WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 504: Is This the End?

= = =

Ragna arrived without washing, without eating, after wandering the roads for days, and even so, Enkrid could not knock him down with everything he had.

The idle giant's sword had grown heavier than before and faster than before.

Watching that massive greatsword bend through the air as though it had joints of its own, Enkrid had to admit he felt no confidence taking it head-on.

Still, he blocked Ragna's sword nine times, deflecting and sliding it aside.

Between those exchanges, he slipped in the thrust he called Knight's Strike.

Ragna dodged it with nothing more than a twist of his body.

Watching that continuous chain of movement, Enkrid recalled one of the Conditions of Knighthood Ruagarne had described.

Time.

Something about knights and ordinary people operating at different speeds.

In the time it took Enkrid to swing once, Ragna could twist away and extend a counter.

Reflexes, physical ability, raw strength, all of it had clearly broken past any ordinary limit. That was the kind of movement and timing only that could make possible.

His technique was not lacking either. He was nothing like that chimera knight. Ragna was the real thing.

How could a knight cut down a thousand soldiers? The answer was right here.

"If a soldier stabs a spear once and you can stab ten times in the same moment, then yes, you can do it."

Ruagarne had said that, and what Enkrid had grasped many times before, he understood again now at a deeper level.

Just noticing it at all was remarkable, honestly. He had Future Sight to thank for that, the eye that let him see one beat ahead.

Not that Enkrid felt satisfied with where he stood.

The want to push further still burned in his blue eyes, a flame of desire that had not dimmed at all.

Ragna, for his part, had not seen those mad eyes in a while, and found himself pleased. That was true even though he had barely eaten or slept properly in days.

"That's all you've got?"

So he paid Enkrid back for what had just happened. He stood over the fallen Enkrid and threw down exactly one line. Enkrid did not get angry. He just laughed quietly through his nose.

His squad somehow seemed to grow sharper with their words in proportion to growing sharper with their blades.

"You jumped the line? Obviously I go first, right? Huh? Huh? Huuuuh?"

Rem had gone absolutely berserk when Enkrid fought Ragna before him.

Rem had been about to hurl his axe on the spot, and Enkrid stepped in and said he would go first, which set Rem off like that.

Even so, Rem did not muscle his way in midway through or suddenly clock Enkrid in the back of the head.

His pride would not allow something like that.

Ragna watched Enkrid with quiet eyes as he came back. From one spar, Ragna had recognized that Enkrid had crossed some wall and reached a certain level.

Inside Ragna, there was no scale of junior knight or knight or Squire. No such framework at all.

Why? No particular reason. He just never cared about it.

In truth, it was his own genius that kept him from building that kind of framework.

Setting a framework meant confining yourself inside a mold.

Get trapped in a mold and you fight to fit it without realizing it. But a fight, a real battle, could go any direction at any moment.

Let your guard slip and a child held in your arms could put a spike through your heart. That was just human reality.

Though if it were Ragna himself, even if the child in his arms transformed into an assassin and jammed a spike toward his heart, he would have been fine.

He would have responded the moment he felt the tip graze his skin.

Reaching the level of a knight made things like that possible.

Enkrid, though, looked like he might be able to do something similar.

Even if his skin got nicked, he would avoid what needed avoiding. Compared to before, it was growth almost too great to believe.

And yet certain areas still showed gaps.

Reaction speed, the speed of seeing and judging, the ceiling of his physical ability.

It came down to his grip on Will still being incomplete. Ragna understood that by instinct. Even so, he had nothing to say about it.

Offering help might just build another mold and trap him inside it. So he only watched and kept his advice to himself.

Jaxon had been watching too, and the surprise on his face matched Ragna's.

The edge Enkrid had shown while facing Ragna stood out sharply.

Pressure. That was what it was.

The natural Pressure that flowed from a knight-level fighter. The directionally-impaired bastard had radiated intent and pressed down on Enkrid's spirit, his Will, without effort, and instead of thrashing against it, Enkrid had raised his own presence and swept it aside with ease.

He had not slipped out using Refusal. He had scattered it with a natural surge of presence.

Jaxon felt it freshly: the old Enkrid was gone.

"You bastard!"

Rem finally ran out of patience and went at Ragna, who had not properly rested at all.

Their fight was fierce and also somehow flat. It was like two parallel lines.

At some point, Enkrid watched the two of them collide, sword against axe, at speeds that exceeded his Dynamic Visual Acuity.

Sparks flew off the sword and axe until the heat coming off them was something you could feel.

Even so, neither of them was serious.

In between, rain started falling, one drop then two, and within moments it was pouring down in sheets.

"I went easy on you, lazy directionally-impaired bastard."

"Looks like you picked up some way to wriggle around somewhere."

They kept snarling at each other, but their hands had stopped. It was raining hard now.

"Let's wash up."

Enkrid said it, and somehow Krais ended up in the mix too, so they all walked into the bathhouse together.

The place was the same as always. Steam so thick from the hot water that you could barely see across it, and the middle-aged woman who ran the place, loud and completely at ease.

"Come right in!"

She threw her greeting like a knight throwing a sword stroke, bold and without hesitation. She came right at them and pointed at the tubs, ready for the mud-covered lot of them.

"Go on, strip down and get in! It's been a while since I've had a good show."

She said it, but she probably had no real interest in gawking at a group of men.

Enkrid, Rem, Ragna, Jaxon, Audin, and Krais all shed their clothes. Ruagarne and Teresa quietly excused themselves.

It seemed the same as before, but there were differences. The most obvious was the large stone tub. Someone had brought in big flat stones, hollowed them out, and smoothed the insides into a tub wide enough for all of them.

Whoever did the work, it would have taken a skilled stonemason.

"A gift from Lord Graham."

Krais added that detail, and they all climbed in. The water was heated to just the right temperature, the kind that made your whole body go slack.

Bathing culture had spread from the Empire across the continent, reaching even Naurillia.

It was not something the western lands had, but Rem found he liked it quite a lot, enough that the sharpness that had been sitting in him all day settled on its own.

"I went easy on that lazy directionally-impaired bastard."

"Go pray to whatever god you like before you sleep tonight. Lucky you survived."

"Ha ha, brothers. Let us not quarrel. The gods are always watching over you both."

"Useless pair."

From Rem all the way down to Jaxon, they went one by one, and the bathhouse felt like it got even hotter.

Enkrid knew none of it was sincere. Half of it was a joke, probably. And this was just how they showed they were glad to see each other.

That was what he decided to think.

Still, this was a lot better than the first time they had all been together. Back then they had not just been glaring at each other, they had practically been one step from a corpse hitting the floor.

Rem looked satisfied, in his own way.

Maybe because he had avoided being on the receiving end this time. That might be it. Or he just liked the water temperature.

"By the way, where has our beastfolk sister gone?"

Audin asked. Looking at him across the tub, Enkrid thought he had gotten to that question fast.

"She said she's heading east."

"Is that so."

That was the end of it. Dunbakel had gone because she had something on her mind, and that was fine.

Respecting someone else's judgment.

It was not something any of them had naturally possessed before, but it was now.

Enkrid had always treated them that way, and because they had taken it in, they knew they had grown from what they used to be.

Apart from any talent with a blade, Enkrid was a different kind of person, the kind who had more room in him.

There was a lot to learn from watching him.

They all thought that, though none of them would ever say it out loud.

"I heard you brought gifts for Commander Sinar and Esther. What about us? Nothing?"

Krais asked, half-submerged to his chin.

It was not exactly a gift, but there were things to hand over.

"I put them in my bunk bag and forgot."

If everyone had been there when he arrived, it would have come up naturally, but the place had been empty.

Enkrid did not know it, but that was only natural. A group without its center tended to scatter. He was the thread that strung all the beads together. Without the thread, the beads had just rolled off and spread out on their own.

Krais was the only one who had felt that mood at the time.

Even so, they seemed to get along better than when they were tearing into each other constantly back then.

They had scattered, yes, but the beads had stayed close by of their own choosing, drifting nearby.

Krais recalled something from a book he had read long ago, and something an astronomer had once taught him.

The world, apparently, did not sit at the center. The sun did.

He had not understood eight out of ten things the man said, but one thing stayed with him.

A star that turns and turns with the sun at its center.

In some regions it was a theory people got persecuted for believing, but looking at this group right now, that was what Krais saw.

Sun and stars.

They fought, they washed, they went back to their quarters, and Ragna ate something that looked like a packed meal, bread stuffed with ham and vegetables.

Apparently it was a special sandwich selling like mad in the city these days. Thin-sliced yellow kabocha inside, made by the people at Vanessa's Pumpkin Soup inn.

Vanessa clearly had a gift for cooking and for running a business.

Thinking about cooking made him think of Juol, out west. He and Vanessa together, Enkrid idly thought, might actually do each other some good.

Letting that pointless thought drift away, he dug through his pack and started pulling things out.

"Found these along the way."

First was the Carmen Collection. The previous owner had peculiar taste, keeping it in a jeweled scabbard. A dagger.

He tossed it over and Jaxon caught the handle out of the air.

Schhhk.

The moment he had it, Jaxon drew the blade partway out of the sheath. The sound was there, but the blade was not visible. Transparent. Jaxon's eyes went wide, which was rare.

"Carmen Collection?"

He murmured it to himself and touched the invisible edge with his fingertip. The sensation was real. He could not see it, but the blade was there-the sharpness and the shape of it catching on his sense of touch.

"Were there treasures just lying around on the road? You picked that up?"

Krais blinked his large eyes and asked.

"Not entirely wrong."

Ruagarne nodded from the side and offered a brief explanation. Krais heard that a deserter had been carrying it and they had taken it.

That was supposed to be a remarkably rare blade, was it not? Had luck found them? Maybe so. Krais could not quite finish that thought.

"This seems like it belongs to you."

Jaxon was in such a good mood that he tossed the jeweled scabbard over to Krais.

Krais caught it and quickly settled his feelings.

Not top-grade, but not bad.

The individual stones were not especially precious, but this was still better than some cracked relic pulled out of a shoddy dungeon. The resale value would be decent too.

Free income was never a bad thing.

"I'll put it to good use."

Jaxon seemed genuinely pleased. He said those words and even dipped his head toward Enkrid, which was not nothing. And he was not finished.

"There were a few assassination attempts. A few aimed at the lord, a few at Big Eyes."

Jaxon dropped it casually. Krais blinked his large eyes.

"When? I had no idea."

He would not have. While Enkrid was away, Jaxon had cut loose anyone who would not listen, and the rest he had persuaded with fists, daggers, and the right amount of threat, reshaping Georg's Blade into something that suited him.

Not completely reshaped, but enough to set roots in a single city.

So the useful people under Jaxon had staked out corners all over town, and they formed a net that picked off incoming Masters of assassination one by one.

Some might have slipped through or gotten lucky and found a gap, but no one who had come so far managed it. By Jaxon's measure, the lot of them were amateurs.

The kind who worked for a few gold coins.

Krais blinked a few times and reached a conclusion.

Thinking about it, there were few targets as easy to aim at as himself and Graham.

People with reasons to want them gone? Plenty.

People twisted by envy and spite.

Azpen people who wanted to see Border Guard fall.

Noble bastards looking for a fight, and so on.

"Ha, that's really too much."

Krais said it with a sulk. At this rate, what if someone slipped poison into his food and that was that?

Not that he had not thought of it. He carried a long silver pin for exactly that reason, and mostly used silver utensils.

Silver had always been the best mineral for detecting poison. Old knowledge.

The only thing that genuinely counted as a gift was the Invisible Blade.

Next, Enkrid pulled out the corrupted Sacred Object, and Audin recognized it at a glance.

"Ungodly wretch, your sins shall be answered. Father, grant no forgiveness."

Audin muttered it to himself but said it with the force of a shout, and stepped forward, reaching toward the Sacred Object.

Hm. Enkrid had planned to ask someone to find a Priest to deal with this. It was not something to hand over without thinking.

"This is something that must be touched in the name of the gods. Please hand it over."

Audin opened his large palm.

Well, if he said it like that, he probably knew what he was doing. Enkrid passed the cup over without a word. The thing had a strange smell to it, but no one in the room seemed drawn in by it.

Krais added one thing.

"True silver?"

"That's right, brother with the big eyes."

Audin placed the cup inside a small pouch and tied it at his hip.

The Cursed Ground Holy Sect had once stolen Sacred Objects without discrimination, throwing away lives like they were nothing until they had seized a handful of them.

Those stolen Sacred Objects had caused incidents all over the continent.

In one region, the undead kept rising without end until the Holy Knights had to be called in.

What Audin had just tucked away was that kind of object.

Purifying a Sacred Object carried deep meaning for him.

So if Jaxon had received something he wanted, Audin felt more like he had been given back something precious he had forgotten. Something close to that.

Audin moved to one side and began to pray, and Teresa came and stood beside him.

Teresa, who had given herself over to the god of war, understood as well as Audin did just how significant this object was.

What could matter more than returning an object that held the will and power of a god to what it should be?

The two of them stepped away, and from outside the barracks came a soft snort.

Odd-Eye. Enkrid took out the lucky fish he had carried all this way without ever thinking of it as a gift.

He held it out and tossed it through the open door toward Odd-Eye, who stretched his neck forward and caught it in his mouth, then chewed.

A few chews, then Odd-Eye stared straight at Enkrid and gave a single nod. Seemed to like it.

The pack felt about empty now.

Enkrid thought that and shook out his hands. Ragna, who had finished two sandwiches in the meantime, asked:

"Is that everything?"

= = =

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried