WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 598: Only Three Days

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The Evil Eye, the city, the people, the crime guild, all of it had been one great trap.

And the Apostle of the Cursed Ground Holy Sect who had laid that trap did not underestimate her target. Not even slightly.

'Would a knight really fall for something like an Evil Eye?'

Of course not. That was precisely why Apostle Anella had told no one her plan.

She could not let her opponent catch on to any of the arrangements she had made. For that reason, she had sent those she might call her subordinates straight into death's reach.

"Go. Show him what you can do. Do you really think he'll cut you down without even looking? If you drive a spear through his heart with telekinesis while he's in that state, what then? Even a knight isn't immortal."

"I will bring back his head without fail. I will bring it to the Demon God as an offering."

She sent a believer carrying an Evil Eye, knowing full well her target would never fall to it. Her prediction was correct.

When the Evil Eye died and the mental link snapped, her vision vanished with it.

The Apostle settled quietly onto the filthy ground, hands folded in a posture of prayer.

Those who knew Apostle Anella called her the Angel of Calamity. The reason? Her ability. She could sacrifice her own lifespan and Offerings to cast forbidden spells born from disaster. The spell she had prepared this time was Walking Fire.

Forbidden spells, by their nature, hungered for lifespan. She had devoted herself to studying spells that consumed lifespan in particular, that structure was what perfectly suited her own special ability.

When she first began her preparations, she estimated the spell would burn through half her remaining years.

Then she witnessed Enkrid's presence, felt it for herself, and changed her mind.

Especially when he tracked the trail of her gaze and threw a fork at it, how astonishing that had been.

It made her all the more regretful.

'What a waste. What a terrible waste.'

Why had such a talent taken the wrong path instead of standing beneath the Cursed Ground Holy Sect's banner?

There was no turning back now. She had told him time and again to come to their side, urged him again and again to seek the light, but he had refused. So all that remained was punishment.

For that end, had she not used an entire city as bait?

The bigger the bait, the better, so she had thrown a city.

And so the pitiful soul who should have walked with her in the light had taken it.

'Demon God.'

Like the Curse Apostle, she too possessed a special ability: the power to absorb the lifespan of others. With that stolen lifespan, she could cast spells that defied all reason.

That was what she did. She called down a calamity. She recited the spell, borrowing the Demon God's name.

She burned through every drop of lifespan she had gathered up to this moment. She had estimated half would be enough, nowhere near. She burned through the majority of her lifespan to complete the spell.

"Come forth, flame that coveted the sun."

Blood wept from her eyes. A shape of fire rose before her and took human form, larger than a person, smaller than a Giant. Churning flames consumed its entire body like fur. It had no face, no eyes, no nose, no mouth, no reason. This was merely a spell.

What it did have were legs. That was why this spell was called Walking Fire.

The fire walked. Toward Cross Guard.

* * *

Serenity. The chirping of birds. The harmony of winter flowers against a blue sky. All of it led Enkrid briefly into another world.

He dozed off. Not long, just a moment. A light nap swallowed by tranquility.

Then all at once, sleep fled him completely. His body responded to instinct before his mind caught up. It had been a dreamless rest, but his sixth sense suddenly fired.

A sharp, dizzying premonition stabbed at his heart. Why? What for? His gaze moved on its own.

Whoooosh.

Far in the distance, flames rose. Anyone could see they had been set deliberately.

'Why is it warm?'

Through the winter wind came a hot blast thick with dread.

He shot to his feet, scanning his surroundings.

Far away, someone with their entire body on fire ran screaming.

"Aaaaah!"

Fire. More precisely, a monster made of fire. Flames that formed its body from shoulder to crown surged upward into the air, and its burning feet hung just above the ground, walking as though treading on nothing.

Watching it, it looked weightless. But when he saw what it had done, the weight of it hit him like a blow.

It had no words. Fire cannot speak.

It only made fire.

"What is this."

Delma, who had been carrying water, came face to face with the blaze. The child had terrible luck.

A few fragments of conversation from before the nap flickered through Enkrid's mind.

Delma would inherit the inn. If the child lived, that was how it would go, but left as things were, the child would burn to death.

Whoooosh.

Winter flowers burned to ash. Trees caught fire. A road of flame stretched out behind the creature.

The moment Enkrid fixed his eyes on the fire monster was where it all began. Whoooooosh, the blaze leapt to everything around him.

Flames painted his face red, and the heat pressed down on his whole body.

Enkrid drew his sword and charged.

He thrust his foot forward and swung, cutting at the creature with Will loaded into the blade.

Every motion happened in a single breath, without waste.

Hwang!

'No sensation.'

Paching.

At the same moment, a strange sound rang in Enkrid's ears, starting from the sword in his hand. Blue light shattered and scattered across the blade like breaking glass.

'That was the spell Esther put on it.'

The magic had broken apart. The Walking Fire reached out its hand. Enkrid reflexively extended Spark and drove it through the creature's arm.

He had spun in place, and the rotation drew a ring of wind around his body.

Hwak!

Spark punched through the arm cleanly, but that was all.

The hand the Walking Fire had stretched out had already finished what it was meant to do. Enkrid had not been fast enough to stop it.

A thread of flame shot out and reached Delma.

Puwaaaaang!

Fire erupted in a pillar. Delma could not even scream.

The creature had only reached out its hand, and the flames swallowed Delma faster than an arrow. Instead of a scream, the smell of burning flesh filled the air. The other threads of flame that had stretched out like wire also erupted into rising pillars a moment later.

"Hah!"

Enkrid recalled Spark and raised his hardest-iron longsword, bringing it down with a shout. The blade carved through the creature's arm. The severed arm flew sideways, drove itself into one of the city's buildings, and exploded.

Boom! The air compressed and swept everything nearby like a storm. Explosions followed one after another.

"Aaaaaaah!"

"Help me!"

"Whyyy!"

"Ugh!"

"Reni? Reniiiiii!"

A hell of fire opened up before his eyes. The pressure from the blast shoved at his body, but Enkrid held his ground and took in the ruin around him. Everything was burning.

People. Buildings. Children. Delma. The inn. The fool. Lovers. Families. Fathers. Mothers. Everything.

"What are you."

Enkrid asked it, feeling a revulsion with no bottom to it. The dizzying dread had not lifted.

"A forbidden-word spell, it's Walking Fire!"

Ruagarne's voice came from behind Enkrid.

That was the conclusion.

Enkrid could not cut the fire. The creature scattered sparks and burned everything to the end.

Ruagarne burned to death, and Enkrid held on until the last and then died too.

Dying in fire was twice as agonizing as dying of thirst. His entire body blazing, there was nothing to compare it to.

He was clearly burning, yet it felt like spears made of icicles were being driven through every part of him.

That was how Enkrid died. Darkness. This darkness lasted longer than usual.

Then the swaying came, as if it had been waiting.

Slosh.

The bow of a boat, where river water rocked his body. The Boatman was looking at him with a smile. Enkrid could not smile back.

"Did you enjoy yourself?"

the Boatman asked.

In his final moment, Enkrid had held on by reflex and watched everything burn.

The tree that had bloomed even in winter had burned.

The inn had burned.

Delma had burned.

Ruagarne had burned.

He had burned.

"Is it not your turn to enjoy things?"

The Boatman spoke again. Then once more.

"Come back when you've had more fun, and we'll talk."

Before Enkrid could answer, the Black River vanished. The purple lamp blurred and scattered.

Everything dissolved like grains of sand.

When he opened his eyes, Enkrid knew it was not morning.

'Right after waking from a nap?'

Was sleep the key that turned back the day? No. Was it the Boatman's doing? Perhaps.

There was no time to think it through. He had opened his eyes because he had felt something wrong.

He felt the same thing now.

Dread. Pure dread. And this time he also knew what was coming. He had lived this day already.

Enkrid was on his feet in an instant.

"Whoa! What's wrong? You scared me!"

Delma, nearby, spilled water from a cup and yelped.

"Go stay with your uncle."

He said it and ran, toward the source of the heat that could not be called a warm breeze.

Hwarak.

"What is that?"

"What kind of lunatic is playing around?"

"Fire! Fire!"

Burning flames. The presence of Walking Fire was real and unmistakable.

Enkrid ran and drew his sword as he moved. Chiiiring. The tip of the blade shot skyward and came down in a single stroke.

Pung!

His sword split the fire. The split fire spread left and right and exploded.

Blue light broke apart like sand across the blade. The magic shattered. The flames erupted. Cut but not cut.

"No good, you can't cut it. It's Walking Fire."

Ruagarne's voice came again. Enkrid did not die instantly this time. The body he had trained endured the flames long enough, and Walking Fire did not target him first.

"Look at me!"

He chased after the creature and shouted, but it was not a being with reason.

Once more, the fire burned everything around him.

"Delma!"

The child who was supposed to inherit the inn died. The adult who had held on trying to protect that child died. One more repetition.

"Go and do it one more time."

The Boatman offered him the same day again. It was a compulsion he could not refuse.

Enkrid faced the same brief, chopped-off day one more time.

In the next waking, his thinking accelerated to a frightening degree.

'Is there any way to intercept it before it enters the city?'

'What if I combined my sword with Ruagarne's whip if the magic isn't enough?'

'Should I treat it as a formless Demon Creature?'

'Ruagarne knows something. She kept shouting Walking Fire.'

At the end of that rapid thinking, the decisiveness and judgment Lord Lui had admired lit up.

"Rua!"

He called out with Will in his voice, and Frog came running from one side.

In this run through the day, Enkrid had two options.

One was to borrow the whip. The other was to ask about Walking Fire.

This was not the time to deliberate, so he reached out first.

"Give me the whip. Let me borrow it."

No time to explain. Ruagarne blinked once, uncoiled the whip, and threw it.

She read the desperation in him.

She trusted that this was not the kind of person who would say something like that unless it was serious, so she did not hesitate.

Enkrid caught the whip in his left hand and knew at once he was not skilled with a weapon like this.

So was there no way? There had to be. He wound the whip around his sword and ran.

Walking Fire met him.

The whip burned. The magic on his sword broke. The flames would not be cut.

"One more time."

The Boatman said it again.

In the next repeated day, Enkrid threw a question instead of the whip.

"What is Walking Fire?"

Asked without preamble, Ruagarne answered without asking why. She must have read the urgency in his words.

"Walking Fire? You mean the forbidden spell? Once it's activated, it burns through everything until its magical energy runs out, only then does it vanish."

Then the answer was to make it exhaust its magic.

Keep cutting? But when cut, it split and exploded. If it weren't inside the city, could he just endure it? What about luring it outside?

"Look at me, come follow me!"

The flames without reason did not respond to provocation or to human desperation.

What the Cultist had loaded into Walking Fire was a single command: burn this city.

And the fire did exactly that. The entire city was a trap and bait.

As Enkrid repeated the day, he came to understand that all of this had been a snare someone had dug for him, but that understanding changed nothing.

Twenty-eight days passed.

Enkrid burned to death again and again, and twenty-eight times he watched Delma and the fool and the people and the buildings and the winter flowers burn while black smoke swallowed the blue sky.

The Boatman sat at the bow drinking tea. The lamp set to one side, teacup raised to his lips. Enkrid had never seen that before.

Was that how pleased he was?

"How is it? This wall?"

"It hurts."

Enkrid answered honestly. Burning to death truly was the kind of pain that could drive a person mad.

What was worse than the pain was that he could see no path forward.

"That's right, it hurts. Want me to tell you a good way out?"

"Yes."

"Run away. It won't chase you."

Enkrid did not listen. He burned to death again. Sixty more days piled on.

"Want me to tell you another way? You foolish bastard, hide. If you don't want to run alone, take the people you care about and avoid the flames. Want me to tell you where to hide? Fine. You've seen the underground shelter before, haven't you? That should be enough."

Enkrid did not listen to that either. Eighty more days piled on.

Until now, the Boatman had always said what he wanted to say and sent Enkrid back.

As if he already knew Enkrid would not listen to a word of it.

Enkrid had burned and come back again. He was inside a hell where he had stopped counting the days.

"Let me ask you something."

The Boatman spoke while standing. The lamp's light did not waver. There was no teacup, no chair. The same as the very first time. The boat, the black river water, the Boatman, the purple lamp, an inhuman figure whose eyes and nose and mouth were impossible to make out.

Outside the swaying river water, nothing moved.

From beneath the hood that hid his mouth, the Boatman asked.

"How far will you protect them?"

Enkrid felt as though every breath he exhaled still carried heat. A moment ago he had done the insane thing of trying to bite at the fire, and his organs had burned from the inside out first.

"What do you mean?"

The experience of having one's organs catch fire was not something that could be dressed up as enjoyable, no matter how you tried.

"If the meeting between two people is called a bond, I am asking about the depth of that bond."

Enkrid was a good listener, so this time he caught the rough meaning.

The Boatman did not wait for his answer and spoke again.

"A three-day bond. One that has not been entirely friendly toward you, either. A three-day bond."

Enkrid looked at the Boatman. The eyes that had been invisible, along with the nose and mouth, began to flicker faintly into view.

"Three days before today. Judge for yourself. Whether it is right to stake your life on something futile because of three days."

Before the Boatman even finished speaking, the moment just before Enkrid's day repeated itself, the time before he had fallen into his nap, rose up in his mind.

Three days of a bond. Just three days. Was something like that worth staking a life on?

That was what the Boatman was asking.

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