WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 481: Dream, Flower, Dream

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"There are always people around you."

The Boatman had not appeared in a while.

The rippling river, the purple lamp, the blurred face.

Today the Boatman had one eye closed and the other open.

Enkrid turned the words over in his mind. People around him? Well, of course there were people. What else would there be? Was this supposed to be some kind of clue?

Then another thought followed.

Had anything the Boatman said ever actually helped?

He did not think so.

All the advice amounted to: run away, give up, that sort of thing.

Enkrid let it go in one ear and out the other.

He had almost asked whether the Boatman rowed out here alone because he was lonely, but he kept his mouth shut.

He could hold back. Saying everything that came to mind was not honesty, it was a lack of tact. So he said nothing.

"You are never alone."

The Boatman spoke again.

Enkrid cast his gaze out past the Boatman, all the way to the far side of the river.

Nothing was there.

The only things visible were what fell within the lamplight's reach.

Within that circle of light: the Boatman, the ferry, the oar, and Enkrid.

The view offered nothing worth looking at, much like the western wilderness. Just black water in every direction.

He pulled his gaze back and looked at the Boatman again.

Was he going to put on a one-man show like before?

"Loneliness will fall upon you."

Something similar had been said before, he thought.

The Boatman still had one eye closed. Enkrid stared at him for a moment. Their eyes met, colorless ones and blue.

A brief silence, then Enkrid's mouth opened.

"Is this a companion to the ominous thing you warned about before?"

There are moments no one can hold back, no matter who they are.

Tact had nothing to do with it.

Hearing something like that, his tongue simply moved on its own.

It was like how someone born with a gift for the sword, watching a clumsy slash, would knock the blade aside without even thinking.

The Boatman went quiet.

He looked vaguely angry, but said nothing more.

The dream ended.

Enkrid opened his eyes to the familiar tent ceiling.

"You're awake?"

Two eyes were staring straight at him.

The blood vessels in the whites were tinged purple in places, but they were deep brown eyes that gave off warmth.

Full of youthful energy, clear in a way the world had not yet worn down. The forehead above them was smooth, and the balance of nose and mouth made for a fine face.

Cute now, and likely to grow into something remarkable. This was the child named Jiba.

"Can't sleep?"

He asked with only his eyes open. Jiba smiled shyly and answered.

"I woke up early."

Whether he was a Human Totem or a Curse Ward, Enkrid did not know exactly what he was doing here, but he knew his presence was thinning the curse that lay over these people.

Geomnarae had recovered enough to get up and move around, and Jiba had come far enough to play with the other children.

Borrowing Hira's words, a few more days would be needed for a full recovery, but Geomnarae said he was ready to fight at this point.

Not perfect, but enough to move.

The head Sorcerer still had not woken up, which was a worry, but that was not something Enkrid could fix.

The Boatman had been right that there were plenty of people around him.

When they first arrived it had only been Rem, Dunbakel, and Ruagarne.

"You really are something, up at this hour," Geomnarae said, picking the crust from his eyes, while beside him Hira was pressing leaves into her herb stick first thing in the morning.

Then Ruagarne, who had come with them from the start, and Dunbakel rubbing sleep from her eyes.

"What's going on?"

Rem walked in just then.

What had that man been doing since the crack of dawn? He came back covered in grass blades and burrs.

"What have you been doing outside?"

Enkrid pushed Jiba's forehead back gently and asked. Rem raised his left hand.

Through the dim sky, the first light of morning was already seeping in, enough to make things out clearly.

So he had not seen wrong.

"Flowers?"

White and red blooms. A bouquet cut to an even size, the stems bound together at the base.

"These only bloom around this time of year."

"Flowers, you say?"

"Arath likes flowers."

No embarrassment, no awkward shuffling. Rem was Rem. He said it without flinching.

Enkrid finally understood why this man had spent days wandering around without finding a single Giant.

He had been picking flowers.

"You said you'd be right back, and you stopped here first?"

Arath stepped in through the tent flap.

"Just passing through on the way."

"Right, sure."

Her tone was rough, but the killing edge that used to fill it was gone. When she caught sight of the flowers in Rem's hand, the corners of her eyes softened a little.

A happy face. A pleased expression. That was what Enkrid saw.

"See you later," Rem said and turned to leave. Arath grabbed his forearm and held tight.

She was not letting him go. Had she been watching him every second, too wound up to let him out of her sight?

Reading the mood, Enkrid gathered she intended to kill him not with an axe but with other things entirely. A bed, a body, heat.

Left to their own devices, those two would be praying for a new life inside that thick leather tent, on that wide mat woven from straw and dry grass.

It would be a greater achievement than any spell or ritual.

A child like Jiba might come from it.

But wasn't there supposed to be some kind of crisis?

Enkrid wondered to himself.

All that talk about things being complicated with Arath, and it seemed to have sorted itself out in no time.

"That man is incredibly relaxed about things," Geomnarae said, putting Enkrid's exact thought into words.

Still, it was not a bad sight at all.

When this was over, Rem would probably stay.

Arath seemed to be steering him that way, and Rem looked like he wanted it too.

Having a child meant putting down roots, after all.

Was he going to settle down? Should Enkrid try to hold onto him?

No. He would not try.

Rem was not the kind of man who could be held, and Enkrid had no wish to try.

A person's body should be where their will and heart pointed.

"Dunbakel, outside."

Enkrid said it and got to his feet.

Time for morning training.

The early sun had risen and cast its light over everything.

What Aoara had left behind, combined with everything that had built up from all his experience, it had come together into something.

Enkrid could not feel any clear change in himself.

But.

'I can cut them.'

Even if there were three Giants of the same caliber, it did not feel like a problem.

* * *

Ruagarne sat still and turned last night's dream over in her mind. It had left her unsettled.

'It had been a while.'

A welcome face had appeared, but the moment it chose for its stage was one she least wanted to recall.

If there was something as important to a Frog as desire and want, what would it be?

They sought love of the spirit.

That was why it sometimes happened that a Frog would take a human as a spiritual spouse.

It was not common, naturally.

A person had to be beautiful in appearance and in soul, beautiful enough to make a Frog dizzy just being near them, and such people were rare.

Of course, inexperienced Frogs made mistakes. Her first partner had been exactly that kind of mistake.

The second, learned from experience, had been someone worth knowing.

"Rua, what do you think is out there, beyond all this?"

He had said it looking at a map of the whole continent.

Ruagarne had answered the way a Frog would.

"Does it matter if we know?"

At that point, her own ambitions had nothing to do with exploring the unknown.

She was a technique obsessive. Learning and mastering every fighting technique she could find, that was her goal.

In the middle of all that, someone had appeared who caught her completely off guard.

A man who seemed to shine just by standing there.

There was said to be elf blood on his father's side, generations back. She could not speak to that, but his looks were extraordinary.

"Ha ha ha."

He laughed loudly and said:

"You don't need to know."

He never forced anything on anyone.

"I'm going to make a map. One that covers the whole continent."

His work was going to places no one had set foot and studying them, researching them.

His skill with a sword was nothing remarkable, but there were people who shared his purpose.

Former mercenaries, ex-thieves, discharged soldiers. And one Frog.

More than ten of them in all.

Everyone who traveled with him, including Ruagarne, did so for their own reasons and their own gain.

They dug through ruins, took on commissions, one thing after another.

But was exploring the unknown easy? People left.

"You need a full purse before you can do anything. What are we supposed to accomplish looking like beggars?"

Cutting words.

His pockets were never deep, because he lived for a belief rather than a profit.

Nobles who had promised support often pulled out without warning.

When a companion left cursing him, he would smile and say:

"Everyone thinks differently. Everyone places value in different things. I can't force that on anyone."

He had every right to be bitter, but he was not. He simply never treated people that way.

Then it happened.

Before they reached the eastern frontier of the continent, a plague broke out in the surrounding area.

Ruagarne had been thinking, at that very moment, of her first partner, a man who could have been a Ghoul's son for all she cared.

She had been young and foolish then.

She had chosen by face alone, and the man had been using her name to run gambling dens.

A gambler with a Frog watching her back. Who would dare touch him?

Every word out of his mouth was a lie.

To put it plainly: he had been a lunatic.

Ruagarne broke all ten of his fingers to bring him to his senses.

He had wept and wailed, snot running down his face, and three days after swearing off gambling he was seen lurking outside the gambling house again.

His fingers had not even healed yet. She had not killed him. He was not worth it. All he had was a pretty face.

Her second partner had a good heart and big dreams.

That man could not walk past a place where a plague was spreading.

"This is bad."

While searching for the source of the sickness, he discovered that someone had caused it deliberately.

"People will die if we leave this alone."

He had a kind of naive sense of justice. And Ruagarne had her own confidence.

The arrogant confidence that she could protect one man of hers through almost anything.

She should have talked him out of it.

"Rua, I'm sorry."

Her dying partner said it. Ruagarne had lost an arm trying to protect him, and had no time to cry.

The enemy had been a Cultist. It was a tragedy.

"Have you heard of Hualin's hounds?"

He had unleashed dozens of black hunting dogs from black scorched smoke.

In a city that the plague had consumed whole, Ruagarne tasted despair.

"Hunt down the heretics!"

An army from the holy city swept in and scoured the area.

Ruagarne barely survived because of that.

Once she had survived, she threw herself into hunting Cultists for a long time.

'I will tear the Cursed Ground Holy Sect out by the roots.'

But that could not be a real goal. A Frog's desire was not completed by revenge.

In time, a new purpose took shape.

'The unknown sets a person's heart on fire.'

Experience changes purpose. Desire moves with it.

Her second partner's gift had shifted the direction of what she wanted.

His death replayed in her mind again and again.

Even after waking from the dream, it was still there.

That place ached. It stung terribly. She pressed her hand to it. The solid Heart Armor she never took off, even in sleep, protected it well enough, and yet.

'It feels like it's cracking and tearing.'

Negative thoughts came without stopping. It felt as though everyone would die and burn to nothing in the end.

Frogs were a mentally resilient race, but that did not mean they were immune to everything.

Days like this happened.

Just a bad day.

In Ruagarne's mind, every memory surfaced like spliced scenes strung back together, leading up to the present.

"Ha!"

The shout pulled her back to the here and now.

Eyes that had drifted into the past came back into focus.

Round pupils looked forward. There was a man in front of her, black hair damp with sweat.

A human who had shown something beyond the level of a junior knight. It was a mystery she still could not explain.

'Will that surpasses a junior knight's level? How?'

The process made no sense to her. The only words that came to mind were luck and divine whim.

But when she looked at the man in front of her, those words went away.

Enkrid simply swung his sword. Without rest, he turned over what he had learned and repeated it again.

Never tired of it, always the same figure every day.

Enkrid yesterday and Enkrid today were different, and yet he did not live any differently.

He proved himself through action, through how he lived.

He just swung his sword. That was all.

Watching him, the useless thoughts scattered.

These past few days, something had been gnawing at her in a vague, unpleasant way, so she had looked around.

She had seen traces of scorch marks, but could not be sure whether they were from a Cultist or not. Saying nothing had only made her feel worse, so she finally opened her mouth.

"I may or may not have seen traces of the Cult. Hard to say which."

Enkrid stopped mid-swing and turned his head.

Aker lowered. His back to the sun, he said:

"Noted."

He did not seem troubled by it at all.

Practically speaking, whether a Cultist appeared before him or the Cultist's mother, father, or grandparent showed up, what did it matter?

If they were an enemy, he would cut them down. That was the whole of it.

And that was exactly what he was swinging his sword for right now.

By the next morning, Ruagarne's mood had improved considerably.

Two days later, with Geomnarae at the front, a group of warriors assembled.

"We fight."

When he spoke, one of the tribal warriors raised an axe overhead.

"The soul of the West!"

"The soul of the West!"

Everyone shouted and lifted their weapons.

A battle, then.

The warriors gathered numbered fewer than two hundred. A little over a hundred and fifty, it seemed.

Among them were Rem, Enkrid, Dunbakel, and Ruagarne.

Everyone else was going to fight, so slipping off to the side was not an option.

And Enkrid saw no reason to drag this fight out longer than it needed to be.

The Tribal Chief had said they could sit this one out and come with the main force when it was ready, but they had ignored that and gone out anyway. That was why.

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