WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 446

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"What is swordsmanship?"

Aoara asked after the sparring ended. It was the front yard of a house, hardly worth calling a training ground.

Enkrid was down on one knee, clutching his stomach.

He had dodged the vertical downswing, then the thrust that followed.

He had seen that combination many times. With the Sense of Evasion active, it was manageable.

He got through the blade work that way, but the moment Aoara finished her swing, she stepped straight into his chest and drove her palm into his stomach.

The shock tore through his organs and punched out through his back. He was lucky he hadn't coughed up blood.

It was, of course, a strike loaded with Will, but the motion itself was simple. Stripped down to nothing.

"What do you have to do to put someone down? Think about it."

Enkrid nodded. He gave a military salute, and Aoara smiled brightly and walked away.

He turned her words over in his mind. They didn't quite land.

She came back the next day.

"Don't tell me you didn't understand what I said. That's strange,at your level, the body should just respond on its own."

The brown-haired knight tilted her head, then continued as though it hardly mattered.

"Don't you think you have too many things you can do? Every barrel full of water overflows, and water that overflows can't be drunk."

"Is that a problem?"

"Swing what you need, when you need it, and only as much as you need. That's all there is. Keep that in mind."

No lightning-bolt epiphany cracked through his head. Still, he understood what she meant.

Was having too much really the problem?

Aoara said something similar once more.

"Technically, you're overflowing. Throw out what doesn't fit."

She was firm about it. Enkrid thought it over. It might have been exactly the advice he needed right now.

So why did it feel wrong?

He didn't know. Just a feeling. Something in him resisted.

He let his gaze wander while he thought. Rem was nearby, carefully sharpening his axe blade.

Shrrring.

The whetstone sliding along the edge rang out clean and clear.

Beads of sweat had gathered on Rem's forehead. He was more focused than Enkrid had ever seen him. It was rare to see Rem like this,he put far more effort into this than he ever did when tormenting Ragna or harassing the soldiers.

Shrrring.

The same sound he had been hearing for days kept ringing in his ears.

"Rem."

"Can't you see I'm busy?"

Rem answered without turning his head. Enkrid shifted until his shadow fell across Rem's light.

"Am I someone who wants too much?"

Shrrring. Rem pushed the stone along the blade and answered without breaking his motion.

"Is that even a question worth asking?"

Blunt. Delivered like the answer was obvious.

To Enkrid's ear, it sounded less like a reply and more like: don't waste my time with things you already know.

Enkrid settled down beside him and drew Aker, Spark, and the Gladius. He picked up the linseed oil and started wiping them down. The blades caught the sunlight and glinted.

"Grrr!"

Right beside him, Dunbakel snorted and pushed through her muscle training.

Ruagarne was off to one side, swinging the Loop Sword and the whip coiled at her waist.

She had said her edge felt dull and she needed to sharpen her senses again.

She had also mentioned something about showing him what Frog-style fighting looked like from the inside.

That was something to look forward to.

He cleaned the blades and counted his Whistle Daggers. Three left, so he sharpened those edges too. He went over the Throwing Axes and the round shield frame, checking each piece for damage from the damp air, then spent the remaining time swinging his sword.

That evening they went out to deal with what remained of the Colony.

What was left were Ghouls.

Spitting Ghouls,the kind you only ran into near the Cursed Ground border.

The fluid they spat looked unpleasant enough that no one wanted to get hit on sight, and for good reason: it smoked on contact and carried acid that could eat through iron.

Ruagarne handled the Ghouls.

From three steps away, she looped her whip around one's neck and snapped it.

The Frog were called a warrior race. Ruagarne proved it.

"That finishes the Colony, then?"

Dunbakel said it. She looked ready to leave, but Enkrid ignored that.

They came back and settled into the routine of Thousand Bricks.

In the meantime, Aoara had stepped outside the city once and returned covered head to toe in black blood.

"There were some spider bastards gathering, so I took care of them."

It had the feel of a light warm-up.

"Good work, you capable, handsome one. Since I don't have to worry about what's behind me, I can take the first move."

A knight is measured by cutting through a thousand alone. She had gone out by herself and come back with dozens of Demon Creatures dead.

The two junior knights were with her as always.

The big man and the small woman.

"Your face falls a little short of mine, but your skill,I'll grant you that," the man said.

"You can ignore him," the woman added.

Enkrid looked at them both.

Neither was someone to take lightly. Oliver from the knights' order, the arm-wrestler, was the same. He stood behind them and gave Enkrid a nod of recognition.

These were people with no pretense in them, Enkrid thought. Straight and uncomplicated.

Every last one of them lived without holding anything back.

They never hesitated to pull out whatever was on their mind,a joke, an opinion, anything.

Would Sinar have enjoyed this if she had come along? She was not exactly opposed to a joke herself.

Eisia had been keeping order in the city. With no raiding parties hitting them, there was not much to manage.

After her outing, Aoara didn't leave her house for two days. No one knew why.

Enkrid sparred with a few of the soldiers in the meantime.

Several evenings passed that way. One dusk, the sun dropped low and caught on the far edge of the sky.

The light was dim enough that a dog and a wolf would look the same standing in it.

Chirr, chirr, chirr.

Insects called from the grass.

Above the campfire Dunbakel had lit, hunks of meat on skewers were sizzling.

Rem sprinkled salt and spices over them. Ruagarne crunched through a bug and rumbled happily, puffing out her cheeks.

That was when Aoara showed up again. They sparred once more, and at the end she said, "This is actually something new."

"Is it?"

"You're stubborn, aren't you?"

"I'd say I have a firm will."

"Stubborn."

Rem snickered and cut in. "You read people well."

"I agree," Ruagarne added.

Dunbakel opened her mouth, caught Enkrid's eye, and chewed her meat instead.

Crunch, crunch.

She got on just fine without talking.

Enkrid didn't bother defending himself.

He was not stubborn. He simply had convictions that didn't bend easily.

That was not something he needed anyone else to recognize.

"Looking at your eyes, I can tell for certain. You have a kind of madness in you."

Aoara said things that would have earned a beating from anyone who wasn't a knight, and she said them without blinking.

Rem was laughing outright now,a loud, delighted hahahaha.

"You two are a match."

Whatever he found so amusing could wait.

This was rich coming from the most unhinged person in the company.

"You're the first like you I've met. I like it."

Aoara took a piece of meat and turned to go. She gave a thumbs-up on her way out and declared it well cooked.

All of this conversation had come after he faced her sword in the last light of that sunset.

Meaning the spar was over. Enkrid was flat on his back on the ground.

It hadn't felt bad, though.

"It wasn't bad," Ruagarne said.

Ruagarne puffed out her cheeks lightly and went on. He took that as a sign of satisfaction.

"Honestly, I was surprised."

"You'd never stop being surprised by him. When I was teaching him, I'd get surprised a dozen times in a single day," Rem said. He had been laughing a moment ago; now his tone was calm. There was something in the way he trailed off, as though he had more to say. Ruagarne picked up on it.

"What surprised you so much?"

Pure curiosity.

"A madman picks only the mad things to do."

Rem answered while looking up at the stars, as though he had become some kind of sage. For that one moment, he seemed like someone who had mastered something.

Of course, it was complete nonsense.

Enkrid still hadn't been able to accept Aoara's advice,the suggestion to throw out what was complicated and tangled.

Did he have to give something up, surrender what had kept him alive, in order to move forward?

He asked himself that, and he answered himself.

He did not want to.

So instead of discarding, he held everything together.

More precisely, he merged it.

He had done something like this once before, and had used it naturally a few times without thinking, so it wasn't difficult.

He started from what Jaxon had taught him.

Sense of Evasion, the realm of instinct, Sense of Attack.

All of them leaned on perception. Jaxon had called that Sensory Technique.

Had Jaxon ever used those separately?

No. His use was seamless. So could Enkrid do the same?

He just needed to shift how he looked at it.

And then he made it real.

Everyone who had ever seen Enkrid said his talent was nothing to speak of, and he didn't even have the daily repetition of past lives to fall back on,but he did it anyway. He had pulled it off.

Enkrid felt quiet pride in that.

A shame it hadn't worked on Aoara yet.

"It's just not refined yet," Rem said, pulling out his axe and whetstone again after finishing his food.

"You'll wear down the edge at this rate."

"Don't worry. I know what I'm doing. Who do you think you're calling a clueless fool?"

Rem's biggest grievance these days was Ragna.

Mostly because Ragna had been needling him about Enkrid rising above a knight's rank.

Ragna seemed determined to prove there had been a reason for Rem being under Enkrid's command, and he found every possible angle to needle him.

"Barbarian. That's not right. That's not how you eat. You won't improve eating like that. Hold the fork properly."

He had even done it at mealtimes. That said everything.

"Strike like a storm when you attack, and hold like a stone mountain when you defend."

Aoara kept giving Enkrid lessons over the following days. Then one afternoon she asked, "You're going to become a knight?"

"Yes."

Enkrid answered with his sword hanging at his side. His left arm had gone numb,Aoara's grappling strike, the one loaded with Will, had done that.

Where the Mercenary King's bull put weight behind the blade, Aoara's sword made the muscles in his arm go dead from a graze alone.

That too would pass in a few minutes, same as before.

The Will of Refusal activated, slowly pushing out the Will Aoara had planted.

She watched that happen with some surprise.

What is that strange thing you're doing?

That was the look she gave him.

And then she asked,was he going to become a knight?

"Not a trace of doubt. Good. Your face is already fine, and I like your spirit too. Want some advice?"

"I'll hear it gladly."

His voice was calm, but his eyes lit up. Aoara found those blue eyes very much to her liking.

Without that, she would have had no reason to spend time sparring with him.

Was it personal interest in him as a man? His face was easy on the eyes, but it was more that the things he did set something burning in her chest.

"If you want to be a knight, start by deciding what falls within what you will protect."

Aoara spoke and turned to face away from the sun. Shadow fell across her face. Still, the smile on it came through sharp and clear.

Was she beautiful? Were her features striking? Was her jawline elegant?

If you judged by face alone, Sinar with her otherworldly looks would rank higher. Esther with her air of mystery would rank higher still.

For purely human beauty, that woman from the Marquis Bysar household was also remarkable.

Kin, was it?

She would probably fly into a rage if she knew Enkrid had forgotten her name again.

She radiated life.

For sheer vitality, Dunbakel was much the same,practically bouncing.

That she went days without washing was a separate matter entirely.

Then there was Teresa, who gave a solid and settled impression.

Aoara was different from all of them.

What she was showing him now had nothing to do with a woman's appeal, so that was probably natural.

"I want to be arrogant about it, but I can only go this far. The things I will protect,this city, the people standing behind me. That's it. That's my range."

A knight builds conviction through Will.

That conviction becomes both the knight's constraint and their vow.

"As long as I hold, this city will not fall. The Cursed Ground will not be allowed to approach."

Smiling Aoara.

That was her name as a knight.

An unusual nickname for a title. Eisia had explained how she came to have it.

She was someone who had never lost her smile, no matter the moment.

Aoara had not been posing a question, but the answer was already inside Enkrid.

So he answered.

How far did what he would protect reach?

"Everything I can see and everything that sits on my mind."

"Sorry?"

Standing with her back to the sun, rain beginning to fall around her now, Aoara blinked. Her smile dimmed just slightly.

Then it spread wide again. "You really are out of your mind."

"Is that so?"

"Way too arrogant. But, well,do what you want."

He had been planning to anyway.

"The job's done. You can head back. Enkrid of the Border Guard."

"Right now this place is sitting on my mind, so I'll stay a bit longer."

"I can't very well stop you."

Aoara disappeared just like that.

Enkrid watched the rain cool the ground, then gathered his gear and went inside.

Rem was still there, grinding the axe.

The next day, a familiar face from among the soldiers came looking for him.

"It's Millio. In case you forgot."

A soldier whose face read as solid rather than sharp. He had shown them around the city after Eisia, and he was the one who had asked to learn something.

"I had no days off until now, so I've been swamped. Please,one round."

Enkrid obliged. He gave Millio a thorough beating.

Millio came back the next day, and the day after that.

Rain fell for two full days, and Millio rolled across the muddy ground until his face was caked with it, but he kept coming, diligent as ever.

Enkrid noticed the air around him had grown strangely dim.

It was early morning the day after the rain stopped.

Millio showed up before dawn.

"I have duty during the day. That's why I came now."

Millio had not been the only one coming to find Enkrid all this time.

Several other soldiers had come too. Every one of them was skilled.

Watching them had given him something to think about.

Was this an overstaffed post?

There was a knight here, two junior knights stationed in the city, and four squires.

Three squires beyond Oliver.

Even setting aside his own group and Eisia, this place was stacked.

Every one of them was close to junior knight level.

On top of that, the soldiers themselves were strong. Hardened by real combat, they would hold up fine against Border Guard. The difference was only that Border Guard's fights were mostly against Azpen, while here the purpose was holding back the Cursed Ground. These were battle-tested soldiers, the real kind.

The numbers were not large, though.

Was it normal to hold back a Cursed Ground incursion with this many?

Of course not. The knight's presence was what made it possible.

The quality of the soldiers covered the rest.

So this was not an unusually high concentration of force,it meant the place itself was that dangerous.

That was part of why he didn't want to leave.

And beyond that, every single soldier here carried something in their chest. Duty, responsibility, purpose.

Among them, Millio was different in a particular way.

"What's your goal?"

At Enkrid's question, Millio's face went a little red in a way that seemed unlike him. He scratched his cheek and answered.

"I want to take Knight Aoara as my wife."

This one had ambitious dreams.

Listening further, Millio was twenty-five this year,his face looked thirty-five, but regardless, a relatively young man was reaching for a knight who had at least ten years on him.

Enkrid supported it, though, because it was an ambitious dream. He himself was chasing a dream that made no sense and pressing forward anyway.

There was no reason Millio couldn't do the same.

"Keep at it."

"I am."

Two days after Enkrid cheered Millio on.

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