WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 463: Still Turning It Over

= = =

It happened while they were talking about Aoara, bright as sunlight.

The funeral was over. Not one person among the city's residents wailed. They cried, but quietly, with steady faces and dry eyes.

"Oa!"

Now only the cry raised in her name remained.

"In honor of Knight Aoara!"

The shout rose from those still standing.

Knight Aoara's will was surely carved into this city forever.

Just as every knight had an Inscribed Weapon, Aoara had gained a city inscribed with her name.

City Aoara. That was Thousand Bricks' new name.

"Catch up properly for once. I'll head back first."

When Enkrid and Crang fell into conversation, Ruagarne quietly stepped aside to give them room.

After talking a while and making their way to the city gate, Enkrid opened and closed his hand a few times. His forearms were still stiff-stiff enough that gripping and swinging a sword would have been a strain.

He was checking his body when he asked, out of nowhere, "Leaving right away?"

A day's rest seemed reasonable, but Crang had not even unpacked, and the color had been draining from his escorts' faces for a while now. On top of that, they looked tense. What did all of that add up to?

He was going straight back, not staying.

In other words: he had come to mourn a fallen knight and offer some comfort to the city's people, but he was an enormously busy man and always had been.

"Check the carriage. A broken wheel on the road is the last headache I need."

Crang turned to his escorts, gave the order, then answered Enkrid.

"I dropped everything to come here. If I don't leave now, someone might die of overwork on my account."

Half a joke, but half of it sounded like he meant it.

"Then."

Crang had come like the wind and left the same way. He apparently needed no proper send-off and was already going.

Just before he left, he turned only his head back and asked, "Will you come as a knight next time?"

Crang's eyes caught the light and gleamed. Even amid the sunlight they shone on their own, making his intent plain. Those eyes asked a question.

Whether they could meet again, each standing on their own ground.

Whether Enkrid would climb that far.

Enkrid looked at him directly.

"You really believe I can get there without the Red Cloak on my back?"

Crang smiled and spoke.

It was a question, but trust lay beneath it. The kind of question that expected an obvious answer.

His eyes did not waver. In them was a certainty that Enkrid would make it up.

"Do I need to answer?"

"No."

Crang laughed and turned away. One of his escorts approached before they left and spoke.

"I'm Squire Lug. Is Ropord doing well?"

"Probably."

Having repeated this day so many times, the name Ropord felt faintly distant, like something half-forgotten.

A friend who had followed him all the way to the Border Guard after the civil war.

The image came back of Ropord constantly picking fights with Ragna.

As long as Ragna's blade hadn't killed him, he was probably doing fine.

"That guy was wandering around lost for ages, then suddenly changed completely. He says it's all because of the Demon Slayer, my lord."

The title had shifted somehow.

"My lord" had been tacked on, and Demon Slayer seemed to have stuck as a fixed nickname.

He had not joined a knight order, but he had proven his ability, and so it had come to that.

Enkrid only thought it was a lousy nickname.

"Might I receive instruction someday?"

Squire Lug asked again.

What showed in his eyes was competitive drive, the desire to cross blades with someone whose name had spread.

"Lug, if you ever want to quit my escort and become Enki's squire, say the word. You can go whenever you like."

"No, Your Highness! I have no such desire whatsoever."

"I'd wager a year's budget that's a lie."

Crang laughed and tossed that out, and Lug bid farewell with his eyes and turned away.

"Come to the Border Guard anytime."

Enkrid called it to the back of his head.

Lug glanced back briefly, gratitude in his eyes.

"Right, I'm really going now. Tired enough to drop dead. They say whoever wears the crown must bear its weight. All lies. They should have said bear the work, not the crown."

Crang said that, and then he was gone, just like that.

Enkrid walked on, taking in the sunlight and the still air. He had seen the exhaustion on Crang, who had ridden here in one hard push, but even after several days of rest his own body creaked just as much.

The price of going head-to-head with Jerix.

He turned and started back. Walking along and looking around, he saw soldiers busy with cleanup. There was life in them.

Some were hauling materials to repair the broken gate.

Others had fires going in forges nearby, firing molds and making arrows.

Someone had said the shells from spider Demon Creature carcasses made good strong shields, and he could see people breaking those bodies down to make use of them.

They worked with cloth wrapped over their noses against the foul smell.

Everyone looked busy; everyone was moving hard.

A funeral was a funeral, and work was work.

This kind of energy had always suited this city.

"Oa!"

The shouts were still there too.

Soldiers carrying logs on their shoulders, back and forth.

So would this city really become City Aoara now?

A knight's name passing straight into the city itself.

City Aoara. A fine name to hear.

On the walk back, drowsiness kept washing over him.

Aching muscles, a pulling sensation in his core, stiffness near the shoulder blades.

It felt like satisfying muscle soreness, but also like one wrong move could cause real damage.

"Rest when it's time to rest."

Ruagarne was waiting at the lodging. Enkrid nodded.

She was right.

Now was the time to recover. Which meant closing his eyes and sleeping.

Even so, some things needed saying first.

"Dunbakel, if you don't go wash right now, I'll give you a bath in blood."

He had sent her out to help with recon, and she had come back having killed a few Demon Creatures but not washed at all. The smell from the spider carcasses drifted through the lodging.

Dunbakel recovered faster than he did. Something about drinking in some toxin that had turned out to be good for her body, or so she said, though even after listening closely, he still couldn't make sense of it.

"Do I smell?"

Dunbakel asked with a look of perfect innocence.

"How do you not smell yourself?"

Rem, lying on his side and recovering, shot back from across the room.

Dunbakel was unimpressed.

"What business is it of yours?"

Something had shifted in her. She was bolder than before, less afraid of anything.

She had thrown herself in front of Enkrid at the last moment.

He had known it was coming and blocked it, but if he hadn't, Dunbakel might have died.

A sobering thought.

This was a battlefield. Anyone could die.

Kk.

Rem smiled and ground his back teeth.

"You think because I'm like this I can't put you in the ground?"

Even off the battlefield, having a furious barbarian as a companion meant you could just die anyway.

"I'm going to wash. Going now."

Dunbakel learned fear quickly when she had to, and she bolted outside.

Rem, who had been gripping an axe haft with the blade half-crumbled, said, "That one's got a disease where she only listens after you beat it into her."

And you've got a disease where you beat first and think later.

Enkrid thought it, and Rem noticed.

"Sounds like you're cursing me."

"I was going to ask what's out west. Might as well hear it now."

Both of them needed to recover anyway. Bodies wrecked from fighting Demon Creatures.

Rem was close to seriously injured. He lay there talking as though nothing was wrong, but anyone else would have been groaning in pain.

"Low skies, interesting clouds, or the opposite, high skies. A river of sand you can never come back from. That kind of place. You want some old stories?"

"If they're interesting."

"I've got a few from when I was young."

Enkrid steered the conversation neatly, and Rem pulled out a handful of old tales handed down from the west.

Stories tied to myths, the kind told around legends.

Some of them mixed in the origins of the dark sky, and a few old words besides.

He had wondered if the west used a different language, but that wasn't it.

"After the Language War, the whole continent speaks the same tongue."

The Language War had been started by the Empire, back when the continent was still split into three kingdoms.

Rem told the stories well, with flavor, and Enkrid listened.

In the west, for instance, calling someone a pocket-spy was a deep insult. They despised the act of stealing in secret rather than winning something through an open challenge.

"What's a pocket-spy?"

"A thief."

"Winning through open challenge sounds fine, but isn't that just robbery?"

Ruagarne asked. Rem shook his head.

"A bit different. Robbery is just taking something by force. This is more like a wager."

Enkrid listened quietly. Dunbakel came back not long after, washed. She joined them, and the talk bloomed.

Western stories were interesting from every angle.

"Out there they don't ride horses. Something else instead. In the desert it's got the endurance of a camel, and on flat ground it's not quite as fast as a horse, but it handles most terrain well enough. They call it a velopter."

Enkrid had heard the word somewhere but never seen one. That story too.

* * *

The Boatman watched the group talking.

"You look like you're having a good time," he said.

Because they really did.

Repeating this day over and over, some walls you cross still leave scars. Those marks linger and quietly eat at a person.

The moment of meeting someone you could not save no matter what you did.

This was a day made for this madman, the Boatman had thought.

But once again, he was wrong.

"When does a person die?"

The Boatman murmured to himself.

When their life runs out?

Then when does a knight die?

When the sword of conviction breaks.

When they fail to protect what they swore to protect.

Knight Aoara had fulfilled her duty, kept her oath, and died smiling.

That mad creature had let go of what was past, what could not be undone.

Instead he had moved so that the choice already made would become the best one possible.

That attitude stirred some memory in the Boatman.

He let the memory scatter into the river and drift away.

He had no desire to take it out and hold it.

It was also something already too old, already forgotten.

"To dwell on the road not taken is to be left with nothing but regret."

The Boatman murmured it like a verse.

The words spread with a kind of rhythm.

He had been watching the one bound to the curse for a long time.

And now he saw the creature had gotten up and was moving again.

Freshly felt: this one shook off yesterday's dead weight and lived toward tomorrow.

Watching from inside a stopped today, that figure was blinding.

He could not look away.

Those who live in darkness always hunger for light.

And so he wanted to sit this one down in the dark beside him.

Wanting to keep something that gives off light close by, wasn't that the most natural thing in the world?

Rippling waves, a violet lamp, the Boatman on his small ferry, he watched the one bound by the curse without blinking.

This was a human doing what no one he had ever watched had done.

It stirred something in him, some feeling he hadn't felt before.

A change born from watching the same steady attitude, day after day.

Then what remained now?

Still a great deal.

Catching even a toe on just one of those things and failing to clear the wall would be the end. That was what made this a curse.

The Boatman let out a single sound.

"Ha."

Well, would you look at that?

The body seemed about half-recovered, and already moving like that?

He was swinging his sword, drenched in sweat while doing it, which did not look normal by any stretch.

"Mad creature. A mad creature."

The Boatman muttered it again and again.

And watching it, something became clear on its own.

That mad wretch had not let a single thing pass from those who had died before him.

He was chewing over what he had received from the dead, turning it again and again.

* * *

Two more days of rest and his body was mostly back.

Even moving his fingers had sent sharp pain shooting through his wrists, but now that was gone, clean as if it had never been.

The God of Regeneration, wasn't it?

He owed Audin fresh gratitude. His body had recovered so quickly because of that.

He got up, gathered his gear piece by piece, and stepped out to the front of the lodging.

"You held out a long time."

Ruagarne was already outside. She turned her pale cheek toward the sun and soaked in the warmth.

A humid day. Exactly the kind of weather Frog loved.

"Yeah."

Enkrid answered and turned over what had been circling his mind.

There was a lot to think about.

His head was full of what Knight Aoara had left behind.

What she had left was not only her smile.

Aoara and the Balrok fragment.

Every single movement from their fight was still in his memory.

Taking down the Balrok came later.

You had to repeat each day to reach the next. That was the only way.

Enkrid knew that too well to do anything else, so he did what needed doing now.

He chewed over the movements Aoara had shown him. He studied what she had taught him in the dream. He worked through the Balrok's movements too, the glimpses he had managed to catch.

It was fighting at a full knight's level, not a junior knight's. He had missed more than he had seen.

Even so, there was a mountain of things to examine piece by piece and learn. Ruagarne helped him with that.

One thing at a time, slowly.

As Enkrid steadied himself and began to move, Ruagarne said, "Seems you don't need the advice not to rush."

She was satisfied.

This man was good to teach. Slow to learn, but good to teach.

What Frog had just said was already a way of living Enkrid had long since made his own.

One step at a time, with anything.

He studied what he could not understand, and what he could at least grasp he repeated endlessly, however slowly, practicing until it became his own through sheer accumulation.

"You build experience, then make it yours through training," Ruagarne said.

He was already doing that.

Chewing, turning it over. This was part of what Aoara had left behind.

In the fight between Aoara and the Demon Creature, both had hung motionless in the air at times, and not as a metaphor, their swords had given off real light.

Aoara had strung together movements that were thoroughly, purely simple. The Balrok fragment had not.

It flipped its body, took strange forms, moved in ways that made no sense.

So how had Aoara's sword been able to meet all of that?

Enkrid started working through every bit of it.

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