A Knight who Eternally Regresses - Chapter 557

WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 557: Fighting So Well It's Maddening

= = =

The city center was as chaotic as ever, but where Enkrid had wandered off to, there were only a handful of people.

The contrast was stark, yet Enkrid was enjoying it.

A butterfly with brilliant red wings drifted past him.

Just beside where it passed, a long stretch of flowerbeds ran along the side of the path.

Flowerbeds like these had been planted all over the city, and the yellow and orange blooms caught his eye.

They were beautiful.

Holy Gold, the flower of the Holy Mother. Not a flower with any actual sacred power, just one whose meaning was.

A flower blessed by god to celebrate the beauty present on earth, or something like that.

Because of that, Holy Gold stood for more than just the Holy Mother. It also meant a Holy Maiden or Holy Man, those born divine through god's direct blessing.

A few maple trees stood in front of the flowerbeds. Red leaves had scattered and settled across the ground.

It was a fine street to walk. A newly laid path on the city's outskirts, with no sign of shops or businesses in sight.

Instead, here and there, construction guilds and craftsmen were at work raising buildings.

Even that looked like just another piece of the scenery.

What is peace, if not savoring happiness while living through an ordinary day?

The mood was lyrical enough to draw out a thought like that.

A well-made road on a scale you rarely saw in a farming town.

Enkrid walked the rest of the way and reached his destination.

Clang. Clang. Clang.

The rhythmic crash of a hammer on metal. A forge.

He had to duck a little to step through the low entrance. Once inside, the whole interior opened up to him at a glance.

Hot air pushed back against the cool breeze that tried to follow him in.

The space was larger than before, but nothing much had changed otherwise.

Gray ash and black soot, a blazing furnace between them, a bellows. And among it all, a figure who looked like part of the scenery.

"Aetri."

Enkrid called out in greeting, and Aetri responded.

"You came."

Aetri was seated in front of the furnace. He only turned his head and met Enkrid's eyes.

"How is it going?"

After the previous battle with Azpen, Enkrid had gathered up every weapon the enemy knights had carried. He had sorted through them and kept only the Inscribed Weapons.

Naturally, these were weapons forged with rare metals and refined through a variety of techniques, clearly valuable things, and Enkrid had handed all of them to Aetri.

For research and experimentation.

"I cannot forge an Inscribed Weapon yet. Not right now."

Aetri said it without preamble. His tone was firm.

"That's fine."

Enkrid intended to leave his weapon in the hands of a man with a dream. That had already been decided, and he had no intention of changing it.

In a way, Enkrid was stubbornly persistent to an almost maddening degree.

Everyone around him already knew that.

Ask Sinar and you would get the same answer.

"Then would you tell me what you have come to understand, Enkrid?"

Aetri asked. This was his own request.

He wanted to know what Enkrid had learned through fighting, the applications of Will, the mindset behind it, the changes that had come about along the way.

He listened, sometimes glancing at Enkrid's palms, sometimes asking about his sword habits.

As Enkrid talked, he naturally came to realize that the blacksmith in front of him had considerable martial ability as well. The level of his questions and answers was not ordinary.

"You know how to use a sword, don't you?"

"I can handle all kinds of weapons a little. I picked it up because it's necessary when making and testing them."

"Do you train on your own?"

"No, only as much as I need to."

Aetri had talent. He simply chose to direct it as he did, because what he sought could only be found through the heat of fire and iron.

An Inscribed Weapon was so named because it was a weapon into which Will was carved.

So a process like this might well have been necessary.

'Is that how it is for everyone?'

Enkrid was briefly curious, but he did not ask.

It was not what mattered here.

No matter how others had done it or how it had been done before, Aetri had found his own way, and he had said he would walk that way together with Enkrid. That was enough.

What if it failed?

That too was something he would simply carry.

The choice had already been made and the path was already underway, and he felt no regret about it. All there was to show here was trust.

"Do you trust me?"

Aetri asked midway through, as if he had read the thought.

"I don't know."

Enkrid answered honestly.

Neither of them smiled. They simply kept doing what they were doing.

Aetri was calm about it. This might have been a moment he had quietly hoped for and looked forward to, but nothing showed on the surface.

Same for Enkrid.

"Go ahead then."

At Enkrid's word, Aetri dragged his chair back with a scrape and straightened his posture.

The posture of someone ready to listen properly. He was the type who knew how to give something his full attention.

'Or maybe he's just zeroing in on the parts he needs.'

That was probably closer to it.

"I've picked up a lot of things."

Enkrid talked on, almost like he was having a casual chat. Frog the sculptor had drifted over at some point and settled in nearby.

Naturally, since Frog had not given up on the dream, practice was still ongoing.

As Enkrid spoke, Aetri nodded here and there.

He could not follow all of it, but with something this conceptual, a rough sense of it was enough.

Aetri asked repeatedly to make sure, and double-checked each point by comparing it against what he himself had learned and practiced.

In the process of melting down Inscribed Weapons and hammering them apart, he too had arrived at certain realizations.

Then Frog joined the conversation.

It was not something Enkrid had planned or anticipated, but he enjoyed it.

These were not people who had taken up the sword in earnest, but each of them had spent every day giving it their best rather than letting time slip away uselessly.

Listening to them, Enkrid found himself realizing and learning things he had not expected.

The three of them talked until the sun had gone down and the moon had risen, and when Enkrid finally made to leave late into the night,

"Use this. You should stop using that Gladius."

Enkrid did not ask why. He simply did as Aetri said. Aetri spoke, and his apprentice brought over a short Shortsword. The blade was suitably thick, and slightly shorter than the Gladius.

Enkrid picked it up and tested the balance. It felt comparatively heavy.

"I mixed in hardest iron."

Aetri said, watching him.

"I'll put it to good use."

The cost and payment would have already been handled by Krais. He had told Krais to back Aetri after hearing about the man's dream.

Enkrid stepped outside.

A bright moon hung in a sky without a single cloud.

He looked at the full round moon and turned over the conversation from earlier in his mind, going back over the things that had happened that day.

No lightning-strike of insight crackled through his head.

'Have I been driving myself with an obsession to do my best every single day?'

Just a passing thought, nothing more.

And then he started the same day over again.

He walked the city and saw this and that, but nothing had changed. Same as before, same as now, he simply swung his sword.

After meeting with Aetri, he heard more about Inscribed Weapons, threw himself back into training, and in between signed what needed signing and received a letter.

A letter from Anu, King of the East, which he had not gotten in quite some time.

Reading it, word had apparently spread all the way east.

- Iron Wall Knight? That you? What have you been up to? I'm curious, so write it all out and send it over. Oh, and the one you sent me is still alive. Might be dead soon though. And Madman Knights? Good name. They're all madmen anyway.

Well, not wrong.

Set himself aside, and the rest of them could all fairly be called madmen.

Just from the rumors, you could tell.

The letter gave off a faint smell of blood, and the handwriting was rushed and careless. It looked like something scrawled in a hurry between fights.

Enkrid wrote back.

He saw no reason to write much, so it was very short.

- Ended up that way somehow. Dunbakel is not the kind of Beastfolk who dies easily.

He sent the letter off and went back to spending his time swinging a sword.

Over in one corner of the training ground, Rem was carefully wiping down his axe blade when he asked,

"Why'd you name it Madman, anyway?"

Enkrid did not believe every rumor he heard. But he did not think the people under his command were normal. Same answer he had given inwardly to Anu's letter.

When Rem asked, Ragna, Jaxon, Audin, Teresa, Ropord, and even Fell all leaned in to listen.

Even Ruagarne swiveled those large eyes toward Enkrid and opened her mouth. A skeptical gurgle rose in her throat, even her Frog-specific curiosity had been piqued.

Ruagarne puffed her cheeks.

"Yeah, I was wondering about that too."

Enkrid gave it a moment's thought. Whether it was right to come out and call a madman mad to their face.

Probably not.

So Enkrid could not quite bring himself to be honest.

"Because they fight so well it drives you mad."

There was not much force behind the words. But the meaning was clear, and it came through without any trouble.

Rem accepted it and nodded.

"Fair enough."

As Crang had said it, everyone including Enkrid nodded.

Because it sounded right.

After that, Enkrid swung his sword until sunset, meditated, moved his Will around and tried this and that, and then Krais came to find him.

He looked like someone with a lot to say. That was how it appeared to Enkrid.

The traces of worry and inner turmoil were plain on Krais's face.

* * *

Krais judged that this was a crossroads.

'All right, let me think.'

He had two paths in front of him. One was to keep living as he was now. The other was to throw everything aside and disappear to some corner of the Empire.

What did keeping on mean?

'A life where any day you might eat poison and die, or catch an arrow and die.'

So what about throwing it all aside and running?

'Hiding somewhere and living out the rest of my days quietly.'

Honestly, the second option was not a life he especially wanted either. But the risk was lower. Would Nurat follow? She would not.

Meaning he would have to leave behind everything he had now and go.

'That's the right call.'

In exchange, the chances of dying would drop sharply. No more headaches like the ones he had now. That would do. Wanting to live fast and bright was the madman's choice.

Life was meant to be long, comfortable, and enjoyed in moderation.

Find a corner of some city, set up a salon, and live quietly.

Krais was different from the others. He knew that better than anyone.

'I am perfectly sane.'

That name, Madman Knights, did not suit him at all. That was part of it.

'Give up.'

Krais could see, to some degree, what was coming for the continent.

Fire and iron, blood, the line between life and death, Demon Creatures and Magic Beasts. In the end, the anxiety alone would drive him mad.

Having to calculate survival odds through all of it and find an escape every single time?

'It might be faster to wait for Ragna to circle the whole continent.'

A world drenched in blood was coming. It would happen. Even so, there was no going back to Enkrid now and saying let's take it easy, step back, and just live well on their own. Things had gone too far for that.

'Is there a place for someone like me here?'

There would be a place. The things that needed him would be endless.

But that meant becoming close friends with death in equal measure.

In the end, he might have to take a friend's hand and cross the river to some far-off world.

A firm resolve took shape in his heart.

They said the captain had built a wall with his Will.

Krais raised that same strength of will within himself right now.

He had not even been able to tell Nurat first. He had spent days turning it over, and the moment a decision formed, he sought out Enkrid.

"Captain."

The evening glow was breaking apart, orange bleeding past the mountains and fading out into darkness.

Call it deep blue dark, the sun was making one last desperate stand, scattering traces of light across the sky and turning the darkness into something almost blue.

Within that darkness, a pair of straight, clear blue eyes looked directly forward and fixed on him.

The owner of those eyes would not bend their will, no matter what came.

Krais looked into the captain's eyes and knew his own resolve had not wavered.

'This is not a board I belong on.'

The continent would burn. The war with Azpen was the least of it. Up to this point, he had managed to lay out the pieces somehow, but beyond this, he could not keep up.

Krais had come to this spot because he had reached his limit.

The factional disputes within the city in recent days, the internal discord, the countless other problems piling up, all of it had passed beyond what his hands could reach.

He felt no regret about it. His measure was simply exactly this much.

Well, maybe a little.

He was curious how far Enkrid would go.

But Krais valued his own dream, his own life, his own survival more.

Nothing outranked those.

'This is as far as I go.'

Enkrid had become a knight. The fruit of never stopping, never turning back. Having at least seen him reach this point, Krais felt no lingering attachment.

"Something on your mind?"

Enkrid asked, and Krais shook his head.

"I don't think it's really on my mind anymore."

The question was already settled.

His eyes were dull and his voice flat. His appearance was not particularly clean.

Enkrid had noticed recently that work had been piling up on Krais at a crushing pace.

Some of it was Enkrid's own work to begin with, and some of it was not the kind of problem that Enkrid stepping in could solve.

At a time like this, maybe the right thing was to offer some encouragement.

"On my way back, I heard Crang talk about his ambitions."

Ambitions?

Krais was not especially curious, but since it had come up, he figured he would hear it out and then say his piece.

"The Empire, the great powers, all of it was inside Crang's picture."