WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 552: Viscount Harrison

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The moment Enkrid and his two companions stepped through the banquet hall entrance, the doorway seemed to shrink, and the room felt instantly full.

Some of the nobles saw a kind of radiance around them. Others felt something closer to dread.

If any one of those three decided to, they could kill everyone here without much trouble, could they not? And one of them was said to be a slaughterer of nobles, no less.

The unease belonged to a small few. Most were too busy staring and marveling to think that far.

Was it an exaggeration to say that power could be felt in each step they took? Probably not. A single move from any of them could shift a great many things.

This, perhaps, was the bearing of heroes who had changed the shape of the continent.

In truth, nothing so grand was happening. They had simply walked in. But people had already known these three were extraordinary, and seeing it confirmed while their looks held up too made everything seem more impressive than it was.

Enkrid, Rem, and Audin had done nothing but walk into the room.

He's here.

One of the nobles watched Enkrid enter and closed his hand into a fist.

This might be the moment a certain resolve was needed.

The man was completely bald, lean with hard muscle, his skin darkened to near-black from sun and wind, and his fingernails were dirty at the edges. Change the clothes and he could pass for a farmer rather than a noble. Yet here he stood, wearing a tailcoat that was old but intact, proof enough that he was indeed a noble.

The bald noble felt the rough texture of the fabric and tugged at his collar once.

Madman Knights, of all things.

He was freshly surprised, even now, by the name they had chosen for the knight order.

The bald noble had been among those who denounced Enkrid in the great hall, one of the loudest voices demanding that the oath of loyalty be required and that a leash be put on that excessive military force.

From the moment Enkrid walked in, the noble had not looked away once.

He was not alone in that. Every single person in the room was doing the same.

Certain ladies and unmarried women in particular had their eyes going soft and unfocused.

Strange? Not really.

Enkrid, having stepped inside, pulled every gaze in the room toward him.

Appearance could be a weapon, and right now the greatest weapon Enkrid possessed was burning bright.

His black hair had been oiled, and when the lamplight scattered throughout the hall touched it, the color was pure black yet it caught the light and shone.

Everyone had their own eye for beauty, their own measure of it, but when something is exceptional enough, opinions tend to converge.

Enkrid's face was like that right now.

A straight nose, clear blue eyes, a well-shaped mouth, everything in balance. It looked like the face of someone a god had come down to shape personally and then blessed before returning to the heavens.

The bald noble looked and thought the same thing.

Genuinely handsome.

"Oh."

Two steps to the bald noble's right, a woman holding a wine cup let out a small sound.

The group directly across from her reacted the same way. Eyes going loose, and if left alone a moment longer, a few of them might have started drooling.

"A statue that moves?"

People were saying things like that.

Some had simply forgotten to speak and stood there staring with their mouths open.

At least half the women in the banquet hall were probably in the middle of experiencing what people called love at first sight, the kind that only came once in a lifetime.

It was as if someone had cast a charm on the room.

"Is this magic?"

Words like that slipped out on their own.

Even those who had not fallen at first sight found it nearly impossible to look away.

The noble felt the same. He had seen at the royal palace that Enkrid's looks were exceptional, but this, with hair oiled and combed, the tailcoat fitted, everything deliberately arranged, this was a face that men and women alike could not pull their eyes from.

A few people nearby showed jealousy. But most of the male nobles, the moment they looked, did not even feel competitive. It was simply beyond that.

Among the crowd was a female Frog, and she matched her boldness with action. She stepped forward and actually spoke up.

"Do you happen to know any Frog?"

That broke the collective spell hanging over part of the room.

Silence gave way to murmuring.

"Who is he?"

"Did they not say the Madman Knights?"

"Ah, the Demon Slayer."

Words went back and forth. In the capital, the name Demon Slayer still carried more weight than Knight of the Iron Wall. It was simply more familiar on everyone's lips.

If a real demon were hiding somewhere in that room, the situation would have been rather indignant. Enkrid had never actually killed a demon.

Of course, even if a real demon showed up to lodge a complaint, Enkrid would probably shrug it off. He had never asked to be called Demon Slayer. What was he supposed to do about it?

"There's a Frog named Ruagarne. She was at the royal palace a while back."

The answer to the Frog's question came not from Enkrid but from the gray-haired man at his side, delivered in a flat, indifferent tone.

The bald noble had heard something a little different from the rumors, but gray hair was uncommon enough that he knew immediately who this was.

The noble slaughterer.

Watching the gray-haired man stand there staring blankly at the Frog who had stepped forward, listening to the casual way he spoke, the bald noble could see no sign of the violence he had heard about, no sense that this man threw his fists at nobles on sight.

He had never fully believed those rumors anyway.

What, that he beat nobles on sight and felt compelled to lop off a noble's head at regular intervals?

People had died by his hand, yes, and not a small number. But probably none of them without reason.

If that man truly hated the privileged class and killed out of some murderous compulsion, he could not be standing at Enkrid's side right now, in that spot, as a companion.

Still, there was a reason that nickname had attached itself to him, and he was clearly the most dangerous person in the room.

Even standing right next to a knight commander with the face of something heaven-blessed, that danger did not dim. No matter how good a potato, it was still not a sweet potato. Beside the Demon Slayer, this man radiated his own pull.

Gray hair that reached the nape of his neck, half tied and half loose, combed neatly. A squarish jaw. On his own, he would not lose to anyone in terms of looks.

It was only that the face of the man standing right next to him was simply too much.

Either way, he was a broadly built, bold-featured handsome man in his own right.

"Sister, there are already many competitors. I suggest restraint."

The man standing just beside him, head and shoulders taller than anyone else nearby, added his own words.

His forearms looked thicker than most people's waists.

They actually were thicker than the corseted waists of some of the women in the room.

Standing still, he gave the impression of a mountain.

Bear Beastfolk.

Rumors were rumors. He showed none of the traits characteristic of the Beastfolk, which made it obvious enough that he was human.

His words suggested deep religious conviction, and yet paired with shoulders too wide to look human, a neck that looked like a log jammed into place, a chest that looked ready to burst through his shirt, and muscles visible even in his shoulders, arms, and fingers, even a simple gesture from him carried a kind of force.

There were plenty of people in that banquet hall who preferred solid, overwhelming physicality over clean good looks, and those people watched him just as closely as they watched Enkrid.

"I'd love to be held by him once."

"You could probably hang off one of those arms."

"Why are his thighs like that."

They tried to keep their voices down, but they were standing right next to him, so every word landed.

The man known as Bear Beastfolk was measured in his manner, but the force behind him had nowhere to go, and so even standing beside Enkrid, he did not fade.

Three people, each unmistakably themselves.

The banquet hall had passed through three stages, noise, then silence, then murmuring again, and the three of them had walked in through all of it and found a spot to stand.

The bald noble had been watching from the moment they entered. He looked at Enkrid and drifted briefly into old memories.

From the moment he had positioned himself against this man, he had figured today might be his last day alive.

Perhaps that was why the old thoughts came back on their own.

"What is the most important thing in the world? It is land."

His father's teaching. He had agreed with it and run his domain the same way.

Land first, and why? Because without that land, the people of the domain had nothing to eat. Did knights live without eating or sleeping? Were they not people too?

In that sense, he had wanted the kingdom's walls to protect him and his land.

That was all. Nothing more than that. He knew Enkrid was the hero who had ended the civil war.

If I tell him I meant no harm, will he believe me?

He had not met many knights, but he knew people well enough.

No person could like being rejected and looked down on. If grudges did not take root, you were lucky.

Setting that aside, were there not people with a larger character than that? There were. He had seen one, though only once.

The king he now served had been like that. That was precisely why he had sworn his loyalty.

The noble put his hand into his breast pocket. His fingers closed around something hard. He slipped it into his sleeve and started walking over. If anyone noticed too soon, nothing good would come of it.

"This is unfair. If you fight that well, you should not look like that. You should at least look rough. Small eyes and a turned-up nose would be much better."

Marcus, said to be among the king's closest men, was muttering something like that in their direction, and people nearby were still stealing glances, but the mood of the banquet had already begun returning to what it had been. Those who wanted to talk were talking, those who wanted to drink were drinking.

The crowd around the Madman Knights was thick, and all attention remained pointed at them, but things had loosened.

The bald noble pushed past the onlookers and kept walking, watching Enkrid steadily. His sleeved hand stayed where it was. Enkrid must have sensed the attention, because he turned and met his gaze.

This was the face of a man who had denounced him openly at the royal palace. He would not have forgotten.

"I have something to give you."

The noble said it and kept coming. Marcus and the people nearby locked their eyes on him.

"Harrison Viscount."

Andrew Gardner, one of the king's close men, recognized him and said the name. His eyes were sharp, the look said, what are you doing here.

Harrison Viscount ignored Andrew's gaze and took one more step toward Enkrid. Then his sleeved hand came out fast and pushed something into the front of Enkrid's coat.

For a man who looked ordinary, that hand moved very quickly.

* * *

"Don't hate him too much."

"Hate who?"

It was something Crang had said right after the oath ended. Enkrid blinked and asked the question back.

"That noble from just now. He did not have bad intentions."

"So who are you talking about?"

Enkrid had not harbored any ill feeling to begin with. Nobles? That was just how things were. He understood their position well enough.

And beyond the Demon Slayer title and everything attached to it, this was an age where seeing was believing. Rumors without proof were just stories.

If you believed every rumor, there were stories of a Priest who arm-wrestled a Giant to a draw. These things always came with some exaggeration baked in.

Though in Enkrid's case, many people had seen things with their own eyes, so skepticism was harder to justify.

They would not move against him recklessly, at least.

It took more than ordinary courage to do that.

To stand against Enkrid right now meant, at the small end, standing against the nobles who supported him, and at the large end, standing against the king himself.

Even so, those nobles had spoken out against the danger of the knight order and planted themselves opposite him.

Was that simply because they found him personally unpleasant?

That was not what it looked like. Some of them were fools, yes, but others had taken that position because they believed in something.

In terms of chasing dreams, conviction, a light to follow, Enkrid might have been second to no one on the continent.

So he could see at a glance that some of those nobles had stood in that room knowing they might take a blade for it or fall from the king's favor, but had decided to speak anyway.

Enkrid kept half-jokingly asking who Crang meant, playing dumb, and Crang laughed.

"You've survived this long somehow. With that mouth of yours, you should have died dozens of times over."

Enkrid nodded at that. Not because of his mouth, he had never died for that reason. But he had died not dozens but thousands of times, so the nodding felt fair.

"Why are you nodding? Anyway, one of those nobles is probably the person most eager to work with Border Guard right now. He wants to push the safe road through his territory using his own savings."

The safe road Krais had built ran in two directions.

One led to Nauril, the capital.

The other passed through Martai.

If the branch that ran through Martai came down south from there, every lord whose domain sat along that stretch would gain.

Among those, who stood to gain the most? The lord who held the trading city? They would benefit too, certainly. But someone wanted the safe road even more than they did.

A noble who had wanted to develop the land outside his city for a very long time. His name was Harrison.

Because cultivating the land was his life's purpose, it was almost inevitable that he fell for the system of building checkpoints and stationing troops to secure an area the moment he saw it.

Enkrid had sensed Harrison Viscount approaching from some time ago.

He had seen this man at the royal palace before, and seeing him again now, nothing struck him as especially different.

Worn, frayed clothing and a stern face, that was what stood out.

But the clothing, old as it was, was clean and tidy, so there was nothing improper about the man's appearance or bearing.

A life of frugality worn into the body.

Enkrid did not know where Krais's safe road extended or what the man in front of him was after. Their eyes had met, so he simply looked back.

Looking into Harrison Viscount's eyes, the image of a hard, solid stone came to mind.

If someone could not use Will, did that mean their willpower counted for nothing?

If someone said your talent was too small and your end was already decided, did that mean you had to stop?

Were you supposed to give up on everything you were doing?

If someone told you something was impossible, did you have to accept that?

Even when it was not your own judgment but someone else's? Did it really have to be that way?

Harrison stepped forward and pushed something into Enkrid's coat. It was obviously not a weapon, and nothing like an assassination attempt.

Enkrid's Dynamic Visual Acuity had already told him what the hand held: a glass bottle small enough to fit in one palm, stoppered with a cork and sealed with cord wound tightly around it.

So he left it alone, and Harrison Viscount, having tucked the bottle into Enkrid's coat, spoke.

"I was rude earlier. This is by way of apology."

Enkrid did not ask what the bottle was. He asked something else instead.

"Is there something you want?"

The man looked twenty years older than Enkrid, or maybe that was just the baldness.

Harrison Viscount blinked several times at the question, then opened his mouth.

"The intention behind this bribe, no, it is a bribe, that much is accurate, could you arrange for the safe road to run toward our territory?"

Harrison said it without a trace of embarrassment. You could see the stubbornness of a man who had lived long and grown set in his ways.

Under normal circumstances, the next move would be to ask why.

Or to name a price.

But Enkrid did not ask what had been pushed into his coat.

"Sure."

He simply nodded.

Enkrid had answered well outside the range of what Harrison expected.

"You are not even going to ask the reason?"

Harrison asked, thrown off.

"Tell me if you want to."

This was a judgment made on character alone.

Eyes, bearing, clothing, everything taken together. If it turned out to be the wrong call? Life was always a string of choices, and they could not all be right. Enkrid understood that truth well.

That was why he had no fear of choosing.

If fear of choosing wrong meant not choosing at all, that was the same as standing still.

And if that was how he lived, he would have been trapped long ago in the happy today the Boatman talked about.

There was also something in this man that reminded Enkrid of himself.

Harrison was caught off guard, but these were words he said often enough that he answered without much trouble.

"I am going to cultivate the land."

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