WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 453: Sure Enough

= = =

Did it matter that today was short? No.

The task was clear. Stop the threats bearing down on the city.

Enkrid moved right away. Repeated action becomes mastery, and it was not just today's repetitions that had done it. His hands knew how to gear up. They had known for a long time.

"Is it customary here to wake people up by screaming?"

Rem was up.

"Demon Creatures. Probably a Wave."

Enkrid said it calmly and stepped outside. The rest of the party would follow on their own. He passed through the cluster of soldiers and headed back toward the wall.

Instead of climbing up to where Aoara was, he waited briefly in front of the gate.

"Let me out!"

Rowena's man appeared and shouted.

Enkrid smacked him in the back of the head.

Thwack!

"...Huh? What was that for?"

Millio asked, startled.

"He goes out, he dies."

To be exact, it was Millio, who had stepped up to support that idiot, who had died.

"Well, that's not wrong, but..."

"A commander has to keep a cool head."

Enkrid said it with a straight face, but he did not mean it that way.

'You can't die like that.'

Knight Aoara's end would not leave his mind. There had been nothing dramatic about it, nothing impressive.

The fight before it was a different matter.

She had died without managing to put up any real resistance.

She had said she would protect the city, and she had not.

So it had been a dog's death.

Was that how it should go?

No. He did not want that.

It could not go that way.

Enkrid set his goal, and the Boatman watching him felt something like laughter rise up.

There were things that would never change no matter how much else did, and the Boatman could see that those things would tear Enkrid apart.

Even so, the Boatman felt something like anticipation.

'Let's see what he does.'

What would that madman take from today, by repeating it?

What else would change?

He did not know. Not knowing was exactly what made it enjoyable.

That was why the Boatman felt like laughing.

Watching someone thrash to change things and end up trapped in the loop anyway would be a fine spectacle.

"Oa!"

The battle cry rang out. Enkrid surged forward. He was braced for incoming arrows, and he went through the gate before any hostage had even appeared.

He did not stop at getting out. He broke straight into the dark beyond without slowing.

"What are you trying to prove, going crazy out here?"

Rem came after him.

"And what does that make you, following?"

"Call me a caretaker. Looking after the patient."

"Then do it properly."

Enkrid swept his eyes in every direction, searching for anything even slightly out of place.

Rem sometimes looked at his commander like this and found it strange.

He moved like someone who already knew what was coming.

'Some kind of instinct you got instead of talent?'

He kept the question to himself. Say it out loud and the man would start talking nonsense again.

"If I die, I repeat the day."

That kind of nonsense.

Who was going to believe something like that.

Enkrid spotted the pole and the glowing stones quickly. A spider Demon Creature was lying on top of them, belly pressed flat against the pole and stones. A group of Demon Creatures waiting to ambush from the flank.

"Rem."

Just the name was enough. Rem understood.

The two of them split the Demon Creatures' skulls without another word.

The hostage was saved. Enkrid thought it had taken less time than yesterday.

But the outcome still was not what he needed.

"Where's Knight Aoara?"

He came back to the gate and spotted Eisia. He asked, and she answered.

"She saw two monsters and went into the Cursed Ground."

Too slow. His actions had rippled out and shifted the situation.

Enkrid tried to sprint straight into the Cursed Ground, but he was too late for that as well.

Da-da-da-da-da-da.

Same as yesterday. Arrows flew. The wave of spiders began.

Spiders the size of grown men poured in.

"Rem, Dunbakel, push through!"

"Do we have to?"

Ruagarne asked. He ignored her.

Enkrid started cutting a path toward the Cursed Ground, toward where Aoara had gone.

It would cost time. They had to push through anyway.

No one complained. They followed without a word.

"Good thing I sharpened the axe blade."

Rem said it and let both arms hang loose at his sides. They swayed like feathers, and what those hands held was a Lewes-iron steel axe.

Then Rem used the technique he had named Feather-Axe.

He ran forward, and the axe carved a path of indiscriminate arcs.

Everything that fell within those arcs became a corpse.

Through the thick black blood, Ruagarne moved with her whip in her right hand and the Loop Sword in her left.

"Don't block for me."

She lashed with the whip and cut with the blade.

Dunbakel drew her two curved blades as well.

Enkrid was no different. He cut and stabbed and broke his way forward with Aker and Spark.

That was how they pushed into the depths of the Cursed Ground.

"Romen!"

A faint cry reached them. The trees of the Cursed Ground swallowed sound. That was why it had not carried farther.

Stepping inside, an unpleasant sensation pressed against him. He ignored it.

Enkrid saw it. Three of a spider's limbs had punched through Romen's gut.

The spider's leg-spines jutted from his back, painted red with Romen's blood.

The spider Demon Creature was not unharmed, either.

Romen's club-sword had caved its skull in.

"Damn it, can't go anywhere alone."

Romen said.

"Where's Knight Aoara?"

Enkrid looked around as he asked.

The cry had come from a junior knight with short blond hair. She was hunched to one side, clutching her stomach, breathing hard.

He scanned the area. Dead Owlbears lay scattered around.

'There was more than one?'

Two more Owlbears of the same kind. They were not knight-level, but it must have been a string of close calls. A bloody fight. You could tell just from what had been left behind.

These two had risked their lives to put those things down.

But there was no Ghoul. No Balrok Fragment, or whatever that thing was.

"How did you know to come?"

The short blond asked. Her face had gone pale. Nothing about it looked normal.

Blood leaked steadily from beneath the hand pressed to her gut. Even with immediate treatment, survival was not certain.

"Master couldn't fight properly because of me."

She said it evenly, but something dim and heavy sat behind the words.

"That's not it. Idiot."

Romen said it with a grin. Her eyes did not leave him.

After that, Romen started to blink slowly. The smell of death rolled off him.

"The Demon Creatures laid a trap?"

Ruagarne muttered, as though thinking out loud. That was exactly it. Coming inside had led to this.

Enkrid took the situation in and moved.

He stepped deeper.

"You going to get yourself killed in there?"

Rem asked. It sounded like a warning to stop. That was what he meant.

"Anyone can see this is too much."

Dunbakel muttered.

Enkrid turned and looked at them both.

"Even if this is where it ends for me..."

He was not trying to convince them. Only the truth remained.

Knight Aoara should not die in there. Not like that. Even knowing that, he could not hold himself back.

"If going forward is what has to happen, then I'll go."

"Who said anything?"

Rem let out a short laugh. He added that nothing you said to someone with a broken head made any difference.

"Look who's talking."

Enkrid shot back.

Rem sometimes seemed unaware of his own condition.

"I'm the one who should be saying that. Move your feet."

Should have gone sooner, he might as well have said.

"When this is done, you're heading west?"

"That's the plan."

"Alright."

Enkrid nodded and walked on.

Inside, the thing, the Balrok Fragment, or splinter, or whatever it was, came into view.

"A Balrok? No, a fragment."

Ruagarne said it, the same line as always.

"A fragment?"

He had time to listen this time, so he asked.

"There's a creature in the Cursed Ground treated like a war-mad demon god. It carries a sword wreathed in flame in its right hand and a whip in its left that nothing can cut through."

"You talk like you've seen it."

"My fighting style came from studying that thing."

Which meant she had seen it.

"That one looks like roughly a piece of it. I once heard that it splits off parts of its own soul when it gets bored, something like that."

Enkrid gave a rough nod and looked ahead.

Just looking at the red-muscled mass made his shoulders ache. A crushing weight bore down on him.

So even a fragment was knight-level.

Aoara's body came into view as well. She was already dead. Beside her lay the Ghoul with a caved-in skull.

The monster Jerix had named.

He was going to die here.

Did that mean he should do nothing?

Enkrid gripped his sword and raised Aker straight.

"Can you talk? Your father was a Balrok, they say. Was your mother a Ghoul?"

He threw the taunt out. The Demon Creature gave no answer, naturally.

Rem said this was rotten luck, that he had come to ward off misfortune and walked straight into it, but he stayed by Enkrid's side.

Dunbakel was taken by fear again.

This time, instead of charging, she ran.

Ruagarne had no attachment to her own life.

But she said something.

"It's a shame I won't get to see you become a knight."

* * *

"I was planning to go slash my ex-husband's face, and now this. How many people are in love with you, exactly?"

In the new today, Knight Aoara's jokes were the same as always. This was when they spotted a group of Trolls blocking the way.

"You'll die if you go in alone."

He was trying to stop Aoara from going into the Cursed Ground, but she shook her head.

"If I fall back here, there won't be a next time."

The moment Aoara finished speaking, five Trolls that had been stirring in the darkness of the Cursed Ground began to creep forward.

Those were the ones directing the Demon Creatures.

"Leave them to me and go."

Aoara still smiled. A bright, easy smile.

In another new today, she said:

"Your dream is to become a knight? I asked you once, told you to decide what you were going to protect. And I said what I would protect. So what do I have to do to protect this city?"

The answer needed no thought at all.

"Destroy the Cursed Ground."

"Right. So my dream is to kill Jerix."

She had given the Ghoul her ex-husband's name and meant to kill it.

Aoara's purpose was clear. She was poisoned, and she was on borrowed time.

The candle wax had melted down until barely an inch of candle was left.

In her remaining time, she wanted only one thing.

To kill the core creature sustaining the Cursed Ground.

To cut down the Demon Creature whose power matched that of a knight.

What she did not know was that Jerix was not that core.

"What are the odds?"

Ruagarne asked.

"If I get to face it head-on, I never lose."

The smiling Aoara said it. He knew. She did not lose. The problem was that one more creature, at the level of the Ghoul or worse, always showed up to make things impossible.

'What if there were another knight-level fighter on our side?'

Then it would be simple.

No, Aoara had known that long ago. What she needed was a knight. Erasing the Cursed Ground was that kind of task.

With that, it could be done without great sacrifice.

But if that was not possible?

"Even if I die, I'll kill it before I go."

That was Knight Aoara's dream.

Enkrid had watched the end of that dream again and again. The Cursed Ground did not end. Soldiers died. Romen died. The city fell. The Wave could not be held. The Cursed Ground had been prepared; the humans had not.

That had not changed this time either.

The Balrok Fragment came toward an exhausted, wounded Aoara.

Jerix lay dead to one side. Of course it did.

Did that thing even know what name had been put on it?

"Damn, that thing's a monster."

Rem saw it immediately.

What was the Balrok itself like, Enkrid wondered idly, the real one, not just a fragment. A pointless curiosity right now. Not something he could see just by wanting to.

So for now, he only had to handle what was in front of him.

A new today came again.

He met the Ghoul.

"You eating regular meals?"

Enkrid asked it for no particular reason.

"That's my ex-husband. Mind letting us have our reunion?"

Aoara stepped in with a grin.

The Demon Creature had evolved and now faced a knight. The Ghoul wore Aoara's stolen smile and raised its sword.

Guurk.

The sound it made felt like Pressure.

Even so, it died. Aoara's sword cut it, tore it, split it open.

After that, Aoara would die again.

She could run if she chose to.

Aoara was capable of that.

She could simply bolt before the Balrok Fragment got to her. It did not chase people who fled. Dunbakel had run in a panic once, and it had not followed.

Even so, Enkrid never asked Aoara why she pushed this far.

Because he understood her.

"Romen, wait. That one's mine."

Aoara said it and killed the Ghoul.

There were days she put up a real fight against the Balrok Fragment.

But exhausted and wounded, it was never enough.

Enkrid watched the situation, traced back through the day, reviewed it, fought, and endured.

What was needed right now?

Some days he managed to push back the Ghoul and the rest. He brought Eisia into it and tried to hold the line together. There were days he held long enough that Aoara did not die.

But coming back after tearing through the Cursed Ground, what he found was a nightmare.

A wildly impossible number of Demon Creature spiders. Even if the wall held, without Knight Aoara, without the junior knights, those numbers could not be withstood.

Demon Creatures had poured over the walls and into the city.

The city could not hold the Wave.

And then came the moment he saw a soldier, still alive, being chewed and swallowed by a spider's mouth.

"Aaaah!"

That was the first time Enkrid ever saw Aoara lose her smile.

And right at that moment, the Ghoul and the rest came charging out of the Cursed Ground.

At that point, Aoara could not even beat the Ghoul.

What was he supposed to do?

The conclusion was simple.

'Let the city go.'

The sacrifice could not be helped.

Convince Aoara to pull out and wait for another day. Prepare properly, pick off the high-ranking Demon Creatures one by one. That way the Cursed Ground could be stopped, and Aoara's dream would be fulfilled.

But the city would fall.

The gate her grandfather had carved, and most of the people protecting this place, would have to be abandoned.

And the Demon Creatures would push through and spread outward. Countless people in the surrounding villages would die.

Even if the end of that road was victory, it was a reality Aoara could not accept.

Enkrid had no confidence he could convince her, and more than that, he himself had no intention of doing it. Not even a little.

His dream was to become a knight.

Was the knight in the old songs the kind who abandoned the people behind him and won in the end?

Knowing it was foolish and walking the thorns anyway.

That was what a knight meant to Enkrid.

Running was not something he considered.

In the repeating today, Enkrid said:

"Go ahead to the west."

"You take a hard knock to the head?"

Rem came right back at him. No intention of going. Of course not.

Rem had never once left his side.

"Ngh... nghhh."

Dunbakel groaned low. Fear had swallowed her.

One of their fighters was useless to them.

He had watched Aoara die and come away from it. Some days she barely survived, but the moment dawn broke she lost consciousness.

The day repeated.

"Enjoy it. Like before."

the Boatman said.

Enkrid opened his eyes again.

The day repeated.

"Without this city, there's no me either."

Aoara said.

The day repeated.

"Even if the end is a cliff, if I have to run toward it, I'll run. That's why I became a knight."

Aoara said it with a smile.

"Oa!"

A soldier shouted the battle cry.

"We go out smiling!"

Romen died smiling.

The short blond threw her life away.

Spider Demon Creatures swarmed. Arrows woven from thread came flying.

When the stretch before the wall was left open, soldiers blocked it with their bodies.

Four Squires died.

Soldiers died.

Millio died.

Even letting Rowena go changed nothing.

The flower that had bloomed in the Cursed Ground withered and died.

When despair and hopelessness soaked in was when you were supposed to close your eyes and give up.

"I'll give you the answer. Run."

the Boatman said.

As always, it was the best choice.

Run, meet a new today, and settle into a today that was tolerable enough. That was what the Boatman was offering.

He was saying he would make it easy.

Enkrid nodded at the Boatman's words.

It was after the one hundred and twenty-first today had passed.

"Here's what I'm thinking of doing. What do you make of it?"

Enkrid laid out what he had been working through and brought it to the Boatman.

"Indeed."

The Boatman said it and looked into Enkrid's eyes.

In Enkrid's eyes, two blue flames burned with madness.

"What a lunatic."

The Boatman said it with something close to admiration. Eyes that held hope instead of despair had drawn the words out of him without his meaning to.

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