WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 456: How to Seize the Initiative

= = =

Enkrid wanted Rem to handle things on his own, cleanly, cleverly, and with quick thinking.

And Rem would.

'He'll manage.'

It was not blind faith.

Every version of Rem he had seen was exactly that kind of man.

What Enkrid wanted was the death of the leader among those strange Demon Creatures that bundled thread and fired it like a bow. Cutting the overall numbers down along the way would be a bonus.

He had not spelled it out, but Rem and Dunbakel would know what needed doing.

Would there be dangerous Demon Creatures waiting for them there too?

Probably.

But.

'If I were one of those Demon Creatures.'

He would not waste resources against Aoara like that. And on top of that, Enkrid was about to drag even more eyes his way.

He had lived today over and over, thinking and rethinking, turning it in every direction.

Standing in the enemy's shoes, shifting his perspective, he looked back at his own side.

'What is the greatest threat?'

No need to ask. Aoara.

'What is the objective?'

He already knew that too.

'Knight Aoara.'

They were pouring everything into killing one knight.

If Aoara had tried to destroy the Cursed Ground by killing its core, they had done the same thing to her.

Enkrid had read their intent, guessed at their thinking, and confirmed it through the todays he had repeated.

"You were born with a battlefield sense," Romen muttered to himself.

But that was not really it.

Experience was all it was.

Either way, today had passed like that, and then again, and again.

And not a single one of those days had been thrown away just to gather information.

Even the Boatman had been surprised by that.

Enkrid simply lived each today, each day, every single day, swinging his sword like a madman and cramming whatever reached him from his surroundings into his head.

That was how this today had begun.

The conclusion: Rem and Dunbakel would do their part. So Enkrid had to do his.

"Hoo."

He puffed his cheeks out, breathed, then pursed his lips and drew air back in.

Thud, thud. He started moving, picking up his pace. His body felt light. His condition was not bad. No, it was good. Better than usual.

The want burning in his chest was pulling out something sharp and high.

Enkrid broke into a light run, and Ruagarne followed behind.

From the top of the wall, Aoara watched. Closer by, Romen, the short blond, and Eisia watched too.

He had decided to earn trust through action.

So he just had to show them something worth trusting.

Ahead, the head of a spider Demon Creature came rushing in. Dozens of side-eyes, a jaw that split sideways, legs hard as hammered iron even though no one had hammered them.

Faster than others of its kind. The thing skittered forward and crossed its two front legs like a pair of scissors.

The Gate of the Sixth Sense opened. Concentration made time feel like it was slowing.

He saw the blade-like legs. Saw the ridges spaced at regular intervals, teeth of a saw running along each edge.

He felt the force loaded into those two crossed limbs.

If he caught those, his body would be sheared clean through.

Even a graze would shred him to ribbons.

So the answer was to move before they touched him.

In the gap of that split second, thought accelerated and the body followed.

Enkrid swept Aker upward from low to high.

The blade drew a smooth arc, sliced through both legs, and drove all the way up through the spider's head.

'No need to stop.'

Think and move.

He cut through one Demon Creature and kept going, switching to wielding Aker with his right hand alone.

Both feet hammered the ground, scraped across it, skidded, and kept moving.

Twisting his hips, bending his ankles, he slashed and thrust and cut and swung.

Thwack, crack, thud, chunk, crunch.

'What does fighting many at once require?'

Boldness and judgment.

Judgment born from instinct rather than thought, and the skill to make every one of those instincts right.

No one did that better than Rem.

His axe moved on instinct, tracing its arc without hesitation.

Enkrid copied him.

Not the technique. The drive.

'I am a barbarian.'

A mad barbarian.

One with a hobby of splitting noble skulls.

One who started fights the moment something rubbed him wrong.

The swords in both his hands cracked like whips and moved like streaks of light.

Spark became a streak, angling down and plunging diagonally.

It looked as if it were stabbing at empty air. It was not.

A spider Demon Creature stuck its head right into where there had been nothing.

Kreeeeee!

A large spider was bracing on its legs and raising its rear end when Spark punched through its skull.

Thrust, withdraw. A sword strike at a speed outside any ordinary range.

Thwump.

The Demon Creature died with a hole in its head, and as it went it sprayed venom from the opening at its rear.

Dark brown liquid arced through the air and spattered across the ground.

Naturally, none of it touched Enkrid, and none of it mattered.

One venom-spraying Demon Creature crumpled and died, and Aker shot through the battlefield like a swallow.

Strike, hit, break. Over and over.

He sensed a presence at his back and ducked.

A spider leg cut past just over his head. A few strands of hair floated away, and Enkrid twisted his hips and shot his leg backward.

Crack.

The spider's skull that caught his heel was crushed.

As he extended that leg back, a smaller creature came crawling up and tried to hook both its front legs like scythes into the top of his left foot.

He pulled the leg back and snapped it forward in a kick.

Those scythe-curved arms were a hair away from sinking into his foot when the iron-plated boot connected with the spider.

Bang.

It was one of the smaller ones. A sharp, snapping kick burst it apart.

Black fluid soaked across the boot's toe.

Big ones, small ones, medium ones. Ones that sprayed venom, ones that shot thread, ones that used their legs like blades, ones that charged straight in, ones that tunneled up from underground, ones that crept around behind.

There were many. More than enough to kill.

Enkrid saw one step ahead of each moment.

And swung accordingly.

Aker came down from above while he sheathed Spark and drew the Gladius, driving it into the ground.

Two simultaneous motions, and then he jumped sideways.

Crack!

A whip with an iron weight at its tip filled the gap he left. Ruagarne covering him.

The spot he landed in was the center of the Demon Creature swarm.

Several spider Magic Beasts reached out their limbs. He twisted his head to one side and brought his sword up vertical, using the flat to smack their forearms and redirect them.

That was only possible because the gap in skill was absolute.

Even so, it was half a mad act.

Then again, when a mad act succeeded, it became something extraordinary.

There had always been only a hair's difference between a madman and a hero.

That was what Enkrid was doing right now.

He dodged, deflected, and found his footing. The center of the swarm.

He pressed in among the Demon Creatures, gripped Aker with both hands, and swung in a wide arc.

The kind of slash that poured centrifugal force into the Heavy Sword Style.

His blade tore through the swarm like a typhoon.

Craaaack!

Everything the blade touched was cut and severed.

One stroke punched a hole straight through the heart of the group.

For one moment, the space around Enkrid was empty.

He steadied his breathing and flicked the blade clean in the air. Black fluid dripped to the ground.

He had learned the Demon Creatures' patterns through all those repeated todays.

Enkrid painted his own picture over the patterns burned into instinct and reflex.

Because he had grasped and predicted their tendencies, the battlefield was a canvas, and their black blood was the paint.

Normally, knowing every habit of every kind of Demon Creature would be impossible. Right now, it was not.

Todays where Aoara died. Todays where he died. Todays where Rem had a hole through his stomach. Todays where Eisia's head came off. Todays where Ruagarne died with her heart run through. Todays where Romen could do nothing and died. Countless todays like those.

Those todays, those experiences, had built up and condensed into one person.

So at least on this stage, Enkrid was the most experienced hunter here.

'Not bad.'

The more he moved, the more his body seemed to open up. He was not tiring. Even though he had drawn on the Momentary Will, the Giant's Strike, and the Will of Severance in between.

Enkrid did not stop.

For one stretch he forgot even Rem, forgot even Aoara, and just ran. Swung his sword. Moved his feet. Fought without pause.

This alone was enough to prove himself. And there were people watching.

* * *

Millio had been waiting at the gate and could not see what was happening out front.

When the order came to open the gate, a different voice called out to close it instead. He had no reason to follow that voice.

Even so, he had almost moved to obey without thinking before he caught himself.

"Close it."

Right then, Aoara's order came down.

Millio thought that even without the knight's command, he might have obeyed that shout from out front.

"To the wall. Everyone grab a bow."

He said it to the soldiers under him and started moving.

'Admore, you bastard. You haven't died already, have you?'

Enkrid had stepped in, but the one who had sent Admore out was still him.

A quiet worry settled into one corner of his mind.

Of course, now was not the time for that. Demon Creatures were swarming in like never before.

A large-scale Wave among Waves.

He could not let worry over one comrade cost him in a battle where everyone, including Aoara, had committed to the field.

Millio moved again.

He knew there was no need to rush, but his feet quickened on their own.

'Why aren't they shooting?'

The common sense of Thousand Bricks was to hit them with arrows before they got close, cutting their numbers down. And yet no arrows had flown. Still.

His feet kept hurrying as he climbed to the wall, and once he was up he took a bow and nocked an arrow. All he had to do now was wait for the order to shoot.

Aoara was there, but someone else was calling the commands.

When the knights pushed forward to fight, command of the archers behind them always fell to a separate person. That was how Thousand Bricks had survived.

Millio saw that the person who should have been giving those commands had gone silent.

The soldier beside them, the one who should have been waving flags to signal, was the same.

No, even Aoara was.

"Crazy bastard."

Aoara said it with her lips curling up at one corner.

Aoara always smiled. But the smile she wore when she was genuinely thrilled was a little different.

It was a subtle difference only Millio knew, a particular skill picked up from watching her over a long time, from keeping his eyes on her.

Reading Aoara's smiles.

By that measure, the Aoara in front of him right now looked truly delighted.

His eyes turned forward without thinking.

Once, he had heard about a Red Cloak Knights member fighting during the transition from Squire to junior knight.

The battlefield of Naurillia and Azpen, in the heart of Greenfield beyond Border Guard.

The knight with Will running through their legs had kicked off the ground and charged.

The slashes that followed were like butterflies. The movement was like lightning.

One fighter had torn through the battlefield. A junior knight moving among regular soldiers could do that.

The kind of force that turned a battle inside out.

Millio had not seen that fight himself. He could only see what was in front of his own eyes.

But he was seeing something close to it right now.

Outside the gate.

That was why Aoara was smiling.

The center of the Demon Creature swarm, with nothing to call an ally nearby except one Frog following behind.

And even Frog's fighting was barely visible.

Someone standing in a position where Millio himself would not last more than a few exchanges before dying was swinging a sword. Cutting. Thrusting. Slicing and breaking.

The man was raging to Aoara's right, and when a crash sounded from her left, he had already moved there.

Black dirt erupted from where he had kicked off.

Before that dirt could fall, four Demon Creatures had holes in their heads.

What kind of person could do that.

The flame of a nearby torch shook wildly, throwing its light over what he was doing.

Few soldiers had seen the knights fight as closely as Millio.

So he knew that Squires and junior knights were not invincible.

They tired when they could not sleep. They could not put out full strength when they had not eaten.

Millio's palms were sweating. His heart was pounding. Some feeling he could not name surged through him.

He did not know what that man was fighting for.

But if anyone asked who was at the very front of this battle right now, Millio would answer without hesitation.

Thud.

"Oa."

One soldier stomped a foot and let out the chant.

"Oa!"

Another called it back. A few voices joined at once.

The chant spread. One cheer for one person.

Everyone in the city, everyone holding the walls, watched as one. Even Aoara.

"Enkrid!"

They shouted one person's name. That was a strange thing.

Was what Enkrid had shown here really so different from the spectacles the knights had put on before?

It was not.

And yet the way that man fought had something in it that set a chest on fire.

Hearts were pounding. Chests burned hot. Heads went white. The feeling ran through every limb, and Millio believed he could beat anything, Demon Creature or otherwise, into the ground.

The Twin Red Moons had risen, and not one person raised their eyes to look up.

Not one person spoke of danger.

They were simply watching the one person cutting down alone the horde that had threatened them all.

= = =

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried