WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 524: Brother Who Knows How to Fight, Step Right Up

= = =

"Haaah."

Ragna let out a wide, slow yawn, making it abundantly clear that he was bored and half-asleep on his feet.

Enkrid watched him and wondered.

Should he be impressed that the man could walk while dozing? Or marvel that someone could carry no tension at all heading into a fight with real danger baked into it? Or maybe take notes on how Ragna treated the Pen-Hanil Mountain Range like a stroll up a hill behind someone's house?

Yawning and nodding off mid-march in a situation like this, was that a strength, or was it simply being out of one's mind?

Call it a strength.

Enkrid himself was not exactly trembling with nerves, so it seemed healthier to frame everything as an advantage.

"The mountain range has lost its vital energy. The air feels heavy," Sinar said from beside him.

Enkrid nodded and kept walking.

Their pace looked like a leisurely stroll behind a neighborhood hill. The ground under their feet, though, was the Pen-Hanil Mountain Range.

They had been told to intercept the enemy, but first they had to find them. That was what this march was for. Tell an ordinary person to advance through the Pen-Hanil Mountain Range and they would ask if you had swapped your brain with a Ghoul's. For this group, it was a different matter entirely.

That said, it was hardly a carefree outing either.

They moved while reading the terrain ahead. Ten rangers, Finn among them, led the way as a forward unit.

"Long time no see," Finn said with a grin, drifting over to them the moment they entered the mountain range.

Finn had been the Reconnaissance Team leader who fought alongside them during the campaign for Cross Guard. She had spent a brief stint with the Madman Squad after that, and now she served under Sinar.

A deep scar cut into her left cheek, but her expression was bright.

"Looks like you're doing well enough."

"Can't complain."

"Don't get yourself killed."

"I'd like to ask you to rescue me if things get rough, but I've practically been living inside this mountain range. Trust me on that, Captain."

She finished with a military salute. Enkrid gave a nod.

Finn pulled back and led her unit ahead, pushing until she was barely traceable by sound, then until even that faded.

In the gap she left, Sinar stepped closer.

"A charmer, that one."

"Who are you referring to?"

Sinar fixed Enkrid with a flat, unhurried stare, then struck without warning.

"Could I be talking about the big-eyed homemaker who isn't here right now? Or the fighter who calls himself a devoted husband? Or perhaps the swordsman who could wander the continent like it's a maze if things went sideways? And yes, Jaxon could certainly pass for a charmer, but he keeps just one lover and sees her faithfully. Did you know that lover of his runs a shop right in the middle of the city?"

Soft-voiced and unhurried yet relentless, the elf's ambush landed before Enkrid could dodge it.

Taking the hit, he realized once again that Sinar had a precise read on every single one of his people.

Well. They were a distinctive bunch.

"The continent as a maze? You should at least be able to read the stars and find your way," Ragna said, rousing from his half-sleep to scold Rem.

"Captain." Rem put one hand on his axe and pointed at the continent's self-proclaimed maze enthusiast with the other. "Seriously asking, do we actually need this one?"

Ragna's remark had landed badly enough that Rem's eyes went sharp and narrow.

To Enkrid, it was starting to look like Ragna said things like that on purpose.

"Jaxon's lover runs a shop?"

He steered the conversation aside, figuring that pressing the subject would only breed worse words. The redirection worked neatly, dropping Sinar's charmer comment into some distant abyss and shoving Rem and Ragna's argument off to the side.

"A tea house. Small."

More detail than the answer needed, enough to spawn several follow-up questions, but Enkrid left them unasked.

It did not matter. What surprised him was simply that Jaxon had someone, and had shown up faithfully to see her.

The shop served as cover for managing certain operations, and his lover did genuinely run the place, so there was not a shred of falsehood in what Sinar had said.

After that, no one spoke.

Rem hummed a few bars of something and trailed off. Ragna kept trying to push out front through his drowsiness, and Enkrid kept pulling him back.

Jaxon and Sinar walked with similar sound, which was to say almost none at all. Even with the sharpened hearing that had come after opening his Will, Enkrid could barely catch them.

If they actually tried to move without sound, I'd never hear them.

One had trained for exactly that. The other was something closer to raw talent. Elves moved lightly and quickly by nature, though of course not all elves were alike. Sinar simply was.

Then the markers Finn's unit had left came into view.

"White," Jaxon said, spotting it first.

A thin strip of cloth tied to a branch. Blue meant contact with the enemy. White meant signs discovered. Red would have meant a fight had broken out and casualties taken, but if there had been fighting, the air would have shifted before any marker could tell him so.

A sharp gut sense would have already caught the residue of combat.

And that gut sense, sharpened along with the rest of his senses, whispered something to Enkrid now.

The enemy had moved faster than expected.

The judgment came from instinct, but instinct that had already run through the calculation at speed. It simply delivered the answer first, skipping the steps.

The group had cleared the entrance of the Pen-Hanil Mountain Range. Based on Krais's projections, they should not encounter the enemy until somewhere past the midpoint, two to three days from now.

Finding signs already meant the enemy had pushed ahead.

Just because both sides had laid their cards on the table did not mean either was obligated to play along. The enemy had acted first.

If this side were less prepared, striking early was the smarter play, get the initiative, move in ahead, take advantage of the terrain.

In that case, Finn's unit could have picked up the enemy's trail even at this distance. Was the timing a coincidence? He was not sure it was. An enemy with any sense would not leave traces this visible unless they meant to.

The layered calculation folded into instinct and pressed several things into his awareness at once. Enkrid sorted what had already happened from what was coming.

Finn's role was to scout for any alternate route the enemy might have taken. She would do her job. Even at the cost of her life.

And yet.

"There's more than one."

One white cloth on a branch. And on the ground, two strips of cloth folded into the shape of birds, one with its beak pointing right, one pointing left.

The enemy was moving along at least three separate paths.

Which meant this was something even Krais had not predicted.

Even so, there was no need to panic. The calculation was done, and instinct had already fired. Enkrid's mouth opened.

"Jaxon, link up with Finn's scouts. Ragna and Sinar, follow the center as rear guard. Rem takes the left. I take the right."

No reason to hesitate. He spoke and moved in the same breath.

"Then."

Jaxon was already climbing a tree. Something far larger than a bird but far quieter began leaping between branches overhead, passing through the canopy that broke the sunlight.

It moved like a bird launching from a branch, but with less noise than a wingbeat.

Enkrid swept his gaze over where Jaxon had vanished, then checked his own reasoning once more.

If the enemy was split, was splitting up the right answer? Could it be a trap?

If it went wrong, he only needed to confirm and pull back immediately.

An enemy he had expected to meet days from now had appeared at his doorstep.

Did they want us rattled, our hands tangled up? Or were they hoping the chain of command would crack under pressure?

That kind of play made sense. When you gathered multiple people of knight-level strength, disagreements were common.

But the Madman Squad followed one person's orders.

"Hey, don't push yourself too hard out there. I'll wrap things up fast and come find you," Rem said as he moved.

Enkrid turned right and followed.

Only Ragna and Sinar walked forward in silence, moving at twice the pace from before.

* * *

Did they pull something?

Krais still felt anxiety rising from somewhere deep in his gut like a spring, but from the outside he looked completely calm.

He drank tea, smiled, cracked jokes, and got everything done. Showing anxiety from his position would have consequences. So he could not.

When alone he could shake his leg all he liked, but with anyone watching, he had to act fine.

"Don't go swinging too hard."

That was what Enkrid had said at the send-off ceremony.

Goodness, is that really something to say to soldiers heading into battle?

He had screamed inside, but Krais handled Enkrid's words with smooth efficiency.

"He means we win even with the effort dialed back," he told the commanding officers.

He delivered the message through them rather than standing on a platform himself. The one speaking, after all, was the Demon Slayer, lord of Border Guard, friend of the king, savior of the western city, the one who silenced the Gray Forest.

Honestly, if Enkrid had just barked one syllable, the morale of the allied forces still would have shot up. Whatever Enkrid said these days, people were ready to find meaning in it.

"We!"

"Win!"

"Without even trying!"

"We win!"

Now that is a chant.

Krais watched the unit march out to that chant the officers had thrown together on the spot, then turned back to the dozen other things demanding his attention.

Even as he worked, anxiety swelled on its own, pressing against his thoughts and refusing to let go.

Did those Azpen bastards actually sit on their hands?

No full engagement, just a show of force, so let's not fight, they had agreed on that. Right?

And if they don't hold to it?

Then what? One word does it. The winner's version becomes the truth anyway.

An unspoken agreement was always optional.

So Krais had moved a few pieces of his own. Just a little, by his own measure. The enemy on the other side might have had a very different opinion about that.

* * *

Both armies gathered at a distance, Greenfield between them. They had assembled at roughly the same time, but Azpen finished forming their lines first.

Their numbers exceeded five thousand.

Border Guard's forces came to perhaps three thousand at best.

Three thousand that were anything but ordinary, though.

Krais had poured Krona into military spending for some time now.

This was the result.

Three thousand elite soldiers, no deadweight among them.

"Advance the unit."

Heavy infantry led the front. Five hundred of them.

A small number, yet not small at all.

Every piece of equipment was standardized.

Plate cuirass over chainmail over gambeson underneath.

In most wars, matching equipment across a unit was rare. Heavy infantry especially tended to source gear on their own coin. You often saw soldiers taking the field in mismatched, patchwork armor. If you were lucky, at least the colors matched. But Border Guard's heavy infantry had unified everything, down to the last piece.

An army was a creature that devoured Krona just to exist, eating and nothing else. The value of that creature shone brightest on the battlefield.

War was coming. Krais had not held back on investment.

"Every last drop of Krona I had went into this," he muttered to himself at the rear, grinding the words between his teeth.

The weapons in each soldier's hands varied slightly in material but looked similar enough that from a distance they appeared identical. No single forge could have turned out that volume in a short span, so the stockpile had been built up steadily over time.

To the left and right of the heavy infantry, spearmen and archers split evenly and took their positions. Their gear was standardized too.

Blue gambesons and deep-brimmed leather helmets.

A unified kit, and soldiers who had endured the brutal training Audin started and Ropord carried on.

At the center, standing alone on a quickly assembled platform, was Graham, lord of Border Guard and the face of its supreme command.

He drew a full breath, puffed out his chest, and roared.

"All forces! Battle positions!"

Drums answered his call.

Each officer passed the order down at once. Their side began to form up.

Drill is the measure of an army's discipline. If you want to know how well trained a force is, watch how cleanly they hold their lines.

Every great strategist and historian on the continent said the same thing.

Here, now, Border Guard's finest soldiers proved it.

Clack, thud.

One step forward, lines dressed. That simple motion said everything about how well these soldiers had been trained.

Not a gap in the formation. Not a single voice out of place. They had moved, and yet every row and column stayed true.

From a distance it looked less like an army and more like a single living thing.

Azpen had made some attempt at forming up too, grouping by unit in their own rough way, but the quality of order on display was on a different level entirely.

A wall of soldiers, standing straight.

A wall Krais had built.

The full force of a refined army came through in unified dress and unified drill, and that alone was enough to make any enemy swallow hard.

So, you see what you're looking at, and you're still coming?

A few of Azpen's officers did exactly that, swallowed hard.

What is this? Why do these people form up so well?

Is this actually a fight worth having?

Is the charge order really not about to come?

Every unit had soldiers who volunteered to be the first to charge. Azpen had theirs too.

Even they hesitated.

The man who called himself their charge leader noticed the hesitation in himself and opened his mouth wide.

"The hell with it. Can they fight just because they stand in a straight line? Aaaah!"

He bellowed to reinflate his own shriveled courage.

His soldiers matched him.

"Aaaah!"

Hundreds shouting at once spread like an infection, and the surrounding troops joined in.

Loud. The shout tore across the field.

Azpen's army screamed out something close to fighting spirit.

It looked almost as if some kind of energy was gathering and rising above the mass of soldiers. Easy enough to believe, if you wanted to.

Graham watched it all without a hint of a smile and raised his left hand.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

Five drumbeats.

The signal: count five in your head, then shout.

Through the mess of curses and wild noise from the other side, Border Guard's soldiers, every last one of them, answered their officer's lead in perfect unison.

"Without even trying!"

The lead call rang out.

"Without even trying!"

The unit echoed.

"We win!"

The lead again.

"We win!"

The response followed.

Like a crack of thunder.

That precise, unified shout, one that actually carried meaning, crushed the uncoordinated screaming from Azpen. Whatever fighting spirit had been building there came apart like dust.

The ground shook. The air trembled.

Krais listened to his side's thunder and decided the opening had gone well enough.

It did not make the anxiety disappear.

Alright, Audin. Finish this.

I'm counting on you. Son of the war god.

Krais reached for the faith he only called on when he needed it.

On this front he had Audin and Teresa, along with Ropord and Fell, kept back deliberately. Even if Azpen had held a knight in reserve and sent them forward, that was enough to hold the line.

The anxiety did not lift even so, which was why Krais had made his small move.

Abnaier had sent the flanking forces out so early that no one could have anticipated it, that was his move. Krais had made his own, positioning his pieces where a full engagement might break out.

"Brothers who know how to fight, step forward!"

Out between the two armies, already formed and waiting, rode a figure on a large brown horse, enormous as a giant, a man of the cloth who was anything but meek. His name was Audin.

He had agreed to avoid a full engagement. He had not agreed to avoid fighting altogether.

If he knocked a few of them down before any push came, sending the enemy's morale into the dirt while lifting his own side's spirits sky-high, wasn't that perfectly reasonable?

Krais thought so.

Abnaier, for his part, would absolutely not agree.

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