A Knight who Eternally Regresses - Chapter 517

WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 517: Rotten Eyes

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Esther's previous World of Spells had been born from observing nature.

She had lived in the mountains, roamed forests. She had killed Demon Creatures and dealt with Magic Beasts, and she had fought Sorcerers more than a few times, but measured against the whole of her life, those were only moments. The greater part of her existence had been spent alongside nature.

Now, she found herself drawn to observing people instead.

After parting ways with Enkrid, Esther lingered in the market.

People haggling, porters bent under their loads, a noblewoman in a wide-brimmed hat that made plain she found the sunlight disagreeable, children racing around in it anyway, parents scolding those children, a man inside a newly opened cafeteria tearing at his own hair over some drink order.

She was watching. Measuring their thoughts, their intentions.

'This is fun.'

More entertaining than she had expected.

The journey here had been interesting in its own way, too.

Esther knew well enough that you needed Krona to buy anything in the market.

When it came to getting some, she chose the most reasonable method available.

She followed Krais. Slowly, with great patience, and simply stared at him.

"Nurat," Krais murmured, watching Esther from the corner of his eye, "what did I do wrong?"

Nurat considered what she could actually do, facing a Sorcerer, and a skilled one at that. She drew on the instincts particular to a woman, the intuition of a warrior, and what she knew about Krais as a person. She weighed all of it and chose the best answer currently available to her.

"Apologize."

"That would be fastest, wouldn't it."

Krais nodded. Just admit fault first. Even in another city, those witch's eyes would find him somewhere. It was exactly the sort of thing that bred nightmares.

In his mind, Esther had already stopped being a beauty and become a witch, plain and simple.

Was she holding a grudge because, back when she was a panther, he had once gone for her claws?

"Yes, I was wrong. I apologize."

Krais directed the words toward her gaze. The head of the construction guild, a man who had come with a delicate request for the power behind the city, the man they called the true master of Lord Graham, blinked.

"Pardon?"

"That wasn't meant for you."

At Krais's words, Esther glided toward him across the ground with a soft, sliding motion.

Crash.

"Ah!"

The guild head startled and toppled backward. Krais's heart lurched too, but he managed not to fall over himself. Years spent with a unit of lunatics had done wonders for his composure.

Esther only approached. She said nothing. She just watched.

She was thinking.

What would happen if she followed this man who was quietly afraid of her, this man who was practically a walking coin purse, and simply stared at him?

He was perceptive. Remarkably so.

"Why?" Krais finally asked, his mind turning quickly. What did this crazy witch want? Had Enkrid rubbed off on her somehow? The captain had qualities worth learning from, but he had his share of bad ones too.

Sometimes, honestly, the man seemed genuinely out of his mind.

Not that it couldn't make a deep impression on certain people. It just didn't work on Krais.

"Is there something you need?"

He asked it calmly.

"A ghost!"

The guild head shrieked from the floor, still not back on his feet.

"No. She is not a madwoman. She is the Black Flower, attached to the Border Guard General's direct unit."

The guild head blinked. Only then did Esther's face actually register. White skin, black hair, blue eyes, long legs, and a way of dressing that left little to the imagination.

The flower blooming at the side of the Demon Slayer.

"Oh."

Leaving the guild head to his reaction, Krais turned back to her.

"Do you need Krona?"

Esther held out her hand. Krais looked at it and thought, sincerely, what is anyone supposed to do with these lunatics.

If she needed something, she could go find the quartermaster and ask. Why come to him and pull this?

Then again, he couldn't quite picture the Black Flower, this witch, walking up to the quartermaster and saying she needed a few silver coins.

Krais handed over a pouch he had on him.

More than a hundred silver coins inside. That should be plenty.

Esther did not pull her hand back.

"Give it in gold," Nurat suggested.

Krais took the advice.

By the end of that day, Esther had collected three more pouches on top of the first.

Recalling it now, the Sorcerer found herself quietly pleased. She had enjoyed it, the other party's reactions, and her own choices both.

'But why Enki?'

She thought of Enkrid, whom she had passed a short while ago, and felt her heart squeeze tight.

A tingling, a tightening. Her emotions had stirred. Where did that feeling come from? Why did her chest echo when she looked at him? Should she have followed him?

Was she worried because he had walked into the market without managing to pocket even a single gold coin?

She didn't know. It probably didn't matter anyway.

There was no right answer to it.

So why did it bother her? No, even this was simply part of who she was. Something that made up the whole of her. There was nothing to do but look at it plainly.

Esther felt the tingling spread from her chest through her whole body and understood, for the first time in a real way, what it meant to have an aching heart.

Whether it was the kind of love that grows between a man and a woman, or simply friendship, or just a passing whim that had appeared one day, nothing would change because of it.

There was only one thing that nagged at her.

'His eyebrows.'

Hadn't the front of Enkrid's eyebrows risen slightly?

Observation had become habit lately, so the small shift in his brow had caught her eye. There was something slack about the shape of them now. His expression looked a little different.

Why would someone's expression change? Because their state of mind had changed. That was what Esther thought.

Enkrid's state of mind had changed.

That was what she had learned from watching him.

Knowing it, she still had nothing to say. Far off, his back disappeared through the market and out the other side.

Esther would live like this for a while.

And eventually, she would rebuild her World of Spells.

When that time came, if he wanted it, she would be his strength.

Not because he had freed her from her curse. Simply because she wanted to. Her heart told her so. She never turned away from what her heart said.

She brought her focus back to what was in front of her. Observing, and gradually reconstructing the World of Spells. For now, that was enough.

* * *

"You've come."

The master craftsman who owned the smithy recognized Enkrid at once. He had seen him from a distance before, and the man's face was simply too striking to forget.

The smithy sat on the edge of the city. The craftsman had come from the capital and borrowed a smithy at first, but now he had set up his own bellows and equipment and opened his own shop.

He should have returned to the capital by now. Why he had chosen to stay at Border Guard, Enkrid didn't know.

No trouble keeping him here, probably.

A guess, but the right one.

The head of the blacksmith's guild at the royal palace found it a little unfortunate, but not enough to chase the man. The craftsman was skilled, but stubborn, and had no idea how to deal with people. Privately, the guild head found him tiresome.

And so the craftsman preferred it here.

He could swing his hammer in peace, and Border Guard, known as a paradise for traveling merchants, brought in all manner of rare materials.

He made only weapons. He took no new apprentices.

The guild head back in the capital would have shaken his head at that stubbornness.

Not a large operation. Not the kind to bend his work to suit a customer's tastes.

Under ordinary circumstances, sourcing rare materials would have been nearly impossible for someone like that. Yet the craftsman was not struggling. He was, if anything, comfortable.

Border Guard filled the gaps in his Krona.

At Krais's request, he supplied weapons to the garrison. That alone gave him more work than he needed.

"I will always keep time for what I want to make."

That had been his condition, and Krais had accepted it exactly as stated.

This was the craftsman who had forged Rem's and Ragna's weapons from Lewes iron and hardest iron. Krais had seen the quality and recognized the difference.

"A weapon is skill made solid."

He had heard that said more than once.

The finish on the man's work was different. The quality itself was different.

That was why Krais had chosen this shop from among the seven smithies in Border Guard.

With more craftsmen arriving, smithies and all manner of shops had multiplied, which meant this one on the outskirts saw less foot traffic. The work itself looked busy enough, but few people came to the door, so it appeared quiet by comparison.

In practice it had become a garrison-attached smithy, where anyone above a certain rank owed nothing for the work.

Standing inside now were a human, a Frog, and a dwarf.

The craftsman had looked at all three, then asked if they had come.

"There are a few things I need."

While Enkrid answered, an apprentice with a towel wrapped around his head came in from the back.

"Oh! The Demon Slayer!"

"Good to meet you."

"Ah, I'm sorry!"

The apprentice bowed. He had been so startled he had blurted out the title without thinking.

Enkrid waved it off.

"So, what is it you need?"

At the craftsman's question, Enkrid began unstrapping his weapons and presenting them one by one.

"This one has a loose joint, this one I'm not sure can even be repaired, and if you could sharpen the blades across the board, I'd be grateful."

"Is this Aker?"

The sword let out a low hum. The craftsman lifted his hand away from the grip.

The blade had trembled, and it startled him.

He had once worked maintaining the royal family's swords, and he had seen Aker then.

The way a young man in his prime can see an extraordinary beauty and still remember that face ten years later, the craftsman remembered Aker.

"That's right."

Enkrid answered from where he stood. The apprentice lingered, read the room, and brought over a low stool, the kind used for work, since there was no guest chair to be had.

Enkrid sat without comment.

"Why is the royal family's treasured sword here?"

The craftsman asked, startled.

"Someone gave it to me."

"This?"

Enkrid nodded.

The people who knew about it knew, and those who didn't far outnumbered them, which was only natural.

If the truth came out, even Marquis Bysar would have to raise at least one objection with Crang. Not that he would demand it back or say it should never have been given, but with eyes watching, some formal protest would be owed.

Either way, Crang had passed the sword quietly by keeping most people in the dark.

If it came out later, he would deal with it then.

"This one I can't touch. The fact that the blade holds its edge at all is a mystery in itself. I don't know how to work magic into a weapon."

The craftsman said it plainly. His gaze slipped sideways for just a moment toward the dwarf sitting nearby before settling on the Gladius. He picked it up, looking like someone looking forward to seeing what he could do with it. His eyes lit up. Then his expression went flat, and he set it down.

"Let me make an introduction. This is Argan."

The craftsman pointed at the dwarf.

"Pleased to meet you."

The dwarf's greeting arrived with a strong smell of alcohol.

"The Demon Slayer and the Border Guard's General? You've got yourself some luck."

He kept talking. The smell of drink mingled with the smell of his breath.

Strange as it was, with conversation going at full volume right beside her, the Frog sitting to one side hadn't glanced over once.

Enkrid took it in stride and asked without heat.

"What luck?"

"I'm planning to work right here in this smithy, forge fire and iron together into something worth calling a piece of craft."

Enkrid took in the self-assured dwarf and the human craftsman with one glance.

He thought he understood why the craftsman had stepped back, so he asked the man.

"Is he better than you?"

"He is."

The craftsman nodded. He didn't look wounded by it.

"Hmph. That's an understatement."

The dwarf said it with a belch.

"Ah, a few conditions. I'd like decent wine and a proper house arranged for me. I came from a place called Martai and I've run up a few tabs there, take care of those too."

Another belch as he finished. It smelled of pickled meat.

Dwarves were said to be children of iron and fire, born with an ability to work those materials that ran deeper than skill.

Of course, not every dwarf was the same.

Just as there were Giants who sold goods rather than swung weapons, there were surely dwarves with no interest in working iron.

That didn't mean the one in front of him was one of those.

This dwarf would have real skill with iron. The kind that couldn't be compared to an ordinary craftsman.

"I can vouch for his skill."

The craftsman who had been startled by Aker said it.

Enkrid nodded once. Then he handed his sword, the Gladius, to the human craftsman.

"I'd like you to handle it."

The dwarf's hand had already reached out. It stopped.

He had assumed the weapon would naturally come to him.