WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 512: Never Runs Dry

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Rem, Ragna, and Jaxon exchanged glances, then each gave a slow nod. The agreement was settled.

Ruagarne crouched in front of all three and nodded as she spoke.

"No objections."

"As long as nobody pulls any tricks."

Rem pressed a whetstone against the axe blade and dragged it in long strokes.

"Just throw."

Jaxon added his piece, a wood chip in his left hand and a dagger in his right. Each time the dagger moved, it sliced through the green wood like butter, shaving and splitting it clean.

"There were times I'd get lost and just throw dice to decide where to go."

Ragna tossed in a line of his own. The golden-haired genius was loosening up with his sword still unsheathed.

He looked like someone who had made up his mind about something and was simply waiting.

"That's why you get lost."

Rem reacted to the absurd remark Ragna had thrown out.

"Who does?"

Ragna asked back, perfectly unbothered. Who gets lost? No idea what you're talking about.

That tone, that attitude, the air of genuine ignorance, scraped against Rem's nerves.

"You."

Swwwwsh.

The back of the axe head, the butt end of the handle, swung toward Ragna. As he said it, Rem channeled his Will into his Sorcery. It was a technique that exerted invisible pressure.

Ragna twisted his sword hand slightly, turning the blade toward Rem.

The Will threaded through the blade cut apart the pressure the technique was pushing out.

Neither side won or lost. It was more like a bit of sleight of hand between them.

Of course, because these two were the ones doing it, it amounted to something closer to a high-level contest than any game, but that only meant something to someone who could actually tell the difference.

Anyone with that eye would have just shaken their head at how childish they were being.

"If you're jealous of someone's talent for navigation, the only answer is to work harder."

Ragna said.

"...Right, I kept thinking, why go through all this trouble when I could just kill you first and sort it out after."

Rem answered without pausing to breathe.

"If killing were an option, it would have been over long ago."

Jaxon looked at the two of them, set the carving he had made down on the ground, and spoke. The carving depicted two figures with their necks half-severed and dangling. One looked strangely like Rem, and the other bore an odd resemblance to Ragna.

The talent was good enough that he could have made a name for himself as a sculptor.

It was the kind of skill that came from years of training to find and probe the weak points of each race, honing his instincts, and from woodcarving as a hobby over many years. Calling it raw talent alone would not be quite right.

The three were radiating a bloodlust so heavy it pressed down on the air like a physical weight, and Ruagarne slapped her palm flat against the ground.

The bumpy surface of a Frog's palm struck earth with a dull thud.

"Focus."

At her word, the pressure from all three dropped.

If none of them actually intended to kill each other, handing the decision to the Frog was the sensible thing to do.

The three reined themselves in. Ruagarne watched them do it, gave a small nod, and placed her hand over the cup sitting on the ground.

When testing for luck alongside raw ability, what method works best?

Rock-paper-scissors, the classic answer, was too unwieldy for splitting three people. Every one of them was reading the others' movements and constantly switching hand shapes, watching each other's fingers in real time and adjusting in response, which meant it collapsed into nothing but stubbornness and cheap tricks.

In the end, the killing blow came from Rem, who produced a hand shape that was none of the three options.

Thumb and index finger extended, the remaining three fingers bent with the palm facing outward.

"This is a unique specialty of my people. Scissors that contain iron, a perfect blend of scissors, rock, and fist."

That was pure stubbornness.

"My fist breaks whatever wraps around it."

Ragna said.

"Isn't it completely obvious that scissors can cut rock?"

Jaxon piled on, and it was clear this would never end.

Eventually, all three went looking for a notary to settle things. That was Ruagarne. So dice it was, and the Frog now held the cup.

She lifted it.

But plans never quite go the way you want, and Ruagarne's slick skin made her lose her grip. Only her hand came shooting up alone. Watching the three of them unleash their pressure had made her hands sweat oil.

"Ah, slippery."

They had chosen the wrong notary. Or the wrong method.

"You're really just lounging around, aren't you."

Krais stepped up while this was happening and took the cup from her. He drew on skills he had picked up working at a gambling den in his younger days. There was no chance for anyone to stop him, and nobody had any desire to.

Whoever it is, just shake that cup and roll the dice.

Three pairs of sharp eyes said exactly that.

Krais gripped the cup and rattled it hard.

Clatter, clatter, rattle!

Inside the wooden cup, the dice spun and tumbled.

The dice had six faces. Rem had claimed the two highest numbers, Ragna the two in the middle, and Jaxon the two lowest.

Clatter, clack.

Krais's hand stopped, and the dice hidden under the cup came to rest on the ground.

"So why are we even doing this?"

He remembered the old habit, that moment of drawing out the tension before lifting the cup, and he paused mid-reveal.

"Just open it, brother. You'll get yourself killed."

Audin's gentle advice came right back at him.

The three pairs of eyes boring into his hand from the front were already bad enough.

Even if someone were holding a blade to his throat right now, those three pairs of eyes would still feel more dangerous.

Krais lifted the cup.

The number showing was five.

"I knew Mother Bear would look after me."

Rem laughed. Jaxon shook his head. Ragna stared at the dice and said hmm.

Should he just smash it now and pretend this never happened? That was what he was turning over.

"I think that's enough of that."

Enkrid said it from across the training ground, and Ragna dropped the thought. If he smashed the dice, they would have to start the whole ordering process from scratch. Enkrid had already been kept waiting too long.

It was yesterday that Enkrid had woken up and confirmed he had become a Knight.

"Just one day to sharpen up."

Instead of asking to spar, Enkrid shook his head, and Audin went through that sharpening process with him.

"Hit me."

The training called striking practice began.

Thwap. It started with a light punch.

Thwack. Later came punches that carried a bit of real intent.

"You have to tell me if it gets to be too much, brother."

Audin said that, and from noon that day until just before evening, Enkrid never stopped taking hits.

Audin was drenched in sweat, and Teresa's pupils shook as she watched.

Is it really okay to take those punches like that?

Knight or no Knight, just staying on his feet was astonishing.

Audin planted his stance and threw punches that carried rotational force all the way from the ankle, through the knee, and up through the hip.

On top of that, the outer surface of Audin's fists was close to steel. His hands had gone past thick from all the conditioning and become outright hard.

They might as well have been called a Mace in their own right.

So what Enkrid was enduring right now was no different from taking a Mace swung at full force by a powerfully built warrior.

And he never made a sound under those blows.

Not once, even after taking dozens of them.

"Iron Body."

Ruagarne, who had been watching, let out a sound of amazement. Her cheeks kept up a rolling gurgle, one after another.

She sounded more excited than she would have been reaching the water's edge after days away from it, even in the rain.

"How does that work?"

Ruagarne muttered to herself. She was not asking Enkrid. It was a private thought.

She had decided the first order of business was to see Enkrid's current state with her own eyes and work it out from there. She had already told him separately that if any questions came to mind, she would ask them when they did.

Until then, leave her alone, she would just watch and figure things out herself. That was what she had meant.

The Enkrid in front of her now was full of things that set her curiosity alight. Before, it had mostly been anticipation. Now it had moved past that into something she could not quite name.

Was she not still seeing things, one after another, that shattered her expectations?

Ruagarne had no desire to satisfy all of that with a few words of explanation.

Frogs had a slightly unusual way of going about satisfying their wants, so Enkrid had come to accept it as simply how she was.

He had plenty of his own things to take care of in the meantime.

He was in the middle of running through everything he could think of as part of his own verification process.

That was how the whole day passed.

"Aren't you tired?"

Teresa had been watching long enough that she was on the verge of asking, and yet Enkrid remained unbothered.

A moderate sheen of sweat, bruises scattered across his body.

Just bruises, you might say.

Except that what had made those bruises were Audin's fists, attached to a body god must have assembled by accident.

"Not bad, all things considered."

Enkrid answered. He seemed to be turning something over in his mind, but Teresa did not catch that. What was happening right in front of her was too strange to look past.

"Withhold the Will and let your body absorb the blows on its own, and you'll get harder. Brother."

Audin said it while sweat ran freely down him. It looked like the most sweat Teresa had ever seen him shed.

That was how much he had poured into each punch. What was even more astonishing was that Enkrid was sweating less.

After taking all of that. After taking those fists.

Small wonder anyone would be shocked.

After Enkrid spent that day the same way, the following dawn brought Rem, Jaxon, and Ragna quarreling over who would step up first as a sparring partner. Rock-paper-scissors collapsed into shameless tricks, and that was where things stood now.

Rain had not come since the seasonal rains, so the ground had dried out, and even a small breeze sent dust swirling up.

Rustle.

A few blades of grass that had fallen nearby caught the wind and skimmed sideways.

Krais, who had been crouched in the corner of the training ground rolling the dice, stepped back, and the space opened naturally.

Enkrid stood with Aker in hand.

"How deep are you going?"

Rem cut to it, and Enkrid understood him perfectly.

If full sincerity was twelve, how far down the scale would this go?

"Five."

Enkrid answered.

A sparring match at full sincerity could leave someone dead.

"My control isn't great right now. Be careful."

Enkrid said it, and Rem laughed.

"Who are you saying that to? The directionally-impaired bastard? The wildcat? Or the youngest bear cub who got left behind all alone and is probably miserable about it?"

Rem revered Mother Bear yet had no trouble giving another bear a hard time. Since coming back he had taken to calling Audin the youngest on top of everything else.

Well, Mother Bear and a wild bear were different things.

Drawing distinctions and separating one thing from another was Rem's specialty.

That was why, even growing up steeped in Sorcery, he was fine.

Learn to draw the right distinctions and you would never do something stupid like letting yourself be pulled in by a wraith.

On the other side, fail to draw proper distinctions and you ended up taking a demon into your body and doing nothing but vomiting out ten thousand wraiths like a useless fool.

"My weapon is an Inherited weapon. So a half-baked Magic Sword won't cut it. This one has its own self."

Ego weapon, a term for weapons that possess a self. The kind of thing that appeared in legends and the far corners of history books, but such things did exist.

Rem's Inherited weapon had emotions. Because of that, the power it put out shifted slightly depending on how far those emotions swung.

Every advantage came paired with a disadvantage, as the saying went.

The inconsistency as a Sorcery Medium was the disadvantage.

The advantage was that when it finally let loose, it went absolutely berserk.

In moments like that, honestly, he was confident he could handle three knights coming at him at once.

Of course, that was measured against the kind of knights Rem knew from his own experience.

Knights were not all the same.

If there were people like Aoara, there were also people like the knights of Azpen. Both had risen to the rank of Knight, but looking at it plainly, a gap existed.

Well, every fight had to be fought before you knew the answer, so certainty was out of the question.

He was running through all of this while extending his axe when Enkrid said something strange.

To Rem's ears, it sounded like nonsense.

"You too?"

"What do you mean, me too?"

"My sword talks."

"Talks?"

If it expressed emotions, fine, but if it actually spoke words, should it not be called a Demon Sword? Or maybe a Divine Sword?

Whether that was fortunate or not was unclear, but it was neither of those.

Enkrid had already spent half a day in conversation with the sword, so he knew that the Aker he held was a genuinely unusual weapon.

"Well, it rambles a bit, but."

-Hey, rambles? Do you have any idea how rare a sword with the bound will of a previous Knight is?

Right on cue, Aker hummed and the words meant only for Enkrid came through to his mind.

"We'll talk later."

Enkrid muttered.

Ego sword or not, right now it was time to fight Rem.

"Fair enough."

Rem agreed with what Enkrid had said to his sword. At the same time, he swept his own stray thoughts aside. When it was time to fight, fighting was all that mattered. Worry about how to escape, worry about what comes next, and you would end up showing less than half your real ability.

His opponent was a captain who had awakened Will through Awakening. There was no room for carelessness.

Show me. Show me how much you've changed.

No call to start, no signal of any kind, Rem swung his axe. Enkrid swung his sword to meet it at the same instant.

Rem's axe was slightly faster, but Enkrid was not far behind. The gap was small enough that even a close observer would have struggled to feel it.

Clang!

Where Aker and the axe met, sparks scattered, and Enkrid's blue eyes traced a long arc.

Enkrid closed the distance with his feet and followed with a rising cut.

A combination that split the space between one breath and the next. Rem brought his axe down at the exact same moment.

Clang!

The second clash landed, and after that, Aker and the axe met and parted and met again and parted again, too many times to count.

Like lovers whose moods kept shifting.

After that meeting and parting repeated dozens of times, Rem stepped back.

What is this?

He was surprised again. Enkrid's shoulders rose and fell slightly. Rem deliberately pressed his weapon in harder. More clashes, more force.

There was intent behind it. Ragna or Jaxon would probably have done the same.

Controlling the omnipotence was good, but there was a more important concept to grasp after that.

Seeing the limit of the Will.

When does it tire? See the limit, then learn to regulate and use it from there.

Rem saw that as the next step.

Sorcery was similar, after all.

But.

"Not tired?"

"Did you get winded already?"

Enkrid's body was screaming, yet the Will held inside him was the same as at the start. Like a spring that would never run dry, the water just kept rising, endless.

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