WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 458: Twisting Today

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Fighting a knight of Azpen had taught him something. If he only played defense to hold on, he would die having accomplished nothing.

He knew that from experience now.

Enkrid swept his sword and pushed off, boots dark with blood pressing into the earth as he advanced.

Blade and feet moved together.

Watching Aoara's strike had taught him something. This was swordsmanship with that lesson folded in.

Combine footwork and bladework into one. Match the forward step to the downswing, that was all, but it was nowhere near simple.

Getting this into his body had taken more than sixty todays.

Two blue eyes stretched long, slicing through the dark.

He poured Will into the monstrous strength flowing through his body and brought the sword down.

Crackle.

A slash carrying white lightning twisted from the Ghoul's head down to its shoulder and drove in.

It looked like part of the Ghoul's body might cleave clean off.

Thud. Pak.

But the Ghoul slapped the flat of the blade away with its palm, blocking the junior knight's strike with contemptuous ease.

Their speeds were different. That was what made it possible.

Enkrid did not panic.

He drew Spark and thrust again.

A lunge that looked as though he had expected the block all along became a flash of light aimed at the corner of the Ghoul's eye.

Pik.

This one missed too. The Ghoul tilted its head sideways and let it slide past. Enkrid drew Spark across in a slash. The Ghoul shifted a foot and stepped cleanly out of the blade's path.

The Ghoul ended up on Enkrid's flank, and from there it stretched out its clawed hand.

Enkrid pulled his chin in and hauled his left shoulder up. The pauldron caught the thing's claws.

Crack!

Part of the armor shattered, and a shard flew up and struck him above the eyebrow.

A slightly worse angle and he would have lost an eye, but Enkrid did not even blink. He extended his left foot back, opened up room to swing, and brought Aker down.

The fact that it could fight a knight did not make it one.

He could copy Aoara's smile, but he could not copy her swordsmanship whole.

This next strike came from outside what the Ghoul expected.

A blow still loaded with monstrous strength, aimed straight at the Ghoul's head.

However hard its hide was, a hit from this would hurt. Blood would pour, and something would get cut.

Pak! With that sound, the Ghoul bent its knees, pushed off, and jumped back.

It left the range of his strike so easily. He noticed where its feet had been, a hollow pressed into the earth.

How could anything dodge like that?

The first swipe that had taken his pauldron had been light, closer to a probe than a real attack, and that was precisely why it could dodge the way it did.

Born with a different body entirely. That was why it could evade.

And it had cost Enkrid his left pauldron.

"Huh."

He pulled Spark back and gripped Aker in both hands. The tip angled upward at a slant toward the sky.

He held his stance and watched the Ghoul. Pitch-black eyes with no pupils stared back.

How many of its attacks could he endure?

He did not know. Not that it mattered, Enkrid intended to keep going until he won. The fire of wanting to win burned bright.

He had not forgotten his purpose, either.

Holding on here would only last so long.

Not because he could not hold on.

Because Aoara would not stand watching for long.

The moment she stepped in, today was a failure.

So.

Get back here quickly.

Enkrid built a picture from his instincts, and in that picture were people who needed to finish their job and come running.

If he could not overwhelm the Ghoul, Aoara would step in. Then all he had to do was kill the damn Ghoul before that happened.

If he failed, this today would be no different from every other today until now. He hated that.

He refused to see Aoara lose her smile.

He would show her what a proper knight was.

So he would twist today.

"Do you really believe you can twist cause and effect?"

At the end of one of the many todays he had lived through, the Boatman asked.

Enkrid did not think it was a matter of belief, so he answered.

"I just do it."

Keep going until it works. That was the only thing that had kept him walking until now.

The Boatman looked at him and smiled.

Was it too optimistic a reading to say that smile did not look like mockery to Enkrid?

Hard to say.

* * *

It was just a feeling.

A feeling that something might be about to happen.

"That's why I had my axe blade sharpened and ready. This right here is my foresight."

Rem held up the keen blue axe blade and said it. His legs were moving very fast even as he talked.

Not quite running, but as fast as running.

Dunbakel followed behind without effort and replied.

"Don't you sharpen it every day?"

What she meant was that calling it foresight was garbage.

If you sharpened your axe blade every single day, what was so special about it?

Dunbakel was sometimes, or rather, often, oblivious.

On top of that, she was a little buoyant from Enkrid's rain of praise.

"You said it was because you found a good whetstone and got excited."

At moments like this, Dunbakel's tongue operated without input from her brain. What rose from her chest fell straight out of her mouth.

Rem twisted his lips at that.

"Finding it was the foresight."

Forced logic.

Admore, coming up behind them, thought so.

But he kept it behind his teeth. Or rather, there was no room to get it out.

Even with a body drilled through training without rest, keeping up was nearly enough to break him.

It was essentially a dead sprint.

Opening his mouth and risking a bitten tongue was definitely stupider than keeping quiet.

Of course, even if he were not running like this, Admore would have kept his mouth shut.

He read situations. A savage light moved behind the barbarian's eyes. One more wrong word and the man looked ready to split open whoever said it before worrying about any Demon Creatures.

Still, Dunbakel kept jabbing past the threat of the axe.

"Forced logic."

The barbarian put on a smile that pretended to be pleasant and staked a claim on their time after the fighting was done.

"I'll deal with you when this is over."

Dunbakel paused for half a beat at that, but her stride did not slow. She thrust out her chest instead.

"Do it, then."

She had made up her mind to prove herself.

So she was done stepping back before things even started. The axe blade was not flying at her face right now, and yes, the crazy axeman had driven her to the edge of death more than a few times, but even so, the intent to actually kill her was never truly there.

Calling those days training felt like too easy a word for how much they had ground her down, but the fact was the fact.

So she was not stepping back. If she retreated over something like this, proof would be a very long way off.

"Good. Sure. We'll see."

Rem quickened his pace. Admore huffed behind him.

As he ran, he corrected a bias he had long held, that "we'll see" was usually just bluster.

What this man called Rem said, he meant.

He could feel it.

This was clearly someone who held onto grudges for a very long time.

"Smell."

Dunbakel stopped dead mid-stride. Her nose twitched again and again.

A swamp leaking poison lay to their left; a gray forest stood directly ahead.

Admore raised his right fist toward the soldiers behind him, knuckles outward.

The hand signal to stop. Every one of them jolted to a halt.

Cold tension wrapped the whole group.

Why would it not?

This was the Cursed Ground.

Even for soldiers who guarded Thousand Bricks by staying near the border, pushing this deep inside the Cursed Ground was not common.

Almost unheard of.

Normal reconnaissance teams swept the outer edges. They did not go inside.

But right now there was no other choice. Admore looked at Rem and Dunbakel, and anxiety he had been keeping down surged back up.

It felt like someone was thinly slicing his heart with a narrow blade.

Rowena.

Admore's eyes swept the area. He did everything he could to find traces, but he was not a ranger.

Nothing showed itself easily.

Ordinary reconnaissance meant skimming the perimeter of the Cursed Ground.

That kind of patrol had once gotten them a kill on a Demon Creature right before it became a Colony leader, and they had predicted Wave timing more than a few times.

Now a mission that should have been routine had ended in disappearance.

Please.

Pounding heart, damp air, tension, everything fused together and locked his body up more than usual.

Admore knew his field of vision was narrowing, and he could not pull his eyes away.

Dunbakel had said smell and looked in a direction, and he looked there too.

Past the narrowing vision, something crouched inside the forest.

Long legs rippled in the dark like a mirage.

A grotesque creature moved on tapping steps. A large spider.

The Demon Creature called the Giant Spider.

A monster that seized people, wrapped them tight in silk, and ate them alive.

Why is it so big?

It was larger than any spider Demon Creature Admore had ever seen.

"Lots of them."

Dunbakel moved past the sheer size of the thing without comment. She named the number instead. She had roughly counted by smell.

As Admore heard Dunbakel say that, he also saw something moving between the spiders, a creature covered in feathers from head to toe.

Between the spiders, scattered among them.

An Owlbear, the creature called the Reaper of Night in this area, stood in place.

No. Not just standing.

Does this look like it's holding position right before a charge? Am I reading that right?

He was imagining things, surely.

They had not formed up into ranks, but the cluster of Demon Creatures looked ready to surge forward at any moment.

It did not feel like imagination.

And there were Owlbears among them?

Every foul word he knew rose up at once.

Anyone who had experienced a bear-sized creature drop silently onto their back would find it perfectly natural to feel the urge to wet themselves at any dark shape. That was normal.

Though the luxury of feeling that urge belonged only to the ones who had survived.

Running into an Owlbear alone was usually just another way of saying your name got carved on a headstone.

But Rowena would not die easily.

The reconnaissance team moved out prepared to watch for dangerous Demon Creatures closing in.

Then where were they now?

Damn it, why were there this many Demon Creatures?

Damn, damn, hell.

"Hey. Relax. I don't know why they sent you along, but I said it already. My foresight is shining."

The words came from the barbarian, gray head turned away, only the back of his skull showing.

Admore realized he had been holding his breath and worked on getting it under control.

As he looked ahead, he saw the barbarian's hand move to the axe handle at his hip. The man unclipped the leather axe sheath he had made himself and drew the axe out.

To forget the awful tension, the ugly thought that he might lose both his life and the person he loved, Admore asked a question.

"Why do you follow orders without question?"

Was the man that loyal? He did not look it from the outside.

Admore more or less knew what would come out of Rem's mouth. He was asking something he already guessed.

It was a question to loosen up, not genuine curiosity.

Privately he had already decided that Rem must have owed a life debt or sworn some kind of oath.

But the answer that came out of Rem's mouth was strange enough to make Admore forget his tension for a moment.

"He asked for help, so I'm helping."

"...Hm? What? Sorry?"

Admore asked again before he could stop himself. He was just so startled he said anything at all.

Dunbakel, listening beside them, twitched her nose and added one line.

"He asked for help. Earlier."

When?

Admore went back over the earlier conversation in his head.

Had his ears gone wrong? Had worrying about the person he loved broken something?

He turned his head and looked at the face of one of his soldiers.

He saw his own expression reflected there. The soldier's face said it plainly.

What the hell are they talking about?

"He asked for help, so I'm helping. He's not the type who usually says that kind of thing."

Rem said it, and Admore got the effect he had wanted. The anxiety and tension were gone for a moment.

He also gave up on trying to fit this person into any box he understood.

So he shut his mouth. He said nothing more. This was not someone words could reach.

The exchange was brief. Admore dropped his gaze and caught something on the ground, bootprints mixed with other marks. Something had been dragged.

He was not particularly skilled at reading tracks, but these were too clear to miss.

A broken tree and twisted woody vines lay scattered around, evidence of whatever someone had been trying to do with them.

What happened here?

That question was still forming when it came.

Hoooom.

The gray forest trembled.

Vibration rolled through everything. His body began to shake.

Then Rem turned his head back. What sat on his face was a smile.

Not the kind of smile that called Aoara's smile to mind.

It was the grin of a troublemaker who had just found a very interesting toy.

The smile of a kid who never stopped causing chaos.

Right on cue, clouds covered the moon and Rem's face fell into shadow. For a moment Admore felt that Rem had vanished.

An instant after thinking he could no longer see that twisted smile, Rem really did vanish.

A light tap off the ground and he was gone, sprinting forward at a speed Admore's eyes could not track.

He had crouched low and used the dark to do it.

Admore never saw Rem run, but he knew the man had gone forward.

Pak!

A Demon Creature that had been holding its ground ahead had its head split open. Hard to miss that.

So what was his job now?

He gave the hand signal.

Everyone, fast march forward. Follow the path they cut open and fill the gaps in the line.

The soldiers had experience keeping pace with a knight's unit, and they handled even this without missing a step.

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