A Knight who Eternally Regresses - Chapter 402

WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 402: Heaven-Given Talent

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"Send in the Chimera Unit."

At Count Molsen's order, Rierbart raised a flag. A runner who saw the small flag in his hand sprinted forward and shouted,

"Advance! Advance!"

At that cry, the second blade the Count had prepared began to move.

The Count had sent a pack of lycanthropes to Border Guard. They were true lycanthropes, humans turned into demon creatures in the most literal sense. Naturally, that was not all he had sent to Border Guard.

His main force was here.

His cavalry was being pushed back, and his mounted archers had been pinned down by the knight order led by Eisia. His infantry line was losing the formation battle too.

Because of an unexpected force rampaging through the Count's infantry.

More precisely, this whole mess could be traced back to one ignorant swordsman who kept losing his way.

Rierbart saw it too, but stayed calm.

Compared to the strength they had, this battle was downright miserable. They were being pushed back without mercy.

No, they were already being pushed back.

Even so, the Count only watched, as if none of it mattered.

As his commanders made their own calls and moved, casualties in the Count's army kept rising.

In other words, people kept dying. In that gap, the Chimera Unit ran.

On the surface, it looked like the right call. If you were losing, committing another force was the basis of tactics.

Most of them wore torn leather and ragged cloth full of holes.

A group dressed nothing like soldiers started charging forward. Up close, their eyes were cloudy, with no trace of reason left. They were nothing but a pack obeying one simple order: move forward.

Then, at some point, they changed as they ran.

Feathers burst from their bodies. Thick mane-like fur sprouted. Their frames swelled larger.

Their nails sharpened, and killing intent flooded those blurred eyes.

They were becoming demon creatures born for slaughter alone.

Owlbear, lycanthrope, and Bearman.

Those transformed into three kinds of demon creatures charged while screaming.

Hoooooo!

Awooooo!

Grrrrrraaaah!

To ordinary people, the howls alone were enough to raise goosebumps, an instinctive fear carved into the body.

With that howling, they struck at the right flank of the royal army. There were well over a hundred demon creatures, enough to drive anyone facing them into despair.

Then it happened.

A shout rang out from one side, aimed at the beast pack. It was clearly human, yet mixed with a strange call.

Orororororol!

A rolling-tongue cry, projected wide on deep belly breath.

"Chase the wolves!"

"Beast, beast. You took the wrong path!"

Orororororol!

Shouts and wild calls echoed together. From one side of the plain, a group appeared, running so fast it was hard to believe they were infantry.

They were so quick they looked almost as fast as a cavalry charge.

In other words, they did not fall behind even against the rushing demon pack.

Every one of them carried a long staff or spear and wore a reddish-brown leather cloak.

There could not be two groups like this.

They were the Shepherds of the Wilderness.

People who lived by herding sheep across the wilds.

At the far northern edge of the continent, they handled thick-horn mountain goats in the mountains, and on the plains called the wilderness, they handled "lean sheep," said to be the fiercest herbivores on the continent.

They were fewer than twenty, yet a force on the level of a knight order.

They ran and slammed into the demon pack.

Fewer than twenty charged into a group of over two hundred. At a glance, it looked like mass suicide, but the result was the opposite.

"Die and become fertile soil."

At their front was a man named Pel.

He swung Idolslayer, the sword that held a demon soul.

If it cut you, you died.

It was like being struck with extreme poison. A sword that cut and killed not the flesh, but the soul.

He had once been warned not to use it carelessly because repeated use could awaken the demon trapped inside, but against creatures like these, using it without restraint was the right move.

He was the same shepherd and the same sword that had once made Enkrid repeat this day.

Pel drove the sword into an owlbear's eye. He did not need to pierce the brain. A quick stab and immediate pullback was enough. A moderate wound would do.

Of course, gouging out an eye was not a moderate wound.

It only looked moderate to a shepherd.

"Woooooo!"

The stabbed owl creature shrieked. It endured instead of dying. Will? No. That was the demonic nature of a demon creature.

The sword trembled and gave a short vibration. A sign that it did not like that cut. Which meant he could swing it as much as he wanted.

Was that not the same as using its power without offering a soul to the demon sword?

In return, compared to cutting things with true souls, he would need to cut, slash, stab, and pierce much more.

Still, if one strike failed, then cut twice.

As fast as he had withdrawn, Pel closed in and stabbed the other eye.

With a whoosh, the owlbear slashed with clawed, paw-like hands.

Pel pulled his blade free and ducked under it. His eyes glittered.

Information poured in from all sides, and he moved on instinct. Pel began to rampage even harder.

Then two comrades came up beside him. Older-looking shepherds. One wore a wolf-head cap, the other a bear-head cap.

"You crazy bastard, Pel. Rampage in moderation."

"Kids these days, every time."

One handled a long spear, the other a long staff.

The Shepherds of the Wilderness had preferred long polearms for generations. Spears, staffs, things like that.

Pel insisted on using a sword among them.

"Can't you just let me handle it?"

Pel said that as he kicked the dying owlbear.

"So now you do not even want to hear nagging?"

"If you have no manners, maybe ask your father about that."

Noisy old men.

Pel thought one thing, but said another.

"Yes, I was wrong."

"Only words, only words."

"Kids these days, every time."

The old man in the bear-head cap said "kids these days" like a habit.

So it was easy to ignore.

Pel decided he would rather chat with the owlbear than listen to this.

Conversation was supposed to include laughter, but he would be the only one laughing.

The dead could not laugh, and he had no intention of giving demon creatures that kind of room anyway.

The two old shepherds watched Pel and followed like support.

Then two more joined them, and five moved as one.

It was the basic shepherd formation.

Five became one and struck. Diamond-shaped spearheads, staffs ringed with iron at the tips, and Pel's sword brutally killed the transformed test subjects.

In short, the Count's chimera army failed to achieve any of its purpose.

So how were the Shepherds of the Wilderness here?

Crang's work.

While wandering the continent, he had happened to make a connection with a shepherd and asked for help, and the shepherd came to repay that favor.

No, to be honest, they had arrived years ago.

They had not waited all this time just for today.

They came because they wanted something too.

Of course, Crang knew all of this and used it fully.

Using what the other side wanted to set the board was basic politics.

Crang did exactly that, and because of it, twenty Shepherds of the Wilderness were here.

Their number could not be called a mere twenty.

To the soldiers, it felt like Enkrid's Madmen Company had doubled.

Older commanders thought it looked like a knight order split into three wings and ravaging the enemy army.

Eisia and the squires.

The Shepherds of the Wilderness.

And Enkrid with the Madmen Company.

Ironically, the most overwhelming among them was the Madmen Company.

The Red Cloak Knights showed the least destructive force.

Even without full knights, it was still absurd.

* * *

Count Molsen was, in short, like a boil.

Leave it alone and it hurt, touch it carelessly and it got worse.

A boil like that had to be cut out in one stroke.

That was why Crang made a claim that sounded absurd at first.

"We need a civil war."

By civil war, he meant gathering every disease into the boil called Count Molsen, cutting it out, and burning it.

So this battle was less the Count's intention and closer to being swept up in Crang's.

Then did Count Molsen fail to see Crang's intention?

Molsen might have been a born politician, but he was also an ambitious schemer. He knew what needed knowing. He agreed while knowing.

And that brought them here.

Marcus's mind was tighter than ever.

He moved troops based on information from his scouts.

Marcus had to leave no gaps and crush every method the enemy had prepared.

Until now, that was exactly what had happened.

As he did, he threw a question at the Count in his heart.

'You did not expect it to go this far, did you?'

They had called in a completely different armed group instead of a knight order. It was only natural to think the enemy would be shaken.

He had heard they promised the Shepherds part of the land in return.

The shepherd chief would receive a noble title in name, and their land would become an autonomous territory.

Beyond their northern lands, they also held land here and there across both kingdom and empire.

That said, they did not rule those lands directly.

They only kept tenant farmers and collected a portion of crops.

Needless to say, the Marquis of Okto had spent his influence to make that possible.

Without his ability, it could never have happened.

So yes, it would have been hard to predict.

'Try to stop it, traitor.'

A blade that once herded sheep in the far northern continent was now tearing through the chimera pack the enemy had sent.

For whatever reason, Count Molsen pushed even more troops into them.

The Count's next move was unexpected.

'What?'

Marcus frowned. What was he doing now?

'You are going to force it through with numbers?'

They were not trained soldiers. Through the path split open left and right, rear units poured in like floodwater.

There were so many it looked like waves rolling in, but they just ran without formation.

'Field soldiers?'

Those were people who reclaimed frontier land in peacetime and became soldiers in wartime.

Field soldiers still received basic military training. Some advanced and became professional soldiers, and even those who did not still had mandatory training in peacetime.

So those men were not field soldiers.

They could not even form lines. They only rushed in wildly.

They were ordinary civilians, more precisely people from the Count's territory, handed a spear and sent out.

Behind them stood a unit of archers with arrows already nocked.

Men who made troops fight by killing anyone who ran were called punitive officers.

The Count had formed a punitive rearguard.

Retreat and die to arrows, advance and die to enemy blades.

If they survived, they were promised land and status, which gave them a reason to fight, but Marcus had no way of knowing that part.

Marcus drove his thoughts desperately.

'Is he trying to drain our strength?'

Even if he understood, it was a move he could not avoid.

The Count was no idiot. He had once been a man who defined an era.

In his youth, he had even been called the Protector of the Territory.

When the meat shields he sent reached the allied lines, they were butchered and ground down. Naturally. Behind them, the army the Count had raised pressed in too.

The battle continued without pause. Whatever the Count intended, one thing was certain.

Blood would run across this land like a sudden downpour.

* * *

Ragna was in the middle of stabbing and cutting down enemies.

"Block him!"

"Kill him!"

Blood sprayed. Bones snapped. Skulls burst and brains soaked the ground. Severed limbs dropped, and beside them lay dead soldiers with open eyes.

Ragna showed no mercy with his blade. More accurately, he did not care much about those who died.

Instead, he honed his own technique.

He used this place as a training ground.

And that was fine.

He stabbed, cut, and swung as he thought, reviewed fights, and gained insight.

He did all of it at once.

Like that, he created several techniques.

In the process, he naturally merged and sorted what he already had. He discarded what should be discarded and kept what should be kept.

'Flow-Breaking is a grab.'

He had learned it on the spot by watching that squire he fought earlier, and used it then, but after reviewing it, it was not worth keeping.

Useful against weaker opponents, maybe, but meaningless against someone near his own level.

It could throw them off for a moment, but expecting more than that was hard.

So he did not need it. Ragna easily threw away what he had learned and forgot it.

He had a few small realizations like that.

'Stronger and faster.'

Raise power and speed overall. Pour that into the fundamentals of cutting and thrusting. That was the point. Physical enhancement.

Beyond ordinary training, it was enhancement as a technique rooted in Will.

He walked that road without needing to ask whether it was right. He did not need to ask anyone while searching for a path. He did not need to turn his head and check the constellations either.

That was talent.

The genius people called heaven-given talent.

Right there, Ragna kept creating the techniques he needed to master and repeating them.

Then men who did not even know how to fight came all the way to his front.

They were the Count's fake field troops.

'Annoying.'

Why? He did not need to know. Ragna moved without a second thought. He kicked off the ground to find enemies worth swinging his sword at, professional soldiers and the like.

Soon, he found a group that could fight.

When Ragna suddenly approached, a unit abruptly opened a round space at the center as if inviting him.

Ragna walked into the middle of their formation. Then men with thick square shields drew a circle around him.

They had the feel of people trained to hunt a wild beast.

"Now!"

Right after he stepped inside, a net flew down over his head. Along with it, bolts and arrows came from all directions, all aimed at him alone.

Ragna raised his sword and cut the net.

It was not difficult.

Cutting the net while dodging arrows and bolts was not difficult either.

Then he flowed forward like water and swung his sword level with the ground, toward the shields. He meant to cut both shields and shield-bearers in one strike.

But.

Kagagak! Jjeong!

For the first time, his sword was blocked. By men who were neither knights nor squires.

Those were not ordinary shields. The men holding them were not ordinary either.

They were heavy infantry wrapped head to toe in thick metal.

The shields in their hands were triple-layer iron slabs, five times heavier than normal shields.

Even with Will of Severance, it was natural that a blade could not physically cut beyond the length it actually had.

That was exactly what had happened.

The sword had split the shield, but it was too thick to cleave through.

The shield-bearers glared at Ragna as they breathed hard.

Ragna looked at his sword once, then raised his gaze.

Beyond the shields, he saw sharp stares fixed on him.