WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 411: Borrowing for a Moment

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Jaxon kept throwing daggers, then hurled a Silent Throwing Dagger straight at the count's brow.

The silent blade exploded with a boom right in front of the count's face.

A black curtain rippled before him with the blast. His Magical Barrier was still intact. A dagger wrapped in scroll magic was not enough to pierce it.

"Don't beg for forgiveness!"

Dean Molsen had always looked at the world too easily, but now he had been driven to the edge of a cliff and finally felt fear. Sweat ran down his back. He had never faced an enemy like this. It was a first for him, and it cost him his composure.

The count had already gone beyond the level of ordinary sorcery. Now he was even burning through his own lifespan.

He drew out more specters and rolled his eyes back.

His eyes had turned pitch black as they fixed on Jaxon. A horrific chill surged up from the hole in Jaxon's abdomen.

"Hm?"

His legs almost gave out, but Jaxon held on. Two bastards beside him would love to see him fall.

"Die, die, die, die, die."

The count kept muttering with his staff raised, staring at Jaxon. Jaxon stared right back. Those fully black eyes had no visible pupil or sclera, yet they stayed locked on him with stubborn fixation.

The more the count spoke, the colder Jaxon's abdomen became. Staying upright was getting impossible. He dropped to one knee. Thud. His palm hit the ground, and he shut his eyes.

He had to resist the chill. As he focused, he heard Rem mutter beside him.

"Yeah, that's it."

'Crazy barbarian.'

Jaxon focused harder. This was a kind of spell. Something had been planted in his wound. Then all he had to do was find it and rip it out. He began observing his own body.

Patience to endure pain.

Calm to observe his own body.

And sensitivity.

Add one more thing, an unbreakable will.

'I do not quit.'

Jaxon had learned things from watching Enkrid too.

This was the first time he had been hit by this spell, but there had to be a way out.

Take what he knew, what he had experienced, and what he could infer, then organize it and reach a conclusion.

As Jaxon endured on one knee, his squad leader was shattering every danger laid before his squad.

Enkrid took three steps forward.

They were steps toward the count. Which meant he was now inside sword range.

His squadmates had blocked the count's repeated spells and dirty tricks for him.

After closing the distance, Enkrid put his hand on his sword grip and said,

"You are already inside my range."

Three sat and one stood, and all of them looked at Enkrid. The count looked at him too.

Range? Just the distance his sword could reach. The count snorted.

He trusted the defensive spell wrapped around his body.

Enkrid adjusted his breathing. He had pushed himself hard getting through the ten thousand specters.

Fatigue had piled up until his muscles were trembling, but that was fine.

It was not like this was his first time.

This happened often when he swung a sword.

Back when he had nothing, he had swung until his muscles tore.

If he had not, he could not even have reached for the dream he carried.

If he wanted to keep reaching forward without seeing the path, what did he have to do?

Repeat, then repeat again.

That was what experience gave him.

He had lived through it, so he could push himself now too.

Enkrid could still endure.

His gaze landed on the black curtain rippling in front of the count.

He had already seen Jaxon stab at that Magical Barrier once. From that, he had roughly guessed how tough it was.

'It might not break from a thrown dagger.'

But it could be cut. Normal sword swings would not do it, of course. He needed not a speck of doubt that he could cut it.

So.

"Ragna, let me borrow this once."

Ragna did not even get time to ask what he meant.

Enkrid copied a technique again, one he had tried to imitate countless times and failed every single time.

He raised the sword like the tip would pierce the sky. Both hands gripped the handle, shoulders relaxed.

Heavy Sword Style upper stance.

More exactly, it was a modified posture from a hereditary sword art passed down in a northern family.

Ragna's surname was Zaun.

Ragna had altered the Zaun family's inherited stance however he pleased.

Enkrid had no way to know that. He had only finished preparing his swing.

Ragna looked at Enkrid with mild surprise.

'Not bad.'

Posture, pressure, and will.

There was little to criticize.

This was the best stance Enkrid had shown so far.

Seeing him copy his own form made him feel that even more strongly.

Ragna was not the only one surprised.

Rem had already been surprised since they fought through the specter soldiers.

'He never got pushed back even once.'

Enkrid had matched both his and Ragna's rhythm. It was getting hard to remember what their old captain had been like.

'This is fun. Damn fun.'

Rem tightened his grip, ready to throw an axe if things turned bad.

Audin could not even put his hands together, so he prayed with only his lips. The pain felt like it would split his skull, but he endured and kept praying.

"The lamb watched by Father has shed its wool and become a shepherd."

And a shepherd was one who struck and corrected what was twisted and wrong.

That binding restriction was no joke. If things went wrong, it could drive a person mad with pain. Plenty of people lacked the discipline and ended up that way.

Still, what had to be done had to be done.

That too was something Audin had learned from watching Enkrid.

Jaxon raised Carmen's Stiletto and slowly stabbed into his own abdomen. He avoided the organs and drove toward the source of the chill.

Thk.

That settled the cold, and he looked forward. The blade was in his gut, but it was not fatal. He had avoided the organs, and proper treatment would be enough.

He had not stabbed deeply either.

He reflected too.

'I was sloppy.'

He had not used his assassination techniques perfectly. Why was his master's lesson coming back now of all times?

"You want to do your absolute best? Then find a place to live first."

Why had his master said that?

He had been chosen to inherit Georg's Dagger.

Had he not already had a place to stay?

If he fought with everything and reveled in killing and being killed, he would get drunk on it.

His master had said exactly that.

Jaxon had felt that pull before too.

Then what should he do to avoid it?

Thoughts kept coming at the wrong time. Jaxon cut them off hard. This was not what mattered now.

He looked ahead.

He saw a captain who no longer needed his help.

That back filled his view.

And that back was in a stance just before a sword swing.

"Hoo, you damned bastards."

The count steadied his breathing. He had been pushed back again and again, but seeing them collapse one by one had barely brought him something like composure.

His eyes turned to Enkrid. The count knew how to use a sword too.

He saw Enkrid take his stance and decided he could not give up the first strike.

That rippling black curtain could nullify most attacks anyway.

After running several calculations, the count struck first.

He kicked off the ground and thrust forward. A flawless thrust. The sword tip looked like a single point as it flew at Enkrid.

Clean and direct. Fast and strong too.

Enkrid calmly brought his blade down and struck the count's sword.

Clang!

The count gathered his rebounded blade and tried to cut.

Enkrid borrowed Ragna's Severance for a moment.

Enkrid's foot drove into the ground and carried him forward. At the same time, his shoulder turned smoothly, and his waist redirected the sword.

The blade that had come down to stop the count's thrust changed direction like a fish gliding over a river.

Heart of Superhuman Strength surged power into it, and then he layered Will on top.

'Cut.'

It was the Will of Severance.

Enkrid's sword leveled with the ground and swept over the bridge of the count's nose.

Crack!

The Magical Barrier split. Will was the power of intent. The Will of Severance cut through the Magical Barrier and split the skull too.

Silver, which had split the skull, shattered into pieces and flew away.

Enkrid held his finishing posture and exhaled the breath he had been holding.

He stood gripping the sword with both hands, and his eyes looked blue enough to glow. In the black world the count had created, those two blue eyes made him look like the only one standing in a different world.

"Hoo."

After exhaling, Enkrid felt pain in his arm muscles, lowered the broken half of his sword, and turned around.

The count had lost the top of his head.

To anyone watching from the side, it looked like a very simple exchange.

Enkrid had struck aside the thrust, then instead of pulling back to reset, he flowed straight into a smooth upper-level horizontal slash.

The count had not even managed to try to block before taking it.

It had been part of the technique Ragna had shown moments earlier, and it carried the Will of Severance.

That was why Enkrid had said he was borrowing it.

"Grrrk."

Bloody foam rose from the count's mouth.

He was the schemer who had turned Naurillia upside down, but death came equally to all humans.

People died from blind arrows too, so a man with his skull split open could not live.

Blood streamed down from the cut head. Even in the dark, the surging blood looked vividly red.

Then something impossible happened.

"I cannot let it end like this."

Again, words that rang through their heads. The count spoke while dead, and his voice split in two and overlapped.

Blood ran down his face, yet his mouth spoke clearly?

Only then did Audin doubt what the enemy really was.

'This is...'

A dread like something from deep inside a Cursed Ground touched his skin.

"A demon?"

Audin muttered to himself. At the same time, black smoke flowed from the count's body.

"Not one hundred thousand, only ten thousand, but you cut through it. I respect that. Since I respect it, I will give you a deep curse... hm? Witch?"

Audin had said "demon," and the smoke was just about to take human shape.

As nonsense kept spilling from the count's mouth, thunder rolled through the dark clouds.

Krrrboom.

The black smoke stopped mid-formation.

Enkrid watched it with the broken half-sword still in his hand.

Tap.

Then rain began to fall.

"...So I got played."

The headless count and the demon that had failed to fully form spoke at the same time. Their voices overlapped.

Enkrid understood why the count's voice had occasionally sounded doubled.

He had been carrying a demon.

It changed nothing.

Enkrid threw away broken Silver and drew Gladius.

He would pull attention with Gladius, then land the killing blow.

'With Spark.'

In an instant, he mapped the flow of the fight.

Everyone else was shocked, but he alone was already preparing to keep fighting, so the demon looked back at him.

"You insolent little thing."

No emotion was felt in its tone. That did not matter either.

Enkrid only wanted to finish a fight that was not over yet.

His entire company looked wounded or exhausted.

Meaning only he could step forward.

At this point someone might wonder if this was a wall too high to cross, but Enkrid did not.

Do the best he could in every moment.

That was how he had lived.

So he did the same now.

Beyond the world of the mind, the Boatman burst out laughing.

"As expected."

This bastard really was properly insane.

* * *

The count had extraordinary talent, and his greed had leaped far beyond human limits.

That was how he had obtained a demon heart and become intoxicated by it.

Ignoring the mad swordsman rushing at him, the demon watched the witch's trick and said,

"Wouldn't I be disappointed if you blocked even my final curse?"

Its tone was light, but the weight of the word demon was anything but.

A top-tier danger creature that should only exist in a Cursed Ground.

It had intelligence, and it excelled at tormenting and killing humans.

"Demon," Enkrid said.

The demon's eyes turned to him.

"You, yes. Impressive. Human. But right now, even if I wanted to fight, I don't think I can."

The demon did not know the road Enkrid had walked, but it understood what he had done here.

Every one of them had gathered around this man.

Even the witch who had just pulled this trick was one of his people.

"If you touch them, I'll chase you anywhere and kill you."

The witch's voice crossed space and reached the demon.

Even demons did not welcome total annihilation. So the threat annoyed it.

"Arrogant witch."

From the black mist, only something like eyes floated up, scanning everyone with a dull gaze.

The instant Enkrid recognized what it was, a strange feeling rose in him.

It was clearly not human. Did that mean it could not be cut? Really? It said it would not fight, but was that true? Should he test it with one cut?

Right after that thought came, he gathered his remaining strength and tried to charge.

The demon looked at him.

Its tone had been playful the whole time, but now it changed.

"We will meet again."

Through the haze, Enkrid caught a vague outline, but he could not make out the form.

"I am the Lord of One Hundred Thousand Specters."

As soon as it said that, the demon's body crumbled away. The rain falling in heavy drops had grown stronger, and it could no longer endure.

The witch had created rain from her own magic power. Since it was a natural phenomenon, it erased what was artificial.

And the rainwater was warm. She had opened part of her World of Spells and sent in rain infused with her magic.

The demon vanished.

The falling rain erased the spell-world Dean Molsen had created, the same one that had helped the specters manifest on this land.

Just before disappearing, the demon reclaimed its heart and read the final thought of the man who had been both offering and servant.

"Everything was in my hands."

Dean Molsen's final resentment.

"You think the world is that easy?"

The count had died spitting grievance, but by then there was nothing he could do.

Only the demon could hear those words. The lingering thought was quickly wiped away.

The demon smacked its lips. It regretted losing a chance to leave a major mark on the human world.

Just before the fragment of soul lodged in its servant vanished completely, the demon looked at the one who had killed it.

Black hair, blue eyes.

"Enkrid."

It had heard someone call that name, so it remembered it too. If they ever met again, it thought, this was the kind of human face it wanted to torment until he begged to die.

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