WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 487: It Was Nothing

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Enkrid turned toward the Black Warrior immediately.

The pack of Giants were contorting their bodies in some kind of awakening, but.

'Probably fine.'

Rem was there. Dunbakel was there. And above all, the female Rem had been holding her own.

So this was where he needed to be. His instincts said so.

"He's coming!"

One of the Cannibals spotted Enkrid and shouted. Terror filled the voice. Small wonder, the one who had led them until now was lying on the ground, neck and head no longer on speaking terms.

Enkrid caught a glimpse of the Cannibal's black teeth but left them alone.

The state of the battle, the whole situation, seeped into his head and made the priority crystal clear.

He set priorities by feel alone. The battlefield sense he had sharpened while fighting Azpen.

Beyond strategy and tactics, he could simply sense what needed doing.

As Enkrid charged, fear grew in the Cannibals' eyes. Pupils shook. A few of them trembled so hard their hands rattled.

How do you survive against something like that?

Not that they needed to worry about it.

Dead men could not afford to worry.

A few scratches marked Ruagarne's Heart Armor, but nothing serious. A thin sliver of metal was lodged in her side instead, a Throwing Spear one of the Cannibals had hurled, snapped so only the spearhead and a handspan of shaft remained.

The Black Warrior, on the other hand, was missing an ankle. Burned to a blunt stump. The work of the flame whip.

The fight had been even, but the Black Warrior had Cult-aligned Cannibals at its back, and Ruagarne had the western folk at hers.

Had it been precarious? It had been.

Not anymore.

A faint shadow fell across the Black Warrior's back.

Enkrid, naturally. He swung Aker at full speed.

The silver blade sliced through the dead warrior's neck.

Fft.

The soot scattered, but the neck sealed itself back together at once.

Without something magical, nothing could deal lasting damage to a body like that.

Not a problem. Aker was a Magic Sword.

It could hurt the Black Warrior, just not well enough to kill it in one stroke. Or perhaps it was something he had been noticing lately, a feeling as though the sword was gradually losing its edge.

Still, that did not particularly matter.

It was still usable.

One slash thinned the soot on the creature, but it did not die.

'Not dying.'

Cut the neck and it means nothing?

So what then?

The soot seemed to thin each time, so keep slashing?

The thought was brief. The action was fast.

Enkrid swung Aker like a branch. The blade moved at speed, cutting through the creature's body again and again.

The Black Warrior thrust its spear in resistance, but it was useless.

Enkrid shifted his feet, changed position, let the spear stab air, and cut three more times.

Nineteen slashes total, and the Death Knight made of bundled soot began to come apart.

Normally, magical tools or sorcerous treatment would have been needed to deal with something like that.

That was why Geomnarae had been about to push himself and resummon his wolf.

But it was no longer necessary.

Geomnarae watched the summon scatter under the rapid slashing and thought again.

'Do I actually need to spar with this man?'

The Death Knight dissolved into the air like smoke from the tobacco Hira exhaled, black smoke drifting apart between shafts of sunlight.

The enemy that had put Ruagarne in real danger fell apart without even managing a proper fight. The gap in raw force was plain for all to see.

"Run!"

"Sand ghost!"

Seeing it, the Cannibal pack scattered in every direction. They cast sorcery and ran at the same time.

Ruagarne saw it and shouted as she sprinted.

"Not one of them gets away."

Enkrid let them go without bothering to chase.

This mob of Cannibals was pulling out amulets, weapons, and all kinds of strange things as they fled, but none of it looked like it would hold up against Ruagarne.

A Cannibal threw an amulet, and with a rushing whoosh, sand shot up and shaped itself into something vaguely human. Ruagarne's flame whip coiled around it, and it burned black and crumbled on the spot.

Ruagarne was not the only one giving chase.

More than five western warriors were dropping Cannibals with spear-throwers and obsidian throwing spears, or picking them off with slings.

Geomnarae just hurled a hand axe outright.

Whoooong!

The spinning axe caught a fleeing Cannibal in the back.

With a dull thud, the creature pitched forward, and Frog's foot came down on its skull.

Crack.

The skull split. An eye popped free and rolled across the ground. Death.

Ruagarne pressed on after the rest.

Sorcery was a variable, but from the sand ghost onward, Geomnarae handled it. He had a technique for cutting off sorcery before it could even activate, though naturally Enkrid had no way of knowing that.

He just felt like things were going all right.

The threat was gone.

When opponents who could barely hold their own while fighting were now too busy running, there was nothing left to feel threatened by.

"Enki, not here."

Geomnarae said it, looking at Enkrid.

Enkrid nodded and turned around.

The battle would not be over until the Apostle's last desperate gambit was cleaned up too.

"You want to die twice? Sure. Go ahead and die."

Rem's shout reached him right on cue.

It did not matter that the ones they had killed were reviving, or that more than ten Giants were in some state of awakening.

Enkrid looked at Rem cutting loose.

The left axe battered a Giant's club while the right axe split open its wrist.

Brutal force sent the club-gripping hand sailing into the air.

After the wrist came the throat. Rem stepped onto the Giant's foot and launched himself upward, the axe blade sweeping past the soft cartilage beneath the Giant's chin with a sharp hiss.

Crack. A new mouth opened in the Giant's neck, and blood poured out in a rush.

The bracer wrapped around Rem's forearm grew wet, soaked through with blood. Droplets spattered in every direction, and running beside those droplets was Arath.

"Kill them all!"

She swung her axe and shouted.

He had a rough idea of what she had done.

It was the technique the Twins had shown.

A pale blue energy settled over her entire body, and thanks to it, her axe swings were faster and cleaner than anything he had seen from her before, there was no comparison.

Not a matter of man or woman, just a large powerful frame putting the weight of a heavy axe to use.

Those two facts came together cleanly. One axe stroke caught a Giant in the shin, and through the split bone, black blood ran instead of purple.

A single swing cracked the bone halfway through. The Giant could not support its own weight and toppled sideways.

A nearby Giant swung a fist, and Arath caught it one-handed.

Thud.

Not a deflection. A full catch. Outrageous strength, the kind that would make for a good arm-wrestling match with Audin.

"The bear spirit walks with me."

Arath muttered, shoved the Giant's fist aside, and swung her axe.

A heavy war axe with a blade twice the size of a standard one fell vertically and bit into the Giant's foot.

Thunk.

Bone broke. Blood sprayed. Black blood hit her face, and the corner of Arath's mouth rose. A smile. She was smiling. She even looked like she was enjoying it.

Definitely a female Rem.

Either way, the husband and wife were a matched pair in a fight.

Dunbakel was raging right beside them.

"Why do they keep coming back to life."

She bought time with a hit-and-run approach.

Western folk threw spears from behind her.

Dunbakel looked more than capable of keeping herself out of harm's way, but the number of Giants was considerable.

And then another unexpected thing happened.

Phwpwpwwk.

A handful of people, small even by western folk standards, fired blowguns from one side and swung hooked implements.

The Giants that got hit shrieked, bleeding from their eyes and noses.

They did not drop immediately, but their fighting capacity was cut in half.

Sorcery Poison. The touch of the small tribe Rem had called in.

Enkrid could tell from a glance that they were on his side, so he wove around them and joined the fighting.

Gwrr!

A Giant came straight at him, arms and legs windmilling. Enkrid knocked away the club and the stamping foot with Aker, then punched a hole through its skull with an upward thrust.

He pulled the blade free with a wet sound, and a streak of blood followed it out.

He watched the dead Giant for a moment. It twitched but did not rise.

So this one was not coming back.

Plenty of western folk had been shaken when the Giants suddenly started their awakening frenzy, but they were no longer startled.

That was fine.

Fighting them directly himself, Enkrid could feel the gap between these Giants and the two he had faced before. These ones fell short.

Normally, the Apostle and necromancer would have summoned wraith armor and bone blades and handed them to these Giants to complete the Death Giant warrior force, but the necromancer was dead.

So they were half-finished.

The Tribal Chief, watching the battle, was outright weeping. He had thought midway through that something might go wrong. It had not.

Most of those who had set out from Elder Bear as the vanguard had prepared themselves to die.

They had stood here ready for it.

And still they would fight. For what?

For the western lands, for freedom, for survival.

But no one had died.

The Apostle's final frenzy was cut down by Enkrid and Rem and the Beastfolk's blades.

Sorcery Poison had seeped in at some point and locked the Giants' legs.

The hands of the tribespeople who had only been throwing spears from a distance went still.

All the Giants were dead.

Nothing left to throw at.

The small tribe vanished faster than they had joined the battle.

They pulled back to the side of the ravine and left with open palms raised, gone in an instant.

They were people who believed that even speaking with outsiders was a problem.

Most western folk respected their ways and let them go.

The fight that had started at sunrise ended before noon, and no one felt cheated by it.

No one mistook an easier ending than expected for an easy thing.

They only felt that they could go on living.

Only recognized that the threat was gone.

It had not fully sunk in yet.

But that they had won was certain.

Under a gentle sun, Enkrid felt the western wind cool against him.

Purple blood ran like a river. A foul smell hung in the air. Corpses lay scattered.

None of that was what the western folk saw, the Tribal Chief included.

What caught their eyes were the two who had started and ended this fight, exchanging words.

And who were those two? The prodigal son returned, and the Foreigner he had brought with him.

While Enkrid let the wind wash over him with Aker hanging at his side, Rem walked over.

Enkrid read Rem's mood and spoke first.

"You don't have to bow your head and thank me."

"...What exactly did I say?"

Rem tilted his head.

Fortunately, they were not close enough for anyone else to hear.

Thanks to that, the onlookers' feelings were not reduced to rubble.

Only Arath walked over, looked at Enkrid, and privately wondered if this man was slightly unhinged.

Even so, he was someone she owed a debt to, so she kept her mouth shut.

Saying something now would make her look like an ungrateful fool. She could not even complain if people treated her like a wildcat.

"Right, if you're grateful, do better going forward."

Enkrid said it again.

"You all right? Sounds like you're having hallucinations. You might need treatment."

Rem answered immediately.

To Arath, it was a string of nonsense, but it did not look bad.

She could see how these two had been with each other day to day.

What had her husband been doing since he left her?

The sight of Enkrid and Rem together was a piece of Rem's time she had never seen.

Looking at it just made her feel good.

They had fought, won, and enjoyed each other's terrible jokes.

"Well then, let's have a cup of the best liquor the western lands have to offer."

Rem expressed his gratitude the way Rem would.

Enkrid nodded as though it was nothing.

Nothing special.

Measured against everything Rem had given him, it really was nothing special.

Heart of the Beast had been the beginning. Without that, he would not be who he was now.

Did that make all of this luck? A gift shaped by chance? Just the whim of the goddess of fortune?

Of course not.

Luck found those who were ready for it.

Enkrid was not denying his own effort.

But gratitude was gratitude.

So this was nothing special. As far as he was concerned.

He understood, though, that it was not nothing to them.

The Tribal Chief rose to his feet without bothering to brush the dust from his knees and said, "Eat and drink."

With the Tribal Chief's permission, everyone did. Something like a festival broke out.

"To the soul of the western lands."

"To the bear and the thunder."

"Grime, smile upon us. We thank you for hearing our prayers!"

"Dawn Bird, raise the sun."

All kinds of words, everyone lifting cups and tearing into meat.

Two days. They enjoyed the festival. Enkrid joined them.

He drank plenty of goat's milk wine, sheep's milk wine, and cow's milk wine, and none of it made him drunk.

He drank through the night and the next morning sweated it all out working his body, and whatever trace the previous night's drinking had left seemed to vanish entirely.

A clear, adequately dry morning.

The bodies had been gathered, buried, and cleared away.

A visit to the Sacred Ground would have to wait for later.

The head sorcerer had not yet woken up, a problem, someone had said.

So it seemed.

In the meantime, all sorts of things happened.

"We will carve your name into the cliff face."

Someone said something that amounted to praise.

They had called themselves of the Maru tribe.

The time set aside to mourn the dead was brief. To these people, death was not an ending. Their culture said so.

While the work of gathering the dead went on, all manner of people came forward.

"Have a drink."

An elder offered wine.

"Ahem, I want to travel to the continent, but my mother is against it. I need somewhere to hide until I leave. Sir."

Jiba was still chasing her dream.

Dunbakel, since the battle ended, had sunk into some kind of thought, staring into the air, or dozing off.

Ruagarne fit right in among the western folk.

Asking about this and that, immersing herself in their ecology and culture, it seemed to happen naturally.

"We cannot call you a true hero, in our lands, hero carries a somewhat different meaning. But we would call you an honorary hero."

Firelight. A bonfire. Western folk gathered around it.

Those who had been talking loudly had gone quiet without anyone noticing.

The Tribal Chief spoke with the great bonfire at his back.

His single word drew every eye. Enkrid stood calmly.

It was the night after the battle. The excitement and feeling of it had not yet faded.

"Foreigner, I speak on behalf of all the western folk. From this day forward, you are our friend."

With that, the Tribal Chief pressed his forehead to the ground.

Rem had told him what that posture meant.

Something about how if he said right now to come to his room stripped bare, the person would come without a word of complaint.

That old man?

The very thought was horrifying.

"It was nothing special."

So he politely declined.

Behind the Tribal Chief, Arath and everyone else bowed their foreheads to the ground in the same posture.

Nothing compared to what Rem had given him.

But to them, something more precious than anything.

Something that had let them go on living.

Something that had protected the soul of the western lands. Something that had let them keep living.

"They're saying thank you."

Rem, who seemed to have read Enkrid's thoughts, chuckled and said it. Rem was seated off to one side.

Enkrid said it one more time.

"It really was nothing special."

He meant it. Measured against what Rem had given him, he truly thought it was nothing special.

Heart of the Beast had been the start. Without it, he would not be who he was now.

Did that make all of this luck? A gift shaped by chance? Just the whim of the goddess of fortune?

Of course not.

Luck found those who were ready for it.

Enkrid was not denying his own effort.

And the head sorcerer woke up.

What was it Rem had said, the sorcerer Rem needed to track down his own sorcery.

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