WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 545: Not All Kings Are the Same

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Azpen had long been shaped by the breath of religion.

As a result, it maintained friendly ties with the holy city-states recognized as sovereign nations and could rely on their aid. But that same dependence meant Azpen had to watch its step around the temples, and little could be done without first glancing over its shoulder.

Was the Holy State the only problem? Not even close.

If it were only the Holy State, the king of Azpen might have managed to look the other way now and then and still pursue his own ambitions.

Religion was not the only burden.

Going back through history, the Azpen Duchy began as a title, the rank of duke. It was a nation built on imperial permission.

Look closer, and you might say the empire's scheme to tie down a once-in-a-generation hero had worked beautifully. But that is the judgment of hindsight. For those who lived in that era, Duke-King Azpen would have been a hero among heroes without question.

A hero who founded a nation could hardly be ordinary.

That origin meant the duchy still carried no great love for the empire today. The empire had essentially said: here is land, now stop fighting us. A transaction dressed as generosity.

So while Azpen was called a duchy in name, it was in practice a separate kingdom.

Claiming that openly, though, was difficult now.

"Do you not wish to receive the empire's support?"

The imperial envoy who arrived every year brought grain to Azpen, a country where farmland was scarce because most of the territory was mountains.

It was not a bad deal. The empire treated Azpen reasonably, at fair prices.

Of course, in order to pay for that grain, Azpen found itself with little left to stockpile.

As the saying goes, you finish a painting of a beauty by drawing the eyes last, and there was one more country whose influence fell over Azpen.

Rihinshtetten, the southern great power.

It was the empire's opposite. Rihinshtetten bought metals and various other goods that came out of Azpen.

One side was the buyer, the other the seller.

Caught between watching both of them, Azpen struggled to open trade even with the merchant cities nestled in the southeastern corner of the continent.

What a damned situation.

Argius Bona Azpen, the man known by the epithet chosen by the gods, the current occupant of the throne, found the present circumstances deeply unsatisfying.

Will this country always have to beg from someone just to survive? And not from one, but three?

The priests of the abundance god resided within Azpen's royal palace, and a temple had been built inside the palace grounds. They said the people needed divine teaching to find stability.

Those who lacked food always dreamed of abundance. Naturally, most of Azpen's people were devout believers in that faith.

Some priests prayed faithfully for their congregation and served the people with sincerity. Others had rotted so thoroughly they gave off a stench.

But could they all simply be cast out? Not a chance.

Kill a single priest and there would be cries from every direction. A king who could not freely execute even a low-ranking priest, that was the reality of his position.

It was one of the reasons Argius wanted a separation of church and state.

Why did the people of Azpen believe in the god of abundance? Because their lives were hard.

Is using faith as an escape the right way to live?

The king knew that retreat and avoidance bought only a brief moment of relief, but he could not ask the same of his people.

He wanted to push through the current situation. And the chance was right in front of him.

Greenfield.

Said to be the most fertile land on the continent, land with every likelihood of becoming the granary lands, and it sat right beside the border.

Push a little to the southeast, extend the border slightly, and that would be enough.

Secure the granary lands, and every problem had an answer.

Of course, nothing in the world went exactly as planned. Still, there was no question it would mean something.

No need to borrow the empire's hand, no need to sell so much iron to the south. A full belly would make even the spiritually impoverished lean on their gods a little less.

Then it might be possible to purge a few of the corrupt priests.

And in the end, was it not simply a matter of making the people understand that their king had accomplished all of this? Their dependence on religion would diminish accordingly.

Argius had a dream.

He had carried it for over a decade.

It was a dream of his country becoming a true kingdom, not a duchy. A dream of a lame man standing and walking on his own, without anyone else's help.

Some who heard that dream called him a dreamer. Others joined him and followed.

And they had failed.

Now, right in front of him, a young king more than ten years his junior was laying out something beyond dreams, something closer to sophistry. He was being stubborn about it.

"Why is it impossible?"

"Erasing the Cursed Ground alone is already impossible. And War's End? A land without war? Gathering non-human races to fight together? Do you actually think any of that makes sense?"

Argius felt the veins rise on his forehead. Emotion was bleeding into his words now.

He wanted to ask: do you know what you are saying? What in the world possesses you to speak such nonsense?

"Why not?"

"The very question is wrong."

"Have you tried?"

"What?"

"I asked if you have tried."

A path no one had walked before, was that a path that could not be walked?

There was a time when the king had thought exactly that.

Because that was the dream he had carried. A dream of standing free and alone, beyond the reach of everyone's influence.

Everyone said it was impossible. Everyone said the path could not be walked.

Argius had never believed that. He had simply seen it as a path not yet taken.

"If no one has ever set foot on a piece of land, does that mean no one can live there?"

And the young king spoke the words that had once lived inside him.

But the two men were not the same measure.

Not all knights were the same kind of knight, and not all kings were the same kind of king.

"Are you going to give up without even trying? Is that the dream you carry? Then what did you cross into Naurillia's borders hoping to find? Enki, take the head of the king of Azpen right now, then gather the troops and kill every living person on this land called Azpen."

Crang's voice was not loud. It was quiet and even. Only his tone had shifted slightly.

Jaxon heard Crang's words and glanced sidelong at Enkrid.

Was he going to take the head or not?

Enkrid knew Crang had not meant it literally, so he only watched.

Andrew had been listening to the conversation this whole time, and he was starting to feel like his mind might simply give out.

The young man who had introduced himself as Ilord put his hand on his sword grip when Crang spoke.

The other two who had come from Azpen stepped back half a step without realizing it. Frog stayed where she was, silent.

The force behind the order to take the head had been convincing enough that everyone took it as truth.

"Is that truly what you want?"

Crang asked.

Argius looked at the young king. The night sky stretched behind him, and behind that, a knight who had stopped an army stood at his back. Argius knew he could die at a single gesture. But what he saw now was only Crang's eyes.

Those eyes shone brighter than the moon, brilliant enough to push the starlight aside.

Nothing could outshine the eyes of someone who carried a dream.

"Why did the racial integration policy bear fruit? Was it not because everyone was treated exactly the same? I would appreciate knowing your secret."

Crang said.

It sounded entirely without ulterior motive.

Argius felt like he wanted to gasp for breath, and he had not even moved. The mental toll was enormous.

Why had the veins risen on his forehead with anger? He turned inward and asked himself.

What was he actually angry about?

The difference in scale.

He did not want to admit it, but the man across from him was larger and wider than he was.

"Why did you come all the way here?"

Rather than shouting, Argius asked something close to his first question, though changed. Before, he had asked what Crang was thinking, showing up when there might be hidden troops. This time the question was genuine. He wanted to know the intent.

"Does it matter?"

Crang smiled. Argius let out a hollow laugh, a sound that escaped before he could stop it.

Not all kings were the same.

That line felt like it had carved itself into his bones.

The man in front of him was built on a different scale.

He was talking about erasing the Cursed Ground and ending the wars of the continent.

"How do you plan to do it?"

Argius asked again. No subject, but the meaning was plain.

How would he bring the continent's wars to an end? How would he deal with the Cursed Ground? How could the Cult be pulled out by the roots?

None of the three made sense. Any one of them alone would rightly be called raving.

Argius had been watching the priest he had brought with him, and he had been keeping in mind the woman from the Ekins family, sent at the behest of the south. Right now, he had forgotten both of them.

He could only hear the words of the man in front of him.

Crang smiled again. If there were magic in that smile, Argius would have nodded without hesitation.

A king with magic in him spoke against the backdrop of the night sky.

"Work through it with me."

"Ha. Hahaha."

It started as an empty laugh, but Argius threw his head back and laughed fully, hard enough that his eyes stung.

This bastard had no plan at all and was just saying he would do it anyway? Was this ambition? Or was it the recklessness of someone who knew nothing about the world?

Ordinarily it would have to be called recklessness, but this man was the king of Naurillia, the one who had ended a civil war and received the throne.

You could not write off a man like that.

Argius thought of his retainers, the ones who had opposed him when he said he wanted to stand alone.

They had called him a dreamer.

Compared to himself, the man standing before him was something else entirely: a madman who dreamed with his eyes wide open.

But.

He had lost.

Not a single thing he had anticipated came up. The king of Naurillia had not pressed any of the points Argius had worried about. He had only shown the difference in their scale.

"You will need the granary lands. You will want to break free from the empire's hand and the south's, and there is the matter of religion as well."

Even his thinking is sharp, on top of everything else.

Argius said nothing. He only listened.

"I cannot hand over all of the land. But let us join them like this. That should secure your farmland."

Crang pressed his two palms together side by side as he said it.

This too could fairly be called delusion.

That was what Argius thought.

What Crang was proposing was to align their borders. Not a war, not even an alliance in the usual sense, just sharing the agricultural land and dividing the harvest without a fight.

Easy to say, when both countries had previously used the full length of Greenfield as their shared border. But it was only easy to say.

Where did the history of battles between them go? The bitterness accumulated over all those years? Fine, none of those clashes had been large enough to wipe out a city, so set that aside.

Would the empire and the southern great power simply stand by and watch?

Crang spoke as if he had been waiting for exactly that thought.

"If anyone elsewhere has something to say about it, use this friend as your excuse. Tell them there is a knightly order capable of carving up a city of Azpen, and no one can come at you with a blade when that is the threat hanging over them."

Crang said it and hooked his thumb over his shoulder. It pointed at Enkrid, obviously.

Enkrid did not care either way, so he nodded loosely.

"A retainer?"

"A friend."

A king calling himself a friend in front of another king, and Enkrid's face stayed flat as he heard it.

Argius found himself curious about the two of them, though that was hardly what mattered right now.

"Is that really possible? You are at war with the south. They will not stay quiet."

"It is not me who does the fighting, but yes. The people defending my country, the ones who share my dream, will defend it together."

"Is that so."

The energy seemed to drain from Argius's voice.

Yet his eyes began to shine.

Not the guarded, defensive eyes he had worn when this first started. Not eyes that spoke of frustration and despair.

What Crang said next woke something in his mind.

"There is a threat, so direct confrontation is impossible, but you have received generous terms and gained farmland. The god of abundance could not permit fertile land to sit idle, so there was no choice. That is all you need to say, is it not?"

Reckless.

What absolute nonsense.

A rabbit living in a cave cannot understand a rabbit living outside it.

Why live out there in the danger? There is grass growing inside the cave, enough to survive on.

The truth was simply that Argius had never seen past the cave entrance.

The man before him was not simply asking to be friends, not simply saying: join my dream. He understood the situation Argius was actually in, clearly and precisely, and he named it.

And with the force of his words, he had silenced even those standing behind him, each with their own interests, each with their own things to say.

There are moments in every life when everything changes.

For Enkrid, it had been a single sentence from a third-rate mercenary swordsman.

You are a genius.

And a single line from a song a traveling bard sang.

The Knight of War's End. The knight who ends wars.

The king of Azpen was having a similar experience now.

Crang smiled and opened his mouth again.

"What are you afraid of? Death? Failure? If it is neither of those things, will you not dream alongside me?"

A plan? There was none.

An alternative? None.

But there was a dream.

Crang was a dreamer, and Argius wanted to reach out and take his hand.

To do that, something had to come first.

He had been moved by the words of this young king, but the person who had made this young king into what he was deserved to be seen first.

The one who had stood perfectly calm while everyone else was shaken or swayed.

His name was Enkrid. The Knight of the Iron Wall.

The name of the one who had made this moment possible.

Ilord Hurrier had been the first to express gratitude to him, but that had truly been something Argius himself, as king, should have done first.

Ilord had done it in his place because Argius had been holding onto his pride, trying to the last to preserve some measure of his kingdom's dignity.

There had been a reason he requested that Enkrid come along to this meeting.

And so now, with clear eyes at last, should he not give thanks for the fact that his people, his kingdom's blood, had not been spilled?

The king, shaken loose from his illusions, still laughing, rose from his seat.

"What should I call you?"

"Crang."

"Argius. There is something I want to do before it is too late. I would do it now, if you are willing."

Not something he had to do. Something he wanted to do. A king who understood well that a single word could change the meaning, and he had chosen the right one.

"Go ahead."

With Crang's answer given, the king of Azpen turned to look at Enkrid.

"The introduction comes late. Sir Enkrid, Knight of the Iron Wall, because of what you did, a wife who would have wept through the night will not have to weep, a child who nearly lost both parents will be able to smile, and elderly parents who sent a child out will be able to breathe easier. For that, I give you my thanks."

The king lowered his head.

It was a show of respect acknowledging that this moment existed because of the once-in-a-generation hero who had stood against an army and did not yield.

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