WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 550: The Mad Knight Order

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Some nobles had never laid eyes on Enkrid in person, and everything happening at Border Guard was simply too remote to feel real.

Greenfield? They had actually taken that land? One man held back an entire army? Not wiped them out, but held them back? An army stopped just because someone told them to quit? How did that even make sense?

Some rumors sounded too outlandish to believe, and others, while plausible enough, had nothing to do with them personally.

He had ended the civil war, and the name Demon Slayer had reached their ears, but for many it never quite sank in as something real.

Among those present were people who genuinely worried about the royal family, nobles who viewed Enkrid as a threat, and others who had simply shown up without thinking much at all.

Whatever their reasons, they all fell silent at Crang's words.

A smile did not mean he felt any warmth toward them.

With that single line, Crang stilled the room, then rose from his seat.

He could have turned his anger on every one of them.

"Is that really what you say to the man who ended the civil war and guarded the border? I'm so embarrassed I want to drown my face in the washing basin and die."

He could have gone around and persuaded them one by one.

"Enkrid is not that kind of person. He is my close friend and the sword that protects the royal family. I will vouch for that myself."

Or he could have soothed the anxiety they were carrying.

"I know what unsettles you. But do not worry. My eyes are still clear, and I do not let personal matters make me forget my duties."

Had Crang possessed a merchant's instincts, he might have promised the nobles something in return for their silence.

But he did none of those things.

He did not soothe anyone's fears, did not lose his temper, and did not argue the case point by point to justify what was happening.

He simply savored the moment.

He thought back to that time in the barracks, long before he ever declared he would become king, when they had first met.

For Crang, that was where everything began.

"So what do you want to be?"

He asked the exact same question now, not one word changed, and Enkrid blinked once before a smile crossed his face.

It was old enough to sound like a story from another life, but looking at Crang made the memory surface on its own.

The throne sat seven steps above the floor. Perched at the top of those stairs, Crang naturally looked down. Enkrid had just been below, dropping to one knee in formal respect for Crang's public station, then rising again.

Their eyes met.

One looked down from above while the other looked up from below, and both forgot where they stood and drifted back to the past.

Enkrid remembered standing there talking with Crang and asking himself whether his dream had faded to nothing more than a faint trace lodged somewhere near his heart, then immediately answering his own question: no, he was still moving forward.

He gave the same answer now as he had then.

"A knight."

The words of a low-rank soldier, a squad leader at most, dreaming well above his station.

A position worth almost nothing, skill nothing to write home about, and yet he had spoken of the pinnacle of those who carried weapons.

That was what Enkrid had done.

"Right. A knight."

Crang's words overlapped perfectly with the ones from back then.

A good deal of time had passed since. Crang had been the same man then, and he was the same now.

Rather than sneer, he had put weight into those words and taken them seriously.

He had shown that he was listening with everything he had.

"Have you figured out how you intend to live?"

Enkrid turned Crang's old question back on him, and Crang's lips trembled. Then he laughed, loud and open.

Pahahahaha.

"Right, that's how we got here. Have you achieved your dream? Friend?"

Many eyes were watching and he was supposed to carry himself with kingly dignity? He could not care less. This moment, right here, was one Crang had wanted more than he could say.

The man in front of him had brought back a dream he had buried and tried to keep buried.

How could he not cheer for him?

He had wanted, over and over, for that man to achieve his dream.

To climb above the rank of knight.

Back then, Vengeance had stood nearby and scoffed like someone throwing cold water on everything, but no one in this room could do that now.

The one who had spoken of becoming a knight stood here now, having stitched his broken dream back together. The man who had not laughed at that dream had found his own path and taken the throne.

"Part of it."

Enkrid still wanted more, so he said his dream was not yet fully realized.

Crang nodded. The same was true for him.

"Everyone out."

Crang said it while looking at Enkrid.

"Pardon?"

A noble with a half-bald head and sun-darkened skin asked back in disbelief.

"I will receive the oath of a knight."

He was announcing that he would officially invest Enkrid as a knight of Naurillia, right here and now.

"The commander of the Red Cloak Knights is not present."

Marquis Barnas said it, keeping the surprise off his face. He had raised this before. The king could not unilaterally place someone in the Red Cloak Knights without the commander's approval.

He was not wrong. And Crang knew that even if he told Enkrid to join the Red Cloak Knights, Enkrid would not.

"I know."

"Then what exactly are you proposing to do?"

The Duke of Okto added his voice.

Marcus had seen what those two had not, so he said nothing.

The king had not spelled it out, but the picture was taking shape. The two great nobles who had stepped forward were not too foolish to understand.

Bold.

It was not the kind of thing that came to mind easily under ordinary circumstances.

But looking at it the other way, there was nothing that suited a man of this record better.

And considering the sheer force he carried, it was only natural.

"My close friend will lead a new knight order."

What did he just say?

The Duke of Okto blinked and looked at Marquis Barnas.

The Marquis felt much the same.

What?

"Out. I will receive the oath with only the two of us present."

Normally the proper form would have been for all the nobles to witness the oath, but what could be done. Right now, nothing anyone said was going to reach Crang.

His loyal Trading Company Escort thumped the floor with the butts of their spears.

"We will escort you out."

The guards stationed around the room guided the nobles toward the doors.

Marcus walked out and, as he passed Enkrid, raised a closed fist toward him.

Marcus had been someone who cheered for Enkrid's dream too.

The room had been full, and now it felt open, but not hollow. Not quite.

Instead of emptiness, Enkrid felt something ignite inside him.

It reminded him of when he had become a knight.

Call it light and it became light. Call it a flower and it became a flower. A star if you called it a star, a dream if you called it a dream.

His Will moved. It blazed through his whole body, scorching and full.

Crang stood before him.

A knight's oath of loyalty rested on a vow, and breaking it dealt a fatal blow to the Will. So it was perfectly natural for a king to receive a knight's oath.

No kingdom on the continent did otherwise.

"This is the dream you wanted. Go wherever you wish."

And Crang disregarded all of that entirely.

The man in front of him might plunge a sword into him someday? Then that would be his end. A gamble? No.

He was a king. A king had to be able to read people and trust them.

This was not a gamble. It was trust. Because he was a king and not a merchant, this was the faith he could show to someone he believed in.

Chiring.

Crang drew his sword and rested it on Enkrid's shoulder.

Enkrid did not kneel. He did not bow his head.

"I appoint you a knight of Naurillia."

Crang spoke. Enkrid felt the weight and touch of the blade on his shoulder.

There had been those who deceived him and used him, but there had also been those who had planted a dream in a child's heart.

Among the people he had sought out, some had cursed at him and pushed him away, but others had clapped him on the back.

What did he swing his sword for?

He had wanted to protect farmers who would never have to lose their legs.

What did he keep moving forward for?

He had wanted to save a child whose dream was to become an herb gatherer.

That was how he had stitched together his broken dream and become a knight.

With a handful of exceptions, no one had expected it. No one could have been certain.

He had no reason to stop because of people who criticized and mocked him, so he had not.

Arrows flew and buried themselves in him.

Blades tore through flesh and struck bone.

Even as the walls blocking his path grew taller and waves wearing the name of Despair crashed over him.

"Waves, walls, whatever comes, I will overcome it and protect everything behind me."

The oath was short, but that did not matter. The conviction held in the heart meant more than the words that left the mouth.

And Enkrid had proved it through everything he had done until now.

Crang lifted the sword from his shoulder.

A proper investiture ceremony came with all kinds of formalities, but all of it had been stripped away.

"What do you want to call the knight order?"

Crang's tone shifted. Strip away the formality and he sounded like any young man from the neighborhood. A decent-looking one, to be fair, so perhaps not quite ordinary.

"Isn't that something the king decides?"

"Oh, right. The Red Cloak Knights, I heard they named it after the mane of the Sun Beast. So how about Iron Wall?"

Iron Wall Knights. Not a bad name, but Enkrid thought about identity.

Was it a name that suited the people under him?

He had ended up with that nickname by accident, but he also felt that pushing forward fit him better than holding firm.

"Blue Cloak Knights?"

He said it off the top of his head.

"...Why do you make jokes this sincerely?"

Crang laughed and fired back. He normally managed to sound refined, but right now he was more relaxed than he had been in a long time.

Honestly, Enkrid was not sure the name of the knight order mattered all that much.

What he wanted was to turn over the small realization that had surfaced a moment ago.

It was an insight he had not expected, something that had come out of nowhere.

Everything had probably played a part.

The duel with the knight of Azpen, pouring out everything he had in that fight, and then the continuous sparring and training and thinking and review that followed. All of it.

A moment ago, Enkrid had felt his boiling Will crash through him like a wave.

It was not for nothing that the word wave had come out in his oath.

And he had thought: what if he swung his sword to match that surging, wave-like form?

If it worked the way he imagined, should he call it the Wave Sword?

Creating a sword technique was not something only a genius who had distilled all swordsmanship into the Five Sword Styles could do.

Enkrid was no genius, but everything he had built through effort was blending and merging into something he could almost grasp.

That was a sword technique.

The foundation was mixing the Flowing Sword with the Correct Sword Form.

To that he added the method Knight Jamal had shown him, the one that forced any blow to be blocked without fail, and a little of Aker's Web as well.

Lost in thoughts about swordsmanship, Enkrid decided to leave the knight order's name as it had always been called.

"Let's go with Madman Knights."

"You're serious?"

"It's what our unit has always been called."

"Oh Lord. This bastard seems serious, could you please fix his head for him."

Sounds like something Audin would say.

"My head is fine."

Crang rolled the name around a few times, then nodded.

Did a plausible-sounding name actually matter? Probably not. So what would neighboring kingdoms think when they heard the word madman?

First they'd ask if we were serious. Second, they'd probably curse and say these bastards were actually insane.

That was Crang's read.

Enkrid had no particular feelings about it. Someone who let other people's words push them around would never have made it this far.

He also thought the name of the knight order would change on its own with time.

His own nicknames proved that well enough.

From the Alluring Squad Leader, to Demon Slayer, to the Knight of the Iron Wall.

"Come to the banquet. It would be a shame without the guest of honor."

A new knight order had been founded. A kingdom that had one now had two. It was something the continent had not seen in nearly a century. A banquet was only fitting.

* * *

After parting ways with Crang, Enkrid passed through the guards' salutes, walked past Marcus and the two great nobles still reeling from the shock, and returned to his lodgings to find Rem shooting to his feet.

"You hear that?"

Word about the knight order was already going around?

Enkrid thought that and asked back.

"What?"

"I'm being called some noble-slaughtering lunatic, that one over there's a bear beastfolk who rips people apart, the directionally-impaired bastard's a blood-crazed swordsman who kills anyone who meets his eyes, Esther's a witch, the elf carries demon blood, and the rumors are flying everywhere, but that one bastard has no nickname at all."

The moment Rem saw Enkrid, he jumped up and spoke with his hands going as fast as his mouth, and his expression was completely serious.

Enkrid started pulling off his coat and reaching for his shirt, and a lady-in-waiting and a servant who had been watching with wide, nervous eyes hurried over to help him undress.

This was everyday life in the royal palace, but it still felt awkward to Enkrid.

While he peeled off his clothes, Rem kept going without pausing for breath, then opened his mouth again.

"Does that make any sense to you?"

"You're talking about Jaxon."

"This is a conspiracy."

Rem seemed bored. Or possibly he and Jaxon had developed an actual friendship somewhere along the way.

When people got too close, that kind of teasing was par for the course.

If he said that out loud, of course, Rem would head straight back to Border Guard, to swing his axe at Jaxon's neck.

"Indeed. There is a passage in the holy scriptures that says: do not accept an unreasonable situation as fate."

Audin pitched in too, which meant both of them had made up their minds. They did not love their own nicknames, but it clearly bothered them far more that one person had been left out.

"There's a banquet tomorrow, apparently. Are you going?"

The Jaxon business was probably close to a joke.

Enkrid thought about whether this might be a chance to clear up the small misunderstandings that had formed about them, with the nobles or anyone else.

Specifically: Rem was not some lunatic who split noble skulls on sight, and Audin had no hobby of tearing people apart and was not a bear beastfolk.

It was the Madman Knights' first official public occasion.

He cared nothing about how outsiders looked at them, but if these two were bothered by it, giving them a chance to course-correct was not a bad idea.

"It might be good to go together."

He half-expected them to refuse, and figured that was fine, but Rem gave a nod.

"Works for me."

"I will go with you as well. Brother."

Audin did not decline either.

The reason was clear enough without asking. Rem's words had spelled it out.

"I think we're going to need a rumor about a wildcat at Border Guard who got turned down by every woman he ever chased and now only comes out after dark."

Enkrid briefly wondered whether bringing these two was the right call, but he did not dwell on it.

Right now he wanted to think about the wave and the sword he had let slip from his mind earlier.

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