WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 590: Six Guests

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"Cross Guard has four inns, and this one is the cleanest."

Ruagarne nodded. Frog's sense of smell was dull, so the place made little difference to her.

Enkrid, despite his sharper senses, found it tolerable enough. He had spent days wandering mountains soaked in Magic Beast blood before. Compared to that, this was no palace, but it was close enough to a manor. Not that he was calling it good.

Still, he had no desire to make the trek to the actual manor the administrator kept mentioning.

"Give us your best room."

Snake Eyes pressed a few Krona into the innkeeper's hand and said it flatly.

The ground floor doubled as a pub and was loud with it. When the group walked in, three or four of the men hunched over grease-filmed tables glanced back. Not a clear eye among them, bloodshot, glazed, the look of people who had been drinking or chasing something harder. One look was enough. They turned back to what they were doing.

It was not even late evening, the sun had not fully set, and people were already playing cards in every corner.

Six tables filled the ground floor. Three had card games going. Two had dice.

Enkrid noticed the one gaze that had not moved on.

The last table. A dagger was stuck into the wood at an angle, point down like a spike, and behind it sat a one-eyed man staring at Enkrid without blinking.

Most people who lost an eye covered the socket with a patch. This one left his scar bare for the world to see. He had been cut and gouged in too many places to count, and none of them had healed clean.

The man sitting right beside him leaned in and whispered something. The voice was too low to catch. Only a few words reached Enkrid. Sleep. Night. Guest.

"The Cursed Ground Holy Sect comes out after dark and takes people. Kidnappings. It has everyone on edge."

The boy working the inn could not have been older than ten. He had gone up to turn down the rooms, and Snake Eyes filled the silence.

Enkrid nodded and ordered a rum. He liked milk and tea well enough, but asking for either here seemed like a good way to get something undrinkable. From where he stood, he watched the owner behind the bar pour an amber liquid into a tin cup.

That cup does not look clean either.

He thought it, then took the cup and tasted it anyway.

He was not much of a drinker, but this was something else. Cheap was one thing. This had been watered down.

"What a cheerful city," Ruagarne said, scanning the room.

She did not mean it. The mood was rough and hard and gray, drained of anything like hope, and that feeling hung over the whole city like bad weather.

"Would you reconsider the manor, even now?"

Snake Eyes asked it with the careful tone of someone who respected his employer's wishes, but Enkrid shook his head.

"We are fine here."

He needed to ask around about the missing guild members. Staying at the inn put him closer to that than shuttling back and forth from a manor would.

If you wanted to catch a ghoul, you walked the dark with raw meat dripping blood. If you wanted to find what lurked in a beast's den, you went inside.

Besides, was there anything in this city that could actually threaten him? He doubted it. His gut said no.

"Then I wish you success against the Cursed Ground Holy Sect."

Snake Eyes said it under his breath and left. Enkrid turned it over in his mind and quickly worked out why he thought of those eyes as a snake's, they looked like the Boatman's eyes, difficult to read, like a puppet with nothing behind the face.

Though compared to the Boatman's eyes, they were practically warm.

After Snake Eyes left, the young boy brought food. A handful of mealy apples, the inn's eternal stew kept simmering in the corner, and roasted pork. Enkrid did not touch the stew. He worked through a few apples and most of the meat, even though the pork carried a heavy gamey smell that made it hard going.

He was not Ragna. He did not have the luxury of being picky.

He ate what he could and went upstairs. The room was cleaner than expected. No bed, just several layers of blanket laid out as a sleeping mat. The inn was three stories, and their room sat at the far end of the third floor.

It smelled a bit, but as long as fleas did not come with it, a rolled blanket still beat a cloak on bare ground.

"Can you bring water for washing? A tub would be even better."

"We have a tub," the boy answered quickly.

Enkrid flicked a silver coin spinning through the air. The boy caught it with both hands.

"Oh."

He went a little wide-eyed. That was not a small amount of Krona. The boy glanced toward the stairs, then tucked the coin into his trousers and said, "You must be rich."

He served them carefully after that, and meant every bit of it. They washed, settled in, and that was the first night in the city.

Cross Guard had seen almost no travelers or merchants lately. The place had already been scraping by before the Cult worked its way in and made things worse.

Maybe that was why the rooms on either side were silent. The inn had more than ten rooms, and the third floor felt like it belonged entirely to their group.

"Those eyes really bothered me," Ruagarne said.

Enkrid nodded.

She took a few sips of the inn's water, then made a face. Frog could live in a swamp without washing and not mind it, but the one thing they cared about was drinking water. They liked it clean. Murky water was an actual offense to them.

"Nothing right about this place," Ruagarne muttered.

The sleeping situation and the food were fine by her. This was about the water.

Border Guard sat near the Pen-Hanil River, so clean water was never scarce there. Up in the mountains there were clear pools of it too. Cross Guard had no shortage of the same conditions. That the water here was like this meant no one was managing it properly. The gap between the two cities was plain.

Was it the loss in the war? Or the lord's incompetence?

Both, probably.

Enkrid thought it over and nodded to himself.

"I expect so."

They traded a few more words that went nowhere, and then he closed his eyes.

Sleep came, and with it the Boatman. It felt like Enkrid had been pulled somewhere in a hurry, and that was exactly what had happened.

The Boatman spoke without preamble, not even bothering to open his mouth, transmitting his meaning through Will alone.

"You dare compare those eyes to mine?"

Today's Boatman had a different register. Light. Almost breezy.

What a moody one.

He led with an accusation. The meaning was easy enough to guess. Enkrid had compared Snake Eyes to the Boatman earlier, and the Boatman had apparently been listening to thoughts Enkrid had kept to himself.

Still, was that really urgent enough to drag him here over?

"I simply noticed a similarity," Enkrid said, and shrugged.

"How dare you."

So comparing them at all was the offense, regardless of what was said.

The Boatman snorted and passed along the same message as the night before, same content, different tone.

"You can still turn back. It is not too late."

Enkrid started with the same question as yesterday.

"Is something ominous coming?"

The Boatman opened his mouth, then shut it. Enkrid could not read emotion from him, so it was only a guess, but the Boatman's whole bearing said he had no interest in speaking to this person.

"I am not mocking you," Enkrid said.

"Ha. Mock me? You dare? What an absurd thing to say."

The Boatman laughed. He did not look like he was laughing. The sound was Will expressing intent, nothing more.

Enkrid noticed something in that. The way the Boatman transmitted meaning without speaking, it was not unlike how Will worked.

He had not expected that thought. Nothing would change right away because of it, but it was the kind of luck that arrived without being called, like finding a silver coin on the road.

He sat with it a moment, turning it over, then said, "Transmitting meaning through Will. It is similar to how Will itself is wielded."

The Boatman gave a sharp sound through his nose. This time he made a full show of speaking, mouth and all, and the meaning came through clearly.

"Did I not tell you from the beginning? That you would not be able to recall our conversations clearly. Why do you think that is? Because everything we share here is exchanged through Will alone."

Enkrid did remember those conversations. Why that was, he could not have said even after hours of thought. And it probably did not matter much.

"Conversing through Will. Pouring Will into it. Smooth and natural."

He was more interested in what he had just understood. He turned it over quietly.

The Boatman had laughed and gotten angry during their meetings. Those had been demonstrations of his Will. As Enkrid began to murmur to himself, the Boatman stopped reacting entirely and simply watched him for a while.

After that silence, the Boatman passed along his meaning once more.

"...I told you it is not too late. Do not forget that."

And with those words, the Boatman began to dissolve like mist.

What is this? This has not happened before.

Enkrid caught a sharp, acrid smell.

Had he ever smelled anything while he was with the Boatman? No.

So this was not the vision reacting. His body was.

Something was happening. This was not a dream.

"Go," the Boatman said.

The realization and the word arrived at the same moment. Enkrid's eyes snapped open.

The smell was in the room. Tracing it took no effort. The brazier, the one loaded with heated stones and charcoal to keep the cold out, had something burning inside it. Ordinary people would have dropped into a sleep lasting two days from the fumes alone. A sleeping incense.

Enkrid got up and opened the window. Ruagarne was already awake. He pointed at the brazier, and she understood immediately.

"Such a thoughtful gesture, making sure we sleep well."

Once she decided this was the Cult's doing, she puffed her cheeks out a few times. It was something she did when she was steeling herself, and she was doing it now.

Walking into the city and pulling this on the first night? Had to be the Cult. Ruagarne held her breath and moved toward the window.

Enkrid did not assume Cultists yet. Nothing was certain.

More than that, he reflexively took stock of his own body.

Poison mixed in with it?

He leaned his head out and breathed the cold night air. No. He had not drawn in much of the incense in the first place.

Even for Enkrid, breathing enough of that would have dragged him under. He felt nothing of the sort. His senses had caught the smell the moment it reached him and pulled him back before it could take hold.

Jaxon had said it once. In any city you do not know, always lead with your nose.

He had been right.

Your senses are your best warning. He had said that too.

Enkrid filled his lungs with night air.

Clear.

His fingers responded cleanly. No fog in his head.

He kept the window open and let the room breathe. That was when he felt them.

Hearing, layered with the other senses, and then the Gate of the Sixth Sense opening wide.

With sound as the base and every edge of his perception sharpened, he mapped them out, their hiding spots, their numbers, close enough.

Two on the roof. Two in each room on either side.

Six in total.

Any of them dangerous? Judging by how much trace they were leaking, no. That was what he felt.

Enkrid raised a hand, palm facing down, pressed his thumb to his own chest, raised his index finger toward the ceiling, then pointed at Ruagarne.

The room was his. The roof was hers.

Ruagarne did not nod. She simply set her hand on the windowsill.

No need to count breaths or time it out. The gap between them and whoever was waiting outside was too wide for ceremony.

Frog hooked a foot on the sill and vaulted up without a sound. Enkrid moved to the door and opened it.

Creak.

The rusted hinges complained. Long enough for one breath, and then the doors on either side of the hall swung open.

The man who came out of the left room stepped from deep shadow into the lamplight and said, "Could have just slept quietly. Making this harder than it needs to be."

The scar on his face, the shape of him, he had been downstairs in the pub.

The one-eyed man who had left his wound uncovered. The people who had been gambling beside him were the same ones Enkrid had seen earlier that evening.

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