WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 435: Lake of Experience

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Enkrid had gone through countless standstills in his life, so he had long since forgotten impatience. He just did what had to be done.

He ran, jumped down, and climbed mountains.

Ruagarne never left any tool unused.

That meant he used anything and anyone.

Enkrid was one of those tools.

Just yesterday, Enkrid fought Dunbakel, Teresa, and Ropord all at once.

He thought their pride would never let them accept a three-on-one fight, but all three agreed without hesitation.

Ruagarne taught them a formation that kept them from getting in each other's way while fighting together.

Even that alone made it hard for Enkrid to take the advantage. Their tactics were vicious.

Dunbakel circled with her trademark speed and footwork, stabbing only when she saw an opening, while Teresa kept pressing her shield forward from the front with stubborn persistence.

They were already troublesome opponents, and now their sight-blocking techniques were more refined and their overall skill had clearly improved.

At their side, Ropord swung his sword with solid, unwavering force.

It was not Heavy Sword Style. He swung while calculating exchange after exchange.

Sometimes Ropord swung at empty air instead of at Enkrid's front, and when that was the only space Enkrid could evade into, he had to deliberately knock that blade away.

That naturally opened a gap, and Dunbakel's curved blade shot into it.

Enkrid got another glimpse of Ropord's talent.

"They're fighting as three, and he's still calculating moves?"

With talent like that, he would shine when commanding small forces.

Ropord was, in fact, in the middle of awakening that talent.

It was a sense for reading the flow of battle, almost like looking down on it from above.

That sense would work not only in small-unit tactics like this, but also in individual combat tactics.

It was textbook Correct Sword. Ruagarne spoke of suggestion and checks, but Ropord drove his opponent back with steady, disciplined sword swings.

"Outstanding."

Enkrid recognized Ropord's talent.

Ruagarne had seen it much earlier and drawn it out with just a few words of advice.

Anyone might have felt the gap in talent more sharply at a moment like this.

Enkrid did not care.

He was too busy gasping through day-by-day training to waste energy on that.

Dunbakel's skill had also surged, and no one knew what she had been doing.

She showed a full-body killing style using twin curved blades, fingernails, and even toenails.

Swordplay born from instinct.

Claws that lashed out while she was still thinking ahead.

Messy, but all the harder to defend against.

In any case, yesterday was just barely surviving those three.

Today brought something even stranger.

"Have you ever fought a mage?"

Before Enkrid could answer Ruagarne's question, a woman with long straight hair and a thin robe stepped out from behind Frog.

It was Esther, of course.

"Will that help improve his sword skill?" she asked.

Enkrid thought for a moment, then said, "Maybe."

He had no clear idea, honestly, but there had to be something to gain.

Making everything in the world, everything he could see, into a teacher was Enkrid's greatest strength.

Esther did not refuse.

She blinked her wide eyes a few times, combed back her hair with one hand, raised the other, and said, "Then let's do that. Dmuilleur's Scythe."

As she spoke, she spread her thumb, index finger, and middle finger in a gesture that looked meaningless.

At that exact moment, Enkrid drew Aker and swung.

Clang!

A compressed air blade met Enkrid's sword and shattered.

A faint recoil ran through both his arms. It felt like he had blocked a full-force sword strike from a warrior with forearms as thick as tree trunks.

Most people would have frozen, but the instant he blocked it, Enkrid reversed and drove forward.

He kicked off the ground, his body leaving an afterimage.

Anyone short of a knight would struggle to track that speed with their eyes.

"Watch out for the snake."

Esther's words slipped into that gap and drove into his ears.

No, the voice rang through his entire head.

It felt impossible not to hear it.

It was bizarre. He was charging straight ahead in total focus, so how was a person's voice ringing vividly right beside him?

At the same time, Enkrid saw an illusion of Aker turning into a snake and coiling around his arm, but it vanished in a blink.

His Will of Refusal had triggered on its own.

Clang!

Enkrid's blade stopped against Esther's open palm. It was a mage's barrier.

How do you break this?

He had already done it once, when he cut the count's neck.

Raise the sword vertically, then bring it down in a Heavy Sword Style downward slash.

Put the will to cut into it. It was not Ragna's Black Lightning, but it was a lightning-like slash.

"It will be blocked," Esther said as both her hands moved without pause, changing shape over and over.

As she drew multiple hand signs, layered barriers stacked above her head and caught Enkrid's sword.

"Royta's Sticky Web."

Any passing mage would have been horrified by the sight.

A moment earlier, Esther had formed the spell first and spoken the trigger words afterward.

It was a technique called Delayed Chant, something most mages would not even dare attempt.

To get to the point, Esther overwhelmed Enkrid completely.

The saying that a prepared mage was more terrifying than a knight existed for a reason.

She proved it.

The count's magic had been huge in scale and overwhelming in force.

Enkrid had broken through Ten Thousand Specters, so he believed he had the advantage in a fight against mages.

He did not.

Of course, Enkrid had no idea how extraordinary Esther was as a mage.

In anti-personnel combat especially, Esther was already a genius few mages could imitate.

Even that Galafran mage he had met before on the battlefield Azpen prepared, the one who gripped river water in his hands, would have run the instant he saw Esther at full condition.

Esther had felt threatened three times while facing Enkrid.

Pushing a mage like her that far was impressive in itself, but Enkrid did not realize it.

"One more time?"

Enkrid just kept doing what he always did.

"As many as you want."

Esther nodded with ease.

If her opponent wanted it, she only had to oblige.

She did not back down, and by the end of that day Enkrid had a broken left arm and scorched hair cut short.

"That looks good too."

Ruagarne, with her sharp eye for beauty, liked Enkrid's short hair as well.

Through all this, Enkrid did not make some explosive leap forward.

Still, just changing his perspective gave him plenty.

"When facing a mage, talking itself gives the first move to the other side."

Esther gave him advice on fighting mages.

Enkrid carved every word into memory. Being taught by someone and then mulling it over again and again until it became his own was one of the things he did best.

So that was exactly what he did.

Esther smiled. Seeing that, Enkrid said, "You probably should not smile at people so casually."

Come to think of it, smiles were as rare from her as they were from Sinar.

"Why?" Esther asked.

"You should know if you look in a mirror. Are you saying you don't know, when you threaten to gouge out eyes the moment someone looks between that thin robe?"

"No, I know. This is a weapon too. The kind who lose themselves over my face naturally forget for a moment that I'm a mage."

Where did tactics begin?

Enkrid gained a small new realization.

If you could sharpen your appearance and shake your opponent's gaze?

It matched the logic behind Vallen-style mercenary swordsmanship.

"Excellent."

"My face is always excellent."

Esther answered him with her smile gone.

He was talking about tactics, not her face, but Enkrid did not bother correcting her.

If someone had overheard their exchange, they would have called it bleak, but the two of them thought they had just had one of their friendliest conversations yet.

Esther acknowledged that she had blended into this group before she even noticed.

"That soldier?"

At the end of sparring, Enkrid asked. Esther had brought a soldier over saying she would teach him, and she called him over now and then to do something.

"He has talent," Esther said shortly.

That was all.

Enkrid did not ask further.

Esther was not trying to raise a disciple.

The first reason was that teaching helped her newly define her own craft.

The second was that, if left alone, he would pick up sloppy magic anyway and probably cause an accident.

Would it not be better to guide him toward something useful from the start?

That line of thinking came from watching Enkrid's actions over time.

Should mages be narrow-minded?

"Not anymore."

Esther admitted it. She had lived shut away, researching and struggling alone, but she had learned plenty by keeping people nearby, observing them.

No, for her, it had helped even more than that.

"Fine, just don't kill him."

A ridiculous rumor sometimes spread that Esther used soldiers as sacrifices, so Enkrid said it.

"If bad luck strikes and he dies during training, it can't be helped."

Esther said that because she knew how harsh the path of magic was.

Enkrid read no malice in her words and nodded.

She was not truly trying to use him as a sacrifice.

Of course, a few soldiers saw symbols carved into the body of the friend taken to Esther and frightened themselves.

If their minds broke from that, they would shatter pointlessly on a battlefield too.

Enkrid wanted to raise strong soldiers.

Then they had to overcome petty rumors like this with ease.

That was how sparring with a mage entered Enkrid's daily life.

"If the opponent uses suggestion and checks, what will you do?"

Ruagarne began sharing her experience throughout every part of the process.

It was Frog's experience, gathered over more than a hundred years of pursuing battle and combat, searching for the unknown inside it and exploring what remained uncharted.

"Suggestion and checks are not everything, but if you can use them, there is no Illusionary Sword Style better than that."

"It breaks easily against a steadfast sword."

"If you factor in the opponent's steadfast heavy blade, brother-nim, it is even better if you can deflect it, catch it, and break it."

"Suggestion and checks can also be done with the eyes. If the opponent is sensitive, you can do it with Will alone."

Before anyone noticed, Ragna's opinion had slipped into Ruagarne's teaching, Audin added his own voice, and even Jaxon, while saying he was busy, left notes behind.

Rem, surprisingly, did not step in that often.

Enkrid took experience from Ruagarne.

From the others' words, he took ways to break through experience.

Then he practiced those things over and over with his body.

"It would have been boring before, but now it's at least better."

Even Ragna gave praise that barely sounded like praise.

The old Enkrid was gone, the one who could not properly execute things even after being taught.

He had not built his body through the Isolation Technique for nothing. His frame was firmer than ever, and his improved balance was obvious just from how he straightened up from the feet and split his weight between both legs.

To put it simply, he had become a junior knight who could withstand Black Lightning and stay standing.

Ruagarne had not intended every part of this, but the time, experience, and training she gave were an enormous help to Enkrid.

His skill had not skyrocketed overnight, but his view widened with each lesson. The range of his thinking changed too.

Naturally, this affected the others as well.

Ropord in particular crossed a certain wall while learning from Ruagarne.

Ropord had been born with this kind of talent from the start.

He could not see one inch ahead, yet he had a knack for herding opponents into traps with his own sword.

There was an old proverb passed down across the continent.

Is it best to predict one move ahead?

Or is it best to make even that move unfold within your own intent?

It referred to two directions within Correct Sword.

Ropord had the talent to faithfully follow the latter.

"Not bad."

Enkrid said that after sparring, and Ropord nodded with a satisfied expression.

It was recognition from the one he wanted recognition from.

How could he not be glad?

Still, before joy or exhilaration, what showed first on Ropord's face was satisfaction.

Frog loved observing humans, and because she liked beautiful and interesting humans, she was good at reading their expressions.

Ruagarne saw satisfaction on Ropord's face.

Deep, complete satisfaction.

Ruagarne realized again that this was where Enkrid differed most from others.

Enkrid never knew satisfaction.

"One more time."

Was that not the line he said most during training?

He enjoyed the moment and basked in exhilaration, yet he was never satisfied.

Would he stop, content, once he became a knight?

Not a chance.

Ruagarne knew the world of knights. Even within that world, the gaps were vast. Ragna alone proved it.

"If you're standing among knights, you're still only at the beginning."

Still better than a broken knight, of course.

Exceptional talent?

By the time someone became a knight, talent was hardly worth discussing.

Once you rose above knighthood, comparing talent itself became laughable.

All of them were people too extraordinary to call mere geniuses.

From that point on, effort, direction, awakening, and high-grade willpower mattered more than talent.

The world of knights was vast.

Ruagarne knew that.

The knights of Naurillia alone proved it.

"And what of that knight in the western country?"

What about Anu, the Mercenary King?

Every one of them was a calamity. Ragna had risen to a similar level, and the elf seemed close as well.

Yet even they still had shortcomings.

Knight was not the end. It was the beginning.

Among junior knights who failed to cross the wall into knighthood, most failed because they did not know that.

At least, that was the judgment of Ruagarne the explorer.

The power of a knight was a mirage you could never reach if you ran toward it as a final destination.

In that sense, Enkrid was not a concern.

That man, packed solid with desire and greed, showed no sign of ever stopping.

"What a shame about his talent."

The thought came to her naturally.

What if that man had been exceptionally gifted?

If he had only possessed extraordinary talent above the ordinary?

He did not need to be called a genius.

Just that much.

"If not that, what if he had simply been given more time than others?"

If one day for others were one week for him?

It was a pointless fantasy. Clinging to what would never happen was stupidity.

It was even more foolish to think that while looking at Enkrid.

A man stood right before her who would swing his sword one more time instead of wasting time on worry.

Ruagarne believed that man would become a knight.

It was conviction without reason.

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