WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 537: A Wicked Thing

= = =

Sinar's gaze swept over Ragna. She did not need an elf's keen senses to read his condition.

He was not dead.

Ragna was still upright, eyes half-open and unfocused, using what remained of his broken sword as a cane to hold himself off the ground.

If she got close enough, he could probably still swing a few times. If something came flying at him, he might block one or two.

Whether he could hold if the enemy commander decided to throw his life away was another question entirely, but that was only worth asking when she was not there.

The two of them had made a wordless agreement that one would handle the opposing commander, and the commander had gone for Ragna first. That settled who did what.

He was alive, so she would bring him back.

If Ragna had died, she would have stepped up next. Knights were not the kind where adding one to one produced twice the strength, so fighting this way was right.

He looked nearly dead, but she judged him salvageable. The remaining enemies were not worth calling a threat.

Then the commander's eyes darted around and he played a card.

"No surrender! Kill them all! Every one of us shall have our name in the Hall of Honor!"

Azpen had raised a great hall at the heart of its capital, and having your name carved there was a genuine honor. Only the names of the dead were inscribed, and only those who had died for the country.

Families received a stipend every year once a name was added to the hall.

Some sought the glory that came after death. Others did it for the people they would leave behind.

At that, the iron-clad infantry reached inside their armor, pulled pouches from the waist, and tipped them into their mouths all at once. No one measured the dose. Powder scattered around their lips and drifted to the ground.

Still, most of it went in, mixed with saliva, and went straight down.

Veins rose on their foreheads and temples beneath their helms.

Swallowing a drug did not suddenly grant them the ability to use Will. It simply let them forget pain for a time, forget fear, and wring out nearly twice their normal strength.

The stuff was called Fury, the kind you only found on the black market, and it worked by manufacturing rage to force raw potential out of the body.

"For the homeland!"

One of the soldiers shouted it, patriotism burning through him. Tiny vessels burst in his eyes the moment the cry left his lips, and bloody tears ran down his face.

Some bled from the nose as a side effect. Five simply collapsed and lay there shaking.

Their bodies could not take it.

The rest stamped the ground and charged, drooling blood and saliva, eyes red and wild.

An ordinary person facing that would freeze. Even someone with real nerve would feel a chill. Knights were not without feelings, so at least a flash of disgust was natural, but not for Sinar.

She calculated coldly.

She was not going to catch that commander.

That was all she thought, watching him slip away behind the soldiers rushing her.

"Graah!"

They came at her slobbering and bleeding, and Sinar swung her leaf blade. Vital energy poured through it just as before, cutting through throats before the edge even made contact. She was at a knight's level, but she knew that did not add to her weight.

Give ground against that mindless charge and she could be knocked down. She could get hurt.

Not that any of that happened. This was not a figure of speech: she could have fought them with her eyes shut and it still would not have.

She kicked off the ground and lifted away, light as a butterfly. The butterfly's wings were her leaf-shaped sword, and it kept cutting through necks and splitting skulls.

Move when movement is needed. Move only as much as needed. Cut only what needs cutting.

That was what she did. It was enough.

The Fury-dosed soldiers all made for Ragna, and not one of them got close.

She could have gone after the commander too, if she left Ragna behind.

But was that the right call?

She felt no need. And she could not leave her position.

Leaving Ragna did not mean he would sit there and take it quietly, but he was in a bad way regardless. The shoulder and knee were bad enough, but if the gash above his eye went untreated much longer, he might end up a one-eyed, directionally-impaired bastard.

This was simply the more reasonable choice.

Sinar cut down every last soldier who had taken the drug, and while she did, the commander ran.

* * *

He was going to die.

Cowin's insight had been an inborn gift since childhood. After several exchanges, it delivered a single conclusion.

No matter what he did, he died. If he held here, he died. That was the fixed result, an unalterable fate, as settled as the name of his sword.

His future looked exactly like that. Destined, like the name he carried.

Soaked in fear, he chose to run.

There was no thought behind it.

The Numbers Game with Future Sight had not worked on Rem at all. That alone had driven Cowin into something close to panic.

It worked on Barnas. Why not on him?

The reason was simple enough. Rem did not think until the instant before he attacked.

He just fought on instinct, finding the best path at the moment each decision arose. That was how he fought.

The sling shrieked through the air, and before you could track it, another Monterre's Swamp assassin had a caved-in skull. Yet even those movements slipped past Cowin's insight.

How does that make sense?

It made perfect sense. Rem was just throwing whatever was at hand, stone or iron ball, aiming at what he saw. There was no calculation in his head.

All of it was instinct.

Making the best choice in the moment without planning or deliberation, but did that mean a person could always pick the right path under pressure?

Impossible. Rem was no different.

When a red glow swirled behind him and a figure with red eyes materialized from mist, Rem had already moved without thinking, trying to split Cowin's skull from the top.

Cowin caught the briefest flicker of intent and barely got his sword up to block. In that same instant, the red-eyed figure drove a kris, a curved dagger, toward Rem's back.

The curved blade carried Sorcery Poison.

To put the result plainly: Rem was not stabbed.

A legless wolf, pale and hazy, appeared from nowhere and caught the blade in its jaws.

"I never said I fight alone either," Rem muttered.

Missing the right choice was fine, as long as something was there to cover the gap.

The red-eyed figure took one look at the wolf and instantly twisted the dagger's grip and released it. The blade flushed red and blazed with light, sorcery gathered to the point of detonation.

"Eat it, Gureum."

At those words, the spirit wolf Rem had called swallowed the glowing dagger whole and shot away to the side.

A boom sounded in the distance. The wolf scattered, then pulled itself back into shape, a little smaller than before, nothing more.

Its legs were replaced by something like clouds, and it moved on those, practically flying. Watching it swallow a Sorcery Poison blade whole was the kind of thing that pulled every eye, and for just a moment, both Cowin and the red-eyed figure looked.

Rem snapped the sling in his left hand loose, stamped his right foot heel-first into the ground, and brought the axe straight down in a vertical drop.

The sling punched through the skull of an assassin who had been tossing a net from behind. The stamp crushed the collarbone of someone creeping up underground. The axe was aimed at the red-eyed figure, and though it was the last motion to begin, by the time the sling flew and the kick landed, the axe blade had already reached that head.

Every movement happened at once, and every movement was bold.

If Cowin, who had been holding position at Rem's back, had thrust a blade in at that moment, something would have landed. Rem had turned his back that openly.

Of course, he would have blocked it anyway. Gureum was not close, but pulling the axe back to parry was an option, and he had been doing exactly that sort of thing for a while now.

One got pressed and the other covered. It made it a real pain to drive either of them hard.

Then the one at his back, instead of thrusting, simply bolted.

"I'll take the front!"

He even added a dirty touch at the end, feinting like he was about to charge before vanishing.

His innate Future Sight had given him the talent to reshape Pressure into something else, and Cowin used it. He surged his energy forward as though he was about to come in hard. It looked completely real.

Whatever anger he had felt about being compared to ghouls seemed to have been forgotten entirely.

Rem knew it was a bluff.

That particular trick was something he had seen more times than he could count, sparring with Enkrid. It was already familiar.

Fake.

Judgment done, his hand did not stop.

The axe dropped straight toward the red-eyed figure.

The figure had two kris out and caught the axe on both blades. Curved daggers and axe locked in the air for a moment, then the daggers were forced straight down.

Clang! Scrape-crack!

Rem leaned into it and drove the axe through.

Ding, one dagger blade shattered, and the axe's path twisted slightly off to a diagonal cut.

"Gah!"

The red-eyed figure's ear was sheared off by the axe. The figure tried shifting into mist immediately, but that too was worthless against an Inherited weapon.

These weapons were made by pouring sorcery into them to begin with, and Rem's axe had sealed sorcery inside it long enough to serve as a vessel for it as well. It was, in every sense, a solid mass of sorcery.

Throwing sorcery at it was the wrong idea.

"Huh. That was real," Rem said.

He tried not to lose track of the vanished one's presence in the middle of all this, but there was nothing to be done. He had not seen that full retreat coming.

The attention he had spent watching for it felt wasted now.

Well, a man who runs is a man who runs.

Rem thought that and turned his eyes back to the red-eyed figure.

"Even if the matchup had been in your favor, the result would have been the same."

He said it casually, having worked out roughly what sort of power the figure drew on and judged the sorcery advantage and disadvantage. But the red-eyed figure had only barely reached a knight's level by coaxing awake a sealed ancient soul, so the sorcery principles Rem spoke of landed on deaf ears.

That Cowin bastard.

Instead, watching Cowin flee, the figure reached the conclusion that the situation was about as bad as a ghoul's reproductive organs.

A moment's choice here would decide life and death.

"Leave it to me."

The voice that had been tempting him all along came again.

A whisper from the sealed ancient soul.

Under normal circumstances, he would never have listened.

The ancient soul was a type of vampire, and it had exactly one desire.

Blood, blood, blood, and more blood.

A creature consumed by appetite.

But if staying still meant dying anyway?

"He told me never to do this."

Barnas had forbidden it, but the figure decided the situation left no choice, and pledged a piece of its own soul to the ancient vampire.

Still unwilling to simply give in, it tried for one last thing, a contract where it gave away only part and kept the rest, not everything.

That was arrogance.

It had believed it would one day subdue this vampire's soul too, then find another ancient soul and become a soul knight without precedent.

"This body is mine now."

The ancient vampire's Will seized control of the body in an instant. A single moment's gap was all it needed.

"So this is the present age."

The vampire spoke. Rem dug a finger in his ear. He had never heard that language before. Of course not, the speech of the era when vampires walked was nothing like the language spoken now.

Did that matter?

Not at all.

The vampire's eyes blazed red. Bewitching, seductive. It looked straight at Rem and spoke.

"Come and bow your head. So that we may see eye to eye..."

Thwack. Crack.

"What are you saying."

The vampire realized its charm had not worked.

It also realized, at the same moment, that it had not seen the axe this fool swung.

That axe had just split its skull.

Split clean down the middle, blood vessels tangling as the two halves tried to pull themselves back into one.

Just looking at it turned the stomach.

The reconstruction played out in plain view, blood and veins knotting back together.

"You insolent--!"

The head was not even fully sealed yet when the vampire raged.

"How many pieces can you take?" Rem asked flatly, already swinging the axe again to split it open a second time.

Thwack!

The arm came up only after the axe had passed. A badly late reaction.

The ancient vampire did have the strength of a knight when using everything at its disposal, but it had just taken the body moments ago. It had not had time to properly settle in. It needed time to adjust.

Though it would not have mattered if it had. The gap between them was wide enough for that.

The axe danced, and the vampire said nothing more after that. The next blow shattered its tongue and fangs, so naturally it could not.

The mass, split into dozens of pieces, twitched, then let out a gray puff of smoke and came apart.

Rem shook the axe out in the air in front of where it had been.

"Got filth on it."

At least the axe did not seem to mind. That was something.

His eyes moved toward the direction the runner had gone.

One had escaped, but the job was done, more or less.

Rem lifted his foot. Time to chase the one who ran, or rejoin the captain.

= = =

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