A Knight who Eternally Regresses - Chapter 548

WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 548: Uncle

= = =

Krais had to live as though work were always at his heels. He knew this would continue for some time, and he had a rough sense of what was coming next.

For instance.

'How much longer do I need to put up with Azpen? Half a year at most, maybe?'

If he left things alone, they could spend years in that awkward state of mutual indifference, but the means to ease that tension were already in motion.

Things might not go as planned. So what? As long as nobody ended up dead, you just pushed forward and saw what happened.

The wild cards were an invasion by another nation, or the Cursed Ground border breaking open.

'That's beyond what I can control.'

The Cursed Ground border was a problem he could do nothing about even if he worried himself over it, so he set it aside. As for foreign invasion, Crang had already made his move.

How far Crang's gambit would reach was hard to say, but other nations would watch and wait for a while.

Naurillia and Azpen had clasped hands instead of burning down the whole continent.

A fight? No, we've made up.

That was essentially what the current situation said to the rest of the continent.

Ceding the border had carried exactly that meaning.

And Border Guard had proven its strength on top of that.

Those who needed to know had probably worked out that Azpen's knights had vanished entirely, and they understood what that implied.

'It's proof that Border Guard holds that level of force.'

In other words, no one would come picking a fight without first taking a careful measure of their strength.

It was as if Naurillia's Red Cloak Knights had suddenly doubled overnight.

Even those who had expected some growth in their forces would have been startled.

While songs about the Iron Wall Swordsman and the Knight were spreading, the sharper minds had surely been calculating Border Guard's real strength.

'Rem and Ragna are far too sharp and unpredictable to hide.'

It was safe to assume the information had already gotten out.

And now, two nations that had been fighting each other had joined hands, however clumsily.

That meant the knight-order-level force at Border Guard, standing alongside Azpen, could amount to a formidable combined strength.

Which meant, for the time being, neither the southern great power nor the Empire would charge in just because they disliked the arrangement. At minimum, they would move only after studying Border Guard's interior far more carefully.

'What else is there?'

Setting aside Cultist activity as something too unpredictable to factor in, it was fair to say they had bought themselves a brief peace.

'On top of that, no band of swordsmen, bandits, or mercenary companies would pick a pointless fight right now.'

When a nation was weak and without power, getting squeezed by even a well-known mercenary company was routine. A small country that had once existed to the southeast had been swallowed whole by a mercenary company. And the trading city in the south that declared itself an independent state had been bled for Krona by mercenary companies multiple times, lacking any military force of its own, until the day it turned the companies against each other and wiped out the survivors with its own home-grown mercenaries. The trading company's blade incident, as it came to be called, was famous enough that few people hadn't heard of it.

The mercenary companies under that trading city were called Gold, Silver, and Bronze, if he recalled correctly.

Gold Mercenaries, Silver Mercenaries, Bronze Mercenaries. Thoroughly unimaginative names.

On top of that, the people running the trading city were said to have ties to the continent's foremost assassination guild, and the mercenary company called the Trading Company's Blade occasionally caused trouble in other cities.

'Would that trading city have any reason to make an enemy of us?'

In human terms, the trading city was the kind of tough, obstinate force that didn't back down for anyone.

This was worth thinking about.

They didn't care whether they were dealing with the Empire, the south, or Naurillia. What mattered to them was trade, and trade alone.

He had heard from Leona, head of the Rockfreed Trading Company, that a marriage proposal had come her way when she was scrambling to take over the company and had barely found her footing.

"At least the man wasn't some fifty-year-old perverted toad-faced creep, so I suppose I was grateful for that much. But that doesn't mean I was about to hand my company over as a dowry."

The trading city's aim had been obvious.

They had wanted to absorb Rockfreed's reach and mobility through marriage.

The experience gained from traveling the continent was not something easily replicated. Rockfreed had even established trade with the Black Leather Guild and the Glacier Rangers.

Of course they had coveted it. Hearing that the company had changed hands, they had probably seen a golden opportunity.

Had Rockfreed Trading Company joined the trading city, it would have grown far more easily than it had on its own.

Though from that point on, it would have been hard to say Leona was still truly the owner of Rockfreed Trading Company.

That was just the nature of building a shop with someone else's money. They smiled when they handed it over, then came back later demanding repayment, and if you couldn't pay, there was nothing to be said when they insisted half the shop was theirs.

If Leona had been even a little less shrewd, she might have fallen for it. But she was sharp, and she knew exactly what she wanted.

Leona had wanted to own the company outright.

"There is a ridiculous amount of work to do."

Krais stopped mid-thought and took a sip of tea.

It had come as a gift from the royal family, with a letter from Marcus enclosed.

The letter thanked him for all the consideration he had shown.

'As long as I'm not at odds with the royal family, I may as well stay on good terms.'

Sipping the tea Marcus had personally selected, he felt the fog in his tired head lift a little.

So this was why people spent money on expensive tea leaves.

When he eventually opened a salon, should he stock a corner of it with teas like this?

A salon couldn't just be a place to eat, drink, and enjoy oneself, or it would lose its worth. It had to be a place where important conversations happened and connections were made.

Right now, noble banquets and parties filled that role, but watching the Cafeteria take root in the city, he thought a salon could replace all of that well enough.

At the moment, people still thought of a salon as a place where young noblewomen married to old men gathered, or where men driven purely by lust congregated.

But that depended entirely on how it was run.

'I hope nothing is going wrong at the royal court.'

"Don't worry. I'm going with you."

Rem's parting words before their departure had left a dull ache in Krais's chest.

Would the nobles assembled at the royal palace quietly accept the commander?

There had to be those grumbling about the power being extended to Border Guard.

Well, that was for the commander to handle.

He would manage fine.

Rem was a concern, but he was also someone only Enkrid could truly keep in check.

"I want to open a salon and disappear from the world."

It wasn't for nothing that old stories always had a wise hermit tucked away somewhere.

You worked yourself to the edge of collapse, and at some point you threw everything down and walked into the mountains to breathe forest air. That was what it came down to.

If you were unlucky, you ended up as a Demon Creature's meal, but if you hated the work that badly, you had to learn magic or find some other way to vanish.

Of course, Krais had absolutely no intention of doing any of that.

It was responsibility he disliked, not the pleasures the city offered.

Being this buried in work, his thoughts even drifted to that figure named Abnaier.

Having someone with that kind of mind helping him would make everything so much easier.

Then again, actually bringing Abnaier in right now felt unsettling.

Maybe he would ask Enkrid about it when he returned.

With that thought, Krais drained his tea in one go.

Time to get back to work.

He had to divide the forces shaped by training into their proper formations, see to the maintenance of their weapons and armor, and somewhere in the middle of all that, weed out the people slipping into the city for useless reasons.

He couldn't do all of it himself, so he had people planted here and there to handle it, but even so, he was always shorthanded.

Krais wondered again, freshly, whether this was really the right place for him, then dismissed the thought. Even if something like residue of doubt lingered, what could he do about it?

Right now, work was burying him alive.

* * *

The sun had been blazing when they set out, but at some point the sky had gone gray.

The gray overhead matched the color of Rem's hair.

Rain looked close.

"Looks like it'll rain. Mm, gonna pour any minute now, we should find somewhere to shelter."

Rem glanced up at the sky and said it. He had always been quick to read weather changes.

"How do you do that?"

Could you even call this journey boring?

The safe road didn't stretch all the way from Nauril to Border Guard yet, but the roads leading to the major cities had been properly laid.

Stone had been set into the ground to build the road.

And every half-day's distance, a three-story tower checkpoint had been erected.

Towers with arrow slits cut into them, good for sheltering inside and shooting out at Demon Creatures or Magic Beasts that attacked.

They would be relatively vulnerable to Griffons, Harpies, or Wyverns, but there were large ballistae mounted atop the towers for exactly that.

He had heard they spent a long period gathering Magic Beast fur to build even a single one of those ballistae, and women had cut and sold their hair for it.

After building the frame, they would have used iron sinew and various kinds of fur to make the string.

He had heard there were quite a few people who made decent Krona selling their hair at the time.

Anyway, thanks to that safe road, you could barely spot a bandit, let alone a Demon Creature.

In short, it was a safe and peaceful road. Several merchant groups heading out for trade passed along it as well.

Everyone's hired guards were soldiers, and most of them turned out to be Border Guard regulars.

That alone showed how much influence Border Guard had over the safety of the whole region.

It wasn't boring so much as safe, but for Enkrid, Rem, and Audin, it could fairly be called a leisurely journey.

All three were on horseback, and Rem pulled his reins and changed direction as he answered the earlier question.

"Knowing it won't mean you can copy it."

"Why?"

"Well, you ask a lot of questions. I've spent my whole life in the west. A western native who dabbles in Sorcery gets sensitive to how smells shift. So it's a kind of feel that comes from living in a dry climate for so long."

"I see."

That would be hard to learn.

Enkrid thought about it as he urged his horse to follow Rem.

He had heard the stable keeper suffered quite a bit finding a horse suitable for Audin.

That was how large a horse it needed to be.

He would have liked to bring Odd-Eye, but that horse didn't easily allow anyone on its back except Enkrid. Clever as a person, Odd-Eye would carry someone or fetch a lost Ragna when a real emergency arose, but would not lend its back for something like this and showed no intention of coming along.

Esther was the same.

"I have too much to do."

Teaching and sharpening spells kept her busy.

Back in human form after a long time, Esther was also tending to the soldiers who served as either her students or subordinates, and she seemed genuinely pleased doing it.

"Keep your eyes down. Let them wander and I'll pull them out."

That was how she greeted her unit, though by the time the words left her mouth, every soldier already had their eyes quietly lowered.

Whatever had happened before, they all listened exceptionally well.

Every one of them walked around carrying a fist-sized crystal orb, constantly polishing it and murmuring to it, and to anyone who didn't know them they would have looked like another group of lunatics.

"Shall we stop to rest and spar a little? Brother."

Audin's voice cut through Enkrid's wandering thoughts.

"Let's."

Enkrid nodded.

"I'll join too."

Rem cut in.

A proper fight between them wouldn't end until someone got hurt, so it would be more about loosening up than any real contest, but even that would be enough to make a stranger's eyes go wide.

Their journey was a repeating pattern of exactly this.

When rain looked close, they found the nearest town or cave to shelter in.

"Kraaaugh!"

If a Magic Beast happened to be inside the cave, all three moved at once without anyone needing to call it.

Audin punching something to pieces with his fists, or Rem splitting a skull with his axe, there were few Demon Creatures or Magic Beasts that could withstand either. If such things were common, the entire land would already be Cursed Ground.

They watched merchant groups and traveling parties pass by, sparred again, rode on, and traded idle jokes.

Going along like that, Nauril was suddenly right in front of them.

Ordinarily, when someone responsible for a great domain came to the capital, they brought a crowd of attendants. Count Molsen and the other nobles who had come before always arrived with large retinues, but Enkrid came with just three people.

There was no need to come swarming in with a crowd.

Only three, yes, but two of those three were knights.

Who would dare make a move?

No one should, naturally. But most people didn't know Enkrid's face.

That was perfectly normal. No matter how famous someone was, you had to have actually seen the face to recognize it.

The gate captain guarding the city walls was a different matter. He had already seen Enkrid's face once during the civil war in the capital.

In front of the city walls, where more people than expected were coming and going, Enkrid lined up quietly and walked inside. The gate captain who had been watching the flow of people recognized him the moment he stepped to the front.

"Huh? Huh? Wait, wait wait wait."

The captain raised a finger and pointed at Enkrid, then couldn't manage another word. He sputtered for a moment before finally getting one out.

"Demon Slayer!"

In the capital, that nickname still seemed to be the more famous one.

Audin's massive frame had already drawn nearby stares.

Everyone who heard the gate captain wheeled around to look at Enkrid.

The heads of everyone standing nearby snapped toward him all at once.

"That man?"

"That's him. Hey."

"Oh, that's the one?"

"Him?"

"The lord of Border Guard?"

"The one they say is the king's friend?"

"The Demon Slayer."

"...Why is he so good-looking?"

Chatter broke out from all sides. Dozens of eyes were on him, but Enkrid was calm.

He had been through this kind of thing even before he became famous. At noble banquets and the like.

"Enkrid of Border Guard. I received a summons from the royal palace. May I enter?"

There was no need to pull out a token to prove his identity.

"Of course, my lord."

The gate captain took hold of the reins himself and led them in.

Enkrid had been here once before and had rolled around fighting in the city, so the surrounding terrain was roughly familiar to him.

What was different from before was that there were more children running around making noise, and the slum near the city wall had shrunk a little.

Crang hadn't been idle since becoming king.

They had just passed through the gate and Enkrid was about to send the gate captain on his way when the man spoke up, his bearded face turned toward him.

"I respect you."

The gate captain was someone who had the song about Enkrid memorized.

He had been born and raised in the capital and loved his country.

To a person like that, the hero who had protected his nation, his city, and his family was on the level of a god.

To him, Enkrid was an object of faith.

Border Guard had quite a few people like that too, so Enkrid gave an appropriate nod, and that was when he noticed it.

The second visit to the capital came with warm sunlight and cool air. The freshness of early autumn.

He was taking in the smell drifting from the row of stables on one side and the sharp stench coming from the alley on the other when the area ahead grew a little noisy.

"Please don't start trouble with us. We're just passing through."

"Hmph. All I did was make a fair offer."

Enkrid hadn't expected to run into either of them here, but both faces were familiar.

"Huh?"

Some in the group knew Rem as well, so he was the first to speak up.

"Twins? What are you two doing all the way out here?"

On one side were the western Twins and Enri, who had gone from hunter to merchant.

His hair was cut short, beard trimmed close, and his face looked clean and neat for it.

It wasn't Rem who knew the other party, it was Enkrid.

A merchant. What was his name again? Malton, that was it.

The man who had scolded him back in Border Guard with that giant merchant standing right there.

'What did he say back then? Something like, if I was friends with the head of Rockfreed Trading Company, then he was Enkrid the General's uncle?'