WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 531: Not All Knights Are the Same

= = =

"...To kill or not to kill, that is my problem."

The man hesitated for a moment, then spoke again in the same tone as before.

The Azpen knight had thick, curly dark navy hair, a high nose bridge, and deep-set eyes framed by prominent brow bones. Taken all together, his face was decent enough to look at.

Not quite as handsome as Enkrid or Krais, but decent.

Looks aside, Rem had made up his mind to mess with this idiot.

"Hah? What was that? Hard to hear when it's coming from someone who got with a Ghoul."

"Getting with" was the kind of word you used for animals mating.

Since Ghouls had no reproductive organs, the act was physically impossible, and even if they did, no one in the world would actually do that sort of thing with a Ghoul. So this insult went a full step further than asking whether the man's mother was a Ghoul.

"What did you say?"

"Interesting taste you've got there."

"What are you on about?"

"Hm? Can't hear me? Bad ears? Got. With. A. Ghoul."

Rem spelled it out helpfully, one syllable at a time, and the man stood there and listened to every single one, too baffled to interrupt.

What in the world did that insane barbarian just say?

The words traveled from ear to comprehension fast enough.

The knight prided himself on his looks. He considered his melancholic gaze and his talent for reciting poetry to be his defining traits.

All of it was surface-level vanity.

At Rem's words, a vein bulged on the forehead of the Azpen Royal Knight Corps knight who dreamed of being called the poetry-reciting knight. Since he wore no helmet, it was very easy to see, thick and vivid enough that the absence of a cracking sound was almost surprising.

"Don't let a madman's words get to you," the red-eyed one said from behind.

"Ehhhhhh, he did it with a Ghoul. He did, he did."

Rem was being childish. He stuck out his tongue and said whatever came to mind. The Azpen knight knew it was childish. He also knew he should ignore it. The problem was that the man saying it had a presence that was hard to dismiss, and at the same time, he was clearly at ease, genuinely so.

The man was surrounded by assassins from Monterre's Swamp and wasn't tense at all, even with a knight standing right in front of him. He'd even picked his nose in the middle of it.

Nothing about him, his words, his attitude, his face, was agreeable.

"Feels good, does it?"

Rem grinned and asked, and the dark navy-haired knight who had stepped forward decided he would personally tear that man's mouth open with his own hands.

"You have a filthy mouth, barbarian."

Had anyone ever looked down on him this badly before?

Looked down on, maybe not, but openly mocked like this, certainly a first.

That mockery had woken the demon sleeping inside him. So the man thought.

The man who had become a new knight of Azpen had not tempered himself particularly deeply in spirit.

There was good reason for that. He had never once been overtaken or left behind by anyone in his entire life.

He was born with talent, stacked effort on top of it, and his environment had sheltered him all the way.

The genius born of the Ekins family. His name was Cowin Ekins.

He laid his hand on his sword. With a ring, the blade caught the surrounding light and revealed itself.

Cowin had named his sword "Fate."

The longer version: a destiny already decided.

"You, barbarian. You who have no rhythm and no romance. I will take your life."

Born a genius and blessed with Future Sight since childhood, Cowin had always seen the path of an opponent's attack and predicted their next move.

That was how he came to carry Fate, the sword that decided his opponent's end.

He had won every life-or-death fight he'd ever had, so he was absolutely certain of his sword and his skill.

Cowin spoke again as if reciting a poem, and Rem dug a finger in his ear and shot back.

"Yeah, sure, go ahead, you freak with the special taste for Ghouls."

"...I told you not to engage him," the red-eyed one said from behind.

In the battle of words, Rem had won completely.

The vein on Cowin's forehead thickened, and as the tip of his sword pointed forward and Pressure radiated from it, Rem rolled his shoulders and shrugged it off. Two steps behind Cowin, the red-eyed one jabbed a toe into the dirt and kicked forward.

With a sharp thud, a clump of earth flew toward Rem.

Rem tucked his chin and raised both arms to block the dirt.

Every motion flowed together in a single breath, in one instant, and in that gap an assassin from Monterre's Swamp fired a blowgun. It was a coordinated move.

The sound of earth being kicked up, the Pressure pulling at his nerves, in that window a near-silent needle came flying. Rem casually swept his raised left hand through the air.

Two flicks of the wrist, up then down, too fast for an ordinary person to follow.

Whff.

Wind stirred from that motion, and the needle lost its path and fell.

At the same moment, a weighted net dropped over his head with a swishing rustle, and a blade shot up from between his legs.

The assassin from Monterre's Swamp saw an opening in the target.

Naturally, it was an opening Rem had left on purpose.

Rem stood still for a moment, then smiled and raised the axe he'd already drawn without anyone noticing.

To Cowin Ekins's eyes, every motion was branded onto his mind in slow detail.

Thud.

The axe moved.

Crack, crack, crack, crack, crack.

The axe moved without stopping and showed exactly what it was made for.

Lines carved themselves through the air with each swing.

It looked like someone crushing fruit with a clumsy fist. He hadn't even used the axe blade cleanly, just swung as the moment demanded, and that was the result.

The skulls of seven charging assassins split, burst, and were crushed. The net became six pieces in midair and scattered.

All of it happened in the time it took to exhale once.

"...I pray, let your will rest within me."

The red-eyed one had watched Rem's movements and began chanting a sorcery. Divine descent. Another soul entered his body.

His body now holding another being's will, the red-eyed one trembled from head to toe, shut his eyes, and drooled.

When those eyes opened again, the shift in his presence announced what he had become.

Even among Demon Creatures, there are those called nobility. This was forbidden sorcery that took in the soul of a Demon Lord.

In this way, he reached for a station above that of a knight, more refined in method than Count Molsen had been.

Rem finished sweeping through the assassin cluster, rested his left hand against a tree, and spoke.

"Big Eyes was really anxious about setting up this whole thing. I kept wondering why. You know why? Because this looked like an easy fight from where I was standing."

While he spoke, three more enemy assassins rushed in using the exact same opening as before.

A shower of needles dropped from overhead alongside darts. Poisoned sand spread through the air.

Rem kicked off the ground and shifted position.

The tree he'd been leaning against had been sliced clean through without anyone noticing and was now tilting sideways.

The cluster of assassins hiding near that tree, or in it, scattered in every direction like ants caught in a downpour.

Rem swept them with a glance, kicked a stone lying by his foot up into the air, and smacked it with the flat of his axe.

Clang.

He kept his force steady through the swing, then drove an extra push the instant the stone met the axe face, and the stone flew faster than an arrow instead of shattering. It crossed the air and blew the top off an assassin's head.

Crack.

Blood and brain matter sprayed outward in all directions and scattered across the ground.

Rem kept talking like nothing had happened, axe resting on his shoulder.

"And another thing, your commander, won't allow sacrifices among his allies? Then just don't. Why all the words? Hit anyone who comes at you until they're dead. That's all there is to it. You simple bastards."

Not a childish taunt but a blunt one. The two Azpen knights briefly met each other's eyes and spread apart.

Their fighting styles were different.

But Cowin Ekins's Fate sees ahead. Because of that, Cowin knew how to coordinate with a fellow knight.

Even setting aside how much he personally disliked doing it.

Rem watched the two of them take positions in front and behind him.

The red-eyed one's body dissolved into red mist and then condensed back.

He had taken in the will of a vampire, the bloodsucking Demon Lord counted among the highest-ranking Demon Lords, and so he could use a portion of their sorcery.

Whether that mattered or not, Rem muttered to himself with his axe still resting on his shoulder.

"You're in a good mood today?"

It wasn't directed at the enemy.

He was asking because his axe had passed him a feeling. It had just told him it was in a good mood today and wanted to play.

The surrounding assassins reformed their formation and encircled him again.

Rem had fought Jaxon. Monterre's Swamp was nothing to him.

And that went for the two in front of him as well.

Clumsy idiots.

Just as Barnaas Hurrier had always said, not all knights were the same.

"Have either of you ever played with someone whose Will doesn't run dry?"

When Fell, driven by provocation, started raving about the air being different and pushed a step beyond with that madness, Jaxon had also taken something like a shock from watching Enkrid.

Rem had too.

A knight was not the end.

Enkrid had said that through his actions and his body, and it had reached Rem just as sharply.

"You know I've been running my body ragged training again because of that guy, right? You know that?"

Rem said it and let his left hand drop. It was time to start the real fight, the kind he had never shown to anyone on his own side.

Rem ran his hand along his waist, and soon his left fingertips closed around a blunt leather cord.

At the end of that hanging cord was a leather pouch about the size of a palm, just right for cradling something in. It was a sling.

The cord was twisted from tiger Magic Beast sinew wrapped in Owlbear hide, made by hand.

When Krais had seen him dismantle an entire Drake scale armor piece and repurpose it as the leather pouch, he'd smacked himself on the forehead.

"Do you have any idea how much that was worth?"

"Should I?"

"No. Just live not knowing."

Krais had never intended to convince Rem. He'd said it because he couldn't let it go, not with something that valuable. That was all.

Even if he were being beaten and had his life threatened, Krais wouldn't have been able to hold those words in.

It was similar to how Enkrid couldn't sleep if he went even a single day without training.

For the sling made that way, Rem had walked riverbanks collecting dozens of smooth rounded stones and ground them down, and he'd gone to the smithy with a request and had similar-shaped iron shots cast and delivered.

The dropped sling hung past his feet. The cord was long, far too long by any normal standard, but it was right for Rem.

Axe in the right hand, sling in the left.

This was Rem's final fighting form. The same as when he had killed the Cannibal warrior long ago.

"Well. It's been a real long time since I've done this. Know you're honored. You Ghoul-loving bastard."

Rem managed to slip in one last jab.

Cowin didn't react to it anymore.

He had decided to shed all the surface-level vanity. He was an Azpen knight, and a man who had proven his ability by surviving until now.

His instinct whispered.

That the gray-haired beast standing before him was more dangerous than anyone he had ever faced.

It lasted only an instant, but in that moment Cowin saw the opponent as larger than his own teacher, Barnaas Hurrier.

"Nonsense."

He denied it immediately. Feed the enemy inside yourself and you've already lost before the fight begins.

A knight is meant to sharpen the blade of will within.

I will win.

Cowin steeled himself again, stoking his fighting spirit through resolve.

On the other side, the red-eyed one read the situation even more coldly and concluded that this was indeed the moment to gather his will.

He did exactly that, sharpening his will in one stroke.

He had become a knight through the sorcery of taking a will into his body.

Not a conventional method, but not a wrong one either.

Barnaas Hurrier had recognized it as much.

"Hm? Well, that's a fascinating technique. So people give you grief for it? What does that matter? You just have to carry yourself with confidence. And you'll end up meeting everything on the road ahead anyway. It's only a difference in method."

The strongest knight Azpen had ever produced had given that recognition.

For Barnaas.

The red-eyed one steadied his resolve for the person he believed in.

Rem.

Whff. Whff. Whff.

He began spinning the sling. A disc formed above his head almost at once.

Whiiiiiiiiiiing.

The sound alone was enough to dominate the surrounding air.

Without waiting, Rem extended his left arm, and the sling showed that the sound was no mere threat.

Crack.

If the stone smacked by the axe had blown apart an assassin's skull and scattered blood and brain matter across the ground in a spray, then the blood and brain matter from this burst skull splattered across the trunk of a large tree standing to one side, leaving the same kind of mark as a ripe tomato thrown hard against wood.

The dead assassin and the tree were more than ten paces apart.

Whoosh, whff whff, whiiiiing.

After sending one stone, the sling resumed its rotation.

"Alright. Next one."

The moment one shot was away, Rem had already started spinning the sling for a second. Cowin suddenly registered the presence of a projectile that exceeded his Dynamic Visual Acuity and triggered Fate.

The eye that glimpses the future.

Judging that standing still meant taking the hit, Cowin's sword cut the air.

His feet kicked off the ground, his body drove forward, and the sword came down in a vertical slash. The moment his blade reached toward Rem's back, an axe appeared and knocked it aside with a solid clang.

In that gap, the red-eyed one dropped from above and tried to drive ten red fingernails that had erupted from both fingertips straight in.

Rem's axe had already deflected Cowin's sword, and it caught all ten nails too.

Scraaaaape.

Sparks flew, and a surge of heat flared up for an instant.

Whooom.

Rem swung his axe and whipped the sling at an angle, releasing the second stone before it had even reached full rotation speed.

Ping, crack.

Another assassin died.

The attack timing was irregular. The assassin cluster might have frozen on the spot for a moment, but then..."Rush all at once! Those who spare their lives will find a far worse punishment waiting!"

At the red-eyed one's shout, the assassin cluster moved again.

Rem still didn't feel any of this as a threat.

Two knights were his opponents, but.

These two are way easier to deal with than the directionally-impaired bastard or the wildcat.

More than that, it was better than sparring with Enkrid.

That was Rem's honest feeling.

= = =

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried