WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 450

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"It was nothing. Just a run of bad luck."

Aoara said it plainly. She had already gone into the Cursed Ground dozens of times.

Alone, at that.

Early on, she had cut down Demon Creatures near the entrance and called it done. After that, she pushed a little deeper, looking for a way to destroy the Cursed Ground entirely. Last came the phase where she went deeper still, a theory in hand.

That was when Aoara ran into a strange monster.

A ghoul with Extreme Toxin in its claws.

The moment she laid eyes on it, a knight's instinct spoke. This is not an easy opponent.

It also happened to be evidence for the theory she had been building.

What, exactly, was a Cursed Ground?

It was, in a sense, another Colony.

Colonies dissolved when you killed their leader.

So what about a Cursed Ground?

"Same principle. This one is not even that large, but it has been rooted here for over fifty years, I would say."

The topic of the poison followed naturally from there. Enkrid listened without interrupting.

Aoara was no scholar, but she was a knight who had spent her entire life dreaming of wiping out the Gray Forest's Cursed Ground right in front of her.

When thinking something through got her nowhere? When she could not even guess at an answer?

She threw her body at the problem instead.

If you did not know, you went into the Cursed Ground and found out yourself. It was the kind of solution that only worked if you had the brute strength to back it up, but she had made it work.

That was how she had learned.

"It is the season of generational turnover."

She did not know the exact mechanism, but one thing was certain.

The Cursed Ground Core changes.

Aoara had concluded that the ghoul was the core sustaining the next generation of the Cursed Ground. The leader, in Colony terms.

A few exchanges of blades had told her as much.

Strength and speed on a different level entirely, and intelligence to match.

She had no idea what the previous core had been. She had no desire to know, either.

Only one fact mattered to her.

Kill one evolved ghoul, and the Cursed Ground loses its power. Nothing more dangerous than that creature would emerge. Everything else could be cleared out one by one, given time.

It would not even require a knight to finish the job.

Romen would handle that part.

He was Aoara's chosen successor.

She had already decided that much.

If the chance came, she would burn her own life to erase the Cursed Ground Core.

Resolve and conviction, bound together.

Her expression brightened in a way that was rare for her.

Will circulated through her entire body.

Strange, she thought as she talked. It really was strange, but speaking to the man in front of her made determination rise in her on its own. A piece of the omnipotence she had felt the moment she first became a knight was filling her body again.

"You are saying the poison cannot be cured?"

Enkrid cut to the heart of it and asked. Arrows cut through the air again over land that had only just fallen dark.

"Oa!"

The soldiers shouted their battle cry. Arrows rained down with the protection of the walls, and directly in front of the gate stood four squires and two junior knights, as always.

If anything went wrong, those six would form a wall on the spot and smash the skulls of any Demon Creatures that drew near.

Aoara smiled at Enkrid's question and thumped him on the back.

"Hey, do I look like I am about to die? I am working on a cure right now, so stop worrying. I have at least ten good years left, minimum."

It would sort itself out in time. The words did not ring false.

The poison had come from the ghoul's claws, and immediate treatment had been impossible.

Several reasons had piled up to make it so.

She had kept going in and out of the Cursed Ground even in that condition. She had fought the ghoul two more times and ended up poisoned by a mixture of different toxins. Sacred power had been tried, and the medicines of renowned alchemists too, but all of it remained unresolved.

Sacred power was not almighty, after all.

"I have seen your back a few times now, but those muscles really do punish the hand."

Aoara looked at her own palm as she said it.

The resilience she had felt from Enkrid's back muscles still lingered faintly in her hand. It had felt good, was what she meant.

She added that days like today came around sometimes.

Today was one of them.

Demon Creature spawn popping up out of nowhere, causing trouble as if on purpose.

You could not predict every movement from the Cursed Ground, after all.

"Damn spider bastards."

Aoara muttered it under her breath. Her eyes glowed white. A Will-laden gaze cut straight through the dark.

Several enormous monster spiders came charging in and threw themselves at the squires and junior knights.

Those massive bodies crashing down on people came into view.

"Stop playing around!"

Oliver was there in front of them, bringing a mace down hard.

Thwack.

A spider's skull split open and spilled black, sticky fluid.

"Dunbakel."

Enkrid called to Dunbakel, who was some distance away.

She shuffled over with obvious reluctance, dragging her feet in a way that made her feelings about being here perfectly clear. She had been singing the same song about going home every day for the past several days, so the reaction was probably only natural.

Rem said from behind her that he would cut off her ankle if she dragged her feet one more time, and Dunbakel's pace quickened.

Caw, caw.

A crow cried without tiring, and from inside the Cursed Ground came the continuous low hooting of an owl.

"Can you see?"

"Well enough."

Beastfolk had sharp night vision. Enkrid could make out shapes in the dark through training, but not with her precision.

Dunbakel spoke.

"They are holding the line in front of the wall."

Kreeeeee!

A Screaming Spider's cry tore through the air again, right on cue.

It came from just ahead, a short distance from the gate.

Two or three torches lit the figures standing there, their shadows stretching long toward the Cursed Ground.

The four squires and two junior knights had stepped forward after spotting the spiders closing in.

"They fight well."

Dunbakel said it without any particular feeling in her voice.

Enkrid's eyes stayed fixed on the same spot.

Same as always. Any spider Demon Creatures that came at them were smashed apart. They had no intention of being pushed back.

And Romen, one of the pillars holding that wall of strength, had a fighting spirit that could have pierced the sky.

"Die smiling, all of you!"

A cheerful shout.

No sign of strain anywhere.

There was no real threat. And yet Enkrid's instincts warned him. His skin prickled.

Why?

He did not know himself. Dunbakel watched the fighting and asked, "Can we just slip away?"

"Hey, Captain. Something feels off."

Rem came up beside Enkrid.

Behind him, Ruagarne cast her gaze out into the distance.

"Mm?"

Aoara tilted her head.

Was a feel for atmosphere and air something only Enkrid possessed? No. He might be sharper than most, having died over and over again, but Aoara felt it too. Something different from usual.

She blinked once and thought it over. For a Wave, the numbers were not that large.

Spiders normally overwhelmed with sheer numbers. That was exactly why soldiers on the walls had led with arrows.

So why did it feel ominous? Why was the air unsettled?

"Twin Red Moons?"

It was rare, but there were times when both moons turned red.

A night called Darfina.

The god of death descends to this land, and the god who governs monsters peers briefly at the world.

In short, a night when unlucky things happened.

"Bring my armor."

Two soldiers came carrying her armor. Steel plate covering the chest, with leather layered over it in sections.

She stripped off her cloak and was putting the armor on when a loud commotion from inside the gate below the wall reached Enkrid's ear.

Amid the snap of bowstrings and the shouts of commanders, there was a noise that did not belong. It sounded like an argument.

"I am going first."

Enkrid came down the stairs.

On his way down, he spotted people arguing in front of the gate.

The gate stood open just wide enough for one person to pass. The soldier there was Rowena's man.

"Let me through!"

"Stop talking nonsense. You go out there now, you die."

"Not my problem. I do not care if I die!"

Millio, guarding the gate, could not allow that.

"Stupid bastard."

"Damn it, Millio, Rowena went out on patrol and never came back!"

The soldier was not crying, but he sounded like he might be.

Millio could not find words. Rowena and the man in front of him were the most well-known couple in the city.

A flower that had bloomed in the dark of the Cursed Ground. And he knew: these two would give their own lives for each other the moment the other was in danger.

That was exactly why he could not let him out.

Rowena was capable.

Capable enough that joining a knight order in a few years was not out of the question. She would be alive.

"Trust her and wait. Rowena is tougher than you."

"Her return time already passed."

Millio could not win this argument. The companions of this man, bound together by loyalty, stood quietly behind him.

"Are you all going out together?"

"To cheer on our squad leader's love life," said the soldier directly behind him.

He was someone who had killed two underlings of a lord throwing his weight around in his own territory and made his way here after that.

Now an upstanding soldier of Thousand Brick.

It was madness. Clearly madness, but Millio stepped aside.

"The front is already blocked by the knight order. Go around to the left."

"Got it."

The soldier slipped out through the gate.

"Oa!"

Millio shouted without warning, and the soldiers on the walls stamped their feet in answer.

"Oa!"

"Die smiling!"

The battle cry tore through the night sky.

Screaming Spiders were only one variety of spider monster.

There were Armored Spiders too, and spiders that shot webs, visible among the rest.

None of them, of course, had managed to break through the wall the knight order had built, holding the line twenty steps from the gate.

And now one more had joined that line.

"Hey, let me join the fun!"

Aoara. She put her back to the wall and slid down in one smooth motion, dropped to the ground, and rejoined her knights.

Sliding down a wall like that was a feat in itself.

And she drove straight into the monsters with that same speed.

"Not a chance!"

She drew her sword as she ran forward. A long, slender longsword. She charged in a straight line, then curved sideways at the last moment.

Her blade swept through the arc.

It looked like a single stream of water cutting through the dark.

A smooth, unbroken curve, the sword never stopping.

She moved her feet while gripping the blade and drew a line through the air.

Whatever that line touched, Armored Spider or giant spider alike, was cut apart.

Underbelly, head, carapace, it did not matter.

Her sword would not be stopped. Anyone watching could see it. If they came at her one after another, she could kill every one of those monsters alone.

Even an occasional glance thrown toward the monsters was enough to make their bodies lock up.

The dizzying level of Pressure Enkrid had experienced himself, that was what it had to be.

Aoara warmed up with easy looseness.

The short blond's work was no less impressive. Her eyes shone white.

"Venom, evasive maneuver."

She peered through the dark and shifted the formation.

The four squires split left and right at her word, two to a side.

Thwap!

Black liquid shot into the spot where they had been standing. A spider that spat poison.

"Hmph."

The short blond's hand moved. A flick through the air, and the Throwing Knife that followed drove straight through the head of the poison-spitting spider.

"Filthy spider bastards."

Romen, owner of a blunt greatsword, stepped briefly out of formation. He surged forward and swung.

Bang! Bang!

The crashes rang out, and six Armored Spiders were crushed and broken apart under his bludgeoning.

Black fluid scattered across the ground.

During all of this, Rowena's man stepped outside.

"Hey!"

Oliver, at the far left of the formation swinging his mace, saw it and shouted.

"I will follow."

Enkrid came out behind the soldier and said so. Rem and the rest of the group fell in. At those words, Rowena's soldier's face crumpled.

"Are you an angel?"

"Shut up and move, or I will throw you back through the gate myself."

The flat warning shut him up. They intended to sweep only a portion of the area.

Basically, just hold out until dawn?

That might be all it came to.

The Twin Red Moons shed their ominous red light from between the clouds.

Enkrid glanced back without much thought.

Millio was leading a portion of the troops out.

A knight could cut through a hundred, but a knight was only one body. While that blade cut through one hundred, nine hundred could loop around and cause trouble elsewhere.

Squires, junior knights, soldiers, they all existed to fill those gaps.

He was thinking that when he turned his gaze back forward.

Every hair on Enkrid's body stood on end.

"Block it!"

Before he could even work out what he was sensing, Aoara's shout came first.

Then.

Ti-di-di-di-di-di-di-ding!

Through the noise, things came pouring down from above.

Enkrid felt through the force and the sound of air being sliced what the monsters had launched. Arrows.

But he could not get a clear look. Darkness covered his eyes like a Veil. The Twin Red Moons hidden behind clouds offered no help.

Dunbakel's pupils dilated. The moderate ovals expanded to fill her entire eyes and gave off a faint glow.

What the monsters had fired was visible to her.

Not like anything humans used. White arrows wound together from thread stitched the sky overhead.

It looked almost like dozens of meteors fragmenting and falling straight down.

Dunbakel reflexively drew her curved blade and crossed it over her head.

Block them, deflect them, dodge, that was all there was to it.

"Heads down."

Rem reacted at the same moment, grabbing a nearby soldier by the head and yanking down while swinging his axe. Enkrid reflexively pulled out his shield.

The arrows struck the shield in his right hand.

Thunk! Thunk!

They bounced off rather than piercing. The tips were not especially sharp, but what they lacked in sharpness they made up for in weight. That was how Enkrid read it.

He dropped to one knee and deflected the next volley easily while the storm of arrows did not let up.

An attack like this could not do much to squires, junior knights, or a knight.

Regular soldiers were a different story. Arrows alone were a serious threat to them.

The ones beside him right now, Rem, Dunbakel, and Ruagarne, could more than handle it, and the soldiers on the walls had the walls themselves for cover.

But what about the ones who had risked their lives to fill the gaps?

"Millio!"

Enkrid shouted it with warning in his voice.

He saw it, a white arrow launched by the monsters driving into Millio's head.

Thwack.

Millio had thrown himself forward to cover a subordinate instead of protecting himself.

His helmet dented inward. His eye bulged out.

His skull caved in and blood burst free.

Not every arrow carried the same force.

But some of them were lethal.

The monsters were clever.

Instead of targeting the ones they could not finish off, they aimed for the relatively weaker members of the formation.

"You son of a bitch!"

Enkrid heard someone's rage spill out.

He felt the same.

Millio had done the most to make their stay here comfortable. It would have been a lie to say no bond had formed between them.

And it did not end there.

From inside the mass of monsters, something like a long pole suddenly rose up.

A person was tied to it. At its tip, a blue stone was bound, a flint, by the look of it. Its white-blue light mixed with the dark and lit up the figure lashed to the pole.

"Rowena!"

The soldier who had come with them shouted.

Monsters taking hostages.

Enkrid felt it in his gut: this Wave was not like the ones before.

So should he stop? Should he just stand here gaping?

"Rem, Dunbakel, left."

While everyone else froze for a moment, Enkrid lowered his stance.

Darkness, a flint, a hostage, no matter how shocking, standing still changed nothing.

If it was time to fight, then fight.

"Damn it."

Dunbakel muttered and moved.

Rem had already lowered himself and was moving before she did.

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