A Knight who Eternally Regresses - Chapter 538

WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

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A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 538: The World Had More Fools Than He Thought

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If Barnas had struggled to beat Ragna half to death, Cowin had fled to save his own life.

"Man, you really are something."

The barbarian's voice reached him from somewhere behind, but he ignored it completely and kept running. He didn't look back even once.

If he turned his head right now, he was sure he'd see a gray monster skull charging after him with an axe.

Like an ostrich burying its head in the ground when threatened, or a pheasant hiding in the underbrush.

Not that looking would make Rem chase him, or not looking would make Rem stop.

The difference between Cowin and those birds, though, was that Cowin had Strong Legs fueled by Will.

Ostriches aren't as dumb as they look, of course, they duck their heads to use their keen hearing, and pheasants hide their large bodies while keeping their eyes exposed to make use of sharp vision. But either way, from the outside, both looked stupid.

Just like Cowin looked right now, sprinting for his life.

He wrung out every last drop of strength and ran like a madman, so far gone he didn't even notice the saliva dribbling down his chin.

He burned through Strong Legs and burned through Will. He used it all without caring whether he hit his limit. There wasn't even time to break into a cold sweat.

His stomach had clenched and he was one bad moment away from wetting himself.

That was when it happened.

Cowin got lucky.

What were the odds of running into a friendly soldier while fleeing, one who was in exactly the same situation as him?

Well, it was closer to inevitable than coincidence.

Cowin had instinctively retraced his own steps and doubled back, while Barnas's lieutenant had been trying to find another knight to shelter under after Barnas fell.

Two knights had been posted in the same direction.

'Going to General Frog is the same as dying.'

She was not someone who would forgive a man for abandoning his soldiers and retreating.

That left only one option.

Crossing the Pen-Hanil Mountain Range alone wasn't a road he could take to begin with.

So calling their meeting pure coincidence wasn't quite right either.

'Everything I've done is to prepare for what comes after,' the lieutenant told himself privately.

He needed something to lean on. That was how he rationalized it, how he settled on a reason, however loose, for abandoning every last man under his command.

'I have to report the enemy's capabilities.'

So this wasn't fleeing. It was a strategic withdrawal for a future advance.

Of course it wasn't.

A moment's thought would have shown him that. Barnas had been Azpen's last hope.

Could a country that couldn't maintain its knight force survive a war against another nation?

No.

On top of that, Azpen had staked everything on this fight.

If only Barnas had died, that would be a different problem, but the fact that the knight they trusted most had lost didn't change.

The right move was to assume the other fronts weren't doing well either.

If his own life hadn't been at stake.

If he hadn't been about to die right there.

If he hadn't watched the knight they trusted most die in front of him.

The lieutenant might have been able to look at things coolly.

Would he have fled even if he were thinking clearly? He didn't know. What never happened was simply something that never happened.

If his heart had turned in a different direction in that moment, maybe he too would have screamed for his homeland and charged in.

But the choice made was the choice made.

Time passed and didn't come back. Now only reality remained.

And that was when Cowin came into view.

"Sir Cowin."

It was already strange that Cowin was here at all, but one look at his face made it plain something had gone badly wrong.

"Why are you here?" the lieutenant asked.

He seemed close to panic, but Cowin was still a knight.

There was a hard, unbroken core of Will inside him that hadn't shattered.

True, Cowin had reached knighthood through an unusual path, so his Will wasn't anything exceptional.

He had awakened it thanks to the intuition he was born with, essentially a gift from nature, from childhood.

But that didn't mean there hadn't been effort along the way.

Cowin was simply someone who treasured everything he had built, all of it: his pride, his reputation, everything else. Because all of it mattered, he could not die.

"And Sir Barnas?"

Cowin turned the question around. The lieutenant bit his lip, his expression saying that even speaking the words was painful.

"He fell in battle."

Cowin blinked twice.

Who died?

To Cowin, Barnas had been another kind of monster.

He knew, because he had trained under the man. The shockwave Barnas could shape with his Will wasn't something you could block just by trying.

Against someone who had never faced it before, failing to block it was the normal outcome.

"Fell?"

Cowin asked back, incredulity plain in his voice. He was in no state to hide what he felt. His emotions were right on the surface.

"Yes."

Creak. The lieutenant ground his back teeth as he said it. He looked genuinely resentful, or perhaps like he was practicing what resentment was supposed to look like.

To Cowin, the whole thing felt like a scene from a play.

What complete nonsense.

"Why are you alone?"

"I got hit."

Under normal circumstances the lieutenant would have found something to say in his own defense, but Cowin was not in his right mind.

Running from the enemy, deceiving and fleeing, had put cracks in the Will he had built up as a knight.

He was mentally and physically impaired, not much different from drinking himself past his limit.

"Got hit, you say?"

"There's a monster on their side."

Cowin answered with a blank look.

"And so you ran?"

A deserter could recognize a deserter. Eyes glazed, Cowin nodded.

Ran? Yeah, he ran.

"Damn it all! And you still call yourself a knight? What exactly did you learn from Sir Barnas!"

Under normal circumstances the lieutenant would never have spoken to a knight like that either.

He had arrived here in a panic of his own. And because he knew his own failures in his gut, he needed someone to blame.

That someone turned out to be a knight who had also run.

Compared to that, his own strategic withdrawal was nothing at all.

Someone had appeared who could absorb all the blame.

"You had better have a convincing reason for why you alone survived. The blame for this defeat would fall on you as well."

If the lieutenant had been even a little calmer, he wouldn't have said something like that right now.

At the very least, it was something to say later, at a court-martial.

Why?

Both of them were deserters, but one held an overwhelming advantage over the other, enough to reduce two people to one.

The foggy look in Cowin's eyes sharpened back into focus.

Was going back the right move?

Live with the shame of being a deserter?

He didn't need bloodlust in his eyes to make the situation clear.

"For now, return to the main unit, guh."

Cowin lifted his sword and pushed it forward lightly.

Fleeing had taken its toll on both body and mind, but his sword arm moved just fine.

As long as his opponent wasn't a knight, yes, his blade was still something to fear.

"Why."

The lieutenant asked why and understood, in the same moment, exactly how stupid a thing he had just done. But knowing changed nothing.

Thrust, thrust.

Two more stabs, and the man tried to grab the blade with his bare hands. That was futile too. After putting three holes in the man who had learned of his flight and making sure he was dead, Cowin spoke.

"It can't be called a defeat yet."

No. Even if they were going to lose, they couldn't lose like this.

The blame for the defeat would fall on him? That was ridiculous.

The feet that had been running on pure instinct now moved with a clear purpose.

He brought up the map of the Pen-Hanil Mountain Range in his head as he moved. His destination was the main unit.

Not the rear. Where both armies stood facing each other.

He cut straight down through the mountain range. A bear Magic Beast cost him time along the way, lucky or unlucky, he somehow found a path and made it down.

He walked into the main camp soaked as if he'd bathed in the black blood of Demon Creatures and Magic Beasts, and two soldiers on guard leveled their spears at him.

"What? Where'd you come from?"

"What is this?"

Cowin let out a breath and spoke.

"Cowin Ekins of the Royal King's Knights. Take me to the commander's tent immediately."

"...Huh?"

The blank look on the soldier's face made Cowin's hand twitch. He wanted to take the man's head off, but he held back.

"Do I need to show you a mark?"

Cowin raised his sword. A knight's sword was his symbol.

He presented his Inscribed Weapon and pushed forward the gauntlet engraved with his order's crest.

The soldier took the iron gauntlet and roughly scrubbed it against the dirt to wipe away the black blood. The crest appeared.

"Oh."

"This way, sir."

Before the main battle had even begun, the dueling challengers had been routed and morale had collapsed. The soldiers who had been anxiously treading on eggshells now turned their eyes to Cowin, though not many of them. Everyone had their full attention on the front, watching in case the enemy used this opening to push in.

That was why Cowin walked into the command tent with less fanfare than he'd expected.

The general who had been holding his position under Abnaier's orders rose when he saw him.

"Sir Cowin?"

They had met before.

Cowin's gaze moved from the general to the two lieutenants at his side.

He remembered Abnaier and the general once discussing those two. One wasn't especially bright but was steadfast and loyal; the other was clever but looked out too much for himself.

'In other words, ambitious.'

The tent was fairly spacious, but counting Cowin there were only four people inside.

There was nothing to plan, no fight was imminent, and the duels had been nothing but losses. These three had been sitting around waiting for good news from their side.

"What in the world..."

The commander couldn't finish the sentence, staring at Cowin's state.

Had they lost? Had the bypass battle gone wrong? Every kind of thought hit at once and stopped his tongue.

In that silence, Cowin looked at the ambitious one, the man with narrow eyes, and spoke.

"From this moment."

Swish, swish.

Cowin left the sentence unfinished and swung his sword. Two lines appeared across the necks of the general and the loyal lieutenant, their color dark and muddy from the black blood already coating the blade.

The heads sitting above those lines slid and dropped.

"You're the commander now."

"Oh."

The lieutenant's lips trembled with fear. Whatever his ambitions, he was not a remarkable man, clever, but small in character.

"Will you follow my orders?"

Refuse and you die. He didn't need to read the room to know that.

Small in character he was, but clever enough to grasp the situation immediately.

"Yes, understood."

"Good. Order the entire army to advance."

The lieutenant swallowed.

"Don't stop until we win. We will take the enemy's city."

Normally, someone saying this would add that they would be at the front leading the charge. Cowin had no such intention.

He gave the lieutenant the words he needed instead.

"I'll be watching from behind."

Disobey and die. A friendly knight was standing at his back with a drawn sword.

The lieutenant knew that even if he gave the order, there was no guarantee it would be carried out.

And then what?

That dark, bloody blade would punch through his chest.

'What do I do?'

He thought it through and arrived at an answer.

Beside the dead general lay a letter from Abnaier. The whole current operation had been following orders handed down from above.

But what if there was an authority greater than Abnaier's?

"Please give me a single dagger, something with the symbolic weight to prove this command comes from you."

"Take it."

Cowin handed over the jewel-hilted dagger given to every member of the order upon joining.

That would do.

The lieutenant went out and gathered the unit commanders. He used urgency as an excuse to hold the meeting outside rather than in the tent.

If they came inside, two corpses would be there to greet them.

"An urgent message came from the main force and the general has returned to his post. We advance before sundown."

Several commanders with enough spine and sense tilted their heads.

"Where to?"

"Over there?"

"If we hit them now it looks bad for us."

"A melee?"

The lieutenant had no charisma to command these men. What he had was the sword from the knight.

"These are the orders of Sir Cowin Ekins of the Royal King's Knights. The order has won. We will take the enemy's city."

It was already too late to turn back.

Bread crushed back into wheat doesn't become wheat again.

'I don't know anymore.'

If they advanced like this, casualties would pour out from both sides.

They would kill and be killed.

Could they break through?

'Probably not.'

One look at the men who had gone out for the duels, and at the enemy lined up in formation, was enough to see that.

"The order won? There was another engagement on the bypass route?"

"I don't know. That's all I was told."

It was a lie, so saying more would only expose the cracks.

"Then our order will hit them from behind?"

"I noticed part of their force was missing."

A sharp-eyed commander nodded along. Others followed on the authority of the knight's sword, and Azpen finished preparing to advance.

While all that was moving forward, Cowin found a nearby lake, cleaned himself off roughly, and thought through his next move.

'Use the frontal assault as bait.'

The people who would die didn't matter to him.

'Instead, I'll take the city lord's head.'

Even now, his cracked mind wasn't thinking about fighting knights. It was looking for the relatively weak. He was going for Graham, the lord of Border Guard.

There was nothing rational about it.

And so Azpen began to move.

Watching it happen, Krais felt something like disbelief.

"Why are they doing that?"

Morale was broken. The outcome of the bypass battle still wasn't in.

And they were opening a full frontal assault here?

Without any coordinated strategic movement to go with it?

They hadn't even sent a detached unit to shake the camp from another angle.

Not that sending cavalry would have changed anything.

Border Guard's defensive posture was already airtight.

Which made it all the harder to understand.

"We need to fight, brother." Audin said it even the enemy's momentum alone told you they were serious.