A Knight who Eternally Regresses - Chapter 442

WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 442: What Is a Knight?

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After filling his stomach with dry bread, thin soup, salted meat, and watery cookies made from grain flour, Enkrid did exactly what he had decided to do.

"Puah! I'm gonna die!"

Dunbakel resisted, but she had no way out. Enkrid shoved her head into the tub. Her head shot back up, spraying water everywhere.

"No, I washed ten days ago!"

Dunbakel protested.

If splashing your face with droplets counted as washing, then sure, she was not technically wrong.

"I can throw Rem into the same tub with you."

"I'll wash alone."

Dunbakel gave up and washed by herself, while Enkrid asked for water to be drawn in another tub.

"I'll scrub your back."

Ruagarne offered kindly.

"I'm good."

Enkrid refused. As he soaked in warm water, the travel fatigue from the journey seemed to melt away.

It felt like he had forgotten something, but it could not have been important.

He thought about what he had to do, then about Knight Oara, and a wave of drowsiness came over him. There was no reason to fight it, so he closed his eyes.

Enkrid fell asleep with his neck resting against the wooden tub.

"So, you came to an interesting place."

Slosh.

River water and a purple lamp blocked his view. The face under the black hood blurred, then eyes, nose, and mouth slowly came into focus.

Skin like a pile of gray stones, unfocused eyes with no emotion, it was the Boatman.

"Is something ominous approaching, by any chance?"

Enkrid asked.

Outwardly, the Boatman did nothing.

But if he were human, if he truly were, he would have been grinding his molars and clenching his fists right then.

If it went even further, he might have punched that bastard in the face without realizing it.

Purple veins rose on the hand gripping the oar.

"No?"

Enkrid tilted his head.

The Boatman grabbed onto his reason before it flew away.

This was the first time since he started rowing the boat. Never before had his emotions churned like this.

Until now, he had only sneered at and despised his passengers, feeling a low and filthy delight.

Now he felt something different.

In a way, this might have been a positive emotional change.

Had he not lived so long that he forgot he could even get angry?

The Boatman thought it through and reined himself in.

"If you're not sure, that's fine."

Enkrid had no malice. To him, the Boatman looked like some divine being.

So he had only spoken honestly.

He had hoped for an answer, but if there was none, it could not be helped.

That much was obvious in his tone and attitude, so the Boatman managed to speak calmly.

"Get lost, you crazy bastard."

He had meant to say that now that Enkrid had come to the Cursed Ground, he would bless his day.

That Enkrid would regret it only after facing what might be the cruelest day of his life.

The Boatman could not say a single one of the taunts he had prepared.

* * *

Nothing changed just because no ominous feeling was coming.

From the next day on, Enkrid adapted on his own.

"Good morning."

He greeted a soldier who was either Rowena's boyfriend helping clear the dining hall, or maybe just a customer, and the soldier looked up.

Dunbakel came right behind him, her fur now white instead of gray thanks to yesterday's wash, and said to the soldier,

"Hi, beggar soldier."

A fresh form of address.

"...Why am I a beggar soldier?"

"I saw you asking for a discount because you had no Krona, in that alley."

Dunbakel swayed her waist in imitation.

The soldier's face turned red. It had been deeply embarrassing, including the part where he could not hold back and raised his hand.

"I'm a squad leader too."

The soldier said it. Enkrid gave a brief "Is that so?" and walked on, and Dunbakel ignored him and followed Enkrid.

"No roasted larvae?"

Frog came down after them and asked, and the soldier shook his head.

"We don't have that."

"Right, work hard then, you soldier with the healthy lower half."

After all three left, the soldier spat out his words.

"...I'm a squad leader too, you bastards."

Still, if you lacked Contribution Points, reality was that you had to carry food in the dining hall at least.

He had overreached trying to secure Krona this time.

Still, it was not something to regret.

The soldier shut his mouth.

Enkrid stepped outside and took a spot in an empty lot.

The whole city was one giant barracks, so wooden training dummies stood here and there.

Houses were built sparsely, with plenty of open ground, and anywhere could be used as a training field.

Yesterday he had washed well and rested well. The travel fatigue was gone now.

"You've got a sturdy body. Excellent."

Ruagarne praised him. Looking at the same sun every day, he repeated the same training dozens, hundreds, thousands of times.

The Isolation Technique was a way to temper the body to its absolute physical limit.

Enkrid did it again today.

Even if ominous danger were coming, it would not have changed anything, and since it was not, all the more reason to keep doing what he always did.

Training.

Move the body, swing the sword.

Ruagarne drew her blade. With a ring, Frog drew her Loop Sword. She was not someone to look down on.

As they loosened up with simple sparring, the damp sun broke through the clouds and spilled light.

Using that light as his center, Enkrid used the step he had learned, drew lines with his sword, and shook Ruagarne's balance with feints and checks.

He moved as if he would strike right, then thrust at the left shoulder.

He used the step Ruagarne had taught him.

Weight on the left foot, then thrust with the sword in the left hand.

It looked like the way a nervous soldier moved. Tree Frog Step.

The technique came from that stiff motion where leg and arm moved together.

Because he had constantly practiced writing with his left hand and using it here and there, he could now do it more precisely than before.

All of that added up and made this movement possible.

"Good!"

Ruagarne shouted, excited. She was not especially battle-hungry, but when she faced Enkrid, she sometimes got fired up without realizing it.

After sweating like that,

"If someone disappears, shouldn't you at least try to find him?"

A gray-haired barbarian walked into the lot.

"...Ah."

Enkrid realized what he had forgotten in the tub yesterday. It was Rem.

"Where'd you go?"

"You were actually curious?"

"No."

It looked like Rem had gone out hunting on his own. Grass and dirt clung to him, clear traces that he had been roaming around.

There was also a faint smell of charcoal.

It looked like he had burned something overnight.

There was a heavy pouch too, probably filled with stones. A few were visible at the opening.

Rem had looked around the city and found good whetstones, and after hearing he could not get them without Contribution Points, he went out to find them himself. Natural whetstones.

They hardened more when fired.

To sharpen a Lewes Iron axe, he needed that kind.

He found a few whetstones, looked around the area a bit, then went back to the smithy to fire them, and that was how he stayed up all night.

"Anyway, let's sleep first."

Fatigue piled up, so you rested when you could.

Whether this was Thousand Brick or the middle of the Cursed Ground, Rem was not the type to be affected by his surroundings.

He did what he always did.

Enkrid accepted it and focused on training.

After swinging his sword for quite a while, a voice cut in.

"You said you'd become a knight?"

When had she come? It was Knight Oara.

She was crouched on a cut tree stump beside the lot, elbows on her knees, both arms hanging loose.

Oara chewed with a plum in her hand.

With each crunch, purple juice stained her lips. A drop of juice ran down.

Under the sunlight, her hair was clearly brown.

It curved naturally, half-wavy and pleasant to look at, and she wore a neat cloth band across her forehead.

Her eyes were round, and her gaze was clear.

She looked fully sober now. Oara chewed a little more, then spat out the pit. It stuck in soil close to her hair color.

"Yes, that's what I plan to do."

Enkrid answered.

"Mhm."

Oara nodded and said nothing else. She only watched.

Enkrid finished what he was doing.

Oara watched briefly, then stood up, dusted herself off, and snapped a branch from a tall tree between the houses.

She tapped it with the edge of her hand. Leaves fell in a flutter.

Then she took out a knife and trimmed the branch.

"I should stay sharp."

Ruagarne said as she watched.

Oara had her back turned. The moment she turned around with the cleaned branch,

Pak!

Dunbakel kicked off the ground and retreated more than five steps. In white lion form, she bared her fangs and lowered her stance.

One hand touched the ground, her jaw almost brushing it, only her head raised.

She was showing pure alertness.

It was brutal pressure.

A knight's Pressure usually felt like a huge stone crushing your shoulders, but Oara went further.

Her Pressure was like iron shackles. No, more like being clubbed by a chunk of iron.

It did not say, if you move I'll cut you. It said, let's start with one hit before you even move.

"Ah, it's been a while since I used this on a person, so I can't control it very well."

She stepped forward as she spoke. Holding up the branch, she stood opposite Enkrid.

Enkrid raised Aker.

Normally, it should have been hard to move.

Oara's Pressure covered a fixed area, exactly about five steps in a radial spread from where she faced, and inside that space, it was on a different level from ordinary Pressure.

Enough to make a junior knight fumble.

But Enkrid did more than raise his sword and take his stance. He showed fighting spirit.

The moment he felt that invisible iron mass strike him, the Will of Refusal activated inside his body.

Will canceled will.

So the Pressure meant nothing.

Enkrid did not intend it, but Oara grew interested.

'He's not even a knight, and he shook off my Pressure?'

Should she call it an abnormal defense method?

It was like a seven-year-old carrying a shield made of Darksteel.

Unless that child was a giant, the shield should have been too heavy to lift, but somehow Enkrid lifted it, blocked, and knocked it aside. That impressed her.

The corner of Oara's mouth lifted. With a faint smile, she said,

"That's a good sword."

"It's a royal treasure."

"So you're the hero of the civil war, huh. Should've given me one too, stingy."

"Do you know Her Majesty?"

"Nope. Never met her."

Oara had no involvement in the civil war or anything happening in the royal house.

Her job was guarding this place.

That was the promise she had made to herself.

"Wanna play?"

She asked. Her voice sounded seductive, like an attractive lover inviting someone to bed at night.

Enkrid took the bait.

He stepped in without a word. Not a single trick mixed in.

Only a straight line. He bet everything on seeing point to point and connecting them.

A probing move to gauge the opponent's skill? He did not need that. His opponent was a knight.

So he had to show his best move.

Heart of Superhuman Strength pounded.

Focus Point made time feel stretched.

Pressure weighed on his whole body like he was trapped in a swamp.

Enkrid endured that pressure and brought his sword down.

Watching from the side, Dunbakel's eyes widened. Without realizing it, her nails dug in, and with a crack she split a stone embedded in the ground.

She had seen this technique too. She had suffered it before.

Was it called Giant's Strike?

But what he showed now was something she had never suffered and never seen.

Enkrid threw his whole body into one technique, one slash.

He detonated the full-body muscles forged by the Isolation Technique.

It felt like someone had grabbed time itself and stretched it sideways.

On that stretched line of time, only Enkrid advanced and brought the sword down.

A beam that split sunlight fell over the knight's head.

Tak.

Then a hollow sound rang out.

"You put too much strength into it."

Enkrid froze in the posture of his swing. Oara's branch rested on his wrist.

Then Enkrid turned his left foot and moved.

The blade drew a new trajectory.

Oara pulled the branch off and snapped it back in, striking his wrist again.

She was a knight. She figured this should be enough to make Enkrid drop his sword.

But being a knight did not mean perfection in every area.

Crack!

The force in that branch could have broken an ordinary person's wrist, but Enkrid endured it.

Muscles honed over long years of training now had a different level of hardness, and Enkrid had learned from Audin countless times how to take a hit properly. At impact, he applied force and pulled his hand, even throwing off the contact point.

Then he completed the sword swing he had already begun.

Using his right foot as an axis, his muscles drove force into the blade. The sword shot out in a straight line, shining like White Lightning.

Oara let go of the branch. The instant she recognized failure, she grabbed and drew a side weapon.

Tang!

Aker's blade was blocked.

Oara looked at Enkrid over the shortsword she held diagonally.

His blue eyes met hers.

Even with blade against blade, neither side was pushed back or gave ground.

Force had been set and stopped at the exact center point of impact.

It was Oara's trick. She used only the needed strength and held Enkrid's sword in place. It was the technique called Blade Catch.

"You're pretty good."

Oara said.

She meant it.

At this level, he was comparable to the two junior knights she had personally trained.

No, if she looked only at fighting spirit, maybe he fought even better.

She did not know. Every fight had to be fought to know.

But this time, she could tell without fighting further.

She had planned to finish this with a branch, yet she drew a sword.

Was it because she had failed to gauge his skill correctly?

Oara had made two mistakes, and she recognized both right then.

'It's been a while since I fought a person.'

Sparring itself was rare for her.

That was the first error.

The second was,

'I wasn't underestimating him, but...'

This Enkrid bastard was tenacious.

If a normal junior knight with a well-made steel sword was one thing, this one was like a blade forged from melted scrap metal, made with absurd care after gathering every piece by hand.

So her prediction failed.

He was not a cleanly trained product. He was a vicious climber who had crawled up from the bottom.

Since she understood that, changing her response was natural.

"If you can't block it, it hurts."

Oara said as she pushed Enkrid's sword away.

Enkrid tried to pull back his blocked sword and force close combat, but he got shoved. Her pushing force was tremendous.

"What is a knight?"

Oara lowered the arm holding the shortsword and asked.

Instead of answering, Enkrid reset his stance.

"They are those who manifest an intangible force called will into reality."

It was a thoroughly concrete definition.

If all romance was stripped away, it was correct.