A Knight who Eternally Regresses - Chapter 511

WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

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A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 511: That's Who He Was

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It was right after he grasped how to handle Will.

Leaving Will open at the base of his unconscious at all times made his body feel like it was shaking apart.

At that exact moment, Enkrid knew what he needed was rest.

More precisely, it was not rest so much as the process of slowly building things up one piece at a time, but in the end it came to the same thing.

His body would have to take a forced rest for a while.

He had to coax the rampaging Will into settling down.

You cannot hold back a flood-swollen river with a dam full of cracks and holes.

The dam Enkrid had built until now was too weak. Meanwhile the floodwater churned, lashed, poured from above, and surged from below.

It felt less like a river and more like a storm.

That was the scale of it, and inside, it was a different matter still.

'Complicated.'

Not a simple, straight line. What had taken up residence inside him was a knotted tangle of thread.

Try to gather it all at once and his bloodstream would knot up and his organs would rupture.

That said, nothing was actually wrong.

Like a child learning to walk, he simply knew by feel now.

Keeping his body in forced rest was part of that. A solution had come to him immediately.

Cut, reduce, discard.

But what if he did not want to do that?

The vow he had sworn to keep still burned in his chest like a living flame.

He needed another way.

The sense of omnipotence helped. Once he believed he could do anything, all sorts of approaches rose to mind on their own.

Aoara had told him to shed the complexity. Ragna had told him to start from the Basics.

Ragna had said as much before, when he told Enkrid to first shed the Vallen-style mercenary sword.

It was because Enkrid had picked up so much clawing his way to where he was.

Was having a lot of things wrong? Surely not.

The formless power filling his body, the Will, felt ready to tear through his organs, muscles, and bones and burst free at any moment.

So right now he was barely holding on.

He could endure like this. He had picked up enough of the knack for that. But he could not use it freely. So what then? If too much had piled up into a mess, he could sort it out. If it was spread around in tangles, he could stack it up neatly.

Walls he had seen, from the Pioneer Village he had visited because of the old Gnoll Colony, to the walls of the city that would bear the name Lockfried, to the walls of Thousand Bricks in between.

Towers rising between those walls. Solid, sturdy towers.

Enkrid pictured a single tower in his mind. Then he began stacking the Will held inside his body.

One piece at a time. Slowly, calmly, little by little.

He found himself enjoying it as he went. Though enjoyment was not all of it. There was a faint regret alongside.

'If I had more time, I feel like I could shape each piece properly before laying it.'

Not rough stones heaped up haphazardly, but stones cut square and true, one by one, before being laid.

To do that, though, a year in bed would not be enough time, let alone a week.

More than that, it did not feel like the right path. Shaping and cutting would need to happen alongside tempering the body. That was what his instincts said.

'Do it that way.'

If he felt regret, he could always come back later, find another approach, and work on it again.

This was not actually stacking real stones. He had only made that association in his mind.

The calm stone-laying, once begun, would take care of itself during the week he slept as if dead.

Because Will was something you handled exactly like this.

At minimum, if you wanted to be a knight, this was how it had to be handled.

Not by force, but laid beneath the base of the unconscious.

Through all of it, part of his awareness stayed awake somewhere between dreams and the unconscious.

"I told you to cut it down and you went and added more. You thick-headed fool."

The Boatman, easy in his manner of speaking, sometimes appeared in between and kept him company.

Somewhere between dreams and the unconscious felt like exactly the kind of space a Boatman would wander through.

His small boat moved on the calm river slowly, very slowly, drifting like a leaf on the current, and it felt like something close to the very symbol of peace.

The two of them sitting on short wooden stools on the deck even seemed to share something like familiarity.

"No impatience in you?"

The Boatman asked a question that cut straight to the heart of him.

What Enkrid wanted could fairly be called delusion dressed up as a vow, a star, a dream.

Becoming a knight with mediocre talent. Earning his living by the sword. Protecting everything that stood behind him.

All of it could have been nothing more than empty talk.

And now those dreams were about to come true the moment he opened his eyes. Yet he felt no impatience.

If pressed to say why, he could have answered that he knew there were things more important than becoming a knight.

He had wanted to become a knight who protects what stands at his back.

Not just a knight. Never just that.

So there was no reason to feel impatient. The road still ahead of him was longer.

Enkrid shook his head.

"What does it feel like, walking a road that needs no one's permission, no one's approval?"

The Boatman asked, and Enkrid simply watched him in silence. The Boatman went on.

"Open your mouth, then. You stubborn wretch."

"It just feels like it does."

Enkrid answered without any particular feeling, as though he had been about to say it even before the Boatman told him to speak.

Whatever it was, it just feels like it does, and he meant those words. Nothing has changed, Enkrid thought, because that was what he truly believed.

"I'll bless your stubbornness. For today, at least, I shall."

The Boatman said it, and Enkrid opened his eyes. The Boatman dipped his oar. The boat moved faster than before, and Enkrid felt his consciousness drift loose.

It was time to wake. Watching the small boat, the river, the Boatman, and the purple light fade away beneath him, all kinds of thoughts drifted through his mind.

Would the timing be right? He had figured about a week. How close was he? It had only been a flash of intuition that struck like lightning right before he closed his eyes after the realization hit.

He opened his eyes and came back to reality.

"Now there's a man who knows how to sleep."

A pair of gray eyes stared blankly at him.

A barbarian with his legs spread wide, one hand propping up his chin, the other rocking an axe back and forth.

"Now that you're up, just listen. You'll feel like you can do anything and all that, but no. You can't. Got it?"

"How long was it?"

Enkrid asked rather than answering. Check first.

"A week. Though I did wonder if this kind of thing ever had someone sleeping flat out like this."

By this kind of thing he meant the awakening as a knight. He had looked at Enkrid now that he was up and tossed out a few words. Rem said it himself and then figured there was something to it.

Could you not collapse for a few days?

The moment of awakening probably did not look the same for everyone.

Rem himself had never had any dramatic moment like that. He had repeated divine descents while learning Sorcery until the concept simply opened up naturally.

His land had no fence around it to begin with, you might say. He had already broken through the fence of limits before ever feeling what limits were.

The directionally-impaired bastard would have had it different. Just looking at him, it was obvious he had been drunk on the sense of omnipotence, trying to find his footing.

"If laziness is contagious, that's serious business."

Rem said it without shifting his posture.

Behind him, Jaxon stood with his arms folded and looked down at Enkrid.

"Suppress your senses. That comes first."

Enkrid looked at him blankly. Jaxon shook his head.

"Take it to heart."

He was not the type to repeat himself for emphasis.

"You'll feel like you can do anything, but you can't. For instance, you'll feel like you could reach the East in a single stride, but that's not how it works. The destination only comes at the end of the road after you find the path and walk it. Don't forget there are things to be done before you reach any conclusion."

Enkrid turned his head and looked at Ragna.

Only his head poked out from inside the bed. His hair was flattened into a bird's nest, likely from waking mid-sleep.

"Mm-hmm."

He said his piece and then added a yawn to top it off. That confirmed it.

He had spoken better than ever, and honestly Enkrid wanted to clap for him.

It was just that the example he chose happened to involve finding a road, which did not land quite as well as it might have.

"When he was a child, a boy drawing water asked, 'Father-God, why must I draw water?' The god answered, 'Would you drink and wash without it?' Squad leader brother, you must draw the water before you can drink and wash."

Audin had planted himself across the barracks entrance and was delivering a sermon. He would have fit right in as a Priest at some village shrine.

Of course, that village would have been a rather frightening place regardless of its size, any halfway decent bandit gang that came to raid would end up making a fine set of Ghouls on the way home.

The only good Ghoul is a dead one, and their return would be to the side of the divine, so it would be a village that put fear into certain people.

Jaxon alone had spoken plainly, but taken together, everyone seemed to be saying something that left him wondering what on earth they were getting at.

Enkrid understood all the same. He remained a good listener.

"I'm fine."

Whether called a knight or a hero, everyone feels something similar at the moment of awakening. Omnipotence. The feeling that anything is possible.

The first thing to be done was learning to tell apart what he could do from what he could not.

Had they all been waiting for him to wake up just to say that? Or had they simply ended up gathered here by coincidence.

"Oh, you're up? Don't push yourself. Fiancé."

Sinar had come too. He sensed a gentle warmth right beside him and looked to find Esther in panther form, her cheek brushing the back of his hand.

"I'm fine."

Enkrid said it again.

"Saying you're fine doesn't make it so."

Ruagarne was standing just beside Teresa, who was beside Audin, and it was she who spoke.

It really seemed like everyone had been waiting for nothing but him to wake up. Was that really just his imagination?

It was not, entirely.

They had waited for him, collapsed as he was.

All their faces passed briefly through his memory.

Rem grown old. Jaxon with a twisted expression. Audin coughing blood. Sinar with parts of her body blurring away. Esther with both eyes gone. Fell driving a blade into his own stomach.

Those faces had been there, in the todays that had passed.

Enkrid raised his upper body, planted his feet on the ground, and stood up. He looked down at his hand and opened and closed it. That was how he checked his condition.

Light. His body felt lighter than it ever had before.

Not that he could flap his arms and fly through the sky. That was not possible. But standing up, walking out, and running the Isolation Technique, that was possible.

"Huh? You really are fine."

Rem said it from where he sat, lifting his head. There was no sign of the wild recklessness that came with being drunk on omnipotence.

There was one other odd thing he noticed, but either way, fine seemed to be the right word.

"I told you I was fine."

Enkrid said it once more and walked outside. He was fine, but not the same as before. The sunlight seeping into the barracks. The wind threading in like a thin strand, brushing his cheek. The char smell of logs burned to cinders overnight. The feel of his shirt against his skin.

Everything looked and sounded and felt more precise than before. The wind almost felt like something he could catch in his hand.

Of course, you cannot catch wind in your hand. But you could walk along with it.

He did not mean to do that now. These were things you simply came to know naturally.

Running like the wind. Swinging a sword like sunlight.

Things he could do by conjuring those images and raising Will through his body.

Enkrid stepped out and started moving.

A week since he woke. Confirmed.

Now came the next step.

'Did it actually take root properly in my body?'

He was certain. He had felt the omnipotence. Even so, the desire to confirm was, in its way, completely natural.

He had pushed forward, had hoped, had called it a dream, had found joy in repeating today after today to reach it, and still he needed to confirm it.

All the time that had passed, all the experience, had made him that way.

He ran the Isolation Technique to loosen his body, and Will followed along naturally.

He could focus on it if he chose, but it moved on its own even without him looking at it.

Which meant..."A knight."

Ruagarne had followed him out and said the word. Everyone else came out behind her.

"The real thing. Not a single clumsy trick about it."

Rem said it again.

When Enkrid had collapsed, Will had burst outward from him like an explosion.

Sinar had caught it first with an elf's keen senses and understood that Enkrid had crossed the wall, but the moment the rest of them saw it, they knew too.

That Enkrid had crossed the wall.

Even so, watching him rise again and walk and move before their eyes was what made it feel real.

"He actually did it."

Rem muttered. When had that been, exactly.

Was it when Enkrid had asked to be taught Heart of the Beast?

Rem had laughed at him hard for saying his dream was to be a knight. He had genuinely thought it was impossible.

And yet he had done it.

Mediocre talent. An ordinary body.

Just conditions, he had called them, and then gone on to talk about his dream, that madman.

And that madman had become a knight.

"Ha."

Enkrid drew a long breath in and let it out.

The day was fine. The wind was cool and the sunlight warm. The morning dew was drying, and the sky seemed to say this day would be a bright and clear one.

The Boatman had said it was a road that needed no one's permission, no one's approval.

And that was exactly right.

It had never been a road he set out on to get permission or approval from anyone.

"So are you going to track down every last person who mocked you and give them each a knock on the head?"

Rem asked.

If you became a knight, what would you do?

Well, you had taken some hits along the way. Why not give some back.

There had been people who condemned him. Many who had cursed him and laughed at him.

Even without tracking them down for a knock on the head, would they not all be so stunned they would keel over? There might be some fun in watching that.

"Not really."

Enkrid asked it back and cracked his wrists left and right. A string of pops. The body had stiffened quite a bit over the week.

"Fair enough though."

Jaxon's voice. One of those rare moments where he dropped the formal address and said what he thought.

A debt exists to be repaid, or so the man who owned the morning dew believed.

In the past, when Enkrid had been begging for sword lessons, willing to abase himself to learn.

Everyone had laughed at him.

Yes, those things had happened.

Should he have broken under it, despaired and wept and cursed the heavens?

Enkrid had not, and because he had not, he stood here now.

"Not particularly."

Enkrid shook his head. He clearly had no such feeling at all. It was a judgment and a way of moving through the world that set him apart from ordinary people.

Whatever his skill, he moved on a different track.

"Then what will you do?"

Ragna had come out late and asked.

"Train."

Enkrid answered, and took his right hand, wrapped it around his left fingers, and pulled them back toward the top of his hand, putting load on the muscles and tendons and stretching them.

Holding the tension, the muscles stretched out smoothly and loosened.

When Will takes root, they say the body changes with it.

It seemed so. No, it was so.

"Train?"

"My body's a bit stiff."

This was who he was now, and this was the road he would walk. So this was what he would do.

Nothing had changed. That was all.

It had been clear to everyone long ago that he moved on a different track.

And yet they could not help being surprised again.

He had become a knight. The knight he had cried out after for so long.

And still he did not change.

Well, that was why everyone followed him.