WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

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A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 489: The Path of Grime

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"My mother tried to cut off my manhood. Said if she'd had a daughter, she would have tried to pair her with the honorary warrior."

The western man with the leaf-pattern tattoo on his face said it without a hint of shame.

The woman who had joked about giving away her daughter the moment Enkrid recovered from the curse, that had been his mother. No daughter to offer, so she had tried to take her son's instead. He said it so casually that everyone burst out laughing.

Even Enkrid, caught off guard by the timing, let out a small chuckle.

The man had not been trying to get a laugh out of anyone, so he kept talking.

"Lucky Fish has a distinctive smell, and there's a species of Velopter that's drawn to it. When someone goes missing, trackers sometimes follow the scent to find them. That's one of the ways it gets used."

The dried fish he had just handed over was called Lucky Fish.

It was food, yes, but also a preserved ration that people only ate as a true last resort. In that sense, it was something like a good-luck charm. It seemed similar to carrying a strangely shaped stone and calling it a lucky stone, but in the Western lands there was a story behind why they called it a lucky fish.

"Long ago, a lot of people went missing during hunts. Finding their bodies was difficult, and if a proper burial wasn't given, they couldn't reach the sky god's side, so finding the body was a duty of its own."

Back then, people had used the Lucky Fish's scent to locate the dead.

These days, disappearances were not as common.

Scattered and living hard lives, some people had eventually gathered together. They fell in love, had children, built families, and those clusters of people living close together formed tribes and became communities.

That was how the western folk began.

Not the mythological version. The anthropological one.

"It's a gift."

He said it with a bright, open smile.

There was no shadow in it. The kind of joy that comes from having something to give, a smile made happy simply by the act of passing something along.

Enkrid accepted the cloth pouch.

Dunbakel, standing beside him, had already tried a piece and was nodding. Good, apparently.

"Does it suit a Beastfolk's palate too?"

The man laughed, a warm pahaha.

A laugh with all the darkness gone from it.

And it was not just him. Everyone's laughter had lost its shadow.

The black smudge of soot Enkrid had noticed when he first arrived was no longer visible in any of them. The hidden darkness behind the smiles of everyone who was not a child, that had been there before, but it was not there now.

That alone was enough for Enkrid. The City of Aoara came to mind unbidden.

He thought of the story written there.

A city where children laugh. A place where people can live like sunshine breaking through dark clouds.

Then he looked back at what was in front of him now.

People, children, laughter, gifts, a moment of happiness.

His eyes were on the present, but the past moved through his head.

"Why do you pick up a sword?"

"Why go that far?"

"That's stupid."

"I've never seen anyone like you."

People who criticized him, people who worried, people who tried to reason with him, people who tried to stop him, people who laughed at him.

There had been many of them.

The Boatman had been right. There were a lot of people around him.

He liked that.

If someone asked him now why he had never lost his dream, the Enkrid of today would answer like this:

"Because I like watching people smile."

Right now, no other answer came to him.

A cloud drifted over the sun and scattered the light in a soft glow. A Sun-shading cloud.

Bright and warm, but not blinding.

A rare sight you could only find in the Western lands, where rain came seldom and clouds spread wide and drifted slowly.

Beneath that gentle light that wrapped around everything, Enkrid looked on quietly.

At the things his sword had protected.

* * *

People learning his training methods.

People coming at him wanting to spar.

Between all of that he trained himself and taught others, and by the time it was done, evening had arrived.

Dinner was well-braised beef. A stew with firm radish simmered in, and it was very good. He was passing the time like that when Rem came to find him in the evening.

"Heard we have to stay over a month."

Enkrid had just finished washing and was drying off, pulling on the thin garment Jiba's mother had given him.

Leather with a rough, bristly feel that stopped just short of scratchy.

The Western lands had metalworkers, but iron was precious there.

There were very few forges and craftsmen.

No iron-bearing mountains either, so iron had to be brought in from outside the Western lands.

Instead, they were exceptionally skilled at working leather and fur. Enkrid found himself curious about their tanning methods.

Leather garments made by stretching hides thin and treating them with preparations were part of why continental merchants came seeking out the Western lands.

For those same reasons, they made fine bone knives ground from bone, and things like obsidian-tipped spears.

"And?"

Enkrid was pulling on the garment, rare even in the Western lands, using a different treatment process, or so he'd been told, as he asked.

"I'm saying we have to wait."

Rem said it again.

Enkrid shook the remaining water from his hair and answered.

"Right, and?"

"We should go together."

"Go where?"

Rem blinked. This man sometimes said things that made no sense, and he was stone-cold sober when he did it. Moments like this called for a direct response.

"Where do you think?"

Rem said it with a jerk of his chin.

From the way he said it, he clearly meant the road back.

"Why?"

Enkrid blinked back at him.

Was he not supposed to stay here for now?

Spending every evening rolling around with Arath, all cozy? Where was he going? According to Geomnarae, Rem had been making up for lost time.

"I need to beat the hell out of that directionally-impaired bastard."

Oh. That made immediate sense.

He couldn't live with taking a hit without giving one back. He'd pay back what he owed.

But they were supposed to be tracking down Sorcery, weren't they? Would that even be possible now? Ragna had already become a knight.

"There's something like disbelief in those eyes."

"No there isn't."

"Yes there is."

"Picking at every word now? You're going soft. If you have something to say, say it with an axe."

"...Just go to sleep."

Enkrid seemed to have run out of things to say and let the subject drop. Rem answered with a flat look and left it there.

He meant: stop talking nonsense.

Enkrid understood what Rem was getting at, so he did not push further.

By any measure, the two of them fit together well.

"Since there's time to kill, let's take a trip tomorrow."

Coming to the Western lands had been a journey for Enkrid, but not for Rem.

There were quite a few things worth showing here too.

Arath had already shown him some of them, which stung a little, but there were still places left.

If Arath had not been busy picking flowers and doing this and that, Rem would have shown him every place she had taken him to first.

Not angry about it. Just a little disappointed.

Either way, had he not been the one who brought him here?

"Sure."

Enkrid answered without hesitation.

"See you tomorrow."

Rem left, everyone settled down, and they all went to sleep. Enkrid slept deeply.

A sound sleep without a single dream.

He woke up well-rested, tempered his body with the Isolation Technique, and beat up the Twins who had come asking for a spar first thing in the morning.

"What about striking techniques?"

"Couldn't they make us a bit stronger?"

The two who had been beaten spoke up, trading off between sentences. Being twins, they sometimes had that kind of speech pattern, and it seemed like a long-established habit. Enkrid watched them and offered his encouragement.

"Try it."

Others came too, asking about techniques, asking about training methods.

Some western folk were content with where they were, but others gave themselves over to the drive to improve.

Among them were quite a few who combined talent with real ability.

Enkrid taught without holding back.

Honestly, compared to Rem or the others, he was a far better teacher by any measure.

That was only natural.

He had come up a path where he lacked talent, pressing each step down hard, chewing through every inch of it.

Those with talent, he could teach in a way suited to them.

Those without, he could teach in a way suited to that.

You cannot see the view from the summit unless you have climbed the mountain.

And if you leap to the top in a single bound, you never see the scenery on the way up.

Enkrid had done both.

He pressed each step down hard, chewed through every inch of it, and climbed.

So it was only natural that he taught well.

That said.

"You should build your stamina first. Run from morning to night."

"You're pretending to swing the axe like this to trip your opponent's foot, right? Proper form and drills on the Basics. Wake before dawn and keep at it until noon."

A gentle teacher, he was not. If someone wanted something, effort was a given.

Enkrid did not compromise on that.

If you did not want to, you could quit.

Many people did quit. That did not mean they blamed or resented Enkrid for it.

Even after quitting, they lingered nearby, grilling meat or simmering stew or just playing around.

The western folk had a game played with twenty cards made from leather backed with thin wood, each one painted with animals or flower shapes.

"It's called Baktu."

They wagered Krona on it.

People used Krona here too, naturally. Barter was more common, but it was not unusual to see someone offer a fine piece of leather or a Magic Beast's tooth in place of coin.

There were necklaces strung together from teeth as well.

The continent called them savages and said they needed civilizing, but these people had a culture of their own, and that was something worth respecting.

That was Enkrid's view.

Would it cause friction? Maybe. Maybe not.

That was not something that could be settled with a sword, anyway.

He could protect people, cut down Demon Creatures, take the field in a war, but culture and politics were not his business.

They'd handle it themselves.

Not his place to step in, not his concern.

He just hoped things would go well.

He was passing the time like that when Rem arrived with the morning sun.

"What are you doing?"

"Just looking around."

Arath and Juol were with him.

"Are Ruagarne and Smell coming too?"

Rem called out toward Enkrid's back.

Dunbakel, who had been dozing on a small rock she'd been using as a chair, lifted her head.

She understood at once that "Smell" meant her. Which suggested that her obliviousness only kicked in when it suited her.

"Going where?"

"Somewhere with the captain."

"I'm coming too."

Ruagarne, who had been listening nearby, cut in with her answer.

The western folk were interesting, and there were plenty of things here that sparked her curiosity, but what stirred her deepest desire more than anything else? Obviously, the person named Enkrid.

Even now, she found it remarkable.

How does he block curses?

She did not understand the principle or the reason. He had not mastered Sorcery and applied it somehow, and he carried no magical implement.

The curse, well, fine, say he blocked it on his own and leave it at that. It was not the part of him she found particularly interesting.

Then what about his growth in swordsmanship? How would you explain that?

Even looking at him now, she could see the limit. A limit of talent, a limit of ability. Dramatic improvement from here would be difficult. He could become stronger, more solid, but only in small ways. That was the limit. And he had been at the limit when she first saw him.

A man like that stood neither as a knight nor as a junior knight, but somewhere in the gap between them.

How? She did not know.

There were people who sometimes broke through their limits by luck.

Cases that even Frog's talent-reading eye could not account for? They existed. Some called it the whim of a god. Some said the goddess of fortune had left a kiss.

But it's not luck.

None of those things were luck. That, at least, was how Ruagarne saw it.

What is luck?

An opportunity. And what is an opportunity? A moment. To seize the opportunity that arrives in that moment, at that time, during that window, what did you need?

Preparation.

Without preparation, luck meant nothing.

In Ruagarne's eyes, Enkrid prepared every day, always.

No natural gift? Does that matter?

"I'm going to become a knight."

Enkrid had said that, and he only moved toward it. Without stopping, without any doubt.

Ruagarne shivered again today. She had been doing this every day lately.

Enkrid was the kind of person who made Frog's cheeks puff up every time Ruagarne saw him.

Where would she find someone like this again? Nowhere. So she had no choice but to follow him relentlessly.

The desire to court him and become his spiritual companion? She'd had a little of that scheming intent at the start, but it had since disappeared completely.

She simply wanted to stay by his side.

What lay ahead on the path this person walked, how he walked it, what changed because of his steps.

She wanted to know.

That was why the urge to explore the unknown surged up every time she looked at Enkrid.

"Yeah."

Dunbakel, too, nodded without giving it much thought. There was nothing in particular to do if she stayed behind.

"Right then, let's go. Should take about a month, I think."

Rem said.

A month? That's a while.

Enkrid thought it over and asked.

"You haven't even said where we're going."

"Didn't I say?"

"You didn't."

"Ah, that's because you were talking nonsense yesterday."

The mental fortitude to shift the blame right at that moment, that was Rem through and through.

Arath nodded as though she found this completely reasonable.

A nod that said: yes, if the other person was talking nonsense, these things happen.

There was an old saying about how when the husband sings, the wife joins in the song.

Apparently the Western lands had a saying like that too. Rem blaming others and Arath nodding along in agreement, both of them were equally irritating to watch.

Enkrid waited quietly for an explanation, and Rem opened his mouth without pushing back further.

"There's something called Grime's Path."

A story passed down from the past, and a certain tradition that had grown from it.

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