WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

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A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 559: The Blind Man and the Old Man

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Clink.

Plates were set out along the dining table one after another.

He was not picky about food, but no one alive truly disliked a good meal.

Enkrid was no different.

The knights had their own dedicated dining room, a separate building from the main barracks mess hall. Krais had expanded and renovated the barracks over time, and this room was one of the things he had built.

On ordinary days they ate the same food as the soldiers, but whenever a guest came by, serving proper cooking was a basic courtesy. It was the custom across the Empire and the surrounding kingdoms, a way of saying: welcome, you who have come to us.

In the west, showing respect meant cooking something yourself, however small, or sharing a meal your own family had made. Central continental culture was different.

The old man had wanted an invitation, and Enkrid had nodded. That was what had brought them here.

Jaxon had said something felt off about the man, that his presence seemed strangely faint. When Enkrid had sent out something close to killing intent earlier, the old man had deflected it with easy skill. In that exchange, Enkrid had caught a feeling similar to what he got from Anu, the mercenary king of the East.

Which meant this man probably fought at the level of a knight.

Strange, though, looking at him now, there was no trace of that at all.

It was genuinely odd. Before today, Enkrid had not picked up on it in the slightest.

A peculiar man. A blind old man. That had been the whole of his first impression, but now, seeing him up close, it was different.

Ruagarne seemed to be getting a similar read. She was rolling those big eyes of hers back and forth, busy studying the guest.

Enkrid found himself curious what Frog's sight might pick up. He glanced sideways at her, and she opened her mouth.

"Nothing."

Nothing, then.

Even Frog's talent-reading eye had its limits.

"Why are you staring like that?"

Ruagarne caught his gaze and puffed her cheeks out a little.

"You look nice today."

"Can you even tell Frog faces apart?"

He could tell them apart. Whether one was prettier than another, he had no idea. Enkrid simply had sharp observational habits.

Sinar turned her head at that.

"So you prefer Frogs to elves?"

"Let's eat."

If he answered something like that, the elf's jokes would start dancing across the table, and Enkrid had no interest in that, so he changed the subject.

"Right, food first."

The blind old man said.

The only ones seated at the table were Enkrid, Jaxon, Sinar, and Ruagarne. Ragna was asleep. Rem had gone into the mountain range to train his unit, and apparently he had taken nothing with him, no proper gear, no food, just an axe. It seemed less like training and more like tormenting his subordinates.

Not that surviving that torment would leave them any worse off. They would come out meaningfully stronger.

He had heard the Twins from the west had joined as training instructors as well. The Twins who had traveled with Enri's western trading company had made it all the way to Border Guard and stayed.

Escort duties for the western trading company were covered well enough now that Border Guard and the Rockfreed Trading Company were working together, so that was not a problem.

Why Border Guard and the Rockfreed Trading Company were involved had less to do with Enkrid's personal connection to Enri than it might seem. To put it simply, Krais and Leona had recognized the value of the trade route the western company had opened, the one that brought goods from the west all the way here.

The two of them saw that the path Enri had carved out could become a road connecting the west to the central continent, and from there to the east or the southeastern reaches of Naurillia. They had already given it a name: the Stone Road.

Obsidian was one of the major trade goods, along with several other rare stones, and the plan was to start from the Safe Road and build way stations and properly paved roads at key points along the route.

Of course, this was not something that could be finished in a year or two. No matter how advanced construction methods had become, laying a road and building cities, at least a dozen of them, was no small task.

Pouring Krona into it and throwing up buildings was not enough. People had to actually live there for any of it to matter.

So it would take a very long time, done carefully and with patience.

The fact that anyone would willingly take that on was proof that the payoff went beyond substantial. It was enormous. Both of them knew well that extending a trade route multiplied profits several times over. There were already people who had proven as much.

In the southeastern reaches of Naurillia sat the greatest trading city on the continent, a city-state unto itself, and the reason it had flourished came down to its waterways. That alone would never have been enough, of course. What made its prosperity possible was the combination of cargo ships crossing several of the continent's major rivers, the shipbuilding craft to produce fast vessels capable of quick transport, and the ingenuity of planting cities at each key point along those routes.

Anyway, Ragna was absent, Rem was absent, and Audin had gone off somewhere with Teresa for some kind of prayer. He was apparently helping Teresa awaken her talent. Enkrid had not asked for details.

Ropord and Fell were around, but both were buried in their own training. The two pushed each other simply by being in the same space, so whenever one had a breakthrough and threw himself into training like a man possessed, the other naturally followed, Enkrid's way. Enkrid's way meaning they were out there swinging swords like madmen. Those two paid no attention to anyone coming or going.

Esther was somewhere in the barracks, but she was in panther form. He had not asked why, but she had mentioned without prompting that she needed to spend the whole week as a panther, something about accumulating natural energy. She was handling her own meals in the wild.

So it came down to just Sinar, Ruagarne, Enkrid, and Jaxon.

The cook set the last plate on the table and stepped aside.

"Mm."

The white-haired old man raised his chin and swayed his nose left and right, savoring the aroma.

The main course was a soup, a dried fish dish with a reduction sauce drizzled over it, and a pork dish using only the tender cuts, served alongside steamed vegetables. Asparagus, carrots, leafy greens, and neatly cut meat were visible to everyone at the table except the old man. He was blind and could not see any of it, but he seemed to read the food through his nose alone.

"Pork. And the fish, mm, smells dried."

He had named the dishes from scent alone. That was no ordinary skill.

"It looks good too," Enkrid told him.

Beside the main dish sat a plate of halved marinated tomatoes, the kind that offered something to both nose and eye. The old man tapped his fork along the surface of the plate, found a piece of meat and a vegetable, and lifted them to his mouth.

He groped a bit, naturally enough, since he could not see, yet somehow it did not look clumsy at all. It was remarkably natural. If you were not paying close attention, you might not even notice he was blind.

How does he manage that?

Enkrid watched in silence, turning the question over.

From what he had observed since the old man arrived, one thing was becoming clear. Every movement the man made was practiced. He never seemed startled, and he always seemed to know where things around him were. Even now, nobody had explained the position of the plate or handed him the fork, yet he had found them by feel and brought food to his mouth without missing a beat.

After his first bite, the white-haired old man stared at some point in the middle distance, nodded, and spoke.

"Mmm. Do you know what I consider most important?"

"What's that?"

"The doneness of the vegetables."

He held his thumb and forefinger slightly apart, then spread both hands wide and continued in a tone of perfect seriousness.

"These are neither too firm nor too soft. Perfect. Excellent. And the texture, starting from how they were cut, is excellent as well. Real care went into the knife work. This food was made with the person eating it in mind. What did they use for the sauce? The depth of flavor is wonderful. Is that pork liver?"

It was not just his nose that was sharp. His palate deserved to be called one of the finest on the continent. His keen sense of taste had picked out the dish's ingredients and method just from a single bite.

"Yes, that's right."

The cook answered in a voice that could barely contain delight.

"Good. This is delicious."

The white-haired old man said it once more and turned his full attention to the meal. Watching him, Enkrid found his own hand moving of its own accord.

The old man was right. It was excellent cooking. Enkrid could not have dissected it to that degree, but the lean pork and the fat worked together beautifully, and the thick sauce made from mashed potato and pork liver left a deep richness the moment it hit his tongue.

"Were you a cook?" Enkrid asked once he had eaten his fill.

The old man smiled gently.

"When my sight went, I lost the joy of seeing, but the joy of eating grew to take its place."

He waved the hand holding his fork as he said it, and at that motion Jaxon shifted the dinner knife in his grip in a way that made it clear he could throw it at any moment. If Enkrid could pick that up, the old man could too. Even so, the old man showed no reaction and said what he wanted to say.

"Without some pleasure like this, what would be the point of being in this world?"

He said it again. Losing his sight had sharpened his sense of taste, that was what he meant.

When the meal was done, the cook disappeared inside and returned with dessert and tea. Marcus sent refined tea leaves on a regular schedule, and while the alchemist he had recently hired was hopeless at just about everything, the man did know how to properly dry tea leaves. Out came tea brewed from those leaves, crisp fried flour biscuits, and bread baked with nothing but salt and butter.

"Mm. The bread is baked to exactly the right degree."

The old man enjoyed every bit of it.

"He's an interesting one," Sinar said, watching.

None of them were in full armor, but everyone at the table had a weapon within reach. And everyone except the cook knew that the cane in the old man's hand was no ordinary cane.

It looked like a walking stick, but it held a blade inside, a Sword Stick, one type of sword. Convenient to carry, but with no crossguard at the hilt, which limited what techniques could be used with it.

No guard meant a slip of the hand could draw the blade across your own palm, and any technique that made use of the guard was simply unavailable. To give a plain example, even binding an opponent's blade and redirecting it would have to be done with the blade itself rather than the guard. Set portability aside, and it was not an easy weapon to fight with.

The old man's cane rested against the table now that the meal was over. An attendant moved to take it and set it to one side, but the old man stopped them.

After praising the cook warmly and at length, the old man turned his head toward Enkrid and spoke. His neck moved with a natural ease that made his gaze feel perceptible, even without eyes.

"It's an honor to meet you in person. You're as strikingly handsome as I've heard."

"Mm."

Sinar reacted to that. He could not see anything. She tilted her head.

"That was a joke."

The old man said it himself and laughed at it himself.

"In my younger days, when I could still see, my wit alone was enough to give several ladies a lovesick fever."

"Did you learn that joke from an elf?"

Enkrid asked in earnest. Sinar's eyebrow twitched. It was an irritating question.

"Not at all. It's innate. In truth, I've never seen anything. I was blind from birth."

Ha ha ha. He laughed after saying it, and nobody at the table joined in. The only thought anyone had was something along the lines of: this old man is really something else.

"Is there something wrong with his head?"

Ruagarne questioned the old man's mental state. Jaxon still said nothing.

The old man took out a handkerchief, clean but worn, and dabbed at the corner of his mouth.

"I've eaten well. Shouldn't I pay for it?"

That was obvious enough. Nobody invited just anyone in for a meal like this without reason.

"Spar with me."

Enkrid said it as though he had been waiting for that exact opening. The meal was done, conversation had been had. The old man's faction? His position? Why he had come? Unknown. And for now, Enkrid did not particularly care.

People looked at the world differently. That was a matter of perspective.

Enkrid had seen the old man twice now. The first time, he had not noticed it. This time, he had.

This old man would fight well. That was instinct.

He'll fight very well.

What made the man's skill so hard to gauge?

What was it that made Jaxon call him strange?

Ruagarne had not been able to measure the old man either.

Everything the blind old man had shown pointed in one direction, at least to Enkrid: there was nothing but things worth looking forward to.

So what did his faction or his intentions matter?

A fire blazed up from somewhere in his chest and spread through his whole body. Will rose on its own and pressed his desire out toward the other man.

He wanted a real fight.

He did not know what the old man had. That was what was pulling at him.

There was no other reason he would have brought the man here and fed him a proper meal.

"You have a hobby of beating up blind old men?"

the old man asked.

"You don't look like the type to stand there and take it. So will you?"

Enkrid fired right back, and the white cataracts eyes curved softly.

"I can't win a war of words with you. You don't even laugh at my jokes."

"That's because someone else already trained it out of me."

"That someone wasn't me, I'd wager. Isn't that right, betrothed?"

Sinar cut in.

Enkrid knew that when things got awkward, the best policy was no answer at all, so he pushed his chair back.

Scrape. He nudged the chair away with his thigh, stood, and said:

"Let's go outside."

He headed straight for the door without waiting for a reply.

Sinar watched him go and murmured quietly.

"We'll need to have a proper conversation later. Betrothed."

Soft as it was, that betrothed's sharp ears would have caught every word.

The elf considered it and rose. She was not quite as eager as Enkrid, but she found herself wanting to watch. That old man was not of the forest folk, and yet from the moment he had arrived, he had been using Assimilation better than her own people did.

Assimilation was the art of blending into whatever surrounded you, becoming forest in a forest, becoming water beside water. It meant aligning your own energy with the environment so perfectly that you disappeared into it. Many trained knights who used Will had learned versions of this technique, but the original art belonged to the elven people.

In that regard, the old man was exceptionally strange. Even to her own senses, his presence had been so thoroughly absorbed into the background that it barely registered.

"In this world, it's only natural to pay for what you've eaten."

The old man said it, pushed himself to his feet, and tapped his cane against the floor as he walked out.

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