WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

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A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 580

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"If you do this, someone who can look after that Holy Maiden child will come looking for you. When that happens, just tell them you are asking on behalf of this Audin Pumray."

She was a child who had awakened divine power. Left as she was, she would spend her whole life running from the Sect.

Her gifts were exceptional enough that she would not be caught easily, but it was better to hide her well than to have her hunted forever.

On top of that, she would need to learn how to handle the divine power she had awakened before she passed out.

Audin knew exactly the right person for this kind of work.

"And who would that be?"

He had mentioned a father, but no such person was supposed to exist. Curious, Enkrid asked, and Audin answered.

"My foster father, who the world believes is dead."

The man who raised Audin was a great figure who had once risen to become Pope of the War God's church, and someone said to glimpse the future even with eyes that could not see far ahead.

Audin understood his foster father's true nature well.

His eyesight was poor enough that he could only make out things at close range, but he was not blind.

He had a habit, though, of going around telling people he was.

His reasoning was that people who did not know the truth would lower their guard around him, and that gave him far more openings to work with.

His poor vision reportedly came from reading too many books by candlelight as a child.

He had faked his own death by letting himself be stoned, convicted as a heretic.

But the place where he took those stones was Legion, the city where he had been born and raised. It was the city his own father had been born and raised in as well.

"Have you found the will to lift God's shield?"

He thought he could almost hear his father's voice.

His father was almost certainly still alive and well.

After faking his death, he would be living comfortably, sustaining himself on the foresight and divine power that let him glimpse what lay ahead.

Taking in children the Sect had cast aside, sheltering fugitives branded as heretics, living that way.

He, Audin's foster father, was surely still living by his love of God and the teachings of the Lord Father.

He was the Ragged Holy Man himself, wandering the continent under that name, the one they also called the abandoned Holy Man.

'I am a little late, Father.'

Audin spoke to him silently.

He would ask forgiveness when they met again one day. Even then, his father would not scold him. He would not say that Audin had taken too long.

That was the kind of man he was.

Only this.

"Come. I am glad to see you again."

That was all he would say.

Whatever had happened, Audin had now broken his own chains with his own hands and stepped out of the prison of delusion.

Fildin's apparition hovered to one side, eyes narrowed at him. Then those narrowed eyes slowly curved into something soft.

Fildin smiled.

"Why didn't you do this sooner? Why would I hold anything against you? That's not it at all. Can I ask just one thing? Please don't make another child like me. You can do that, can't you."

Was this truly Fildin speaking, or only a vision conjured by his own ravaged mind?

Or perhaps a revelation from God himself.

Honestly, it did not matter. From now on, he intended to act as his heart led him, just as Enkrid, his captain, did.

"I swear it."

Audin answered the apparition.

It was the first time he had spoken to it since it had appeared, but even amid the bone-deep exhaustion of a body fully spent, the will carried in those words was enough. A thread of sacred light slipped free and lit his body from within.

Alone in the dark, he became his own source of light.

That light was as though God itself was cheering him on.

Will became divine power, and divine power became light.

Enkrid thought it was a genuinely good thing to see.

* * *

Either way, the Holy Maiden child would stay with Enkrid for now.

Overdier had said the revelation he received made no mention of the child.

Put differently, keeping her with them would make her harder to protect.

Audin barely rested before departing with Overdier.

Enkrid turned with the Holy Maiden in his arms.

"That child will need more sleep before she wakes."

Just as Audin had said, the girl showed no sign of stirring.

"Then I will find the Ragged Holy Man and send word to Border Guard."

Bert left as well.

The rest of them made their way back to the city. Doitchi Fullman naturally turned over his own space to them.

Enkrid soaked in a hot bath and politely declined the maidservant's offer to wash his back.

"No, I really can do it-I want to do it, I'm perfectly able."

The maidservant hesitated several times before Sinar stepped in and pushed her aside.

"It is fine. That is my task."

"Ah, Sinar, is it really true you are over four hundred years old? Your age..."

Enkrid said it and the elf smiled. That rare smile of hers, though this time strangely only her mouth moved. There was not a trace of warmth in her eyes.

Enkrid recalled something he had heard once, that asking a lady her age was close to a sin.

When had he heard that.

He had picked it up while moving between parties escorting noble ladies.

"You do not even understand an elf's idea of a joke."

"That was a joke?"

"Obviously."

"Then how old are you actually this year?"

If four hundred and forty-eight was not the joke, then even accounting for the difference in lifespan between elves and humans, calling her grandmother would not be entirely unfair.

"An older woman is always captivating."

Sinar said it instead of answering and turned away.

The interesting thing was that as she said it, the spirit in her words seemed to take the shape of Will.

Putting Will into the claim that older women were captivating.

'Remarkable talent.'

Whatever the case, she really was a remarkable elf.

Age aside, the sheer confidence in the way she spoke was genuinely captivating on its own.

Enkrid turned that over in his mind as he gave himself to the hot water.

He heard that the Holy Maiden child had been bathed by a group of maidservants.

He washed and sat down at the table. Warm broth was waiting, and pork that had been cooked in a hurry but came out tender and perfectly done.

"Melts in your mouth."

Enkrid said it and the attendant carried the words to the cook. In this city, Enkrid's name carried nearly as much weight as it did in Border Guard.

"It is an honor to serve you."

A cook in a clean white hat and matching white clothes, with a strip of purple cloth tied at the front, stepped out briefly to say it. The purple cloth meant his skill had been recognized by the Culinary Guild.

In other words, he was excellent at his craft.

Sinar beside him made her meal from greens and fruit, though even what she ate had been elevated with dressing, finely crushed almonds, cashews, and the like.

Even Sinar gave a nod of approval, which said enough.

Deutsch had assigned them the best room among the guest quarters.

They slept well and were now on the way back.

"Come again."

Loyal to the bone, Doitchi Fullman said it, and Enkrid answered.

"If trouble comes, send word to Border Guard. Whatever I can do, I will."

"I will do that."

Deutsch did not refuse.

The Iron Wall Knight himself was saying he owed a debt. Honestly, that alone had been more than enough for Deutsch.

They boarded the carriage Deutsch had arranged in the city.

"We are departing."

The unconscious Holy Maiden child, Sinar, and Enkrid settled into the carriage.

The carriage moved slowly along the road.

And when they passed a field thick with marigolds, the flowers of the Holy Mother in full yellow bloom, the Holy Maiden woke.

* * *

Overdier had been born the son of a lord who owned an orchard, and between then and where he stood now, he had seen a great many people.

Among them were a few he found personally remarkable regardless of whether they were good or evil, and even by that measure, Enkrid was a kind of person he had never encountered before.

Someone who stays composed in the face of threats and blades? Yes. He had seen quite a few.

But a man soaked in this degree of madness was a first.

Mad Knight Brigade, they called it, and the name fit without a single exaggeration.

'He does not retreat.'

It felt like staring at an Iron Wall that would not break no matter what came.

Had he himself held back?

No.

And still the man across from him had no intention of stepping away. Not a single crack in the will he had shown.

No one would look at that and not be shaken.

Death, defeat, Despair, ruin.

It was as though none of those things existed anywhere in his mind.

"Seems like a remarkable man, that brother of yours."

The words came out on their own. That was his honest feeling. If he were being even more honest, he could not quite figure out what kind of person Enkrid was.

That he was someone who kept moving forward, he could see.

Once a knight reached that rank, they tended to divide into those who kept advancing and those who stayed where they were. That much was something any knight who had built a certain level of skill acknowledged.

Some saw becoming a knight as the end point. Even if they had overcome the limits of talent, they had not overcome the limits of heart.

Others kept pressing forward even after reaching the rank of knight.

The one called Enkrid was plainly the latter.

In terms of raw skill alone, the man Audin walking beside him now was probably twice as capable.

And as for talent, nothing about Enkrid stood out as particularly exceptional or remarkable.

Yet the impression he left was the strongest of all.

The flame of Will that burned in those two blue eyes was the kind you could never forget once you had seen it.

"If you are talking about my captain, then yes. That is right."

Audin said, walking alongside him.

It was a quiet forest path. Both were making their way out along the mountain's edge at a brisk pace.

Overdier was not in perfect shape either, but walking this much was nothing to him, and Audin hardly needed mention.

They walked through a stretch where autumn leaves had fallen across the ground, the two of them plodding along, and Overdier opened his mouth.

"Will you return someday?"

He was honestly feeling a hunger for talent after seeing Audin's Pillars of Light. If he could manage it, he would have kept him close and raised him as a successor.

He would need to confirm a few things about his character first, of course.

But Audin nodded as though the answer were obvious.

"Yes. I will return."

To Audin, it was obvious. His intentions and will both pointed that way, so the answer came without a second thought.

Overdier felt the pull of desire, but he knew that whatever he said would not reach Audin.

Should he find a way to keep him here even by deception? That would not be easy, and beyond that, he did not want to. Ordinarily he would not have minded the means, but.

'I do not want to stand on the opposite side.'

He had no wish to become Enkrid's enemy.

The saying went that the wisest move with a madman was to avoid him altogether, but the feeling was there. Doing the Sect's work, there would come a day when their paths crossed again.

Standing against that madness-soaked man?

No.

He had beaten Enkrid, and he was confident he could subdue him any time, and even so, Overdier meant it genuinely.

That brilliant blue Will burned so bright. Had Enkrid been raised within the Sect's embrace, Overdier would surely have taken him as a disciple and given him everything.

That was a genuinely bitter loss.

If he could rein in that madness and bring it under his wing?

'Oh, now that would be something.'

But it would be no easy task.

'Any chance he might consider joining the Sect?'

He let that idle thought drift through him. If the chance came, he would not mind finding some way to fold Enkrid into the Sect.

'Through marriage?'

The War Sect and the Sect of Abundance both tended to encourage matrimony.

What if he paired him with a priestess of striking looks?

The thought brought Sinar's face to mind. Otherworldly beauty, even among elves she was strikingly extraordinary.

The ones they called sacred women were not ones to neglect the cultivation of themselves, but even so, it seemed like it would not be easy.

The conclusion, whichever way he came at it, was that pulling Enkrid to this side easily was not going to happen.

'That said, it does not mean there is no way.'

Overdier was sharper by far than the matchmakers sent by the Empire or the envoys from the south. The caliber was simply different.

The answer he had quietly arrived at in his own mind right now proved it.

'I could just stand on their side.'

A simple truth. If the other side could not be drawn in, he could walk over to where they were.

Then they would be on the same side, standing on the same ground.

Of course, he would only do that if Enkrid's Will was clear and his intentions were right.

Whether that was the case or not, the bear-like man walking with him now would tell him.

This man here would show him what kind of person Enkrid was, and where his intentions and Will truly lay.

Overdier nodded slowly at that.

"Good."

"Good how? If you have been thinking something underhanded, you ought to put it away. Brother. That sort of thing at your age, people call it shameless."

"Ha, nothing like that. Let us get moving."

No real malice in what Audin said. Overdier caught that and simply smiled.

Audin honestly did not particularly like this Holy Knight, but he respected the man's intentions.

Had he not shown the Will to purge the Sect even knowing his life might not last long enough and that his honor might not survive it?

It went without saying, but Audin had believed there were people like this inside the Sect, and Overdier was something like a living symbol of that belief.

Just as Overdier saw Enkrid through Audin, Audin did the same in reverse.

Audin looked at Overdier searching for whatever purity remained in the Sect.

If the man only wanted to become another head of the Sect, Audin was ready to cave his skull in at any time.

Fortunately, it never came to the two of them spitting blood at each other.

The two of them focused on what Overdier called the revelation, their plan, and succeeded at it without much difficulty.

The continent would come to call it the Sect's reformation, though that was a story for much later.

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