WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

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A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 439: The City Built with a Thousand Bricks

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439. The City Built with a Thousand Bricks

The border city guarding the Demon Realm frontier was called Thousand Brick.

A city whose walls were built by stacking brick upon brick.

The name meant Naurillia had built it with thousands of bricks to block invasions from the Demon Realm.

Even for a frontier next to the Demon Realm, what he saw in front of him did not look like something that should happen often inside those brick walls.

"Hold them!"

It was right in front of the city wall. Soldiers were locked in a brutal fight.

Harpies flew overhead, and black Hound Beasts rampaged below.

Enkrid saw that the gate of the city called "Thousand Brick" was half destroyed.

This was not even the gate facing the Demon Realm side, yet it was still complete chaos.

Among the people holding the line, he spotted a familiar face.

It was Eisia.

She was smashing the head of a charging hound with the flat of her sword.

It looked like a light swing, but the force behind it was that of a junior knight.

Thud, yelp!

The beast's skull cracked, and it rolled to the side. There were quite a lot of Magic Beasts, but would that really matter?

Eisia was also a junior knight. She calmly struck, stabbed, and killed the black Hound Beasts one by one while flicking her gaze upward now and then.

Five harpies were circling above her head.

It was not truly dangerous. She was fighting in proper formation, and if she died to that much, she could not call herself a junior knight.

Still, standing there and watching would have been ridiculous.

Enkrid stepped forward. He could not just spectate.

Killing all the Demon Creatures was only a matter of time anyway, so ending it faster was better.

"Rem, Dunbakel."

"Time to warm up, huh?"

Rem jumped forward before he was even called. Dunbakel followed right behind him.

Enkrid called the two and ran as well. Because of the Magic Beasts, he dropped his backpack on the ground and moved with only his Throwing Spears.

He kicked off the ground with even force across the soles of his feet as he ran. He was also practicing the step Ruagarne had taught him.

It was foundational training, so his center of gravity could shift anywhere at any time.

Wind slapped his face, and Enkrid looked up.

A harpy above Eisia swung both wings forward instead of arms. As those wings beat, his sixth sense warned him.

He could not see it, but he felt it.

Compressed wind poured down like blades.

Eisia raised her shield and blocked it.

Tatatatang!

The wind blades shattered across the shield, and a sharp burst of noise rang out.

A spellcasting harpy? Enkrid thought as he ran.

The harpies gained altitude. It was high enough that blade strikes could not reach, and even crossbows could barely touch that range.

Anyone who was not a marksman-level archer would struggle to snipe them.

There were five harpies.

They used magic and knew how to take favorable positions.

They could also judge an opponent's ability. If they could not, they would have already become five harpy skewers on Eisia's sword.

Enkrid sorted all the information he had seen in the span of a few breaths.

His senses sharpened like a blade.

An optimal line, one that appeared only on a battlefield, drew itself in his head.

It was a sense he had awakened thanks to Abnair, Azpen's genius strategist.

Enkrid acted at once.

While running, he drew the Gladius hanging horizontally behind his waist and threw it.

He gripped it in reverse as he drew, twisted his running line slightly left, opened and closed his chest, then extended his arm in one motion.

It was a sword throw applying the Sword Flicking Technique.

Whooooom!

The spinning blade looked like a disc in flight.

The harpy usually blocked approaching crossbow shots with wind spells, but this was different. Realizing it could not do that here, it changed its wing angle to shift air resistance and tilted sideways in flight.

The Gladius grazed where the harpy had been and slammed into a brick on the rear wall.

Thunk!

Another wet impact burst from the head of the harpy that thought it had dodged.

The harpy crashed in a long slanted line with a throwing axe buried in its skull.

It dodged the Gladius Enkrid threw, but it could not dodge the Throwing Axe Rem threw.

"One more."

Enkrid said it. Rem matched him without a word.

This time Rem threw first. Enkrid grabbed a short Throwing Spear as he recalled all the lessons he had learned and refined from that lake of experience.

He had brought Throwing Spears for training, but he had not expected to use them here.

"You trained to handle every weapon too, right? Think of this as a continuation of that."

Training that began with Rem had been carried on by Ruagarne.

The process was to handle all weapons, hammer every exchange and tactical read into your mind, then absorb it as instinct.

Enkrid had also trained hard at throwing spears. His sharpened senses, unlike before, gave him a much faster rate of learning.

Sure, geniuses would probably still call it lacking, but Enkrid thought it was decent in its own way.

He could prove it now.

The arm-length Throwing Spear pierced straight into the chest of the harpy that dodged the spinning axe.

Thuck!

The spear smashed through rib bone and punched through. The harpy was shoved backward, hit the wall with a heavy boom, bounced forward, then crashed to the ground. Dust rose with the impact.

"Enki?"

Eisia recognized Enkrid.

"Let's clean this up first."

That was Enkrid's answer. Dunbakel ignored the harpies entirely and charged the Hound Beasts attacking from below.

He sprinted forward, lowered his stance, drew both curved blades, and swung them out to either side. It looked like two bladed whips carving beasts apart.

Up close, Enkrid understood why Eisia had not rushed in recklessly.

If she had gone all out, five harpies would have been nothing. He had wondered why she held back.

She was protecting a few people who looked like merchants behind her with her own group.

If she left her position, the harpies would obviously target them, so she had only held the line.

After two died, the spellcasting harpies flapped their wings and started fleeing.

The remaining three flew far off into the distance.

Dull sunlight filtered through the clouds and fell where the harpies had been, as clammy as the air itself.

Since they had dealt with the Demon Creatures, Enkrid was about to talk at length, but Eisia was not.

"So the reinforcements were you."

"And you?"

"Reinforcements too. This is my original unit anyway."

That made sense. She belonged to the Red Cloak Knights.

"Let's go in."

Eisia took out a cloth, roughly wiped her sword, sheathed it, and spoke calmly.

Her attitude said this kind of thing was nothing.

A few of the pale-faced merchants collapsed as their legs gave out.

"We were never told there were spellcasting harpies."

One merchant spoke. His tone sounded like a complaint, but he was probably just too shocked.

No merchant with sense would dare talk to a junior knight of the order like that.

Fists and swords were always closer than Krona.

Luckily for him, Eisia understood his state.

"It is my first time seeing them too. Either way, we came here to work, so should we not do our jobs?"

Enkrid was reminded again that Eisia was from the knight order.

People who fussed over small things did not become junior knights in the order.

With that blunt tone, it almost sounded like she was saying the merchant was overreacting.

"Get yourselves together first. If you keep lying there, that harpy from before will come back thinking someone left it a lunch box."

So Enkrid stepped in and coaxed them more gently.

Everyone sprang up at once. Some gritted their teeth and helped up those whose legs had gone weak.

"Hey, quit threatening them."

Eisia said that to Enkrid, turned, and went in first.

"When did I?"

When Enkrid shot back, Rem laughed and patted his shoulder.

"If you call them a harpy's lunch box, that's a threat no matter how you slice it."

Chuckling, Rem followed after Eisia.

Enkrid had said it half as a joke, so he thought the merchants had no sense of humor.

With a junior knight escorting them, would they really die to a harpy?

"More practice throwing while running would do you good."

Ruagarne said that while picking up the remaining backpack and retrieving the Gladius. Enkrid nodded and stepped inside.

A gate being half destroyed did not even seem like a big deal here.

The people inside were calm.

The soldiers who had been beside Eisia walked along chatting loudly like there was no reason to whisper.

"We seriously need to wipe those harpy bastards out."

"We need to kill every last Demon Creature bastard."

This was Thousand Brick.

The frontier gateway where a thousand bricks blocked the Demon Realm.

It was so dangerous that ordinary people did not even want to live here.

Only those who hated Demon Creatures remained inside.

Thousand Brick was twice as rough as the old fortress city, Border Guard.

Two soldiers, hard to tell whether they were guards or bandits, walked over without helmets. They passed the entering merchants and stared at Enkrid.

One had a long scar over his right eyebrow, the other looked like a guard-bandit hybrid. They approached.

Tap, thud, tap, thud.

A soldier walked up, tapping the ground with the spear in his right hand, and stopped in front of Enkrid.

He ignored Frog, Beastfolk, and even Rem.

"Demon Slayer General Enkrid?"

he asked.

Enkrid felt a subtle pressure and nodded.

The man moved his free hand, the one not holding the spear. Enkrid did not react.

Then he switched the spear to his left hand, bent his right arm, set it near his waist, and said,

"It is an honor!"

It was a military salute.

The man, who said he had always wanted to meet Enkrid after hearing the stories, was named Millio.

"Good to meet you."

When Enkrid greeted him, Millio's hands shook with emotion.

"Would you perhaps spar with me once later..."

"You crazy bastard, what do you mean sparring? How dare you ask that."

The other soldier beside him snapped in anger.

"The vibe is a little like this here, right? You will need to adapt."

Eisia, who had gone in first, said that while leaning against the wall. She looked exhausted. Now that he saw her clearly, there were dark circles under her eyes. She looked like she had missed sleep for days.

"Adapt to what? This looks fun as hell."

Rem said from the side. He was right.

The guy asked for a spar, so just give him one.

"And you two, sparring in a situation like this? You've got too much time on your hands."

"No, ma'am!"

"We will correct ourselves!"

At Eisia's words, both soldiers straightened their posture and answered.

They were so stiff with discipline it looked like she had smacked their heads whenever she got bored.

"Let's go in. We should meet Knight Oara first."

Knight Oara.

That was why Enkrid had come here.

By then, several more soldiers had arrived besides the guards, and every one of them had a vicious look.

"Rem, looks like you have a lot of friends."

When Enkrid said that, Rem scanned around. He saw no westerners. Then he caught the meaning and smiled.

It was the smile he always wore when killing someone or burying an axe into a Demon Creature's skull.

Rem realized his captain was in high spirits and teasing him.

"What are you so happy about?"

Rem asked, then quickly figured out why himself.

"Goddamn it, you are excited because you are going to see a knight."

"Correct."

Enkrid said that and followed Eisia's lead deeper inside.

The city was large, but the number of people was small. Most of them carried weapons, and there were no flower-selling girls.

There were stores like general goods and grocers, but they looked very quiet.

One shop was full of people shaving long horns.

It looked like they sold almost nothing else.

There was also a bakery, and it sold bread shaped like arrows.

The name was Arrow Bread.

The tavern right beside it was not just quiet, it was dead silent.

Plenty looked like the type who would drink from midday, but everyone avoided the tavern.

The owner came out right in front of it and shouted at the top of his lungs with a sour face.

"How am I supposed to make a living like this? Just because you're a knight, does that mean you can do anything!"

Knights were respected.

Because they could face a thousand alone.

Knights were honored.

Because no one could predict the power in their hands.

Knights were worshipped.

Because they showed their will for their convictions.

"Oara, please!"

The thick-armed man, who looked like the tavern owner, shouted similar lines several times, but nobody answered.

Eisia walked past like it was nothing.

"Try to understand, the situation is bad, so a prohibition on alcohol was issued."

"A prohibition on alcohol?"

Enkrid asked back, but Eisia only said, "Hear it from Sir Oara."

As they walked along a dirt road that was not very orderly, he looked into an alley and saw a few women selling their bodies.

That side seemed to be doing decent business.

A man who looked like a soldier was saying something in front of one of them.

"Give me a discount."

"Cut the crap. You want to save the Krona you spend on screwing around?"

"No, seriously, I will split your crotch..."

Maybe the soldier got angry. He raised his hand like he might strike her. Enkrid naturally slowed his steps.

The woman was the weaker side. He could not just stand there and watch someone get hit. Simple logic. He meant to stop it first, even if persuasion required fists.

But the man could not touch a single hair on her head.

"Hit me if you want to die."

The prostitute stood firm, and the soldier hesitated and lowered his hand.

"Sorry. I have been in a bad mood since morning because I lost in cards yesterday."

He apologized. The woman snorted, grabbed his arm, and led him inside through a side door.

They had argued, but they looked like people who knew each other well.

"That was unique."

Rem said it with interest.

Enkrid agreed. What he had just seen was hard to process. Calling it daily life felt off somehow.

"I am going to look around the city a bit."

Rem seemed more interested in the city than in knights and briskly headed off to take a lap.

At the center of the city stood a house that was far too shabby to call a mansion.

It was a log house.

The place was called Thousand Brick, but you could not build every structure with brick.

Who would haul all that here, plaster it, and stack it all?

For most buildings, cutting wood from nearby forests was obviously the practical answer.

That was the kind of house it was. A house made of logs.

Creeeak.

Eisia opened the door without knocking, and a bizarre sound came out.

It was the sound of rusted hinges.

"Are you not going to fix the door?"

"You can do it yourself. The only thing I am good at is cutting."

A voice came from inside. It was a woman's voice, drained and limp.

"Right, then do it yourself."

Another voice overlapped with it. Deep and clearly male.

Dunbakel stayed outside. Only Ruagarne and Enkrid stepped in.

The interior lit by candles and lamps came into view.

A round table stood in the middle, with bottles of brown liquor and three people seated around it.

"Did you bring the merchant kids in safe?"

The woman sitting in the center asked with drowsy eyes. Her hair looked red under candlelight, but outside it would probably look closer to brown.

The same with her eyes. Without candlelight, likely brown.

The smell of alcohol was strong and stung the nose.

"Reinforcements arrived. Demon Slayer."

Eisia said it, and the brown-haired woman looked at Enkrid with blurry eyes.

"...You."

She trailed off, then spoke again.

"Handsome."

For a moment, focus returned to the hazy eyes of the knight.

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