WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 429: The Man Who Carries His Dream on His Sword

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The cloud-packed sky felt lower than ever.

It almost looked like the clouds were touching the small hill behind the training ground and lodgings.

While everyone went about their own tasks, the king and Enkrid talked about each other's dreams.

They spoke as they breathed in and out the cold, crisp air left behind after the rain had dried.

"I want to become a knight and wield a sword."

His tone and manner were so plain and calm it sounded like someone else's dream.

It was about becoming a knight first, then everything he wanted to do across the continent.

After hearing Enkrid's dream, the king thought:

'No despair. No frustration.'

He did not even mention other people's ridicule.

He would move forward, and he would make it happen, so he had no doubt.

This man did not think about failure.

The king's own past flashed through his mind.

"You want to found a nation? Stop talking nonsense. Do you really think that makes sense?"

Those words had come from the younger brother who followed him most closely.

Anu could not blame him. His brother was simply someone who faced reality.

And he had not been wrong. Others had said things just as reasonable.

"That's impossible. You want us to invest in that?"

"So you'll become raiders or bandits? What is even in the East?"

"Why waste your strength like that? Focus on holding back the Cursed Ground. I'll give you anything you want."

The king, Anu, had listened to none of it and rejected all of it.

Not one of their words made his heart race.

'I will do what makes my heart race.'

For him, that was building a nation in the East.

Anu did it in the end. He burned away his life and laid the foundation of a country.

Everyone said it could not be done. Everyone said it was meaningless. Everyone laughed at him.

Anu had no time to care. He had far too much to do.

He just kept moving forward.

And as he kept walking and advancing:

"This sounds fun. I'll join you."

More and more people stayed by his side.

"You've got a lot of gaps. I'll fill them."

And that led to now.

It was not over. It had only just begun.

He had not meant to give a speech, but weight settled into the king's voice, and heat lit his eyes.

"The Eastern Kingdom? That's just a waypoint. A nation is only a foundation. My goal is to conquer the entire East."

He would study and explore the unknown, open roads one by one, and plant his flag in that land.

As he spoke, the king bared his fangs. He was smiling, but it was also the face of a man showing fighting spirit.

"You said you'll become a knight? You mean the old kind of knight?"

"Yes."

"You said you'll erase war from the continent? If the Cursed Ground is the enemy, you'll erase the Cursed Ground. If demons block your path, you'll kill the demons. If the Empire blocks you, you'll tear down the Empire too?"

It was a dream even bigger than conquering the East. This was fantasy. The king respected other people's dreams. But was this not too much?

Enkrid's attitude did not change. By then his sweat had cooled. The wind scattered his black hair, now long enough to brush his neck.

He had no great bloodline. He was not royalty. He was not exceptionally talented either.

He was simply a man who walked forward with nothing but one dream.

"You're really interesting. You."

Anu now said aloud the kind of words others had once said to him.

The scale of this man's dream was on another level.

"If I pick a fight across the continent one day, you'll fight me too. Then for the sake of that future, I should kill you here."

He did not mean he would literally kill him.

The king had remembered something he had forgotten in the other's words.

And for the first time since coming here, he had seen the other man's true will.

That was why.

It was a lesson wrapped in talk of killing.

He did not want to explain all those sudden turns in mood, so he wrapped it in the excuse, "I'll kill you."

Of course, no one could know what the king truly thought.

He was already a man full of whims who acted however he pleased.

With those words, the king rose from where he had been sitting and reached a hand behind him. His Lieutenant hesitated for a moment.

He had followed Anu for over twenty years.

'Is he serious?'

That thought made him pause, but he still obeyed. He moved to hand over a spear for the king to throw, but the king said:

"Bull."

The Lieutenant did more than hesitate. He stopped completely. That was the name of a weapon that never came out unless the target had to die, or was an enemy worthy of comparison with the king himself.

"My lord?"

Asaluhi asked before he could stop himself.

"Give it."

The king was firm. The Lieutenant pulled out a new weapon from his back and unwrapped the cloth around it.

The shaft was dark brown, and it was hard to tell what material it was made of. The spearhead was unusual, split in two.

Its material and shape looked like horns. A deep gray horn spearhead. In darkness, it would probably look black enough to vanish.

Two horns. The spearhead was the bull's head, and the shaft was the bull's body.

A pressure unlike anything before poured from the king's body as he held the spear. It was the kind of pressure that made you feel you should bow and kneel.

Enkrid, who had been sitting beside him and talking, felt a force pressing him down as if he were sinking into the ground, but he immediately activated Refusal.

The will inside Enkrid pushed back the pressure from his opponent and proved itself.

Because it did not yield under crushing force, it was Refusal, and defiance.

Enkrid pushed off the ground with his palm and rose.

Asaluhi sent him a shocked look, as if standing at all was incredible.

To stand before the king holding Bull without even trembling.

More than anything, that man had already been knocked down twice by the king today.

He should have been exhausted. His heart should have wavered.

But it did not.

Enkrid stood with Aker in hand.

The true meaning behind what his opponent had said? He did not care.

Legs weakened from two sparring matches?

He did not care about that either.

His opponent had heard his dream and said he would break it. He had shown killing intent without hesitation.

So Enkrid did what he always did.

He raised his sword and defied him.

He stitched his torn dream back together, as always.

He took his stance and looked straight at his opponent.

He kept walking with only his dream in sight, as always.

He braced his legs and steadied his breathing.

As always, he chose to live in a moment where dying would be fine.

The king's spear moved. Two horns stabbed toward his chest so fast that even the pale afterimage blurred.

Enkrid angled Aker and blocked.

Without luck, that attack could not have been blocked.

Ting.

In a blink, the spear reached him, scraped along Aker's blade in front of his chest, then stopped. Then it trapped the blade between the two horns and spun sideways.

Stopping after the thrust was more shocking than the thrust itself. He had struck that fast, yet stopped with only a small ting, then tried to snap the blade between the spearheads.

Krrk.

The blade caught between the two horns let out a scream.

Enkrid gripped the sword trying to rip free so hard that his own palm tore, and with Heart of Superhuman Strength plus the grip he trained every morning, he endured.

Enkrid's blade did not break, and the sword was not torn from his hand. Seeing that, the king said:

"Try blocking this too."

As if he had all the time in the world, he spoke while withdrawing the spear and thrusting again.

In Enkrid's eyes, Bull's two horns became six.

The spear split into three lines as it shot out, and all of them looked real. They were.

Speed was relative.

To Enkrid's eyes, all three divided thrust lines were real. It was a strange art, shown by the king repeatedly thrusting and drawing back.

There was not even time to shout.

Enkrid relaxed his body, then in an instant tightened every muscle and cut.

If there were a soldier here who recognized the techniques mixed into Enkrid's swordsmanship, that man would have earned the right to receive Ruagarne's teaching on the spot.

A sword strike mixing crushing force with Swift Will met Bull's horns.

Like before, the horns only scraped the blade and withdrew.

Ting.

Enkrid pulled Aker back. He needed time to steady his breathing. For some reason, the sword felt heavier than before.

No, Aker's weight hit both his arms more clearly than ever. Maybe it was because he was tired.

Instead of rushing, the king spoke.

"You realize Will, build techniques one by one, then go beyond that and fight with Will itself. That's the knight you talked about."

Enkrid had no room to answer. The king kept speaking.

"If you can fight with Will itself, won't you need a weapon fit for that? The answer is obvious. Bull is that kind of weapon. It's what people call an Imprinted Weapon. My Will is inside this."

As he spoke, the king thrust the spear again. It was impossible to tell when he even breathed.

Enkrid raised his sword and struck upward again.

Ting!

Again, the blade and horns only scraped each other.

Enkrid could not even judge whether this was the moment to stake everything.

Even with Eye That Sees One Inch Ahead activated, the next move looked hidden, as if behind fog.

He should have read shoulder movement, the way force was set into the feet, things like that, to predict what came next, but his opponent showed none of it.

So it looked like fog.

The sword in his hand felt heavier than before. Every time it struck the spear, it felt like someone had secretly attached extra iron to it.

Fog and weight, all of it irritated him.

'So what?'

Enkrid ignored it, filled his mouth with air, and held his breath. His cheeks puffed up.

Do everything you can.

That was what he always did.

Enkrid's sword seemed to vanish into the air with a sharp swish.

It was a thrust using everything he had. Swift activation.

A strike with No-Breath, Focus Point, Heart of Superhuman Strength, and Sense of Attack all committed at once.

"Not there."

The king extended his spear and changed the blade's trajectory.

Ting!

A similar sound rang again.

Enkrid pulled the deflected sword back by force. If once was not enough, then twice, three times, and if that still failed, then ten.

If you stop because a wall with no end blocks you, you will never cross it.

Aker's blade began to dance through the air, shattering the sunset light.

The king knocked away every single strike with Bull's horns.

Drip, drip. The dark clouds spat a few thin lines of rain.

Tididididing!

Aker and Bull met countless times, then broke apart countless times.

After clashing and separating like that in a short instant, Enkrid staggered backward.

A thin line of rain fell onto his sword, then hissed and turned to steam.

"As expected, you need to die."

The king said that, and Enkrid still did not loosen his grip on the sword even while staggering.

A short stretch passed while they glared at each other.

"Axe, I know you're behind me, so don't throw anything for no reason."

The king spoke again.

"Your senses are still awkward. If you take the wrong path now, you'll suffer for life."

He continued.

"Looks like you'd grab me if things go bad, but I won't let the distance close in the first place."

The king stood Bull upright, slammed the shaft into the ground, and withdrew his killing intent.

"And I am Beastfolk, and I still haven't transformed!"

That final shout raised goosebumps on everyone's skin. It was not arrogance but confidence, packed solid by proof across long years.

The king had lived long enough that his persona swung all over the place, so his manner of speaking shifted constantly, but the meaning was clear.

"Why all of a sudden?" Ruagarne asked.

She had also been off to one side, touching the hilt of her Loop Sword.

That Frog had been ready to jump in too if things turned bad.

The king knew, but answered as if he did not.

"A whim. Asaluhi."

"Yes."

The king threw Bull back. Asaluhi caught it, shook the spear that still felt hot, cooled the horn blades, then wrapped it in cloth again.

"Let's go."

The king decided and moved. It was as impulsive as his arrival.

No one tried to stop him.

He passed by Enkrid, who was about to faint while still standing, then stopped, whispered something, and tapped Enkrid's shoulder once with his palm.

Then he walked forward with loose, swinging steps.

"Then if there's business again, we'll meet again."

Lieutenant Asaluhi said that as he looked back.

No one answered.

Asaluhi met Dunbakel's eyes, who had been frozen stiff in a tree while watching, then withdrew with a gentle smile.

Every one of them had been ready to jump in.

By the path out, Teresa stood with a shield in hand.

"We'll be off."

Asaluhi followed the king out.

* * *

"Why did you do that? They didn't look like people who would come to the East."

Asaluhi quickened his pace and asked as he came up behind the king, who still walked with loose steps.

He had followed the king for a long time. He had been briefly flustered, but looking back, he roughly understood the king's intent.

What the king gave was a gift.

Including that final whisper, he had left Enkrid a gift.

"I received a gift first."

"What do you mean?"

Asaluhi asked again, and the king gave a short grin before answering.

"The moment I first held a sword or spear, I was already good with it. You know that, right?"

"Yes, I do."

There had been a time when the king was called the Mercenary King because of his natural talent.

He had been born with physical talent and human charm.

"I was born a slave's child, but before I turned sixteen, I freed even my parents from slavery."

After that, his fame spread when he killed a lion with a single spear.

"And even so."

The king swallowed his words for a moment. The brief rain had already stopped again. The air and sky were cold but crystal clear.

A cool wind brushed his cheek.

'There was a time I wondered whether I should really devote my whole life to conquering the East.'

After swallowing that inner thought, the king spoke. It was damage left by time. For a moment, he had forgotten the drive he had in his youth.

He thought he needed talented people, but did he really need them that badly?

Why had he decided he could not move forward alone?

Why did he still think it was not enough, even after building a kingdom in the East?

Because he had lost his drive.

In that stretch of around ten days, short if you called it short and long if you called it long, the king saw Enkrid and realized it again.

He awakened that forgotten drive once more.

"The will shown by that rough swordsman is bigger than mine."

Asaluhi tilted his head, then suddenly asked:

"Do you think that young man will become a knight?"

"I don't know."

"It is not an easy path."

Asaluhi had eyes too. Enkrid could not become a knight. That kind of talent was not visible in him.

At his Lieutenant's words, the king smiled and spoke.

"His talent really is meager. It's the first time I've seen someone that untalented."

Compared to others, he had almost no talent worth mentioning. After sparring him directly, the king felt the opponent's talent was at a miserable level.

Even so, the king thought he would become a knight.

"Can you become a knight just by swinging a sword all day? Or do you need overflowing talent?"

"Don't you need both?"

Effort and talent, were those not the most basic requirements?

Still smiling, the king answered.

He spoke while thinking of the man who had reminded him of what he had forgotten.

"If he's a man who carries his dream on his sword, he can surpass his limits."

That was how the king saw it.

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