A Knight who Eternally Regresses - Chapter 607

WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 607: How to Cut Down Momentum

= = =

The night was dark, but sleep would not come. Maybe that was only natural. Few people in the world could stretch out and sleep soundly in a situation like this, and Noah was no exception.

Unable to sleep, he walked the monastery alone, breathing in the cold air.

The ornamental trees planted inside the grounds had all been snapped apart to build the palisade.

Drying the fresh wood, cutting it, raising it into place, what had once been a garden had been turned into something resembling ruins.

The wreckage almost looked like it was describing the monastery's future.

Why was the moonlight so bright tonight, of all nights?

'Is God calling to me? Is He asking me to account for my sins?'

Was this punishment for looking away from what had happened in this monastery in the past? Did everyone here now have to pay for all of it?

It was a night that only deepened his anguish.

That the Gray God's followers, heretics who fancied themselves a holy path, had made all this noise only to set their sights on one small monastery holding a few dozen people.

Who could have seen it coming?

Noah understood that they could not hold out.

The monastery was surrounded, and the other side refused every offer.

He had gone to them himself, offering his own life in exchange for it to end.

"Nonsense. Down to the last chicken inside that monastery, every one of them is a heretic."

That was the answer he received. He had asked them to at least spare the children.

"Did I not just say it? Holy Man or not, that place is already a pit of evil."

Nothing came back but a flat refusal to compromise.

The martial monk he had sent as an envoy returned with one side of his face bruised purple and a bad limp.

"Send someone out again and next time I'll only be returning the head."

That was added on top of everything else.

'Ah.'

A worrying thing, through and through.

The child who had once been declared the Holy Man by divine revelation would now be called a child of the devil.

Because they would make it so.

"Are we going to die?"

Even the child had sensed how precarious things were and asked. Noah smiled gently.

"God will watch over us."

Noah told a lie. The child smiled at his words.

Even if he were locked in an underground prison after death for the sin of lying, having seen that child's smile meant he would not regret this moment.

Even if it meant dying, he did not want the child to spend whatever time remained soaked in fear.

More than anything, he desperately wanted to believe that God would truly protect the children.

He himself could die. But he wanted the children and the innocent to be saved.

Noah had no choices left, yet he did not simply pray and endure. He sent word in every direction asking for help. Breaking through the encirclement to do so had been no easy thing to begin with.

If someone slipped out by luck and spread word here and there, what would happen? Would anyone actually come to help? It was one small monastery.

The people living inside? They had nothing to do with anyone else, so why should anyone save them? What would saving them gain?

Nothing. There would be nothing. Noah was a sharp man, and he understood the situation with clear eyes.

The whole continent would see this as an internal conflict within the Holy State.

So no one would come.

Even if people who had rallied to fight the Gray God's followers arrived.

'That would be after the monastery had already burned.'

Absurdly, both groups fighting over this place would actually want everyone inside dead, down to the last straw of the last roof.

The reason was simple.

The first excuse the Gray God's followers had used for gathering was to punish a monastery possessed by demons.

So they could not simply leave this place alone.

Did they not need to prove their god and declare themselves righteous?

What a fine thing it would be if the birth of their Gray God came through the extermination of evil.

They needed a scapegoat, and conveniently there was a place full of people who defied them.

The same held true if the Holy State dispatched its army. They had no particular reason to save the monastery either.

"If those who dare to burn a monastery are not heretics, then who is?"

A monastery burned for the holy war.

People who died for the holy war.

And those who killed them are the true heretics. Was that not the perfect frame to hang on it?

In a way, calling them a political scapegoat would not be wrong.

The Gray God's faction had numbers, so did they not need at least a righteous cause to march under?

Mass slaughter, then. That was the monastery's future. And in the middle of all this, certain people showed themselves.

"What are you doing?"

A palisade had been erected in front of the monastery and iron chains wound tightly around the gate so no one could pass in or out. He saw people unwrapping those chains.

They had wrapped cloth around the chains to muffle the sound and were moving by moonlight alone, without a single torch.

There were more than five of them. Even on an early-winter night, those five were sweating through the work.

"We are opening the monastery gate."

One of them answered.

Noah was not even stunned. He half-thought he had gone without sleep so long that he was seeing things.

Of course, he knew that was not the case. His reason, as clear and cold as the moonlight above, told him exactly what was in front of him.

The one who had answered straightened up from his crouch. He stood a full head taller than Noah. The short blade in his hand was plain to see.

'Why?'

Opening the gate would change nothing. Why were they doing this? Because they did not know.

They did not know that the other side would not accept anything, no matter what was offered. They did not know the monastery's position, that it was destined to become a scapegoat. They did not know that those watching this affair regarded the monastery as a nest of demons.

'Are they doing this out of stupidity?'

Or perhaps the terror of death had crushed their judgment.

Both, most likely.

"If you open that gate and declare surrender, do you think they will accept it?"

"...We must repent."

This was why Ruagarne had said to knock all the skulls of those who would not listen and be done with it.

But that was only because the situation had twisted this way. If the monastery had run smoothly under Noah's guidance and they had all spent time together, those people would not be doing this now.

Noah wanted to believe that.

There was no way to know the future, so even if things had gone well over the course of several years, they might have ended up exactly like this anyway.

'Are all people evil?'

Or are they good?

It was a problem that would never be solved. Noah simply wanted to cast his vote for the side that said people were good.

"Why have you come out in the dead of night to do this?"

Another man among those trying to open the gate pulled a dagger from inside his clothes and asked. It looked like he had somehow kept it tucked up his sleeve without a scabbard.

"Nothing changes if you kill me."

Noah said.

"That is your opinion."

They seemed to have already stopped thinking. It was fortunate there were only five, at least.

'I never thought I would die like this.'

Noah kept his thoughts off his face and looked at the five of them. Not one would meet his eyes.

That was when it happened. A black shape came flying over the palisade. It hit the ground, rolled several times, and rose straight up.

A person had vaulted over, rolled, and stood.

"Director Noah?"

the shadow asked.

"...Who are you?"

"A nameless Holy Warrior of the Cult Extermination Priest Corps."

Whatever the world said, there were always those who moved by their own will and conviction. One of the Cult Extermination Priest Corps had come for Noah.

After that, the newcomer knocked down the five who had been halfway through opening the gate and joined them inside.

Several more things happened after that.

The gate was blocked with thornbushes, and one more attempt was made to send someone out before they gave it up.

By now the monastery was watched by so many people that not even an ant could slip out.

"Please escape while you can. You should go."

Noah tried to send the Cult Extermination Priest Corps member away. It would be a waste for someone with that much spirit to die here.

"No. I am fine."

They refused. Until the moment Enkrid and his group arrived, Noah endured six more days inside the monastery, and during that time all he could do was pray.

'God, please help us. Tend to your lambs. Gather the fallen fruit into the basket.'

Someone will come for us, for these poor children.

It was noon on the day they had gone two days without food, as supplies had run out.

It was also the day it had begun to feel like the enemy planned to starve them to death.

Sunlight lit the surroundings brightly.

Through the thornbushes blocking the front of the monastery, beyond the army of thousands that had formed a living wall, there were people cutting through.

* * *

Orders on a battlefield were best when simple. Enkrid knew that, so he kept it simple.

"We push through."

The goal was to break through the enemy encampment in front of the monastery and confirm that Noah and everyone inside were safe.

There was no other reason to have come this far.

Just because things looked fine from the outside did not mean they were fine within.

Rem went first. He stepped out to the left and swept his axe lightly. That single casual swing killed four soldiers of what was calling itself the Grey Holy Army.

Rem's axe traced a crooked line through the air, and along every inch of that line, an enemy soldier's throat was in the way.

"I've got the front."

Ragna stepped up too. He drifted slightly to the right despite saying he had the front, but he stepped forward.

His long blade of hardest iron stabbed, slashed, struck, and tore through the enemy soldiers without pause.

Crak. Guk. Ack.

Enemy soldiers crumpled one after another.

All of them fought well even while mounted. Rem in particular stopped swinging his axe midway, snatched a spear from a soldier who had been thrusting at him, and started driving it in, one after another, and not a single opponent managed to stop any of those blows.

"Their training is awful."

Ropord said it while kicking his horse and wheeling around, sword lashing out. Compared to the Border Guard, this group had no drill discipline whatsoever.

The blade split an enemy soldier's helmet, and blood and other things spilled across the ground. The soldier who took the hit buckled at the knees and fell forward.

Ropord was right. The Grey Holy Army had never had time for drill training.

They had only just gathered and begun to organize. Where would there have been time to train? So this was only natural.

How would people who would barely hold their own against a flock of crows stop a knight's party?

Enkrid was swinging his sword from atop Odd-Eye. He gripped Odd-Eye's sides with his legs for balance, held the new true silver sword in his right hand and Spark in his left.

He was ready, and he was a breath away from swinging.

Taking in the surroundings naturally, assessing the level of the enemy soldiers, a thought came to him.

Did he have to kill all of them? No. That would not be necessary. An army had something called momentum.

If he disrupted that momentum, they would scatter on their own.

How? Build an Iron Wall like before? He had practiced it enough times since that day that the act itself was within reach.

But he doubted it would crush the enemy with the same overwhelming pressure as it had back then.

'Everything is shaped by circumstances and environment.'

Ruagarne's teaching. So even if he put up the same Iron Wall, it would not feel the same to the enemy.

More than that, right now he needed to push through. What good was building a wall?

Enkrid sharpened the edge of his senses. Then he unraveled that edge and spread it wide like threads of silk.

In the realm of instinct, Enkrid looked once more at the mass that was the enemy army and divided it in his mind.

Together, they were one army.

Apart, they were individual people.

What held an army together was momentum.

The net of his senses spread and draped over everything around him.

Eyes, posture, weight distribution, the direction of weapons, all of it became the basis for judgment.

He read through the net, separating those who would charge, those who would run, and those who would hold, and he swung his sword.

The ones whose momentum was high, he cut.

"Kck!"

A soldier spat blood and rolled across the ground, his throat lightly caught by the true silver sword in passing. Next, the ones trembling under the weight of their own crushed momentum, he moved past. The ones holding out stubbornly but poorly, he knocked aside.

Tak. A soldier clipped on the flat of the blade stumbled sideways and went down.

Enkrid chose when to apply force and when to ease off, distributing his Will with care.

Using his senses as the foundation, he cut, passed, and knocked aside. He repeated it, and again, and soon there was no one left standing around him.

The quietest fight produced the most fallen enemy soldiers.

Rem's eyes drifted that way.

'Well, now.'

He himself could cut and kill everything his axe touched. He was not fighting seriously at the moment, so he had not gone that far, but still.

Being impressed by someone simply cutting and stabbing was not like him.

But what Enkrid was showing now was something a bit different. Hitting and cutting could be done with enough strength, but what he was doing was not something strength alone could pull off.

'You could do that?'

Rem was surprised, and a little pleased. He could see traces of his own teaching woven into what Enkrid was doing.

Advancing boldly cut down the time spent hesitating, and that saved time was used to judge and move. It could be called a technique for stretching out time. What Enkrid was doing was built on exactly that.

Someone watching Enkrid was even more surprised than Rem.

'What is he doing?'

With each enemy Enkrid put down, the group that was an army seemed to come apart.

Jaxon felt it through his senses. The others probably felt it too, in a vague way.

He grasped roughly what the principle was, but how did one tell apart the soldiers who still had momentum from those who did not?

'Just by looking?'

Jaxon could imitate it if asked, but not the way Enkrid was doing it now.

Precise. Thorough. That was what Enkrid's blade drew.

What Enkrid was showing right now was something only he could do.

Because it had been earned through experience, crawling up from the very bottom.

There were things you could understand more clearly precisely because you lacked talent.

It was the reward for having lived a long time as an ordinary soldier.