WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 551: Why the Boatman?

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Slosh.

Black river water, a small boat, a purple lamp, and the Boatman seated above it all.

It had been a while. Even the simple act of opening his eyes within a dream, within the inner world, felt like something long overdue.

Enkrid's gaze drifted to the Boatman without thinking.

The figure was no longer blurred the way it once had been. The Boatman's form came through comparatively clear.

Beneath the robe, the Boatman's skin looked like drought-cracked earth, and from within that weathered face, eyes clouded with a dull white film stared back at Enkrid.

"Did you hope I had vanished, since you hadn't seen me in some time? That won't happen. You are a mortal who should be dreaming of immortality."

Enkrid met those eyes and leaned against the boat railing. There was no chair today.

"Even with only one death standing between you and the throne, you felt no desire?"

Was it because they hadn't met in so long?

Or had the Boatman decided to change his approach?

Rather than telling him to stop at today, he was prodding at a human's most basic greed.

"If you had killed him, you could have become king. Damage to the Will? That kind of thing recovers in time. Your Will, especially, can afford a little damage."

Enkrid knew by instinct that the Boatman was wrong. Will did not work that way.

If he had actually done something like that, the inexhaustible Will he called Urkera might have vanished entirely.

Then again, it might not have. The truth was that no one knew what the future held.

If Will disappeared after a single mistake like that, then Azpen's knight Cowin should have lost his the moment he fled, but that was not what had happened.

The Boatman's words stirred up all kinds of thoughts, but Enkrid neither argued back nor questioned him.

"There will come a moment when a perfect today is needed."

That was probably the real point. The flat, emotionless voice continued, settling directly into Enkrid's mind.

This was the inner world, after all, perhaps it was more accurate to say it arrived in his mind rather than through his ears.

Either way, it felt different from the times the Boatman had spoken of a curse coming.

He was not saying this because something was immediately upon them. He said it the way you might say the sun would rise tomorrow morning. It was simply going to happen.

At those words, Enkrid lifted his head from where he'd let it half-drop.

Something like this might have happened before, at some point, but he didn't let that stop him from speaking.

"Not Wave Sword. Wave-Blocking Sword. That feels right."

The Boatman was not caught off guard this time. He already knew the bastard's thoughts were elsewhere.

"So rather than a sword that crashes like a wave, you want a sword that blocks the crashing wave?"

He took Enkrid's words smoothly in stride and then went a step further, adding a remark on the swordsmanship itself.

"Exactly."

"If all it does is block, you'd be better off carrying a shield."

Yes. The Boatman was right. That had been the very question still turning in Enkrid's head just before he fell asleep the night before.

In trying to establish the shape and flow of a sword style, what he had arrived at was not a sword that crashed like a wave but a sword that blocked waves. And if that was what it came down to, would a shield not serve him better?

No. That wouldn't be right. He already had a technique among his own skills that proved otherwise.

The one he called the Snake Sword. Not just deflecting, but immediately striking back.

So what if, instead of a shield, he found a way to transmit a kind of rebound force through the sword itself?

"Polish it until it reflects sunlight like a mirror, and it will be worth using."

A mirror does not stop light. It reflects it.

Not simply holding ground against a crashing wave, but blocking it and then pushing forward to strike.

Something abstract began to take shape in his mind.

If he actually moved through it himself, something would come of it.

"Don't you ever get tired of this?"

the Boatman asked. Enkrid only stared back, not quite sure what he meant.

Tired? Of what?

"Never mind. Go."

The Boatman's tone shifted in some subtle way, but that was the end of it. He added one more line after, but it amounted to the same thing as always.

* * *

Enkrid stepped down from the bed, eyes open after the dream, or inner world, or whatever it was.

When he stirred, a servant outside the door called through even in the small hours before dawn, asking if he was coughing.

He felt light.

His body was in good shape. Lately it always was, but today felt particularly sharp.

He wasn't sure whether to credit the dream, the pondering he'd done before sleep, or some small consideration from the Boatman.

Just before waking, the Boatman had said that no matter what any given today held, he would have to remain in that day, and that fate could not be outrun. Enkrid cleanly ignored it and let it go.

If he stopped to worry over every word like that, he'd never get done what needed doing.

"I'll bring water for washing."

The servant spoke from outside.

Enkrid rolled his neck and wrists lightly and shook his head.

"Later."

With that, he went straight outside. There was a training ground within the royal palace. Apparently it used to be reserved for the knights and royalty who lived inside the palace walls.

Crang had called it a fresh kind of nonsense and had everything torn out and rebuilt.

Now it was a place where anyone who wanted to work up a sweat could gather.

Clean blue, vivid dark, if such a thing existed, that was how he wanted to describe this moment. It was early morning, the kind where a blue-grey light wrapped around everything, dark yet already hinting at the dawn to come.

A cool autumn wind slipped through his nose and down deep into his lungs, announced the freshness of the morning, and left again.

Whump.

Before the training ground even came into sight, his ears caught that someone was inside.

The shared training ground, which had once been a royal training ground, was a place enclosed by a low circular stone wall. A bit of grass grew along the sides, and the floor was packed with soil from which stones had been sifted out.

"I don't know if they have nothing to do or too much Krona to burn, but doesn't it seem a bit backwards to build a training ground and then not let the people who actually need it use it?"

One of Crang's idle complaints from their travels back and forth through Azpen surfaced in his memory.

Someone inside the stone-walled circle was heating up the cool autumn dawn.

Enkrid didn't bother with the gate. He pushed off the ground and vaulted over the wall without touching it, and the figure swinging a heavy wooden training sword turned his head.

"Rievan."

Enkrid greeted him first. An old acquaintance.

Rievan was sweating lightly and looking back at him, so Enkrid said what he always said.

"Spar?"

A smile crossed Rievan's face.

"Gladly."

Watching someone who never stopped moving forward was a pleasure. Enkrid was like that. Seeing Rievan again now brought a new thought alongside.

Could the Boatman have done that?

Had what the Boatman gave him last night been advice? Help? Why? Because watching him was entertaining? That Boatman?

Probably not. At the end, the Boatman had still said something close to a curse, same as always.

Not something to dwell on right now.

Enkrid picked up one of the wooden swords lined along the side. Rievan had been swinging a stone club for conditioning, so he set it down and switched to a wooden sword, cutting the air with it a few times to feel it out.

"You're up early."

"Didn't sleep. Came straight here after my shift ended."

Fair enough.

Not that Enkrid had been particularly curious.

Enkrid gripped his sword and faced his opponent. He matched his strength and speed to the other man's. In exchange, he would focus entirely on receiving his opponent's strikes and returning them.

Rievan's sword came down straight. He probably had at least one technique he was confident in.

This was it. A downward strike that cut away the preparatory motion and shortened the path.

Of course, it posed no real threat to Enkrid.

Crack.

The wooden swords met. Rievan winced.

Hm?

He had swung with full effort, but he hadn't just picked up a sword yesterday.

So what was this?

An unexpected impact sent a dull sting through his wrist. It felt like he had brought a sword down on solid rock.

Closer to a lump of iron, maybe.

Even harder than that.

He had tried Steel Cut training a few times, so he had a rough sense of that kind of force.

He swung again, and the wooden swords clacked as they crossed.

This time it was not a clean collision but a grazing strike, touching and sliding past.

Rievan used his feet to slip sideways, stepping in to hit and back out again.

But.

Brr-rr-rr.

His wrist ached and trembled.

Just from a graze.

"It's working."

Right in front of him, the blue-eyed knight said. Close enough to strike. In a real fight, a single thrust and Rievan would have been dead.

The blue-eyed Enkrid, rather than putting a hole in Rievan's throat, spun the wooden sword through the air a few times and kept talking.

"The weapon can't quite hold up, though."

He could see the wooden sword was twisted and cracked in the middle. At this rate it would fall apart before he even pushed the technique very hard.

"What was that?"

Rievan had never been on the receiving end of a technique like that. It made sense that he was curious.

Rem, too, would have had every right to be surprised if it had been him.

"Wave-Blocking Sword."

The name said it blocked an oncoming wave, but the truer description was this: a swordsmanship that received the force behind an opponent's swing, accepted it, and returned it, making full use of the rebound. A step above the Snake Sword, you might say.

Snake Sword was a technique that required no Will. This one used the inexhaustible Will as its weapon.

That said, even if Ragna saw it and tried to copy it, there was little point in him doing so.

Far too inefficient.

It spent Will like burning through a reserve, wrapping the whole body in it to deflect and return.

The structure of the technique was simple to the point of crudeness. What happens when you bring a sword down on a hard boulder?

If the blade doesn't give, your wrist does.

You harden your whole body, pour in force, and drive it back. But what if an opponent's speed simply overwhelmed you? Then the technique was useless.

That didn't make it the wrong path, though.

It suited Enkrid rather well.

And it wasn't finished here. A glimmer of where it might go further was already visible.

After a few more swings through the air, Enkrid tossed the wooden sword aside and began the Isolation Technique.

"Work on your wrists."

Rievan's wrists hadn't been built up enough, which was why the technique landed so cleanly. But what about Rem or Ragna?

Right now it wouldn't slip past Audin so easily, either. That aside, it was genuinely enjoyable.

Grinding over something through one night and then seeing it come together the next morning was something Enkrid had not experienced before.

It felt like his body was simply doing what he intended it to do.

Moments like this made everything feel worth it.

Training itself was more enjoyable than it had ever been.

Not that Enkrid had ever needed much convincing to swing a sword every day.

But had he been without hardship? Even without despair or failure, there were always moments of doubt.

Right now there was no corner left for doubt to creep in, and the smile on his face would not leave.

Standing just beside him, Rievan's pupils shook visibly.

Do you have to be a little mad for this?

The thought came to him unbidden. The man in front of him had just rattled someone's wrist with a handful of swings, then walked to the corner of the training ground, picked up a stone, and sat down and stood back up with it slung over his back.

On top of that, he was grinning. A broad, unguarded smile spread across his face, as if something about all of this delighted him.

Enkrid had not been entirely normal even back when Rievan had known him years ago. But watching him right now, grinning through it all like that, he just looked flat-out mad.

Watching him, though, stirred something in Rievan too.

If it hadn't, he wouldn't be here training after the end of his shift.

He was not some exceptional person.

He hadn't slacked on training, had stayed committed, had drilled on his own every day. He just hadn't been mad about it the way the man in front of him was.

He was ordinary in that way. Sometimes after a shift he'd have a drink. When rest came, he rested.

That was where Rievan felt the difference.

Not talent or opportunity.

The gap he felt was between someone who did it and someone who didn't.

So the man in front of him had spent every day, every moment, like this.

Smack.

If his resolve wasn't enough,

Rievan slapped both his own cheeks with his hands.

"Stuff your resolve in and get on with it!"

He shouted it loud enough that Enkrid looked over.

"I'll do it. The training."

Rievan said.

If Rem had seen this, he would have said Enkrid had gone and ruined another person.

Enkrid spent the stretch from before dawn to morning with Rievan, and afterward showed the Wave-Blocking Sword to Rem when he came out.

"Not bad."

Rem started with a compliment, which was rare.

Having been on the receiving end of it, he could tell this was something genuinely tricky to deal with.

Every time their swords met, his wrist went numb.

How does it work?

He thought about it for a moment and reached the conclusion that it was a technique that burned through Will far beyond what was necessary.

It detonated Will outward, producing a kind of brutal force, and used that to deliberately wrench the angle of the opponent's wrist in one direction.

Technique, timing, and raw strength. Three elements working together.

But then wouldn't the Vibrating Sword be more effective?

Rem had helped Enkrid review the fight and heard that Enkrid had shattered the Azpen man's Vibrating Sword with the Crushing Sword.

No, that's not quite it.

That vibration could be dealt with by anyone with a little know-how, but the technique Enkrid had just shown would grow and change to match its opponent.

So what Enkrid had now was the more dangerous one.

Then should you just avoid crossing blades entirely? Was that even possible?

What if someone used Sorcery to call a cloud wolf from a distance and sent it biting at him?

If someone came at him with nothing but divine descent technique, throwing cloud wolves at him, he'd curse them out and charge straight at whoever was doing the casting.

Let the wolf's attacks land, ignore them, and go for the source.

Enkrid would do the same.

Putting all of that together, what came out was: not bad.

"You advance without hesitation, brother," Audin added.

There wasn't much else pressing to do now. They'd go to the banquet and then head back. That was all.

A royal palace banquet would be grand and lavish, but Enkrid had never had any particular feeling for that kind of thing. Krais would have loved it.

If Enkrid had enjoyed this sort of event, he'd have spent his days as an escort warrior waiting on noblewomen who wanted him by their side day and night just for the sight of his face. That was not what had happened, which was why he was here.

Evening came, and before long a servant arrived and brought them each an outfit suited to the occasion.

Audin deliberated a few times before putting his on.

All of them were tailcoats. Enkrid wore a purple velvet waistcoat, Audin a pale blue jacket that came down to his waist, and Rem a grey waistcoat.

Tailcoats being tailcoats, they were more or less the same.

But dressed up, both of them looked good.

Servants had descended on them and fussed over hair and appearance for several hours, and neither of them had lost their temper once, which Enkrid found stranger than anything else.

It was just before the three of them walked into the banquet hall inside the palace that evening.

"Is this really how it's read?"

The herald standing before them to announce their arrival bit down on his back teeth and checked with his superior, then steeled himself and called out.

"The Madman Knights have arrived!"

The crowd filling the banquet hall, chattering and whispering among themselves, fell silent and turned.

Dozens, hundreds of eyes swung toward the three who had just walked in.

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