WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 451: He Even Stole Aoara's Smile

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Enkrid reacted. Dunbakel and Rem moved.

Arrows split the black night sky one after another.

Several torches toppled to the ground.

Every detail of the situation painted itself in Enkrid's mind like a picture.

In urgent moments, Enkrid's instincts sharpened to a cold, clear edge. His intuition,that blade,cut through the dark.

He could save half of them.

Some of the hostages staked to the poles were moments from death.

The giant spider had no intention of sparing them. It was only there to break morale. Nothing more.

A monster capable of thinking like that?

Surprising, yes. But not the moment to dwell on it.

What mattered was how many he could pull back.

Not all of them. Under the pale blue light of the glowing stone, the giant spider raised its legs to sharp points and stretched them wide.

Each one was long enough and sharp enough to pass for a spear.

Half. Just half.

He could throw something and kill the spider, but that would save no one.

The Will activated. The eye that saw one step ahead expanded his predictions and showed him a fragment of the future,a future glimpsed through the domain of intuition.

Even so, nothing could be changed.

In that same moment, Rem and Dunbakel killed two spiders. Axe and curved blade split Demon Creature skulls.

Enkrid reached the third and drove Spark forward.

He kicked off the ground, closed the distance, and thrust in quick succession, punching a hole through the creature's head. He stabbed, pulled free, and loaded weight into his legs. Seeing an unchangeable future,was he supposed to give up?

Enkrid did not.

Whether it worked or not, he moved toward the next thing.

Nine poles in total.

Even if he ran, people would die. That was what the canvas of his foreseen future showed him. Still, he would not stop.

And then silver light tore across that canvas.

Shhhkt.

It sliced clean through, severing the spider's leg as it drove toward a hostage.

Enkrid stopped mid-lunge. He forgot to breathe.

He had thought he understood a knight's sword.

That was a mistake.

What did it mean to split cloth alone?

Why had they called it a disaster?

The Mercenary King thrusting a spear at angles no one could follow.

Ragna's lightning crashing down with force beyond reason.

Sinar's blade taking shapes the mind could not parse.

And now this.

Aoara moved at a speed no one could follow, and with her sword as a brush, she changed the picture painted on that canvas.

She had been farther away than Enkrid, yet now Aoara was everywhere at once.

Six poles still standing. Six hostages Enkrid had failed to reach. Six, and Aoara was already there for all of them.

Skill born from violent speed unfolded before his eyes.

One slash had sent a shiver through him. Now something close to joy filled his entire body.

This was what he had wanted to do.

This was what he had wanted to see.

This was a knight.

Aoara of the Red Cloak Knights swung her sword and threw herself into the mass of Demon Creatures.

Her blade turned to rain,rain named disaster,and poured down on the spider Demon Creatures.

"Pretty decent," Rem said, struck with admiration.

"Oh," Dunbakel breathed.

Enkrid's gaze chased Aoara's sword and had no time for anything else.

"Hahaha!"

Aoara laughed out loud.

With a single ordinary longsword, she killed one spider and then another, each with a head the size of a human's.

Simple motions, one after another.

Exactly as she had taught.

"Flashy swordwork is unnecessary."

Her words seemed to reach his ears.

She thrust, she cut, she split, she struck.

That was enough. Her laughter rose, and her sword grew fiercer with it. Her kicks landed like a mace. Her speed climbed higher.

One spider Demon Creature opened its mouth and spat a clump of webbing. The dense mass was bigger than the creature's own head.

Aoara's sword cut through that too.

Fwip. From inside the split web-clump, tiny spiderlings burst out like an explosion.

More than a hundred of them showered down from just above her head.

Each one barely the size of a finger.

It did not matter.

Enkrid could not see her face, but he was certain she snorted.

In that instant, her sword made a flower.

An afterimage-flower built from dozens of thrusts.

Pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft-pfft!

A dozen spiderlings died at once. She did it with her blade.

Enkrid had been watching, but not for long. The shift on the battlefield had come within a breath or two.

The hostages appearing, Aoara showing a knight's power,all of it happened in the span of a few breaths.

Aoara finished, let her sword hang loose, drew a full breath, and shouted.

"All troops, hold your positions!"

Enkrid heard it and began pulling hostages one by one, throwing them back.

Rem caught each one and passed them further behind.

"Damn it, Oa!"

Rowena's man shouted and hoisted a hostage onto his back. It was Rowena.

Other soldiers each grabbed someone and started running back.

"Close the gates!"

Enkrid's gaze slipped back for just a moment. Dead Millio lay there alongside a few other soldiers.

If Millio had reacted when the shout came, he might have lived. But he had thrown himself forward to protect his people.

That was not something he calculated.

It was instinct. His body had moved on its own.

Still, a pity.

He would not be able to dream his dream anymore.

The dream of taking Aoara as his bride was over.

The dead cannot walk alongside the living.

Rowena had lived in his place.

"Don't die, I'm here, I came."

The soldier carrying Rowena kept shouting it as he ran.

Do flowers bloom even in the Cursed Ground?

Something like that was said inside the city.

People lived here. People fell in love here.

These were the things Aoara wanted to protect.

"Captain, you just going to stand there and watch?"

Rem asked. The scale was nothing like what he had seen from atop the walls. A whole different order of magnitude in Demon Creatures came crawling out.

A horrifying number.

And it was not over.

In front of Aoara, a black shadow lunged forward and brought a sword down.

Enkrid's eyes caught it.

Not one sword. Several.

The slash was fast enough to leave dozens of afterimages.

Tang-tang-tang-tang-tang!

Aoara's sword moved and deflected every last one. She parried each strike in sequence and wove in a thrust of her own.

But the attacker pulled back and avoided it.

Enkrid's eyes found the attacker.

An unusual shape. Standing on two legs, with the remaining six limbs hanging like arms,a monstrous spider with eight legs total.

"A Variant Species."

Ruagarne drew her whip and said so.

The spider monster's face was close to human. Pale skin. Where eyes would be, dozens of compound insect eyes. A single round hole where the nose should have been. No mouth.

On each of its eight legs hung a blade of pure white. No,not hung. Fused. Each leg was the blade itself.

"Sure, Jerix. That your new lover?"

Aoara said it with a smile. Even when nothing was to her liking, she smiled. That was the smiling knight, Aoara.

"Master!"

From behind Aoara, Romen came flying out with a shout.

"Damn Demon Creature bastards."

On the other side, the short blond stepped forward, and the four Squires fell back.

At that moment, arrows began flying again from inside the Gray Forest.

Millio's body had not even been collected yet.

Enkrid raised his shield and blocked. The others dealt with the arrows on their own.

None flew toward Aoara or the junior knights.

The standoff between the bipedal eight-limbed spider and Aoara simply continued.

A Knight-Tier Monster.

Why could no one dream of a world where knights existed but Demon Creatures did not?

Because there were monsters made to face knights. That was why.

This was one of them.

The creature with eight legs made its dozens of split red eyes gleam.

"Krrk."

To Enkrid, it sounded like laughter.

"Having fun playing with someone else!"

Aoara tossed the jab at it. Remarkable nerve.

The spider with eight blade-arms radiated a dizzying Pressure just by existing, but Aoara paid it no mind.

She raised her sword, and the spider stepped to the side.

From behind it, an Owlbear emerged.

Owl head on a bear's body, with two abnormally large fists in plain view.

When it clenched them, it looked like two boulders had been bolted to the ends of its arms.

Puffed feathers made the body and fists look even larger.

"Oh? That one's no joke either."

Rem said.

Enkrid felt the same. The moment he saw it, a chill ran through him.

His pulse quickened too.

Strong Demon Creatures,no question about it.

"Did you actually plan this?"

Aoara's mouth opened.

Both creatures charged at once. The knight's sword and the Demon Creatures' weapons clashed.

Speed past any ordinary limit carved long arcs through the air like sparks.

Those arcs crossed, and light scattered in brilliant patterns.

Tang-tang-tang-tang! Clang! Clang!

Booms punctuated each instant.

The two junior knights watched for any gap to enter.

Cutting in carelessly was not an option.

Two against one, but calling it Aoara's advantage would have been wrong.

And still it was not over.

Ratatatatak!

Demon Creatures were shooting arrows.

From beyond the Cursed Ground, more Demon Creatures began crawling out one after another.

A Wave.

The wave Knight Aoara had been holding back was crashing down on Thousand Bricks.

Aoara swung her sword wide and horizontal, pushing both creatures back slightly, then shouted.

"Enki, Eisia, protect the city!"

The rest of the fight was hers.

The two junior knights who guarded her fell in behind.

Eisia was nowhere to be seen. She had already left to deal with the arrow-firing Demon Creature group.

"This is a headache."

Rem said, and drew his axe. Looking at what was coming, there were too many to handle with bullets alone.

Enkrid drew his sword too. Aker in his right hand, Spark in his left.

Would Aoara get pushed back? It did not look that way.

She handled the spider's eight blade-shaped limbs and the Owlbear's fists with ease.

Could I do that?

There was no way he could manage it that easily.

The two Demon Creatures covered each other's gaps with real skill.

What would it take to break that apart?

Ragna's Black Lightning.

That would do it. Could his own white lightning do something similar?

No. He knew it the moment he thought it.

Enkrid pulled his eyes away from Aoara's fight. While she held them, he had his own work to do.

Scree-scree.

Eerie cries mixed with the rapid skittering of legs on the ground, one sound after another.

The spider horde pushing through the darkness was horrifying just to look at.

Enkrid decided to bring his sword down on the horror.

Thwack. Crack.

Aker's blade dropped straight and vertical, splitting the head of a spider whose crown came up to Enkrid's sternum.

Rem helped from beside him. His axe was doing the same work.

Ruagarne surveyed the situation and spoke.

"We hold. That's all."

At those words, visible relief crossed Dunbakel's face.

Enkrid heard the shouts of soldiers who accepted it as natural that arrows would still claim lives.

"Oa!"

He had heard about it from Romen the night before.

That cry. The Oa of Aoara.

These were the people Knight Aoara protected.

The owners of a city built on her belief.

If Knight Aoara fought for them, they fought for Aoara too.

And for the city.

Enkrid cut down four Demon Creatures and let his gaze drift forward for a moment.

He followed a feeling. Instinct. It was as if something had told him someone needed to look ahead.

Inside the forest. Something came walking out of it,a Demon Creature shaped differently from any spider.

It stepped through the gray trees of the Cursed Ground, treading black soil.

"Jerix, you really came prepared."

Aoara said it, catching a gap between blocking and deflecting Arachne and the Owlbear.

The two Variant Demon Creatures pulled back for a moment and stopped.

"Were you actually aiming for me?"

Aoara asked.

A Ghoul would not answer.

And Aoara smiled.

Enkrid could not make sense of everything, but he understood one thing.

They were losing ground.

Jerix. Former husband. The monster currently sustaining this Cursed Ground.

The Demon Creature Aoara wanted most to kill.

Kill that one, and the Cursed Ground would lose its power. The Cursed Ground was like one enormous Colony, she had said.

And still it had come out.

This was a gamble.

When coincidences stack, they become inevitability.

Aoara tearing through the Cursed Ground time and again.

A monster capable of using its head.

The Twin Red Moons.

The number of Demon Creatures gathered.

From the Demon Creatures' point of view, there was only one way to end the threat.

Kill Aoara.

Every coincidence had built toward today.

Enkrid's gaze finally settled on the Ghoul.

Blue skin. A torn-open mouth. A hole where the nose should be. Black eyes with no pupils.

Arms hanging at its sides, fingernails grown half a handspan long. The skin of its arms looked unusually hard,like armor.

It looked almost as if it were carrying swords.

He took in the Ghoul's posture.

It walked differently from any Ghoul he had seen, and it looked like it would use both arms as blades.

Worse, the tips of those nails held venom that could poison a knight from a single graze.

The nails were dark, as if smeared with soot,nothing like the pale skin of the arms.

Black enough to swallow the light of the Twin Red Moons.

The conclusion was plain. The creature's stance looked like it had been trained in swordsmanship.

"The Cursed Ground makes Demon Creatures evolve."

Ruagarne said.

Enkrid could not fully understand why, but he had seen the result with his own eyes and pieced together what must have happened.

One Ghoul had been born in the Cursed Ground.

It had watched humans. It had picked fights. It had barely survived.

Aoara had said she missed Jerix three times.

Each time, it had grown stronger. Each time, it had grown more cunning.

This was where that road ended.

An evolving Demon Creature.

A Demon Creature that trained.

The corner of the Ghoul's mouth twisted upward.

It had even stolen Aoara's smile.

Graaaaaahh!

It burst into laughter. That was how it sounded to Enkrid.

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