WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 612: A Light That Doesn't Dazzle

= = =

Ropord had hoped Jaxon's assassination of a few priests would make the enemy hesitate, but their commander pinned it on an Evil Spirit instead.

Sharp reflexes.

Or maybe they had already planned for something like that from the start.

Ropord quietly assessed the situation, weighing the enemy forces against their own, factoring in the terrain, the positions, all of it. The enemy army happened to be inching forward at that very moment. Once that was factored in, the calculation produced one conclusion.

Fighting inside the monastery will cost too many lives. People will die without even being able to fight back. The monks inside cannot be counted as combat strength.

Then what was to be done?

Ropord grabbed his sword, walked to the front of the monastery, pulled back the palisade blocking the path, and cut through the brush.

The truth was, this had started earlier, when Esther blocked the divine incantation. Fell had helped with that. Seeing it, Enkrid had told them to step forward. Not because he had thought it through carefully, but because those three had already finished preparing to move out, so the words came naturally.

He had not been working from any deliberate tactical plan.

There was not much to see clearly from where he stood anyway.

Either way, once Ropord had nearly cleared the path, Fell spoke from behind him.

"I'm going out first."

"You little, I'm the one who opened this path. Why are you going first?"

"If you want to fight, step outside and do it, little brothers."

Teresa cast a shadow over both their heads and offered a sensible answer to a stupid argument.

In that moment she caught sight of Audin arriving and turned her gaze toward her master.

From a distance, Audin gave a single nod. There would be time later, plenty of it, to share news and catch up on everything that had happened.

For now, what needed doing had to be done.

"We are not fighting inside. We are going to anchor the battlefield out here. That way nobody dies."

Ropord said it as he stepped forward.

In return, the three of them would have to fight with roughly half a life on the line, but that was not much to worry about.

Sparring with Ragna or Enkrid on a regular basis pushed you right to the edge of death anyway.

Half a life? That seemed worth attempting.

Ropord genuinely believed that.

Which was why he did something he could never have imagined back in his Nauril days.

Stepping forward himself instead of deferring to others, exactly as he was doing now.

Enkrid had even told him to move, so in a way permission had been granted.

And so he walked out, striding forward with a loose gait, and dragged a slow line across the ground with his boot.

"Anyone who wants to die, cross this line."

He had wanted to try this ever since he saw Enkrid do it. Right away, Fell hopped forward and stepped over it.

"I crossed it."

"You brainless shepherd, I was talking to the enemy."

"Oh, I know. But before they even get close to this line, I'll let them taste my blade first. So then. If you picked up a piece of metal without the talent for it, I assume you've made your peace with losing your life?"

The first part was aimed at Ropord, the second at the enemy line. Fell was taking his time. Looking only at raw talent, there were few among them worth fighting.

The momentum of the approaching enemy soldiers turned ugly.

Showing gray sacred light meant, among other things, that you had been cutting private deals and sinking deep into worldly corruption.

For people like that, authority was perhaps the highest value of all.

Watching two people openly mock that authority, the soldiers of the Holy Knight Order felt heat rising through their entire bodies. That heat had a name: rage.

"We will rip out your tongues before we kill you!"

The first Holy Warrior came charging straight in. He was on foot, confident in his legs.

Thoom.

The ground shook as his body became a straight line cutting across the battlefield.

Fell stepped up to meet him and drew a different line across that body.

Clang. Shick.

Only Fell heard the sound up close. Those watching from a step away took it in not through their ears but through their eyes.

The large Holy Warrior who had been charging crumpled, his flank sliced halfway through, trailing entrails as he fell.

"Gggh."

He let out a strange cry and reached for his own spilling guts. Ropord followed up immediately, cracking the flat of his blade across the man's skull.

Thwak. Thud.

The helmet tilted sideways and the man's head hit the dirt. Blood from his flank soaked into the ground. Warm, wet liquid filled cold, dry earth.

"That's one," Fell said.

"I finished him off."

Ropord gave a short snort and stepped up beside Fell.

The momentum shifted among part of the Holy Warrior mob that had been charging.

These were not soldiers who had simply broken through allies on a whim. Getting swept up in the moment and charging headlong would only add to their own casualties.

Among every ten Holy Warriors, there was a leader who commanded the group. These were called Senior Holy Warriors.

"Form up."

Groups with deep traditions always honed their collective tactics.

This one was no different.

Twenty Holy Warriors of Abundance split into two columns.

Six Holy Warriors of the Scales, confident in their individual skill, peeled off and moved toward Teresa, who had stepped aside.

"A half-Giant, is it? Should be a decent fight. Tough skin means there's something satisfying about cutting into it."

A Holy Warrior said it while dragging his tongue along his whippy, flexing blade.

As if Teresa had learned nothing from Enkrid all this time. Of course she had.

"Your tongue is going to rust."

A sharp barb born from Enkrid's influence twisted the Holy Warrior's composure.

The remark caught him off guard. The smile on his face went crooked.

"You bitch."

Language unbecoming of a man of faith, but Teresa's mind stayed calm.

Not that she was going to stop and celebrate her inner peace right now.

Teresa angled her shield and reset her grip, tilting it to the left diagonal. She had seen the six Holy Warriors spacing themselves front and back, trying to encircle her.

The six had no thought of losing. They moved into a measured formation and drew their weapons.

Watching them, Teresa took a moment to look back on her training. Only a moment, but her stomach turned.

The drills and conditioning of a madman were enough to make even a half-Giant think of dizziness and nausea.

What had she grabbed hold of at the far end of that brutal suffering?

Teresa planted her left foot outward, put her weight into her right, and lowered her stance slightly. A position from which she could bring the shield down at a diagonal the instant anyone came at her.

"Hmph!"

A Holy Warrior lunged at her without warning and swung his flail.

The blow came from above, aimed at her wrist behind the shield. Teresa eased the shield upward and caught the flail on its edge.

Clang.

Metal struck metal. A crashing boom spread outward. It was an attack that gave no thought to defense.

Teresa followed immediately with a swing of the sword in her right hand. A straight vertical drop, powered by monstrous strength.

Two Holy Warriors flanking the attacker moved to block it.

Both were holding thick iron rods, and they crossed them to catch Teresa's blade.

Clang.

The second crash. Loud enough to leave ears ringing for a moment.

"You will regret stepping forward," one of them said, brow furrowed.

Their method was simple. The striker moved boldly while the other two blocked.

Three becoming one. Six total, which meant strikes of similar force coming from both sides at once.

Teresa blocked one side with her shield and caught or countered the other with the flat of her sword.

From the outside, it looked like Teresa was losing ground. The attackers rotated positions while fighting, and she could not do the same.

But Teresa herself did not read this as a crisis.

This was easier to handle than Ropord and Fell combining their attacks on her.

The fact that she could not find openings in her opponents was not a problem either.

"If you push and pull and the door will not open, ask yourself whether your own strength is lacking."

Words from the Holy War. More precisely, words written in the scripture of the war god.

Teresa liked that line very much.

When Enkrid had shown her the strike that compressed Will into a single blow, Teresa had already been capable of something close to it.

Load the Will into the natural strength of a Giant. Open a door that will not open.

Clang.

Block with the shield. A blunt strike coming from the right, knock it away with the pommel end. In the brief window gained, her sword traced the same arc as before.

A blade falling vertically crashed into the crossed iron rods.

Bang.

This time a different sound exploded out.

Crack.

Then the sound of something breaking.

"You ignorant..."

Even with two of them dispersing the force, what happens when you hit harder than they can handle?

And Teresa had not simply thrown raw power at it. If she had, Audin, who had trained her, would have let out a groan of despair.

In other words, not only had the method of releasing that power changed from before, but the craft inside it had changed too.

At the moment of impact, she twisted the blade and drove more of the force toward the one on the left.

A strike that would have been difficult for both of them to absorb together was tilted entirely onto one.

It was a variation on the Holy Knights' specialty, Penetration.

When the direction of the force tilted to one side, the sound changed, and the wrist of the one holding the rod snapped.

"Get that treated," one of the remaining ones said, but standing there and allowing that was not a problem with tactics, it was a problem with the brain.

Teresa's sword and shield began moving to a different rhythm.

Faster. More violent.

She was using the shield offensively too, sometimes gripping only the handle fitted at its edge and using the corner like a blade.

When the corner of the shield raked across a breastplate with a long tearing sound, one Holy Warrior shouted.

"She's insane!"

Teresa brightened at that.

"Do you know the name of our knight order?"

By proving she would not be out-talked, she made her allegiance clear.

"Crazy!"

Another Holy Warrior cried out as she drove the sword in. Not a simple thrust but a weighted strike.

Blocking it sloppily would not be solved by a few broken ribs.

The sword she drove forward with her words found the thigh of an enemy Holy Warrior.

Thud. Crunch.

Bone splintered apart. The Holy Warrior let out a terrible scream.

"Aaaaaagh!"

A blood-curdling cry soaked in agony. A fragment of the broken thighbone punched through the skin of the thigh.

The result of deliberately striking with a pushing force so the impact drove inward.

"Hold! The God of the Scales watches over us!"

In their panic, they all summoned their sacred light. People armored in gray under the light of the sun. Their light was not dazzling in the slightest.

That thought crossed Teresa's mind as she kept swinging. While she battered the six Holy Warriors, driving them back and cutting them down one by one, Ropord and Fell were meeting the enemy on their own front.

"Why are you facing my back?"

"Get over there and go play with some sheep. Stop standing here."

The two of them were still exchanging sharp words, but they were not actually leaving each other's backs exposed.

Not every individual Holy Warrior was at junior knight level. Junior knights were not exactly common in the world.

Still, one in ten was clearly exceptional.

Every group of ten would attack once, defend, pull back, and then swap with a comrade.

There was no opportunity to corner any one of them.

On top of that, none of the ten were the same skill level, and each had different habits.

And since those ten had more than enough breathing room, they went all out on every single attack. In a situation like this, cutting through their attacks in one stroke to flip the battle was not easy either.

Fights between a few strong people and many weaker ones usually wore down the stamina of the few, and this fight was going the same way.

Two of the Holy Warriors had reached junior knight level, and both of them had excellent patience.

They did not push forward themselves. They coordinated with their comrades.

That was exactly what made them harder to deal with, and on top of that, the Holy Warriors were putting their mouths to full use.

"Idiots."

"Do you know where you are?"

"A pair of dumbasses."

"I'll cut out whichever one of you has the longer tongue first."

"Who told you not to cross that line? Morons."

"Go call your mother."

Every last one of them had a sharp tongue. You had to wonder where they had picked all of this up.

Being steeped in the ways of the world meant being close to it.

The Holy Warriors under Muel's command in particular dealt with merchants and bandits on a regular basis. Over time, that naturally sharpened their mouths.

And the one with the goat beard who had a face sly enough to look crooked even standing still, the kind of man you could only call a bastard regardless of his Holy Warrior title, made even that mispronounced insult hard to let slide.

Not all twenty were running their mouths, but well over ten were coming at them verbally, and it was hard for just two people to win a war of words against that.

In the end, both Ropord and Fell were getting worked over alternately with insults and sword strikes.

Flick.

Then a spear tip grazed Fell's cheek. Blood spattered. Fell stepped back and flicked a pebble with the tip of his boot.

He had been working the calculation from earlier, moving to create an opening.

The pebble shot out and was blocked by the shield of a soldier stepping up from behind.

Thwack.

He had kicked it so hard the pebble split on impact, fragments scattering, but that was all.

No opening appeared.

On the other side, Ropord was busy parrying spear tips and a Morningstar flying in from left and right with the flat of his blade, weaving between them.

If they kept fighting like this, what would happen? Fell did not need to be told the answer.

And if he knew it, Ropord would know it even better. That was his specialty, after all.

"Hey," Fell called.

"What," Ropord answered, still working his footwork. Fell matched his rhythm and asked.

"You see the opening?"

The two of them had a bad relationship. A genuinely bad one.

But because they had spent so much time being acutely aware of each other in a fight, their coordination within the knight order was the best of anyone.

Ordinarily, once you reached junior knight level, fighting alone became more efficient than fighting in a group. When your personal combat strength reached the level of a war instrument, it naturally moved in that direction. For these two, however, it was a different story.

Fell knew Ropord's specialty well.

And Ropord knew Fell's just as well.

Ropord did not have Fell's explosive power.

Ropord used a swordsmanship that built steadily, the opposite approach from loading everything into each individual strike.

Of course, knowing his own weakness, he had been mixing Heavy and Fierce Sword into his orthodox Correct Sword style.

That part he was learning from Ragna.

Ragna was not a great teacher, but he was not the type to dodge sparring either, so there had been some real growth there.

Fell, by contrast, mainly used explosive sword strikes. Grinding fights or calculated battles were not his specialty.

His foundation was something closer to animal instinct.

Which was why his Numbers Game was weaker than Ropord's.

Ropord would generally have preferred not to team up with Fell.

"Hey? Your mom did it with a Ghoul?"

But looking at the goat-bearded face smirking as he said that, the man who fully deserved to be called a bastard regardless of his Holy Warrior title, even a temporary truce with Fell seemed fine.

"Look at that one. Tongue-level commander material right there."

"Yeah. I'll let you be the one to cut out that tongue."

Fell made the concession. The Holy Warrior's lively performance had united the two of them.

= = =

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