A Knight who Eternally Regresses - Chapter 561

WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

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A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 561: A Dream to Erase the World's Sorrows

= = =

"What are you suddenly talking about?"

"I got curious."

Enkrid still did not know who the old man was. But what the man was here for, that much he sensed.

It came from somewhere in the territory of instinct and perception.

The old man had been sizing him up. So Enkrid had let him. There was nothing to hide, nothing to conceal.

Nothing to gain by hiding it either.

Everyone already knew.

Krais, Jaxon, Rem. They all did.

So Enkrid let the old man do as he pleased.

It wasn't as though the man smelled of blood, or was preparing to kill someone. Why chase him off?

The old man might become an enemy. That was not prophecy or foresight. Just a feeling.

Even so, why not drive him away?

'If someone watches me, I can watch them back.'

Ruagarne had taught Enkrid that.

Watching that way, he had felt something. The old man carried something inside his chest.

Something that resembled what Enkrid carried.

Something that resembled what Crang carried, too.

An enormous, nearly impossible goal. People called things like that a dream.

Cynics might call it delusion, but whatever the word, if someone was in the process of realizing it, you could not dismiss it as mere fantasy.

"When I was young, I wanted to change the world."

The old man spoke first. It sounded like a lie.

The part about wanting to change the world was sincere. The part about when he was young was not.

Framing it as something he had once felt, long ago, that was the lie.

He still wanted it now.

The direction, the form, Enkrid could not say. But the will behind it was unmistakable. Not the dim, blurry will of before. Something vivid and alive rose behind the man's words.

Behind the old man's back, something seemed to push the moonlight aside.

He spoke his heart on this night-covered ground, watched by moon and stars. Enkrid knew better than anyone that the man meant every word, and so he stopped walking.

"Would you tell me what you are trying to do?"

Whatever stood at his back, if protecting it was his vow and his oath, the dream he wanted to fulfill as a knight was something else entirely.

Nothing to hide. Enkrid ignored the old man's lie and answered.

"I intend to erase war from the continent."

He said it the way he always said things. Flat and plain.

Not a declaration. Not a resolution. Only the belief that he would do it, that he was going to do it.

He did not draw on his Will to put force behind the words, and he did not respond to the sincerity the old man had shown.

It was not just the tone that was plain. His bearing was the same, and so was everything he held inside.

Enkrid spoke simply and without ceremony.

It sounded no different from saying he would have bread and soup in the morning.

As natural as breathing.

"Sounds like something everyone says."

It was not yet time to sleep for any of them.

Rem, who had already wrapped an insulated leather cloak around his shoulders despite the weather not being that cold, pushed open the lodging door and stepped out.

The old man ignored him. He ignored Jaxon too, who was quietly leaking killing intent his way.

Instead he raised his white-cataract eyes to Enkrid and kept talking.

"Do you truly believe that is possible? That it can actually be done?"

The old man pressed the question, and Enkrid only stared at him.

Enkrid was curious about the old man's identity but had not asked. The man probably would not have answered anyway.

The old man was full of secrets in every direction. Still, there was something to learn from observing him closely.

His skill with Will was extraordinarily fine.

Enkrid had spent several days observing him, using him as a sparring partner, quietly stealing what he could from the man's techniques.

The old man had generally answered when asked things, too.

From that angle, it did not matter to Enkrid who someone was or where they belonged.

Starting from the Will applications learned through echolocation, Enkrid had picked up various techniques and gained much along the way. And the old man, during that time, had been observing Enkrid in turn. He seemed to have accumulated a great many questions he wanted to ask.

Or perhaps things he wanted to say.

"You would need to stand above named Demon Creatures and Magic Beasts called disasters. You would need to be stronger than the nameless Demon Creatures coiled deep inside the Cursed Ground. Can you truly do that?"

Again Enkrid said nothing. He only watched the old man steadily. The old man went on like someone finally pouring out words long held back.

"You would need to be a hero who is both cautious and bold, wise and flawlessly strong, the kind of great figure who exists only in storybooks. Could anyone like that truly be real?"

Could someone like that exist?

Enkrid did not know. But he could answer the question. No one like that was needed.

"I will do it."

Still that flat tone.

"...And why do you think that?"

The old man's head tilted to one side. It stayed there, cocked at an angle, and his white-cataract eyes caught the distant beacon light and glimmered red.

He had asked for a reason. And the reason was simple enough.

Enkrid had never once met anyone else who said they would do it.

"Because I am the only one who will."

Enkrid answered.

A grand and stupid dream.

That was what the old man thought. But he also judged that he could not dismiss what this man Enkrid was saying.

He had watched him for days. He knew. That man did not stop. So the only way to break his will would be to kill him.

He had not shown killing intent. The thought had crossed his mind briefly, but he had put it away quickly.

Ultimately, Enkrid's goal was the same as his own dream. The direction differed. The destination did not.

He found that genuinely funny, and chuckled for a moment before speaking.

"I was curious. I heard you caused quite a bit of trouble for my side, so I wanted to speak with you in person."

"Get anything useful out of it?"

Rem cut in with the question.

"Ah, you kept a hold on me the whole time I was here."

The old man handled Rem's words smoothly this time.

"You were giving off a strange smell. That's why."

Rem rested his axe on his shoulder as he said it. His whole manner made clear he would split the man's head open on the spot if he tried anything.

If Jaxon had sensed the anomaly in the man through his own perception, Rem had smelled the rot on him through pure instinct.

Ragna, Ruagarne, Sinar, even Audin, all of them had been much the same.

The reason they had left him alone was Enkrid.

Enkrid had not made a move, had not done Enkrid any harm, and had even been teaching him things.

"That friend of yours always keeps his eyes on me. Interesting bunch, really."

That friend was obviously Jaxon. Whether or not his name was said aloud, Jaxon just kept watching, steady and unblinking.

The old man finished speaking and turned to go. It was the walk of someone leaving.

"We will meet again."

Those were his parting words as he walked away. Jaxon watched and thought about doing something. He did not.

"Let him go."

Enkrid knew by instinct. The old man had never once shown everything he had.

And there was still plenty to learn from him.

What side was he on? Unknown. But he was not an ally. That feeling had not changed.

* * *

"I must erase the world's sorrows. That is my dream."

The old man had cried those words in his youth, and he had done a great many things over the years in service of that goal.

And that work was still ongoing.

"Interesting. This is interesting."

Life was worth living long enough to see what came.

The old man, one of the Apostles of the Cursed Ground Holy Sect, thought that.

After a long life spent waiting for the day of his death, here was something that gave him amusement and delight.

Watching Enkrid's will was its own kind of pleasure.

And seeing how Jaxon read him and responded, it was clear the man was a craftsman every bit his equal.

The old man walked out of Border Guard. He had stayed up through the night, and now he set off in the early morning light.

Not everyone in the Cursed Ground Holy Sect shared the same heart.

At his core, the old man walked a different road from the direction the Sect pursued.

But a different path through the journey did not mean a different destination.

That was the only gap between the Sect and the old man now.

And that gap was simply the value by which he had chosen to live.

'A dream belongs to the one who dreams it.'

The words he had shouted in his youth came back to him now like an echo.

Pak.

Casting out his echolocation, the old man walked through the night. There was only darkness before his eyes, so day or night made no difference.

Far ahead, the shape of a loaded cart came to him. An early-rising merchant group.

As he walked, people gradually began to appear around him. The old man rubbed at his white-cataract eyes with one hand. A fine white dust crumbled away.

At the moment the merchant train and the old man passed each other, the old man vanished.

Whether he shot into the sky or sank into the earth, he was simply gone in an instant.

* * *

"Lost him."

Among those who had come from Georg's Blade, there were a few who specialized in tracking.

Two guild members who had moved on Jaxon's orders shook their heads.

No trace of his presence. Nothing in their line of sight.

Just like that, the old man was gone.

* * *

Snort.

"Why are you eating that?"

Enkrid asked, baffled. Odd-Eye only tossed his head with another snort.

After the old man left, Enkrid had gone to spend some time with Odd-Eye for the first time in a while. Then, without warning, the horse lunged at him.

He had tried to take it as Odd-Eye wanting to rough-and-tumble, but the horse abruptly produced a glass bottle of holy spring water, bit down and shattered it, and drank.

"...You shouldn't swallow the glass."

Enkrid did not think it was a waste. He had no idea what the spring water even did.

What he did wonder was how Odd-Eye had known to drink it.

'Not a big deal.'

Baffling, sure, but not worth dwelling on.

Enkrid met with Odd-Eye like that, and when he stroked the horse's back for the first time in a while, he felt the spine sticking out a little.

He worried something might be wrong, but then Odd-Eye drank the water, seemed to feel good, and ran so well that the worry faded.

No, the horse seemed to run better than usual.

Fast enough, and kicking the ground hard enough, that the hooves looked like they barely touched the earth.

"Heeee!"

Odd-Eye shattered the glass bottle as if the holy spring water had been the whole reason for coming, slurped up every drop, left nothing but broken glass behind, and went on his way.

"Not even here to get a drink."

Well. These things happened.

Enkrid trained as usual, met Odd-Eye in between, and when he returned to the lodging he found a letter waiting. The old man had left it behind.

-I am an Apostle.

The letter held the old man's confession.

It named him as a member of the Cursed Ground Holy Sect, and came with a blunt proposition.

-Would you care to share my cause? Seeing you reminded me of my younger self. Your face especially.

So I say this: I have no wish to be enemies with you.

Therefore, devote yourself to the Cursed Ground Holy Sect.

"He wrote his nonsense out real neatly."

Rem drifted over, looked at the letter, and said that.

"The Cult?"

Ruagarne showed a flash of fury.

Jaxon muttered that he should have killed him when he had the chance.

Enkrid had no particular reaction.

Enkrid had not known the man was a Cultist, and had not expected to receive a proposition like this from one.

But this was only the beginning.

His reputation had changed, and as if to prove just how significant what Enkrid had done really was, visitors arrived one after another.

"I am Bianca Conti. Countess, if you would be so kind."

A matchmaker came from the Empire.

The next day, another visitor arrived quietly, carrying a letter.

"I was asked to deliver a message and a letter, so I have come."

A merchant with sharp, intelligent eyes.

Whether of noble birth was unclear, but the clothes were fine and the manner of speaking matched.

What the merchant brought was a letter and a message from the king of the southern great power.

The merchant was from the south. And the purpose looked no different from the matchmaker's.

On top of that, an invitation arrived from the trading city.

They had established a holiday to mark the autumn, and asked Enkrid to come before winter set in.

It seemed to be modeled after the Border Guard Defense Day that Krais had started.

And Enkrid.

"A commission?"

Border Guard was technically a direct royal territory and the troops were officially a royal direct force, but in practice they were better described as Enkrid's own unit.

The Madman Knights even more so.

Crang did not try to exert any particular authority over the knights.

Rather than issuing them separate orders, he let them run themselves.

When he needed them, he used the soldier-mercenary system instead.

This time was the same. Crang had sent a commission request.

"A Holy Maiden?"

Enkrid heard what Krais said and asked again.

The whole continent was in an uproar. Someone had kidnapped the Holy Maiden, and they were asking him to rescue her.

The Holy State had formally requested this of Naurillia. The kidnapped Holy Maiden and the culprits had apparently crossed into Naurillia.

There were all kinds of political tangles mixed into this, and technically it was not Enkrid's place to step in.

That was how Krais saw it. But Crang had specifically asked Border Guard.

"I'll go."