WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

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A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 496: Along With Recovery

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Should he call this a gift from the Boatman?

No. That was not right.

The Boatman had not pushed him into the desert.

Then should he call it a gift from that sorcerer who split his skull open before flying off?

None of those were right either.

It had been chance and luck, but put another way, it was only possible because of all the time he had spent clawing and scratching for any opportunity he could find.

Enkrid stopped thinking and got to his feet.

He wanted to test something with his body, but before that he had to get his body working properly again.

The God of Regeneration, endlessly reborn, that was what they had called it. So moving should help.

No theory behind it, just instinct. That was what he felt.

It was not the kind of pain that would kill him anymore.

He had started on thin porridge, sipping water in small amounts, and slowly something like okay had begun to return.

"You should not be moving yet," Enri said from beside him, trying to stop him, but Enkrid shook his head.

"I think I'll be fine."

"Is your recovery just that good, or did some Frog blood get mixed into your ancestors?"

"Relentless training. That's all."

The right answer, but Enri heard it as a joke.

This was no time for kidding around. A man who had nearly died of dehydration, and here he was up after two days, wandering around on the third.

Well, no harm in it.

He went outside to loosen up, rotating his arms and bending at the waist to stretch his muscles, and a few of the western folk who had been milling nearby acknowledged him.

"Moving already?"

"Looks like it."

"Figures."

All the western folk had stayed here, and no one was in any position to object.

Well, at first someone had been, but not anymore.

A small oasis village with no name. If you had to call it something, maybe Low-Wall Village would do.

Either way, the western folk had claimed it.

One fight had been enough.

The village had held a few criminals who had crossed over from the continent and a few others driven out from the western lands. The oasis existed here, but it was small, even more barren than the western lands, and the village scraped by on whatever scraps the desert produced.

One side looked out over sand, the other over wasteland.

A handful of the village's resident idiots, still stuck in their old ways, had set their sights on some of the western women and started making trouble.

"Hey, you planning to stay here without paying the spot fee?"

A gang had seized the whole oasis and banded together into a criminal guild. Their deputy guild master was the one who stepped forward.

The western folk were not well-armed, and their bodies were lean from poor eating. Maybe they had looked easy. Or maybe those men were simply stupid.

If you lived near the western lands, you should have known how dangerous those people were.

As far as Rem was concerned, both were punishable by death, coming at them without knowing, and coming at them while knowing.

So he swung his axe without a word.

Enkrid had not seen it, but according to Enri, it was like watching an axe fly on its own, split someone's head open, and come back. A proper trick.

Enkrid had been unconscious at the time.

"You're up?"

Right around when Rem had finished settling the village, Enkrid had woken for the third time. The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was Rem's face, and for a moment he wondered if this was some kind of nightmare.

"Is this a nightmare?"

Speaking was much easier now. Enri had nursed him with great care.

"You had a nightmare?" Rem asked. He looked exactly like someone who had not worried for a single moment.

"No."

"Then what are you on about?"

"I'm saying get your face out of mine."

"The hell, is that any way to talk to someone who came out to greet you?"

"Yeah."

From behind, Arath pulled Rem back and said, "He's not wrong."

Rem had not actually been that close. It was his version of warmth.

He ended up snorting and smiling anyway.

"How was the desert?"

"Interesting enough."

Not a joke. Genuinely. He had wandered the desert and caught a glimpse of something new.

After that, Ruagarne told him that his charm had drawn the western folk here. Dunbakel lounged nearby and said she had known he would not die.

He spent three more days gradually loosening up, and then the Tribal Chief announced he was taking everyone back except Rem and Arath.

"We must return to our own lives now. This is where we part."

The chief asked for nothing and demanded nothing, and left with his people. Somehow their bearing was proud despite looking like they had not eaten well in days.

Grumble.

The Tribal Chief's stomach made a noise as he walked away. Enkrid pretended not to hear it.

"Come visit again," Geomnarae said, stopping by before he left.

"Next time I'll show you what my sorcery tastes like."

"You could show me now."

"I'll spare you out of consideration for your body."

Somehow Enkrid felt that Rem, when old, would talk exactly like Geomnarae.

"Fair enough."

"Right."

Geomnarae thumped him once on the chest with his fist.

Familiar faces said their goodbyes one by one and left together, and Jiba wept the whole time, tears running freely.

"Don't you forget me. Darling."

Ruagarne answered from right beside her.

"Who's a darling?"

"My chastity belongs to you."

Jiba continued as if she had heard nothing, and Ruagarne kept firing back.

"Since when?"

"I'll never forget you. I'll definitely come find you."

"Don't run away from home. You'll only end up as a Demon Creature's dinner."

Ruagarne shot back at everything Jiba said, the two of them going at it like a comedy duo.

Enkrid watched most of the western folk leave without a word.

He had heard they burned all their preserved food and everything else looking for him, and yet they left without a single word of boasting about it. He wondered if that was the western way, but from what Rem said, that was not quite it.

"They think the captain gave them more. Western folk keep score when there's score to keep."

Enkrid thought he was the one who had received more.

He had already gotten so much from Rem to begin with.

In any case, once the western folk had gone, Enkrid spent half his days on the Isolation Technique and the other half in meditation.

In meditation he turned that repeated day over in his mind.

Not to relive the suffering.

To retrace what he had done, even with his mind half gone at the time.

It had not been a fight. Not a battle.

'There is something to learn from everything you see.'

So it went for those who were ready, someone had said.

Who had told him that? He could not remember, but they had been right.

When he had walked and walked through the desert, when his body refused to give any strength to his legs at all, how had he managed one more step?

He had felt something close to regret, briefly.

Should he have pushed himself harder while he still had strength, moved faster?

But Enkrid shook off the stray thought quickly, and instead of dwelling on it, he put strength into his legs. Only after he had used everything up.

Exhausted, he pushed forward one step, then another. How? Will. Will.

'Refusing is also Will.'

Moving forward is also Will.

Swinging a sword with the intent to cut is also Will.

A junior knight uses Will only in part. Then what about a knight?

The words of Liervart, the false knight under Count Molsen's command, came back to him.

"Master each ability to the knight level and you're done."

That was what Liervart had believed, and he had remade his body accordingly. He became a chimera knight.

Did that make him a true knight? No.

So why had he made that choice?

Because he had focused on what changed when you wielded Will.

Enkrid did not know Liervart.

But he thought he understood the desire and longing the man had carried.

I want to become a knight. Why is it not allowed for me? I have swung my sword day and night, so why can't I?

When desire led to despair, the man had looked at the difference.

When he asked himself what made a knight different, his answer had been things like strength and speed.

Will is the thing that lets humans exceed their limits through an unseen force.

Enkrid went further than the premise of mastering each ability to the knight level.

'What if you put Will into every action?'

To imitate the Knight's Strike, he had packed Will from his toes to his fingertips.

What was the principle behind it? Did he understand it when he did it? No. And yet he had imitated the Knight's Strike.

'Eating, sleeping, relieving yourself.'

Could he hold Will from the moment he woke to the moment he lay down?

If he did, would something change?

Just a thought that struck him out of nowhere. The conclusion he had reached wandering the desert.

Try putting Will into the Isolation Technique right now, for a start.

From the process of forming intent and raising Will, all the way through to the movement itself, nothing about it was easy.

Not something he could simply do right now just because he wanted to.

That was fine.

Moving forward one step at a time was the thing Enkrid did best.

The thread was clearly visible and within reach, and knowing that all he had to do was follow it actually put him at ease.

Not that this would be all he did.

Rem was already waiting for him.

"Tell me when you're ready."

He had said finding the sorcery would change things.

Anyone not curious just how much it had changed was no one at all.

"Spend some more time with Arath."

If his body was well again, it was time to go back. Which meant Arath would have to go back too.

"Do not worry. I wait well. If Rem dies, please send word. I will need to remarry."

Arath's blessing for her perfectly alive husband drew a nod from Rem.

"Yeah, if I die, go find another man. Not sure there's one out there who fights better than me, though."

Arath's ideal type had never changed since childhood. At minimum, a man who could knock her down.

Even among the western folk you would not find that easily.

"If there isn't one, I'll raise one."

Arath answered without missing a beat.

Maybe that was the western way.

Or maybe it was just because she and Rem were the same kind of person.

Days of focusing on recovery and sinking back into meditation, repeating the same things over and over.

Whether the method Enkrid had found was the right one, he did not know.

Honestly, even if it was wrong, nothing would change because of that.

Had he ever known the road before he walked it?

He had crawled, and somewhere along the way stood up and walked, and the path he had walked that way had begun to show markers.

He had walked it even when there were none.

Enkrid spent one more week at the oasis.

During that time Rem suggested organizing a trading caravan of sorts, calling in some of the western folk who were still around.

That was what brought the Twins back to the oasis.

"If you draw too heavily on this oasis, it'll dry up fast. It's not land with any particular value."

All that surrounded it was desert and wasteland, so from the Twins' perspective, the land was worthless.

Enri stepped in to explain.

"It has value."

"What kind?"

"What kind?"

Both Twins turned their heads at the same moment, which everyone else found merely strange but Enri found slightly unsettling.

Those two were western folk, and if things went sideways, they looked like the type to throw the spears in their hands without a second thought.

Enri had worked out that if a trading run from here to a merchant city succeeded, there was serious Krona to be made.

The conclusion came from experience gathered while running around all over the place.

Of course, nothing would go exactly as planned, but Enkrid had said he would help if needed.

And on top of that, he had received the composite bow, which was clearly worth a fortune just by looking at it.

"Take it."

Enri recalled the moment the bow had been placed in his hands, gripping it as he continued speaking.

"You can sell things like desert lizard hide or obsidian."

"Where?"

"If you take it to the southern trading city, the margins should be high."

"Where's that?"

Somewhere in the southeast of the continent that the Twins had never heard of.

The southern trading city-state that existed further southeast even from Naurillia, past a great river that served as a dividing line, beside one of the southern great powers.

Enkrid had only heard of it by name, but it seemed Enri had actually worked there before.

Long-distance trade across this continent was impossible because of Demon Creatures and Magic Beasts, but occasionally someone managed it.

Travel widely, keep your eyes open, let the situation help you along, and sometimes it happened.

That was where Enri was now.

Letting the gem-eared fox slip away had brought him something even bigger.

The composite bow alone in his hands would be worth far more than the gems on a fox's ears.

Enri explained calmly, and Enkrid loosened up beside him.

A full week of rest and as much water as he could drink, and now his hands finally had proper strength in them again.

"Rem, get out here. I'm going to break that smug nose of yours."

Enkrid called for Rem with all the warmth and consideration in the world.

Rem came out with a yawn, scratching his cheek.

"Oh, today? No crying about it hurting after you get hit."

Enkrid adjusted his grip on Aker and looked forward.

He was going to fight first, then ask. Just how much use was that sorcery of his.

From the outside, Rem looked the same as before.

Enkrid had briefly forgotten that Rem was a craftier man than he appeared.

That was the problem.

Thwk.

An axe came flying without any preparatory stance, and when it was almost at his face, Enkrid felt that it was twice as fast as any throw Rem had made before.

At the same time, he swung Aker up to meet it.

Clang.

Instead of being deflected away, the axe slid up along Aker with a long ringing scrape, then suddenly split into eight trajectories.

Only then did Enkrid see Rem clearly.

Behind the man, something like a faint blue beast was wrapping itself around him, bearing down on Enkrid.

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