A Knight who Eternally Regresses - Chapter 404

WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 404: When Resolve Became Will and Shone

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"People often say you need overwhelming talent to become a knight. If you unpack that, what does it really mean?"

Rierbart struck the ground with his shield, leaned on it, and pushed himself up. His brow was tightly knotted as he forced himself through the pain.

Red blood ran down the tip of Spark, which hung toward the floor, then dripped.

Enkrid did not rush in right away.

Why not? His instincts told him the man was not finished yet.

With a piercing wound that deep, he should not have been able to stand.

Still, the feeling stayed, and Enkrid also found himself interested in what Rierbart was saying. So he paused for a moment, and Rierbart kept talking.

"Junior knights master techniques with Will as their base. Then what about knights? Are they different?"

The tone was calm, but something desperate sat underneath it.

Blood streamed from Rierbart's belly. He groaned through clenched teeth, yet still straightened his back in the end.

"They are different, yes. They really are. They're faster and stronger. Like that vertical slash you dropped earlier, they can unleash power that's hard to endure in an instant."

Enkrid almost rubbed his eyes. The blood flowing from Rierbart was starting to look darker and murkier.

That was not all.

A moment ago, he had been grimacing in pain. Now his face looked much more at ease.

Not fake. Not a forced expression. He truly looked better.

Enkrid watched whatever scheme this was, but still could not understand it.

"Ah, did you know this too? Malten had better technique than me, Benukt was stronger than me, and Banat's agility was at a level no human could follow."

Rierbart started naming his comrades. Enkrid did not know all those names, so instead of answering, he swung his sword. He kicked off hard and stepped in with a diagonal slash. He put Spark away and gripped Silver with both hands.

Bang!

Rierbart showed strength on Enkrid's level and knocked the blade aside.

Steel smashed into steel with a booming crash, and fierce sparks burst between them.

What is this?

The shock from the impact was enough to numb Enkrid's hands.

They traded that blow and separated. Then Enkrid saw Rierbart swing his sword in the air as if recreating the exact trajectory from a moment ago. He was holding it in one hand. He had blocked Enkrid's two-handed cut with one hand.

He kept repeating the movement like he was getting used to a newly bought sword.

Diagonal slash, vertical slash, horizontal slash, thrust.

Basic, simple motions, but the force behind them was nothing like before.

Whoom.

The blade fell straight down, perfectly vertical to the ground, and the wind from that motion brushed Enkrid's cheek.

"So this is what I mean."

As he spoke, the blood from his side mixed with blackness and turned dark red-black, then quickly stopped flowing.

The beard on Rierbart's face grew longer, sharpened like thorns, and the fine hair on his face lengthened until it started covering him.

Even so, his eye color did not change. Still, the cold gaze Enkrid had first seen was gone.

A burning heat filled his eyes now. A flame that looked like slaughter and lust.

Not pure passion. Twisted, warped, ugly emotion.

"All you have to do is raise every ability to knight level."

Rierbart said it.

He was not wrong.

If you caught up in every part of a knight's body, reaction speed, power, explosiveness, and everything else, then fought knights as an equal, was that not one path to becoming a knight?

Hair spread across Rierbart's whole body.

A little earlier, he had been human. Now he was not.

He resented the world that had driven him this far. That was why he wanted to tell his story. Why he had no choice but to go this far, and why he had done this at all.

He wanted to say it.

He could not hold it in. People always had moments when they burned to make someone hear their story.

For Rierbart, this was that moment.

The one who had beaten him stood in front of him, a man he saw as built from pure talent.

He did not know Enkrid, so he judged that his opponent must have reached this point through talent alone.

Otherwise, it made no sense.

So he spoke.

His arms and hands were covered in fur. He let his sword hand hang and opened his mouth. His mouth structure had changed a little, but not enough to stop speech.

Of course, he had struggled a lot at first to get used to it. Not anymore.

"Some people have to stake their lives just to become a knight. But if death is guaranteed, should they still walk that path?"

He had reached the edge of a cliff, with only the jump left. Should he jump anyway, even knowing he would die?

"A single step for someone else was a step that cost me my life."

Rierbart's words held only resentment.

"If you cross one wall once through luck, is that the end? No. It wasn't. I had to cross not once, but again and again. New cliffs kept appearing. So I gave up."

It could have sounded like self-deception. Enkrid had gotten this far without talent, after all.

By any measure, Rierbart had possessed greater talent than he did.

His opponent poured out bitterness, pain, and despair. He blamed his lack of talent and cursed the world.

At times, he probably cursed the goddess of fortune.

At times, he probably cursed fate.

That was where he stood now.

And yet none of it sounded like deception to Enkrid.

Rem had Rem's path.

Ragna had Ragna's path.

Jaxon had Jaxon's path.

Audin had Audin's path.

Dunbakel, Teresa, Esther, Andrew.

Everyone simply walked their own road.

And Enkrid had only his own road.

Just because someone sang a song of despair built on talent did not mean Enkrid had to keep rhythm with it.

So he did not call it deception.

So he held no resentment.

So he showed no emotion toward his opponent.

Rierbart felt offended.

If he said this much, the other side should react somehow. Usually people split into two kinds of response.

Had that not happened many times before?

After he got used to this power, he had tracked down one by one the people who once defeated him and killed them.

"That's cheating."

Some had said that, and those words satisfied the twist in Rierbart's heart.

Yes, cheating.

Talent itself was cheating, so was this not fair too?

"How could someone like you choose this? What a stupid choice."

Others condemned it as false power.

Wrong. Power was truth.

Now speak.

Even if a knight came, could they really claim they would surpass him now?

Rierbart had felt the limits of talent, so he changed his own body.

That was how he seized a knight's might.

"Every Chimera was an experiment for me."

Rierbart said it.

Enkrid did not bother repeating what Esther had told him.

Things like the count never did this for your sake and other such details.

Rierbart would not listen anyway.

Even if he did listen, nothing would change.

Enkrid raised his sword.

Through black hair, Rierbart stared at those bright blue eyes.

Still straight. Still eyes that looked forward and kept walking.

Rierbart wanted to dig those eyes out. He hated them.

The more he looked, the more uncomfortable he felt. It was like those eyes were rebuking his path as wrong. It hurt more than the words of all the people who had told him so outright, like a whip cutting deeper.

So he would kill him.

He would kill him.

"My lord gave me this power."

Enkrid adjusted his grip and angled his sword.

After Rierbart transformed, the pressure pouring off him had changed.

The force pressing on Enkrid's shoulders was different.

The pressure from the Azpen knight had felt like cords winding around his whole body. The pressure from Rierbart now felt like violent chunks of iron crushing his shoulders.

"And so I became a knight."

The declaration dropped. The pressure doubled.

Enkrid did not step back.

His opponent spoke of knights, while he remained at junior knight level.

So what?

What changed because of that?

Even then, he would win.

Even then, he would not lose.

Resolve became Will, and it shone.

Whoosh.

It looked like he had folded space. Rierbart's sword dropped as thin as a thread.

Enkrid struck upward with his blade. The timing was razor-thin. If he had missed, getting split in two would have been the least he deserved.

The two swords met, and a blast exploded.

Boom!

Enkrid felt his body get driven into the ground. His knees shook.

No, it was only a feeling. Rierbart had poured pressure into his swing.

Enkrid ripped his feet free from where they had dug into the dirt and raised his sword vertically.

As if waiting for that, Rierbart's sword slammed into the flat of Enkrid's blade.

Klang! Crack.

A fracture ran across the middle of Silver.

Rierbart's sword still looked like a thread.

That thread was fast and blurred. The instant it touched, the shock doubled and battered his whole body. Even then, he could block it. He could react.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

He swung Silver at the incoming blade. Met it head-on. Blocked and blocked again.

If anyone else had stood here in Enkrid's place, they would have given up long ago.

What Rierbart said had been true.

Through his Chimera body, he had leaped far beyond human limits.

And he believed he had gained a knight's power.

Enkrid kept receiving those strikes.

Barely, but he held.

After seeing Silver crack, he switched to Gladius. The thick, sturdy blade showed true dwarf craftsmanship. Even through repeated blocks, it did not break easily.

The thread bent and aimed for his shoulder. He raised his sword and swung diagonally like a strike.

If he only endured blocks, he would get pushed back. So he answered blows with blows. He had learned that when he fought the Azpen knight before.

Enkrid did exactly what he had learned.

Every exchange of offense and defense happened on near equal footing.

Then, after more than thirty sword clashes and razor-thin defenses,

Rierbart took one step back.

There was no way to avoid doubt.

"You can take a knight's sword?"

A junior knight? Impossible. The level of swordsmanship was different. Speed and power were different. Then how was he enduring this?

At Rierbart's words, Enkrid roughly pressed a hand to his cut earlobe.

The wound came from the sword tip grazing him while he dodged and blocked.

Blood ran down his neck.

Elsewhere too, his armor was dented and torn. He wore no helmet, so blood also ran through his hair from a torn scalp.

It had been a savage assault. A blade moving so freely it felt like a thread. Even so, he could block it.

Because it was still easier to block than Ragna's cuts.

Easier than Rem's axe swings too.

Easier than Jaxon's traceless sword.

Easier to endure than Audin's brutal fists.

All those experiences made this manageable.

At least that was how it felt to him now.

"Are you really a knight?"

Enkrid asked back.

If he were a true knight, this would not be the end of it. Enkrid threw out the question, then realized something and spoke again.

"You've never fought a knight before, have you?"

It was the right answer.

Rierbart had feared defeat and death. He had been afraid to confirm the difference in talent.

That was why, deep down, he had hoped to face a knight this time. He believed he now had to break past his limit. Believed he could.

Enkrid caught that.

Disgust in Rierbart's eyes turned to rage.

A mere junior knight dared?

With a dimple showing, Enkrid said, "From where I stand, you don't even measure up to Ragna."

Who was that?

Rierbart did not ask. He could read the intent.

The bastard was mocking him by mirroring what he had done earlier, dropping names of comrades.

"If Rem tries halfway seriously, he'll catch you too. Knight?"

Enkrid lifted the end of the sentence.

That shook Rierbart to the core.

If even after all this, he still could not become a knight,

then what had he become after giving up being human?

He had walked this road by killing his own family and slaughtering everything tied to his house.

Starting with his fiancee, he had thrown several noble families in as test subjects.

He had offered every person who followed him onto the altar.

And now, even after all that, he still was not a knight?

"Take a few punches from Audin. Maybe that'll clear your head. Why not devote yourself to a god while you're at it?"

Enkrid said it while breathing hard, his sword arm trembling.

That snapped the last thread of reason Rierbart was holding.

"I'll kill you, then I'll hunt down every one of those men you named and kill them too."

As the words came out, Rierbart charged in with speed and force twice what he had before transforming.

By the time he said every one of those men you named, his sword was already flying down to split Enkrid's crown.

Enkrid barely blocked again.

Klang!

Steel rang across the battlefield. More eyes had gathered before anyone noticed. Both allies and enemies had stopped fighting to watch this duel's outcome.

Their fight probably would not decide the war by itself.

Still, no one could look away.

It was a duel that drew the eye.

A moment where one life met another and tried to prove which road had been right or wrong.

Both men had drawn their lives with the sword and reached the present with it, so it was only natural they spoke through blades.

Their swords clashed again.

New wounds spread across Enkrid's body.

One hit tore away his shoulder guard.

A cut opened on his cheek.

Drops of blood sprayed.

A strike sliced near his thigh.

Even while being pushed back like that, Enkrid kept the same thought.