A Knight who Eternally Regresses - Chapter 423

WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 423: Rem's Resolve.

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“Why?”

The word burst out from beneath the hood, his eyes shaking wildly. He was so shocked that even his breathing had turned ragged.

The hand clutching Enkrid kept trembling.

He had to be in serious pain.

“The clinic is over there.”

At a glance, the man looked old, so Enkrid spoke politely.

To Enkrid, he looked like someone whose mind had gone wrong from pain.

The shoemaker beside them shot him a harsh glare, but the Apostle of Curses did not even notice.

Something he had never imagined had just happened, enough to make him forget to breathe.

“Why?”

He asked again without realizing it. To Enkrid, it was a completely baffling question.

He did feel something strange from the man, like an odd aura, but it did not feel especially threatening.

To the Apostle of Curses, it felt like grabbing a fistful of salt and tossing it into the sea.

The curse scattered in midair and vanished.

What is this? A dream? That makes no sense.

“Are you sure you are okay?”

Enkrid asked kindly once more. The man really seemed mentally unstable.

At Enkrid’s calm attitude, Redit felt his breath catch.

When the curse failed, the heavenly punishment on his body convulsed. Shock had broken his focus. Panic took over.

“Ugh, urgh!”

Foam bubbled from Redit’s mouth as he collapsed.

“Healer!”

Enkrid shouted. Before his voice faded, a huge figure rushed in from behind like he was flying.

It was Audin. With each heavy step, his frame seemed to grow larger. If he had been an enemy, the speed alone would have made anyone’s knees buckle.

“General brother.”

He came up, saw Redit on the ground, and frowned. It was an expression he rarely wore.

“Ah, he’s dead.”

Enkrid stopped calling for a healer and confirmed the man had stopped breathing.

That was how Redit died. A man who had spent over twenty years as an apostle of the Cursed Ground Holy Sect, killing and killing anyone in his way with curses, the sect’s finest assassin.

Yet only two people here could even guess that.

One was obviously Audin.

‘My Lord?’

Audin was shocked too. The man had clearly used a terrifying curse, yet the target looked perfectly fine.

At a glance, nothing at all had happened to General brother.

There was also the Black Panther watching from a few steps away.

The moment Esther sensed that vile malice, she chased it and found its source.

‘A born curse sorcerer.’

Esther recognized him, but she knew it would never work on Enkrid.

She was the Fire Witch and a mage of exceptional talent.

She did not know what was wrapped around Enkrid’s body, but it shook even the curse on her own body.

So of course he would not fall to it.

A curse always crumbled before a greater curse.

“Grrr.”

Esther snorted once, then turned toward the barracks.

Lately she had been working harder than ever to restore her World of Spells, and she was exhausted.

* * *

The Boatman clicked his tongue at the obvious outcome.

“Tsk!”

Some things in this world cannot be handled without preparation, while others can be handled even without it.

But the latter only works if you train and study relentlessly in daily life.

If you want to dodge an arrow that suddenly flies at you, you must always be ready for that kind of thing.

“Isn’t that obvious if you don’t want to die to a blind arrow?”

That was Rem’s view. Had Enkrid not also trained to dodge Jaxon’s dagger from barely ten paces away for that very reason?

Sometimes he trained it, sometimes he did not, depending on the time, but he had prepared all the same.

So was this curse that kind of case too?

No. It was neither.

One thing the Boatman knew and Enkrid did not was this. A curse means nothing before something bigger.

The curse that repeated this day, including the Boatman himself, was more vicious than any other curse.

And curses, by nature, burrow into the weak points of those with weaker will.

The reason a straw-doll curse that inflicts pain from afar works on one person but fails on another is simple. Each person has different nerve.

Put another way,

‘It is a difference in willpower.’

What the Boatman saw in Enkrid’s resolve went beyond toughness. It was close to madness.

Not just strong will, but mad willpower.

Ordinary curses did not work on someone like that.

That was also why curses had always been less effective on knights.

They used the mystery called Will, built on willpower.

Of course, even the Boatman had widened his eyes in shock when he sensed how powerful the dead man’s curse had been.

‘He picked the worst possible target.’

It was a matter of compatibility.

To Enkrid, curses were less than mosquitoes. Probably less than annoying flies.

So he felt no danger, and his sixth sense and instinct never even triggered.

His body had instinctively known the opponent was not a threat.

“Did he kill someone with just a look?”

A passing city resident blurted out a wildly mistaken guess.

“How does killing someone with a look even make sense?”

Someone beside him immediately scolded him for talking nonsense.

No one knew that an apostle of the cult, who had been murdering people with curses, had died so pathetically.

It was a truly hollow death.

If he had targeted the whole city with curses, or someone other than Enkrid, it might have been far more effective.

But that was over now.

A healer came to check whether it might be an infectious disease, and citizens recoiled after seeing the dead man’s festering skin.

Without realizing it, Enkrid had become the cult’s greatest enemy.

* * *

“Come at me.”

Rem said it, and back at Border Guard, Enkrid tried to show what he had been working on this whole time.

Enkrid raised Aker. The sword tip pointed diagonally toward the sky.

Rem steadied his breathing.

‘If I go easy, I’m the one who dies.’

He had no idea when Enkrid had caught up this much. Rem licked his dry lips.

If the weather would just break and pour one hard rain, it might be better, but no rain came, only sticky blazing sunlight.

The kind of weather that made sweat pour even when you stood still.

Hot, humid, miserable weather.

Rem forgot that discomfort for a moment.

The pressure from Enkrid raised goosebumps all over his body.

Not a trace of wind. Even the dust seemed to hold its breath, pressed flat against the training ground floor.

Every nearby troop member naturally became a spectator.

No one took a deep breath. They simply watched.

Enkrid moved first.

His shoulder rose from his ready stance, and his sword moved.

‘Fast.’

Watching, Ragna saw a trace of his own fast, heavy swordsmanship in that single blow.

Sinar, who had come to watch, saw a finely controlled strike.

Audin saw traces of the point-blank burst strike he had taught.

Enkrid simply swung his sword in pure focus.

What was Will? Willpower.

What was willpower? The drive to accomplish something.

‘Instant explosive force.’

He compressed his muscles, then detonated them, layering sudden acceleration on top for more power. He also mixed in the heavy-sword pressure he had learned from crushing strikes.

To Rem’s eyes, battle spirit seemed to boil out of Enkrid’s whole body.

He could not ignore the force in that strike.

Rem detonated Heart of Superhuman Strength as well. With strength enough to face a real giant, he swung his own axes.

Enkrid stepped in and brought his sword down. Rem crossed both axes and swung up from below.

People said light weapons struggle to carry destructive force, but that did not apply to Rem.

His original weapons were just as light.

The moment the two weapons collided,

Craaang!

A thunderous blast rang out, and a shockwave spread in concentric circles.

It was such a brute-force clash that it hardly looked like sparring.

The shockwave blasted apart the dust clinging to the ground.

After trading a single strike, both froze with weapons locked.

In that state, Rem asked,

“What was that?”

“Giant’s Strike.”

“That name’s boring. You should call it Giant’s Nursing-Baby Strength.”

Enkrid was not the type to bark back just because a dog barked. He only said what he had to.

From Rem’s side, the complaint was understandable. Even normal giants would have to swing with everything they had to produce a strike like that.

“What was yours?”

“Feather Axe.”

It was a name Enkrid had never heard before. Naturally, since it was a western technique translated into this continent’s language.

Rem was surprised by the technique Enkrid had developed, and Enkrid was surprised by Rem’s axe handling.

Even Giant’s Strike had been blocked by Rem tapping the axe edge against it two or three times and peeling it away.

It looked like a full-force collision, but Rem had bled off Enkrid’s power with wrist control and endurance.

It was so difficult that even imagining copying it felt impossible.

Most of all, it was a technique Rem had never shown before.

“Did you make it recently?”

“I refined something that already existed. There had never been a weapon like this until now, right?”

Rem said it while spinning the axe in his hand once.

He meant his own weapon, light and sturdy, perfectly obedient in his grip.

Enkrid looked at the axes that had endured Aker.

The fact that their edges were not damaged was impressive enough.

The craftsman Crang sent had made proper weapons.

The craftsman had actually made two weapons, proudly gave them names, and sent them off, but the men who took them never used those names.

“If I call its name, does it answer too?”

Rem lightly refused the craftsman’s request.

The exact reason was that it was not an inherited weapon, so doing that made no sense, but he had no reason to explain all that.

Ragna called his own sword black blade.

If the craftsman had heard that, he would have wanted to crack Ragna’s skull with a hammer on the spot.

Caring about nothing but swordsmanship was very Ragna.

Right after Rem stepped back,

“My black blade’s turn.”

Ragna spoke and stepped in.

It was a different kind of slugfest from Rem’s. Unlike before, Enkrid was no longer being pushed around one-sidedly.

Watching Enkrid even receive Will of Severance, Ragna shouted,

“Excellent!”

So excited he could barely contain himself, he deliberately unleashed his talent.

“Let me borrow it once!”

Ragna copied the swordsmanship Enkrid had just shown. More precisely, he interpreted it in his own way and reproduced it.

Mad talent.

Enkrid met it with Giant-Splitting, the technique he had learned from Rem.

A method that used Heart of Superhuman Strength to overcome a monstrous strike.

He repeated that three times.

“One more.”

To be exact, Enkrid asked for two more.

He felt stiffness in the receiving-and-redirecting motion, and he sensed that wanting to fix it would directly help his training.

“You have improved a lot.”

Ragna said that after the spar ended.

Rem watched and nodded too.

Enkrid answered them calmly,

“I still have far to go.”

His goal stood too high.

Both men were unfazed. They already knew he was not someone who would ever be satisfied.

* * *

That evening, Rem stayed alone on the training ground.

‘He’s right on my heels.’

The captain who used to wheeze because he could not even use Heart of the Beast was gone now.

So should he also go retrieve what he had left in the west?

No, he would not.

Had he not steeled himself and sworn it when he left?

“I’ll never come looking for this again.”

He had said it and left. His own words.

‘Well, I’ll do whatever works.’

If he wanted to deliberately use sorcery, he would need to retrieve what he had left behind, but that did not mean there was no other way to improve.

To be honest, it was a shortcut and still slow. But it was not without results.

In that sense, the axes made from Lewes steel would help too.

As he sank into thought, he sensed someone passing quietly and lifted his gaze.

A sly alley cat was on his way back.

The road to the training ground connected there, so seeing passersby was natural.

“If you’re going to be like that, why not move out and set up house? You horny cat bastard.”

Rem’s tongue moved on reflex. Like someone who had wandered a desert for three days spotting water and gulping it down.

Wasn’t that exactly the kind of bastard you were supposed to curse on sight?

Jaxon was returning after repeatedly trying to persuade a guild member who would not listen.

One stubborn bastard in particular had refused to be persuaded, and it had gotten on his nerves.

Shouldn’t he have been convinced after brushing death three times?

Already irritated, Jaxon reacted to Rem’s taunt at once.

“Is that really something a barbarian who’ll never even hold a woman’s wrist should say?”

“I’m already married.”

“I’ll bet what’s between your legs that’s a lie.”

Enkrid’s way of talking had spread to both of them.

“Fine, I’ll kill you. Come.”

Rem rose. This was half venting. Bitter memories had surfaced and left a foul taste in his mouth, and times like this called for beating up a sly alley cat.

Jaxon did not refuse.

They fought fiercely, and unlike before, Jaxon brought out everything he had.

In other words, he used Will. Of course, in a completely different form from knights.

Rem knew he had been pushed back.

Would Jaxon not know that too?

After gaining a clear edge, Jaxon withdrew and said,

“Go hang yourself and die.”

“What did you just say, bastard?”

Rem said that, then made up his mind.

He had to make one trip to the west.

Resolve? What did that matter?

Ragna acting cocky was already infuriating enough, and now this sly alley cat bastard too?