WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 566: Why

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The method of becoming a second pursuer, chasing the chaser instead of the target, turned out to be more effective than Enkrid had expected.

A lot had changed since the old days, when he had tracked people down alone on nothing but rumors.

Krais had pushed through the Safe Road, gotten his hands into trade, and built up information networks in various places along the way.

Nothing too grand. He gathered local talk through the Cafeterias he had set up in different cities.

Cafeteria owners and their customers, wandering peddler groups, traveling storytellers, all of them passed on news in exchange for a few copper coins.

A few copper coins was not much of a reward, but passing on a story was not much of an effort either.

The structure through which stories traveled, the way information circulated, was simple enough that it moved fast.

And there was one more thing: the people dispatched from the Holy State had distinctive appearances, so finding them was not especially difficult.

They were not even trying to hide who they were.

'Who would ever think anyone was following them?'

Probably nobody. That was only natural.

Whether it was a Priest of Abundance or a Priest of the Scales, what was the reason they had asked the kingdom of Naurillia to search for the Holy Maiden?

Actually, it had not even been a request. It was a notice.

We're coming to your kingdom and we'll be moving around, so cooperate. You refuse? Are you out of your minds? You don't want potions anymore? You've got no more use for them? Fine, we just won't sell to you.

Come on now, be good and open the border, let our people pass through. Nobody gets hurt, everybody's happy.

Stripped to its core, the notice amounted to something like that.

They certainly had not put it in those words. Not on paper.

On the surface, it would have sounded more like, "We only hope you will assist us in fulfilling the revelation bestowed by the Lord of the Fallen Fruit."

Said while presenting a gift set of twelve potions, most likely.

High probability.

Enkrid's guess turned out to be exactly right. The envoy from the Holy State had delivered ten potions in neat packaging, and Crang had accepted them without a second thought.

And added, "We will lend every assistance we can."

What the gift actually was did not matter.

What mattered was that this was the reaction the Holy State had wanted.

They did not need the border thrown open with a welcome ceremony. If asked, they would appreciate a checkpoint being unlocked to let them through, but the basic message was: stay quiet and watch.

A Holy Maiden was still just one girl, seen from the kingdom of Naurillia's perspective. Would the kingdom boldly deploy troops to find a single child?

At most, each city would have gotten word to keep an eye out for anything unusual.

Commit troops to something like this?

That would not happen. Normally it did not. That was how things usually went.

But Crang had commissioned the job, and Enkrid had taken it.

Crang's intent? The one letter he had sent said enough.

A child was crying, and he wanted to help. Simple.

Right. On to the next thing.

This was where what actually nagged at him began.

Chase them down? That part he could do.

The thing was, there were pieces of this that made him tilt his head.

It was rare, but Enkrid felt a curiosity that ran deep, the kind of deep that reminded him of bone broth, the sort made by loading a pot with pork bones and letting it simmer and reduce for days on end.

'How are they managing to run?'

Even if the kidnapper was one of the rare knights on the continent, did any of this make sense?

The Holy State was not weak. They did not throw their weight around the continent for nothing.

There was even talk that the Empire, which almost never involved itself in central affairs, deferred to the Holy State when matters touched them.

And from that Holy State, someone had slipped out a child. A Holy Maiden, no less.

On top of that, even if the girl was a child, could someone really flee the Holy State while dragging along an uncooperative travel companion? Were there more people helping?

Enkrid tried putting himself in that position and did not find much confidence.

'That would not be easy at all.'

You could tell just from listening to Audin.

A Holy Maiden was an extraordinarily precious resource. There was no way the Holy State's priests would manage such a person carelessly.

You could rotate ordinary soldiers through three shifts and they might complain of exhaustion. Do the same with believers armed by faith, and they would do it gladly.

Could someone really steal a Holy Maiden out from under people like that?

And for that matter, would ordinary believers even have been the ones guarding her? If so, would a kidnapping not have been unthinkable from the start?

Then how had the kidnapping happened? And how had they avoided being caught until now?

'I really want to catch up with them.'

There were too many questions.

Still, he had no intention of standing by and watching. Too many things were snagging at him for that.

For one, something Audin had said kept catching on him.

Audin had spoken of the past, and Enkrid had listened. Had there been nothing more in those words than old events?

Just regret and sorrow?

Just someone chewing over the moment a mistake was made and suffering for it?

No.

What the bear-like man's words carried was not only fault, reflection, and regret. Will and resolve had been there alongside them.

And Enkrid had seen Audin like this before.

He had seen it in days that had already passed.

Back when he died over and over working toward an understanding of Will, Audin had radiated light from his entire body, blood pouring from every opening in his face, eyes, nose, ears.

Enkrid remembered Audin blazing with light as blood poured out of him.

The intensity and bearing Audin had shown while speaking of the past was the same as that.

The only difference was that he was not dying in a blaze of light.

He did not know what Audin intended or what he was thinking. Ask, and the man would not tell him. Only, he had no intention of simply watching from the sidelines.

The second thing that caught at him: if the child had truly been kidnapped, and if that was genuinely all there was to what was happening here, then he fully intended to treat the kidnapper's skull the way you treated a ghoul's-split it open the moment he got his hands on them.

Catch them, and he would crack them open. Simple.

He had done some sorting through his thoughts while walking, but he arrived at his first destination still full of questions.

It was the city with Enkrid's name on the wall.

He entered and asked for the mayor, and the mayor came sprinting out barefoot, dirt flying up with each step, and welcomed Enkrid at a dead run.

"Welcome, welcome!"

The man who had run across ground mixed with the occasional stone, all of it done barefoot, called out as he came.

This had happened the moment Enkrid asked for the location of the mayor's residence and announced who he was.

Enkrid looked at the man greeting him with a near-suspicious degree of enthusiasm.

First thing he noticed: one eye, a trained body. Someone who knew how to fight.

Beyond that, the slightly lopsided balance in the man's frame told him this was a right-handed person who swung a very heavy weapon.

Hair cut above the ears, a little longer on top.

The face was rough. A few scars visible.

Not familiar exactly, but a face he had seen before.

Even so, no matter how hard he tried, the name would not come. How many days had he spent repeating the same today and seen this man.

Even with exceptional memory, you could not remember everything.

Just recognizing that this was a face he had seen was already something. Part of it was probably the impression burned in during those repeated days.

"It's been a while. You're, uh..."

Enkrid trailed off, and the other man spoke.

"Doitchi Fullman."

He said it with a smile, as if it were perfectly natural not to remember his name.

This city was once home to the mad craftsman who had tried to put Enkrid's name on the wall.

Why had he wanted to put a name on the wall?

Because Enkrid had fought through repeated days to smash the Gnoll Colony the Cultists had built.

He had actually put the name on the wall, though people rarely called the place "Wall Enkrid."

People preferred the name Gnoll's Wail.

Enkrid thought that one was the better name too.

What had once been a pioneer settlement now had a proper name: Pelheim. It had been named after what people had long called this region.

In the distant past, beyond recorded history, back in the age of myths passed down through oral tradition, a divine beast that breathed fire was said to have lived here.

Pelheim meant the city that breathes fire.

From what he had heard, it sounded like the birthplace of the divine beast that protected Naurillia, but since it was only oral tradition, meaning a storyteller could insist on their version until it became truth, nothing was certain.

Still, when people believed something and decided to go with it, you accepted it and moved on.

By now everyone seemed to have Pelheim naturally on their tongues.

Pelheim sat north of Border Guard. Head east from there for some distance and you would reach the Pen-Hanil Mountain Range; far to the north, the Gigant Mountain Range was visible.

The Gigant Mountain Range was the dividing line between the Empire in the north and the central kingdoms of the continent, which made it a grand and enormous range by any measure.

In other words, the north was firmly walled off.

West of Pelheim's gate lay a modest patch of farmland. The city ran on hunting animals, Demon Creatures, and Magic Beasts out of the forest to the east and the forest to the north, then selling what came off them. It was, of course, direct royal territory.

It had once bordered Count Molsen's territory too, which made it a neighbor to land Enkrid held.

"I remembered you as captain of the guard. Looks like you became mayor."

Enkrid pulled up the memory and said it, and the other man answered with a smile.

No matter how rough the face, a genuine smile looked good on anyone. Doitchi Fullman's face was exactly that right now.

"Yes. That's how it worked out."

This man had become the highest authority in the city of Pelheim, recognized by the kingdom.

And still his manner was respectful.

Was it because of Enkrid's reputation? That played some part, but more than that, the impression Enkrid had left when he wiped out the Gnoll Colony still lived on in this city.

For Doitchi Fullman, even more so.

"Please, come in!"

Deutsch led the group into a reception room.

A maidservant snuck a glance at Enkrid while setting out tea and snacks, and Enkrid asked, "There's something I want to ask. Did anyone from the Holy State stop by here?"

Deutsch searched his memory for a moment, then said, "They did stop by, but they left right away."

"Is that so? Do you know where they went?"

Deutsch answered the question of his hero and benefactor at once. "No, I don't. But there was something odd."

"Something odd?"

"There were three people there who were stronger than me."

Was that such a remarkable thing?

He thought it on the inside but just barely kept it from coming out of his mouth, and then heard it in someone else's voice.

"Is that such a remarkable thing?"

Enkrid had held his opinion back. Sinar had not.

It could have been an insult, fighters of your level are common enough, but Deutsch did not dare take offense at the elf's face.

This was also someone traveling alongside that Enkrid.

"Brother, the world is a wide place," Audin added.

Only after hearing those two did Enkrid manage to recalibrate.

'That was a mistake.'

Those like Audin and Sinar, who were born to it, would not understand, but Enkrid had climbed from the bottom, which was why he had judged that Doitchi Fullman's current level was not common. He had been surrounded by monsters for so long that even he had slipped into the wrong frame of reference for a moment.

Doitchi Fullman could not by any measure qualify for even Squire rank in a knight order, but you could still call him a capable fighter by most standards.

"Five, was it?"

Enkrid landed on the right response.

Deutsch had not known whether to be offended or push back, and was stuck in an awkward spot, when Enkrid's words reached him. He nodded right away.

"Yes. One of them looked furious but didn't say a single word. The atmosphere was, how do I put it..."

"How do you put it?"

Even as a knight, Enkrid was still a skilled listener. He added small sounds to keep the conversation moving and waited for Deutsch's next words.

He even nodded, as if to say whatever comes next is fine.

A nod that gave the feeling: go ahead and say anything, nothing you say will be wrong.

Encouraged by that, Deutsch found the nerve to speak.

"Like they were going to scold a child who had done something wrong? Something like that, I suppose? Either way, it looked strange to me."

Doitchi Fullman had spent quite a long time doing mercenary work. In other words, he had survived as a swordsman for a long time, and what that pointed to was that his instincts for reading people probably outran his martial skill.

That or his skill was simply exceptional.

Deutsch was the former.

He was sitting in the mayor's seat now.

A man without instincts for people could not go from captain of the guard to mayor.

Doitchi Fullman was a mercenary with sharp instincts. Which meant the impression he had picked up from that group could be more accurate than you might expect.

And he had every reason to feel goodwill toward Enkrid, which meant no motive to pass along false information.

Gut feeling said the same. Doitchi Fullman's eyes were clear.

Here Enkrid found himself running into yet another question.

Even granting that the kidnapper was some kind of specialist in abduction and escape.

'Something really is strange.'

He did not know how they had managed it, but whoever this person was, they had kidnapped a Holy Maiden and, miraculously, had even secured her cooperation, which had made for a smooth getaway.

And still, strange was strange.

"Why did they kidnap her?"

Another question on top of it all.

There was no apparent reason to kidnap a Holy Maiden.

Note: In the source text, 동화 몇 닢 (literally "a few coin") refers to small currency used as payment for information passed through Krais's network. This is distinct from the skill/technique 동화 (Assimilation). The currency usage has been rendered as "copper coins" in the body text to avoid confusion with the glossary term Assimilation; the glossary entry above preserves the canonical term mapping for the technique.

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