WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 572: The Reason He Runs

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Five people had been sent from the Holy State to track down the Holy Maiden.

The core three were Holy Warrior Alma, Priest Shilma, and Inquisitor Bert.

Actual combat fell to Alma and his two disciples. Alma's fighting ability was overwhelming, no question about it.

The Church's highest martial force was naturally represented by the Holy Knights. They were said to carry the same combat ability as the knights spoken of across the continent.

That was not to say the Holy Knight Order was weak.

Among their own ranks, there were fighters who could match a knight in skill.

And behind them stood the Church itself as backing.

That alone made a Church Holy Warrior someone worth treating well anywhere they went.

Though not every Holy Warrior earned that status.

In the Abundance Holy Knight Order, those who had not yet proven their skill received no name. They were simply called someone's disciple or trainee warrior, which was exactly what Alma's disciples were.

The reason they had no name was that upon entering the faith, one became like fallen fruit or a shed leaf, stripped of everything gained in the outside world, expected only to devote oneself fully to serving god. Because of this, receiving a name meant receiving a baptismal name from Abundance. It was proof that god's power had descended upon that person, proof of their skill in equal measure. For a Holy Warrior bearing the name Alma, it meant being able to stand among those who revered him wherever he went.

And that same Alma had been pulled out for a tedious chase like this, on the grounds that combat ability might be needed in an unforeseen situation.

"So where is the Holy Maiden now?"

Alma's brow furrowed deeply. The scowl on his face spoke plainly to how displeased he was.

He was, in truth, deeply irritated.

It annoyed him that he had to come out personally for something this trivial, and it annoyed him just as much that something this trivial had gone unresolved, forcing them to cross the border and come all the way here.

"Were you unaware the Saint Child had this kind of talent?"

The Priest standing roughly three steps behind Alma and his disciples asked.

Her name was Shilma, and she was the director of the fortress monastery. She did not particularly like Alma's impatient temperament, but she was in just as much of a hurry herself, so right now their feelings were aligned.

They needed to capture the Holy Maiden as quickly as possible.

The man who had to answer them both felt the same way.

The man standing before Alma, his two disciples, and Shilma was named Bert.

An unremarkable face, but the other two listened when he spoke. Bert's combat ability was nothing exceptional; he was, however, a specialist who had chasing people down to a fine art.

He looked between Alma and Shilma and opened his mouth.

"Yes, Brother Alma. My estimate is that we can catch her today. Priest Shilma, after the incident I looked into her background and learned that she was raised alongside a Highlander, an independent ranger, from childhood. He trained her as well."

At that, Alma's eyebrow twitched.

He already had not one thing to be pleased about, and now an unfamiliar term had come up, which irritated him further. Alma's two disciples watched their master's expression carefully.

Their teacher had gone several days now without satisfying his urges.

When the fleeing Holy Maiden was caught, there was little doubt she would not be going back with her limbs intact.

Both disciples knew their teacher's sadistic streak well.

His favorite thing, apparently, was when heretics resisted. More precisely, it was beating those who resisted into the ground.

A teacher with a hobby of breaking bones and ruining bodies.

Bert glanced briefly at Alma's expression and added a short explanation.

"They are also called independent fighters…"

Independent rangers, or in other terms, independent fighters, that was what people who knew a little something called them.

Some scholars, noting that their lifespans differed from ordinary humans, called them a separate kind of being altogether and used the term Highlander.

Most people simply called them Highlanders or mountain folk.

The name came from the fact that most of them rarely left the mountains, or more specifically, their own territory.

The origin of the word was unclear, but people who adapted well to city life were commonly called insiders and those who did not were called outsiders. These were outsiders of the most extreme kind.

Setting aside origins, their very existence was quite unusual.

In a world overrun by Demon Creatures and Magic Beasts, they lived in groups of three or four at most, and sometimes alone.

They wanted no work and wanted nothing from anyone.

All they wanted was to go on living in their own land.

"You mean the Highlanders?"

Shilma cut in while Bert was still explaining.

"Yes, that's correct."

Bert rubbed the brooch pinned to his chest as he answered.

Seven grapes, symbol of the god of abundance and the seven martyrs. Holding it seemed to quiet some of his anxiety.

If this went wrong, he might not die, but the damage would be severe. That much was certain.

"Highlanders have very pale skin and eyes that resemble those of animals, don't they?"

Shilma recalled reading something in a book about how Highlanders had undergone convergent evolution from living in the wild for so long.

Eyes that could pierce the dark without any light, or something to that effect.

Shilma had observed the Holy Maiden closely for months. Her eyes were the same as any human's.

"She's not of Highlander blood herself. It seems a mountain folk raised the Holy Maiden and trained her."

That was Bert's conclusion. It was a guess, but one that sat close to the truth.

Highlanders were mountain specialists and Masters of tracking.

Within their own territory, they could never be caught, and they were not the kind to be run down by anyone.

They were said to be Masters of setting traps and pitfalls.

The reason Bert had changed his approach after gathering information was the Holy Maiden's background.

He was an excellent tracker himself. Like Enkrid, he did not look at isolated points but at the line along which a fugitive moved.

Is she just running blindly?

Highlanders were people who scattered hundreds of traps across their territory and spent their lives memorizing every single location.

Tracking and fleeing and hunting were daily life for them. Which meant following only the trail she left behind would obviously end in failure.

Looking only at tracks already laid would lead to failure. Without question.

So Bert had hired people to drive her, boxing her in, and predicted where she would move.

He had known nothing about her at first, but now he knew what kind of child this Holy Maiden was.

A monster among mountain folk, someone who could memorize the position of every stone in a place after just three days. That was what the Holy Maiden truly was.

What if she still gets away after all this?

Fear of failure was what kept adding to the unease in Bert's chest.

If it came to that, there was nothing to be done. He would have to go back to where the Holy Maiden was first found and search all over again, one piece at a time.

But there would be no place for him among those searchers.

Which meant she had to be caught here.

Better to finish it here if at all possible.

He had no desire to climb the mountain where the one who had taught her, the Highlander, lived.

A Highlander fighting on their own land, using traps and arrows and poison, was a genuine monster. No question.

Even the famous Glacier Rangers, called guardians of the glaciers, had reportedly built themselves up by mastering Highlander techniques.

Going that far would finish him.

It would mean failure, and that would mean telling Alma, and the consequences that followed were something Bert feared deeply.

Which was why he wanted to end this here. No, he had to.

Fortunately, he had Krona to hire people, he had fighting strength on his side, and he had enough information to predict the Holy Maiden's movements.

Thanks to that, he had also hired a few hunters with solid knowledge of the surrounding terrain for guidance, and that was how he had brought along Priest Shilma and Holy Warrior Alma.

With all of that in place, they had passed through Pelheim and taken up position near a forest to the north, where Shilma had used prayer and a sacred spell to conceal the group's presence.

"As the Lord watches over us, shield us briefly from the eye of the sun."

The spell deepened the color of the shadow sheltering them slightly. That darkened portion was the spell's range.

"As long as no one steps outside it, they won't be able to sense us first."

Shilma said. A Veil that was present but could not be seen.

Alma waited with a face full of dissatisfaction. Crushing the Demon Creatures he had encountered on the way over had done nothing to ease his temper.

Bert was thinking through where the Holy Maiden might have gone if she had already slipped away.

He would need to defend himself if the worst came.

How much time passed, he was not sure. He was holding back even the urge to relieve himself.

Then, at last, he spotted a shadow in the distance and exhaled with relief.

The shadow drew closer. Her outfit became visible, a shabby cloak that reached down to her calves. Even without seeing her face, there was no question who it was.

The Holy Maiden.

Thank goodness.

Bert felt something close to gratitude toward the Holy Maiden for coming this way.

He meant it. There would be no need to prepare excuses now, and the sun had not even begun to set, so he would probably be eating inside the fortress tonight.

It was a thought only possible because chasing her had been the problem, not facing her.

"Saint Child."

When Shilma spoke, the dark Veil that no one but Shilma had sensed seemed to blur and dissolve.

Alma and his two disciples and Bert became aware of something that had been there until a moment ago, blocking the space in front of them, even though it had been invisible. Now it was gone.

They only noticed it after it disappeared, which meant all they had felt before was a faint sense of wrongness.

What all of this meant was that the spell causing perceptual interference had been lifted.

It meant Shilma had also recognized who was standing there.

After that, the Holy Maiden responded, and the standoff began.

Alma felt no need to wait. He took hold of the combat hammer hanging at his side.

Just as his disciples had expected, he intended to break both the Holy Maiden's legs before dragging her back.

Her divine power healed the body on its own, they said.

Something no better than a single Frog had put them through all of this trouble.

The offense was quite grave.

* * *

Enkrid took in the whole situation simply.

North. Pursuers. Holy Maiden.

Those three words were enough for him to settle on what he had to do, almost instantly.

"Running."

He ran beneath the autumn sunlight, ignoring hills and Demon Creatures alike.

Finding a trail would have been nice, but luck was not playing along.

They say ignorance is hard on the feet.

Enkrid decided he was perfectly willing to admit he was ignorant.

He moved his legs until his heart and gut felt like they were burning. Sweat began to come. Becoming a knight had not placed him outside the limits of the human species, so sweating and getting winded was only natural.

The difference was simply that he could run far longer than an ordinary person and breathe far more deeply.

Among knights who regulated their breathing with Will, some could stay submerged for over an hour.

Enkrid did not need to hold his breath for long right now, so he breathed freely and built up speed.

Boom.

Every time his foot left the ground it punched a crater in the earth, and the places he passed were left with clear marks behind him.

Wrong direction? Wrong path? He paid no attention. What he lacked, he made up for with his legs.

"You'll be exhausted by the time you actually have to fight," Sinar said.

He ignored her.

Enkrid did know an easier and more sensible approach.

For instance, where would the Holy Knight Order take the Holy Maiden once they had her?

Probably to the nearest city.

They could not set out on a long road without resupply, so that was most likely. Intercepting her then would be many times simpler.

But he did not want to do it that way. His mood said no, and so did his instincts.

It had started when he saw the traces of a Demon Creature's skull being split and crushed.

"Someone with a nasty disposition is mixed in with them," Sinar had said.

Some things could be read just from the marks a fight left behind.

The presence of a persistent, ill-tempered fighter. And there was testimony on top of that.

Deutsch had mentioned someone who looked furious, hadn't he?

And that the others around that person seemed to be watching his mood.

A Church affiliate on this mission who had a foul temper and was angry about it.

Would someone like that, after catching the Holy Maiden, simply brush his hands clean and call it done?

Enkrid did not think so.

That was the whole reason he was running right now.

If he ran a little harder and admitted he had a thick head, making his feet do the suffering instead, then someone else's pain could be lessened.

Especially if that someone was a child who had done nothing to deserve it.

The facts were clear, and there was no reason not to act on them, so Enkrid ran.

Boom.

A faint sound struck his ears from far ahead at that very moment.

"There."

Sinar pointed with the index finger of her right hand. She had found not only the sound but footprints and traces of movement.

Past a short stretch of faded yellow grass, far in the distance, a spur of the Gigant Mountain Range stretched into view.

The foot of a peak that rose high enough to snag clouds.

She had found the footprints, but only by combing the ground meticulously, and even then the tracks were the kind that could easily have been passed over.

"There are traces of holy power," Audin said, his brow furrowed.

Enkrid did not spare a thought for Audin's feelings right now.

He simply moved forward. That was what the moment called for.

Boom.

He kicked off the ground and ran. Clods of earth scattered behind him, and Enkrid's body pushed past its limits, closing space and spending time.

Pitying the child who had been caught left no room for hesitation.

When he arrived, he saw her, a child with her right leg broken, swinging a short knife.

Swish. The blade cut uselessly through air, and the man who had been inside its arc stepped back with a sneer on his face.

He saw all of it.

Enkrid had come in fast enough that the sound of his sprint hit like a thunderclap, so the five standing before the Holy Maiden were already on guard.

Enkrid stopped, trailing afterimages and stretched shadows in the light.

Bang.

He did not simply stop.

He drove his foot into the earth as he halted, and dust billowed up from where he stood, blurring the air in front of him.

Through the dust, two blue eyes fixed on the five ahead.

Up close, he could also see that the child who was supposed to be pitied held a dagger in a reverse grip, her eyes flat and colorless.

Calm in a situation like this.

Even with her leg clearly broken, she had not screamed once. Enkrid could not have known all of that, of course.

He had simply read the situation and the state of things, and from instinct grasped a few details.

"Who are you?"

The man with the creased brow spoke, the kind of crease that came from frowning every day of your life.

Enkrid had concluded that if needed, a fist could come before words.

So that was what he did now.

Audin had not even arrived yet.

Enkrid's foot pressed down into the ground. His ankle and knee bent smoothly, then snapped straight in one motion.

The whole thing was fluid enough that, separate from the loud stamp he had made stopping, his body shot forward like a swallow diving on prey.

The target, the man with the furrowed brow, reacted poorly.

That alone was worth acknowledging.

Of course, that was all there was to acknowledge.

As the man raised his left arm as a shield and swung the combat hammer in his right hand upward from below, Enkrid gripped his face with his left hand, swept out the man's heel with his left foot, and arranged a meeting between the back of the man's skull and the ground.

Bang.

That meeting was a great success. The crack that rang out from skull against earth was all the proof needed.

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