WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

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A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 578: One Hundred and Four Hundred Forty-Eight

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Enkrid stepped toward Audin. Blood ran from his eyes, nose, and ears.

He remembered Audin dying in a burst of sacred light.

He remembered Audin appearing from behind during the fight with the Duke.

He remembered Audin teaching him the Isolation Technique.

He remembered Audin praying for him.

Enkrid thought back on the past Audin had shared with him.

Plagued by guilt?

Could that truly be laid at the feet of someone so large and so pure? Really?

Audin's hands trembled again, and blood poured freely from the corner of his mouth.

He was dying. Anyone could see it.

"Tell me what you want. I'll carry it out in your place."

This was his teacher.

Enkrid wanted to see Audin's wishes through.

Audin looked at him with a smile. He bled, and he smiled anyway.

"You want to tear everything out and replace it? You want to cut away the rot?"

You want the Order to walk a straight and righteous path? Then so be it.

For the Audin he remembered, Enkrid could have danced a war dance.

Just as Audin had not stood by and let his own death come quietly, bursting out in sacred light instead, Enkrid could do the same.

"So tell me."

Audin still wore that smile. The lips holding it parted.

"Please punish those who carry a corrupted divinity. Whether Holy Knight, Holy Warrior, or Priest, if any walk the wrong path, please punish them. Do not let people be threatened with the word heretic. Let those who truly believe find peace in their hearts. Let the Order become one that helps the poor and the wretched."

That was probably what Audin truly wanted.

He paused for a moment, then opened his mouth again.

"Please disregard everything I just said. And please, achieve your dream, the way you, my brother commander, want to achieve it. That is what I truly wish for."

Audin did not pass off his duties or responsibilities to anyone else. He closed his eyes.

And then.

A flicker.

He opened them again. He seemed to have unfinished business.

"Oh, please tell the Barbarian brother and the others that if we meet in heaven someday, I will see to their education personally."

If this was a last testament, it was a rather amusing one.

"I'll tell them."

"Please tell Sister Teresa simply to keep walking in the direction her faith points."

"I will."

"When Sister Dunbakel returns, please don't scold her too much about washing. Honestly, she doesn't smell that bad, does she?"

"She does smell a bit stale."

"Please don't let the Shepherd brother use his talent to put others down. It won't do him any good either."

Just listening to him, you could tell how much Audin thought about the people around him.

Enkrid quietly waited for the death of the man who had been his teacher, his squadmate, and the heart of his knight order.

The fight to honor him would probably be a rough one.

He would burn the entire Order to the ground if that was what it took to see Audin's wishes fulfilled.

That was also his own way of reaching his dream.

When Audin died, he would declare it aloud right here, and in the end he would show it through his actions.

So he waited.

"It's a nice day."

"It's autumn."

"When winter comes, please steal Rem's insulated leather once and hide it somewhere. I think it would be funny."

"That's a bit much for a prank."

Rem had a near-pathological hatred of the cold.

If someone suggested a mountain crossing in the dead of winter, he would probably reach for his axe first.

"Brother Ragna will probably never manage to find his way properly. Not in his whole life."

"You should wish for things worth wishing for."

Audin was still on his knees, both of them on the ground, his hands clasped together.

Was this really the end?

He began to pray, a silent prayer, murmured only in his heart.

Perhaps he was asking his Lord Father to come and meet him.

After the short prayer, Audin spoke.

"It hurts."

"Of course it does."

Enkrid stayed at his side until the very end.

"Huh."

Audin exhaled. Enkrid blinked a few times.

But for someone on the brink of death, he had been talking quite a lot.

Was that an impious thought?

To think such a thing as his teacher and companion lay dying?

Still. It was a bit excessive.

Sinar stepped closer in the meantime. "Isn't he doing a little too well?"

Everyone had been standing there staring.

The sight of Audin dying and Enkrid watching over him had looked so wrenching, and Enkrid's back had said everything that needed saying.

He had given off the kind of air that made clear he would not forgive anyone who interrupted, whoever they were.

Even Shilma, who was clearly half out of her mind, had not dared say another word.

And yet.

"Mm."

Audin raised a hand and wiped the corner of his eye. The bloody tears had been flowing, but they had stopped now.

His whole body ached and throbbed, but he did not feel like he was about to die. The trembling in his hands had stopped too.

More than anything, the backlash from unleashing his sacred light had drained all strength from his body, but a little had come back.

He could not burst out with sacred light like before, not right away, but he did not feel like he was dying either.

He squeezed his hand open and closed a few times to be sure. His body seemed to be recovering gradually, likely because the God of Regeneration still had enough room to work.

It would not be on the level of Frog regrowing limbs, but the wounds she had taken now should heal well enough.

"Mm."

Audin let out another small groan.

Why was he alive? There had to be a reason. When he broke the Prohibition Seal, he had been ready to die.

He had placed the seal on himself, but it had been there so long that, if he had truly meant to undo it, he should have peeled it away carefully, layer by layer, the way you would strip off thin cloth.

Tearing it off by force naturally affected what was contained inside. The backlash from that should not have killed him, but at least half his bodily functions should have been wrecked.

"Huh."

Audin drew in a deep breath and let it out.

It was a little uncomfortable, but his breathing was fine, his lungs were intact.

His stomach ached, but there was no sensation of his sphincter giving way, no feeling like he was about to lose control of himself.

In other words, everything was fine.

Was anything different from before? Audin naturally reached for his waist, and there was the answer.

The Artificial Sacred Object.

The item Enkrid had brought from the west.

All this time, Audin had poured everything he had into trying to purge the curse bound to it.

There was only one way to do it.

Transfer a portion of the curse into his own body and burn it away.

The process had meant enduring pain like a hot iron pressed against skin, but he had no way to send the thing back to the Order either, so Audin had treated it as penance and borne all of it himself.

In the course of erasing the curse from the Artificial Sacred Object, a portion of his own divine nature had naturally seeped into it.

When he had unleashed his divine power just now, this Sacred Object had absorbed part of the burden that would otherwise have fallen on his body.

It was not a large effect.

Only barely enough to say it helped a little, but that had been enough. Audin's solid frame could easily absorb the remaining burden on its own.

Coincidence, or something inevitable?

"Whatever you bestow shall return to you. Fortune comes back from where it began."

Borrowing the words of the goddess of fortune, that was what it amounted to. Audin felt deeply embarrassed. He had expected to die, and he was far too intact.

He felt the gaze that had started in Enkrid's blue eyes now turning toward his face.

"Ahem."

Audin cleared his throat.

The gaze did not waver.

He supposed he owed a proper explanation.

"Well, the matters of the Order, I will handle them myself."

Enkrid kept looking at him.

"There is also no need to delay Rem's and everyone else's education."

"Ah. So you lived."

Enkrid said it with a flat expression.

Audin smiled sheepishly. He was embarrassed, so he had to smile at least.

Enkrid stared at him for a moment, then nodded. Honestly, he was just glad Audin was alive.

It could be called a farce, but he was so glad he could still say things like this.

"Don't go beating everyone in the Order to death."

From what Enkrid had seen, the sacred light Audin had just released would probably cave in the skull of any average Priest with barely a tap.

"I wouldn't dream of it."

"Brother Alma!"

Only then did Shilma cry out. The clock that had been forcibly stopped by one act of farce began turning again.

Alma rolled his eyes for a moment, then seemed to make up his mind. He raised his hammer high.

"All of this is for the glory of the Order."

He had, some time ago, given each of his two disciples a ring to keep on their person.

Those rings stood in opposition to the divine, things made and shaped by a demon.

Was there a reason to secretly smuggle items obtained in the Cursed Ground and press them on two disciples? There was.

The rings the two disciples wore could instantly drain a person's life force and, on that basis, transfer power to the other ring.

Through this, Alma could momentarily exceed his own limits.

There had been an incident some time back where the two disciples went missing, and it had been for the same reason then too.

It was a method of borrowing strength.

Why go this far? It was not because Alma had looked at the limits of his own talent and despaired. He had simply chosen this because it was easy.

That was how Alma had lived. He had always taken the easiest and most comfortable path.

He had lived as the direct opposite of everything that told a person to seek hardship. And because of it, his divine nature had quietly lost its light.

That was why, though he was a Holy Warrior of junior-knight caliber, he was out here handling this kind of errand.

"What?"

"Huh?"

The two disciples let out a single syllable each, then screamed.

A scream filled with horrible pain.

Enkrid pulled his gaze from Audin and looked at Alma.

Even at a glance, you could see something with a demon's power in it. This was not the first time he had seen something like this. There was nothing to be shaken by.

He had already seen something similar from Count Molsen. So for a moment he had a thought.

Was playing around with demons fashionable these days?

Too casual a thought? It could not be helped.

Compared to what he had seen of demon power before, what this opponent was showing was rather thin.

The two disciples of Holy Warrior Alma shriveled and dried, becoming like dry firewood.

The light left their eyes and they crumpled to the floor.

Their screams were their final words.

With the fallen two behind him, Alma opened his mouth. He did not even spare a glance at his dead disciples.

He was someone who thought only of himself.

"Can you take a knight's power in your tired state?"

The light he radiated was genuinely murky, dim, with dark granules drifting through it like specks suspended in clouded water.

The price for pledging his soul to a demon, no doubt.

Whatever means he had used to drain the life force of those two, the result was this.

Enkrid knew clearly that even tired and wounded as he was, he would not lose to something like this imitation knight.

Above all, Sinar was still in fine shape.

Overdier was the one who would be a problem if he got in the way.

"A lamentable thing."

He was shaking his head.

And he did not stop there.

"Fall back."

He added one more word.

Enkrid had thought the command was for Alma, but it was not.

Bert, the Inquisitor, responded to it. He stepped aside and away, as if fleeing.

Shilma already knew Alma's secret, so she was not surprised.

She believed that even demon power, if used for the right ends, was the correct path.

"You foolish things."

When Overdier spoke, his tone was noticeably different from before.

The polite manner of speech was gone, replaced by something a little more casual.

He picked up his two rods. The direction was clear, the opposite of before. Enkrid watched quietly, then added a word. At this moment, he simply could not hold it back.

"Hey. Molsen already did that trick."

The imitation-knight act was something he had already been through. Naturally, Holy Warrior Alma would not have known who Count Molsen was.

"What are you babbling about!"

Alma roared.

He understood the feeling. When someone suddenly felt that kind of omnipotence, they probably felt like they could do anything.

Just the feeling. Only the feeling.

The century-old man who had taken hits from Audin and still stood upright raised his rods.

"You should have stayed a martyr."

It was a bitter thing to say.

To put the conclusion of the whole affair plainly: the one called Alma had his head caved in with two rod strikes.

Shilma quickly tried to conceal herself with a divine incantation, but Sinar's vital-energy blade took off her leg.

"Thank you, young elf."

The century-old man, his tone now changed, offered his thanks on seeing it.

"I am four hundred and forty-eight years old. Young human."

Sinar delivered that answer.

And that was it. The situation was resolved.

"Overdier."

The only one left was the man called Bert.

"I believe we need to talk."

The century-old man, who had seemed briefly startled by Sinar's age, spoke. He was wiping Alma's blood and matter from his rods on Alma's battle-priest vestments as he said it.

Enkrid looked at the old man who, though not quite an enemy, had been ready to drag him and everyone else down if things had gone differently.

Drip.

Rain began to fall.

The atmosphere around Holy Knight Overdier shifted entirely.

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