WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 468: He Spoke, and Rem Followed

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The journey that had felt half like a leisurely stroll, watching clouds drift past, was over.

The Giant's arrival changed the air.

Enkrid shifted the angle of his blade left and right, watching the Giant's reactions.

The Giant was unreadable. It blinked like a dull-eyed cow, doing its best impression of a simpleton.

"Wha-whatcha doing, playing with your little sword?"

The Giant tilted its head with exaggerated stupidity. Its speech was slow and slurred. Enkrid was not fooled by any of it.

Look at this bastard.

Even as it spoke, he could plainly see it quietly moving its hand to rest on its hip, right where it could block his sword. A perfect defensive position.

Then the Giant began swinging the club in its right hand through the air in wide, lazy circles.

The wind it kicked up hit his face along with a deep whooshing sound. Whether it was trying to goad him or not, the pressure from that spinning club made his eyes sting.

Enkrid narrowed his eyes to protect them and held two thoughts at once.

If that thing connects, more than one thing is going to break.

And: would training against that kind of impact help sharpen his striking technique?

Both thoughts came together.

He adjusted his grip, angled the tip toward the Giant's abdomen, and shifted his footing.

"Want help?"

Dunbakel asked. She did not seem all that eager to help so much as she wanted to work off the bruises Rem had given her over the past few days.

"No."

Enkrid refused.

The Giant's presence was unusual. Distinctive, even. It was not the kind of opponent he wanted to pass up.

As his ability grew, certain urges rose with it.

There was a kind of pleasure that lived inside a real fight.

Give in to that entirely, though, and you became nothing but a killing machine.

For Enkrid, that was never going to happen.

He had a dream, after all.

But there was no reason to strip away every scrap of that enjoyment, either.

That much was obvious. So he did not hand his opponent off. He did not let it go.

A splinter of the thrill he had felt fighting Ghouls swelled in his chest, and something close to excitement settled in.

Was the Giant dangerous?

Setting skill aside, a club like that could shatter something whether you were a junior knight or not. One clean hit and at least one bone would break.

'If I can't redirect it, I might die.'

Real danger always lived inside a real duel. That was part of what made it worthwhile.

Ruagarne flicked her whip loose at her side.

The Giant's gaze did not move. But Enkrid knew it was already tracking everything.

His instincts were telling him so.

It was playing dumb. It was not dumb.

The stupid act was nothing but a tactic.

"What are you looking at?"

Enkrid asked, and their eyes met.

Enkrid's eyes were blue, direct and unwavering. Like gemstones. Like starlight.

The Giant's eyes were the color of dull sand. Like a crumbling heap of dry earth. Deep brown.

On the surface it kept up its innocent, vacant expression, but whatever sharpness lay behind those eyes could not be completely hidden.

Cunning was the word. Eyes that positively reeked of it.

The Giant's eyes rolled a few times. Enkrid tried to read what it was thinking and failed.

No way to know. Of course not. He had no gift for reading minds.

One thing was clear, though.

It was not going to back down quietly.

The thought came just as the Giant stopped swinging its club.

"Aren't you scared?"

Its voice had softened several times over from before. Coaxing. It even felt faintly warm, as though it were trying to be likeable.

What a talented Giant. Shifting its tone to lull someone into dropping their guard.

"Leave one behind and I'll let the rest of you live."

It said that too, bold as anything.

Through every word, Enkrid kept his eyes on the Giant's eyes alone.

Somewhere in that, he felt a small pang of guilt toward Krais.

'Similar, but different.'

The biggest difference?

The presence of lies.

The Giant's eyes looked like they relished deceiving others, tormenting them through a long string of falsehoods. A base, contemptible cruelty. Sadistic pleasure. There was something almost rotten about it.

There was also a sharp smell coming off the Giant, the kind that clung to those who had eaten human flesh.

"That so?"

Enkrid asked, eyes still narrowed.

"It is. I swear it on the name of Banatuur."

The Giant did not move a muscle as it spoke. Not even a fingertip.

"Understood."

Enkrid answered in kind, his own posture equally still.

Two figures, mouths moving while their bodies did nothing.

They were speaking and watching each other at the same time, neither easing their guard for even a moment.

Giant Banatuur knew the other had not been fooled.

"You mocking me?"

Suddenly it snapped, lunging forward. A feint.

Enkrid watched it and thought of Vallen's mercenary swordplay.

This was exactly that.

The methods of deception differed, but the underlying approach was the same. And right now was no different.

Lunging, pounding the earth with a crash, charging forward, then stopping cleanly mid-stride and bringing the club down in a controlled strike.

BOOM.

That sound tore at his ears.

Even holding back, packed with caution, a swing that was all surface and no real commitment still carried enough raw force to rip through the air.

A Giant was a Giant for a reason.

Either way, it was calm.

Enkrid was calm too.

Threatened with being eaten, offered a deal for his life, none of it moved him. Heart of the Beast. The composure it had built into him kept him steady, kept him clear.

Aker, which had been aimed forward, swept upward at an angle.

Sword met club. The blade caught the club and angled against it.

Like pressing a plank of wood with a plane, Aker's edge rode the surface of the club and redirected it.

The thorns embedded in the dark-brown surface broke free with a rapid cracking sound, splintering off.

From there, the Giant shifted its weight to its right foot and kicked outward with its left.

The wind from that kick sent the broken thorns flying off Aker's blade like thrown projectiles.

Enkrid turned his body sideways in a smooth pivot and let them pass.

As he moved, he switched Aker to his left hand and brought it down across the Giant's shin.

Thwack.

The blade struck the guard wrapped around its shin, something like a bracer or sleeve, but there was no give of flesh. No sense of skin splitting.

Still, something solid was clearly in there, and cutting through it was real.

"Aagh!"

The Giant screamed.

Even then, Enkrid watched only its eyes. And they were the same as before.

Steady.

Still screaming, the Giant shoved its hand forward.

Faking pain as cover for an attack.

Its fingers were splayed wide, as though it believed it could snap anything it grabbed.

It probably could. A Giant's brute strength was a weapon in itself.

They were a species that crushed boulders with their bare hands.

There was something packed inside the cloth-wrapped bracer around its shin, hidden protection. From the outside it looked like a fur sleeve, but it was nothing of the sort.

Deception.

The scream had not been from pain either. It was performed.

More deception.

And holding out the empty hand rather than the club hand, that was an invitation to grapple, an intent to grab and destroy written plainly on its face.

Go ahead and grab me. I'll lose my head trying to get hold of you, and once I do I'll crush you.

That intention was obvious. And also a deception.

Enkrid registered every layer of it in the same instant and responded.

The Giant takes the sword to its shin, screams, reaches forward.

In the gap between those movements, the club, now missing its thorns, came swinging down from overhead. No thundering crash this time, no shredding of air. Fast and clean. The first swing had been deliberate, angled to catch the wind broadly. This one had the club tilted to cut through air instead.

'Out.'

Enkrid breathed out briefly, then held still.

'Focus Point.'

Time slowed.

His senses swept outward and caught everything at once.

Vitality surged through his entire body. Grounded in Will, Enkrid moved.

Right hand extended flat and rigid as a blade, striking outward. Left hand driving Aker upward.

At the same moment, he stepped forward and planted his foot on the back of the Giant's foot.

Thwack, crack, crunch.

The Hand Blade broke the Giant's wrist. The foot crushed the bones of its instep. Aker drove straight through the center of the club and split it open.

Wood fragments rained down as the club cracked in two.

"GRAAAAAH!"

Only then did the Giant scream for real.

That was the truth.

Enkrid pulled Aker back and stepped away.

The Giant was not finished. It released the club and swung its fist.

A blow that would have been lethal if it connected tore through empty air.

"Damn it."

The Giant cursed.

That was the truth too.

Enkrid looked at the tears gathering at the corners of its eyes.

Those were real as well.

He was satisfied.

* * *

While Enkrid kept one Giant occupied, Rem had already killed the other two.

Those fights did not take long.

At first they had traded weapon techniques at mid-range. Then Rem stepped inside their reach.

The two Giants reached out with hands and feet, and Rem swept them aside, pushed through, and opened new mouths in their stomachs with his axe.

One died leaking its intestines out through the gap Rem had made. The other lasted a while longer with a hand-axe buried in its skull before it finally went still.

Purple blood splattered across the ground.

Watching a Giant keep charging after taking an axe to the head, you had to admit their vitality was something else.

Even so, nothing could live with its guts poured out and its skull split all the way through.

The three Giants had been unlucky. Of all the opponents they could have crossed paths with.

"What are you?"

Rem walked over from the rough fight and asked.

Since only the Giant whose wrist Enkrid had broken and whose foot he had crushed was still alive, the question was clearly aimed at it.

It blinked. Seemed to be turning the question over.

"Why are things like you here? You don't live in a place like this."

Rem asked again.

Giant Banatuur blinked.

"Urgh, it hurts. Why are you asking me that."

Playing dumb again.

Enkrid had not been the only one to notice.

Rem did not bother pointing it out. He pulled out a dagger and pressed it under the Giant's eye.

Ruagarne used her whip as a rope and bound both its arms.

Getting that close was still dangerous, even so.

But this was Rem, so it was fine.

He was not the type to get caught by that kind of cheap trick.

Sure enough, even kneeling, Rem held the dagger level with the Giant's eyes, which were still a little higher than his, while pressing the sole of his foot against the Giant's thigh.

If things went wrong, that foot would shatter the femur.

"I'll start with your eyes. Any preference after that? I can also start with the ones hanging in the middle, that tends to come up sooner or later during these things anyway. Either way, I can keep you alive for at least two days."

Jaxon would be a master at this. He had given that impression more than once.

What about Rem? If it was necessary, he would do it.

He might not be a master, but cutting people apart enough times would deepen anyone's understanding of how a body worked.

Giants were not Demon Creatures with four hearts.

They were close enough to human.

"Wait, if I talk, will you let me live?"

Something about this struck Enkrid as strange.

He had not seen many Giants, but they were not called Red-Blooded Beasts for nothing.

A species born for battle. A savage fighting instinct that refused to yield even knowing it would lose.

That was what a Giant was. That was what he had always understood.

The Giants he had seen during his mercenary years on real battlefields had been like unstoppable battering rams.

The image of one bleeding from wounds all over its body and still driving straight at a squad armed with crossbows was burned into his memory.

"Ha, see! You just have to keep pushing through!"

That mad Giant had laughed and mocked the others while pulling off the only tactic it alone could manage.

Of course, not every human was the same, and not every Frog was the same. Not every Giant would be the same, either.

But this was crossing a line.

One hand and one foot broken, and it was already rolling over? A Giant? Its wrists were wrapped in the whip, yes, but it could still fight back if it wanted to.

And yet here it was.

Rem pressed the dagger further under the Giant's eye. A thin stream of purple blood ran down. Holding it there, Rem spoke.

"I'll give you a clean death."

No lies. That was Rem.

"Terrible humans," the Giant said.

The kind whose head worked but whose tongue had atrophied from disuse, maybe.

Its speech was still slow and thick, words rolling up from somewhere deep like sound from the bottom of a cave, and if it slurred even a little, whole sentences became nearly impossible to follow.

Listening now confirmed it.

"Damn it all, what's good about a land where they don't keep their promises. What a load."

Something like that, anyway. Even that was half guesswork from context. More than half was lost.

"All things by the will of the divine."

Then without warning the Giant drove its own head toward Rem's dagger.

Of course Rem was not going to let that happen. He pulled the blade back and hit the Giant across the cheekbone with the fist gripping the handle.

Thwack.

The Giant's head snapped back.

Ruagarne tightened her arms. Veins rose along her smooth Frog forearms.

"That hurts!" the Giant shouted.

"Did you think I was hitting you for your own enjoyment?" Rem said.

He flipped the dagger so the blade faced forward again and drove it into the Giant's eye.

Not a trace of hesitation in the motion.

Thud.

"GRAAAAA."

Another scream.

A real one this time.

The Giant surrendered on the spot.

"This land is now ours. We were told to make it so."

"Who told you?"

"The great prophet."

Most of it was barely decipherable no matter how many times they asked.

A few more questions, and then it was clear there was nothing left to learn.

Thud.

Rem cut the Giant's throat with the dagger. Blood surged out, a deep purple, close to violet.

"Don't know exactly what's going on here, but we'll need to go further to find out," Rem said.

"I'd recommend you not follow."

He said it again, and Enkrid remembered the moment Rem had told him to go deeper into the Cursed Ground without any real explanation.

He had said it, and Rem had followed.

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