WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 460: The Greatest Praise and Support

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"That one's different from the half-baked things we fought before. Did you know that when you blocked it?"

Rem said it without any tone of reproach.

Jerix stopped moving, watching the newly arrived Rem with caution.

If he had a name, he was no ordinary Demon Creature. Which meant he might actually be capable of something like thought.

Common sense said the thing sitting above a ghoul's neck was just decoration, but the Cursed Ground was not a place where common sense held sway.

With a lull in the fighting, or more precisely, a standoff where both sides had sharpened their guard to the limit, Enkrid took the opportunity to study the ghoul called Jerix again.

Whatever else he was, one thing was certain. That Demon Creature was stupidly strong.

Stronger than the fake knights the necromancer earl had made.

"Yeah, it is," Enkrid said.

He had already felt it firsthand. That ghoul knew how to fight.

The half-baked things Rem had been calling half-baked were exactly those fake knights.

Broken toys stitched together from flesh and muscle.

"And you blocked it anyway?"

Rem asked.

"Felt manageable."

That was exactly it. In the past he could not have held on, but now it was just about manageable.

That ghoul bastard was also keeping an eye on Aoara.

Between that and everything else, the Load on his muscles was building and his joints were grinding, but in the end he had not managed to sink a single claw into him.

His ribs ached where the thing's foot had connected twice, but it was a level he could push through.

'Should I thank Audin?'

If he had not trained through strikes, those ribs would have snapped.

There was something else he had picked up from absorbing so many hits over the years.

When taking a blow, right at the moment of impact, he could feel the Will moving inside him.

What mattered for now was that he had held on.

Thinking back on it, even if he faced the sword strikes of that Azpen knight he had once watched, he now had enough confidence to weather them to some degree.

"Did you pick up the bravado from that directionally-challenged guy?"

Rem gave a small grin, then thought to himself.

Yeah, that thing is no joke.

He was nothing like the half-baked ones the necromancer earl had made. Those had taken on a knight's power but their technique was a wreck.

What good was strength if the one using it was an idiot? That was why those things had been easy.

But the Demon Creature in front of him now was different.

They fought each other just to stay alive. That a ghoul had developed his instincts to this level and survived this long meant something.

It proved the thing had fought and fought again, right up to the edge of death. That ability had been earned through struggle.

So no, he was not half-baked. Rem read the situation coldly.

'Can't kill him.'

Not right now. He needed the Sorcery. At his current level, this was too much.

On top of that, he had just finished cutting through five trolls hiding among the Demon Creatures.

Those bastards had not been ordinary either.

There was pain in his left forearm, and his hip joint was creaking too.

When he killed the third troll he had blocked a stone axe with his left arm and taken a hit to the side at the same time.

Small injuries from dealing with five trolls.

Thanks to that, his balance was subtly off.

Not bad enough to be fatal. A few days of rest and it would clear up fine.

A week at most would be plenty.

Walking was not a problem.

Dealing with stupid bandits would be fine.

As long as he did not get into a serious brawl right now, he would be okay. As long as he was not fighting an out-of-spec Demon Creature.

The problem was that there was exactly that kind of Demon Creature right in front of him.

And his captain showed not the slightest intention of backing off.

No, it looked more like he was actively keeping Knight Aoara from stepping in.

'That's more bad luck tax than I bargained for.'

Rem scratched his head with the axe handle. He had made up his mind to go west, so he had been prepared to absorb some share of misfortune, but this was genuinely too much.

"What do you want?" Rem asked anyway.

"To put a sword in him."

The answer came right back. His mind was already made up.

Well. He was not the kind of man who stopped to deliberate.

Enkrid was the kind of lunatic who would start moving first and then make whatever path he chose the right one, rather than stopping to weigh things over.

Rem had found that genuinely entertaining too.

Was that not why he had stayed?

Because watching this man he had learned something, and in the end that was why he had finally made up his own mind to go back west.

The ghoul twitched his fingers. He looked like he was calculating something.

A Demon Creature born with natural combat instincts, running on a knight's power.

Rem thought he might die here.

"Let's do it."

That did not mean he had any intention of backing down.

There was no time to lay out a proper plan, but from the moment Enkrid had started drawing his picture, he had been waiting for Rem.

All he needed was one crack in the moment.

Rem would open that crack.

Enkrid believed that.

* * *

A ghoul, by nature, does not think.

What sits above the neck truly is just decoration.

But the ghoul named Jerix was capable of simple thought.

That was the single biggest factor that had made Jerix what he was now.

Through that capacity for thought, Jerix assessed the situation and made judgments.

Whether two or three enemies stood in front of him made no difference.

They were weaker and slower than himself.

But if he killed one of them, the other blade standing further back would come flying.

A blade he had already faced more than once.

The ghoul thought.

He just needed to hold out and run down the clock.

Then the being that had pushed him here would make its move.

That was the conclusion his thinking had reached.

The irritating blade came for him again.

Jerix kicked the axe blade aimed at his ankle away with the top of his foot without much effort and carefully blocked the sword.

That sword had an irritating metal mixed into it.

Demon Creatures were naturally weak against silver. Silver was the metal that held sanctity within it.

But silver was also a soft metal, and without a master craftsman it was nearly impossible to make a silver sword.

More than anything, an unconsecrated silver sword would have no effect on his body regardless.

But the piece of iron the enemy swung was loaded with a sinister feeling.

That made sense. Aker had a metal called true silver mixed into it.

Jerix dodged and thought.

He only needed to avoid being cut or stabbed deep.

Which meant the sword was not actually a threat.

Whether it was a blade mixed with true silver or a consecrated club, if it did not land it meant nothing.

Ghoul Jerix was confident in that.

He would not fall to sword work as paltry as that.

An instinctive certainty, earned from a long lifetime of survival.

The read on their capabilities was already complete.

The axe blade came whistling in again.

Jerix formed a Hand Blade faster than the axe could arrive and blocked it. Then the enemy dragged the axe.

Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch!

Iron ground against skin, and hard flakes of flesh scraped up by the axe edge went flying.

Not cut, not sliced, but a section of thick skin had been torn away.

The outer hide itself served as armor, which was the only reason that move was possible. So he had blocked well enough.

Jerix blocked with the left hand and extended the right.

Clack!

That right hand was caught by the other axe blade.

Pulling and extending in sequence, a short exchange of blows passed back and forth.

Jerix gauged and confirmed the opponents' capabilities.

From that he was certain. These two could never kill him.

So time was on his side.

No need to rush. He could crowd them back slowly.

The ghoul was still learning even now.

Just as he had learned by fleeing from the human with the terrifying sword, he was learning now the same way.

This time he was learning how to drag things out and apply pressure.

He suppressed the urge to kill and waited.

Time was on his side.

Of course, every being in the world was capable of making mistakes.

"Agh!"

A scream. Human.

The pupils of the ghoul, which had no defined borders, contracted. His gaze snapped toward where the scream had burst from.

A small female human could be seen clutching her shoulder and rolling on the ground. Blood ran down that shoulder.

The sweet scent of blood. Soft flesh.

The urge to kill rose. Appetite surged. Suppressing that and watching the situation instead was the step that had taken Jerix further than before. He had evolved. The exterior was unchanged but the interior had shifted.

The ghoul's thinking accelerated in the way he always did when pressed to a crisis. He pushed further.

At this rate, he might one day be called a god of the Cursed Ground.

And then.

"Now."

In the span of a glance turned aside.

A long line that was a blade, moving so fast that even its shadow looked like a line, came as a slashing blow. The target was the wrist. There was no time to dodge.

It had happened in the moment his gaze slipped away. Axe blades aimed for both his hands.

Why had his gaze moved? Not because of the injured human. He had seen the terrifying sword moving right beside him.

The human who had been pressing him had taken a step.

And that sword went straight for the back of the human giving off the sweet smell of blood. More precisely, it cut the Owlbear that had been going for the human.

Swish, thud, crack.

Everything happened in one instant.

Aoara launched herself and swung her sword.

The Owlbear was split vertically and sprayed black blood.

The ghoul watched and extended his hand, twisting his wrist so the palm faced upward, and grabbed the axe blade.

No need to hide his strength anymore, so he raised his claws and gripped.

Creak, crunch.

The axe blade was pierced and crumpled.

Crushing the axe blade like that, Jerix kicked forward with his left foot.

That forward kick was like a hidden ace he had kept in reserve.

The leg that shot out was three times faster than the hand.

Boom!

A tremendous sound.

The owner of the axe that took the kick was blown back.

All of it was within the ghoul's thinking. It had happened within the calculation.

And then, in that brief moment spent dealing with the axe,

Jerix saw a light that exceeded perception. Something outside the calculation.

That light had drawn close to his face before it even registered.

The point of light vanished as quickly as it had appeared. It passed through the space between his eyes and punched through his head, so naturally he no longer saw anything.

The ghoul could not understand for a moment what had happened, but one thing surfaced. He thought of the terrifying blade that had been coming for him.

The light had been something like that blade.

As his skull was pierced, Jerix poured out his last strength and thrust his claws forward.

Without any particular emotion, this final act was nothing but instinct.

The tips of those claws sank in with a soft sound, biting into flesh.

* * *

The method up until now had been to wring the muscles to their absolute limit, but Romen's strike was a little different.

'Will in every movement.'

Starting from each step taken, down to each breath drawn.

Since he could not yet be a knight, to imitate the Knight's Strike, Romen had put Will into everything.

Enkrid had watched that method, learned it, and made it his own.

Will, what people called willpower, could be felt, but it could not be used freely at will.

Then how had he used Swift or Giant's Strike before?

'Everything is inside me.'

Put resolve into it and it becomes usable. So when moving a foot, walk as if staking a life on it, and grip the sword the same way.

The moment of understanding came in an instant, but reaching further through it required a long time.

He repeated until the body caught up to the insight.

Just as he let Swift or Giant's Strike flow out, he put Will into each step, into each movement of the hand.

Breaking movement down and putting resolve into every part of it, things became leaner as a matter of course.

To put Will into every complex movement would not have been enough with three hundred repetitions of today.

'Thrust.'

Resolve carried the process of driving the sword forward. He arrived at it.

After dozens of failures, he managed to put it into exactly one motion.

The foot planting on the ground felt strange. The hand gripping the sword felt strange too.

Will carried from the ankle planting on the ground all the way through to the fingertips.

Everything around him blurred. Things became hard to perceive. So all he did was move exactly as he had decided from the start.

With focus only on holding the Will, the willpower.

Enkrid drove the sword forward.

More precisely, he broke the act of thrusting the sword into the smallest possible fragments, catalogued each piece with Sensory Technique, and carried it out through Focus Point.

If asked whether this felt different from usual, he would have said he did not know.

What he knew was that the Will poured through his entire body gave him a taste of omnipotence, if only for a moment.

'Thrust.'

The opponent cannot dodge. That is how it will be. It is the obvious outcome. That was how it felt.

And that was exactly how it went.

The tip of Aker's blade punched straight through Jerix's forehead.

Romen had said that after just that one strike he would feel emptiness, and in the end not a trace of strength would remain in his body.

But for Enkrid, that was not the case.

He had already been through it more than once, so he knew.

The loss of willpower brought no feeling of emptiness.

Instead, every muscle in his body ached as if tearing apart.

Jerix was dying and thrust his claws out in that final reach.

And a white shadow stepped in front of Enkrid.

It was Dunbakel.

The moment she saw the Demon Creature, her whole body had been shaking.

She had wanted to run. But she had not.

Run away. Bolt. Flee.

All of those words could only come from someone who had chosen to face the thing first.

Dunbakel faced it and threw herself forward. She had not thought it through. Her body moved first.

'Why am I doing this?'

The question came after. It came with a soft, wet sound.

"Ugh!"

She felt the phantom sensation of claws piercing her abdomen. She braced for the excruciating pain of organs being torn, her whole body tensed so hard that only her abdominal muscles ached. There was no pain.

Tremble, tremble.

Dunbakel's eyes found the shaking arm muscle. The crushed bracer came into view. And at the same time she saw a piece of the Demon Creature's corpse clutched in that hand.

"What are you doing," Enkrid said.

The moment Dunbakel had stepped in front of him, he had lifted a piece of the Demon Creature's corpse and used it as a shield.

"Not coming out?"

Enkrid felt a bone-deep fatigue.

It had not been a simple thrust. Even lifting the corpse to block had to be carried with Will.

The fatigue rolling through every muscle in his body came from that.

There was no emptiness, so his eyes were clearer than they had ever been.

The slow learner who had glimpsed omnipotence did not stop to consider how remarkable what he had just done was.

Because that was not what mattered right now.

His gaze moved to the side instead.

Jerix was dead.

In that time, Romen had killed the spider swordsman with the Knight's Strike.

Aoara had cut down the Owlbear.

He could see the short blond hair, Romen had forced open an opening, taken an injury, and fallen in the process.

Aoara stood at his side.

"What are you?" she asked, startled, looking at Enkrid.

Enkrid answered.

"It's your turn now."

The words came out of nowhere, but Aoara did not argue. She turned her head forward.

There, the true lord responsible for this side of the Cursed Ground came into view.

A fragment of a Balrok.

Aoara had not been able to fight for long periods because of the poison.

Even if she pushed through it she would need to rest for some time, which was why she had not easily left the city.

She only stepped in when there was no other choice.

So if she had fought Jerix and the others and then faced that thing, she would have had to quietly stretch out her neck and wait.

Enkrid had been watching, so he knew what today would have looked like.

* * *

"Show us. What it is that Knight Aoara protects."

From behind Aoara, the guest who had come to the city spoke.

That guest was exceptionally handsome and a peculiar man.

It seemed almost as if he had moved knowing it would come to this.

Was that a problem?

It was not.

Aoara knew what she needed to do, so she smiled.

Smiling, she raised her sword and said:

"Cheer me on and dance."

She threw back the words Enkrid had once said to her and brought her sword down.

She moved her feet as the blade fell. The curving arc of the sword was aimed at the Balrok fragment's head.

Clang!

The fragment lifted a red-stained chunk of iron and met Aoara's sword. One knight and one Demon Creature held their weapons crossed and stopped.

Enkrid had wanted this.

To watch Aoara fight properly.

He had repeated today for the sake of that.

The encouragement had already been given.

By killing ghoul Jerix.

Making this stage was the Highest Praise and encouragement Enkrid could offer.

He simply wanted to see it. What a knight did. What a knight was capable of.

Through the repetition of today, Enkrid had said what he wanted to say.

And Aoara showed him what he had wished and hoped to see.

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