WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 601: You Really Don't Get Cut?

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Is your head just decoration?

That was what people said when they looked at someone who couldn't think straight and felt the frustration building.

In other words, the Boatman was frustrated with him right now.

Enkrid clasped his hands together and settled into a listening posture. Being a good listener meant giving the right sounds of acknowledgment, but turning your body toward the speaker mattered just as much. Tilt your head their way to show you're paying attention. Meet their eyes and nod to show you're hearing every word.

When he did exactly that, the Boatman asked, "What are you doing?"

"Getting ready to listen."

"To what?"

What else? Whatever the one calling him frustrating was about to share.

Enkrid answered with his eyes instead of words.

"You really are one crazy bastard."

The Boatman offered that as the highest of compliments, then followed with a question.

"Do you think blocking it will actually block it?"

That was the last thing he said before the view went hazy. The Boatman began scattering like grains of sand. The dream was ending. Enkrid did not pull any thunderclap of enlightenment from those words. What he got instead was a vague, nagging frustration.

Something had snagged in his chest, like a splinter he couldn't quite reach.

"What in the world is that supposed to mean? Sounds like a Ghoul barking."

So he asked.

The Boatman gave a small, thin smile at that.

"Live an eternal life. That is your path."

To Enkrid's ears, those words carried no weight. They sounded like something said out of obligation, because they had to be said.

"No thank you."

He answered, then opened his eyes to today, waking from a nap.

'Do you think blocking it will actually block it?'

Was he not already throwing everything he had into doing exactly that?

The question stayed with him, but his body moved on reflex and did what it had to do. Go slice through the flames.

Slice through the flames. It sounded like poetry when you said it out loud, but for Enkrid it was a literal, physical thing he did with his hands.

He had grabbed the hardest iron longsword, cut the straps off his armor and left it behind, and now he was running.

"What is it? Where are you going?"

He bolted without a word, and behind him Ruagarne called out. Delma stood holding a cup of water, blinking. Enkrid let a touch of feeling into his voice as he passed.

"I won't let it get this far. Little one."

The reply to those passing words seemed to reach him only much later, because his thoughts were already accelerating along with his legs. He heard Delma's voice even so.

"What?"

Just that single confused word, because she hadn't understood.

'Won't let it get through. Block it.'

He had said the words aloud, and in his chest he raised a sword against them. Then he began repeating today again.

Some todays came at him with no time to deliberate, thoughts running fast.

Some todays had the Boatman appearing when he died.

"I will show you a way."

Starting from one of those next todays, the Boatman's manner changed. He became unusually kind, nothing like before, and handed out advice without any sign of irritation.

"If you cannot give up everything, then give up part. Abandon the slums and meet it on your own terms once you are ready. You should be able to hold out that way."

That was what the Boatman said. Make use of the time that Walking Fire spent burning people and children and mothers and buildings and horses and the stablehand in the other parts of the city.

"Are you feeling all right?"

Enkrid answered the Boatman faithfully. The ones after were much the same.

"Sacrifice is unavoidable."

"Those who must die will die."

"No one will bless what you have done."

"What are you throwing yourself around like that for?"

"Just try holding out at the entrance to the town square somehow. That might actually work. Heh heh."

The Boatman had swung from helpful toward obstructive and was now spitting out useless remarks, taunting on top of it all.

Listening to all of that, one thing kept coming back.

'Do you think blocking it will actually block it?'

That one line from the Boatman, before the change of heart.

"I'm telling you, I'm already throwing everything into blocking it."

It was the kind of line that made you answer the empty air. Things stayed much the same after that. He repeated today. He burned to death.

Enkrid's swordwork gained more refinement, though it did not change things dramatically. Not a single today was wasted, and his skill kept climbing. Somewhere in the process he was growing more familiar with drawing out his Will to cut through the intangible shape of flame.

Today after today of learning and breaking through, passed and passed again.

It felt like exploring a cave with no end in sight. The price of not giving up was burning alive every time, and that pain was his companion through all of it.

Even so, he did not feel like his approach was wrong.

Slice through and endure.

That was the only path with any light at the end of it.

But just because a light shone on one road did not make it the only road. Sometimes a path hid in the dark, and that hidden path could be the right one.

Right and wrong, correct and mistaken, in the end those were all just personal choices.

For Enkrid there were simply two paths. Two paths, completely separate from what the Boatman had suggested.

One was repeating what he had been doing, until Walking Fire could no longer burn everyone. Some people would still die. Parts of the city would still burn.

That could not be helped. Holding out while protecting everyone was not just difficult. It was impossible.

Walking Fire was the kind of thing that would only be manageable if it came straight at him and no one else. But the spell's target was the city itself.

If it only reacted to provocation, things would not have been nearly this hard.

When he was burning to death, it was hard to keep his thoughts together. The pain was so horrific that even Enkrid sometimes felt his nerve waver. That was how agonizing it was. Those moments kept passing.

Even so, the strength never left his swinging arm.

On one of those repeating todays, Enkrid took out his mirror as he ran and spoke into it.

"Can't I just cut a spell like that? It's just a spell."

He hadn't meant to change the way he got information from Esther. The words came out like a reflex, almost like provocation, while he turned over the line about whether blocking would actually block it.

Even while running, he could see Esther's expression shift on the other side of the mirror.

A cold smile, a sneer, settled on her face. At the same time the treasure vault of her knowledge opened. Her mind truly was a vault. A witch's knowledge was as good as treasure.

"Can you really? In theory, it is possible."

Enkrid's ears moved at that. Past simply being intrigued, some part of his ear muscles actually responded, like an elf's.

"A spell is a phenomenon, and that phenomenon represents power. Every spell is force unleashed from a foundation of magical power. So what does that mean? What if a power far greater than the Walking Fire spell, a concentrated version of it, existed? What if the Will a person holds were greater than the magical power borrowed from nature itself? Then yes, it would be possible. Hm."

The little sound at the end was so quiet it barely registered.

Honestly, Enkrid was so stunned he barely heard it properly.

'Greater than the magical power of nature itself?'

He had sliced through a fireball launched by a spell before. When had that been? It was hazy now, a long time ago, he recalled it was someone like Sparrow Blade who had used a scroll.

How had he cut it then? He hadn't deliberated. He had just cut. He built up his Will with everything he had and did it.

'Why can't I do it that way now?'

Because the fire moves?

Using Esther's words, it would be because the magical power of nature was pushing back against the Will he swung.

That was why it got cut but did not stay cut. It exploded instead.

The thought continued. Out of habit carved into his body, he dealt with Walking Fire and died. He died trying to save a child. He died trying to save a mother. The agonizing flames burned his whole body, his mind. Today came back.

"Magical power can also be viewed as a matter of supplier and consumer. What sits between supply and demand? If that were cut, well. Like you said, you could cut it."

The road connecting the spell to its caster was magical power.

The provocative question had pulled more treasure out of Esther's vault. Enkrid indulged in it.

He had not come to understand the complex World of Spells, nor built any new theoretical framework.

What he had done was think of something a fair bit more blunt, and that was probably the more accurate way to put it.

Betraying his own heart's wish not to burn to death again on the next today, Enkrid opened his mouth.

"It's Walking Fire."

He said it to the open air, but Ruagarne stuck her head out from behind him and asked, "The forbidden spell?"

Instead of activating the mirror, Enkrid took a step forward and said, "I should have never tried to block it from the start."

"What?"

"Not block it. Cut it."

"What are you talking about?"

From Ruagarne's perspective, it looked like he had taken a good nap and woken up raving mad.

"Do you think blocking it will actually block it?"

That was what the Boatman had said.

You crazy Boatman.

Enkrid thought that as he ran.

If you were going to tell me, you could have just said it plainly.

All those Boatmen watching him throw himself into blocking it and sneering. They had all been saying the same thing. In the end everything came down to one truth.

'Do not block.'

Not block it. Cut it and make it gone.

And how do you cut it? Slicing through and enduring had been, in a way, the desperate flailing he had clawed out after long deliberation.

That path had seemed like the one with light seeping in, so nothing else had looked like an answer.

But now, he could see a different road leading toward tomorrow.

'I need to be greater, she said?'

That was what Esther had told him.

Overpower the Walking Fire spell with brute force.

But did he need to maintain that superiority the whole time? No.

No need to accelerate his thinking. This didn't even call for that. It all came down to one simple action.

"You really can't be cut?"

Enkrid stopped in front of Walking Fire and asked. The spell had no reason, no intellect, and could not answer.

But Apostle Anella, watching Enkrid through the spell, heard the question.

* * *

Anella could only think this was some manner of madness, but Enkrid was completely serious.

There were beings in the world that no quantitative measure could capture.

Enkrid was that kind of person.

Apostle Anella had observed him. She had studied him.

She had judged that setting the city on fire would not make him give up easily. But would he risk his life over it?

From there it had been fifty-fifty. Either way worked out for Anella. She had aims for both outcomes.

If he came at her in the end? Even without dying, if he took that much damage and sustained a serious wound, she would spring the trap she had prepared and kill him.

If he didn't risk his life and held out to a reasonable point before pulling back?

That was not bad either.

Knights were those who shaped their Will and spent it. From everything she had seen, Enkrid was the sort who could not stand by without protecting those at his side.

And if he saved only some and escaped?

That was not bad either.

This affair was partly aimed at Enkrid himself, but even if he stepped in, it would still serve as a warning to the continent that the Cursed Ground Holy Sect, when it chose to, could burn down a city.

This warning would also let the world see the power the Cursed Ground Holy Sect had kept hidden.

With that, they would bring true salvation to those who had lost their ignorant idea of salvation.

"Nonsense," Anella said. Her answer to the question of whether it could really be cut. Naturally, Enkrid could not hear her.

Beyond the field of view looking through the spell, through Walking Fire.

She saw Enkrid's calm face. His expression had barely changed, yet somehow he looked pleased, almost excited.

The blazing heat had singed the hair at his temples. Beneath those singed strands, the light in his blue eyes burned every bit as fiercely as the real flames.

* * *

He raised the hardest iron sword and brought it down. The blade carrying the Will to cut sliced through Walking Fire. It burst. It exploded. At the center of that violent force his skin split and tore, the flames burned at his eyes, seared his tongue.

That wretched pain came back. But it seemed less than before.

Why?

"Is that your madness?" the Boatman asked in the dream.

Instead of answering, Enkrid gripped his sword. Even in the dream world his sword had a clear, solid presence.

It was because the overflowing Will was affecting the realm of inner vision as well.

Another today woke him.

After grasping something new, exactly five todays were enough.

Enkrid constructed a castle wall in his mind and raised it behind him.

Then he only needed to pour the Will that had built that castle wall into a single sword stroke.

He found the method, and he moved forward. A sword stroke swung in a single breath while burning up his life was the crystallized result of experience beyond any comparison, rich and dense.

Enkrid had that experience tens of times, hundreds, thousands.

He gathered together everything he had come to understand from all those repeated todays.

How to pour out Will? He had long since realized it had to flow naturally.

He had understood that from his conversation with Seiki before this round of todays began, and before that he had also glimpsed the way through Overdier.

'Let it flow naturally.'

There was more to add. Will is intangible, so you have to feel it. Had Jaxon not said as much? If you feel it, you can use it.

He did exactly that.

Ragna had said to focus when you swing. Rem had said to put your strength into the instant.

Both were right.

He did exactly that.

Explanations that had once seemed worse than useless started landing one by one.

Before understanding, they had been nothing. After understanding, they could not have been clearer.

Will that never ran dry spilled over and loaded into the blade.

With no technique and no familiarity to lean on, Enkrid poured in every bit of Will he could feel.

Zhiiing.

The sword rang.

If it had been anything other than a sword Aetri had poured his heart into making, it would not have held.

Craaack.

Filling it with Will split a crack down the middle of the blade. By the time Enkrid faced Walking Fire again, the preparations were already done.

Aside from the Will loaded into the sword, everything was the same as before.

Running, shedding his armor, holding nothing but the hardest iron longsword as he sprinted.

Walking Fire had just finished burning the two horses in the stable when Enkrid met the spell.

"You really can't be cut?"

He asked again. The stablehand who had been about to attack Walking Fire stopped mid-reach for the pitchfork.

The timing could not have been better.

Walking Fire had not swallowed anyone yet.

He lifted the hardest iron sword above his head.

Heavy Sword Style, top-down slash.

What the blade carried was all the Will he had, or at the very least, every bit of the intangible force Enkrid could feel in this moment.

If it needed a name, he might call it the Iron Wall Sword.

He converted the Will that had formed the Iron Wall into the Will to cut, and drew it down.

Whoom.

There had been todays beyond counting where he burned to death against Walking Fire. In every single one of those todays Enkrid had sharpened his technique further and, without realizing it, had poured out Will just to keep standing, and every last one of those experiences had melted into this single stroke.

The blue eyes behind the blade disappeared behind the steel, and the Will that had held back armies as an Iron Wall fell as a blade.

Fwump.

No explosion. No roar.

The blade simply drew its line, and Walking Fire scattered along it.

Where the hardest iron passed, a line was drawn across the world. A sword stroke that seemed to split existence itself.

The monstrously concentrated Will overwhelmed the magical power inside the forbidden spell for one instant.

No one without an inexhaustible supply of Will could have even attempted it.

And so the spell, Walking Fire, was cut.

Pfwump.

With a sound like the most anticlimactic deflation imaginable, the flames went hazy and faded away.

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