WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 508: There Was No Wavering in That Voice

= = =

"Meat."

"How much would you like?"

"A lot."

Enkrid put away a meal for twenty people right there by himself. He had always been a big eater, but even by that standard this was excessive.

And it was all high-calorie food. Beans, meat, thick sauces, that sort of thing.

A few soldiers who watched him eat went wide-eyed.

Is eating like that training too?

Seems like it.

Should we try it?

"Don't do anything pointless."

Bell, now a commander, said it as he tapped one of his soldiers on the head. Trying to copy what Enkrid did would get you killed before your time. Bell knew that.

When had he learned it? When they saved Squad Leader Benzence, maybe? He had known before that Enkrid was no ordinary man, but that was when he had truly started to think the man was something else.

Saving someone on the battlefield, sure, that could happen by accident. But rescuing a comrade from a burning barracks when you might die doing it? For someone who disliked you, at that?

Bell could honestly say he would not have managed it.

Whether anyone made a fuss or not, Enkrid ate dinner the same way that evening, and the same way the day after. Absurd amounts of food.

Rem sat beside him and shot him the kind of look that asked what on earth was wrong with him.

"You planning to use your stomach like an ogre or a Giant?"

Ogres were famous among Demon Creatures for eating people and eating enormous amounts. Giants were just known for eating well in general.

Both had massive frames, so naturally eating a lot made sense for them, but Enkrid did not. That was reason enough for Rem to say something.

"I want to eat well."

"You going somewhere?"

"No."

What's he up to now? Rem watched with a suspicious eye but let it go. The man wanted to eat, what was there to say about it?

Enkrid kept it up for four more days. He ate well, relieved himself well, and slept well.

Morning and evening both, he washed his entire body carefully, head to toe.

"No fever, at least."

At one point Sinar came over and pressed a hand to his forehead.

He had stopped sparring and was suddenly spending his days eating and drinking and sleeping and doing nothing but light training. That was what prompted her.

Of course, what he called light training still looked like a brutal regimen to ordinary soldiers, the kind they could barely keep up with even if they tried.

He normally pushed his body to levels no one else even dared to attempt, so by comparison it looked easy.

Enkrid ate and drank and rested and washed as if preparing for some kind of rite. He looked like a man alone, readying himself for a momentous fight.

A week passed that way, and during it a wind came through that swept the heat clean away. An autumn wind.

Enkrid sat on a stump waiting for dinner, letting the wind hit him, and thought about the west, specifically about one piece of western culture: Sorcery.

Sorcery is made of prayer.

That did not mean he was about to start praying or performing a ritual for it.

Keeping your body and mind clean before something important helped rather than hurt. It was simply a way to settle himself.

Quite a few eyes were on him.

Rem thought the man had finally gone properly crazy, but he was also curious about what Enkrid was planning. Something was clearly coming. The mood said so.

Outwardly, Rem showed none of it. He hummed to himself and sharpened his axe on a premium whetstone he had gotten from somewhere.

That whetstone cost more than most Valerian Steel, but Rem used it without a second thought.

Ragna looked at Enkrid and felt something close to solemnity. On the surface Enkrid looked like a man enjoying an ordinary day, but he also looked like someone bracing to pick up a sword and dance with it alone.

It felt like he might suddenly grab his blade and come at you at any moment, and that would be perfectly fine.

Audin was deep in silent prayer.

Lord Father, please grant your blessing on whatever the small commander and brother is doing.

Whatever it was, something was clearly happening. Audin's heart was full of support. Even so, a sliver of unease crept in.

Why? He did not know. Only that the Lord Father seemed to be telling him the small brother was about to do something reckless.

Audin continued his silent prayer.

Lord Father, this brother has always been that way.

There had not been a single moment in the path he had walked that was not reckless.

If the God of War were to undergo divine manifestation and respond to such a prayer with a revelation, the reply would likely amount to something like: well, obviously.

Of course no god came down to speak, so Audin simply offered his blessing prayer with a heart full of support.

Help him.

The unease lifted. The Father would help. Audin continued his consecration prayer.

Jaxon had his arms crossed, a dagger in his right hand and a book in his left. From the outside, no one would have guessed he was holding a weapon, the grip looked completely natural. The dagger was the same one he had carried on his very first assignment. No great magic on it, but holding it put him at ease.

He had never actually used the dagger that time; the job ended with a single high kick. Still, it was a meaningful thing to carry.

Death.

Jaxon had seen and been involved in countless deaths, and his gut and instincts were warning him now that what Enkrid was doing was dangerous. That he might die.

Why?

He could have asked himself that. On the surface it really looked like nothing, just a perfectly ordinary day by Enkrid's standards.

And yet he felt this dread, which meant Enkrid was doing something.

So he watched. Even with things to handle elsewhere, he stayed.

Eating, drinking, sleeping, relieving himself, washing, resting.

What was strangest about all of it?

Everything. All of it was strange. He ate more than usual, drank more, slept more, washed more.

Well, I didn't confirm whether he relieved himself more.

Eating that much made it a given.

More eating, more sleeping, more resting. And all of it done as if his life depended on it, the way a man fights to the death. That was how it looked to Jaxon.

Among those watching, Sinar was the closest to Enkrid. She had placed a chair a few steps away, directly across from him, and sat there.

It looked as though she was studying his face, taking it in.

She watched him with her usual sculpted expression.

"Come back quickly, fiancé."

Regular augmentation, to be precise, the journey Sinar had taken when she went into the forest with the forest spirit. A journey inward. One with a low survival rate, though she had believed she would make it.

Because Enkrid looked like he was preparing for a journey like that, the words slipped out.

If he asked what she meant, she could always wave it off as a joke, same as usual.

Enkrid looked at Sinar and smiled. The corners of his eyes curved up, his lips pulling back.

Had Enkrid ever found Sinar's smile rare?

She felt the same about his.

A smile that gentle, meant to say everything was fine, she did not think she had ever seen it before.

"I'm not going anywhere."

Enkrid said.

The sun was slowly beginning to set.

Before the colors fully spread across the sky, Esther, the Black Panther, approached. Calling her a witch would have been more accurate, so it was an odd nickname either way. Esther did not mind.

Living in the world, all sorts of things just happened.

Reacting to each and every one was a waste of time. She knew what she needed to do, and she knew where to direct her attention.

Among those things was watching Enkrid.

Was it something she needed to do? No. It was closer to something she wanted to do.

What she wanted came before what she needed.

So she did it.

She looked quietly at Enkrid, who sat there with a faint smile. Black hair and blue eyes, hair and eyes like her own.

"What are you waiting for?"

Whatever his preparation was, whatever he was doing, beyond all of that, Esther looked at Enkrid as he was right now and asked. He seemed to be waiting for something.

"The sunset."

His answer came back.

"Why?"

"I want to see it."

Ah.

Esther nodded.

Pffh.

Odd-Eye came around from behind Esther. Enkrid reached out from where he sat and stroked Odd-Eye's mane. Odd-Eye dipped his head into the hand, then walked one slow circle around Enkrid, moved to the side, and stood still.

Nearby, Teresa felt a swell of feeling and began to sing. It was a hymn she had recently started learning. Her voice was husky and clear at once.

Two opposite qualities lived in that voice together, and the song that spread through them went past simply pleasant, straight into something that made the heart ring like a struck bell.

Teresa, doing effortlessly with her voice what instruments were supposed to do.

Ruagarne, holding back the urge to puff out her cheeks, not blinking once.

Ropord, swallowing and letting the moment wash over him.

Fell, feeling somehow defeated by absolutely everything about this situation, wondering why he was even here.

Everyone watched Enkrid.

The sun tilted west, and the world began to fill slowly with orange.

From the cloudless sky all the way down to the ground.

Sunset light touched Enkrid's face, and he drew in one long, even breath and began to let it out.

Something is going to happen.

Everyone thought so.

A short time passed, and the scraping of Rem's whetstone went silent.

The precious whetstone he had brought back from the southern region dropped to the ground.

"What?"

Rem opened his mouth. Ragna got to his feet.

Audin's pupils widened as he looked at Enkrid. Jaxon was already at his side.

Enkrid had been breathing slowly and long.

Jaxon's hand moved beneath his nose.

He had sensed something happening inside the man's body moments ago.

He simply had not predicted it would end like this.

"He's dead."

Jaxon said. An impossible death. Sudden. Without reason.

And the day was over.

* * *

Just before it all began, once his preparations were complete, Enkrid waited for the sunset.

His favorite time of day.

The sun tilted west and turned the world orange. Enkrid surrendered himself to the wind and sat in the stump chair beside the barracks.

On one side Rem sharpened his axe. Jaxon read a book. Ragna sat in a half-reclined slouch with a blank look on his face.

Sinar sat a little apart, watching him. Odd-Eye stood nearby, looking at the sunset beside him. Esther glanced over with an air of indifference, then found a spot and dropped herself onto the ground however was comfortable.

Like a village woman resting by the roadside.

In looks she could pass for a lady of a duke's house, but in manner she was completely unguarded.

Audin prayed. Teresa sang.

Her voice was an instrument in its own right.

"Lord, lord, my Father does not retreat from battle and aids in judgment, lord, lord, my Father does not endure injustice and aids in judgment."

Listening to Teresa's voice, Enkrid drew out his Will and sent it toward his feet.

Rem, Ragna, Sinar, Jaxon, all of them had advanced to the knight's level.

The obvious question naturally followed.

Was improvement really that easy? Starting from the very beginning, all of it.

If you picked it apart, there was Enkrid as a catalyst, mixed with environment and talent and the effort each of them had poured in from being around him. But Enkrid could not have known that, and he did not think it mattered.

He only wanted to know the method.

How?

Enkrid had asked each of them.

Rem said he had understood Sorcery from childhood and always knew his constitution was different. The explanation of how he had expanded his ability to handle Sorcery through that constitution was too difficult to follow even after hearing it.

"It just came to me, so I tried it and it worked."

That was what Ragna said.

Sinar had said she needed a short journey. Through that journey she came to understand vitality and spirits.

Not a journey where the body moved, but an experience where the mind separated from the world, and the task was to hold the self together through it.

What about Audin.

He said he had not reached the knight's level, but Enkrid understood now.

His vessel is different.

Meaning the vessel was already complete. He had something hidden too. If he ever let it show, he would fight like a knight as well.

Enkrid asked, and the answer that came was this.

"I only followed the revelation given by the Father."

Honestly, there was much in that answer that made no sense even after hearing it.

These were questions and answers that followed earlier conversations. He had already heard them and settled them in his mind, but he was turning them over again.

Then how had Aoara done it?

No way to know. He wanted to ask, but she was no longer in this world.

The Mercenary King? The knights of Azpen?

Each of them would have had their own way, and for most, talent had helped them get there.

It just happens. That is how it is for everyone.

You need to be born with it.

Only those born with it can walk that path.

Only the born can advance.

You have to be born with it. That is what talent means.

Enkrid had no talent. Not the kind that would make someone a knight, at least. He knew that well enough himself.

So would he give up? Be seized by despair and stop here?

Would he settle for patching together his torn and faded dream with whatever scraps he had?

I know.

That I have no talent? I know. Better than anyone.

That the lame mercenary who had been his first teacher, back when he was a child, had not told him the truth?

He might have half-seen it the moment he heard it, but maybe the truth was too harsh and he had looked away.

He could not remember his every thought and feeling from back then with full clarity.

What he knew was that he had never once believed the path to becoming a knight would be easy.

From the very start, all the way to now. It had always been that way.

Dead ends were always in front of Enkrid. If he had stopped every time a path was blocked, he would have stopped long ago.

But he had not.

Because every year, every moment he had lived through had planted Will in him.

If there's no talent, is there no other way?

He had seen a side path.

The chimera knight was one. Borrowing the power of Sorcery was another possibility. But he did not want to walk side paths. So Enkrid looked for something else.

The method he came up with was simple.

If he wanted to keep the door open, what did he need to do? To make Will dwelling throughout his entire body a constant state?

If it does not happen naturally, then force it.

That was what he did. Starting from his feet, he pulled Will out piece by piece and made it stay.

What he had understood from learning Knight's Strike.

Everything he had gained until now helped what he was doing.

All of it, starting from the day he first began repeating the same thrust, extending all the way to the present.

Each of those things passed through his mind one by one.

Drawing on all of those experiences, he pulled out Will and spread it from his feet through his entire body.

The Will that reached every part of him shook his body, and something that could not be seen but could be felt caught his heart and brought it to a stop.

A quiet death.

A death without much pain.

But a death blocked by the wall called talent, all the same.

That death spoke to him.

"It is a wall you made yourself, but it is a wall you cannot cross."

He opened his eyes and saw the Boatman. The Boatman was repeating what death had said.

"Is that so?"

And Enkrid answered the same as he always did. There was no trembling in that voice.

= = =

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