A Knight who Eternally Regresses - Chapter 473

WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 473: Enkrid Found Their Conversation Hard to Follow

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Enkrid found it hard to follow their conversation.

"Should I call it the return of the prodigal son?"

The Tribal Chief greeted Rem warmly when he saw him. He knew what Rem was capable of, and having a man worth calling a hero return in times like these meant something. That said, it was not a situation where he could simply relax. Even with Rem here, talking about hope felt premature.

'No matter how strong Rem is, taking on both those monsters at once would be difficult.'

The Tribal Chief thought of the two giants threatening his people. His expression brightened, then darkened almost instantly, then brightened again.

Still, good news was good news. Even if the pressure had him pissing blood, what was the point of being alive if you could not enjoy the present moment?

"Good to have you back."

The tent was spacious enough to hold a campfire at its center, the rounded ceiling stitched from stiff cloth. The fire was not large, but the fact that firewood was fed to it regularly made it a luxury only the Tribal Chief could afford. Flat cuts of meat were skewered on long poles above the flames. Field mouse, caught, drained of blood, stripped of skin and organs, pressed flat, and roasted. The organs were poisonous, so this was the best you could do. A western-style roasted mouse, not seen in quite some time.

The Tribal Chief sat in his fur chair. He welcomed Rem, then his face went dull, then bright again, and when he caught Arath watching him, he cleared his throat with a dry cough.

He had not become Tribal Chief because of raw strength. He was a chief beloved by his people, not one feared for his fighting. That was part of why this crisis weighed on him so heavily. Still, the fact that he was holding on at all was something worth acknowledging.

The west was a tangled mess right now.

"I came for my sorcery."

Rem went straight to the point.

The Tribal Chief blinked a few times and thought. He had always known this one only looked out for himself. That was exactly why he had left the tribe and run off.

"That is difficult right now."

The Tribal Chief shook his head.

"Why difficult?"

"Because we lost the Sacred Ground to another tribe."

"...You lost what?"

The Sacred Ground was land every tribe gathered here swore to protect. On a small scale, it was where sorcery and Guardian Spirits were received. On a larger scale, it was where their traditions lived, where the soul of the western people dwelled. Those who died were buried there. The Sacred Ground served as a cemetery too.

To put it plainly, it was the land they were supposed to give their lives defending. And they had lost it.

Thinking back, something had felt off from the beginning. A giant taking over a settlement was where it started, and things had only grown stranger from there.

The western peoples were nomads by nature, following grazing land wherever it led. So why were they gathered like this? Large assemblies almost never happened. At most, twice a year, once in autumn when there was enough food to share, and once just before spring when food ran short and people pooled what little they had. Once when there was plenty, once when there was not. This time was neither. There was enough to get by. So they were assembled because something was wrong.

"Not one thing has gone right since you left."

Arath had followed them in, and she found her moment to throw that blade of an accusation.

Rem let it go for now. Whatever he said, she would not hear it, so her feelings could wait. Even if an axe came flying later, that was just how it was.

'My fault.'

All of it was his fault. He could not deny that. Enkrid, Ruagarne, even Dunbakel, though she had said it without knowing anything, none of them had been wrong.

"That is how it is."

The Tribal Chief's face darkened again. Too many things had gone wrong at once, things beyond his ability to fix on his own. He was not losing sleep and pissing blood without reason. The markings on his face hid it, but the shadows under his eyes had gone dark. He was starting to wonder whether it would be a curse or a blade that killed him, or whether the sheer pressure might just drop him where he stood one day.

Where to even begin?

The Tribal Chief thought for a moment, then spoke.

"So. You know about the cannibals?"

Anyone who had spent time in the west knew that trouble. Those man-eaters could be beaten down again and again and still find some corner to coil in and keep their line going. They were a warrior people, good at fighting. Before Rem left, he had split the skull of the one said to be the strongest among them. He had assumed that losing their leader would bring them crumbling down. Apparently not.

The Tribal Chief cut to it.

"One day, out of nowhere, Giant Cannibals appeared."

The western peoples valued practicality over ceremony. That tendency had given them words for things that might otherwise go unnamed. Terms like urkiora and Dusky Sky were prime examples. Dusky Sky, in plain terms, meant the hour before dawn, a state where something would soon fulfill its purpose but had not yet.

That same directness came through now.

Giant Cannibals, out of cannibals? What was the connection?

"What do the two have to do with each other?"

Rem was watching the Tribal Chief, letting Arath's words pass through one ear and out the other, and the Tribal Chief continued.

"The cannibal group that had been in that area vanished without a trace, and in their place, giants appeared."

So was there little connection between the two? Or had something happened on that side as well? Impossible to know for now.

"Those things attacked and wiped out two tribes."

The Tribal Chief picked up a thin piece of firewood and tapped it against his palm as he spoke.

"And you have no idea where they came from?"

"None."

So for now, did they just need to kill the Giant Cannibals?

While Rem was thinking, the Tribal Chief spoke again.

"And then, for whatever reason, the Fortune-Teller Tribe lost their minds completely."

The Fortune-Teller Tribe was a group made entirely of sorcerers. Each one alone was nothing special, but together they were a serious headache, skilled at group sorcery.

"You cannot be serious."

Rem tilted his head.

"I figured you had wandered through and poisoned their minds on your way out."

He ignored Arath's nonsense.

"Yes."

The Tribal Chief also ignored Arath for a moment and nodded. It meant a group sorcery had been cast.

"Was it a prayer or a ritual?"

Both were forms of group sorcery, but they differed. A prayer was the smaller of the two. A ritual was large-scale. If they had used a ritual to attack, the damage would have been severe, not just severe, in fact; stopping it at all would have been remarkable.

"More than a hundred people died from the blood-changing sorcery, and even more are still down and barely holding on."

Rem blinked. So to get the full picture, what exactly was the situation here? The giants and the Fortune-Teller Tribe had joined forces? Why? Did those two even belong together?

He had seen the giants on the way in. He had also noticed that those who should have been in certain spots were gone. Where the Narae Tribe should have been standing watch, there was only a large iron pot and a broken palisade.

"Did the Maru people get hit?"

"They did. Some survivors came and took shelter with our tribe."

That was something, at least.

"On top of that, there have been sightings of outsiders. Some say they saw elves, or some strange spellcasters."

"I thought you had charmed those ones into coming here too."

Rem kept tossing Arath's words out the other ear.

The Tribal Chief simply stopped listening to her entirely.

Rem found himself wondering if a gold vein had been discovered in the west while he was gone. What was there here worth coming for? The Sacred Ground mattered to the tribes, but to outsiders it was just land. As for Rem, he had sealed his ritual, his weapon, and his Sorcery Medium there before he left, so he had no choice but to care. But why did anyone else?

So what was it? Why was everyone here making such a mess?

He had come back after a long absence and found his home overrun, strangers tearing the walls down. Three different kinds of strangers, no less.

"If you did not send them, then what business is it of yours?"

Arath, still sulking, kept hurling those blades.

She meant: who was he to come late and still stand there demanding answers?

"Enough, Arath."

The Tribal Chief scolded her, but she paid no attention.

Juol stepped in and filled in a few more details. Several smaller groups from the Narae Tribe had been struck, along with the Maru and Garam tribes.

"The two giants are too strong."

Two monstrous things unlike anything they had faced.

"The head shaman collapsed while using warding off misfortune to hold back the curse. She may die from it."

And the head shaman, the one Rem needed to perform his ritual, the most capable sorcerer among them by any measure, was down.

Was this real?

Rem sat with that for a moment, wondering whether he had not done warding off misfortune before coming back but had actually brought the bad luck with him. Then he answered.

"The two giants will be fine."

Things like that could be handled by killing them. He was confident he had what it took.

"I will say it again, if you are counting on that Frog, rethink it. And honestly, I would rather you did not step in either. The situation right now is not some Dusky Sky. We are past that."

Juol said it directly to Rem.

These were the words of the man who knew Rem's strength better than anyone.

"Why are you telling me to stay out of it too?"

Rem asked, genuinely curious.

"Because if we lose you, there is no hope left."

A grim thing to say. Juol had always been an optimistic man. For him to speak like this meant they were truly cornered.

"It will be fine. Did you think I spent all this time doing nothing?"

"Many strong fighters have already fallen to those two giants. Arae's father from the Maru Tribe was one of them."

Rem's eyebrow twitched.

Arae of the Maru Tribe was an old friend. His father was the man who had taught Rem how to swing an axe, his teacher. Before Rem had left, that man was the only one who could have given him a real fight. In a battle to the death, neither could have said with certainty who would win.

"He did not last long either."

At Juol's words, Rem's eyes moved to the Tribal Chief. The look asked: is that true? The Tribal Chief nodded.

"Right now we are short on warriors. We cannot scatter, if we scatter, everyone dies one by one. But if we hold like this, we starve."

The Tribal Chief laid out the reality. He was no fool. He simply had nowhere left to retreat.

"Understood. For now."

Rem started to say more, then stopped and looked up. He watched the shadows the campfire threw across the ceiling, flickering and stretching.

Then he finished.

"Let us take a look at what that curse is doing."

"You cannot even use sorcery."

Arath said it, but she moved immediately. Her words had thorns, but she was someone who would do anything for her people. She also knew, deep down, that Rem showing up now was as good as luck. If things had been any different, she might have kept swinging her axe at him until the very end.

'Is a crisis also an opportunity?'

Rem thought about it. If the situation was the only thing keeping Arath's temper in check, then maybe. At the very least, he had bought himself time to explain.

Rem moved. He wanted to see the ones the curse had brought low. Getting a clear picture of things came first.

On the way out of the tent, the Tribal Chief called after him.

"Right. Go take a look. And, truly, welcome home. My new son."

New son was what you called a daughter's husband.

He was Arath's father, and he was a father to all of them. That was the kind of man who had become Tribal Chief.

"A little late," Rem said.

Arath added from beside him, "Very late."

He knew. He knew it well. That was why he had nothing to say.

Rem walked in silence. Arath led the way, Juol followed behind.

'The situation is very, very, very bad.'

Coming from outside, Rem felt the danger more sharply than those who had been trapped inside and holding on. Walking and sorting through his thoughts, he reached the conclusion that stopping the giant group was impossible without himself in the picture.

'The longer this goes on, the weaker the tribe will become from the curse.'

Then send the giants in, and breaking the tribe apart would be easier than twisting a child's wrist. All it required was a heart cold enough to want it. For cannibals, for Giant Cannibals, being that cold was the easiest thing in the world.

'But why?'

If the goal had been to force a nomadic, herding people with no fixed home into one place, and if gathering them was the whole point, then what was there to take from the west?

Rem thought it through, and something like an answer began to take shape about what the enemy wanted.

'People?'

Outsiders, giants, a curse. Put those three together and a certain picture started to emerge. But he still did not have enough information.

'This is a headache.'

And on top of everything, Arath kept throwing sharp looks at him every few steps.

They had just reached the tent where a thick, acrid smoke curled out from burning herbs when a voice rang out.

"A fai-, no, a miracle!"

Someone shouted it with a stumble in their words, too stunned to speak straight.

* * *

Enkrid was a little surprised.

What had he done just now? Nothing. He had only held the child's hand.

And then a small child had opened their eyes.

"Huh?"

The boy opened his mouth and let out one startled syllable.

The child's eyes shone bright as starlight.

"Who are you?"

the child asked.

Enkrid answered.

"Enkrid. You can call me Enki. Someone told me the full name is hard to pronounce."

"Oh. An outsider."

The boy said it simply.

Nearby, a woman who had been burning herbs, someone with a sharp edge of poison behind her eyes, stood watching. The same woman Enkrid had walked past when entering the village, the one who had been standing in front of three girls. Her eyes went wide.

The spreading trace of the curse on the boy's body had stopped, and the child had opened his eyes. Of course she was shocked.

She pulled back the cloth covering the boy and checked his body, then her gaze moved to Enkrid.

"...What?"

She muttered it. She looked thoroughly rattled, like she did not quite know what she was saying.

A short silence followed. The loose, dazed look in her eyes sharpened.

Her gaze would not leave the child.

"He is getting better."

Hira, who had been standing nearby, said it.

The twins, who had been sitting off to the side rubbing their calves from exhaustion, came closer.

"It is real."

They said it at the same time.

Hira was so stunned she cried out.