A Knight who Eternally Regresses - Chapter 462

WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

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A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 462: In Service to Knight Aoara

= = =

When word came that someone from the royal palace was on their way, Romen looked down at his fist.

Big, hard, and covered in scars.

'I shouldn't hit anyone sent by the royal family, right?'

Obviously. And yet he found himself wrestling with it anyway.

Are you loyal to Naurillia?

If danger comes, will you fight for the royal family?

If anyone asked him something like that, Romen would nod without a second thought.

And if they added, 'Would you beat a nobleman you don't like to death?' he could nod twice as fast.

His oath of loyalty came from the heart, sure. But.

'I'd rather they just gave me something like the right to execute nobles on the spot.'

Back when he had served at the royal palace as part of the knight order, Romen used to think things like that.

The palace was packed with people who opened their mouths only to say something without a shred of sense.

Aoara was dead.

His master had left this world.

Even in the damp weather, her body had not decayed easily.

Grief, mourning, all of that mattered to the people of this city. But what about the person the royal family had sent?

The palace dispatched someone the moment they heard the news.

A remarkably fast response.

Was that any surprise? Of course not.

A knight of the order had died, after all. One of the kingdom's pillars had fallen.

They could not know everything that had happened on this end. Thinking through it all at once, from the deterrence needed to hold the Cursed Ground to the political ramifications, would have given anyone a headache.

'Must be a mountain of things to worry about.'

That was why the royal envoy arrived before even the cedar coffin.

He would press for answers.

Why did a knight die here?

He would find fault.

Was there any reason for a fight like that to happen here?

Disgusting noble bastards.

Romen's hand tightened. Veins rose across the back of it.

He would hold himself together if at all possible.

If at all possible.

And if he couldn't? Someone under Enkrid's command went by the name Noble Hunter, didn't he?

Rumor had it the man had killed a noble who had been acting like garbage.

Romen thought he might steal that nickname for himself today.

Today was the funeral. Knight Aoara's. His master's.

"Hah."

One slow exhale, and he stepped outside.

Whoosh.

It was midday, but torches had been lit all across the posts. Fog had settled over the city.

On days like this, Demon Creatures always ran wilder than usual.

It sometimes happened the day after the Twin Red Moons rose, the cycle repeating over and over.

The creatures, drunk on the instinct to slaughter, would go berserk.

But not this time.

"There are no signs of anything."

The Reconnaissance Team had been out since before dawn and confirmed the Cursed Ground was quiet.

Just as the master had said.

The Cursed Ground was still.

The Demon Creature that had been the Cursed Ground Core was dead. The Cursed Ground had already poured out every last drop of its strength.

What remained out there was nothing more than a collection of ordinary colonies.

The Cursed Ground, the Gray Forest, Aoara had wanted to put an end to it.

A knight is a calamity.

That was what they were called, because of the kind of power they possessed.

Even with power called a calamity, closing a Cursed Ground was supposed to be impossible. But Aoara had done it in the end.

'Does that count for nothing? Everything the master did for this city? How much this city loved her?'

If the person from the royal family talked down about the master's achievements, Romen would stop being a junior knight of the Red Cloak Knights and become a thug.

'Please. Respect the master.'

The turmoil inside him put force into his hands on its own. It seemed wiser to leave his weapons behind.

Romen did exactly that. He left without them.

A knight some might have called a calamity.

But to Romen, she had been a stroke of luck. Her traces were scattered all across the city.

"Hey, a guy who looks perfectly fine wants to live by shaking down a few coins from people selling their bodies?"

"What did you just say? You want to die?"

That was back when he had first come to Thousand Bricks as a fresh soldier.

He had judged her by appearances and thrown himself at her, and he saw stars in broad daylight before it was over.

"You need some education. Follow me!"

At some point, Romen had fallen for Aoara.

Not in a romantic sense. It was respect.

Without her, he might have ended his days as a worthless thug in some back alley, or maybe the head of some criminal guild.

That had been him.

No one presided over the funeral, and still the whole city gathered.

A city with almost no young children, women, or elderly.

A city that looked like one massive barracks.

Aoara had loved this city, and grieved for it just as deeply.

"Without that Cursed Ground, wouldn't people laugh and talk more freely? I want to hear the sound of children laughing in this city."

That had been Aoara's dream.

She would see it fulfilled. Even in death she had not given up, and in the end she had laid its foundation.

What remained of the Cursed Ground, he would erase and clear away himself.

Then children would laugh in this city too.

Romen had told all of this in detail to his friend Enkrid.

Enkrid had listened quietly and known when to nod.

No, just being listened to had been comfort enough.

A strange person, truly.

Without even realizing it, he had slipped into the city and been there at the master's end.

His eyes landed on the platform at the city's center. Someone had stepped up onto it.

It must be the one they said came from the palace. An unfamiliar face. No one Romen knew.

'Why would I know any nobles?'

He stood on the platform without even a cloak. No armor either. His clothes were fine enough to show their quality, the way noble things did.

But dust had settled in his hair, and white salt lines showed on clothes soaked through with sweat and dried stiff.

The man stepped onto the platform and looked out at everyone.

That was how Romen took in everything the man did.

He looked at them all and drew their eyes toward him.

Before he said anything grand or made any clever move. Just by looking, he made it happen.

The mood, the gazes, the current in the air, all of it was drawn up onto the platform before he even began.

"I ask for your forgiveness."

The man's mouth opened.

Before he even introduced himself, he spoke of forgiveness.

"I am grateful for the efforts of Knight Aoara, yet I cannot claim her death bears no responsibility of mine."

He was not crying, but he looked as though he was.

What did he grieve for? The loss of a knight?

No. It was not that. He looked as though he was feeling genuine sorrow.

That was what Romen thought.

The man's expression did not change. He stood quietly, and spoke with his eyes and his breath.

I am sorry.

Because he could do nothing for the person who had protected this land, and that was more than he could bear.

Who was this man to stand there with such a bearing?

Rage surged through Romen for a moment. His emotions would not settle easily.

He was on the verge of shouting something when the man on the platform opened his mouth again.

"My name is Kediathart Randiers Nauril. That is the name of the person you should blame and curse."

What?

Romen stared at the platform with wide eyes.

He was trying to make sense of what this man had just said.

"Because Knight Aoara's dream was to protect this city, I too will make a vow. Until Naurillia falls, and even if it does fall, I will protect this land and this city."

The royal family had sent someone.

That person vowed to protect the city.

That person showed grief at Knight Aoara's death.

It was not only the master he spoke of.

He knew every soldier who had died.

He read out their names, one by one.

After the civil war ended, they said the newly crowned king had done something like that.

The king had done it again now.

He had ridden through day and night the moment he heard the news.

He stood on that platform looking ready to collapse at any moment, spoke of sorrow, and made his vow.

"You may throw stones at me."

There had been a knight who loved this city.

That knight had protected the city to the very end.

And the king who should have been protecting that knight says your resentment should be directed at him.

Even if this were a lie.

Romen wept and thought.

Protecting this city was, in the end, protecting the kingdom.

Aoara had protected the city, and in doing so kept faith with the royal family.

Romen himself would do the same.

With a king like that.

Because that king would protect the city in Aoara's place.

Romen raised his head.

The fog was lifting. The Twin Red Moons, the Red Moon, Darpia, had set, and the sunlight that rose in their place broke through everything.

The gray fog that had rolled in from the Cursed Ground's Gray Forest dissolved, and sunlight crashed in like a wave.

It crashed in like a wave and then held there, brightening the world. It lit the king and lit the people and wrapped around the dead Aoara.

In the heart of that light, the golden-haired king looked out at everyone.

"In honor of Knight Aoara."

The king gave a military salute.

* * *

Crang stepped down from the platform and spoke.

Behind him, at the corner of the platform, Enkrid stood and listened quietly.

"Did I arrive just in time, or was I late? Or should I blame my own ignorance from all those years when I could do nothing for the knight protecting this land?"

Political standing. Positioning. The strength of the royal family.

He had not set out after calculating any of that.

He had come to comfort those who would grieve at someone's death.

If cynical counsel had been needed, Crang could have given it. But he had not done that.

Instead he had gone up on that platform with everything he had and delivered something that was not quite a speech and not quite not one.

They say grief grows smaller when it is shared.

Crang had divided the grief among the whole city.

Aoara was dead.

But no one would forget her name.

"From today, the name of this city will be Aoara."

The king said it and stepped down from the platform.

"I'm exhausted."

Only then did Crang speak, with a whining edge to his voice. He was looking directly at Enkrid as he said it. Enkrid, who had been watching, gave him a reproachful look.

"You should have at least brought a cedar coffin."

"You're right."

Then again, if he had stopped to think it through, he would not have come like this at all.

The faces of his escorts did not look particularly comfortable either.

"Ha. Damn Demon Creatures. Damn Cursed Ground."

Crang said it while looking up at the sky. He closed his eyes without so much as a frown even as sunlight fell on his face, and kept talking with his eyes shut.

"I'm going to wipe out the Cursed Ground. Even if it takes my whole life. This land is my responsibility and my country. A knight died in my land. So I will erase every last trace of the Cursed Ground."

Will. The Will that lived in resolve and conviction.

Crang's words carried intent.

It was the same as the first time they had met at the medical barracks.

The way he spoke, the look in his eyes, every gesture flowed as though it had all been decided long ago. Like the sun rising and setting, and the moon rising after.

Crang said it.

He said it with everything in him.

Enkrid heard him properly. He took it in. He read the Will carried in those words.

Still the same pace, not fast, not slow, just a few words. But he would do it.

He would erase the Cursed Ground.

This king would burn whatever flame he had left for that.

The vision came again.

Knights, junior knights, squires, soldiers, all of them raising their swords for a single king.

They would swing those swords and drive those spears.

Toward Demon Creatures, toward the king's enemies.

The king takes responsibility and sets the direction.

The knight clears the obstacles from that path.

That was what each of them was there to do.

"My sword will be there alongside you."

Enkrid answered.

"Just hearing that gladdens me. Walk with me a bit."

Crang came back to himself at once, the same easy manner as when they first met at the medical barracks.

"You look like you're about to collapse mid-walk."

"If I do, help me up."

"With your escorts right here?"

"Fair point."

A thin smile, traded over some pointless joke. Enkrid laughed too and walked on.

Today that had passed would not return.

The dead would not return either.

It amounted to the same thing.

Was this the best it could have been? Was there no better path?

Those thoughts could have crept in, but Enkrid shook them off.

Regretting a day already gone, imagining what a different road might have looked like, believing some better choice must have existed somewhere, there was nothing more foolish than that.

That kind of worry and regret was more dangerous than any curse.

If he had carried that weight through his whole life, he would never have made it this far.

So he shook it off and walked.

Honoring the day that had passed. Honoring those who had died.

Moving past something was not the same as forgetting it.

Probably until the day he died, forever, it would not be forgotten.

Then was Aoara truly dead?

Her body was dead, but her spirit would be carried on by the city of Aoara.

At the front of that procession ,

he had no idea why that friend who looked like a bandit was still crying, but it would be Romen standing there.

Not quite a prophecy. Just a feeling that it would be so.

Romen was not the only one crying. The grief Crang had shared was making the whole city weep.

People who had been too grief-stricken to shed a tear were weeping now.

If those tears could carry on Aoara's spirit.

'I will carry on a part of the technique myself. Knight Aoara.'

So the spirit, the technique, the will, things like those would remain and be passed down.

Dead, but not gone, still protecting this land.

With that, it could be said that Knight Aoara had kept faith with her own will and conviction.

Enkrid walked with those thoughts, his footsteps making a soft scuffing sound.

Crang walked alongside him, and the escorts followed behind.

Then Ruagarne came around to Crang's other side, putting Enkrid between them.

"I told you, once your contract with the previous queen was finished, you should come help me, and you ended up here? Ruagarne."

Crang craned his neck forward to say it.

Ruagarne puffed her cheeks out with a low gurgling sound and laughed, then answered.

"My interest lies over here, not over there."

As she said it, she stuck out her tongue and pointed it at Enkrid. She could stick out her tongue mid-sentence without the slightest effect on her pronunciation. A talent, if it could be called one.

"I thought you were interested in my face?"

"The Frog race's thing about faces is just how we are, we can't help it, and that didn't necessarily mean I was going to make a contract with you."

"I know. I'm just a little disappointed, is all."

Gurgle, gurgle.

Ruagarne only laughed. Whether Crang also fell within her tastes, she seemed to enjoy herself just from looking at his face.

Enkrid and Crang walked through shafts of broken sunlight.

Nothing particularly important passed between them.

The future, politics, the problems that would come from the absence of a knight, none of that was on either of their minds.

"So you killed a Ghoul that fought like a knight? You've gotten even stronger."

"It just kind of happened."

"You can't just say it kind of happened."

"Of course not. It's a rate of learning I can't explain."

Ruagarne chimed in from the side. Even from her perspective, reproducing Knight's Strike on the very first attempt had been nothing short of mysterious.

How was something like that even possible?

She asked, but it was not as though Enkrid had any answer to give.

Different bits of conversation drifted by.

Enkrid listened to what Crang had to say and talked about his own things too.

Most of it was trivial.

Looking at the content alone, a good deal of it was important or secret, but to the two of them it was nothing more than small talk.

Something like this, for instance.

"Oh, I got married."

Producing an heir was also part of a king's work.

Crang said it as plainly as that.

Enkrid told him congratulations.

"Is it worth congratulating, I wonder."