WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

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A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 434: Ruagarne-Style Training

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It had gone on for an entire month.

Ruagarne watched Enkrid's changes with meticulous care. She observed him every single day without fail.

She was one of the Frogs with the sharpest eyes and senses on the continent.

When it came to reading a person's talent and teaching them, it was fair to say she stood above knights.

So watching alone was enough.

Enkrid was already at his limit. He was at the end. This was his last stop.

He was like someone who suddenly choked mid-bite on a steamed potato.

The conclusion was obvious.

'Blocked.'

He had stagnated.

'What a shame.'

He felt both at once.

For that whole month, he lived like a man scraping together every last scrap of time that would never come back.

He looked like someone who had already been told he did not have long left.

"Keep that up and you'll die."

The elf he sparred with said it.

"You must not overdo it."

The human who displayed a knight's swordsmanship said it too.

At one point, even the bear-blooded man tried to make him take a day off, using fists and feet to persuade him.

It made you wonder whether beating someone during sparring to force them to rest was really the right way.

"This is one of the traditions of Battle Priests."

Knocking people out so they sleep?

Audin was telling the truth. The God of War's Battle Priests often wrecked their bodies through excessive training, and when that happened, they had to be cared for with proper fists and kicks.

That was the duty of a senior priest.

Ruagarne was an open-minded Frog, so she nodded.

The others reacted a little differently.

Watching from the side, Dunbakel widened her eyes and said, "He's getting beaten like that and still not running?" Pel, face stiff, said, "A Shepherd can easily endure this much," but no one listened.

"I'll make sure to rest well."

Ropord said it with resolve. He still threw himself at Ragna again and again for sparring, but getting punched by Audin into quality sleep was another matter.

In a way, it was a wise response. He had not been selected into the knight order for nothing.

Anyway, Ruagarne watched Enkrid struggle.

'Even when he fights this hard.'

It was not growth. It was stagnation.

And even that stagnation was barely holding.

He was only just managing not to regress.

Why was he avoiding regression at all?

'Because he learned all kinds of techniques.'

The punishing training he put his body through every dawn had made Enkrid's body different from an ordinary person's.

He had already awakened Will, so his body would have changed along with it.

Will was willpower, and techniques driven by will put strain on the body. Enduring that strain hardened the body further.

There was a reason junior knights suddenly showed combat power on another level.

Ruagarne pulled a wriggling, high-quality larva from a leather pouch, placed it on her palm, flicked out her tongue, and swallowed it in one gulp.

She needed to eat to keep her brain working.

For that whole month, she observed Enkrid and planned method after method.

'What would actually help him?'

She could not guarantee any of it.

She sank into desperate thought.

She sat on a chair Rem had made, one knee pulled up against her chest.

Other than occasionally puffing her cheeks with a low gurgle, eating larvae, and smelling a herb called Epiphrimum that put Frogs in a pleasant mood, she did nothing else.

Frogs generally preferred summer over winter. It was not that they pathologically hated the cold, but in dry weather their skin often dried out, which left them deeply uncomfortable.

Their skin cracked like drought-split earth, and when it got bad, it even bled. How could that be pleasant?

For humans, it would be like someone slicing their skin with a knife every day, both in pain and condition.

Cold and wind dried Frog skin, so of course they preferred summer.

Ruagarne was glad it was summer now. She could keep observing and thinking without even taking time to splash water on her skin.

Why was that man struggling this hard?

'I understand.'

Ruagarne heard what Enkrid was saying through his attitude and actions.

Even if the sky refused to permit it, he would still move forward.

To Ruagarne, it looked like a cry hurled at the world with his entire body.

So what should she do for him now?

Something for the man who had stagnated.

Thinking alone changed nothing. Action mattered. Ruagarne stood.

"That way won't work."

Enkrid was training by swinging a sword ten times heavier than a normal one.

Whooom!

He failed to control the weight perfectly, and the blade trembled as it stopped.

At the same moment, the sweat running down Enkrid's forehead flicked into the air.

Blue eyes shone between his wet black hair.

"You know that too, don't you?"

Ruagarne spoke again.

"Do you have another method?"

Enkrid replied calmly. He already knew.

If Ruagarne had noticed his growth had stalled and he was blocked, then this was a predictable situation for Enkrid.

He had always known this day would come.

He had forced out talent he never had, moved forward, and felt the joy of growth unlike before, but limits always came.

He was familiar with that.

Words the Boatman had rattled off the night before came back to him.

"Tsk tsk, that's why you should have stopped in your happy today. You want the joy of moving forward? Couldn't there have been a today like that? There was one, probably. If you had not wanted tomorrow, it would have been so. A today where you returned again and again to yesterday's today and felt the same joy every time."

The Boatman had scolded Enkrid.

Before that, he had finally revealed what that ominous feeling really was. It was when Enkrid dreamed again after they parted in silence.

"Nothing in this world is perfect."

He said it while acting proud. Enkrid did not care.

Did he hate stagnation so much that he had wanted even a wall to appear?

It was not hatred. He had simply looked for a method. Since he expected this, he chose to keep moving his body instead of wasting time on other thoughts.

He understood the fragments on the path to becoming a knight.

'Watch other knights' swords and learn even one more thing.'

At the same time, sharpen his own and move forward.

That was the path Enkrid had realized.

Was this right? He never wasted time on that kind of question.

Instead of worrying, he took Ragna's black lightning one more time, dodged Sinar's invisible blade, and tried to read Jaxon's Pierce Without Killing Strike.

He did everything, literally anything.

That was what he thought.

"Long ago, there was a truly outstanding bard. To create special and great poetry, he never left his room. He repeated what he did. He believed that was best."

It was an old tale about a dull bard who never used his feet.

Its lesson was simple. One had to experience the world and see new places for inspiration to come.

Enkrid knew the rest of the story too.

"The one who made him realize that was his friend who had baked bread his whole life, and with a single remark from that friend, he left behind the song Frog Trapped in a Well, which is still known across the continent. Yes, I know that story."

The bard was a Frog.

He clearly realized his own mistake and wrote the song.

Now children and adults alike all knew it.

Did you think the sky was round?

Did you think the world was round?

Was my world that narrow?

Frog, little frog, if you do not leave the well, you gain nothing.

It was a song that repeated similar lyrics.

Its meaning was clear.

"Will you do as I say?"

Ruagarne was one of the best teachers on the continent, but this was her first student like this.

So what should she do?

She decided to try everything. Everything she could.

"Let's do it."

Enkrid nodded.

He had no choice.

He had experienced this kind of stagnation many times. It did not make him panic, but it was not something to welcome either.

It felt like he had been walking by moonlight, then sudden dark clouds rolled in.

Those clouds covered his eyes all at once.

It felt like the middle of a perfectly good cloud bridge had snapped in two.

He could see the road with markers already set, he was walking it, and the world told him not to walk any farther. That was all.

When that happened, Enkrid kept walking even with his eyes closed, and even on a broken bridge he tied ropes across and crossed while hanging from them.

It was the same now.

* * *

This summer was unusually long.

The heat was beyond scorching, as if it would roast people whole.

"This really seems insane, Instructor."

Before the torture called marching began, a soldier raised his hand and spoke.

He was the son of a noble family who had come from the capital to study.

Though from a branch line, he still belonged to one of the vassal houses of Okto's nobility, and Okto had just gained a duke.

He came to the Border Guard confident in his own talent, and he thought that with a little training and luck, he would soon stand out even among the lunatics called the Lunatic Company.

So what was this?

Those lunatics were told to walk carrying one longsword, two daggers, a heavy light crossbow on the wrist, armor layered with linen and leather, forearm and shin guards, at least three throwing knives, one hand axe, one modified small round shield, a helmet, and even a short club.

That was not all. They also had to carry backpacks.

This, they called full armament.

'This isn't gear. It's torture.'

For him, most of it was torture.

At the front, the commander and instructor in charge of recon training tilted her head and said only one thing.

"Then get lost."

He was harsh.

The soldier could not resist further. More than one fool had challenged that instructor and gotten beaten flat.

Getting beaten down was a problem by itself.

'Then that monster bastard will show up next.'

If that guy Rem came, there was no answer.

He had been less frequent lately, but before that he used to show up at the slightest chance, say the training intensity was too weak, call people out one by one, and beat them. It was one-sided violence.

He also always picked nobles to beat.

'That Noble Hunter bastard.'

The noble-born soldier knew Rem's nickname well. It was pretty famous among nobles.

"Run!"

They were in full gear from sword belt to backpack, but instead of walking they were told to run.

The soldier gritted his teeth and moved.

"You are in recon training. If you can't endure even this, get out and die."

It was a three-day training block. Climb and cross the mountain, dig a smokeless pit at the target point, eat, then return.

'Even the Demon Slayer couldn't do this.'

This was not training. It was torment for torment's sake.

The soldier kept moving while gasping.

He cursed this one and that one, then ended up cursing his father for sending him here after being dazzled by the Demon Slayer's exploits. After that he cursed the Demon Slayer too, and when he was so exhausted he could only move his feet without thinking, one soldier caught his eye.

'An iron helmet?'

Everyone else moved in leather helmets, but this one alone wore an iron helmet, and his backpack was bigger and heavier too.

He also had three hand axes, two longswords, and at the back of his waist, mounted horizontally, a gladius shorter than a longsword but easily usable as a main weapon.

And that was still not all.

For some reason, he also had two Throwing Spears on his shoulders.

'Is he a spearman?'

By role, loadouts differed. That had become common sense in the Border Guard's standing army.

When they trained in full armament, they learned it whether they liked it or not.

If a man lost even one piece of his own gear, the whole unit got beaten brutally under collective responsibility.

So this being recon training was certain.

It was hard enough to drive a person insane, but he could not forget that.

Then why was that man carrying spears?

Looking again, he also wore iron-weight guards on his legs.

His load was already heavy, yet he carried about three times more than everyone else. He was insane.

Was this a hallucination? Was he seeing things from exhaustion?

Thinking that, he kept moving, and then he caught a glimpse of the man's face.

The noble-born soldier knew that face.

"Demon Slayer!"

He cried out in surprise, but his voice was not loud. He was too exhausted.

At that sound, the ruler of this area, the man who had been granted a rank above General directly by the king, turned his head.

"If you drag your feet, it'll be harder."

He gave that short advice and moved forward again.

The soldier was left speechless.

The Demon Slayer was walking with a load many times heavier than the one he himself carried.

For a moment, the soldiers' rebellious spirit that had formed around that noble-born soldier broke all at once.

Finn, the commander and training instructor, moved up beside Enkrid, who was walking at the front.

"Long time no see."

Finn said it with a brief salute, placing her right hand at her waist.

She was also in full armament.

"Looks like you've improved?"

At Enkrid's words, Finn thought the man before her was the same as ever, still sizing up swordsmanship at a glance, and brought up Torres.

"He said they've strengthened Frontier Guard training even more in Martai, and told me to have you come see it. Please stop by once."

Torres. Enkrid had already seen him once, when he took office as General.

Even without a formal inauguration, he still had to see each city's lord in person. He had seen him briefly then.

"If I get time."

He had laid out his training course according to Ruagarne's words. Right now, he had no time to step out.

Finn clicked her tongue.

Even after so long, he was still a monster-level training maniac.

Then again, that was exactly why he became the Demon Slayer.

She had once been this man's superior, then later served under him, and now she was merely a commander under a man who had become a General, but Finn still felt oddly proud of all of it.

Enkrid had a strange charm that made the people around him feel rewarded.

* * *

"What frees a tightly blocked view is variety. Do everything."

Following Ruagarne's words, Enkrid walked and ran among fully armed soldiers while carrying an even heavier load than theirs.

"Run."

Splash!

He even climbed into the mountain range and jumped from a cliff into a lake.

"How to break limits? I don't know. But I do know this: holding only a sword is not enough."

Widen your view, and you will see more. That was Ruagarne's perspective.

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