WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 461: I Never Even Dreamed of Being a Knight in the First Place

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Not once across all the days he had lived through had Enkrid managed to send Aoara out in one piece.

The conditions for it were simply too difficult.

Kill the Ghoul before Aoara steps in.

In that same window, Romen kills the spider swordsman with eight arms for blades.

And block the Ghoul's final strike at the same time.

He could not keep repeating days where Dunbakel died or Rem died.

Aoara killing the Owlbear was outside his calculations, but that was fine.

Not bad.

That was his conclusion.

At that moment, out of nowhere, something the Boatman had said came back to him.

"Do you know what it's called when someone walks a hard road by their own choosing?"

"Being a saint?"

"An idiot."

The Boatman kept tearing into Enkrid without letting up.

It did not bother him.

That kind of scorn and criticism was far too familiar.

How many tongues had laughed at him when he said he wanted to become a knight?

So none of it mattered.

What mattered more was the hollow feeling that came when he lacked the real strength to protect what he wanted to protect.

He had once watched a man fight a Demon Creature to shield his own family.

He watched that man die.

He watched the family the man had been trying to save.

When he saw a mercenary grinning at the lone surviving daughter, Enkrid lost himself.

"Someone stop that crazy bastard!"

"Hey, hey, you piece of shit!"

"Ow, my ear!"

Enkrid bit off a chunk of the mercenary's ear and drove a dagger into the back of his neck.

"You, hah, forget it. Cool your head."

The mercenary captain let him off.

He went to prison instead. That was what letting him off looked like.

If they had left him out there, the dead man's friends would have put a blade in him.

He sat in a cell for half a year.

Nothing to do. He trained his body. Most of the guards ignored him, but one of them asked.

An old head guard, past fifty.

"Why'd you do it?"

"His smile bothered me."

"Are you out of your mind?"

The head guard released him.

The words the man said afterward stayed with Enkrid for a long time.

"A man without strength ends up unable to do even the things he wants to do."

Enkrid stepped out of that prison, scraping his palm over his chin again and again to smooth the rough stubble, and answered.

"I know."

His dream was to be a knight.

He had chosen that dream because he wanted to live protecting what he cared about.

"Ha ha ha!"

Aoara's laughter kept bursting out.

Grrrrr.

The Balrok fragment growled like a beast.

He could not count them exactly, but dozens of exchanges had passed between the two.

Aoara's "laughter" sliced open the Balrok's forearm and punched a hole through its gut, but that alone was not enough to kill it.

When the hole opened in its belly, it actually moved more violently. Something like black smoke rose from the wound, and without anything being done to treat it, the gap half-sealed itself and stopped bleeding.

Even as that hole was being made, it swung the red rod that resembled a sword more than dozens of times. A monster.

The lines that rod drew spread over Aoara like a net.

Instead of falling back, she pulled her laughter up and struck overhead.

The net tore apart in a single blow. White light burst out and pressure swept the area around them.

Bang. The ground shook with a booming crash. The Balrok had stamped down as if trying to smash the earth itself.

Aoara swung her sword.

Something rippled along the shaking blade.

To Enkrid's eyes, the blade suddenly looked like dozens at once.

Intangible Will passed through an Inscribed Weapon and became tangible force, sweeping everything around her.

The Balrok did something similar.

A red rod and a white rod met each other.

Sometimes the two became whips. Sometimes they became beams of light.

They curved, then stiffened and stopped. They formed walls like barriers of steel.

That was how it looked to Enkrid's eyes.

In truth, the two of them were simply swinging swords at each other.

Bang!

With a thunderclap, the Balrok fragment and Aoara crossed paths.

No one could cut in. Cutting in would only get in the way.

This was a knight's fight.

"Master!"

Romen shouted.

Enkrid watched in silence.

The fight between the Balrok fragment and Aoara did not last long.

Having glimpsed the realm of omnipotence, Enkrid could read roughly how it would go.

Aoara would win.

But it could not be called a loss for the Balrok either.

Rem, who had been knocked away, went pale. He vomited a mouthful of blood, probably from a rib piercing something inside. Of course, that was nowhere near enough to kill him.

He walked over and came to stand nearby, watching the fight alongside Enkrid.

"She won."

Dunbakel said it. She said it still sitting where she had dropped after surviving.

A long line was drawn across the Balrok's neck. Not a red line. A black one.

That line parted the monster's head from its body.

A heartbreaking farewell? Or a satisfying one?

Hard to say. Nobody knows what a Demon Creature feels.

Aoara turned to face them.

Still smiling.

"People die no matter what."

She said it with that smiling face.

Enkrid already knew Aoara could not live much longer.

He knew too that there was no way to save someone already dying, no matter what you did.

Repeating today did not mean he could do anything. Some things never changed no matter how the cursed day looped.

"Hah. That was good."

The red rod the Balrok had carried was lodged in Aoara's chest as she said it.

A sword shaped like a skewer.

Ruagarne had said that a Balrok uses a flaming sword and a whip.

This fragment was only half, so that was all it had. A red rod that looked like a sword but did not burn, that was its weapon.

"Romen, I leave the city to you."

The knight with that rod buried in her chest said it.

"Sorry I can't make it to Rowena's wedding."

The lord of a city built from a thousand bricks said it.

"The Cursed Ground is finished now. So just kill off what's left. No new Demon Creatures will come."

The hero who worried about tomorrow even at the very end said it.

Without Aoara, this city would never have existed.

Without her, it would already have become part of the Cursed Ground.

"Thank you, Enkrid."

She acknowledged what he had done.

"Ah, that was fun."

That was the last of it.

What begins must end.

What rises must come back down.

Living is a walk toward death.

Only what you do along that road is yours to decide.

No point looking back at roads not taken and regretting them.

In a life, that kind of thing has no meaning.

Whatever you choose, only the effort to make that choice right is what makes a life rich and worth living.

Enkrid sheathed Aker and stood straight.

He placed his hand on his right hip. A promise to keep his weapon under control.

The beginning of a gesture made to pay respect to someone before him.

Then he bowed his head. Something you could do because you honored the effort they had given.

A salute.

"Oa."

Enkrid spoke the motto that carried her name.

And watched the last of the knight who died smiling.

* * *

Two junior knights handled the situation, and Eisia dragged her worn body into managing the cleanup.

Anyone can die on a battlefield.

Knights are not immortal.

Nobody there needed to be told that.

"Master had been dying."

A short-haired blond soldier came over and said it. The soldier raised a torch. Few people were crying.

There was a lot of work sorting through the aftermath of a battle. Every person in the city came out to help with the shortage of hands.

Romen carried Aoara's body himself.

They laid her in the house she had lived in. There was no coffin yet.

She looked like she might burst through the door any second shouting, "Surprised, weren't you, you lot!"

Of course, that was not going to happen.

Knight Aoara was dead.

Enkrid washed the blood from his body.

Outside, units moving for the night watch kept the streets noisy.

Enkrid returned to his room, washed, lay down, and closed his eyes. He fell asleep just like that. The Boatman appeared in the dream.

"You want to loop today again? But some things never change, no matter what. Take a die whose face is fixed. Where a god has rested, a curse cannot take hold."

The Boatman mixed in words Enkrid could not follow. A few things he simply could not understand.

He could only guess at the rough meaning.

Where a god has rested. What does that even mean.

"If you had stayed in today, you would never have had to watch that death."

The Boatman's voice had a persuasive edge.

But it held no pull.

From the start there had been one thing he wanted to protect.

A satisfied Aoara. A smiling Aoara.

Wanting to watch a proper knight fight, that was secondary.

Enkrid had seen exactly that: a satisfied Aoara, a smiling Aoara.

Because he had watched a hero die smiling at the end, it did not hurt.

What he had wanted to protect was her smile.

Not a life scraped together by abandoning what mattered and running.

He said nothing and sank back into sleep.

The Boatman's figure blurred. The sound of waves grew distant.

Then a real dream came. This one was a real dream.

The kind where the Boatman does not appear.

A jumble of stray thoughts rebuilt from the memories left in his head.

Memory and impressions mixed randomly and spilled out.

"Hey, what do you think of my city?"

Aoara stood on the city wall wearing a red cloak and asked.

Enkrid was standing beside her before he knew it. He had no cloak.

If it was a dream, she could at least give him one.

His back felt bare.

"I asked what you think."

"It's good. Good to look at and good to be in."

"Want to stay?"

Nothing to think about, so he shook his head.

"You're still set on becoming a knight?"

Whether it was because it was a dream, the way the conversation moved was a mess.

No, Aoara had always been like this.

She threw questions out on impulse, one after another.

But every one of them cut right to the heart of things, sharp as a blade.

"Yes."

"All right, I think you'll get there. Anyway, I really was grateful. Wow, the end there was close."

"Was it?"

"You couldn't see it properly, could you? Come here, I'll show you what I did."

In the dream, Aoara reenacted the movements from her fight with the Balrok. Enkrid stood in the Balrok's position, then in Aoara's, fixing each movement in memory one by one.

"Right here, when I lifted the sword like this, I figured this bastard would sneakily try to trip my feet."

"You predicted it?"

"I intended it."

Countless exchanges of read and counter-read were layered into that short clash.

It seemed impossible to calculate all of that while using Will at full force.

"Right now you're layering intention over it when you use it, right? But once you get used to it, you can just use Will freely."

Aoara held nothing back and told him everything.

They talked for a long time like that. Hard to say in a dream, but it felt like a day, or maybe a month.

"Goodbye."

With a bright farewell, Aoara pressed her lips to his cheek.

Enkrid looked at her with an expression asking what that was about, and the hero in the dream answered.

"Gratitude."

No other meaning seemed attached to it. Friendship, or exactly what she said. Even in a dream, Aoara was Aoara.

She faded away as if dissolving, and after that he caught a glimpse of the Balrok's afterimage.

The dead monster was placing a chain around Aoara's neck.

Why? Was that just the dream being strange?

For a dream, it was a very unsettling way to end.

Enkrid woke up. It was before dawn. When he stepped outside, Romen was there.

"You're up?"

Romen asked. His face looked dull. Fatigue showed through.

"Looks like you didn't sleep."

Enkrid said it looking at Romen's face, and got a flat reply.

"I slept."

But it was the kind of face that said he had slept and something was still gnawing at him.

Romen had taken a deep cut to his forearm from the spider swordsman, so his forearm was wrapped tight in bandages.

"Just for a moment, but Master appeared in my dream and said something. Told me not to do anything stupid."

Romen, the unsettled look now gone from his face, brought up the dream.

It sounded very different from the dream Enkrid had.

"An unconscious expression left through Will?"

The words came out of nowhere. They were Ruagarne's. She was coming out of the lodging.

Since Enkrid had woken and stepped out, it made sense she would follow.

"A Balrok takes the souls of those it kills. It's said to shape them with hellfire like sculptures and keep them as a collection."

What is a soul. Something every being with intelligence possesses.

"Then?"

Enkrid prompted her along. If she had more to say, she could finish it.

Ruagarne did.

"That is why the Balrok scatters fragments. Its title is Soul Collector. In the Grand Cursed Ground they also call it the Knight Hunter. It is a monster whose hobby is collecting individuals who fight beyond the limits of their kind."

Worthless souls it ignores. Souls with outstanding potential it watches. It waits for them to grow. Sometimes it even cultivates them.

Once they had grown into a powerful body and reached the peak of their skill, a Balrok would come at them like a dog starved for days.

Projecting refinement on the surface while living drunk on its own desire.

A monster like that existed.

A Demon Creature with genuine intelligence.

On the continent, beings like that were called Demon Lords.

"So Master's soul is with the Balrok right now?"

Romen asked. Fire flickered in his eyes.

"Most likely."

Before Ruagarne even finished her answer, Enkrid spoke.

"Ah. Is that so."

Normally those words would have carried no special weight. Coming from Enkrid's mouth, they carried something.

"Ah. Is that so."

From him, they did not sound simple.

A hundred times more loaded than just you wait.

Nothing could be done about it right now.

Even if he went to the Grand Cursed Ground, it would be a monster nearly impossible to find.

But once he climbed beyond a knight.

And kept moving forward even after becoming a knight.

"I'm first."

Romen said it. He had understood what Enkrid's words meant.

"I become a knight. Then I kill the Balrok."

Enkrid added one more piece to his dream.

The requiem for a hero would be played then.

The cheer he never got to give, the dance he never got to show, he would offer those in the act of killing the Balrok.

That was what he would do.

Ruagarne watched those eyes, blue flames burning quietly, refusing to go out, and spoke.

"That's dangerous."

Enkrid did not answer, and Ruagarne continued.

"I know you won't listen even if I try to stop you. Just being a regular knight won't be enough. Don't forget that."

He had never dreamed of being just a knight. Not from the start.

The knight in the old song carried the title "War's End."

And the meaning wrapped in those two words was the power to put a final stop to every fight.

From the very beginning.

Not to simply become a knight, but to become a knight who could do whatever he set out to do. That had always been the dream.

He had glimpsed part of omnipotence.

Enkrid knew his dream had come within reach of his fingertips.

All that remained was the act of pulling his hand closed around it. That was what he thought.

The road ahead would not be easy, of course.

As it had always been.

Even so, he would not feel fear, and he would not stop.

As it had always been.

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