A Knight who Eternally Regresses - Chapter 573

WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 573: Brother, He Must Be Punished

= = =

The moment someone asked who he was, Enkrid knocked the man flat. For a first greeting, it was rather aggressive.

Better than slitting his throat outright, though. Enkrid thought so. As long as the man wasn't dead, that was good enough.

And if it turned out to be a misunderstanding? Well, apologize then.

So he hadn't killed him. That alone was showing consideration.

But then.

"Hm?"

He was honestly a little surprised.

Bam.

The man whose skull he had driven into the ground swung a hammer while still on the floor.

Didn't knock him out, did it.

Enkrid released his grip on the man's face and stepped back.

He snapped his half-crouched body upright in one smooth motion, and the hammer whooshed through the space he had just vacated. The man on the ground had swung it.

"You crazy bastard!"

The fallen figure erupted in rage. His face was flushed red and he puffed great snorting breaths through his nose.

"Do you know who I am!"

He roared again.

Enkrid wiped the sweat from his forehead, walked over at a calm pace, and came to stand in front of the child with the broken leg.

"Kidnappers?"

Everyone just stared blankly. The whole thing was too absurd.

Alma, who had been watching Enkrid's movements wide-eyed, jerked upright.

As Alma rose, Enkrid observed him and understood why the man was still standing.

A faint light radiated from his entire body.

The light itself had absorbed and dispersed the impact. If Will manifested through a person's individual traits and took on many different forms, divine power was the opposite, confined to a single function.

Divine power made the human body extraordinarily tough.

Even so, the back of his head had split, and blood was running from it.

* * *

Shilma blinked. She wasn't sure she had heard right.

Kidnappers?

Could they actually be mistaken for that? No. They could not.

It made no sense. Could this man truly not see the priestly robes right in front of him?

Kidnappers, of all things.

Though if that was how they were being framed, there was nothing she could say to it. Someone determined to insist would just keep insisting.

Shilma watched the scene unfold and let out a sigh.

"You-you..."

The words wouldn't come.

The man who had charged in had subdued Holy Warrior Alma in a single instant. Without even drawing a weapon.

She could see the swords at his hip. Three of them. Several throwing knives were visible across his chest as well.

Unarmed combat was clearly not his specialty.

And yet this man had beaten Holy Warrior Alma down with his bare hands.

Shilma lacked the eye to assess a knight's true ability, but her instincts gave her a rough measure of his skill.

He could play with Alma.

And a man like that had genuinely not recognized the priestly robes?

A cowardly excuse. But could she even argue against it? What if he just kept denying everything?

She could say that speaking falsehood would bring divine punishment, but only someone genuinely naive would believe a line like that.

If heavenly judgment came for every sin, how did corrupt clergy even exist.

"How dare you!"

While Shilma was struggling to find her words, Alma burst into fury once more.

He could feel something warm and thick sliding down the back of his skull, and that only stoked his anger hotter.

"You would dare interfere with the Church's affairs!"

Alma shouted.

"Pretending to be the Church and expecting me to believe it? Cunning kidnappers."

The man shot back without missing a beat. Watching him catch Alma's words and return them like that, Shilma felt a strange, involuntary admiration.

Listen to how he pronounced each syllable of "cunning kidnappers" with careful deliberateness.

As if to say: I have declared you kidnappers, so from this point forward, that is what you are.

What did that posture and those words mean.

He has no intention of backing down.

This was something she had never anticipated.

Chasing and retrieving a Holy Maiden had been the problem. That anyone would plant themselves in their way had never even crossed her mind.

Daring to obstruct Church business? If the Trade Confederation spread across the entire continent as its bank, the Holy State spread its influence through temples and monasteries everywhere. Even if the king of Naurillia had appeared in this very spot, he could not have done this.

That was what Shilma knew, at least.

Not every person was the same.

If Crang had been here, he would have done exactly as he pleased regardless.

Even Alma, furious as he was, did not believe he could pin this man down and kill him.

The gap in skill was obvious. He gauged that his opponent had reached knight-level.

Shilma stepped forward.

This was not a moment to solve with force.

"My name is Shilma, Priest of Abundance and Fallen Fruit. Do you require proof of my identity?"

"You lot came prepared, I'll give you that. But I won't be fooled."

The blue-eyed man examined the child's leg, then wiped the sweat from the back of his neck and scratched the bridge of his nose. He was completely at ease.

"Son of a,!"

Alma erupted again at the sight of it, but naturally did not rush in. Shilma kept her eyes fixed on the man in front of her. What he said and how he carried himself were two different things, and that gap was deeply provocative.

He had no intention of listening to a single word they said.

"Why are you doing this?"

Shilma could not understand him. A Holy Maiden was still just a child, and taking her was a straightforward matter.

The strange part was that she and Alma had come out personally at all. If the Holy Maiden had not shown that uncanny ability to flee, none of this would have happened.

Yes. Just one child.

There was no reason for anyone to stand in their way.

"The Iron Wall Knight!"

Bert suddenly shouted in the middle of everything. He had been lost in thought for a while, and the words finally broke through. He had connections with the Information Guild, the kind that gathered and sold news from all corners.

Black hair? Blue eyes?

The striking looks registered. Even another man could admit it was a handsome face.

Then add the impossible behavior of a madman and the skill to subdue Holy Warrior Alma, and a name naturally surfaced.

Shilma frowned at Bert's outburst.

She could not make sense of any of this.

The Iron Wall Knight? She had heard the name. At this point, few people on the continent had not heard of Enkrid's reputation.

But why was the Iron Wall Knight coming up here.

Did the king send him? Why? Does it even matter?

Was there any reason to deliberately interfere with Church business?

No. She had thought it through every way she could. There was none. And yet why was he throwing himself at them like this? Even someone called the Iron Wall Knight?

"I happened to be passing through and 'coincidentally' came across signs of a kidnapping. As a knight of Naurillia, I couldn't just walk past. So put the child down quietly and surrender."

Enkrid answered in a flat tone.

The way he stressed "coincidentally" was genuinely grating.

"Why, though?"

Shilma threw the same question out again, and Alma, having recalled the man's reputation, added his own words.

"Crazy bastard. He actually is a lunatic."

Alma had concluded that this man could not kill him.

If he had intended to, he would have taken his head during that first exchange.

So this man was still minding his manners around the Church, which meant Alma could afford to act all the more arrogantly.

"Brother!"

In the middle of the standoff, another shout rang out, and a man built like a giant came walking over, trailed by an elf less than half his size.

They had followed behind Enkrid's headlong charge. Audin came up alongside Enkrid and swept his gaze around.

No one needed to explain. The situation read itself.

"Kidnappers," Enkrid said.

Sinar caught the word with quick understanding.

"Kidnappers disguised as priests?"

"That's right."

"I see. Unforgivable. Impersonating children of god."

While the two of them traded lines like a comedy act, Bert recognized one of the newcomers.

"Audin Pumray?"

Not a frequent acquaintance or a close colleague, but the name was known, and they had spoken a few times.

The face and the reputation were too distinctive to forget.

Was he not said to be a child given by the God of War out of his love for humanity?

Bert recognized him. This was a crisis. The opposition were supposed to be kidnappers, not the Church, but if Audin could identify them, that all but proved their identities on its own.

Shilma, Alma, his two disciples, and Bert all looked at Audin.

If a word of agreement left his mouth now, it was over.

So, say it. Everyone watched with something close to expectation, and Audin opened his mouth.

"...Who might that be? It seems these kidnappers are playing clever tricks. Hyung, we must punish them."

Catching himself before "Brother" slipped out from force of habit, Audin turned his gaze away from Bert.

Bert's jaw dropped entirely without him realizing it. His jaw muscles briefly left his control.

He's going to pretend not to know? With that unmistakable frame, and he's going to play dumb?

"Ahem."

Audin cleared his throat, embarrassed, and bent down to tend to the fallen child.

Seiki had watched everything unfold but understood none of it.

Who were these people, and why were they standing in front of her.

Her grandfather had not sent them.

Her grandfather had spent most of his life on a mountain. He had no friends. Most Highlanders were the same, and hers was no different.

Would he step in even knowing she was in danger? That she couldn't say.

He had told her all her life that a person had to handle their own problems.

In front of that Seiki, a figure who looked threatening at a glance bent down. The stooped body blocked the sun and cast a wide shadow.

The shadow wrapped around her completely.

A man that large, kneeling on one knee before her, and yet somehow he was not threatening at all.

It was strange. She felt something close to relief. But did that mean she had to trust him outright? No. That wasn't it.

Seiki raised the blade of the dagger she held in a reverse grip up in front of her face.

Even in the shadow, the knife gleamed with a sharpness that felt eerie, and it seemed to say everything about where she stood right now.

Do I have to trust you? No, I don't.

That was what the dagger said.

Audin's eyes went soft at the corners. There was nothing sadder in the world than this.

Why did the Church do these things.

Why did they force sacrifice on a child like this.

Was it truly right to save someone with what a child named Holy Maiden or Holy Man had created?

How had the Church grown so rotten.

"I'm sorry."

Audin said it. Seiki had never seen a face so racked with guilt and pain.

And at that moment, wholly out of place for the circumstances, Seiki's gift bloomed.

She had been born with enough divine power to be called a Holy Maiden, but she did not know how to use it properly.

To pass that light to another, a person had to feel compassion for them and carry the wish to give. Seiki had never learned that.

From childhood, all she had learned was how to eat alone, sleep alone, and survive alone.

That was the Highlander way, and she had lived by it.

And right now, for the first time in her life, Seiki felt something called pity.

What sin had this man committed.

Why did this man wear an expression like that.

Why did he look at her with that face.

The large man held that same expression and gazed at her quietly.

Seiki felt the pity, and she felt her gift awakening, and she did what she had always been taught and pressed the dagger blade forward.

"I'll stab you."

Even if the blade went into his heart, this man would not dodge. She didn't know why. She simply knew it.

The two who had helped her at the monastery had done it for a reason.

They had been cleaning up something they themselves had caused. Seiki had made use of their conscience.

Something she had worked out in her head.

This was different.

Seiki pushed the dagger forward and pricked the rough area of his chest.

The blade sank through the cloth he wore. And still he only looked back at her with that face, anguished past sadness, and offered a faint smile.

She felt the resistance of leather against the tip. If she kept going, this man would die.

Seiki let go of the dagger. It dropped to the ground with a small clunk.

With her empty hand she reached up, touched his face, stroked his cheek, and then the Holy Maiden with the broken leg opened her mouth.

"What's hurting you so much that you're crying?"

Flash. At the same moment, light poured from her hand and wrapped around Audin's cheek.

It rose without a sound, then spread like a wildfire catching dry grass, rushing outward in every direction.

Light burst from Seiki's entire body.

The light spilled without pattern at first, then gathered into a single point and drove a pillar straight up toward the sky. A column of pure light pierced the heavens.

It was not one pillar. They multiplied, shifting sideways, growing into a colonnade that formed a circle around Seiki.

Seiki felt the pain in her leg vanish in an instant.

At the same time, something flooded into her body, filled it completely, and poured back out.

With it went all her strength. She could not feel her limbs. The world before her began to go dark.

Then Seiki lost consciousness. The last thing she heard was a shout from behind her. It belonged to Shilma, the former head of the monastery.

"Pillars of Light!"

* * *

Shilma's eyes went wide.

In all her years as a priest she had never seen pillars of such density or scale.

Those columns had been shaped from pure divine power, taken whole and made real.

Could that much divine power truly dwell inside a single person?

It could. She had just seen it.

Seven pillars reaching to the edge of the sky.

"Take your hands off the Holy Maiden!"

Shilma shouted, eyes wide.

A gift that bloomed and raised pillars of light through divine power. This was no ordinary Holy Maiden. This was a true child of god, sent by god himself.

She could not simply let this go now, even if she died here.

She knew it was foolish. But had her Father, her Lord, not just spoken through that child?

Do now what you must do.

Shilma had no choice.

"Holy Warrior Alma, listen. We will save that child no matter what!"

Shilma felt heat burning through her entire body. The wave of emotion at god directly conveying his will was overwhelming. And blazing alongside it came the sense of mission: she had to save the one who had moved her so.

No matter what it takes.

She repeated it to herself with that same force, and blood rushed to her staring eyes until her head burned and the whites went red.

Naturally, this was not how someone chasing a fleeing Holy Maiden was supposed to think.

But to someone already swallowed whole by her faith, it made perfect sense.

Shilma had never thought of herself as oppressing or enslaving one child. She believed she was simply doing what was necessary as an agent of god.

And then.

"If we kill them all and leave, no one would ever know."

Calm. Perfectly quiet. And to Audin it was a genuinely tempting offer.

Even as an Apostle of the God of War, he did not simply cut people down on a whim, least of all when those people were brothers of the Church.

Audin's ears pricked up, almost like an elf's.

Enkrid's words were like a whisper from a devil.

He should not listen, and yet they were so terribly sweet.