WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 602: A Spark of Despair, a Stroke of Hope

= = =

Pouring every last drop of Will into a single sword stroke.

For any ordinary knight, placing ordinary knights in that category being a stretch in itself, this was something they would never do.

Even those who simply possessed comparable amounts of Will would never attempt it.

Anyone who had first awakened Will, gotten drunk on that feeling of omnipotence, and then felt the depletion that came from pouring it all out would know just how dangerous it was.

Push it a little further, and you might die. That much you felt in your bones.

This was perhaps the price of seizing power beyond the limits of one's kind. The possibility of death in exchange for unleashing something formless, that was what it meant.

So ordinarily, it was not something to be done. But Enkrid had been born with a Will that never ran dry. Because of that, he had never once experienced true depletion.

No. This was the first time.

His sword stroke cut through Walking Fire. He watched the severed flames scatter apart.

Hm.

Enkrid felt the wrongness immediately.

Strength drained from his limbs. His arms and legs felt like they belonged to someone else. His lungs burned past the point of tightness, and his breathing grew so ragged that without conscious effort it would have given out entirely. His vision blurred. Muscles in his thighs and arms seized at the same time, and even his stomach pulled taut with a deep ache.

It was beyond severe muscle pain. It felt like his body was no longer his to command.

All of it came from the depletion, from pouring out every last drop of Will in a single moment.

And the price bought him this: Walking Fire, crumbling apart beyond his clouded vision.

The flames scattered and died.

Sparks flew through the air. A few clumps of embers sprayed outward. They did not fly far, but where they landed they scorched the earth, which meant that even with the spell's core severed, the fire's force had not fully spent itself.

One of those embers turned toward Enkrid's face.

Can't dodge it.

He truly had nothing left, not even enough to twitch a finger. The last shred of will he could scrape together went into turning his head aside.

Some of the townspeople who had, by chance, watched the whole thing, seen the fire walking and seen it cut apart, shared the same thought at the same moment.

He's going to burn.

That ember would touch his face. It would not kill him, but it would disfigure the skin badly enough to leave a serious burn.

The dying remnant of Walking Fire. Its final strike.

That remnant was almost on his face.

Thwack.

Enkrid felt his blurry vision clear a little, and at the same moment he saw a thick hand, back-side out, cutting across his line of sight.

Thin cords crossed the back of it, wrapped there to keep it from slipping when gripping things.

Frog's hand. The smell of burning flesh reached him. The ember had caught on Ruagarne's skin.

Frog, Ruagarne, shook her hand to knock out the flame, but the ember had already turned a patch of her skin black in an instant.

Before that, Ruagarne had sliced the burning skin away. Pressing a blade to it hurt less than letting it burn.

Frog skin was on the duller side when it came to sensation, so this, while not exactly pleasant, was the kind of thing she could endure with no more than a brief frown.

Of course not every Frog was the same, but Ruagarne did not frown at all.

"It's fine. I regenerate."

Enkrid blinked once and nodded.

"Still, I should thank you."

His tongue, stiff as stone a moment ago, moved smoothly now. The depletion had seized his entire body, but already he could feel strength returning. It came back as fast as it had vanished.

Why?

He turned inward and felt the Will welling up inside him. A Will that never ran dry, it refilled even after being emptied all at once.

Several things became clear from this.

Get used to it, and I can pour out more each time. Repeat it, and the vessel grows wider. Experiencing depletion might actually do me more good than avoiding it.

You could fairly call it an obsession with training. This was the madness the Boatman had spoken of when describing Enkrid.

He had just been through something awful, nearly helpless from depletion, and already he was thinking about how to use it for practice.

"So it really was Walking Fire."

Ruagarne, who had lost a hand, spoke. She had been told all of a sudden that instead of blocking the forbidden spell it needed to be cut, and she had chased the one who said so outside only to find this scene. Not all of what had happened was clear to her. There was quite a bit she could not make sense of.

But she let the small things go. Something else had her full attention.

That sword stroke.

Ruagarne had been right behind Enkrid. She had arrived late and caught only the moment he swung.

That stroke had cut a spell. A forbidden spell, a spell of annihilation that would not end until it had burned everything, had been severed.

What should you call a moment like that?

Spell suppression? Spell restraint? Spell slaying?

One thing was certain: it was a sword stroke that could rightly be called a natural enemy of sorcerers.

Cutting Walking Fire, a forbidden spell?

Even Frog, with infinite regeneration, would find it nearly impossible to attempt. What sort of knight could do something like this?

She had just watched that feat, that acrobatic piece of swordsmanship.

How could her heart not pound?

How had it been done?

Her eye as a Frog sought out the principle hidden inside it and found it.

Will, flooding out all at once.

That was what Enkrid had just done.

His original weakness had always been that the amount of Will he could release in any given moment was limited.

Like a well brimming with water but with too small a bucket to draw it up fast enough.

That was his weakness. Or rather, it had been. Not anymore. Had he not just proven it right in front of her?

He had overwhelmed a spell with his own Will.

Alongside the awe, what made Ruagarne tremble was her hunger to understand. A question rose in her.

How had he overcome his own weakness in a single day and done something like this?

It's a mystery.

That was what made her heart pound. The thrill she felt right now was so intense she could have blurted out, my heart is racing, and meant every word of it.

Enkrid's vision had returned and his tongue worked again, but full strength had not come back to his limbs yet. His senses had recovered faster than his body.

Still, his sixth sense caught it: malice aimed at him. It poured out from somewhere inside an alley and made itself known.

They were not particularly skilled.

"Die!"

Shouting while charging in for a surprise attack was about as clear a sign as possible that you were new to assassination.

Why announce your position while attacking?

Jaxon would have watched this, shaken his head, and said he could not begin to understand it. So they were no great threat. But the malice was real. Three of them, throwing daggers and firing poison needles.

If Enkrid had been alone, it might have been close to a real problem. The depletion had not fully lifted yet.

But Enkrid was not alone.

Crack! Thud thud thud.

Ruagarne's whip stopped all of it. The dark brown whip braided from Magic Beast hide shot forward like a snake going for prey and struck knees, waists, and shoulders. A round weight fixed to the end could be used like a club in its own right, and the bones of the ones it hit broke, their skin splitting open.

Frog's monstrous strength married to the craft of the whip. The three went down fast, crying out in pain.

Once down, they glared with venom in their eyes and shouted.

"A world ruled by black blood is coming!"

"Demon god, descend upon this land!"

Cultists.

One might have wondered whether it had been worth drawing a sword for people like them. But the eyes Enkrid turned on the three knocked down by the whip did not waver.

A moment ago, cutting Walking Fire had saved this city's tomorrow.

If the Boatman were watching right now, he might have asked exactly this.

"So, is that the 'tomorrow' you wanted to protect?"

If he asked that, Enkrid would answer plainly.

"No, it is not."

Because a no was a no.

Would the Boatman be baffled by that answer?

People who had tried to harm him, with hearts as black as pitch, and he would save every last one of them, give them all the same chance? Enkrid held no ambition that grand.

So he had no wish to spare even those who had just attacked him, no saintly mercy of that kind.

"Kill them."

Enkrid said.

"Goes without saying."

Ruagarne nodded.

Maybe the faith in the Cult and the cries for the demon god were the product of brainwashing. But that was not Enkrid's concern.

He could never save everyone he laid eyes on from the start.

He would protect the tomorrows at his back, yes, but those who had crossed the line in his eyes would still die.

If it were otherwise, he would never have picked up a sword. A sword was a tool for hurting people.

"Hah."

Enkrid breathed out, opened and closed his hand, and checked how his body felt.

"Are you alright?"

Ruagarne came back after kicking their heads in and snapping their necks, and asked.

Somewhere in the middle of it, someone had shouted, "Well killed." As he heard later, those three had been especially vicious even in a city that had been turning lawless.

Well, they were not the only ones like that.

"Yeah."

Enkrid answered and stood. Strength had returned to the body that depletion had taken over. Compared to before he had cut Walking Fire, nothing felt different.

No, if anything, he felt stronger.

Anyone who knew something about a knight's Will would have been startled to hear it. To Enkrid, it was simply how things were.

Will born from conviction was always full.

He checked the blade of the hardest iron longsword. A crack ran through the middle where it had split.

Aetri is going to have more work from me.

And when he got back, Krais would say something about it. Something like: you really have to come home with broken equipment every single time you go out, don't you.

Still, it had ended like this. That was something.

There were still cold stares fixed on Enkrid inside the city, but there were other eyes too.

Some held goodwill, and some had moved past unease into open admiration.

The old stablehand, who had been staring blankly with his pitchfork still in hand, shifted from shock to reverence to warmth.

"That, uh, thank you."

From the old man's mouth came words full of nothing but goodwill. He had seen it up close, and he knew in his gut just how dangerous Walking Fire had been.

If Enkrid had not cut it down, would some people have died?

What would tomorrow look like for this old man, who had kept dying over and over across the day that kept repeating?

No one would know.

Only that he was alive now, and bowing his head.

That was the only thing that had changed.

Cross Guard did not erupt in praise for Enkrid or start chanting his name.

But that was not something he needed.

"What happened here?"

The castellan arrived late. After him came Delma, then the innkeeper.

The castellan heard about Walking Fire and understood roughly how great a danger had entered the city and then vanished.

Ruagarne filled in this part, adding details at just the right moments.

She looked like she could barely contain herself, wanting to explain what Enkrid had done and how remarkable it was.

"Can any of you cut a spell? From now on, the word Spell Slayer must be added before the name of the hero who saved this city. If that spell of annihilation, Walking Fire, had been left to run loose, how many of you would still be standing? One thing's certain, I would not have died."

Ruagarne declared with confidence that if she had not died, Enkrid would not have died either. She meant she would never allow this man to die before she did.

And she had followed through on that throughout each repeated today.

When she burned to death, he burned to death after. When she burned to death a little later, he burned to death first.

You might call it a fiercely loyal bond.

While the castellan stood baffled from not knowing the full story, then felt relief once he understood how close to disaster the city had come, then poured out his gratitude, Enkrid quietly turned the day over in his mind, this today that would no longer repeat.

At the start of this day, he had even held up the mirror and told Esther he would cut Walking Fire.

Ask him why, and he would say it was part of steadying his resolve.

I need to sort out the armor too.

He had wrapped things up, one way or another. Then Ruagarne asked.

"Why did you do it?"

"Do what?"

"Why step in? You had no obligation to protect this city."

Cutting Walking Fire was a gamble, in her eyes. Enkrid had thought about it during the repeated todays, burning to death over and over.

When the Boatman had asked, he had said he was protecting tomorrow.

And right now, this felt like the right answer.

"Because I could."

Yes. That was all there was to it.

It was something he was capable of doing. He could choose not to run. In a today that kept repeating, he could bring a new tomorrow into being.

That was why he did it.

And there was more. He was glad to protect the child who wanted to become an innkeeper, glad to protect the people steeling their hearts and building their boats, and glad to protect even the castellan who thanked him without fully understanding what he had been saved from.

The sun set over the city, and most of its people had passed through the day without ever knowing the danger called Walking Fire.

Sleep came, and when he woke the next morning, the sun that rose was the same and yet not the same.

Only a few days had passed, and only one day had turned, but Cross Guard felt a little different today. That was the sense of it.

More alive than before. A hope remained there too, the kind that plants apple trees knowing they will not bear fruit for years.

There had been an ember showing despair and suffering. But there had also been a sword stroke calling for hope, protecting people and their lives.

That was what had happened in this city yesterday.

And so, past today and into the early hours of tomorrow's dawn, when he rose and went out to train as he always did, someone arrived whom he had not expected at all.

"Hold me. I'm cold."

"Esther?"

She had come with her face drained to a pale blue, wearing nothing but a robe that still let the shape of her show through, and little else besides.

= = =

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried