WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 396: Next

= = =

Edin Molsen’s head throbbed from the smell of lamp oil burning in the room.

If he stayed in here much longer, he felt like he might die before anything else from never breathing fresh air.

Even without torture or beatings.

"Damn it."

The moment he cursed under his breath, worry for his sibling suddenly stabbed into his thoughts.

When he raised his head, he saw a man sitting right in front of him with his legs crossed. Big eyes, handsome enough to make even men look twice. A familiar face. Kraiss from the Madmen Company.

He had never imagined this bastard had planted a watcher right beside him and his sibling. Blaming him now would not change anything, so he asked the practical question.

"What about my sibling?"

"Doing perfectly fine. Eats a little less than usual, but I figured that is the secret to keeping a good figure."

That smooth tone annoyed him.

"If you had run right before the civil war broke out, none of this would have happened."

Edin almost said he had wanted that too, then stopped.

He would have had to know first to avoid it.

His father, the King of the Frontier, had planned the civil war and put it in motion. He had known, but he could not speak freely.

No matter what anyone said, that man was still his father.

Treason meant beheading for the whole family.

So should he have stood against his father?

Not a chance.

Edin knew how much power his father held. He was not the kind of man who picked a fight he could not win.

All Edin Molsen had wanted was to hide somewhere quiet with his sibling.

East, north, anywhere.

That was why he had endured getting beaten by Enkrid.

He had even tried to persuade his father by saying his sibling could seduce Enkrid.

Looking back now, his father had probably never cared about someone like him in the first place.

"Though he would not have let us run either."

"Kill me."

Edin said it flatly. These people were his father’s enemies. They would not keep him alive.

Value as a hostage? No chance.

That father?

At some point, Dean Molsen had stopped feeling human. His chill was like permafrost, land frozen forever.

You could not see it on the surface, but when you watched him up close, there was an inhuman coldness.

"Since when did he become like that?"

He did not know. It was beyond what he could trace. At some point, his father had changed.

"Kill you for what?"

Kraiss shook his head, slapped his thigh with a smack, and spoke.

"Let us do this."

Kraiss knew how to handle people. He read the room fast and understood situations quickly.

He had figured out long ago that Edin Molsen had no value as a hostage.

Count Molsen did not care at all about the son in front of him.

Or the daughter he had brought in disguised as a man.

Family business was none of his concern, but one thing was clear.

Edin Molsen was trying to run.

His goal was obvious. No torture needed.

"Tell us everything you know, then go to Martai. We will set you up with a new identity and a house. You were probably planning to sell the gems and jewelry you brought and build a base, right? You think you can dump things like that out of nowhere? You would be lucky if you did not get stabbed by a robber at night."

Kraiss had made Krona before by hiding people. He had been good enough at it that he once considered doing it for real.

He quit because the odds of getting stabbed or thrown in prison were too high, but his old touch had not disappeared.

You could do this through Gielpin’s guild too, so it was not hard.

"...You would let me live?"

Edin’s eyes filled with suspicion.

Yeah, I would not believe this easily either.

Kraiss gave him words that sounded convincing enough.

"I swear on the captain’s honor."

The captain was Enkrid. In Border Guard, the weight of Enkrid’s name could not be compared to anything else.

People might not know the lord’s name, but even random kids on the street knew Enkrid.

"And if that is a lie?"

"Do you have another choice?"

Edin had no other choice. Trust him and talk, or just die.

"Hah, damn it. I got caught good."

Edin Molsen told him what he knew. It was not even that important to him.

He did not know details anyway.

"In the count’s territory, there are Five Weapons."

"Not five objects, five people?"

Sounded like the counter was wrong.

"It means five warriors, each using a different weapon."

The explanation was short.

The count’s army was split into four branches, and each had a commander they called a general.

The rest of the organization was similar to the kingdom’s.

Four generals, plus the warriors guarding the count. That was the Five Weapons raised by Molsen.

You could call them five monsters who had proven themselves through force.

Malten, the mute warrior who swung a hammer.

Benukt, the giant who used his body as a weapon.

Zalban, who handled two spears at near trick-level skill.

Banat, the Leaf Blade elf.

Rierbart, a guard warrior from fallen nobility.

"Every one of them could have joined a knight order. They are all absolutely loyal to the count too."

Just thinking about them made Edin’s mouth go dry.

None of them felt human.

Count Molsen was persistent and insidious. That was why nobody knew how much force he had hidden.

"What if he joined hands with cultists too?"

Kraiss asked because that question applied to him as well. Could the count pull in Azpen and another group on top of that?

"No need for that. He already has his territorial army."

Edin spoke, and Kraiss’s relaxed face changed instantly.

No long explanation was needed.

"So he built a brutal army."

While Border Guard was blocking Azpen.

While the kingdom was blocking the Cursed Ground and the south.

Count Molsen had stayed quiet. He did not cause major trouble.

He was called the King of the Frontier, yet he never caused a huge incident.

That was how he gathered his strength.

And was that all?

From that insidious bastard?

He had to have more hidden cards. Suspicion became certainty.

Bang!

Kraiss shot up so hard it was like he kicked off the chair, and it fell backward with a thud.

Watching that, Edin closed his eyes.

The die had been cast, and he felt like he already knew what number had landed.

He heard Kraiss run outside and shout from deep in his gut.

"Audin! Captain Sinar! Battalion Commander Graham! We need to form reinforcements right now!"

* * *

"Beating the Security Commissioner down like that was a mistake."

Those words came from some guild master glued to Enkrid’s side. Honestly, he was annoying, but Enkrid let him be.

The man had approached with something like goodwill.

He had supplied various weapons and gear, and even followed all the way to the Nauril Plains.

He also said he had been pretty good with a sword in his younger days.

So this was his way of saying he wanted to fight with the king’s army.

"A mistake?"

Andrew, walking behind them, reacted as if the words bothered him.

"I know you are skilled, but you know this, do you not? Nothing is as important as reputation."

The guild master said it like an excuse, and Andrew gave a snort.

The guild master frowned at that, then quickly smoothed his face again.

The other party was the head of Gardner, a rising new noble house.

And he had heard that the five trainees behind him were all outstanding too.

Enkrid did not care what this guild master trailing him said.

Why did talk like that keep coming up?

He did not even need to think deeply to know.

No one here who had properly seen what Enkrid did had gone around spreading it.

Eisia knew the rough situation, but she was not someone who talked carelessly.

Would Rem go around explaining it? Talking was his specialty, sure, but he had nobody here to talk to. Ragna and Jaxon were even less likely.

And Esther was not about to step up and say,

"This is the man who saved your king."

Right, as if she would.

Of course, there had been people who saw Enkrid.

They were the ones who had stood against him when he saved Crang. They saw the swordsmanship that cut down a squire in one stroke, but they ran.

Naturally, they had no chance to spread the story.

Crang said little, Matthew said little, and the Trident guard did too.

Still, if anyone spat nonsense, both Matthew and the Trident guard got angry.

It was not that no stories spread at all.

There were people like Squire Ropord and palace maids.

Thanks to that, rumors did spread.

Rumors that Enkrid, Border Guard’s hero, was real.

The old talk, that he was a loud braggart or empty chaff, began to fade.

But not every noble accepted it.

So what?

As always, Enkrid did not care at all. No one around him cared about that either.

Unless someone came up and mocked him to his face.

If not, why bother?

Compared to stuff like that, Enkrid had other things filling his mind.

He had a lot to think about and a lot to do.

All the way to the Nauril Plains, Enkrid kept replaying what had happened.

"I am Ingis of the Red Cloak Knights. Feels like we will meet again."

It started with that knight, Ingis, coming to find Enkrid before leaving.

"Next time, I hope we can spar."

Enkrid had not even done anything particular, yet Ingis’s interest had turned toward him.

"Why do you want to fight our captain anyway?"

Rem asked from the side, sounding curious.

Usually Enkrid was the one challenging first, not the other way around.

"I have good instincts, so I can tell. You are an interesting man."

Ingis brushed back his hair and answered seriously.

To Enkrid, the man looked very peculiar.

"Then I will go."

He said the south had too many troublesome issues and left just like that. He repeated once or twice more that they should meet again later.

"A man worth falling for more with each passing day."

After that, Ruagarne came over. She crossed swords with Enkrid a few times, then said,

"With my skill now, I cannot handle you."

Her ankle still was not fully healed. Even a Frog could not regrow an ankle in one day.

Even so, the skill gap was obvious.

"Still, I have things left to teach you."

For five days, Ruagarne corrected the methods in his Correct Sword style.

Enkrid naturally learned with full focus.

"Did I do it like this back then?"

During the march, Enkrid kept moving his hand like a blade and replaying sword forms. It was daily routine. Everyone saw it and let it pass.

He did not command a separate unit anyway, so the people watching were predictable.

Ragna, Jaxon, Dunbakel, Rem, and Andrew.

Except for Andrew, all of them were originally from Border Guard’s standing army, so having no troops under direct command was natural.

The road to the Nauril Plains was smooth. No ambushes, no raids.

The Reconnaissance Team kept moving and reporting enemy movement.

Until that very point, Enkrid did nothing but keep replaying what he had refined over one month.

One month. Normally, that would be short.

This month was different.

"You have grown a lot."

He saw Ragna’s gaze change.

"Hah, come at me. I will go half serious."

He drew out Rem’s serious side.

"This is truly ridiculous."

Eisia, partly recovered and back again, shook her head. How could someone grow this much in just a few days?

"It is getting hard to find his old self."

Jaxon said that too. It was high praise. Enkrid nodded.

For one month, Enkrid barely spoke.

He only swung his sword and moved forward.

Was it because of the stimulus the Boatman gave him?

That was not all.

Inside him, the Flow-Breaking Squire kept surfacing without rest.

Over and over, Enkrid asked himself.

"What if we had fought all the way to the end?"

Then what would have happened?

From repeated questions, he got answers. No, he already knew the answer.

Experience from repeating this same today over and over.

Only now, after walking and walking again to reach this point, did his view open.

At most three times. That would have been enough.

Then he could have surpassed him.

So that man had not been a wall.

It was a fresh experience.

You could call one month a short time.

Compared to the repeated todays, it was extremely short.

Yet the quality and density of that time were different.

Day by day, Enkrid changed. It was simply him digesting experience earned through accumulated todays, but to other people it looked strange.

"At this rate, he will not die easily anymore."

That was Rem’s conclusion.

And then they reached the Nauril Plains.

Beyond fields where green shoots were rising with summer’s approach, the enemy appeared.

A line of troops, so many that one glance made your head spin.

"Filthy amount of them."

Rem spoke first. Ragna nodded. Jaxon, arms folded, just tilted his chin slightly.

Dunbakel swept her eyes from left to right and said,

"Looks like triple."

He was right. The numbers were different from the start.

In truth, the commander class in Crang’s army had expected the count might pull in cultists or use some trick.

It was a misread.

This was pure troop difference. A polished territorial army nearing ten thousand.

Just standing in formation, they already overwhelmed by momentum.

The allied force prepared for civil war was around three thousand at best.

They were behind in training and behind in numbers. It was a losing fight.

In front of that army stood the Five Weapons. Two lieutenants stood beside each of them, and those men also carried unusual pressure.

The weather was bright, but it felt like dark clouds were rolling in.

Black clouds hanging only above the allied side.

And then.

"I will just go say hello."

There was one man who had come all this way doing nothing but revisiting his sword.

He wanted to test his blade. Instinctively, he also meant to flip the atmosphere right now.

It was that sense for reading battlefield mood, the sense born from seeing through strategy and tactics in the war against Azpen.

"Odd-Eye."

Enkrid called Odd-Eye, who now carried him willingly, and climbed onto its back.

Pwoooooo, the horn trumpet blared.

Doom doom doom doom doom!

Drums rolled across the field, and one rider moved out to the front.

"Anyone, come out."

He shouted. Everyone stood stunned, and one of the Five Weapons, a lieutenant under Zalban, stepped out.

"I will bring back his head."

The enemy wanted a duel, so he would grant it.

The lieutenant rode forward with a long spear leveled.

His opponent got off the horse.

Why was this idiot dismounting?

Hiiiiiing!

The lieutenant’s horse cried out.

"Hah!"

He shouted and pushed for more speed, and the ground began to pound.

A heavy warhorse, a warrior above it with a spear.

One man on foot looked like he would be smashed to pieces or skewered like meat.

"Uh, uh..."

Someone in the kingdom army pointed forward and gaped.

Should he not dodge that?

That was the question.

Most people only watched blankly.

The whole sequence did not happen in one instant, but what could they do?

Since it had already reached this point, all they could do was watch.

Anyone with eyes, anyone reading the scene, judged that man would be run through and die on the spear.

Those who did not know Enkrid thought that.

Only a few stayed relaxed. They knew exactly who had stepped forward.

Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!

The horse closed the distance in a flash. Its heavy mass was visible even from far away. Dirt flew up.

Grass got crushed under the hooves and flung backward.

Compared to the smooth advance that had looked like gliding over clouds when friendly forces moved, this was a violent charge.

Whoosh!

The spear split the air. Zalban’s lieutenant thrust, and horse and rider shot past the target.

Pwahk!

Blood sprayed through the air like paint splashed across a canvas.

The cavalry passed through, but the rider had left half his body behind.

The upper body of the man with the spear rose into the air as if pulled by a string, then dropped to the ground.

Blood and intestines stained the grass and dirt.

First casualty.

Enkrid muttered, not caring if anyone heard him.

"Next."

= = =

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