WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 515: Everything Had Changed

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Rem had sparred with Enkrid time and again before settling on that thought.

'Too crude.'

He had trained Enkrid before, so he knew the man did not change easily. More precisely, whenever he watched him, there was always a sense that he had slammed into his limit, that he had burned through every last thing he had and simply stopped.

Even now that he was a knight, it was the same.

Which made it all the more remarkable that he had come this far. But would that stop him? Probably not.

'Can something that blunt sharpen again?'

Rem had built himself on Sorcery, but he understood what a knight was. And by that understanding, he judged that the Will Enkrid currently wielded was very dull.

So could that dullness sharpen back to an edge?

'Won't be easy.'

Not that he was the type to give up. Still, something caught in Rem's chest.

'Is he satisfied?'

Enkrid's attitude had shifted, at least a little. He had always been a man who hungered, but was that still true? Did that hunger, that flame of desire, still burn as large and bright as it once had?

His eyes always faced straight ahead.

But could anyone honestly say that hunger was what it used to be? Really?

Rem did not think so.

It was impressive that he had not gotten drunk on omnipotence. The Will rising from him like a spring that never ran dry was impressive too. But that was not all there was to it.

Being a knight did not end with awakening Will. It only started there, with learning to wield it.

Rem chose not to say any of this out loud. It was not the kind of thing words could teach anyway.

Instead he showed it with the axe. By going at him, again and again.

The rest was Enkrid's share to carry on his own.

Ragna saw something similar, though he did not dig into it as carefully as Rem had.

'Sluggish.'

He looked like a man who could run but chose to walk. Why? Just a feeling. But it was the feeling of a genius and a knight, so it was not nothing.

Still, what was there to say? When someone has lost their way, what do they need? The will to find it again. If that will is alive, they can reach their destination somehow. But if it goes cold, they wander lost forever.

To Ragna, Enkrid looked like someone who had lost the path.

Jaxon saw it too.

"Are you satisfied, perhaps?"

He even asked, but Enkrid only blinked those blue eyes at him.

"With what?"

Did he not know that knighthood was not the end? No, he knew. The diligence of never skipping a single day of training after becoming a knight proved that much.

And yet.

'Is it my imagination, or does his focus seem a little scattered?'

Or maybe his own expectations were simply too high.

"No."

"If you're asking whether I'm satisfied just because I became a knight, then no."

Becoming a knight had brought him level with his squadmates. He had reached a moment he had dreamed of. But did that mean satisfaction? No, Enkrid said. It did not.

"Is that so?"

Jaxon let it pass without pressing further. The road Enkrid had walked was not the road ordinary knights walked. What came easily to them might come hard to him. What they could not do, he might be able to.

Put plainly: if they fought face to face right now, Jaxon would lose. That would change in a battle to the death, but in a straightforward sparring match, that was how it would go.

On the other hand, if the question was whether he could kill Enkrid...'Yes.'

Looking at technique alone, yes.

The point was that he was not an ordinary knight, so no half-considered advice was needed from him.

It was only that his gut told him something felt off.

Normally Jaxon did not ignore that kind of feeling, but this was Enkrid. He would figure it out somehow. He would surprise him again. That was trust, built from everything they had been through together, and so Jaxon left it alone.

Audin watched Enkrid and prayed.

'Father, have you set a limit on where my elder brother the commander will go? I believe your word that no one's fate is fixed, Father, my Lord.'

He could not step forward while bound by the Prohibition Seal. What he needed to show could not be said in words and had to be shown through his body, yet the conditions right now made even that difficult.

For these reasons, Audin said nothing either.

He believed in Enkrid too.

"Not scattered, but strange."

Ruagarne, who had the eye for reading talent, added her word. The days of sparring and training went on as they always had, and yet that was how the eyes of everyone watching Enkrid looked.

And none of them said a thing to him about it.

Saying something would not change it. If it looked like he might stop there permanently, they would do something then, but for now, at least, it was time to watch. That was what they all felt.

* * *

Aker was a sword into which a knight had poured his own thought-self.

"Why was I, a thought-self, created? I don't know that myself. I simply awaken when certain conditions are met."

When the sword vibrated, its meaning transferred directly into the mind. That was strange every time.

And that was more or less the extent of it. Strange, but with nothing especially useful to learn. It made Enkrid wonder why anyone had put a self inside the sword at all. It seemed almost pointless.

If having a self meant it could cast magic on its own or do something of that sort, that would be one thing. Instead, now that the self had awakened, all that remained was the stage where the will embedded in the blade would scatter and dissolve.

'For something that took such difficult conditions to awaken, it doesn't seem to know very much. Was there really a reason to make a sword like this?'

There were three conditions for Aker to awaken.

First, learn the swordsmanship created by the knight Aker.

Second, awaken Will.

Third, come to truly possess the sword.

'Who judges whether those conditions are met?'

Take the question of having learned the swordsmanship, for instance. When he asked, an answer came back.

"Pick me up and use me, and it registers. As for awakening Will, the blade's maintenance condition was always the inflow of Will to begin with. You noticed the blade had chipped and lost strength recently? That couldn't be helped. I don't consume Will while I'm asleep, but I woke up in a half-formed state, so I must have burned through the Will the blade had stored. For now I'll manage on what you feed into me, but the sword's lifespan has already reached its final stretch."

A month at most, that was how long the thought-self called Aker would remain awake. Even so, it expressed no regret. A thought-self was only a thought-self, and it did not fear dissolution. It accepted that as the natural order.

Enkrid understood, and moved on to his next question.

The conditions.

What about awakening Will? And possession?

"You'd know, having reached a knight's level of Will, wouldn't you? You reach a state where your Will keeps flowing even when you stand still. It affects whatever weapon you carry. The concept of possession was about pushing the blade hard, so when part of the edge takes damage, that counts as possession."

Aker answered faithfully whatever was asked of it.

What is a thought-self?

It had to be understood as a mass formed entirely from thought.

Aker was a fragment of will left behind in his Inscribed Weapon by the knight Aker, once called a hero of the previous era.

That will had originally been left for the sake of teaching. But..."Swordsmanship alone isn't enough. What you need is tactics, hey, where did you learn that?"

No matter what it tried to teach, Enkrid already had every last thing carved into his bones.

Things learned wandering the continent with Rem, Ragna, Jaxon, and Audin; and more recently, everything Ruagarne had taught him.

The thought-self Aker had meant to impart the lesson that becoming a knight was no excuse to forget one's foundations. But Enkrid was a man who had clawed his way up from the very bottom. He had not turned his back on the Basics just because he could use Will now.

"You're diligent."

He rose each morning to practice the Isolation Technique, training each muscle group separately, and the Iron Body technique for dealing and absorbing blows. After that, working each muscle: stretching it, loosening it, training it again.

From the Basics, from sword drills, working through one thing after another. He moved through the day as if it were not long enough.

Even for a thought-self it was exhausting to watch, but Enkrid did it all with enjoyment.

In the middle of all that, he received those who came to the domain, faced down whoever was worth facing, and read and wrote letters.

And now he was making his way toward the market at the heart of the city.

More precisely, he was on his way to the smithy at the market's edge.

The grip on his Gladius had loosened, and he wanted to look over Aker while he was at it, and pick up a few daggers as well.

'Should I look into some armor too?'

Not a bad idea. Enkrid's pace was unhurried. There was nothing to rush for.

"Want some company?"

Sinar asked as he set out, but he declined. A thought that had crossed his mind from time to time: what was this elf still doing here?

An elf knight of her standing could have returned to her village long ago. There was no real reason she had to keep fighting for Naurillia.

Did she feel loyalty to the kingdom?

'Unlikely.'

And yet she stayed. Not that many people even knew Sinar was an elf knight, only himself and the mad squad members, most likely. Even Graham, lord of Border Guard, probably had no idea.

At first she had held her position like a mercenary. Now she stayed on as naturally as any soldier.

She had some connection to Crang, which suggested some kind of arrangement with the royal family.

'A reward?'

Was that why she stayed? Not really his business. He doubted she would answer if he asked.

"In case you get lost, I can show you the way. You've been gone a while, things might look different."

Ragna stepped up to offer to come along as well, but Rem blocked him.

"This crazy bastard is really testing me."

Rem would not have held back even without Ragna's words. Ragna only needed a pretext to pick a fight.

Fortunately, neither of them went far enough to try actually killing the other.

Now that he stood at the level of a knight, Enkrid understood why. If they truly meant it, there was a good chance one of them would end up dead. That was what fighting with Will meant, unless the gap in ability was clear enough.

"Wolf spirit."

Rem invoked his divine descent. Using the Sorcery dwelling in his body as the price, the leg-strength of a wolf settled into his legs.

"Dwell within my legs and press down upon my opponent."

Getting serious today.

Enkrid left their quarrel behind and walked out alone.

Jaxon had excused himself, saying he had pressing matters. Krais was genuinely busy, war preparations, you might say. On top of that, there was plenty else to do.

Talk of war filled the air, but for the next few months it might just be a matter of watching and waiting. Not fighting yet. That was how Enkrid understood it. Either way, he had set out alone.

The sun fell warm on his shoulders. A light breeze drifted through. A few birds sang somewhere in between.

Surely the same sunlight, the same wind as always.

And yet warmer, and fresher.

The wind came and seemed to pass straight through his chest and out the other side. The sunlight poured down, filled him completely, and then let go.

The concept of a knight as a title had fallen away. What remained was a knight as proof of force.

Enkrid felt, as if for the first time, that everything had changed.

The sunlight was different. The wind was different.

'And the me that receives them is different.'

Everything had changed.

He could see the path the sword wanted to take. He knew how it wanted to move.

In the wind, in the birds' singing, he heard it. He walked on. It was a brilliantly clear day.

The whole walk to the market, he kept that unhurried pace and savored the moment. What he could only call a stroll, he almost wished it could last forever.

"You look like you're enjoying yourself."

Aker spoke to him. Was he? He answered easily enough and kept walking. Along the way, a few soldiers he recognized gave him a military salute.

"I want to become like you, sir!"

One of them shouted it out with bold nerve.

To become an idol to someone, honestly, anyone who claimed they did not enjoy that would be lying.

"How do you do it, sir?"

At the follow-up question, Enkrid watched the face of their commander go quietly ferocious. Their uniform and the general order of things told him discipline here was tight.

The soldier had spoken up on his own, in the middle of all that.

Once Enkrid passed, there was a good chance that soldier would find the rest of the day reserved for physical punishment under the name of training. Extra drills, most likely.

He let the small thought pass and looked at the soldier.

He had thought about this often. There was only one thing to say to someone who asked how.

"Motivation is yours to carry. A comrade can cover your duties, but no one can resolve and commit on your behalf."

The commander's eyes, which had been holding back fury, lit up too. Every one of the ten soldiers marching in column, their eyes all caught the light the same way.

Not a bad sight.

"The flower of war."

"Is the infantry."

He parted from the group with that familiar chant, and by the time he was almost to the market, it was packed with people.

The city had grown, the market had grown, and Vanessa's Pumpkin Soup inn had grown too.

Even so, the crowds filled every corner, and order held within the press of it.

There were no roads for carriages, every path was made for walking, and the ground was laid with bluestone rather than dirt.

Stone was stacked high, and several buildings rose to more than five floors.

Word was that war with Azpen was imminent.

Merchants were saying it among themselves. The rumor had spread everywhere. No one knew exactly where it had started, but everyone seemed to understand that fighting was coming soon.

A few people still held out hope that it would not happen, but most who could read a situation had already accepted war as a given.

Years ago, the mere mention of war would have sent merchants packing. They would have turned Border Guard into something like a ghost town.

Now it was the opposite entirely.

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