WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 480: Just Because He Killed a Giant

= = =

"Mister, I've made up my mind."

Enkrid had just come back from washing up and was shaking his damp hair dry when Jiba came trotting over with those words.

His hair had gotten long enough that he was starting to wonder if he should cut it.

Enkrid looked nothing like the man from moments ago. He was back to his usual self, calm as ever.

He kept toweling his hair dry with the cloth Jiba's mother had handed him and asked with his eyes.

Made up your mind about what?

Jiba looked up, met his eyes, and set her lips with firm resolve.

"I'm going to be your bride. Just wait five years."

Pff-pfff.

Ruagarne puffed out her cheeks beside them, stifling a laugh. Dunbakel tilted her head. "Five years will be enough? I have my doubts about the development."

Jiba was still a little kid.

"Look at my mom. I'll grow. A lot."

Grow into what, exactly.

Jiba's mother straightened her back quietly from across the tent and thrust out her chest.

The man from the west who had forgotten his hostility nodded beside her.

Naturally.

Pride was plain on his face.

She had indeed grown, but that was beside the point.

"Who's this kid?" Rem asked.

He had come and gone a few times by now, but he had only spent any real time in this tent on the first day, so Rem did not know the audacious little brat named Jiba.

"Jiba. A kid whose dream is hard to cheer for."

Rem nodded at Enkrid's blunt assessment.

"First time I've seen one of those. A kid nobody can root for."

Any dream could be supported, usually, but this one was a different matter.

Marriage required the other party's consent. It did not happen by one person's will alone.

Not that Enkrid had any particular feelings about the little brat named Jiba.

He thought of her as a brazen kid who had managed to survive, and that was the whole of it.

Jiba stepped back, looking satisfied that she had said what she came to say. There was no helping it, either way.

They had fought, and he had just come back and washed off.

The fervor had not yet faded. People kept coming to find Enkrid, one after another.

"Your skills have grown quite a bit," Rem said.

It was true. Hearing people shout things like great warrior and savior did not sound like empty words.

Rem had the eye for it.

He measured Enkrid's current ability against himself, a man who had found Sorcery.

Real combat was shaped by all kinds of factors. What he gauged now was not the whole picture.

Take a junior knight, for example. Could a Squire never kill one?

They could. That was possible.

That was what actual combat was.

Using Will did not turn your body into steel.

What he was gauging now was a rough read of the level, nothing more.

That did not mean it was meaningless.

What is swordsmanship? What is a fight?

Strength, speed, stamina, judgment, adaptability, daring, the venom that wrings out the final breath, an unshakeable mind, sharp eyes, keen senses, and more.

All of it combined, to kill the opponent.

Looking at Enkrid now, every one of those qualities had risen together.

It was not simply that he had gotten stronger. Some kind of concentrated experience had soaked through him.

Strange, honestly.

Rem had been watching him for a while, and seeing him change like this every so often was just that, strange.

Not that it was beyond understanding.

The world was wide, and Rem did not know everything.

So could something like this happen outside the range of what he knew, outside his frame of understanding?

Hard to believe.

But possible.

Geniuses broke through certain molds. Rem had broken through those kinds of molds himself to get where he was, so he carried no fixed notions set in stone.

If anything, it was the half-skilled ones who would get trapped in their own thinking and shout that it made no sense.

People with narrow minds would do that. Rem was not one of them. Neither was Ruagarne.

Dunbakel had no particular opinion on the matter.

Most of the westerners had no idea about Enkrid's past, so to them the present was simply remarkable.

"You have improved a little," Enkrid said.

He had grown another step beyond where he was during their sparring sessions on the road here.

And so Enkrid nodded calmly.

Cutting down two Giants had not been simply cutting down two Giants.

It was the moment accumulated experience converted into skill.

Even Enkrid could not put it into clean words, but what he was certain of was that the path toward becoming a knight, that thread, now looked like a thicker strand than before.

"That's impressive," Arath said from beside Rem.

She did not hide that she was awed, or that she was moved.

"It's the first time I've seen anyone fight better than Rem."

Juol was even more stunned. He had known Enkrid would fight exceptionally well and had heard he overpowered the twins, but..."I thought from the moment I first saw him that he was no ordinary person."

He could not finish the sentence.

What he had witnessed had been that extraordinary.

"You blocked the curse and killed the Giant too, I'm not even sure what to say."

There was also the middle-aged westerner who had occasionally stopped by to say something or other.

How had this person ended up wedged in among them?

He appeared from between Geomnarae and Hira, tear tracks still clear on his face.

He grabbed Enkrid's hand and kept repeating his thanks.

"Ah, Tribal Chief."

One of the sorcerers recognized the man and said so.

Enkrid had not known the man in front of him was the Tribal Chief.

His clothes were not unlike everyone else's, he had never come around with anyone in tow, and he had no exceptional fighting ability to speak of.

He had just stopped by occasionally to say thanks and leave some fruit, so Enkrid had only thought of him as an amiable westerner.

He did have a friendly face and way of speaking.

He used the accent typical of the west and sometimes dropped words that only westerners used, but the Tribal Chief had always been considerate when talking to Enkrid.

He would unpack words with explanations or say things kindly twice over.

A thoughtful person in many ways.

Was that why he was the chief?

"You were the Tribal Chief?"

"Did you not know?"

A nod.

"Doesn't change anything."

He had blocked a curse and killed two Giants. The Tribal Chief looked ready to tear out his own liver and hand it over.

Even when Enkrid became a Human Totem, the man had already been grateful to the point of breaking.

And then he had killed the Giants on top of it.

"If there's something you want, I'd stake my position as chief to get it for you."

A brief spell of commotion followed, Jiba's strange declaration, the Tribal Chief's gratitude, Arath's astonishment, and more, and then everyone found something to do and drifted off.

"Let's talk later," Rem said, and stepped out of the tent.

There were those who called out savior, and there were moments that blazed with fervor.

After that, the way people looked at Enkrid changed, but his daily life was no different from before.

"Let's spar later," Geomnarae said quietly.

His body was still rough, but Enkrid had seen him getting up bit by bit and stretching.

"Weren't you the one who said you'd do it right away once you recovered?"

"A half-hearted spar sounds like no fun."

Geomnarae clicked his tongue. He was a westerner too.

He had been planning to give Enkrid a decent match, but that no longer sat right with him. He was saying that once the business in the west was settled, he wanted a fight with real sparks flying. When he said it, his canines showed, unusually sharp.

Enkrid nodded.

"The result won't change."

"You're a bit of a smug talker, aren't you?"

"I've heard that from time to time."

With nothing pressing to do, Enkrid turned his attention to what had concentrated and surfaced in him during the fight.

Reviewing and reflecting was an old habit of his. It was exactly what he needed now.

"Going to go over everything you have, one by one?" Ruagarne said in passing.

Enkrid knew what he was doing.

It was something he had always done.

From his basic footwork to how he swung a sword, how he gripped it, everything he had learned up to now.

Starting from Vallen's mercenary sword style, moving through the nameless Correct Sword forms learned from the Demon Sword Tutor, the various steps, the swordsmanship and techniques.

He had gone through the process of tracing each piece and combining them, and then gone further, breaking them back down and examining the principles behind each technique.

Why?

There seemed to be somewhere further he could go.

Something realized through contemplation, in the realm of instinct and intuition.

So what did he need right now.

"Looks like you won't be needing me for a while," Ruagarne said.

She was right.

He was still swinging his sword the way he always did, but it felt more right to embody things one by one through his body than to ponder and puzzle them out in his head.

"Probably not."

"Good timing, then. Or maybe not."

Ruagarne muttered and began getting ready to head out. She had been going out constantly lately, but he saw no particular reason to ask why.

She would tell him when the time came.

Given all of that, his daily life naturally did not change. Enkrid went on looking the same as always, absorbed in training.

"You can leave whenever you like now, but if you're more comfortable staying here, that's fine too. If there's something you want, just say so, I can get you most things."

That was Hira, an herb stick between her lips. She had treated him well before, but now she was even more attentive.

Jiba's mother was the same as ever.

"This is a local specialty of the west, wind rabbit meat. Please try some."

Wind rabbits were animals found only in this region.

Light-bodied and twice as fast as ordinary rabbits, catching one apparently required hunting skill that stood out even in the west.

Wind rabbit meat was soft, almost delicate.

Prepared in the western style, minced, mixed with grain flour, and grilled into flat patties, it melted in the mouth.

"We have a guy in our unit named Krais. If he ate this, I think he'd say we should open a shop right now."

High praise.

Hira and the other westerners kept asking what he wanted, so Enkrid did give them an answer.

A sparring partner would be nice.

"Geomnarae, are you not well yet?"

Hira called over to Geomnarae, but he shook his head.

"Not yet."

He was not dodging it. What he had felt before meant he needed to be properly ready if he was going to do it right.

Surprising or not, there was no shortage of sparring partners.

These were westerners, and westerners considered turning tail a disgrace.

Anyone willing to fight Enkrid if he wanted was in abundance. Backing down because the opponent was strong was not the western way.

One of them was someone who had arrived ten days ago, seen Enkrid fight, and come seeking to learn something from him.

"For a westerner, a wound on the back is a disgrace."

Short gray hair, a square jaw, a steadfast look to the face.

"What if you get hit in a surprise attack?"

"That can't be helped."

Westerners were not rigid. They had plenty of flexibility. More than anything, they enjoyed a good joke.

Enkrid smiled and took the wooden sword the westerner offered.

"I enjoy fighting in all kinds of ways. Some of my friends call it dirty or cowardly on occasion."

Even, unhurried words. A relaxed manner.

This came after the person had walked up holding two wooden swords and handed one over.

Enkrid caught the wooden sword his opponent tossed with a snap of his hand.

Ruagarne had gone outside again, and Dunbakel had sat herself down off to one side, apparently happy to watch.

"Aahh."

Dunbakel opened her mouth wide, stretched all four limbs, and let out a long yawn.

She looked utterly at ease.

She had been sleeping more than usual lately.

Enkrid held up the wooden sword his sparring partner had given him and bounced it a few times. He did not even need to swing it properly to tell.

The balance on this is off.

Poorly made, or the material was wrong. And yet it had the look of something carefully carved. The rough surface made it seem freshly cut.

In other words, his opponent had carved this specifically for this spar.

The opponent kept talking, enough to make you wonder when the fighting was going to start.

"But calling something cowardly is just underestimating your opponent's preparation a little too..."

He was rambling as he walked closer, then mid-word he swung the wooden sword without warning.

Fwap!

He had wrapped his arm in a cloak to hide its movement, and now the cloak whipped and thrashed violently.

The patterns on its surface threw off the eye.

The wooden sword, the cloak, the talking, all of it was groundwork for victory.

A tactic.

Deception was also a tactic.

That did not mean the tactic had worked.

It was no concern of Enkrid's.

The wooden sword being hollowed out from rotted wood in the middle was also no concern.

Enkrid feinted as if to parry with the wooden sword, then let it go.

The opponent swung hard.

Thwack.

The dropped wooden sword snapped in half at the middle.

How rotted was the thing he brought?

The thought came with the motion as Enkrid stepped inside and drove the heel of his palm up into the solar plexus.

He did not put everything into it. That would just mean one more corpse.

Thud!

The impact traveled through his hand and a sharp sound rang out.

The opponent did not react.

Enkrid had stepped in off-rhythm and found the opening before the man could adjust.

The palm strike lifted the opponent's feet off the ground. When they came back down, the sparring partner pitched forward.

From the outside it looked like he was dead.

"...Ugh."

The opponent had taken the hit to the solar plexus and lost all air. He lay face-down on the ground and could not get a word out.

"Were you trying to kill him?" Dunbakel said, walking over and grabbing the western warrior's back to straighten him out.

"Hck, huh, hh, hah, hrrgh."

Rough, ragged breaths came out one after another.

"I saw my late father."

Enkrid looked at his own hand once.

His force control was still not perfect, it seemed.

There was a female warrior standing nearby who had been waiting her turn.

If the one who had just fought was like a hunter who used every trick in the book, the way the twins did, then this one was closer to Rem.

Hair tied back, a large axe resting across broad, well-trained shoulders.

She had just watched the man in front of her take one hit and nearly die from it, and she did not care.

That was another thing Enkrid liked about her.

"It doesn't look like going all out would kill you, full strength is fine?"

Enkrid nodded.

He then used only the flat of his blade to deflect her heavy axe swings, struck the back of her neck, and the female warrior dropped unconscious.

Enkrid came to understand that there were quite a few capable fighters among those sheltering inside the tribe's fence.

Looking at the situation, their numbers seemed to be growing.

"Is he really that impressive?"

A few unfamiliar faces had been coming around, saying they wanted to see the warrior who killed the Giant.

"Show some respect. Act up and you'll regret it," Geomnarae warned the more reckless ones from the side.

"Yes, yes."

The warriors nodded easily enough.

What Enkrid had done was astonishing, but they each had their own things to attend to.

Sharpening their weapons on whetstones, meditation, sparring, training.

You could see it just by looking.

The whole tribe was preparing for battle.

Which meant killing the Giant had not been the end of it.

= = =

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried