WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 605: Ice Fairy

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How rotten the Church had become was laid bare by all of this.

"The Gray God is merciful, and he loves all. He is one who extends generosity even to those who stand on the opposite side of the scales."

They dressed up nonsense as a new holy scripture, and many took their side.

It was proof that beneath the same sky, corrupt priests outnumbered righteous ones in the Church and its faith.

"Look upon this. It is as things should be."

Serve the Gray God, and tainted divine power becomes righteous.

Perhaps that old saying was true, the louder side becomes the right side.

Their voices grew louder without limit.

They had once been mocked and reviled for losing their light, but if one simply accepted the existence of the Gray God, were all their problems not solved? And was there truly a god at all? If so, should every sinner not be punished? Had a god descended and done that? Punished the wicked? Or even forgiven them?

Nothing of the sort had happened.

Not once.

Divine power was borrowed strength from the gods, and yet the gods gave power without giving responsibility. They only spoke in words.

There were many reasons the Holy War had broken out, but one was certain.

The absence of god.

The other was that many people desperately wanted to insist that gray sacred light was righteous.

You could call it the death throes of those who, beyond seizing power and privilege, also wanted the moral high ground.

Once they stumbled into a stable position, they would become a proper organization from that point on.

Was it not similar to how new nations had been founded in the past?

People with like-minded goals, people with aligned interests, gathering to form a collective.

"Look upon this. Those who have gathered here prove that we are in the right."

Muel was drunk on power. His power had already been bloated from managing the merchant guilds under the Church's oversight and maintaining the roads the Church had built, but now it had grown even larger. He felt like a creator opening an entirely new world.

He decided to lose himself in that feeling.

He would open a new world, just like this.

Anyone could dream.

That did not mean every dream took the right shape.

* * *

Just before the Holy War was officially declared, Enkrid returned to Border Guard.

The very first thing he did?

"Rem, are you afraid of the cold? Starting today, I'll be your cold. Come out. Ragna, you too. Your own talent frightened you into stopping? Arrogant bastard, I'll show you just how insignificant you are."

He shouted that in front of the training grounds. The door creaked open and Rem stepped out.

"Did you hurt your head?"

He looked ridiculous, wrapped head to toe in insulated leather.

Ruagarne knew Enkrid well enough by now to understand there was always some reason behind his words and actions.

She translated for him.

"Can you not tell he's saying he's in a good mood and wants a spar?"

Rem stared blankly at Enkrid for a moment, then opened his mouth.

"Damn, if he's in a good mood twice, I think he'll start cursing out my ancestors too."

It was not quite that bad, but Rem fired back in his own way.

Ragna came out after him, looked at Enkrid for a long moment, and said, "Looks like he really did hit his head. He's not picking his words."

His tone was not unpleasant, despite what the words suggested.

Both Rem and Ragna knew perfectly well that Enkrid was acting like this because he was in a good mood.

A little out of nowhere, sure, but what was there to complain about if the man himself was happy?

Excited was one word for it. Or maybe he just looked refreshed.

Either way, there was nothing wrong with the captain looking pleased, and everyone watching felt much the same.

Sinar heard about Enkrid's return and came into the training grounds too. The elf, who usually drifted around at a leisurely pace, was moving with a touch of urgency.

She looked like she had something she absolutely had to say.

It was a cloudy night. He had not picked a fight after waking from sleep, but doing this at bedtime, he was a truly impossible madman.

The Mad Knights, or the Knights of Madness, might have been the most fitting name for them.

"If you're here for a spar, your fiancée is present," Sinar said.

"Who is my fiancée?"

"I am."

Sinar had no shame whatsoever. Her elf-style joke warmed the air.

Jaxon spoke from a corner of the training grounds, half-hidden in shadow and half-caught in moonlight.

"Did you bring something back?"

Sharp senses made for sharp instincts. Jaxon had asked.

"Obviously."

Enkrid answered and drew his sword at the same time.

Schring.

He had stopped by the armory the moment he returned to pick it up. The hardest iron sword had broken, so he had no choice.

A longsword that could be gripped with two hands, swung one-handed. Lighter than the hardest iron sword, but no problem to use.

He had already adjusted to the weight on the way back, and he had finished coaxing everyone into a spar.

Enkrid brought the sword down without another word.

He started with Rem. One step, his body tore through the air, and the blade drove into it. A sword strike that poured every last drop of Will into a single moment. Rem reflexively drew his axe and met it.

"You crazy bastard!"

Feeling the force packed into that cut, Rem burst out with something that sounded more like a war cry than a curse.

If he had eased off even a little, that blow would have split him in half.

Of course, he had caught on and poured in just as much force himself.

Clang!

With a thunderous crash, a shockwave rippled outward in concentric circles from where sword met axe.

Wind surged with a whomp, scattering frozen dirt and small stones across the dry, hard ground.

Dust rose, and Ragna squinted against it, replaying in his mind what he had just seen.

He loaded Will into it.

Loading Will was already something Enkrid could do. So something was different.

Impossible to quantify, but to put it simply, the amount of Will he packed in had grown.

Another way to say it was that a pale color had deepened to something richer.

The stroke was the vertical cleave of the Heavy Sword Style.

The foundation is the Will of a slashing strike that cuts clean through.

That was even a technique Ragna had taught him. Seeing it made him genuinely glad. It looked like Enkrid had broken through the weakness and the wall that had held him back.

"Let me join in."

Ragna drew his sword and wedged himself in. He stabbed at a slanted angle, at a line that was simply impossible to hold against without dodging.

On the way back to Border Guard, Enkrid had trained not to pour all his Will into one strike but to divide it.

Breaking through the path was the hard part. Once the path was open, working it into the body through repetition was not difficult.

Though that was how Enkrid saw it when he looked at himself.

"Sloppy!"

To Rem's eyes, it was not.

"That's true," Ragna agreed.

"You need to use it with more precision," Jaxon added.

Sinar naturally joined in as well.

"Fiancée thrust."

She pushed her elf-style joke past its limit, gave the attack a strange technique name, and drew her blade across.

"You said it was a thrust?" Enkrid had heard her call it a thrust, but he twisted his body to dodge the sweeping blade and asked back.

"Is that not a technique you use often?"

Vallen's mercenary sword style, verbal misdirection.

Having it used on him, he knew what it was and still found it quietly irritating.

Vallen, supposedly a knight of a previous generation, must have been someone who simply could not resist toying with his opponents. Too many of his techniques could not have existed any other way.

There were people out there who picked up a sword precisely to mess with others.

"Going again."

Enkrid waited for his spent Will to refill and swung his sword once more.

While he waited, he was busy blocking alternating thrusts from Rem, Ragna, and Sinar.

Their skills had grown again while he was away. That was how they were able to hold up like this.

Even though each repeated day was short, it came from swinging a sword like a madman every single day, every single moment.

Each time his Will refilled, he swung with full force. After three rounds, Enkrid's sword rang out with a sharp crack and snapped. It could not withstand the Will. That ended the spar.

"Is brute-forcing Will into everything really all you've got?"

Rem scolded him and wrapped his insulated leather back around himself.

Ragna, Rem, and Sinar said much the same. And if Audin had been there, he would have added his own word.

"Tempering the body will handle it, brother. Move every muscle at will, and the precision with which you use Will should come alive too."

"Is that from personal experience?"

"It just came naturally to me, brother. But you are not me, so training you must do."

That was probably how the exchange would have gone.

Krais, who showed up late while they were all going back and forth like that, said, "Did you break another sword this time?"

"Yeah." Enkrid nodded. He needed a new sword.

"I heard a lot happened. Is that right?" Krais asked.

"It was. A lot. There'll probably also be the story about hugging Esther close. I'm cold too, Enki. Seems to be someone's turn to hold me."

Sinar cut in.

"Winter is supposed to be cold," Enkrid said calmly.

He had been on the receiving end of elf-style jokes so many times now that nothing could rattle him anymore.

"I shall freeze to death."

Sinar went so far as to pretend to be pitiful. She lowered her head and performed a sulking expression. You could see the corners of her eyebrows dipping, a strange sight.

"Come on, give everyone a fair hug," Rem said in complaint.

Hearing that, Enkrid made a mental note that he absolutely had to prepare a gift for Rem someday.

"Why don't you tell us what you got up to in Cross Guard?" Jaxon said. More precisely, he was asking how Enkrid had picked up yet another skill like this.

"It's late. Let's do it tomorrow."

Enkrid looked around at everyone. What kind of story was there to tell at this hour? It was time to sleep.

"Are you serious? You knew it was late at night? And you still had a spar?"

Rem stared at him, bewildered.

"Sparring is important."

Enkrid answered and went off to wash. Everyone had every right to be baffled, but they let it go.

"Did none of you know he was like this?" Krais said.

"I am cold," Sinar said. She turned her expression back to normal and turned to leave.

Hearing that, Krais stepped away and said, "Then stoke the brazier."

"Fire is dangerous."

So what were they supposed to do.

It was not really a question looking for an answer.

"Not bad."

Ragna summed up Enkrid's current state in two words and went back inside.

The night passed that way, and from the next morning, between sparring sessions that snapped sword after sword, Enkrid and Ruagarne told everyone plainly about what had happened in the city.

Easy to hear, but remarkable all the same.

That said, no one, Rem included, dropped their jaw in exaggerated shock.

Only Sinar, off to one side.

"I am already ice."

That was all she muttered.

The city. The Cult. Walking Fire.

Rem listened and fell into thought for a moment.

Thinking back on every point where Enkrid had made some leap forward, there was a strange common thread.

So basically, he changes whenever he goes somewhere and nearly gets himself killed.

Somehow surviving without dying, and his skills would spike sharply. So what about sending him somewhere he might die? But were places like that common?

Enkrid carried Will that did not run dry, and his experience was nothing shallow.

On top of that, his instincts and senses had not dulled either. No, at times Rem thought Enkrid's gut felt even sharper than his own.

Probably thanks to that sly wildcat.

By now it would be hard to genuinely threaten Enkrid with anything ordinary.

But did that mean real threats were gone? They were not. He himself had no confidence he could walk out alive from Silence, the western Cursed Ground.

So what, throw him into the Cursed Ground?

There was no crazier idea than that. It had just been a passing thought.

The kind of thought that crept in because, whenever a life-or-death moment came, that man broke through his own limits.

Maybe that was why the thought surfaced.

Or maybe it was because of that blunt, brainless sword swing in the middle of the night a few days ago.

While Enkrid was away, Rem had also heard news of Audin and split his days between that and training.

Word had even gone around that the Rem Company members were praising Audin.

Apparently someone had tried to build a shrine and had to be talked out of it.

All credit to Audin for cutting down their training load.

Truly mad subordinates under a truly mad captain.

Whatever the case, Rem mixed in his own realizations during the sparring and pushed Enkrid a little past his limits.

It was something like playing push-and-shove at the edge of a cliff.

The kind where you might fall and die if things went wrong.

Fortunately, nothing like that happened. And before any life-threatening moment could arrive, Enkrid did not show any sudden, dramatic change either.

Not yet.

Rem simply thought that, and Jaxon, watching it all, said sincerely, "Has he lost his mind?"

"Is it mating season? That wildcat's yowling and making a scene."

An ordinary, peaceful life.

While they were spending full, good days since returning, news of the Holy War reached them.

Under normal circumstances, whatever they were doing, serving the Gray God or not, it was not something Enkrid needed to personally move on.

It was an internal matter of the Holy State.

The problem was what they were targeting. They had set their sights on Noah's monastery.

A merchant traveling the newly opened Stone Road had brought the news, and that was how Border Guard learned of the situation.

"Didn't I hear that monastery is a den of demons?"

"Ah. I heard that too. Something about raising a demon child, and the head priest selling his eyes to a demon, so the Gray God has risen up to punish them, or something like that."

Full-scale propaganda was circulating. It was the work of Muel, who called himself the Pope of the Gray God.

Krais mobilized the Gielpin Guild and asked Leona for help, gathering every scrap of information available.

In the process, he realized the monastery Enkrid had briefly visited had been chosen as a scapegoat, and piecing together the full picture, he figured out roughly what scheme was being run.

Set up one scapegoat, then use the pretext of striking it to draw people in?

Giving people a target was ten times more effective at gathering a group than telling them to assemble for no reason. It was a move made with exactly that in mind.

Krais relayed all of this to Enkrid, and what Enkrid said was this.

"Let's go."

Simple and clear.

Normally there would be no obligation to get involved, no reason to fight this fight, and it might be a fight with nothing to gain even in victory.

Still, Enkrid picked up the new sword he had received from Aetri.

The local requests had been dealt with to a reasonable degree, so Rem, Ragna, and Jaxon had nothing pressing either.

In other words, they were free.

Esther, Sinar, Ruagarne, Teresa, Ropord, and Fell joined in on top of that.

"Everyone looks free," Enkrid said.

"Thanks to working hard all the other days," Ropord answered.

"We're in a hurry, so we leave the unit behind and go with just us."

Delay long enough and all they would see was smoke rising from Noah's monastery. So it would be a small, elite group. Anyone who could not keep up when they moved would be left behind.

"This is officially the first expedition of the knights," Krais said, watching them go.

"I suppose it is." Enkrid nodded.

A rallying cry was not strictly necessary, but Enkrid opened his mouth on impulse.

"Madmen, let's go run wild."

Rem added to that.

"Let's do it."

The grinning barbarian's face showed no trace of tension. He had heard that two Holy Knights had joined the other side, but his expression said, So what?

"The ice elf is also present."

Sinar threw in her own line, but Enkrid heard it and pretended not to.

She had been doing this, asking to be held, ever since he came back.

Either way, it was time to march.

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