A Knight who Eternally Regresses - Chapter 490

WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 490: A Picnic

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Rem was still a poor storyteller, but better than before, and Arath and Juol listened with genuine admiration.

"Since when did you pick up the gift of speech? Just don't use it to charm other women."

"Did you attend some oratory academy on the continent or something?"

Enkrid understood their surprise, but felt a faint resistance to it all the same.

No matter how you looked at him, Rem was not a good speaker.

Listening to him mid-explanation, Enkrid thought that if this guy had ever tried his hand as a traveling bard, he would have given half his audience some kind of suffocation disease.

"So what Grime's Path is, right, there was this person called Grime. The path is the path he walked. And what that path is, well, it refers to Grime's whole life story. Now, are you still with me up to here?"

Of course, none of that mattered if the listener was sharp. Enkrid was always a good listener. He focused, and he gave proper responses.

That only made Rem try harder.

Filtering out the repetition and the pointless back-and-forth, pulling out just the substance, that was Enkrid's strength.

So that was what he did.

Among the old heroes of the Western lands, there had been a man named Grime, and he had done something resembling a pilgrimage.

If a pilgrimage meant visiting places of religious significance in order, then what Grime had done would be better named a hunting trail.

He had chosen places with things worth killing, things that needed to be killed, and visited them one by one.

He walked his path that way, traveling the Western lands and slaughtering every demon creature, magic beast, and monster that crossed his sight.

It was the life story of a hero obsessed with hunting, who wielded sorcery to command shadows.

It was also a tale from an age that sat somewhere between mythology and legend.

He had set a cannibal tree monster alight with sorcery and burned it to death.

He had found the weak point of a demon creature in a lake that commanded dozens of tentacles, and stabbed it dead.

There were accounts of him killing a thief who owned an invisible hood, and more besides.

A few of them made no particular sense, the kind of oral folklore that gets embellished over time, as old stories do.

Connected to all of this, there had once been a coming-of-age rite in the Western lands called Grime's Path.

Nothing complicated. It meant retracing a portion of the road he had walked.

"Walking a real piece of Grime's Path ourselves."

It was called a coming-of-age rite, but if someone tried to follow the exact route that hero Grime had taken, it would not be a rite of passage. It would be a suicide march.

Sending a fifteen-year-old alone down a road crawling with demon creatures? That made no sense.

So they had always used a watered-down schedule and route. What Rem was talking about now, though, was the real Grime's Path.

The actual route that hero had traveled.

Not that they planned to cover all of it.

That would take years of wandering.

What Rem was describing was the last stretch of hero Grime's road. Listening further, it was clear this was not about honoring some ancient hero either.

"Everything worth seeing is packed together there."

Simple enough. To Enkrid's eye, there was also the sense that Rem wanted to show them something.

Rem had a heavy pack on his back. Juol and Arath both carried heavy packs too.

"You could have told me to bring my things."

"Your things, please. We handled everything. Just come on a picnic."

Arath said it, flat and easy.

Could you really call Grime's Path a picnic?

The western folk standing nearby blinked.

It should have sounded half-deranged, but for this group, picnic was exactly right.

It was not as though mythological monsters were waiting there.

And that was how the journey began.

"Let's go."

"Right."

Nothing to deliberate over. They grabbed a change of clothes and the gifts they had received, and set off.

"A whole month? Great."

The beastfolk, who had been quietly resentful about bathing every three days, welcomed the trip the most.

Nobody would be telling her to wash more often out here.

Ruagarne, who always kept close to Enkrid, fell in behind him.

Enkrid, Rem, Dunbakel, Ruagarne, Arath, Juol. Six together.

"I would like to come with you, but I need to recover, and there are still the Fortune-Teller Tribe and the remaining man-eaters to deal with. Do not grieve that I cannot join you."

Geomnarae said it as they were leaving.

It was a western-style joke.

"Genuinely devastated."

Enkrid answered without expression or warmth, and Geomnarae let out a small laugh.

This one was fun to tease.

Once the exchange was done, they finished gathering their weapons and headed out.

"What about the head sorcerer?"

Enkrid asked, walking at a steady pace. Rem answered without concern.

"Wheezing around. If he says he's recovering and getting ready, a month is nothing, that's actually fast. Ah, and the head sorcerer wanted me to pass on his thanks."

"It was nothing."

Enkrid said it the same way, with the same lack of ceremony.

Rem watched him and thought, once again, that this was a genuinely strange human being.

Both his skill and his will stood outside the boundaries of the ordinary.

What was it to be extraordinary? Surpassing the common measure, most would say.

If someone asked Rem who the most extraordinary and remarkable human he had ever met was, the answer was already fixed.

"Let's move."

Rem slung an arm over Enkrid's shoulders.

"Doesn't that strain you?"

"What, grown a little taller now, have you?"

Enkrid had always been the taller one.

He had only said it because watching someone shorter, weighed down by a pack, stretching an arm up looked like hard work.

Enkrid looked down. Rem looked up.

"Let's have a spar later."

That was exactly what he had wanted to hear.

Walking on, he heard from Juol that for various reasons, this year they were living as a nomadic collective. Telling small tribes that had lost warriors to go fend for themselves was no different from condemning them to death.

So Juol had taken responsibility and chosen to look after them.

An austere life was nothing new to them, but this year, with the Cursed Ground Holy Sect's apostle having torn through and caused havoc, they might end up going hungrier than usual.

That was a problem.

So before leaving, Enkrid had asked a few quick-footed western folk to pass letters along through merchants coming into the area.

Nothing dramatic.

One letter to the king, one to Border Guard.

He had written that he had come to the Western lands with things to attend to, and that if they had any spare bread, they should send some.

If they actually sent bread, it would arrive as mold, but Crang and Krais were both sharp enough. They would figure it out.

Rain season was coming to the continent soon. In about two weeks, rain would be falling on Border Guard as well.

A cool breeze moved through, lifting his hair and brushing his cheek.

Arath walked beside him, and Enkrid asked without much weight behind it.

"I heard Rem was following you."

"I know."

"He coming along?"

"Why would I?"

He had asked because he wondered if Arath was following Rem, but both Rem and Arath reacted the same way.

The attitude of someone being asked something so obvious it barely warranted a response.

"So you're staying?"

"I'm staying."

Arath was holding her long staff, tapping it against the ground as she continued.

"I'm with child."

She said it the same way she said everything else. Even Enkrid was briefly speechless before asking again.

"What?"

Then a few questions came to him, and the first one, absurd as it was, turned out to be this:

Never mind how it happened, but how did she already know?

"Someone who works with sorcery can sense a new life forming inside them very keenly."

That was how it was in the Western lands, apparently, and with sorcerers especially.

In a short span of time, Rem had added yet another achievement to his list.

In the Western lands, the idea that pregnancy meant rest and recovery did not exist.

You kept doing what you did, and when your body grew heavy later, you simply took more time to slow down.

Arath would do the same.

She smiled as she spoke. A bright, open smile, clean in the way of western folk.

"I will work for my tribe, protect them, and raise my child. I love this land and have no wish to leave it."

Arath placed her hand over her belly. Whatever came, she would protect her child. She was strong enough for that.

There seemed to be a soft glow about her face. She looked especially beautiful just then.

Not in the way one looks at a woman with interest. Simply the thought that she was a beautiful person.

"Can you manage without Rem?"

"I'll miss him, but I'll be fine. He's not leaving forever. That man should do what he wants to do. I don't need a hollow shell of a husband whining in my ear."

That much was clear.

Most men probably could not match the thickness of Arath's forearms.

In sheer physical vitality, she outshone Teresa and Dunbakel both. A beauty built from health.

She was also broad-hearted and deep in understanding.

Rem had not fallen for her without reason.

Rem, who had been listening all along from nearby, cut in.

"That's how it is. But why did you think I'd be staying behind?"

In matters like these, Enkrid privately ranked Rem's perceptiveness somewhere around Dunbakel's level.

"Child, wife, Western lands. Isn't that reason enough to stay?"

Enkrid said it quietly, trying to ease him along, but Arath had heard every word too.

"You mad husband, so leaving is the normal thing to do?"

She let him go willingly, but there was affectionate cursing mixed into it.

The journey was noisy from the very first step.

That was not a bad thing.

Juol watched it all with a chuckling laugh, then signaled with his hand. Six velopters came at the call, six travelers, six velopters for company on the road.

The one Enkrid would ride had red scales shaped like flames along the top of its head, its body a general brownish color.

Looking at it, he thought of Odd-Eye for no particular reason.

Riding on Odd-Eye's back at full gallop, there had always been something like a rush to it.

Would there ever come a day when he charged into battle from that horse's back again?

He climbed onto the velopter with those loose thoughts drifting through him. Of everything involved in setting out and moving, nothing was particularly difficult.

"Help!"

When a Copycat demon creature turned up midway.

"I'll deal with it."

Juol stepped forward and drove it off with a few stones.

"If we kill it here, the blood smell draws others."

The reason for scattering rather than killing was plain.

They had a seasoned hunter with them.

"That's a Ratman pack. I'll go handle it."

When a group that could not be avoided came close, Rem or someone else stepped out and cut through them cleanly.

Watching him charge in and split a head open with an axe, then kick the next creature's skull apart with a clean boot, you almost felt sorry for the demon creatures.

"We should head toward water today."

Most of the land was wasteland, but small lakes appeared here and there, and near the lakes there were patches of green.

The western road was mostly ground that was neither grassland nor proper wasteland.

The velopters ate grass, drank from the lakeshore, and ate dried fish.

They ate just about anything, but fish was clearly a favorite.

Grrrk.

When given food, one pressed its head against him and rubbed, all warm neediness. Hard not to feel something.

Being cold-blooded, the scales were faintly cool to the touch, though not so cold as to startle you.

Night came, and they lit a campfire.

Dunbakel, running on the beastfolk's hunting instinct, came back with a rabbit and a mole.

"Excellent."

Juol was genuinely impressed and volunteered to cook. Hunting was no easy thing in the Western lands, and Dunbakel had pulled it off like it was nothing.

Once Juol moved to start cooking, Arath quietly took a step back.

"She's my wife, but never forget, you should stop her if she tries to cook," Rem said, keeping his voice as low as possible. Arath, seeming to have no confidence in her own hands, did not push forward either.

Juol was a better cook than Rem. He found the water's edge, cleaned the blood and entrails from the rabbit and mole, dressed them properly, and set a stew going from scratch.

The smell rising from the bubbling pot called up hunger that had been forgotten.

The taste? Rich and clean. The umami from the salt and herb powder stirred in made the thumb go up on its own.

"Not the best in the Western lands, but cooking is something I'm confident in."

Hearing more, it turned out Juol had always been in charge of cooking when living in communal settlement.

But because he also fought well and hunted well, he ended up involved in everything like this.

Juol said the greatest pleasure of his life was making food and watching people eat it.

"Then why did you come along this time?"

"The hero who saved my tribe is right here. How could I miss the chance to cook for them?"

That was his answer.

It was a genuinely cheerful thing to hear. After dinner, Juol took the lead on washing the dishes too.

"Everyone here is someone I owe a debt to. I don't want to hand off the chores to any of you."

The journey was supposed to take a month.

It looked like he intended to handle every small task himself for the entire duration.

After eating well, to let the meal settle, Enkrid picked up his sword and stood ready. Rem stood opposite.

Whooosh.

Wind cut through. Shattered sandstone crumbled to fine dust that stung at the corners of their eyes.

Both Enkrid and Rem squinted. An instinctive response to shield their eyes from the grit.

"Let's go."

"In front of my wife? You don't mind getting hit?"

Rem snickered.

He always did know how to talk.

"I, well, I prepared something to make things a bit more interesting."

This was the Western lands. Rem was a western man.

His inherited weapon and his own sorcery were things he would need to enter the Sacred Ground to find, but there were workarounds.

He had already come to new realizations during the fight against the immortal madman back on the continent.

"Arath."

He had spent several days practicing too.

Arath had hesitated at first, but once she tried, there were no particular problems and no side effects, and she had thoughts of researching it further.

In the meantime, Rem had also passed along a new way to use Heart of Superhuman Strength to members of the tribe.

A refined version, you might say.

Watching Enkrid use it, he had mixed in his own understanding.

It would soon become a technique most western folk could use.

Either way, right now was the moment to receive Arath's sorcery into his body.

"Strength of the Bear."

Arath spoke. With those words, something formless settled into Rem.

Enkrid could see something shimmering over Rem's shoulders.

What is that now?

It was similar to what he had seen layered over Arath's body when she fought.

A gleam showed in the depths of Rem's gray eyes.

Enkrid adjusted his grip on Aker.