WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 469: They Already Knew Each Other

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Violet blood soaking his clothes. A dagger in hand. A high sky still full of cool wind and billowing clouds.

And amid all of that, three Giant corpses that felt wholly out of place.

It would be dangerous. Instinct sent up the warning.

Which was exactly why turning back was not an option.

"Right, let's go have a look."

Enkrid said it.

It sounded like a non sequitur. But the intent was plain enough. He was going with Rem.

"If you go, I go."

Ruagarne said it, and then:

"Fine. I'll grace you with my company."

Dunbakel said it like she was doing everyone a favor.

Rem looked at Enkrid.

Would he really go just because that man said so? That was not who Rem was. When it came to stubbornness, he was second to none on the continent.

Could that stubbornness be broken?

Not a chance.

Rem reached his conclusion in an instant and answered.

"Alright. Let's go."

They set out again.

After finding the three Giants, Rem tracked down signs of a settlement.

"What in the hell."

Rem said it under his breath.

Torn tent canvas, a punctured pot rolling on the ground, wide flat stones, all of it visible from where they stood.

There was almost no blood. Almost no smell of it either.

The settlement sat on slightly elevated ground, a low ridge compared to the surrounding land.

At its center stood the remains of a large bonfire.

The marks of burned-down shelters.

Nearby lay a heap of half-burned tent cloth, strips of hide, and dry timber, and at the center of it all sat a large pot.

Beside the pot were a few bones that, no matter how you looked at them, had come from a person.

Rem's expression had gone tight in a way it rarely did.

He scooped up a handful of dirt, smelled it, then looked around.

"No particular traces."

No shattered Palisade. No broken bow staves or spear shafts.

Too little evidence for a fight. That was Rem's read.

Too many things nagged at him. But nothing here could be pinned down with certainty.

Looking at the remains of a Palisade made of wood that had held some special resin, Rem spoke.

"This is where people I know were supposed to be. Or, where they should have been."

"And now they're not."

Enkrid said it while scanning the ground.

Finding traces beyond the three Giants was hard. So what had those three Giants meant by a prophet?

"Right. And three Giants. Something's off, their blood was off, the fact that there are so few Demon Creatures around is off."

Rem muttered it like he was talking to himself, axes set aside, arms folded.

Just because it was the west didn't mean there were no Demon Creatures.

Out here, you'd see unusual monsters rarely found elsewhere on the continent.

Sandworms, white shaggy things that mimicked human voices, Ratmen. Rem had said those were common enough.

On the other hand, the dry climate meant Lizardmen and crocodile-type creatures were hard to come by.

In the meantime, they'd spotted a few wild Velopters.

Short mouths, bodies covered in scales instead of fur, stubby forelegs and long hind legs.

He'd watched one run. It was nearly as fast as a decent horse.

He had his doubts about whether something like that could be tamed.

Word was that some people in the west rode them, so there had to be some trick to it.

"Let's move."

Rem dusted off his hands.

The Giants had attacked the settlement. It was possible, but the people who had lived here were not the kind to be taken down so easily.

Which meant there was a situation he didn't know about.

Rem took a step.

The group moved again.

One settlement stood empty, but the road Rem knew had not changed. The road was still there.

Enkrid walked with his head lifted. For a moment the clouds seemed to be moving faster.

He'd heard that when rain came to this region it came down in a fury, and the rest of the time it almost never rained at all.

In air like this, rain was hard to imagine.

A rough, scratchy wind, you might call it. By Enkrid's experience, this was a day with no hint of rain on it at all.

Ruagarne followed behind and said:

"It's awfully dry out here."

It was actually pleasant enough for a person, but for Ruagarne it was uncomfortable.

She kept drinking from her water supply.

"Drink it all. We'll arrive tonight."

Rem said it, and Ruagarne nodded.

Every so often a dusty, ochre-tinged wind swept through, and after it passed, a clean cool breeze with no dust in it would follow.

Moving forward like that, Rem spoke up.

"People around here don't much like change."

He was scanning the surroundings as he talked. Enkrid thought he might be looking for more Giant tracks, but no, he was just navigating.

His landmarks were ridgelines, boulders, large trees.

Things that didn't change.

Things that held their place through a storm.

The scenery was imposing. Grand, even.

If a person lived here, they would be nothing more than a speck.

Here and there across the ochre earth, patches of grass clung on, and stretches of gray stone ground broke through. There were chunks of sandstone too, grit compressed into rock, worn and hollowed by years of wind.

Those would be hard to use as landmarks.

Taking in the surroundings, Enkrid asked:

"What do you mean?"

"There are wars, and we fight each other, but when it comes down to it, they reject any real big change. Wander this land, fight, struggle, die, that's all there is. They want to live believing it's all fate."

Rem had a tendency to go flat when he talked about something he truly despised.

Whether he knew it himself, Enkrid couldn't say, but Enkrid had noticed.

When Rem raised his voice getting angry at Jaxon or Ragna, that was fine. That was ordinary anger.

But speaking low while reaching for an axe was a different sign entirely.

Lately it had been a common sight, after Ragna kept beating him.

"Beats me what the appeal is."

Rem said it. Without even needing to think, Enkrid answered at once. The content was earnest, but the tone drifted along easy and light.

That was fine.

He moved forward because he believed in something. If he'd lived worrying what other people thought, he would not have lived like this at all.

It was a question that compressed his whole life and threw it back at him, so even said lightly, it was not a light thing.

"What's it to anyone?"

Rem's stride stopped dead.

"That's true enough."

Rem muttered it to himself and walked on.

Because some way of living was supposed to be right, because everyone agreed on it, did that mean you had to live that way? That living like that was the right answer? That life had a right answer at all?

No. If there was something you wanted, didn't you just go take it?

That was exactly the kind of person Enkrid was.

Rem was not so different.

Which was why he'd broken out of the west.

To seize a life for himself.

For enjoyment.

To keep moving forward.

Because he didn't want to stop in place and be ground down into a block of sandstone by the western wind.

He had a past where he'd run from responsibility and duty. He acknowledged that.

Acknowledging it was also what made it possible to go back.

That had set the course of Rem's path now.

It was a feeling. A mood. A Will.

When he'd been learning Sorcery, he'd sometimes hit on something like a realization. This felt the same.

Rem called back something he'd forgotten, a mindset he'd arrived at some time after leaving the west.

"We walk through the night. Anyone who can't keep up, put your hand down before I break it, Dunbakel."

"I wasn't raising it. My armpit itched."

Dunbakel was damp or dry or indifferent in equal measure. A truly oblivious Beastfolk. About all she ever said was that wide-open terrain made her uncomfortable.

Maybe it was because it looked like the broad plains where Beastfolk lived.

"Try washing once in a while."

Rem said it, looking at her.

"You'd be hard-pressed to find a Beastfolk who washes as well as I do."

Dunbakel answered with full confidence.

Naturally, Enkrid didn't believe her. Neither did Rem. Neither did Ruagarne.

"Anyone who can't keep up, climb on someone's back."

Rem said it carelessly and kept walking, long, steady strides, out of the wild-looking plain and across a dirt path, through a short stretch of grass, with a ridgeline to the left.

The ridge was packed with porous, gap-riddled stone.

It might have been volcanic country once. A faint geothermal warmth rose from the ground, and the surrounding area looked pressed down under a layer of basalt.

'From a distance it probably looks like a lava Giant stamped its foot down.'

Through acquired training and the Sensory Technique, Enkrid had developed a kind of synesthetic perception. Looking at the stone shapes and the hollowed basin, he could picture what the whole terrain looked like from above.

They walked through the night.

A few Demon Creatures jumped out along the way.

Ratmen. Rat-headed monsters with long protruding claws. Dunbakel swept through them one after another with her curved blade.

"My turn!"

She knew perfectly well that Demon Creature blood would mean washing up, so the moment her blade connected she stepped sideways immediately.

Classic hit-and-withdraw.

Not a drop of blood on her, and the Demon Creatures dealt with.

Dunbakel's skills had improved noticeably from before. That was how it looked to Enkrid's eye.

So how would she fare against one of the Giants from earlier?

He could have held his own against one, but...'Dunbakel wins. Our odds would be much better.'

Of course, in an actual fight, odds were a funny thing.

Not letting training slip raised your chances of surviving, but it was never absolute.

'Am I rating Dunbakel too high?'

Should he push her harder to give her something to strive for?

Dunbakel didn't look like she was thinking about much of anything.

Something did seem to have shifted since she'd been showered with praise on that last battlefield, but.

'She'll figure it out herself.'

It was not Enkrid's concern. Dunbakel would carve her own path and walk it.

"Leave them. The vultures or the hyenas will clean it up."

Rem looked over the dead Magic Beasts and said it, then kept walking.

Moving along like that, he glanced to the side. The ground was packed with blade-shaped rocks.

Sharp, hard stone bristling everywhere. Naturally treacherous terrain.

Enkrid scanned the surroundings.

To the right, scattered patches of grassland. Short-grassed earth. A few sheep grazing there without a care.

Sheep?

Sheep, out here?

There were cattle too.

And among them, a few people.

They had walked through the night, so dawn was just breaking.

Sunlight and cloud, the light dry air particular to the west, all of it layered together and lit up the area.

The sun reached in and wrapped around the gray-and-ochre land. It felt peaceful.

With almost no fog to block the view, nothing interrupted the line of sight.

The sunlight added color to everything around them.

After the gray and ochre came pale brown, deep brown, faint green grass, overall the gray-and-ochre combination had green working its way in, but it was not discordant.

Four people were clustered among the sheep and cattle, and one stepped out from the middle of them.

Someone might have expected wariness, but the figure glanced at the group and walked straight toward them without hesitation.

"When I read the clouds, nothing said an enemy was coming."

Tall, broad-shouldered, powerfully built, with a voice that was relatively thin for that frame.

The figure wore armor bristling with fur all over. Not the kind of fur clothing worn for warmth; the fur itself seemed to serve as the armor.

Hair braided back and hanging long. The color was a light brown.

Strangely, the footsteps made almost no sound. Something was packed under the boots.

Enkrid clocked it just by watching.

A hunter? At minimum, someone who hunted regularly. That was how it looked.

The approaching figure's eyes swept across everyone except Rem, one by one.

Probing? Wary? Something between the two, maybe.

On top of that, something faint and steady radiated off of her.

'Flowing lava.'

On the surface it moved slowly, but touch it by accident and you'd catch fire instantly and burn from head to toe. That kind of lava.

Tightly reined-in, scorching fury held still.

The gaze started with Enkrid, passed to Dunbakel, then landed on Ruagarne.

Touched and moved on.

It did not linger on Enkrid's face.

Dusty from the road and grimy from the travel, yes, but clearly a face that was pleasant to look at, yet she paid it no mind at all and looked away.

Then she asked:

"Which side?"

A question thrown out with no lead-up.

"What are you talking about?"

The answer that came back was Rem's, and unbelievably, he sounded almost cowed.

Rem, cowed?

It wasn't the fact that they seemed to know each other that was surprising. It was that he seemed cowed.

Enkrid glanced around briefly.

It could have been one of the Boatman's dreams.

There was no Boatman. No mirage-like illusion either.

This was real. His senses said so.

"I'm asking why you left home."

The powerfully built woman spoke again.

Rem did not answer right away.

Taking the two of them in, Enkrid felt something wake up in his instincts. His mind started turning. A chain of reasoning drew itself out and arrived at a conclusion.

'Do you really have to come with me?'

'You don't have to, you know?'

'Why go the long way when I could make it faster alone?'

The reason Rem had been dragging his feet.

'Going now might get us killed. No, it'll definitely get us killed.'

The reason he had absolutely refused to leave while his body was still injured.

The reason he had shown something almost like fear, which was not like him at all.

The unmistakable reluctance even while saying he was going back to collect something he'd left behind.

The answer to all of it was standing right in front of them.

"Hey. Husband. Say something, damn it."

The western warrior's hand moved to the axe at her hip.

She was Rem's wife.

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