A Knight who Eternally Regresses - Chapter 577

WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

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A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 577: Even If It's Not Such a Big Deal

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"You could still die in the end."

Audin said it with one knee on the ground, head lifted.

A moment later, Enkrid answered.

Clang!

The sound of a sword and a rod meeting.

"Who could?"

He had not actually said the words, but the Enkrid Audin knew would have said exactly that.

"A knight is not an immortal being."

Audin kept talking.

What he meant was that being a knight did not mean you could withstand the might of the Holy Knight Order.

"Never wanted to be."

An indifferent reply came back.

"In the end, you will not achieve what you want."

Chasing a dream while being hunted by the Order was too hard. There was no reason to choose that path.

All he had to do was discard himself.

Just give himself up, and it would be over.

But Enkrid never did that.

And Audin knew it.

He himself had been slow to make up his mind. He had gone beyond confronting his past life, his mistakes, and everything they contained, he had needed to let go of the very sins he had acknowledged as his own. That was why it took him so long.

Even so, Audin kept opening his mouth. He kept asking. And then came the last question.

"You still intend to stand on this side?"

A hard and painful road.

Calling it a dream felt too grand, but Audin had something he thought of as his responsibility, his duty.

He had only looked away from it because he believed it could never be done. And then Enkrid had scolded him for it.

"There's something in this world you can't do?"

No, there wasn't. The man who had proven himself said so.

Bang!

A tremendous sound split the air.

The Valerian Steel sword finally broke, and Enkrid's body came flying, his arm bent at an angle it should never have reached.

Audin caught him by reflex.

Thud. The body settled into his grip. Audin did not shake at all. His hands were steady, his back straight, his eyes clearer than clear.

Even seated, his frame looked larger than anyone else's.

"You will have to give up your dream."

He said it while holding Enkrid in his arms.

"Why would I?"

An answer came back. Not a vision. A real voice.

Enkrid had been listening to Audin muttering to himself this whole time.

Audin smiled.

Right. His captain would say something like that.

Audin made a different choice than before.

When one person's will shone this brightly, it was hard not to respect it.

All the more so because it was also the path he himself had always wished for and believed was right.

"Walk the road of hardship. Pass through the narrow gate. Walk the narrow path, if that is where your will lies."

He spoke the words of the Father God and rose to his feet.

Behind him stood his captain with a broken arm, the man who had once given up on everything, including life itself, and who had made Audin see the world anew. And behind that man stood the child destined to share Fildin's fate.

Audin decided he would protect them both.

Even if this was where he ended.

Even if he could not escape all those past sins.

Even if this was something the Father God did not wish for.

'For now, it is simply what I want. Father God.'

The Prohibition Seal could not be broken by force all at once. If he tore it away in a single breath, the backlash would come just as hard.

It might drive him to his death.

So what?

He chewed over the same words his captain had once said.

The chains in his mind fractured and shattered.

The Prohibition Seal had been one he placed on himself to begin with, so no one else's permission was needed.

Audin had bowed his head as if in prayer. When he lifted it, white light had already settled into both his eyes.

A light that made Overdier's silver pupils look pale by comparison began at his eyes and spread across his entire body.

Sacred light.

And then he showed the miracle that Holy Maiden Seiki had shown once before.

Whooooom!

The sacred light became a pillar and shot upward with Audin at its center.

A pillar twice as thick as the one Seiki had raised pierced the sky.

Light poured in every direction. The God of War, so he told himself, had said, 'With my light, I support your will.' That was what the God of War, Audin's Father, had said.

Even if those words were never truly spoken, he chose to believe them now.

That was faith. That was devotion.

The light held Audin. Audin held the light.

A man born and raised in the Holy State, a man whose talent no one had ever surpassed, poured out the divine power he had spent years compressing inside himself.

Blood ran from the corners of his eyes alongside the light.

The backlash from ripping the Prohibition Seal away so fast. It did not matter.

'So what.'

For what he wanted right now, his life was a reasonable thing to wager.

This was not saving a continent.

It was only saving a child called the Holy Maiden and carrying on the will his captain had raised.

That was all.

That was what Audin wanted.

It did not matter if others said it was nothing much.

[If you have something you believe in, why do you lend your ear to others and in the end fall for what the demon whispers?

Prove your faith and advance with that faith as your foundation, and the demon's words are nothing but noise.]

As the Prohibition Seal came undone, the words of the holy scriptures rose to him one after another.

Inside the light, Audin opened his mouth.

This time it was not scripture. It was something he had learned under his captain, and that was what he chose to say.

"If I could return to the Holy Knight Order now, Brother Rem would already be a dead man."

He said it with a smile and raised both fists. The surging sacred light lingered briefly over Enkrid's arm and chest.

It could not heal the wounds in an instant, but it would do something.

The sacred light pent up for years still erupted in waves.

The pillar of light that had shot into the sky descended and settled across Audin's entire body.

Rather than scattering, the light wrapped around him and held there, thick and still.

"Sacred Light Armor?"

Overdier's mouth fell open when he saw it.

He was right.

Iron Body was the technique of wrapping invisible armor around the full body using Will.

Wrapping the body in light through divine power was sacred armor.

Above that sat the ultimate technique, one that pushed the light even thicker and wrapped every inch of the body in it.

That was what was called Sacred Light Armor.

Achieving it demanded a brutal level of physical conditioning, which was why so few had ever managed it.

It was a technique you could only attempt after training your muscles to a different density entirely, your skin hardened through training until it was genuinely like iron plate.

On top of that conditioning, you had to handle divine power as naturally as your own body.

You exploded the divine power out, then drew it back into yourself. That was how the technique was forged.

Muscle and skin in harmony, a soft white radiance settled across his entire body.

Over that huge frame, the light became armor and stayed.

"Something I could not achieve even with a hundred years of training?"

Overdier said.

"A difference in talent, I would say. Why not take a hit first and see?"

Audin said it without hesitation, casually dismissing the Prophet's century of effort, and moved.

He had been watching Enkrid get beaten around with a calm face, but even he had let a small amount of frustration build up, and he wanted to work some of it out.

And honestly, Audin was not someone who lived with a particularly easy heart.

Not the kind of man who, after taking a hit on the left cheek, would offer his right. He was the kind who would hit back and ask if it hurt.

Whoosh.

The sacred light left traces behind, afterimages made of pure light.

The huge frame that had earned the nickname "bear beastfolk" moved and threw a punch. Overdier swung his rod to meet it.

Boom!

Fist and rod, divine power and divine power collided, and light burst in every direction like scattering sparks.

Enkrid, still on the ground, could barely keep his eyes open against the glare.

Shilma and everyone else clamped their eyes shut as well.

The sound was followed by light shooting upward and scattering in every direction, and for a moment the surroundings turned as bright as midday.

The purple-tinged dusk vanished without a trace.

A mystery forged entirely from divine power.

The light fell as rain.

It looked like the sky weeping in sorrow.

Audin poured out everything he had, like a candle burned down to its base.

And he overwhelmed Overdier.

He showed the astonishing feat of deflecting the two Inscribed Weapons, the iron rods called mind staves, with his bare hands.

"One hit first."

Audin shoved aside Sacred Penetration with his own divine power and drove a fist forward.

A heavy blow landed on Overdier's shoulder.

Crack!

The sacred armor shattered with a thunderous sound. The light wrapped around Overdier's body shook.

"If nothing breaks, then my power was lacking, but if you can break through something head-on, Sacred Penetration is nothing but a grappling strike!"

Audin's shout. Enkrid had taken enough hits by now to understand what technique the opponent was using.

Audin wanted to tell him there was no need to bother learning it.

Better to use Will properly and smash through. That was the correct approach.

Sacred Penetration was a fine technique, but there was no particular need for it. He would leave it as a parting lesson.

When your Will overflows and spills over, you fight to match that.

After that, the two clashed again and again.

"Magnificent!"

Overdier shouted at one point. Part of why he had not been pushed back until now was the superiority of his weapons.

His two rods, normally filled to capacity with divine power, did not yield easily even against Audin's punches.

Light scattered and exploded and rained down without pause.

It was a spectacle. Anyone watching might have felt genuine devotion rise in them without meaning to. That rare sacred light was scattering everywhere.

Of course, it was light full of the will to wound, not to heal or comfort.

"Father God, here your child comes."

Audin murmured it like a song.

A chant. Through the hymn, the sacred light in his body surged higher, and Overdier across from him tried to wring out more force in turn.

Audin compressed the sacred light. Blood ran freely from his eyes, his nose, his ears.

He had reached his limit.

That was exactly when it happened.

No one had seen it coming.

From somewhere behind, Shilma had been reciting a divine incantation through prayer.

Hmmmm!

The sound came first.

Then, in front of Shilma's outstretched hand, a cluster of light condensed into bullets and shot forward.

It was a distinctly different shade from the light the two fighters were producing, dull and murky. Light Bullets made of that gray-tinged brightness.

Those Light Bullets, absurdly, were aimed not at Enkrid and not at Audin, but at the Holy Maiden.

No one had expected it.

A ball of condensed sacred light had the force of a boulder. If one of them hit that child, it would grind her apart piece by piece.

Eight balls of light came flying. Sinar reacted first.

Her blade split apart, releasing an edge of pure energy. A blade identical to Naidhl appeared and cut down five of the Light Bullets.

Enkrid, still lying on his back, threw Spark and the Shortsword.

Two blades thrown with knife-throwing technique. They shattered two Light Bullets.

Crack!

The gray Light Bullets, dull and murky, broke apart in midair and scattered.

In that instant, Enkrid felt a cold drop in his stomach.

When he threw the Shortsword, he had deliberately angled it to punch through and hit the one beside it. It did not work.

One Light Bullet remained.

And that last one was blocked by a single person, with their back.

Bang!

It was not Audin. He had just been on the verge of releasing the sacred light gathered across his body through the chant.

For just a moment, he could not move.

Audin redirected the concentrated sacred light not forward but straight up.

It looked like a meteor rising from below. A mass of light pierced the sky.

As if becoming a new star far above, the clump of sacred light shot upward trailing brightness, and the person who had blocked the last Light Bullet turned their head.

The hit itself should have meant nothing to them, but they had already taken a beating from Audin, and blood ran from the corner of their mouth. Internal damage already done. Not a wound that would kill, but not nothing either.

"Priest Shilma. What is the meaning of this?"

Overdier spoke. He looked at Shilma. White smoke rose from his back where the sacred light had struck. The rain of light had just stopped.

"Why did you block them?"

Shilma asked, thrown off.

She had been watching the situation unfold and felt the danger clearly.

At this rate, they would smuggle the Holy Maiden away, and she herself would not survive.

'God has spoken.'

That child belongs in the temple of the god of abundance.

If that could not be, then what?

'Wound her until she is nearly dead.'

If she was wounded badly enough, a priest's hand would be needed to save her.

In other words, her own hand.