WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 609: I Made a Friend

= = =

The unnamed Holy Warrior's question reached Ropord. He glanced at the man, then stepped politely to one side to let a leopard pass by and held out his cape so the Holy Warrior could see the crest embroidered on it.

A single line with a step in it. What it meant was a castle wall, the Iron Wall.

"Recognize this?"

He showed it and asked. The crest was not one you could easily mistake. If anyone asked who had set the continent talking most in recent times, this was the answer, and it was not as though the Cult Extermination Priest Corps lived sealed away in some mountain, ears shut to the world, fighting Cultists in ignorance. Something of this scale was hard to ignore even so.

"Border Guard?"

The Priest Corps warrior blinked once and said it. His expression was one of surprise. The crest was indeed that of the Border Guard. And there was one more emblem on it, the one that stood for Enkrid.

Ropord lifted his cape and showed that one too.

A solid black shape with a line cutting straight through it. That was the crest.

Its meaning was to cut through the Cursed Ground. It was the symbol of the Madman Knights.

One of Naurillia's nobles had looked at it and asked, "Does this mean you just start swinging if things go sideways?" That was the kind of crest it was.

"Know this one too? It is the only knight order at the Border Guard, after all."

They had been doing a lot of work outside lately and had seen for themselves how far their influence spread, but Ropord's current location was, strictly speaking, outside the Border Guard's territory.

He had thought the other person might not know, and said as much, but.

"The Knights of Madness?"

The answer came right back. The original name was the Madmen, but people called it the Knights of Madness on their own. Well, the meaning carried, so it amounted to the same thing.

In some places they were called the Iron Wall Knights outright. Ropord had experienced that himself.

"Yes. Squire Ropord."

Ropord stated what could be called his identity. His actual skill was on par with a junior knight, but Ropord had stayed a Squire.

The title of knight had originally come from nobility, but these days it had become a symbol of martial power used broadly to refer to those who wielded Will.

The rank of junior knight carried a similar symbolic weight, though right now none of that mattered much to him.

That said, he was not without a sense of belonging or pride, so this was fine.

Squire of the Madman Knights.

That was exactly how Ropord described himself.

Even if his captain Enkrid said he was a junior knight, he would remain a Squire until he accepted and acknowledged it for himself.

Looking at it this way, it was clear that a certain madness had taken root in Ropord too.

And Ropord figured that if he was introducing himself as Squire, this other one deserved a proper introduction too. He spread one open palm to the side as he said it.

"This here is guest soldier Fell."

Strictly speaking, a knight order could not have a plain soldier in its ranks, but what did that matter. This one was just a soldier.

That was how Ropord saw it. Fell took the words back without a trace of a smile.

"Since when does a Squire rank below a soldier?"

"Maybe out in some wilderness backwater, but not on the continent. Soldier."

"Huh? A mere Squire, talking back?"

The two were growling at each other when the gentle-faced half-Giant smiled and spoke up.

"We do not cut down or harm just anyone, so please be at ease, brother."

Her frame made it obvious she was a half-Giant, but look more closely and she had quite striking features. Though right now no one was paying attention to a woman's face.

"Oh."

The unnamed Holy Warrior of the Cult Extermination Priest Corps stood there with his mouth hanging open. He could not find any words.

The Knights of Madness?

The very people whose names were on every lip across the continent right now. Why were they here? Nothing but questions filled his head.

What could they possibly want here?

People always moved for gain. He himself, a nameless Holy Warrior, might not, but others doing so was entirely natural.

So the question arising in him was natural too.

And it was not only him. Anyone would have wanted to ask the same thing: why are these people here?

Getting involved in the fighting unfolding here meant stepping into the Holy State's internal conflict.

On top of that, the people gathered outside were screaming at the top of their lungs that Noah's monastery was a nest of demons, that they had received divine revelation to that effect.

Of course no one believed it, but when someone with power said something like that, a small monastery had no way to resist.

Right. Even if these people helped and the monastery somehow survived, things could go sideways and everyone inside could end up treated as servants of demons.

Even after all the fighting was over, they would have to wear that stigma.

He understood that. It was knowing that which had made him come to this monastery ready to throw his life away.

"I thought about what it was I wanted to do before the Cult Extermination. It was to pray for people who suffered unjustly."

The unnamed Holy Warrior said those words and left the Priest Corps, and stayed here.

Even so, every night he looked at the moon and prayed, and needed that time to steady himself.

Crawling into a death trap knowing you would die was not something any mind could be at peace with.

That resolve of his felt like it had been drained of all meaning.

What is this calm?

These people had walked in without a care and wandered the city without any fuss. Watching them, he felt something close to bafflement.

They growled at each other, one of them was humming a tune, the gray-haired Barbarian complained about why it had to be cold, and the one beside him asked where the main gate was.

The man had climbed over the wall himself, why he was asking that was completely beyond understanding.

Meanwhile, the leopard walking along one side, and the one who shared the same cape as this group yet walked apart from them as though he had nothing to do with it, what was that about?

Watching all of it, there was no word for what he felt.

Why was he baffled?

There was one reason. He felt no sense of crisis from these people.

That was what drained his resolve of meaning. That was why he was thrown off.

* * *

"I have not eaten in two days."

Noah said it with thin, bony hands as he brewed tea. Enkrid took the cup and drank.

Thanks to Marcus in the past, he had tasted what fine tea was and had drunk it often enough to know the tea in his hands now was nothing expensive.

The monastery clearly was not well off, just hearing that they had gone two days without eating was enough to tell that, so this was tea brought out with real effort.

Though Marcus had once said:

"Does expensive mean good? Not necessarily. A truly good cup of tea depends on who is sitting across from you and what that moment feels like. Drink with someone you cannot stand and even the finest tea tastes like nothing."

That was something Marcus had said on the way to drink tea with his father.

Expensive tea or not, he had been complaining about not wanting to go?

With that memory as his guide, Enkrid decided the tea he was drinking right now was not bad.

It had a proper bite, a proper fragrance that lingered in the mouth. It was dried flower tea, and it had a rough, heavy taste because it was not blended, but as tea went, this was more than enough.

"I am truly grateful you came, but I think you should understand the situation."

Noah said it again. He was serious. And genuine.

On the way here, Enkrid had thought about what reaction he might get when he arrived, and he could roughly guess.

Most people would thank him. Then they would tell him to save them, somehow, no matter what.

Whether that meant getting on their knees or making promises they could not keep, they would need to do that.

Or at least beg him to save themselves.

They might ask him to save just some of them, themselves included.

But occasionally there were people you could not so easily measure.

Noah's parched, cracked lips parted. Through the splits, there was a hint of blood.

The dried and broken skin looked like it would split open again at the slightest pressure. The situation was visible through those lips.

The kind of situation that could crack and bleed at any moment if things went sideways.

"You have already been marked as a scapegoat, so staying here could earn you the same treatment, branded children of demons. Not only those outside who call the gray one a god, but those from the Holy State may see it the same way."

There are this many lunatics in the world.

That thought crossed Enkrid's mind.

Worrying about others in a situation like this? But then, Noah had always been that kind of person.

Losing one eye and having one ear destroyed, knowing the end would be death, death at the conclusion of torture, and still choosing to save Seiki. That was the kind of person he was.

"Looking back on it, I think Noah is a little broken. Though I was the one who used that."

That was Seiki's assessment too.

What Noah was saying right now was this:

It is dangerous. This could be bad for you.

Enkrid had fully concluded that this one was also perfectly mad.

Noah spoke again. Enkrid just listened, drinking hot tea. Quietly, with an attentive posture.

"If it is at all possible, could you save at least the children? The monks and I have all decided to stay in the monastery. Yes, I suppose this would be penance for my past sins."

He smiled, and there was genuine feeling in it. The smile was there because at least the children could be saved, because he had glimpsed at least some hope of saving a few.

The situation was bad. He was saying to get out, but save only the children, and the smile he wore saying it was this bright. Could such a thing be?

Enkrid stared at Noah. Anyone who had gone through that much torture and pain would have had dull, sunken eyes, but that was not the case. His eyes were truly not like that.

He had lost one of his two eyes, but in the remaining hollow there was an eye that shone like starlight.

Just a monastery. Just a few dozen people.

A fight with nothing to gain, someone had said?

Nothing to gain. Why would there be nothing to gain.

Among those who judged true saints by whether they possessed divine nature, here was someone who was like a true saint. That alone was something worth fighting for.

Do not abandon your neighbor because you are poor.

Do not shove others aside to pick up the fruit that has fallen.

If there were someone who followed every word spoken in the holy hall without exception, would that person not rightly be called a saint?

"Let us be friends."

Enkrid said it.

"...Pardon?"

"Speak plainly and let us be friends from today."

He put the teacup down and shook the dust from his hair. Dust scattered from his black hair.

In the shaft of light coming through the window, specks of dust drifted. To Noah's eyes, they looked like stars in a night sky.

The feeling was there, and in that moment it seemed as though he could see a light coming from the man in front of him.

Just as Enkrid saw a light in Noah.

Noah saw something similar.

Why had this man come here?

Even if asked, no answer would come easily.

Because it was too obvious, too simple.

He came to save people.

If the Boatman saw this, he might say: off again to save tomorrow, are you?

It was not wrong.

From Enkrid's own view, Noah was right and good and necessary to the world. That was simply all of it. Someone could say he did it on a whim and he would have nothing to argue.

"Let us be friends."

Enkrid said it again. Considering age, Noah would be older. At the sudden, out-of-nowhere words, Noah blinked for a moment, then placed both hands neatly in his lap and nodded with a smile.

"Yes, let us be friends."

Was this a comforting thing to say? Even if it was, it made him happy.

And the hero who had once come in place of a god came again, this time speaking in place of a god.

The mouth of the one who held light opened.

"Then from now on, this becomes a fight to protect a friend. I have a cause."

He could be treated as a demon.

So what?

Both the Holy State and the army of the gray god might turn on him, and the army gathered right outside was a real and immediate threat.

Yes. He had known that before coming.

"And you would still fight?"

Someone asks.

"Let us just say that is exactly why."

Enkrid answered inside himself and stood up.

Had Noah not said he had gone two days without eating? He could not let that go on any longer.

There were children in this monastery too. Children who had nearly been exploited under the name of saints. And children who had not. There were many, by his count. Even accounting for the monastery's modest means, many children lived inside these walls.

Noah did not especially discriminate between people.

Inside the monastery was someone who had sacrificed themselves to save Holy Maiden Seiki.

And someone who had watched everything until now and only just had a change of heart.

Fortunately, he was told that anyone who would have betrayed the monastery had already managed to put their shoes on the wrong feet and died before he arrived.

"Ah, Seiki says hello."

Enkrid said it and stepped outside.

Seiki had said:

"You think it would help if I came? I would probably just get in the way. Once I am a bit stronger, we can go together. Good luck. And pass my greetings on to Noah."

A remarkably straightforward kid. Embedded in Seiki's words was the assumption that nothing he set out to do would end in failure.

That trust pushed at his back. A welcome kind of push.

Krais too, who had not said a worried farewell, had been a first.

He was full of a desire to answer the trust they placed in him.

He wanted to give Noah's face that same look of relief he had seen on those two.

= = =

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