A Knight who Eternally Regresses - Chapter 494

WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

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A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 494: Luck Doesn't Flow Only One Way

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Rem crouched before a corpse with a split and rotting head and drove his dagger into the chest cavity.

The putrid flesh tore apart without resistance, and the blade came away stained black as it parted the meat.

Rigor mortis had long since dissolved, so cutting through the body took no effort at all.

Not that it would have mattered either way.

From somewhere near the chest, a heart emerged, its surface riddled with the marks of insects. Punctured, gnawed through. The black blood had thickened into dried jelly.

Well, look at that.

The captain's return was one thing, but understanding the situation beforehand was just basic procedure.

That was why Rem had opened up the corpse in the first place.

No one here knew it, but his grasp of sorcery, his depth with it, ran on a different track now than it once had.

Some of it came from his own talent breaking through. Some came from what he had picked up after killing the immortal madman. Some came from watching Enkrid and letting that change the way he lived.

Whatever the reason, reading the traces of sorcery left behind gave him a rough picture of what had happened. More precisely, he was working out what the other side had actually done.

One of the spirit line's natural divines? No.

Forbidden sorcery. Power borrowed from another being entirely.

After turning a few possibilities over, he landed on a conclusion.

Lucky bastard.

Rem reached the same conclusion Geomnarae had.

The scales of fate had tilted a little further in that direction.

He had also picked up something else: the identity of what had been borrowed. The Cursed Ground Holy Sect. Cultists worshipped demons as gods. Priests were those who borrowed divine power, so it stood to reason Cultists could do the same.

Meaning they had prayed to the master of the Cursed Ground to borrow its strength.

Should that even count as divine power?

If Audin ever heard that, he would have leapt straight off the ground and kicked at the air with both feet pressed together.

Anyway. The Apostle's teachings, the technique of borrowing a demon's power, and a sorcerer of genuine genius thrown into the mix.

They performed a ritual by treating a demon as a god?

He understood the mechanism. He could see the shape of what had unfolded. Standing here brooding about it alone was not going to change anything.

There would have been more offerings at the destination. Wherever they had tried to send him.

Not the Cursed Ground, though.

Rem nodded to himself and muttered.

"Probably didn't go that far."

"There's no way he's dead."

Ruagarne said it beside her, finishing the thought.

That was obvious enough.

How far could it be on foot? Two weeks at most?

Since more offerings would have been placed at the destination, it was not the Cursed Ground. The Cursed Ground: Silence was silent because it was silent, but that did not mean just anyone could walk into it.

Whether it was some form of spatial forbidden sorcery or otherwise, you could not hurl a person somewhere you had never been. So the Cursed Ground was out.

More than anything, Silence reacted when touched. Nothing had reacted, which was proof enough it was not that direction.

With forbidden sorcery of this scale, the offerings are probably all dead.

The worst case was somewhere beyond the River of Sand Without Return.

If not that, then he was out in the western plains somewhere, reading the stars and finding his own way back.

That was Rem's read.

That night, the moon rose. Two moons lit the western land, and stars blazed across the sky in full display.

"Aren't you worried?"

Ruagarne asked, watching him.

After examining the corpse and sorting through her thoughts, Rem had dusted off his hands and stepped back. He was sitting by the fire now, slowly turning wind rabbit meat over the flames. Let his attention slip for even a moment and the meat would char instantly, ruining it. Getting the cook right mattered more than anything.

Rem kept his eyes on the fire as he answered.

"If he was the kind to die from something like this, he'd have been dead long ago."

That was true enough.

Ruagarne had been shaken for a moment when Enkrid vanished, but she had settled down by now.

Dunbakel was the same. The moment Rem arrived and said he would probably find his own way back, the Beastfolk gave a short, inward ah of understanding and nodded.

Rem had considered the worst case too, but he did not believe the captain would die over something like this.

A hundred attempts should have failed every single time. A thousand attempts, a thousand failures. This had happened because some absurd stroke of luck had fired off.

Die from just that? Ridiculous. This was a man who had walked through more brushes with death than anyone could count and come out the other side every time.

But what if he actually had died?

Idle thought. Rem shook it off quickly.

Went all the way to find a sorcerer, and it ends like this?

He decided to wait without worrying. What would pacing around accomplish?

"Everyone just do what they're supposed to. You think you're going to spot him by looking around? And if it's not the desert, he'll make it back on his own."

"What if it's beyond the River of Sand Without Return?"

"He'll still make it back on his own."

The Tribal Chief had asked. Rem answered without hesitation.

If someone asked him how, he would have to admit he did not know.

But Enkrid would come back. He always did.

It was faith without grounds. Some people would call it trust.

He would become a knight, and he would keep whatever he said he would keep, and,

Still needs to feel my inheritance weapon.

That was how it would go.

Three days passed after Rem examined the corpse. Enkrid did not return. There was no trace of him anywhere.

* * *

Meditation. Thought. Working things through.

One thing led to another, and the sun went down fast.

Partway through, he had tried to read the angle of the descending sun and gauge direction from it, but it had not worked at all.

What was wrong with the sky out here?

The sun sank bright and clear, but you could not tell which way was which.

With no angle to read, there was no dusk either. The light simply drained away, the sky turned a pale early-evening blue, and then it was dark.

Black night. A desert without a single light.

The next visitor to the land, now stripped of its heat, was cold.

The moment night fell, the temperature dropped sharply.

Why the sudden cold?

At that rate, he thought, he might freeze to death.

Either way, finding a path came first.

Enkrid lifted his head.

The stars above covered the sky so thickly they looked white.

There were too many. Far too many.

What was this now?

The western folk called this place the River of Sand Without Return.

That name was exactly right.

This was land with no landmark by which to fix a direction.

"Should I call this a sky-blocking Milky Way or something?"

Enkrid talked to the empty air around him.

Clouds that blocked sunlight were called sun-shading clouds. A canyon that blocked sandstorms was called a sand-blocking canyon.

So should this be a sky-blocking Milky Way? That had to be about right.

In the western tongue, he had heard that a river of stars hanging in the sky was called mirinaе.

Jiba had told him that.

Sometimes in the western sky, a river of stars in every color would appear.

They called it mirinaе.

In the day, a savage heat that seemed to cook a person alive. At night, a cold that crept in from the opposite direction to kill them.

Was he going to freeze to death out here?

The moment that thought crossed his mind, a soft warmth bloomed from somewhere inside his chest.

It swept the cold aside instantly.

Enkrid reached into his clothes and pulled out the source.

There in the sea of sand where every light had gone out, the dagger glowed with a faint red warmth. A gift from the short blond junior knight.

"It's a dagger that holds warmth."

That was roughly what Hira had said.

The heat pouring from the dagger formed something like a thin membrane over his whole body, and the cold eased considerably.

Enkrid had warmth. The gift was doing its job.

What next?

He needed to find a direction.

Was there anything he had on him that might help?

Enkrid took stock of what he was carrying.

Aker, Gladius, Spark. His main weapons.

Beyond those, a throwing knife sheath strapped across his chest held six Throwing Knives. A dagger was hidden at his ankle. He also had the spider-shell breastplate, shoulder guards, bracers, shin guards, and the rest.

Lucky Fish, was it?

The preserved ration he had packed without much thought.

The bracelet Jiba's mother had put on his wrist.

The composite bow a craftsman from the City of Aoara had made for him.

The dagger that gave off warmth and light.

The dagger that returned when thrown.

The last dagger had a long blood groove cut down the center. The Dagger of Calamity, he thought it had been called.

One of those common curse ward objects, kept deliberately dull.

Curses were something the Boatman munched and sautéed and enjoyed quite happily, so the thing held little real meaning.

Nothing he had on him was going to help him find a direction right now.

Bladed things and preserved rations. That was the whole of it.

Enkrid had to choose.

Move, or stay still?

The answer was already set.

If staying put changed nothing, then moving was what Enkrid did.

Step by step.

He started walking.

Starlight, stars spilling thick across the sky, opened up his vision. All he could see was sand, but he walked steadily on. He walked through an entire day like that.

The dagger's warmth kept the cold from becoming a real threat. That, at least, was a relief.

He walked through the evening and tore strips from his underclothes to wrap loosely around his head.

At this rate, once the sun came up, everything from his scalp to his face would cook through. His face and the back of his neck were already burning.

The sun rose again.

Walking in the day was impossible.

The dagger's warmth made the cold bearable, so walking at night was the right call.

Breathe slow and long. Walk only at night.

He decided that and did it.

Was there another option? Maybe. Sprint with everything he had. Push Will through his thigh muscles, blow past the limits of an ordinary human, and run flat out.

Could he clear the desert in one go? And if he failed?

How many Will-fueled sprints could he manage? Ten? Twenty? That assumed his body held up. Would it even get him out?

Not a chance. So the answer was to walk as long and as far as possible while conserving his strength.

Hold everything in reserve.

A stray thought drifted in, and Enkrid glanced at his surroundings.

They said an ordinary person died without water after three days, but that varied from one person to the next.

Enkrid had a strong base constitution and extraordinary patience.

He never pushed himself. He did not run.

He walked steadily, preserving every bit of stamina and moisture his body still held.

He had been walking like that for ten days when something small changed.

A shape like a mound of piled sand caught his eye, and something about it felt slightly wrong.

He stopped in front of it, and something sharp and pointed cut through the air with a hiss.

Enkrid drew Aker and swept the incoming object aside.

A clang rang out.

A tail. More precisely, something that resembled a scorpion, a Demon Creature.

With a wet rush, the creature burst up from the sand.

Demon Creature or Magic Beast, at this point he was almost glad something had shown up.

In that instant, Enkrid traced a flood of Attack Lines.

He could charge in and bring the sword down. He could sidestep and drive Spark in with a thrust. Both were options.

But everything cost stamina.

With the thought still forming, Enkrid flicked his left hand. A dagger was already in it, and it spun through the air and punched through the creature's head.

A dull crack as the hard shell gave way, and something like a black mass scattered outward in every direction.

Had it evolved living out here in the desert?

The black mass was its blood.

Not liquid. The blood had solidified.

He could not have drunk it anyway, but seeing it only made his thirst worse.

I'm thirsty.

His skin had taken on a dry, crumbling feel.

Enkrid held out his hand, and the thrown dagger drifted back through the air.

He could feel something like a taut string at his fingertips. When he pulled at that feeling a little, the dagger picked up speed.

He caught it with a snap.

His immediate thought: he was almost annoyed at himself for not using this sooner. It was a fine weapon.

Enkrid straightened the gear that had shifted when he threw the dagger. The bow was strapped across his back, and while it was not heavy, it was awkward.

During morning training he had sometimes wondered why he had even brought it.

He was not practicing archery. So why had he packed it?

One Demon Creature. That was all, and he kept walking after.

He slept in short fits. During the day he sometimes found a sand mound to rest against.

After killing the Demon Creature, he skinned it, used the bow as a pole, and rigged something like a shade cover.

Carrying it around like that, he stopped regretting bringing the bow.

The composite bow held up fine against both heat and cold.

He thought Spark or Gladius could probably stand in for the pole just as well.

But he did not throw any equipment away.

Somewhere around twelve days without a drop of water, he urinated and the color was black. The smell was foul. Dark urine. One of the signs of dehydration.

His skin had gone past dry into something worse. When he pressed a finger into it, the flesh barely bounced back.

The armor felt heavy, but if he shed it, surviving the daytime heat would be even harder.

His throat ached. The thirst felt like it was squeezing his heart.

His lips cracked and peeled. The skin itself began to come away in strips, like bark being planed from wood.

After more than ten days enduring the cruelty of heat and cold, his body cried out through the pain.

Like a snake shedding its skin.

Enkrid thought that as he walked, then stopped. His head spun.

"To be left alone, with no one near. What is loneliness? Shudder under the torment of it, that is the day you have chosen."

The Boatman spoke from somewhere far away. No swelling river, no ferryboat, no lamp. Only his voice.

Enkrid had no strength left to reply, so he only listened, and then opened his eyes.

He started walking again.

How much time had passed, he could not say.

Dizziness, headaches, suffering, pain. One after the next.

He felt like he was wandering without purpose.

No path, no direction.

He might wander this desert forever, dying and dying again.

The Boatman had been rowing toward that outcome. Enkrid knew it, but he just walked.

Junior knight or full knight, a person was still a person.

Starve and dry out, and death was death all the same.

Even so, Enkrid did not reach for his rations.

Preserved rations were, at their core, salt-cured fish. Eating something salty would only worsen the thirst.

He knew that, so he held back. Remarkable patience.

They said you saw mirages wandering a desert, but Enkrid saw none.

His inborn patience would not allow illusions to creep into his eyes.

He walked. And walked. How many times had he pushed past what felt like his limit?

Hot.

Sunlight slipping through the gaps in the Demon Creature shell was splitting his skull, and then everything went dark.

Today began to repeat.

He walked, and died. Not falling, not collapsing, standing, walking to the end, dying on his feet.

Patience, a honed body, a will that never broke. The harmony of all three.

Enkrid himself did not clearly register the deaths.

Is this the same today again?

Seeing only sand day after day, he could not tell if today was repeating or if he was simply making it through another single painful day.

He had died from exhaustion while walking, yes, but feeling it was a different matter.

After that, the Boatman appeared a few more times.

Sometimes laughing softly. Sometimes speaking with something like pity.

"Give up. It gets easier."

And then, at some point, he was gone.

Hallucinations came instead.

"Hey, I still can't quite talk right, so if you have any Will left, try putting a little more in."

Something like that. It was hard to understand properly.

Through the haze, Enkrid walked by instinct.

Today, this way.

What did it mean that even skilled pathfinders did not enter this land? It meant finding a path was pointless.

He thought he had heard something about pathfinders who worked the desert exclusively, that they were not entirely absent.

A half-remembered scrap.

Some days he was swept up in a sandstorm and died.

Days of dying from exhaustion repeated.

And then, cutting across the world before him, he saw a great river. The River of Sand.

So this is the River of Sand Without Return.

Enkrid had no strength left to speak aloud, so he kept his mouth shut and turned it over inside.

The desert was a desert, and the River of Sand Without Return was a vast, unbroken stretch of quicksand.

To enter it was to die.

He stood there searching for some way to cross, and then died from exhaustion.

After that death, he changed direction.

With no landmarks to set, he watched the shadow cast by his Demon Creature-shell shade cover and made rough guesses at direction as he walked.

Past the River of Sand Without Return, he found a cliff face.

Land he would not dare attempt even in full health.

He searched for another way and died again, this time sinking to one knee, breath rasping in and out, until it stopped. Sometimes the inside of his throat split and bled, and in those moments the wetness was almost welcome.

But that was also a sign of death.

He wandered on and on.

How many times had he died? How many todays had he drifted through? He did not know.

Simply being alive hurt. Dying hurt too.

The thirst could have eaten his mind by now.

Headaches and dizziness were constant, and that made measuring time nearly impossible.

The Boatman deliberately did not appear.

Enkrid was isolated, dying over and over, alone.

Even so, he never stopped walking each day.

When walking itself was too hard, he raised his Will.

Muscles alone could not carry him, so he moved Will through his body.

Come on, legs. Walk.

Body, hold on.

When Will cycled through him and pushed strength into his toes, he could manage one more step.

That was how he learned to last a little longer.

One day, walking and walking still, a blurred shadow appeared ahead.

A rattling skeleton Demon Creature.

Beside it, a fox with large ears. Something glinting on the rims of those ears. A gem-eared fox.

Clatter.

He watched the skeleton lift a foot.

Enkrid's lips were cracked and shriveled. His cheeks were so sunken it would have startled anyone who saw them. The skin beneath his eyes was nearly black.

Even so, he gripped his sword. The moment he saw a Demon Creature, his hand moved on its own.

Did he have the strength to swing it? He did not know.

The Boatman watched all of it.

He watched and thought.

Was every today a crisis? Was it suffering without end? That was different for every person.

The Boatman knew that.

With no one cheering him on, no one there to protect him, abandoned and alone, he had expected the man to give up.

He had been wrong.

Enkrid was not the kind of person who walked for the sake of being cheered on.

He walked for what he believed in.

The Boatman's eyes gave off a purple light.

Enkrid had lost count, but the Boatman knew. This was the thirtieth today.