A Knight who Eternally Regresses - Chapter 471

WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 471: It's All Rem's Fault

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The first thing Enkrid noticed was three girls playing with a length of rope twisted from tree bark, and one boy.

The three girls were playing together, and the boy had appointed himself a nuisance. He stuck his foot out and tripped one of the girls, then bolted.

"Stop that!"

The girl's eyes flew upward in a furious scowl.

She looked genuinely furious, the same expression Arath wore whenever she swung her axe at Rem.

The boy's feet flew. He shot between two large tents like a dart. Quick feet. You could tell he had been running and playing since he could walk.

His lean build made him look even faster.

"Little brat, not even worth a Velopter taking a bite out of."

The girl still gripping the rope glared wide-eyed. Most adults here had some kind of marking drawn on their faces, but the children were bare-skinned, which only made their complexions look cleaner.

Young skin was clearer anyway.

Copper-brown eyes flashed sharp and fierce above lightly tanned skin.

She had been in the middle of a perfectly good game when the interruption came. If he got caught, it would not end with just a single scratch.

Enkrid could see what the boy actually wanted. Kids that age were all like that. He had only been trying to grab their attention with a bit of mischief.

Four men working leather nearby watched and laughed.

"One of these days you're going to snap something doing that."

"Don't run, stand your ground, boy. Better to just take the hit."

"If she catches you, you'll get it worse."

They were teasing. They laughed, but to Enkrid it looked like a cheerless kind of laughter.

The boy poked just his head out from the gap between two large tents and called back.

"Only if she catches me."

The men kept needling him, saying he could not spend his whole life running. The boy did not bother listening.

As Enkrid watched, a sound came from behind, the deep, rattling call of a mount.

He had already felt it approaching.

"Hiyah."

A child came riding up on a Velopter. Enkrid turned around.

The child sat atop a young Velopter, its scales still soft and unset, its body low to the ground. The two of them were at nearly the same eye level.

"Do not block the path of a hero."

The child announced this. Enkrid stepped aside without argument.

Past the child came a large ox pulling a loaded cart, roughly the same height as the child on the Velopter.

"Whoa, let's go around this one."

The child tapped the Velopter's neck and steered around the ox.

The Velopter shifted sideways.

A fully grown bull, big enough to cave in most people's ribs if it charged, but its bright, gentle eyes looked nothing like something about to lose its temper. The man leading it paused briefly to let the child pass.

Beyond them, all kinds of people filled Enkrid's view.

A woman walking with a woven wooden basket on her back, herbs piled inside. A man drying grass in the sun. An old man running a long pole against a work knife, shaping something. A one-armed man holding leather under his foot and stitching with careful, unhurried focus, his empty sleeve hanging loose.

"Feels warm."

Enkrid took a slow look around and said so.

There was a heaviness somewhere underneath it all, but the place was alive.

"Told you it was a good place."

Rem answered from beside him.

Right. He had said that.

Not plentiful, but peaceful.

Enkrid saw it the same way. A pastoral scene. Something about the place carried the smell of simplicity and warmth.

Meh-eh-eh.

Sheep bleated.

Moo-oo-oo.

Cattle lowed.

There were a few horses too, but all of them had short legs and thick bodies, bred for hauling loads, not for speed.

Was it because there was no use for riding horses out here, and only the work horses had survived?

The West had wild horses too, apparently, but people here did not bother taming and riding them.

Tents stretched in rows with open lots scattered between them. This was one of those lots.

A dozen Velopters rested with their short forelegs folded beneath them, heads buried in buckets, eating.

Those were the mounts of the western people.

One vertical slit pupil turned toward Enkrid with idle curiosity.

The creature clicked and rasped, its scales shifting.

They were cold-blooded, which meant a drop in temperature would kill them outright. That was why Velopters could only be found here.

The West was land that had never seen snow, warm, generally. Hot, really.

Even now, sweat ran freely. But step into the shade with a breeze and it cooled fast enough.

Not everyone here wore a bright face.

A one-armed man was just wiping sweat from his forehead, starting to grin sheepishly, when a woman walked past him in the opposite direction with an expression like the world was ending.

Gray eyes and short gray hair, the same color as Rem's.

She moved with a grass basket in hand, her face utterly grave, gaze fixed somewhere far ahead as though walking straight through everything around her.

She looked slightly unhinged.

Gray smoke curled up from wherever she was headed.

She passed. Three children stepped out of her way, watched her go for a moment, then burst back into smiles and returned to their game.

They had laid the rope out long and were taking turns jumping over it according to some pattern with its own rules.

They were absorbed in it. Whatever it was, it clearly had their full attention.

Tents, people, everyone bent over their own small tasks.

At a glance, most of them looked similar.

Lean muscle carved by steady work and limited food made them look that way.

There was visible want all around, holes in tents, thin supplies, things you could read at a glance. A few worried faces, but most seemed to be making their peace with things in their own way.

"Strange to you?"

Rem said.

Enkrid said nothing and turned it over quietly in his mind.

Aoara came to mind, for no particular reason.

She had wanted laughing children to run and play in her city.

This was that.

People with less, and content with it.

Seeing this, he understood now why Rem had said these people held no interest for him.

They were savoring the life they had right now.

They lived in the present. It seemed to be in their nature.

Their group was obviously outsiders, standing in a corner of the lot, and no one paid them any great attention.

A few passersby glanced over, that was all.

Though a small cluster of children did gather at a distance to stare at Ruagarne, wide-eyed with curiosity.

"A frog."

"A frog person."

First Frog they had ever seen, clearly.

Luckily, Frogs did not think of themselves as frogs, and words like that did not make them angry. Frogs were not the type to start trouble as long as you steered clear of things tied to their purposes, or the word heart.

All of it together made for a peculiar atmosphere.

A life of settling rather than striving. Or more precisely, a tendency to let things run as they will.

Enkrid got that feeling from the whole of the moving tent city.

It did not sit badly with him.

Rem had warned it might feel unpleasant, but you could not force your own values and way of living onto others.

Just as you could respect someone's dream, he thought, you could respect the way others chose to live.

That was life, was it not.

Everyone alike and yet different, different and yet alike.

The differences born from continent, people, and tradition were nothing he needed to reject.

Besides, this place was not made of only one kind of person.

You only had to look at Rem to see that.

Not everyone here would be content to stand still.

"Wait, who's that? Someone came?"

A few people called out in recognition as the group passed.

Plenty of eyes caught Rem, naturally.

"Is that Rem?"

"Is it actually Rem or someone doing an impression?"

"Didn't Rem die?"

"I heard Arath died. No, wait, didn't someone say she killed someone?"

That last one was the most memorable. A man with gray eyes, lighter than Rem's.

Rem's wife, Arath, turned toward that and nodded.

"I will soon."

It sounded completely sincere, which made it unsettling.

"What have you been telling people?"

Rem said it, and Arath smiled for the first time. One corner of her mouth pulled up, and the smile went past unsettling into something that felt genuinely ominous.

It touched everyone's survival instinct.

"This is all Rem's fault."

Ruagarne said it. Since when had she been so quick?

"Agreed."

Dunbakel chimed in.

"Rem, apologize."

Enkrid was not far behind.

However he looked at it, Arath clearly held no small amount of sway here. They could easily leave this place without having eaten a single bite. If she told them to get out, they would have to go. No one looked likely to bother listening to Rem's opinion.

"What do you people even know?"

Rem sounded genuinely baffled and looked around at them.

Nothing. But it is your fault. Unconditionally.

Enkrid conveyed this with his eyes.

"You've got spine, at least."

Arath showed a flicker of approval. The first impression had been a disaster because of Rem, but things had improved slightly.

Taking Arath's side like that apparently pushed Rem to mutter that fighting a losing battle was pointless from the start.

With the mood softening a little, Enkrid turned to Rem.

"Go apologize. Bow your head once every three steps."

"How about you just shut up and wait here."

Rem said it with genuine irritation, so Enkrid left it alone.

"I need to go see the Tribal Chief, so wait here."

Rem drew a breath and said it. He looked far more at ease than he had when facing Arath.

Seeing the Tribal Chief apparently gave him no concern at all.

The things they had all said about going west came back to Enkrid. The only thing Rem had actually been dreading was the moment he would have to face his wife.

"Go on then."

Enkrid answered, and Juol stepped up and showed them to a place to rest, a tent tucked into a corner.

The West had a seated culture, so instead of chairs, wide cloth was spread on the ground to sit on. Inside the tent, the same kind of wide cloth had been laid out.

"You can wait here."

Juol said it, and Enkrid nodded.

The floor was padded with thick stuffing. Quite soft.

Enkrid set his pack down to one side. It was a heavy pack, a thick cloak, wooden dishes and eating utensils, and various other things. Putting it down felt like lifting a stone off his shoulders.

Light enough now that his body wanted to move.

He had done plenty of thinking on the way here, and there were things from his fights against the Giants that felt almost within reach.

He got up, took his sword, and went out in front of the tent. Behind him, Dunbakel called out.

"Where are you going?"

"To loosen up."

"Ask someone later about this smell, will you? What are they burning? It's been bothering me."

The sharp nose of a Beastfolk.

Enkrid nodded and asked back.

"Doesn't the smell coming off you bother you?"

"That one's kind of exhilarating when you get used to it."

Enkrid nearly reached out without thinking. His right hand had come halfway up. His left hand had already found the Gladius on his sword belt.

He stopped there and reined himself in. What was patience, after all, but the will to hold back.

Enkrid's willpower came through once again.

He had nearly acted like Rem for a moment, though it was not entirely his fault.

Dunbakel's provocations had a way of evaporating whatever reason a person kept in their head.

What made it worse was that she never meant to.

"Leave it. If hitting her would make her listen, she'd have listened long ago."

Ruagarne offered that piece of Frog-like insight.

She had weathered Rem's fists without changing at all, so in a certain sense Dunbakel was without equal when it came to sheer stubbornness.

"I know."

Enkrid answered and stepped out. Ruagarne followed.

Standing in front of the tent, he swung his sword to clear his head.

Swing, whip, swing, whip.

Once slow, once fast. Then repeat.

He had looked around enough, and the large tent nearby blocked the view anyway, so there was nothing left to see.

The eyes that had been quietly watching the group from a distance were gone too.

The children, and everyone not buried in their own work, had each glanced over at least once, but no one seemed particularly invested.

Enkrid let a few more swings clear the surface noise, then sank inward.

Today, built on all that repetition. Something learned watching Aoara.

He turned it over, revisited it.

The experience from fighting the Giants, piled on top.

"Keep fighting for real without coming back to the basics, and sooner or later your balance shifts without you realizing it and your form starts to break. That's why you can't let your daily training go slack."

Words from a mercenary deep in his own training.

Most of the teachers Enkrid had met at Training Schools agreed.

"Obvious, isn't it. What you drill every day is what comes out when you stop thinking."

Ruagarne had nodded along with that too.

Ragna, Rem, Jaxon, and Audin had all said something similar.

Not that it was particularly useful coming from all of them.

Ragna had insulted the very word training by saying that at the bare minimum you needed to swing your sword three or four times a day. Jaxon had implied everyone else was an idiot by saying if you trained it in your head, reproducing it with your body was easy. Rem just said to swing however felt right, which drove home the gap in natural talent in the most depressing way possible.

Audin, at least, genuinely emphasized training. The Isolation Technique he had taught made daily practice the foundation of everything.

Not that Audin lacked talent. He simply never stopped working on his body.

The moment the Isolation Technique came to mind, a wave of nausea nearly rose in Enkrid's throat.

When he was first learning it, he had done it three times a day, morning, noon, and night, and that was what came back to him now.

He had called it the three-repetition method back then. His body had hurt so badly he felt like he was dying. Moving a single finger had been a struggle.

But if someone asked whether he resented Audin for it, Enkrid would shake his head.

That process, those grinding days stacked one on top of the other, had given him the strength to swing a sword like this.

"I heard you came with Rem."

The voice pulled him back up.

He had not gone deep, not the way he sank when he dropped fully into Focus Point. This was just the state that sometimes came during training: a kind of running absorption where his thoughts kept moving while his body kept doing what it was doing.

He had felt the approach, too. No killing intent, no fighting spirit, so he had left it alone.

Enkrid's gaze moved forward.

A middle-aged woman. She held a long thin pipe to her lips, drew on it, and blew a puff of smoke. Tobacco. The smoke carried a sharp, peppery bite.

"What is someone burning?"

Dunbakel poked her head out of the tent, nose twitching.

Instead of answering, Enkrid looked at the two westerners standing behind the woman.

Brown hair, similar faces. Twins.

"You said you wanted to spar. Rem told us. That's why we're here."

Puff. A curl of tobacco smoke drifted past his face. Still sharp, still peppery.

Somewhere underneath it, Enkrid caught a faint sweetness.

Whether it was actually there, he could not say, but it felt like it was.

The sparring partners had arrived.