WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 444

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Thwip, thwack, whirr, crack!

The battle with the Harpies could be summed up in those four sounds.

When it was over, Rem had shredded through two slings and fired nineteen shots.

Screech! Screech!

Harpies wailed as their skulls caved in. Still shrieking, they charged again and threw spells.

Wind coiled and formed something like a wall. Look closely and you could see the air warp and ripple in sloppy, half-formed shapes. Even if you could not see it, you could feel it well enough.

So what? What was a barrier going to do?

Whoosh, crack!

The Harpy spells could not stop the overwhelming physical force Rem's sling put out. The stone released from the whirring leather strap punched clean through the barrier without slowing.

Screech! Screech!

By then the Harpy cries were starting to sound like laughter.

Dying and laughing at the same time?

Oh. They had wanted to die all along, and they had been miserable because no one would do it for them.

Well. A barbarian came, and he brought rocks.

He came, he came, with rocks all packed and ready.

Enkrid was humming an old marching rhyme under his breath. There was nothing else for him to do.

"There are a lot of them."

He rested his hand on Aker's grip and looked up. More Harpies were pouring out, their cries clicking and rattling. Wings beat in rapid bursts, feathers scattered, and the smell of sourness, fish, and blood reached his nose.

Over thirty Harpies, just from this group.

Fifty, maybe?

While Enkrid watched, more spilled from the top of the stone tower. The count looked like it would pass fifty.

Thwip! Thwack!

Another stone split the air.

It was moving faster than the eye could follow.

The rock punched through the chest of a female Harpy and black blood rained down from the sky. The Harpy dropped like a meteor and slammed into the ground with a hole where her chest had been.

Thud!

Dust rose with the impact.

The Harpies were not going to take it lying down.

Three male Harpies with thick, powerful pectorals dove low, swept both wings forward, and launched a volley of feathers.

Dozens of blade-feathers, sharp as knives, rained down over the group.

Enkrid pulled out a round shield, roughly two handspans across, read the trajectories, and blocked.

Thunk, thunk, thunk.

The feathers bit into the oiled face of the shield and stuck there. They did not punch through.

Blocking was easy. He only had to catch what was aimed at him; the rest he dodged by reading the angles.

He could have cut them out of the air with his blade, probably. Not that hard either way. They were stopped, so it did not matter.

Ruagarne drew her Loop Sword and used the flat to cover the area near her heart, ignoring everything else. She wore the Heart Armor, and that piece had three or more layers of thin steel plates over the heart, high-quality Magic Beast leather, and spelled cloth wrapped around it, so feathers would bounce off without her needing to block them at all.

Frogs had a deep fear of anything touching the heart, though.

Even with two or three layers of protection over it, feeling anxious and afraid was normal for them.

Ruagarne was one of the rare Frogs disciplined enough to say the word heart without flinching.

Several feathers found her arms and legs. Two more hit her stomach.

Thump, tik.

With soft sounds, they slid right off her skin and fell away. Not even a scratch.

Frog skin was coated in a natural mucus that made most blades slip right off. No surprise there. No matter how sharp the feather tips were, unless the strike could sever a limb, it was not going to do much.

Dunbakel leaped clear of the volley's range.

Rem stayed exactly where he was, spinning his sling, and moved only enough to dodge.

The three Harpies who had launched the feathers seemed to hesitate.

They had just thrown something that should have sent anyone scrambling in a panic, and this group had brushed it off like nothing. Probably the first time they had ever seen that.

Enkrid understood how they felt. He would have been a little surprised too.

Know your enemy before you know the battle, someone had once said. He had learned that swimming in the deep waters of hard experience.

Know your enemy and know yourself.

Know yourself and know your enemy.

It had to come before the first swing.

The thick pectorals of the three Harpies rose and fell.

What are they? Little monsters?

He could almost hear the thought from the Demon Creatures.

They hesitated, and that was a mistake.

They had come down to launch the feathers, which meant they were low enough that a running jump could reach them.

Dunbakel ran. She used the stone tower's wall like a floor beneath her feet, and after a few rapid strides she was level with the Harpies. She twisted in midair, and her curved blade and claws split open the heads and chests of all three.

She spun once, pulled herself tight, and landed with barely a sound.

Thud, thwack, thud.

Three Harpies collapsed to the ground.

Through all of it, Rem's sling never stopped tearing the air apart.

Thwip! Thwack!

The Colony leader was a wind-arrow Harpy. Rem gave that one the same treatment, equal and fair, a stone through the skull.

That time he did not throw from a standstill. He let the sling whirl with a rising hum, rotated his whole body once, and released.

The rotational force doubled the stone's speed.

That ended the Harpy Colony. The leader lost everything above the neck without managing to cast a single one of its spells.

Kiaaaaaa!

The remaining Harpies screamed. Some charged in a rage. Others fled.

The ones that charged, Dunbakel and Ruagarne cut down one by one.

"Should we hit the next one now?"

Enkrid said it. He had not needed to step in at all, the group looked fine, and the night was still young.

Moonlight filled the sky. Dawn was a long way off.

"Let's."

Rem dropped the ruined sling on the ground and said it.

Finding the black dog Colony was even easier.

"Dogs mark their territory even after they become Magic Beasts."

Follow the droppings. Follow the smell. Simple enough.

Dunbakel had a hunter's instincts. Tracking by scent was second nature to her. Bounty hunting had been her main work while she roamed the continent.

That was how they found the second Demon Creature Colony.

What came out of it was a dog walking on two legs. A variant of a Hell Hound.

And this was just the border of the Cursed Ground.

Nothing around here was ordinary.

Harpies that cast spells.

Dogs that walked upright.

This was not even a major cursed zone, and it was already like this.

The southern Cursed Ground would be worse.

"Demon Creatures near the Cursed Ground are not normal. That's what makes them dangerous."

Ruagarne said it while looking at a severed dog head that could have crawled straight from hell. She spun the Loop Sword idly in one hand, and the heavy steel sang through the air.

Cavalry could not be used out here, someone had mentioned. Animals near the Cursed Ground were said to be gripped by constant, instinctive fear. The environment was strange because of it. Ordinary animals were almost never seen moving around. Instead, Demon Creatures and Magic Beasts were everywhere.

Grrrr!

The Magic Beast leader, the two-legged dog, breathed fire and carried venom in its fangs. That was not Enkrid's problem.

He took its head off in two cuts.

The gladius in his left hand swept and severed a foreleg. Aker in his right followed through and cut the neck.

By then, Rem and the others had slashed and beaten their way through dozens of the other Magic Beasts. Over a hundred Magic Beasts in total, and they killed roughly half before the rest scattered in every direction. No point chasing after each one.

"Leave them. They'll die on their own."

Ruagarne said it and elaborated. The Demon Creatures out here were vicious, she explained. Without a Colony holding them together, wandering alone was as good as dying. Ordinary Magic Beasts could barely survive this place at all.

After that, her lecture on Demon Creature biology continued. Enkrid listened. It was genuinely interesting.

The key point was this.

"So Demon Creatures near the Cursed Ground evolve?"

Enkrid nailed it on the walk back, and Ruagarne nodded.

They cleared the two Demon Creature Colonies, came back, slept, and when Enkrid woke, Eisia was waiting for him.

"What exactly have you been doing out there?"

She could not hide the surprise in her voice. It was probably not from sparring with Knight Aoara, though. She had just woken up and received reports.

He had mentioned it when they entered the city, about clearing two Colonies and killing the deserter-turned-cult-leader. Word of that had clearly reached her.

Enkrid read the meaning behind her short question and gave the simple answer.

"Handling the requests."

He said it while carefully wiping down his blades with an oiled cloth, the fine linseed oil variety.

The food in this city was nothing special, but the weapon maintenance supplies were solid. Good, even.

It felt like a place designed for people who expected to die fighting.

Made sense for a city that was essentially one large barracks.

Maybe that was exactly it.

Eisia responded to his flat answer.

"In two days?"

Her hand drifted naturally to her hip. Her fingers found the sword grip. Just touching it helped settle her nerves.

She was not trying to pick a fight, but how could anyone be this efficient?

Enkrid was sitting on a tree stump in front of his lodging. Eisia had come in light kit, just a sword at her hip.

In front of the stump was something like a thick leather mat, and he had laid his weapons out across it. He was going down the line, oiling and cleaning each one.

Weapon maintenance was as important as training itself.

"Two days is enough, isn't it?"

"Ha."

Eisia exhaled.

She had known they were good fighters, but this was something different. Tracking and hunting ability like a first-rate ranger.

Thousand Brick had a few soldiers close to that level too. They had left with Swordsman Jack when he deserted.

So this man fought better than her and tracked better than her?

Well. Good was good.

His work had bought them breathing room. The Harpy problem, the one she had been ready to leap off the walls to deal with herself, was gone.

The plan had been to jump from the battlements and cut them down one at a time if they attacked again, then scramble back up the wall. Not impossible, but a headache.

"You're very good at this."

Eisia said it again, and as she spoke, another visitor appeared from behind her.

Eisia wore a short-sleeved shirt, properly laced and tied, so only her forearms showed. The newcomer was wearing rather less.

A thin shirt with her cleavage showing and short pants that left both knees bare.

Knight Aoara. She shook out her brown hair with one hand and spoke.

"Hey. Want to come out and have some fun?"

An impossible question to predict. Eisia's question had been easy to read from context. Aoara's came from nowhere.

Enkrid answered what he felt.

"A spar?"

If it was a fight, he was ready. Anytime. The intent was plain, and the will behind it brought up a natural fighting spirit.

Eisia felt her muscles tighten at the edge in it. Something in her wanted to step up too. That kind of fighting spirit made you want to match it.

"Not today."

But Aoara refused, flat and clean.

Enkrid stared at her.

Then what had she come here for?

"It's a rest day."

"What is that?"

"If you have worked six days, rest on the seventh. The teaching of God."

Some gods said things like that, apparently.

Enkrid had heard it somewhere in passing.

Aoara held up her necklace as she spoke. It was not an object with divine power, but it carried a symbol of the faith.

Aoara was devout.

Audin would love to talk with her. He would rather exchange views on religion than push anyone away for believing differently.

"Word is you finished the work cleanly. So now it's time to play."

Aoara's brown eyes looked straight at Enkrid.

The corners of her eyes were soft. Eisia, who knew Aoara's nature well enough, kept quiet.

Aoara smiled, then pinched the front of her shirt and flapped it a few times. It was the kind of day where sweat just poured out of you. Humid and stifling. Rain would have been welcome.

Being a knight did not make you immune to heat. She was sweating too.

A faint trail of it ran down her neck.

"Letting your eyes wander will make many people sad."

Ruagarne spoke from off to one side. She had been pressing a dry stalk of grass to her nose and breathing it in with great satisfaction.

"Is that a drug?"

Enkrid asked with genuine concern. Ruagarne puffed out her cheeks. That was her way of laughing.

"It is a plant that lifts the mood, but it is not a drug for humans. For a human it would be closer to poison."

She was not on anything, so why was she talking like that.

Aoara watched him and said it plainly.

"Rest when you rest, work when you work. That is my way. So right now, you play."

It sounded like she was forcing the issue, but she was not wrong.

Enkrid had realized this himself some time ago. Rest mattered too.

He had also learned from Ruagarne how to broaden his perspective. Rest was not only the body resting. Mental rest was just as important.

"I'll show you around the city, handsome. Come on."

Aoara offered. Enkrid had started gathering his things from the leather mat one by one when he spoke.

"Dunbakel."

"What?"

"Put these away."

He had no squire, so there was not much choice about who to ask.

Dunbakel did not say anything like why me. When Enkrid asked her to do something, she did it.

"Eisia. No winged crazies, no sulfur-reeking dogs anymore, right? You've got time. Come with us."

Aoara pulled Eisia in too.

Enkrid got to his feet and dusted himself off.

Rem was over to one side, carefully grinding the axe blade on a whetstone. He looked up.

"You all go. I'm busy."

He said it and went back to the whetstone. He was always doing this, but today he looked especially absorbed in it.

"All right."

Enkrid nodded and started walking.

"How did you find the Colony locations?"

Aoara asked as she stepped across the damp, muddy ground. The short boots she wore, ankles bare above them, looked very light on her feet.

Enkrid glanced at them and answered.

"I have a Beastfolk with a sharp nose and a squad member who's good at tracking people."

Aoara pressed her lips together in a small impressed sound and leaned in to listen. She was giving it her full attention.

Enkrid kept it brief, only the essential parts.

There was not much to say about taking down Colony leaders. He found them, he killed them. That was everything.

The three of them wandered along at an easy pace and stopped in front of a tavern.

It was loud. Voices overlapping voices, mixed with shouts that could have been cheering or cursing, it was hard to tell.

"I've got money on you! Ruben!"

"If you lose, you're dead! Idiot! Come on!"

Something was going on in there.

"The alcohol ban got lifted."

Aoara said. The tavern was packed.

In the middle of it all, two bald men sat across from each other, hands locked together, straining.

Arm wrestling.

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