WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 579: Not a Revelation, a Plan

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Pitterpat. Pitterpat.

Rain began falling without warning, and yet no one suggested stepping inside to talk somewhere dry.

Dark clouds swallowed the moon, and the visibility around them dropped fast.

Until moments ago the area had been blazing with sacred light and radiance, so the sudden dark felt even deeper by contrast.

No one moved to relight sacred light just to see a little better.

No one had the margin for it.

In that quiet, the Holy Knight opened his mouth.

"It must have been around that time."

Falling rain wet the old Holy Knight's hair and eyebrows.

His silver eyes drifted toward the empty air, toward the rain-streaked sky, as if reaching back through memory.

Where sacred light had once erased the sunset, rain now took over that role. Darkness was creeping in. A little longer and the black would be total, the kind that wrapped around everything and squeezed out the last of the light.

As the dark seeped in, the Holy Knight's softly glowing eyes gave the whole scene an eerie quality.

"It was the moment I felt I had finally become complete as a warrior. I looked back, and what I saw on the apple tree I had tended my whole life was not apples, it was fruit swollen with poison. Can you imagine how this old man felt then? Can you even guess?"

When Enkrid first saw him, Overdier had looked middle-aged, but something had shifted. He looked exactly as old as his words sounded.

Talking about the past added years to him. Not that his face changed dramatically.

Strange thing, that, how much a person's apparent age could shift from tone and bearing alone.

The rain thickened, bit by bit. It was not yet the season for snow, but the drops were cold enough to make themselves felt.

"At that moment, this old servant knew he could not uproot the apple tree. He felt how small and worthless his own strength truly was."

Coming from a Holy Knight, and the one who had just beaten him, at that, those words seemed an odd thing to say.

Enkrid watched him and thought as much.

Overdier did not stop.

He went on, something about deciding to wander the continent after that, about being unable to tell well-ripened fruit from poisoned fruit and therefore having no real choice. But there were a few blind spots in what he said.

At least, that was how Enkrid read it.

In other words, Overdier's regret did not sweep him along.

More than that, the way Overdier was presenting himself felt slightly off. When Enkrid tried to place it, he landed on Krais, the way Krais acted when angling to pry some Krona out of someone.

The words were not lies, exactly. Just a little short on sincerity.

Either way, the blind spots were there because of it.

For instance.

"Demon Creatures and Magic Beasts pour endlessly across the continent, and someone must stand against them. This old servant had no choice but to step forward."

That kind of line caught in his throat.

Originally, Holy Knight Overdier had held a section of the Cursed Ground as a member of the Holy State. If he abandoned that post to go wandering, he had left his position empty. The excuse sounded fine enough. But if you looked at the bare facts, he had dumped his assigned sector on some new Holy Knight and bolted.

"I set out on a pilgrimage to purify the continent."

Pilgrimage for continental purification was a nice way to put it. What he had actually done was drift wherever he pleased.

Enkrid saw no reason to point that out.

Nobody listening here would have missed the meaning. Pay enough attention and it all came through clearly; ignore it and it was just words.

Audin was steadying his breathing in silence. Sinar looked uninterested.

What Enkrid did not know was that Sinar had already decided she could take Overdier if it came to that.

Not that it seemed likely.

They had been trading blood moments ago, but both sides had let the hostility fall away.

No race read that kind of subtle shift better than elves.

Sinar's gut said the fight was over.

And honestly, neither side had been fighting with any great hatred to begin with.

One side moved according to values it had set for itself.

The other acted because it had decided this was necessary.

Enkrid was the first, and Overdier the second.

Swords and weapons had crossed. They had traded blows and taken hard hits. Through all of it, Enkrid had felt something in the way Overdier moved and held himself.

He had definitely been ready to put him in the ground if things turned sour.

But there had been no malice behind it.

"And so this old servant waited for a revelation."

Looking at everything up to this point, the words from one aged Holy Knight did not land with much weight.

Someone who claimed to be waiting for a revelation had still gone ahead and made Bert the Inquisitor his own man, with a Priest and Holy Warriors slotted in around him, no less.

The intent behind that was not easy to read at a glance, but that some intent existed was obvious, and what it implied was plain enough.

"And yet a revelation led me here so precisely."

This one was slippery as an eel.

The old Holy Knight kept talking with a smile. He had followed revelation until now, would continue to do so, and would burn the last flame of his life for the purification of the Order.

Not a single specific detail, all of it bundled up loose. Still, he had clearly not arrived here by accident.

Even bundled as it was, there were phrases mixed in that gave the shape of things.

The aged Holy Knight Overdier seemed to be traveling the continent, meeting people from the Order, and drawing them to his side one by one.

The reason? He had already said it, purification of the Order.

Hearing all of that, a thought crossed Enkrid's mind partway through.

This is less a revelation and more a plan.

What had just happened here would have unfolded much the same without him. Planting Bert inside the tracker team to measure the character of the Order's people, was that not exactly what this was?

When one turned out to be worthless, he had caved the man's skull in on the spot.

And he had acted similarly toward Enkrid.

He would not have killed him, probably. But the intent to cripple him had been fully there. That intent had since vanished, but still.

Did the man simply have a habit of sizing people up? Might be.

A person's rank or profession does not guarantee their character.

By the same logic, being poor does not make someone good, and being rich does not make someone evil.

Obvious enough, but plenty of people went through life forgetting it.

There was no reason to hold illusions about Overdier just because he was a Holy Knight.

That said, there was no need to fix him into a single shape either. Seeing one side of a person does not mean you know all of them.

What about the Holy Maiden?

He had not brought her up once.

Given his habits and the way he spoke, he had certainly had some plan involving her.

But right now it looked like he had cleanly given that up.

Then there was no need to poke at it.

One thing was certain, at least.

The will behind those words, purification of the Order, was clear and sharp.

Every time he said it, Overdier's eyes left no room for anything false to creep in.

In a way, his conviction looked a lot like Audin's.

The path they walked might differ somewhat.

The rain was unmistakably heavier now. The sound of it had changed, and being a knight did not make you immune to a downpour.

That went for Holy Knights too.

Enkrid pulled a strand of wet hair from his face and spoke.

"Why don't we get out of the rain first and talk?"

He kept his tone respectful. Hard to call the man an enemy at this point, and besides, had he not said he was over a hundred years old?

"I apologize, but I must go. A new revelation is waiting for me."

Reading between the lines: he had another plan and no time to spare.

"You must be very busy," Sinar said, and it was not a warm remark. The meaning was clear enough, something like: if you are that busy, why come all this way and cause this kind of mess?

She had not meant it as a real dig.

It just came out, because getting pushed back on the sword work had not felt great.

Overdier's expression stayed pleasant.

"I only live as revelation leads."

Which meant the Order's purification kept him fully occupied.

That was how Enkrid understood it.

Overdier seemed to mind his manners, because he kept addressing Sinar with consistent respect.

"With that said, may this old servant ask for help from you both?"

He asked, then, without waiting for an answer, laid out part of his plan. Under the guise of revelation, naturally.

"A revelation came to me that I cannot leave him alone."

That was how it started. Stripped down to its content, it amounted to this: he intended to kill an Archbishop, a high-ranking clergyman and master of divine magic.

He mentioned that the Archbishop's divine spells were a direct counter to his own, that the Archbishop commanded a Holy Knight Order of blinkered followers, and that killing every last one of them was not possible.

"That-that is quite a lot to just say out loud."

Bert, who had been listening while nervously watching the mood, went pale and muttered.

Overdier waved a hand to cut him off and finished what he had to say. The conclusion was that he was in the middle of planning an assassination.

"Revelation leads me."

Hearing it put that way, the assassination plan might as well be called an assassination revelation.

That framing seemed to suit him just fine.

"Captain, brother."

Before Enkrid could get a word in, Audin called to him.

"Might I take a short leave?"

Enkrid looked at the light that had risen from all over Audin's body. He also remembered something Audin had once said to him.

Something about trying to step out of the prison of delusion.

Then what had that light been?

The shackles that had held him?

Had Audin stepped out of the prison now?

Had he planted his feet in the world?

And if he had stepped out, what would be the first thing he did?

Stray thoughts. Enkrid gave a single nod.

"Go ahead."

"It will not be long, brother. So when you return, please pass a message to the barbarian brother and the rest."

"What message?"

"Tell them that when I return, I will be offering instruction, so they should prepare themselves. And tell them there is no longer any need to consider me an older brother by age."

So he meant to hold a spar where whoever won became the elder.

Enkrid understood and nodded.

"Sure."

The same answer in the same tone, said twice. Enkrid was unruffled. He had not predicted this, but he took it as it came.

Overdier found that genuinely surprising.

The Knight of the Iron Wall, that was what they called him. A man of uncommon capacity.

That was the thought that came to him.

"Walk with me, then. Brother Holy Knight of unknown contents."

Audin sometimes could not hold back what was in him and let it out.

That was actually a chronic condition shared by every member of the Madman Knights.

People ought to know when to hold their tongue.

Enkrid worried about that tendency sometimes.

Naturally, he himself had that quality less than the others.

The fact that he could not hold his tongue around that Alma fellow who had just died was a somewhat different matter.

That was something that truly had to be said. No containing it.

Count Molsen had already tried his hand at the experiment of creating knights, and that it had ended in a smashed face was something Alma needed to hear about.

Not that the man had understood a word of it.

"Quite an impression that title leaves. How is your body holding up?" Overdier asked.

He took that kind of remark without a flinch. If eating a few insults meant he could sweep the Order clean, he could stomach them for years.

"Walking will fix it. More to the point, are the places where you were hit all right? I worry you may have worn out your old and ailing body."

Audin had a longer aftertaste than expected, and each word scraped at something in Overdier.

Asking if someone was all right after you were the one who hit them was close to a provocation.

But the old Holy Knight, deep in his discipline, absorbed the remark without a crack.

"I am fine. This body is old, but walking still gives me no trouble."

That exchange had just wrapped up when it happened.

"Wuoh! Doitchi Fullman has arrived to fight!"

With a battle cry, Doitchi Fullman came charging in, leading ten of his soldiers.

Everyone had already sensed someone approaching through the sound of falling rain, so there was nothing startling about it. Only Bert gave a small flinch.

Ten-odd soldiers came running through the dark with no torches, hidden by sheets of rain that had swallowed the moonlight.

Sinar had her elf's eyes and picked them out easily. The others used their sharpened senses to read exactly where the group was and what state they were in.

Doitchi Fullman had none of that, so he had simply charged in blind.

Even with the rain thick enough to kill visibility, he had done it.

Because he could not stop wondering, what if his benefactor was in danger?

He knew his own strength was modest. But if one extra hand could flip a situation? If there was even a chance of that?

The answer might well be no. But that could never be a reason to stay back.

The will to help. That was all. Coming in sightless like this said everything about who Doitchi was, and everyone there could see it.

"I wish to offer my praise for that courage. Doitchi Fullman," Overdier said.

Enkrid followed.

"It's over. More than anything, I'd like to ask you for a hot bath, a meal, and somewhere to rest."

Doitchi had put his life on the line coming here, but that did not mean he wanted to die. So finding the situation already resolved came as a relief.

Reading the mood, it looked like things had ended on a decent note.

He could make out pieces of the scene through the dark, but honestly, not much was visible.

"Ah, yes, of course," Doitchi said.

He lowered his weapon once he had taken stock of the situation. At the same moment, Audin placed a hand on the shoulder of the spy Overdier had planted.

"Your name was Inquisitor Bert?"

"Pardon? Yes, that is correct."

Bert went tense. He knew very well that the hand on his shoulder could yank his head off at any moment.

And knowing Overdier as he did, the man might simply let it happen without lifting a finger to save him.

Killing a few people and burying them for the sake of purifying the Order would not even register as something to think twice about.

"Have you come across anyone recently who suffered a severe illness or serious injury and then recovered with unusual speed?"

An odd question to come out of nowhere, but gathering information while traveling the continent was in fact Bert's job. He let his eyes move a few times, thinking it over, then answered.

"Yes, I have heard of such cases."

"Could you follow the most recent rumor and find someone for me?"

"And who would that be?"

"Find someone who recovered suddenly from a serious illness, someone wealthy, and ask around about anyone who had a handful of gold coins taken from them. The trail will come from there. I do not know the name, but once you find the city where this person is suspected to be, go to the largest inn in that city and ask for Audin's father. If no one has been relieved of gold coins, walk the poor quarters. He is called the Ragged Holy Man, but he does not necessarily go around dressed in rags."

"...Pardon?"

Bert tilted his head, unsure what he had just heard.

Enkrid, who had been listening, was equally uncertain.

Had he just said father?

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