WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 470: Rem the Woman

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The braided hair swayed, independent of the wind.

That happened because the other person had moved.

A woman shining in deep brown against a gray world.

There was a vitality to her, something that pulsed.

Put another way, the motion of drawing the axe from her hip looked light and easy, like dancing.

Then came a vertical downward chop.

Enkrid's gaze followed the axe.

No hesitation.

It was not quite killing intent, but the will to split something open somewhere was plain to see.

Past the falling axe, splitting down like through firewood, her eyes drew a long line.

The axe carved through the air, moving toward its purpose, to split Rem's skull.

Words like "you bastard" and worse reached his ears at the same moment.

There was not even half a breath of margin, but naturally, Rem reacted. The axe in his hand went out to meet his partner's axe.

Clang. Skrrk.

Ruagarne's and Dunbakel's eyes darted back and forth.

It was because of what happened when the axe blades met. Their gazes followed the exchange between the two axes on their own.

Enkrid watched with comparatively calm eyes. Each detail was visible to him.

The two axes caught against each other and sprang apart. That was thanks to Rem subtly twisting his wrist.

"Hmph!"

Rem's wife snorted.

She pulled the rebounding axe back with the strength of her arm alone.

Leather cord was wrapped tight around the middle of her forearm, and as her muscles expanded, the cord looked like it was sinking into her flesh.

Like that, the axe leveled out horizontal to the ground and aimed for Rem's jaw.

"Arath."

Rem said it lightly as he twisted to dodge. The woman called Arath answered with the axe.

She thrust the blade forward, pushing it straight at him. Rem caught it with his bare palm and shoved it to the side.

That one's Audin's.

Enkrid recognized it at a glance. What Rem had just shown was a variation of the body deflection technique.

Done with a bare hand.

Enkrid could beat Rem in a fight, but he could not pick up something like that at a glance and copy it on the spot.

A difference in talent. You needed both the knack for it and the body to carry it out.

Of course, the Enkrid of today could bat aside a blade with his bare hand well enough, but could he do it improvised like that? Probably not.

It had not been thought out. It came from instinct. Rem's hand had simply moved that way.

Not that Enkrid felt anything particular about it. No special impression. He simply noted the trick behind that hand motion because it was unusual, and stored it away.

Might be worth practicing later.

Deflecting, striking, flowing, that kind of hand motion.

"I chose my partner, and I swear on my axe I have not scattered my affections anywhere else."

Rem said it. His tone was even.

When her axe missed, the woman called Arath slowly set it back at her hip and spoke.

"Fine. Let it go for now."

"A smelly Beastfolk, a Frog on top of that, and one of them is even a man."

Rem added.

It was his answer to the question of whether he had taken up with another woman somewhere. You could piece together the context from that.

Rem's words sounded very much like excuses, but they were the truth.

"If you need a witness, I can do it."

Enkrid stepped in.

The power of friendship. Payment for fighting with his life on the line all this time. A word raised by Will.

"I don't know who you are, but stay out of it. Not unless you want a new decoration on your head."

Enkrid decided to respect her opinion.

Dunbakel had been about to say Rem was not her type, but she closed her mouth.

The woman in front of her did not look like someone who spoke idly.

Ruagarne cast an interested look.

Female Rem.

That was how she looked to her.

Dunbakel took it in much the same way.

Two brainless axes.

Enkrid was the same.

She's a female Rem.

Female Rem, Arath, rested her hand on her axe and looked at Rem. In those eyes settled a thick, quiet killing intent.

"We'll talk separately later, you and me."

Rem's face went a shade darker.

"Sure."

There were things in life you simply could not avoid.

For instance, a husband who left home had an obligation to explain to the wife who had waited for him why he had gone.

When Arath's venting axe swings were over, a few other western people who had been watching approached.

They showed no sign of tension whatsoever. They knew Rem too, which was probably why.

Among them, a man with what looked like dye-painted patterns on his face came closer. Something like sharp thorns seemed to be drawn on his cheeks.

"Well, I'll be. This'd be enough to make Grime weep."

He seemed genuinely surprised.

Grime was a divine beast that lived in shadow form, something out of western mythology.

Enkrid looked the man over steadily. It was a habit by now.

Take in everything around you, understand it.

A habit formed when he first picked up a sword and started learning.

Enkrid's gaze swept over him.

His skin was tanned dark, though that looked like sun rather than his natural color, which seemed closer to reddish. The border between his hands and his sleeves showed a bit of that reddish skin underneath.

His face had prominent cheekbones and narrow eyes, but he did not look cunning. If anything, he gave off a gentle impression.

Overall, he had to be called handsome. Quite a good-looking face.

The same went for Arath. She fell into the category of beautiful.

From behind, Ruagarne's puffed-cheek sounds came through at intervals. Frogs liked attractive human faces.

An expression of satisfaction, most likely.

This seemed to be a feature of the people here. By contrast, Rem had the look of a continental man.

Why is that? Different origins.

From seeing only a few western people, Enkrid had grasped one secret of Rem's birth.

A guess, but likely a right one, when only Rem looked different among people who all resembled each other.

"Hey, long time no see."

Rem put his axe into the holster at his hip and raised a hand.

"I nearly forgot to count how many times the hailstorms came."

"Six times."

Arath counted from behind. The man nodded.

"Right, that's a long time. What have you been up to all this while?"

"First it was travel, then a campaign, recently fighting. Now I've come back to get something."

There were many words in the middle that Enkrid could not follow, but he read the situation and got the general picture.

"What are they saying?"

Dunbakel tilted her head, unable to understand.

Ruagarne, who knew the western dialect, seemed to be following along.

"Well, there's really only one thing to say at a time like this. Good to have you back, Rem."

One of the men said it.

"I figured you'd croaked somewhere, but you managed to crawl back."

Arath welcomed Rem home.

Only then did the man with the thorn pattern turn his eyes toward Enkrid.

Standing three steps away, he asked, a subtle wariness showing through.

"Are you with Rem?"

"I'm in the middle of debating whether it's better to admit I'm with him or pretend I don't know him. Could you give me a moment before I answer?"

Enkrid replied, and the man laughed.

It seemed to suit his taste in jokes.

"Funny guy. I'm Juol."

"Enkrid. From the Border Guard."

"Enkrid? That's a mouthful and the name's long."

The whole continent spoke the same language spread by the empire, but subtly different accents were very common.

The way Juol talked was the same.

When he said the name was long and hard to pronounce, that was what he meant, and that was the same kind of thing that gave rise to dialects.

"Is that so?"

Enkrid let it pass without much thought.

Rem cut in with a question.

"What's this about the settlement outside getting raided? We ran into a Giant on the way here too."

It was not that he had only just remembered. He had been catching up and only got to it now.

"Long story. Let's head inside to the Elder Bear first. Arath?"

Juol spoke, but Arath stared at Rem without expression, and the remaining western people just stood there looking on.

Enkrid watched them and roughly worked out the relationships.

Female Rem's the decision-maker. Juol would be something like a squad leader.

Close enough.

They had been a party out grazing cattle and sheep and keeping watch around the perimeter, and among them Arath was the strongest fighter.

"Fine."

Rem said.

Arath felt both glad and angry. Either way, Rem coming back right now was clearly something to be glad about.

The kind of thing where the sky god must have been lending a hand.

"We head to where the Tribal Chief of the Elder Bear is."

Shortly after, the two remaining western people whistled and drove the sheep and cattle.

Tapping long poles against the ground to line up the livestock and set them walking, the sight of it was something even the Shepherds of the Wilderness could learn a thing or two from.

Enkrid let that thought slip out as a remark, and Ruagarne puffed her cheeks and smiled.

"Grrk. The Shepherds of the Wilderness don't herd that kind of sheep. You'll understand when you see it. Go ask Fell when we're back."

"I'll do that if I'm still alive."

Enkrid nodded. The qualifier "if I'm still alive" might have sounded odd, but both Ruagarne and Dunbakel let it go without a second thought.

It was actually one of the western people listening on his left who tilted his head.

He was not sure he had heard right.

If I'm still alive? Who? A continental joke? A dialect?

It was neither, of course.

As they walked, Rem drifted over to Enkrid's side and whispered low enough that Arath, walking ahead, could not hear.

"Man, that was a close one."

"Wouldn't it have been better to just take the hit?"

Enkrid whispered back.

Would have been simpler to just let it land.

"You'd have to swing it right for me to take it."

Enkrid agreed with that too.

She was swinging with enough force to lop off a forearm.

"Rem? Is it really you? The Rem who left home back then?"

A western person who had been watching closely asked from the side.

"Yeah, that's me."

"Is it because you were cursed with the wandering spirit?"

"Who told you that?"

"Arath said so."

"And who are you?"

"I'm Ire."

Sunken cheeks, but bright eyes, and a body hard as flint from controlled eating and repeated labor.

The way he walked, tapping a long pole against the ground, marked him as someone who knew how to fight.

No aggression showed through, but the signs of training were plain.

Enkrid's eye for people had grown considerably by now, and a glance was enough to gauge someone's ability.

This was actually an area where he surpassed even Rem or Ragna.

The difference between someone who climbs a mountain by examining each step from the foot all the way up, and someone who simply sprints straight to the top.

For that reason, Enkrid read Ire's ability most accurately of all.

Take him to the Border Guard and he would probably be treated as a high-rank soldier.

Hard to say what he would be like in actual combat, but his floor was at least that high.

Real combat was something you could not know until you faced it. That had been true when he was a junior knight and when he had been a low-rank soldier in the past alike.

In a fight where lives were on the line, anything could happen.

Seen from that angle, the ability of Female Rem was considerably higher.

She looked to be somewhere around Squire level at minimum.

Rem answered the young man's question.

"It's nothing like that."

Explaining what happened back then would take a while, and it was not something to say to a kid who knew nothing.

"Hmph!"

From up ahead, Arath snorted.

The whispers might not have reached her, but the conversation just now she would have caught all of.

Female Rem had sharp ears.

As they kept walking, patches of grassland appeared here and there, and groups of western people tending livestock came into view.

Everyone looked up when they spotted the group.

An obvious outsider moving through was impossible to miss.

Among those glances were a few that recognized Rem.

Walking like that, a sharp, acrid smell reached them from somewhere. Not a pleasant smell at all.

Enkrid glanced to the side and saw Dunbakel's nose twitching.

If his own nose had caught it, Dunbakel would have smelled it first.

"What does it smell like to you?"

"Like a few kinds of grass gathered up and burned."

Rem also seemed to catch the smell and lifted his head.

Far off, gray smoke was rising into the air.

"Something happened."

Rem said.

"Go inside and we'll see."

Arath replied in a blunt tone. She still seemed angry. Would that anger ever go away? Enkrid thought that as he kept walking.

A gentle slope of highlands blocked the way ahead, and past it opened a wide clearing.

"Outsiders, now there's something we haven't seen in a while. Welcome, strangers who have crossed the boundary."

Juol said.

The clearing was thick with tents. Round shapes, angular shapes, and others.

Counting them all looked like it would take a good long while.

There were just as many people. A large-scale settlement of several hundred gathered together.

A western city, in other words.

"In continental terms the city's name would be something like Elder Bear. Something like that. We're all descended from the bear goddess who became human. There's a myth like that."

It was something Rem had told him before they arrived.

There were myths about a bear that killed a giant snake, and myths about a crowd of animals gathering in a cave and transforming into people.

There was also a saying that the first people born from a bear were the origin of the western peoples, he had said.

That had come alongside the note that the myths passed down differed by tribe.

The sight of the western city Rem had told him about came into Enkrid's eyes.

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