WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 452: Let's Die Smiling

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Thwack.

Enkrid drove Aker straight down into the skull of an approaching spider. The blade punched through the Demon Creature's head and buried itself a handspan into the earth.

He planted a foot on the spider's back and pulled the sword free. Black blood ran down the blade.

Lots of them.

Spiders swarmed in the distance, still pouring out without end. Right around him, though, the numbers were thin enough.

Instinct said holding ground and counter-striking was better than charging. So he could afford to look away.

His gaze moved to where the Demon Creatures had gathered, just ahead of Aoara.

The spider whirled its eight arms.

Whooooom!

Wind poured forward with the sound of spinning blades, and the rotation carved a circular wall of steel before her.

It reminded him of the disc Rem made with his Sling.

Instead of rushing all at once, the spider advanced one step at a time. Walking pace. Matching that rhythm, the shield of spinning blades began to drift toward Aoara.

Enkrid watched and thought: what would I do in her place?

This was a different kind of fight from before.

Drive the sword in and see what happens? No. More precisely, doing that would mean giving up rather than trying to win.

No gap. None at all.

And the spider was not the end of it.

The Owlbear started moving. Its footsteps were strange, nearly silent, its presence fading with each stride.

Darkness had settled over the field, but a red moon hung in the sky. Visibility should have been fine.

Even so, the Owlbear's massive body blurred, as if dissolving into the dark.

Like watching Jaxon vanish right in front of him.

A blade that hides and waits for an opening.

Same as a shadowless thrust.

The Ghoul, meanwhile, slipped out from behind the spider and circled wide, moving at a leisurely walk. Both arms hung loose at its sides, and the long nails at their tips would leave a mortal wound on contact.

What a mess.

That was the honest feeling.

Enkrid swapped himself with Aoara in his head.

He'd die. It was a wall.

And yet, if he were the one standing there, what could be done?

He could see Aoara's back. Her red cloak snapped in the wind, and her blade angled up toward the sky. She held the sword in both hands.

"Fun."

Her whisper reached him then.

He could only see her from behind, but he knew the expression she was wearing.

She was smiling.

Smiling the way the Ghoul's stolen grin could never match,bright and open, that kind of smile.

Smiling Aoara.

How does a knight earn a title?

By proving themselves.

A title comes from action, from doing the thing and being seen to do it.

"All of you, watch closely. I'll show you what a knight's fight looks like."

Aoara's voice carried at just the right volume, no louder than it needed to be.

Preparations to deal with a knight. Traps. Demon Creatures built for the purpose.

All of it was a threat. A crisis, no other word for it.

"Even I couldn't handle that," Rem said.

More precisely, not right now,but there was no point talking about what he didn't currently have. He kept the second half of that to himself.

Aoara answered with her back and her sword.

Sit down, chew your jerky, and watch.

Enkrid did, more or less. He swung his sword instead of chewing jerky.

Two spiders that had crept up on him in the meantime caught the blade and had their heads split open.

He was pulling the sword back through a cutting arc when Aoara moved.

For a moment, he lost her.

When a person became a knight, their reflexes and physical capability moved to a different level entirely.

They struck from angles that made no sense.

They moved at speeds that made no sense.

Trying to watch got you nowhere.

Enkrid knew that from experience. He had already gone up against knight-level force more than once.

"If you try to track it as a series of points, you'll never see it," Ruagarne had said.

He stopped chasing individual motions and read the flow instead.

Then, just barely, he could make out the shape of the fight.

Aoara's sword came down onto the spinning wall of blades.

A clean, upright cut met the barrier.

Clang-tang-tang-tang!

Golden sparks tore through the dim red moonlight falling between patches of darkness.

"My sword's name is Laughter."

She had said that during a sparring session. A knight carries an Inscribed Weapon.

An Inscribed Weapon is a blade a knight has poured their Will into.

A master craftsman, a rare metal, a knight's Will.

All three had to come together even to produce something worth looking at, and because it was made by inscribing Will into it, it was called an Inscribed Weapon.

"My sword never breaks as long as I'm smiling."

Enkrid had heard those words exactly.

A weapon that holds Will and begins to feel like part of the body itself.

Her sword was that.

Mixed into the golden sparks were tiny white fragments spraying outward.

Her blade plowed through the barrier of spider-arm blades and came back out. Naturally, Laughter had not lost so much as a chip.

"Let's see how long you can keep blocking!"

Aoara's shout rang out. The white fragments were shards of the spider's blade-arms.

Aoara's Laughter began to grind down the spider's transformed arms.

At that moment, the Owlbear lunged out from behind her.

Enkrid caught it because he was watching from a distance. Up close?

It would have felt like facing Jaxon.

A blade surging out of nowhere was Jaxon's specialty, after all. The Owlbear used a fist instead of a blade. A feathered fist drove toward Aoara's back.

Or rather, in the instant it looked like it was about to connect, Aoara's body bent smoothly aside. Her frame rippled like cloth caught in wind and slipped to one side.

Reflexes at an astonishing level.

To Enkrid's eyes, it looked almost choreographed.

The Owlbear's fist hit nothing. A sharp bang split the air,the sound of compressed force with nowhere to go. That punch had enough in it to tear through sound itself.

Then he saw Aoara's face. Her feet. Her hands.

A soft smile, a forward step, a snapping wrist, a bending blade.

The blade turned toward the Owlbear's neck. White light struck the Demon Creature's throat.

The Owlbear tucked its neck inward, like a shrug.

The feathers around its neck stood up and stopped Aoara's sword.

Clang!

The blade looked like it would carve straight through the feathers and open the neck anyway. Drops of black blood scattered.

The feathers the blade had shredded tore apart and burst away like metal shards.

Then the spider dissolved its barrier, stepped in close, and swung all eight legs at once.

Two came down from above, two cut diagonally, two thrust for the thighs, and the last two chopped at the tops of her feet.

Eight blade-arms doing their work.

Aoara broke off her cut at the Owlbear's neck and pulled the sword back, leaving eight afterimages in its wake.

Her blade caught each of the spider's attacks in turn.

Enkrid felt his senses sharpen past their ordinary edge.

His ears caught eight separate, distinct sounds.

Pak, thud, crack, snik, shriek, slice, thwack!

Focus Point, Sensory Technique,everything he had, just to keep watching.

Aoara deflected five of the eight legs and cut, tore, or shattered the other three.

Seeing all of it was impossible. But reading the outcome and tracing back to the method was possible. His mind ran at full speed.

She twisted her wrist to slice, stab, and strike.

Could that really all come from wrist movement alone?

It could, because she was a knight.

She drove the sword in, wrenched it back out, and left one spider arm hanging in shreds. She swung the freed blade and cut the second leg with a hard slash, then used the flat to bat the last one sideways and fold it in half.

The broken spider arm dangled.

How did someone move like that?

He didn't know. He couldn't understand it.

But it was where he wanted to reach. The path he wanted to walk.

Ragna, Sinar, the Mercenary King, the knight of Azpen.

If all four of them fought at full strength, what would it look like?

Aoara was showing him right now.

An ordinary swordsman discussing something close to omnipotence. That was what a knight was.

A sharp breath escaped him. His eyes wouldn't move from her.

They couldn't.

"Are you insane?" Rem said beside him.

"There are too many Demon Creatures. Way too many. Something is pushing them out," Ruagarne said, a note of unease in her voice.

If Ruagarne, who was usually hard to rattle, was saying it like that, the situation was serious.

Dunbakel had started trembling at Enkrid's side.

Even so, Enkrid kept his eyes on the smiling Aoara. Every nerve, every bit of attention, stayed fixed on her.

"Oa!"

A soldier shouted the rallying cry.

Aoara answered it.

The Ghoul that had inserted itself into the fight was thrusting straight at her arm.

Speed and angle alone told him everything.

A knight.

The Demon Creature was fighting like a knight. Aoara held her sword in her right hand and struck the Owlbear's fist with it, then swept her left arm around to block the Ghoul's nails.

A piece of artistry. She used the bracer on her left arm to catch the nails and redirect the angle.

Clank.

Nail marks scored across the bracer.

In that same instant, the spider's blade-arm hit Aoara's torso.

She held.

Thud.

She twisted her body to shed some of the impact. And she didn't stop there.

The sword that had blocked the Owlbear's fist was now buried in the spider's skull.

He'd missed it.

That attack was genuinely invisible.

The spider died. The Owlbear slipped back into the darkness. The Ghoul thrust with both hands in alternation.

Head, chest, stomach, thigh.

Its targets were clear.

Land one hit.

Aoara worked her sword and bracer back and forth, blocking everything.

Then the Owlbear swept its arm in a wide arc from behind.

Whoosh!

Even standing well clear of it, the wind felt like it slapped his face.

A horizontal sweep. The range was impossibly wide.

Rather than block it, Aoara jumped straight up, pushed off the Owlbear's sweeping arm with the soles of her feet, and launched herself into the air.

At the top of her arc, she twisted and drove the sword down from above. The bending blade looked like three blades at once.

Raw power and speed working together without seam.

The Ghoul moved both arms,almost a copy of how Aoara had used her bracer.

An exchange of attack and defense that looked like possession.

Either one could have won.

And then.

Thwack. Thud.

Aoara's sword split the Ghoul's head open. At the same moment, the Ghoul's nails drove into her side.

"I won. You miserable thing."

Aoara said it with the same smile she'd worn throughout.

Her red cloak hung in shreds, flapping in the wind.

The Owlbear, half its face cut away long before, still had a torn piece of that cloak caught in its hand.

The Ghoul whose skull had been split clean down the middle,Jerix,hit the ground with a heavy thud.

"Yeah!"

Romen let out a shout. A victory cry.

"Too many. Something's feeding them out here," Ruagarne said. The spider Demon Creatures were still coming.

"Seems like it."

Eisia had gone inside, and it still wasn't resolved.

Was it over now? At least they'd bought a moment to breathe,or so Enkrid was thinking.

Dunbakel flinched. Every muscle in her body pulled tight.

Why? She didn't know.

Fear sometimes pushed past the limits of whatever instinct a person had. That was what happened to Dunbakel.

She felt it, and she said it.

"Something's coming."

Her gaze swung to one side.

Aoara's gaze went there too.

Enkrid was a beat behind them both.

Thud!

It landed just ahead of Aoara, who had just killed three Demon Creatures. A Demon Creature covered in red muscle. Two legs, two arms, wings like a bat's membrane, and a broken horn jutting from above its brow.

The kind seen only in places called the Grand Cursed Ground. Among all Demon Creatures, the truly special ones were sometimes called Demon Lords on the continent.

Dunbakel caught the smell of sulfur.

The thing looked like it had climbed up from hell. The moment it appeared, it sprinted in a straight line and crashed into Aoara, bearing down on her with everything she had already spent.

Aoara barely managed to block the attack,left hand gripping the flat of the blade, right hand on the hilt, catching its Hand Blade strike,and said, "Everyone, run."

"Hell with that, move," Rem said.

"A Balrok? No,a Balrok Fragment," Ruagarne said, identifying it.

The moment it appeared, everything around it shrank. The presence the Demon Creature carried crushed the entire battlefield.

This was what Pressure meant.

Every soldier's feet locked in place.

Crack.

In that frozen moment, a soldier died to a spider's leg.

Some soldiers stood with their mouths open and no sound coming out.

Dunbakel was soaked through with fear. Her Beastfolk eyes showed her the situation more clearly than anyone else's could.

She saw Aoara's arms shaking. Her heart felt like it was shrinking under the overwhelming Pressure radiating from the new Demon Creature.

She should have turned and run without looking back.

Fear broke something in her head.

Without knowing she was doing it, Dunbakel sprinted forward and swung her curved blade down at the newly arrived Demon Creature.

The creature kept its Hand Blade pressed against Aoara and answered with a high kick that caught Dunbakel in the skull.

Crack!

Bone shattered. Blood poured.

"Dunbakel!"

Enkrid shouted. The Will of Refusal activated. His body moved.

"I said run," Aoara muttered, already moving. She pushed both hands against the Hand Blade that had been pinning her down.

A few exchanges followed, but the results weren't good.

Crack.

A blow to the head. Aoara's neck vertebrae snapped.

Because the Ghoul had stabbed her side?

No,even without that, she had already burned through everything she had.

She had been fighting on a body slowly being destroyed by a vicious poison. Long battles were never an option for her.

Which meant the Demon Creature had first set the stage so she couldn't fight properly, then moved in.

A vile thing.

A merciless thing.

Enkrid walked forward with his sword raised, knowing this was a pointless death.

His body went anyway.

He wasn't the only one.

The moment Aoara died.

"Let's die smiling!"

Romen shouted it.

"Let's die smiling!"

"Oa!"

"Oa!"

Oa,the cry built from her name.

This city was Aoara's city.

A city Aoara the knight had protected.

Something surged up in him.

In other places, throwing yourself at something you knew would kill you meant everyone called you mad. But every single person here was that kind of mad.

The Balrok Fragment, or whatever it was, measured close to a knight in strength.

The three Demon Creatures had been below that.

The difference in force was plain.

Screaming Spiders kept charging in without a break, and arrows made of silk kept raining down from above.

The same arrows that had killed Millio.

Enkrid exchanged five sword strikes with the Balrok Fragment.

Even that was closer to a miracle than real skill, but in the end a kick caught him in the ribs and sent him tumbling.

He saw Romen dead on the ground.

He heard Rem, who had rolled to a stop nearby, coughing up blood and murmuring as he lay there.

"Should have gone earlier."

It started with Dunbakel. Everyone died. All of them, wiped out.

The city Aoara had wanted to protect was disappearing.

Enkrid held all of it in his eyes. When breathing started to become difficult, the edges of the world began to darken.

He had died often enough to recognize it.

Took a bad hit.

Even the bandage-style armor hadn't held against an impact that shook him from the inside. Broken ribs had punched through and torn something within.

"Cough."

It came up. Blood poured out in a rush.

Dying soon. Just before his eyes closed, Enkrid watched the Balrok Fragment slaughter what remained of the soldiers.

One swing of its arm killed two or three at a time. It picked up the weapon that had belonged to Romen, whose life it had already taken.

Bang! Thud!

Bodies burst, broke, and flew.

"Aaagh!"

"Let's die smiling!"

A soldier screamed it through tears, just before the end. Enkrid didn't know the name, but he knew the face.

Everything Aoara had wanted to protect was coming apart.

Enkrid closed his eyes. He passed through a short but long dark tunnel.

Slosh.

The river moved, and the small boat rocked with it. He opened his eyes to a purple lamp.

"This wall is one you're really going to enjoy," the Boatman said, clearly in high spirits.

Before Enkrid could answer, he closed his eyes again and opened them.

Kraaaagh!

Another repeating today, and by now he knew that scream belonged to a Screaming Spider.

He had woken before midnight, but morning was not the start of this one.

Today started from the moment he woke up.

So this particular today had been very short.

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