WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

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A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 482: How to Deal With a Mage

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Narae, Garam, Maru, Fortune-Teller, Gureum, Hanui.

Setting aside the smaller tribes, the west was shaped primarily by six.

The story went that many small, nameless clans had gathered and grown into larger ones.

So a Narae was a Narae, a Great River was a Great River, a Stepping Cloud was a Stepping Cloud, and the name you used for a splinter tribe was the same as the name for its parent.

When a single elder decided to leave with their household and strike out on their own, that group was loosely called a small Narae, if the elder came from the Narae tribe.

The largest among them became the Elder Bear, and that was Rem's tribe.

Most western tribal societies worked that way.

Inside each one sat a Tribal Chief, a top warrior, a head sorcerer, and other such ranks.

Those ranks were power, and they were symbols of strength.

And the Narae were something like the parent of all the tribes.

The Elder Bear was the largest of them all, after all.

That was roughly what Enkrid had pieced together from the handful of times he had heard about the western tribes.

There was no shortage of mouths willing to talk.

Geomnarae was there, the Twins were there, and some warrior from the Maru tribe kept finding him without rest.

After a sparring match, people would sometimes come asking to be taught, and when you were resting between fights, what else were you going to do but talk?

Gossip might have been the western people's favorite pastime.

Perhaps that was why it was so hard to find anyone quiet.

Anyway, that was the sort of talk it was.

"It might be hard to understand. Once you're family, you're always family, there's a concept like that."

Geomnarae said it that way, but Enkrid understood almost at once.

He had grown up in a place like that himself.

Even on the continent, in regions where Demon Creatures were scarce, small villages would form. Not cities, villages. Clan settlements, places built around shared blood where crossing one bridge meant almost everyone was a relative. Outsiders came in and eventually fit right in. You lived together like family even without shared blood. Enkrid's own village had not been a true clan settlement, but it had looked a lot like one. It had started as a collection of war refugees.

Fifty-odd small houses, barely past that count, filled with people from across the continent who had each been wounded in their own way.

It was also where Enkrid's dream had begun.

Where an apple seller carved away the rotten spots and sold the rest.

Where an old barmaid roasted potatoes over a cooking fire.

Where a foul-mouthed old woman with a bent back had once sold her body.

Where a mercenary fleeing battle had come to rest.

Without the relative scarcity of Demon Creatures and Magic Beasts, the village would have been wiped from the map long ago.

There was nothing special to eat, nowhere fine to sleep, and no value as a trade route, so it never grew into a city, but people scraped by there all the same.

"We'll pay back what we were given."

A departure, you could call it.

At any rate, Geomnarae said it with his fangs bared in a grin, right before stepping forward.

The smile carried something unmistakably grim beneath it.

The kind of edge only someone staking their life could give off.

Retribution, Enkrid thought.

His village had understood the same concept.

If you let an attack go unanswered, you looked weak. If you looked weak, you became a target for raids.

The exact reasons might not match, but to Enkrid's ears it sounded close enough.

Geomnarae wore a faded fur cloak with a wolf-shaped hood.

Crouched low in it, he would look like a wolf.

The thin veins along his forearms were still purple, but he had no intention of stepping aside.

He was the one who led everyone, the top warrior.

How could the Elder Bear's top warrior sit out a fight like this?

It was only natural. The western people had not simply been taking hits. They had been preparing, too.

Gathering warriors, resisting the curse, pushing forward.

The one leading that effort was the Narae's Tribal Chief.

Sky god, watch over us, he prayed silently.

He buried his unease and stood at Geomnarae's side.

If they let it end with nothing but suffering, the enemy would only grow bolder.

Under ordinary circumstances, he might have invoked the word urkiora, the dark dawn, and urged patience. But there was no room for patience left.

The moment they identified the curse, the head sorcerer had moved to stop it and managed to suppress it through a few experiments.

Even that alone had taken a heavy toll.

Because the head sorcerer and the top warrior had both been struck by it.

Thinking in reverse, had it not been for those two, most of the tribe would have fallen to the curse.

The two of them had held back a flood.

A great stone thrown in the path of rushing water could block the surge, even if smaller trickles seeped through. The main current got stopped at least once.

If you bought time in that gap, mixed earth, and built a wall, you could block even the smaller streams.

That had been the plan.

The Fortune-Teller tribe was said to be the most skilled in sorcery, but there was no shortage of capable people on their side as well.

Then two Giants appeared. They threatened the five tribes that had gathered around the Elder Bear.

The Maru tribe's top warrior died because of them.

"I'll hold them off. Everyone get to the Elder Bear!"

He had stepped out with three warriors to protect the whole Maru tribe.

He had been better with a club than with sorcery, and at the combined tribal festivals he would often show off his club work and teach it to others.

Rem had even learned something from him once, long ago. But two Giants were too much.

Those two Giants were dead now. Killed by a stranger who had come with Rem.

The shock among the western people, and especially the Maru clan, had been enormous.

"A champion!"

It sounded natural when one of the Maru clan shouted it. They had earned the right.

After that, the Narae Tribal Chief had kept gathering warriors.

The goal was to sweep out the ones occupying the Sacred Ground.

The Fortune-Teller tribe would be there, along with Giants, and whoever had set all of this in motion.

Odds? There was no time to think about odds.

Otherwise they would wither and die.

Honestly, if those Giant bastards had pressed in with their allies from the start, the fight would have been over long ago. For some reason they had dragged their feet.

That delay had bought time.

Breaking the curse, killing the two Giants.

Those had been the sparks that started everything.

The Tribal Chief was still uneasy even so.

The feeling kept rising, unbidden, that they were only marching out to avoid being hit again.

Were Giants all that waited in front of the Sacred Ground? Was that really the whole of it?

Looking at how things had unfolded, there was no shortage of strange details.

Every conversation with Rem since his return deepened the feeling.

"So the Giants jabbed at them, herded each tribe here like they were driving game, and that's why everyone gathered, with warriors dying along the way?"

"Right. They were probably trying to spread the curse."

The curse would only take full effect once everyone was in one place.

"I see."

Rem sank into thought for a moment, then spoke.

"After everyone was gathered, what happened next?"

"What do you mean, what happened?"

"I mean, did the Giants demand anything? Make any kind of request?"

A scheme this large had to have a purpose. And that purpose might be plain to see.

This was the west. Not fertile land. Coming all the way out here to eat people? That made no sense. If that were the goal, raiding a few small villages past what they called the settled lands would have been far more worth the trouble.

So why?

The Tribal Chief had no idea.

There was only the unease.

No demands, no raids. Just time passing.

And so, a desperate push.

Fighting was far better than letting time run out and dying withered from a curse.

"Let's go."

They had known for a while that a group of Giants had gathered in front of the Sacred Ground.

The western warriors took their first steps.

"Mind if we tag along?"

The Tribal Chief caught the voice from behind and turned.

Off to one side, relaxed and easy, someone was speaking to him.

The Giant-killer. The savior of the tribes.

Black hair, three swords, black leather armor, and enchanted equipment besides.

He carried an almost excessive amount of gear.

And yet every piece looked like it belonged there.

He did not look uncomfortable walking, and wearing all of it did not look strange at all.

Rem answered from beside him. The Tribal Chief was close enough that the whole exchange reached his ears.

"Seems she says she'll follow, as a companion."

"Goes without saying."

Arath, standing beside Rem, took up the reply. A faint undercurrent of worry showed on her face too.

He was her father, and her Tribal Chief. He looked at Arath's face. He could not tell his daughter to stay back. He could not ask her to sit out while telling everyone else to fight.

A Tribal Chief must never do that.

He was the elder of the Elder Bear, responsible for all these tribes.

"Let's break everything."

He called out again, forcing the unease back down.

Geomnarae raised a hand loosely in acknowledgment. The warriors nodded. They all moved out in long strides.

Enkrid glanced at the Tribal Chief, who kept calling out one thing or another.

Why was that man following along?

"There are probably Cultists there besides the Giants."

Enkrid said.

"Seems like it."

"Did you know?"

When Enkrid asked, Rem dropped his voice.

"You really think I was just out picking flowers?"

That was what he had figured.

"Something's off with their eyes."

"No."

Dunbakel, walking alongside them, tilted her head.

"A whole pack of Giants? Will this many of us be enough?"

An uncharacteristically sharp observation.

"We feel it out first. This isn't an immediate all-out assault. We go, get a proper read on the enemy's numbers, set up camp nearby, and go from there. Combat isn't just charging in and swinging. If we're fighting sensibly, that's how it goes."

Ruagarne cut in cleanly.

She was right. Enkrid knew that plenty of warriors had stayed behind.

The Twins, for instance. Hira. The others called sorcerers. None of them had come.

This group was something like a scouting party, preparing for a full engagement.

The western people might get called savages, but that did not mean they charged in blind with no strategy or tactics.

Ten riders on velopters trailed along on one flank.

Beyond them, the ones you could fairly call warriors numbered a little over fifty.

Of those, by Ruagarne's standard, the capable ones were fewer than twenty.

"The rest had better keep their heads sharp, or they won't make it back."

Something about Ruagarne had deepened, as though she had reached some kind of understanding. Her eyes were quieter than before, her voice slower.

Whatever it was, Enkrid did not ask.

Well, living long enough gave you thoughts like that. They had a way of being useful, too.

If it got in the way, she would snap out of it quickly enough.

That was the Frog called Ruagarne, from everything he had seen of her.

Enkrid trusted her.

Walking forward did not make him especially tense. That was not what this situation called for. His gut gave no warning.

All he had to do was meet them and cut them down.

The gathered Giants might be dangerous, or there might be surprises he had not anticipated, but the tension simply was not there.

The Sacred Ground was a cliffside, they had said, with over a hundred caves.

"Long, long ago, bears, tigers, wolves, foxes, all sorts of animals were said to have received the sky god's blessing inside those caves and become people. Something like that, there's a myth about it."

Rem had told him as much once.

Rem walked now with a finger in his ear, while Arath beside him urged him to stay alert, warning him that the two Giants were not the whole threat.

"The enemy won't know anything, so they're going to take a fair number of hits."

Ruagarne's manner of speaking had gone strange.

"Know what, exactly?"

Dunbakel had shown a flash of sharp instinct moments ago, but it had vanished just as quickly, leaving her knowing less than the enemy.

Lately Dunbakel seemed to have given up on thinking altogether.

Outside of sleeping, training, and getting scolded into bathing, Enkrid had not caught her doing much of anything. Swiping her front claws at passing butterflies seemed to be the sum of it.

Enkrid, listening from the side, agreed with what Ruagarne had said.

What did the enemy not know?

They did not know him. They did not know Rem.

The two Giants had died, so they might be on guard.

They would be.

So what?

Ruagarne had said she sat somewhere between a junior knight and a full knight.

What did that mean exactly? He did not know.

He did not need to know. He would just do what he always did.

Enkrid privately thought the way sword-wielders sorted each other into ranks was a little ridiculous.

Sure, so a low-ranking soldier always loses to a mid-rank soldier?

A Squire always loses to a junior knight?

Combat does not always begin on level ground with both sides announcing themselves before they start.

The battlefield is a place where you stake your life. You have to keep in mind that death can come at any moment.

So there is nothing stopping a junior knight from dying to a Squire.

Letting your guard down invites defeat.

Defeat invites death.

Give your best, always.

Well, maybe sorcery is something I can be a little loose about, he thought.

The Boatman had said he swallowed curses whole.

Walking along with thoughts like those, Enkrid steadied himself again.

That was one of his strengths, if it could be called that.

He did not let his guard down even against a child.

Getting a hole stabbed in your gut by a twelve-year-old would teach you that.

He was still thinking when they reached what was called the Sacred Ground.

Several low hills came into view.

High ridges rose on both sides, making it a place that could fairly be called a canyon, and they were standing at its mouth.

Dozens of Giants were gathered on the wide stretch of land beyond. It looked almost like an army.

At a rough count, there were more than thirty heads.

Not a perfect formation. They were not standing in neat rows.

The arrangement was loose. Even so, seeing that many enormous figures gathered in one place gave off a pressure that was hard to ignore.

A few of the western people swallowed hard.

Hell, they look completely ready for a fight.

"So you're the outsider, then. Turns out it was you."

An old man spoke from in front of the Giant formation.

The huge figures had hidden him at first, but there was a line of what appeared to be humans standing among them.

The one in the center was an old man.

Long cloak, wooden staff in hand. The picture of a sorcerer.

Several people flanked him on both sides, every last one of them as filthy as if Dunbakel had handpicked them for their distaste for bathing. Their faces were black with grime, which made their eyeballs stand out even more.

One of them opened his mouth and licked his lips.

White eyeballs, black teeth, and a sorcerer.

Seeing all that, Enkrid pressed his toes into the ground.

While he had been immersed in the lake of experience alongside Ruagarne, Esther had also given him a great deal.

She had taught him how to fight a sorcerer.

How to fight a sorcerer.

"You there, I am Si,..."

Whatever the opposing sorcerer was trying to say, cut them down immediately.

Enkrid did that.

He pressed down through his toes and into his left foot, loaded his thigh muscles, and drove them into the ground. The force of that push shot his body forward.

It was a charge built from an application of Knight's Strike.

Faster by far, more explosive, than anything the Red Cloak Knights junior knight had shown on the Azpen battlefield.

Most of the western people probably did not even see him move.

Bang.

The earth burst. Soil sprayed up like a fountain.

Crack, crack, crack.

Aker, drawn and swung before anyone could track it, cut across the sorcerer's body on a diagonal.

It went through flesh and bone with a sound like splitting hardwood.

The blade caught him across the mouth, so he never finished what he was saying.

But there was no shadow of death in those eyes.

The shape went hazy, and an identical form materialized behind the first.

"You little,..."

He tried to say something more, but this time a flash shot from Enkrid's left hand and pierced his face. Spark.

Rule two for fighting a sorcerer: never give them a moment to speak.

"You've got a nasty temper."

Rem kicked off the ground from behind and pushed forward.

No time to react. No room to speak. The melee erupted.

To Rem's eye, a brawl against Giants was normally a form of combat to avoid.

Honestly, at this point it did not matter.

Geomnarae saw Enkrid and Rem go and moved too. They had come here to fight, what was the point of holding back?

You just did what needed doing.

In other words, it was finally time to pay back what they had been owed.

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