WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 502: General Store, Inn, Mercenary, Trading Company

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Audin could tell where Enkrid stood just from their sparring.

Not a knight. Not a junior knight either.

What was certain was that his skill had grown, and that was not even the whole of it. His movements had grown more precise, his judgment faster, his reflexes sharper, and on top of all that, something else was there.

As they traded hands and feet, Audin looked into his eyes.

Even normally, those eyes gave off a kind of heat. The drive pushing toward his dream, toward becoming a knight, always showed there. But this time, something else was visible alongside it.

Something close to conviction. The look of a man who had been wandering lost and finally found a proper signpost.

There was more to be surprised by beyond that.

Thud, tap, crack!

While Audin was thinking, Enkrid closed in. Audin blocked the incoming fist with his elbow, then Enkrid opened his hand and swung the back of it across. Audin shook his arm to deflect it and threw out a right hook, Enkrid caught the punch flat on his palm.

He did not stop there. Throughout the exchange he kept moving his feet, constantly trying to claim favorable ground.

Did raw strength alone make someone good in a fight?

If it did, a Giant would be the greatest fighter on the continent.

That was not how fighting worked. Combat was the combination of many elements.

The way understanding precision and the exact point of force transfer was far more useful than simply throwing weight behind a blow, for instance.

The Valaf Martial Arts had their roots in techniques built for the weak to overcome the strong.

Audin had layered his own insights on top of that foundation.

So to use the techniques properly, you needed a deep understanding of things like the points where force acted on a body.

Had Enkrid ever been especially gifted in that regard?

No. He had been well short of average. Yet now he was grasping the essence of each technique and applying it in altered forms.

He would draw attention with his fist, and the moment he claimed better ground with a foot, he would quietly try to twist the forearm.

Rather than shake it off by force, Audin kicked off the ground, lifted his body, and turned a full somersault in place.

A build that invited comparison to a bear or a Giant, moving no differently from a squirrel.

Enkrid immediately sent a whip-like kick at Audin's shin as he came down.

Pak.

There was no deflecting that one, so he took it through muscle alone.

Audin's dense muscle was armor no single kick from Enkrid could punch through, so holding firm was not difficult.

What surprised Audin was the process that had led to this point.

Reading the situation, understanding how force worked, the reflection that had drilled down to the essence of each technique.

Surprising as it was, there was not much to say about it. Audin simply looked at what he saw and asked what came naturally.

"Are you enjoying yourself?"

Enkrid was pressing him with a wider smile than he had ever worn. The question rose on its own.

"Yeah."

Enkrid nodded.

A drop of sweat traced down from his brow and fell from the tip of his chin. Audin laughed softly and stepped back. If he committed and went for a joint lock, he could still hold his own, but pressing with straight strikes alone, overwhelming Enkrid quickly was not going to happen.

And if Enkrid had a sword in hand? If it were a fight to the death?

He would lose ground.

Audin admitted it plainly. Of course, the outcome of a fight to the death was never guaranteed. Nobody present needed to be told that.

Whatever the case, setting everything else aside and looking only at where things stood right now, falling behind was simply accurate. Audin found it absurd and welcome both at once, and he laughed.

"Hey, wildcat. Want me to shave that hair of yours down to the scalp?"

Rem was off to one side, needling Jaxon without pause.

Frog was there too, whip and sword in hand, working through training.

Beside her, Teresa was spinning a shield in slow circles and watching the sparring.

She was next.

"I have learned a great deal from Brother Audin."

Teresa said it with her shield raised. Enkrid let out a slow breath and nodded.

"Picked up a bit myself."

More than a bit, honestly.

Regardless, it went on like that, fight, then fight again.

Ropord was off to one side, breaking into exclamations of amazement. At the edge of the training ground, Fell was watching the scene, and his pupils were shaking like something had come loose.

What is this?

Fell had never felt crushed looking at someone else's skill before.

When it came to raw talent, he had always believed he was the best.

He was a man who could measure the future against the present. Given enough time, he was sure he could catch up to all of them.

Start with the captain first.

After that, maybe the gray-haired one? He had even laid out a rough plan.

He had nearly broken when he saw Ragna become a knight, but he had pushed through in the end. He had taken one step forward. Fell believed he had pulled himself out of the pit of despair. Or rather, he had believed so.

I can do it too.

When Enkrid came back, Fell had been planning to spar with him and tell him it was time someone taught him a thing or two.

But what was this.

Rem, that barbarian, had come back a monster who could fight as well as any knight.

He could write that one off as expected. What truly stunned him was Enkrid.

This was the man he had been certain he would catch up to in no time.

If Enkrid's growth had come from training hours and sheer effort, then doing the same would close the gap. Fell's talent was greater, after all.

So he had done exactly that.

He had thrown himself into training without caring whether it was day or night. He had swallowed his pride and thrown himself at Ragna alongside Ropord. He had rolled around in the dirt at that religious bear Audin's training sessions too.

It had been painful. He had never pushed himself this hard since picking up a sword. But he had endured because he could feel his skill growing, you reap what you sow.

Patience had tasted bitter, so the fruit waiting at the end had to be sweet. That was what kept him going.

It had to be that way. That was the logic of the world. The logic of the world as Fell understood it.

And then this. Watching Enkrid, the confidence to win drained out of him entirely.

What did it mean to expect a loss from the very start when you measured yourself against someone?

Fell had sharp eyes, and right now those eyes were telling him Enkrid's skill was formidable.

The force packed into a single stroke. The way he read the situation. The quickness and the judgment.

A sense of self-loathing reared its head.

Could my talent actually be worthless?

A crack opened inside Fell. More precisely, the crack that had started when he watched Ragna began to split.

Without realizing it, Fell's expression had gone rigid. He was in a state where no joke, however funny, could make him smile.

"My betrothed, come spar with me too."

Sinar stepped up and faced Enkrid. Fell could see it, but his eyes were not on the present.

What did some elf matter?

If I have no talent, what am I supposed to do?

Quit everything and go home to herd sheep?

But was the Shepherds of the Wilderness really the kind of work you did with a heart this soft and frail?

No. So what then?

Enlist as a soldier? Here? Why? For what? No, not that.

Then walk into a general store and work the counter? He had heard an inn was shorthanded. A trading company guard would not be the worst option.

He sank inward, deeper into himself.

Enkrid welcomed Sinar's arrival, but he slid a sideways glance at Fell, who was slumping lower by the second, trailing an endless gray mood.

What is going on with him now?

Just as Sinar arrived, Enkrid turned his head and saw that Fell's eyes had gone completely vacant.

He turned back to Sinar. Green eyes more vivid than emeralds, and blond hair drifting down like falling silk, she was in the middle of pulling it back.

With a soft rush, the blond caught in her hands flowed like silk. It looked like a waterfall wrought from gold.

She used her long hair in actual fights sometimes, but for sparring she considered it unnecessary and tied it back. Change the angle of view, though, and it was simply a beautiful painting.

A beauty unmistakably inhuman, standing apart from anything human.

Normally you would find yourself staring at that face as though in worship, but perhaps the longer you kept looking, the more you came to see her as a person.

Were the Shepherds of the Wilderness not people who threw themselves at difficult things by nature?

That must be it.

His instincts had not fired, but when you looked at what came before and after, the current of things became visible.

Enkrid's eyes sharpened.

"Going forward, you might want to be careful about calling me your betrothed."

He had become a general, and he could speak plainly when the moment called for it, but with Sinar he still found it more natural to use formal speech.

Sinar paused mid-motion, both hands raised behind her head, and tilted it to one side.

"Why?"

"It would just be better."

"And if I don't want to?"

"Then I suppose there's nothing to be done."

If she did not want to, what could he do?

Pinning her down by force was not going to make her listen anyway.

In terms of sheer stubbornness, she might be the most stubborn person he knew.

Rem, who had been sending Jaxon one formal duel challenge after another without pause, glanced over at Enkrid.

"Hey, just go to the temple."

He said it because he had read exactly why Enkrid had spoken.

That man's aiming at the wrong thing again.

Jaxon's gaze moved back and forth between Enkrid and Fell.

"Hmm."

A soft, dismissive clearing of the throat. The meaning was plain. He had heard nonsense.

"There's someone who would shed tears at that one word."

Enkrid spoke to Sinar again. It was his way of looking out for someone. Even in the middle of training, this much he could do.

Fell's gaze was still blank. In truth, he could not even hear what was being said over there.

He was just muttering the same words over and over. General store, inn, mercenary, trading company.

"Brother, why not just focus on sparring?"

Audin said it with a grin.

Enkrid decided to do exactly that.

He had done what he could. In its place, he sent Fell a quiet word of encouragement in his heart.

He had always respected those who carried a dream.

Come on, Fell.

Nothing in this world is impossible.

Rem, Audin, and Jaxon all had a rough sense of what state Fell was in.

He had seen someone better than himself and been swallowed up by the hollow feeling that left behind. Nobody in that place understood it better than those three.

They had watched people around them break that same way, up close.

When Rem had been in the Western lands, there had been a few near him too. He had tried to pull them back at first and eventually gave up.

What can you do if someone will not listen.

Some of them had pushed through in the end, but some had disappeared, and others had given up the life of sorcerer or warrior entirely.

Jaxon had killed every one who tried to prove their worth by killing him, so none of that type were left anywhere near him.

Audin had tried to guide each of them, but the end results had been roughly the same as Rem's.

Anyone could fall. There were simply those who stood back up, and those who stayed down and stopped. That was all.

None of the three expected Fell to crumble.

Sinking into self-loathing over watching Enkrid?

Maybe the first moment could go that way. But watch for a week? Watch for a month? The man was simply insane, obsessed with his sword, obsessed with training.

Keep watching Enkrid long enough and you would find yourself getting back up. That was the natural course of things. Fell had an unusually serpentine streak in him, so there was a chance jealousy would eat him alive and he would never rise again. But that was not any of the three's concern.

Watching Fell did bring one thought to Rem's mind.

Didn't expect that from him.

He had assumed anyone from the Shepherds of the Wilderness would grind their way through by sheer determination, but here Fell was, flat on the ground and scrabbling rather than fighting back up.

It looked like someone drowning in a puddle barely a hand deep, thrashing as though it would kill them.

Ropord, who seemed to have been raised in comfort by contrast, was something else entirely.

"Teach me too!"

He was still shouting that right now.

He had thrown himself at everything with reckless energy even when Ragna was around, and he had somehow survived.

More than survived, his skill had grown.

He still had that drive to improve and did not hesitate to push forward.

What the difference between those two was, Rem had neither the interest nor the inclination to work out, so he turned his attention away.

Everyone had their own business to handle.

Instead he watched Sinar and Enkrid's sparring.

Sinar had gone into the forest not long ago and come back soaked through with vital energy.

She had not told anyone, but it had been an act that was half a wager with her life.

"If betrothed bothers you, what about promised one?"

"Has your skill improved any?"

Enkrid said it like a reflex, and that single line worked like a spell, drawing a faint smile to Sinar's face.

"You should also be careful about smiling."

She had no idea why he was suddenly saying these things. Sinar did not let it concern her and drew her sword. It was time to speak through blades now.

Naidhl, shaped like a leaf, half-concealed her face.

It was something all of them already knew, Jaxon included.

Sinar had already risen to the rank of knight. An elf knight.

* * *

The sparring ended in Enkrid's defeat, but his expression was brighter than it had ever been. He had learned something, taken something in.

A blade of vital energy he could not have blocked before, he had blocked. After that he had spotted an opening and tried to go for a Wrestling technique.

In close quarters, Sinar's body moved faster than ever.

The greatest strength of the elves was said to be their light bodies.

She proved it.

She began to circle with Enkrid at the center, her steps light and rapid, and Sinar's image split into twelve afterimages.

Ruagarne, watching from the side, puffed out her cheek with a low croak, and by some coincidence Sinar's sword cut Enkrid at the exact moment that sound rang out.

Not one of the twelve leaf-swords was a fake.

There was only the difference in precedence, visible to those who had risen to the rank of knight.

Enkrid had opened the eye that saw one step ahead, but he could not block it. More precisely, he saw it, but his body could not follow.

"You've opened Future Sight."

Sinar said it after seeing that, and Jaxon and Audin both glanced at Rem with barely concealed surprise.

The look meant: you must have already seen this back in the Western lands.

"Damn. His skill is really shooting up now."

Rem was visibly surprised too.

Which meant this was something even Rem had not seen before.

Everyone present, everyone except Fell, watching Enkrid knew this was the moment of an egg cracking open.

Enkrid was changing by the day.

"Captain!"

And then Krais arrived, sooner than any of them had expected.

"You're late."

Enkrid said it from where he was sitting.

Krais, cloaked and hooded, came into view with a wide grin.

Behind came Nurat, and eight blade-users arranged like a proper escort.

Every one of them was at least the level of Torres, who would be in Martai now.

Top-grade soldiers, in other words.

One of them even looked to be at roughly junior-knight level, at least by mercenary standards.

The most striking change was in Nurat.

"It has been a while."

She dipped her head in greeting, and the pressure she gave off was distinctly different from before.

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