WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 408: Ten Thousand Specters

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Count Molsen was no genius of strategy or tactics, but he thought in broad terms.

He moved outside the enemy's expectations.

Right as the battle began, part of the count's army broke formation.

They peeled away in the middle of the fighting and looked like deserters.

The kingdom commander judged there was no need to chase them. It was normal for deserters to appear when a battle started tipping one way, and his side was still outnumbered anyway.

If enemies ran, that only helped.

So they became a force no one paid attention to.

They split into twos and threes, scattered, then regrouped as they followed the order ringing in their heads.

Find the source of mana.

Naturally, they ended up right in front of Andrew. Watching that group, now a strike unit, Andrew spoke calmly.

"Can you move? I think we need to get up."

Esther did not budge.

A thin line of blood only ran from the corner of her mouth.

That alone proved Esther was fighting too.

Andrew let out a short breath.

The whole situation was a complete mess.

The fighting on the other side had stopped, then these lunatics suddenly popped out of nowhere.

Where did these bastards even come from?

And why here of all places?

This was not where the supplies were, and Crang was not here either.

From a tactical view, this spot meant nothing.

It had to be because of Esther. Even Andrew could see that much.

There were over fifty infantrymen. Every one of them looked dangerous.

He would have preferred fifty ghouls.

"Patriarch, these bastards' eyes..."

One freckled trainee stepped back as he spoke. Andrew had noticed it too.

Maybe their capillaries had burst, because blood droplets had formed in most of their eyes and streamed down their cheeks. Even the ones that looked relatively normal barely had any white visible.

Bright red sclera, black pupils.

Only their eyes had changed, but they no longer looked human.

Their appearance alone was oppressive. Andrew clenched his teeth.

Should we fall back?

He and five trainees could hold formation around Esther, but if they fought here, they would die like dogs.

Then what, grab Esther and run?

Every blood-teared bastard held a lowered sword, with thigh muscles so thick they looked ready to burst.

What did they do to make thighs that thick?

Running for it seemed impossible.

Even escaping alone would be close. Carrying someone while running was out of the question.

It was still broad daylight, but the sky seemed to be getting darker. The battlefield was right nearby, so he should have felt heat, yet a subtle chill crept in.

No, the heat had still been there until a moment ago. Then all at once, it felt cold.

They came forward with no formation at all.

There was an old legend about angels who fought while crying tears of blood, and this looked like that fable brought to life.

Called by the gods to fight, yet weeping blood because they did not want to kill, was that how it went?

Of course, these bastards were the opposite of that fable.

They were men who had taken drugs and pushed their bodies to the limit.

"Ma, ma, mage, te, tear, ki, kill."

The one in the center who was not crying blood stammered it out.

His speech was painful to hear, but the meaning was clear. Their target was the mage.

What was the main force doing, letting these bastards through?

Did the captain even know what was happening over here?

Andrew had every right to be pissed.

"Patriarch."

One trainee called out to him. A rational option still remained. If they ran, they could survive. He had no duty to protect a woman named Esther.

"If I can't even protect the person behind my back, then what can I protect?"

A line the captain had once said came back to him. In this crisis, Andrew looked back on everything he had gone through with Enkrid since first meeting him in danger.

What had he learned from that man?

"If I run after failing to protect even one woman, how will I protect my honor? If survival means that, then from today on, I'll throw away the name Gardner."

Better to die here than run.

"Go, go, go..."

"You get lost."

Andrew cut off the stuttering idiot.

"Let's die, then."

The freckled trainee spoke and assigned positions to the other four. Andrew stood in the center and swung his sword straight down once.

It was a descending cut. A declaration of will. The enemy strike unit rushed in, blood tears and drool flying.

"Grrraaaaah!"

No one could tell if it was a battle cry or a scream.

They were as nasty to fight as they looked. Their lowered swords were fast and strong, and they kicked and clawed too.

He almost doubted they were human.

As a bitter joke, he wondered if their mothers were actually ghouls.

A human-ghoul hybrid sounded absurd, but those bastards were right in front of him.

"You fucked-up bastards, come at me!"

Andrew roared. A blade had already cut one thigh and his leg no longer moved right, but what did that matter?

Then, while he kept holding on and holding on.

Boom!

For a second, Andrew thought a siege stone had flown in from somewhere.

Blood from his torn scalp ran down and covered his eyes. The world looked red.

Something barreled in from one side like a chariot. Looking closer, it was not a chariot, but a person. She clubbed enemies with the flat blunt weapon in her left hand, then crushed enemies with the wide sword in her right.

Red potatoes.

Without realizing it, Andrew had that thought as he watched enemies get mashed.

He had hit his limit long ago, and this help came right before he died.

It was the half-giant warrior, Teresa.

Dunbakel came with her too. With curved swords in both hands, Dunbakel rampaged like a mad sorcerer.

His two blades sliced, smashed, curved, and battered enemies.

They butchered the strike unit and rushed right up in front of Andrew.

"Hey, you okay?"

"You're looking pretty to me right now."

Andrew wiped blood from around his eyes as he answered.

"I've always been pretty."

"The one over there looks even prettier."

Andrew jerked his chin past Dunbakel's shoulder.

Teresa's shield and sword were moving like a grinder. If there was ever a time to say ruthless, this was it.

The huge female warrior, so large she distorted depth itself, crushed and shattered over a dozen enemies in moments, breaking and smashing them to pieces.

Anyone watching would say this looked nothing like pretty, but Andrew meant it.

Those two had saved his life. He could have said even more than that.

Andrew dropped to the ground.

Right before Enkrid moved on Count Molsen, he had sent Dunbakel and Teresa to Esther.

If Esther had sent some spirit or projection to talk, that meant she could not come herself.

Which implied danger.

That was not instinct. It was reason.

That was why Dunbakel and Teresa came here.

Of course, in the middle of all this, Dunbakel saw the count and felt both instinctive fear and deep self-contempt.

Teresa was irritated because she felt her own skill was lacking.

Then they found someone who needed them and was saved by them.

Looking at Andrew, both felt a little better.

"Cough!"

Right before Teresa and Dunbakel finished wiping out the ambushers, Andrew saw Esther cough up blood.

She opened her eyes for a moment.

"Lady Witch?"

Andrew called her, but Esther gave no answer and closed her eyes again.

Something was clearly wrong.

Rejecting the count's mana that had pushed her out, Esther opened her eyes again in the other side world.

She saw black soot-like matter spreading out from the count.

I got hit.

To be exact, it was less that she got tricked and more that it was unavoidable.

The enemy mage had prepared for this, and Esther still had not fully recovered her mana.

If her World of Spells had been intact, she would have noticed and not gotten caught.

So what?

Esther had seen a man who did not know how to give up, and she had learned from him.

She also knew her own proud pride.

Her self-regard, close to arrogance, did not allow retreat.

That was why.

You think I'll back down?

She could not stand it unless she flipped the board that that so-called count mage had laid out.

If winning head-on was difficult, she would use another method.

Second-best option.

Of course, that option needed conditions.

Right now, the source of that soot, the one driving this mana, had to be beaten half to death or killed outright.

Enki will do it.

A mage's prediction was close to prophecy. It was a conclusion reached by weighing context and cause.

But what Esther said to herself was not prophecy.

It was not a wish either.

It was trust.

It was the trust built by watching one human being live the way he did.

Enki was a man who did what he set out to do.

Believing that, Esther prepared the second-best plan.

* * *

The count did not explode in anger. Getting angry because everything did not go your way was no different from being a seven-year-old child.

Can I handle this problem?

He could.

Has the plan gone badly off course?

Hard to say that.

His cold mind cooled his irritation quickly.

The prepared magic circle had twisted, which pissed him off, but this was still enough.

He could not swallow the whole kingdom in one go, but ending one battlefield was possible.

But didn't I need a healthy kingdom in the first place?

Wasn't this all started because I wanted power?

As he tried to recall his past self, another self asked him.

Does that matter?

The count answered.

No.

Black or white, a throne was still a throne.

Increase your thralls. Stain the world.

After reciting those words in his mind, the count used the prepared magic circle as a base and kept chanting.

In truth, the other self inside him had been chanting this spell from the start of the battle.

The ambush might have failed, and the mage who interfered with his World of Spells was still fine. That could be dealt with later.

For now, first he had to sift the souls of those approaching him.

The count raised the hand holding his staff.

He leveled the staff forward, and black soot-like matter spread from its tip.

Even though it was daytime, the sky, already dim, began to darken further.

From behind the count, clouds as black as the chair he sat on began to roll in.

Those heavy clouds, with no thunder at all, looked ominous at a glance.

The dim sky blocked the sunlight.

It looked like it could paint everything black.

"Wh, what is that?"

A kingdom soldier looked up in shock at the bizarre sight.

The black sky kept spreading, then reached the ground. Part of the soot crept over and touched the soldier's arm.

It must have been because the dark clouds were so thick. That much was true. But then how was this shadow forming with no sunlight?

The sky looked like an extremely overcast day, so why could he still see his surroundings?

His reason said that.

His instincts did not.

The soldier tried to brush off the soot from his arm, but it kept spreading and soon gripped all four limbs.

"Ghk."

Then he felt something else forcing its way inside his body.

Not anything physical.

-Give me your body.

A specter that invaded the mind.

The soldier's eyes went cloudy, leaving only the whites. Drool began running down his mouth.

Seeing the result, the count smiled and shouted.

"Endure Ten Thousand Specters!"

His voice spread across the whole battlefield. He was full of confidence. The layered voice shook the minds of ordinary humans without mercy.

The soot itself was made of specters that stole human vitality.

The thickest of them touched the five men advancing toward the count.

Enkrid heard someone whispering to him.

-Give me your body.

Before he could even answer, the Will of Refusal reacted on instinct. Soot like that could not stain his will in the slightest. The specter was knocked away by Will.

-...Give me your body.

Thunk.

-...

The specter turned away from Enkrid.

A specter reached Rem too, but Rem knew how to deal with things like this.

Still, he had no interest in touching such nasty spirit bodies. It was like seeing a rotten egg in midsummer heat and not wanting to lay a hand on it.

Wouldn't anyone rather pinch their nose at the foul smell?

So Rem swung his axe.

Whoosh.

Along the vertical line of the blade, the specter's will scattered.

He still had the sorcery power left from the Undying Madman, so cutting specters was not even worth calling skill.

He could do this even without sorcery power, with a dirty trick if needed.

Ragna ignored it.

A specter stuck to Ragna tightly, but got no response at all.

-Give me your body, can you not hear me? Give me your body.

Ragna ignored it the whole time, and the specter gave up. Even if it could not force obedience, it needed some response to do anything.

No specter could pierce Ragna's rock-like will.

Jaxon was following a little behind the group when he sensed a specter approaching and dodged.

The soot looked like it was spreading without gaps, but if you watched and felt carefully, there were plenty of spaces to slip through.

It was not hard either.

Even if he could not dodge, it did not matter. If things went wrong, he could just use a straw-doll artifact.

Jaxon carried a few prepared items in his coat just in case.

Audin accepted the specter. He alone showed pure kindness and generosity.

Welcome, for the Lord awaits you.

What a pitiful soul this was. He wanted to hold it close. Even in death it could not rest.

He almost cried. A small bead of moisture really formed at the corner of his eye.

Divinity was hidden inside Audin. It was only bound in restraint.

Excited, the specter burrowed into Audin and touched the mass of divinity bound by that restraint.

It had no time even to scream.

It was erased on the spot, sent to the Lord's side.

For a specter, this was the most terrible death.

There was a reason divinity was the natural enemy of undead types and demon creatures like Wraiths.

Holy power gave them the worst pain possible.

Of course, Audin knew that very well.

The Lord said one must bear pain on the road to His side.

He did it knowingly, with the utmost heartfelt care for specters.

The count frowned when the momentum of the five approaching him did not drop at all.

Not just that, here and there, others were resisting his soot specters too.

Around that man Crang, for one, and several others as well.

"Insolent little bastards."

As he spoke, the count shook his staff. If he could not break their minds, then he would tear their bodies first.

"Try blocking this too."

He gave the order, and from the floor beneath the chair where he sat, figures rose, using black soot as their flesh.

Specter Soldiers.

He manifested specters into reality linked to his World of Spells and sent them out, and their number was ten thousand.

A black wave suddenly formed in front of Enkrid and the Lunatic Company and blocked them.

Enkrid saw that suffocating wave and did not waste a second wondering what to do.

Who was best at this kind of fight?

"Rem."

The Lunatic axe master.

"...Not exactly my favorite thing."

Rem saw the approaching horde of specters too. He knew they had to break through.

So, even though he did not like it, he said what needed saying.

"Let's form a battle formation."

He meant lining up in ranks for a specific purpose.

It was a phrase that did not suit the Lunatic Company at all.

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