WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 618: What Is Divinity?

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Will, at least, was something he understood. Maybe not perfectly, but enough to define it roughly.

It was an intangible force born from willpower.

But what was divine power? What about sorcery?

Even people who learned best through their bodies rather than books still used their heads. More than that, everyone here had broken through some threshold in their own field and earned their own insight. They knew things.

"A good question," Ruagarne said, nodding along.

Audin smiled softly and turned the question back around. "What does the captain-brother think?"

Enkrid turned a few answers over in his mind. What came out surprised even him. It was less a question about function or the particular qualities of divine power, and more the question that came before all of that.

"Irrationality. Things beyond understanding. The full weight of wondering why, if a god exists, that god lends only power instead of stepping forward."

Part of it might have been Muel's fault, the man had flung questions at random while he was half-dead. Or maybe these were thoughts Enkrid had always carried without realizing. He had never sat down and reasoned deeply through whether gods were absent or present, but if someone asked him right now, these were the questions he wanted to ask.

If a god exists, why does that god not act?

A question about what divine power was had drifted into something ontological. It implied another question: could the existence of divine power prove the existence of a god? Taken far enough, it might have amounted to a denial of theology itself.

In an age when faith stretched across the whole continent, that was not a question anyone was supposed to ask lightly. Asking it of a man who had clearly served as a cleric, a priest, and a Holy Knight was something else entirely.

"Bold," Rem said from the side. Everyone glanced at Audin. He might snap.

He did not.

A snowflake drifted down and dissolved on Audin's head and shoulder. The faint smile on his face did not waver. That same gentle, unhurried expression stayed in place as he answered.

"We are the ones who live on this earth. So rather than waiting for a god to come down and clear the snow piled before us, we should clear it ourselves."

There was no offense taken. None of the alarm the others had been bracing for.

If the barbarian-brother had said it, or the directionally-impaired bastard-brother, or the wildcat-brother, would it have stung differently? Audin was not sure. Even then, he suspected he would have read it as provocation rather than genuine insult. He could understand why someone might say such things.

What came naturally from Rem, Ragna, or Jaxon's mouths had come from Enkrid's instead, and Audin understood it at a deeper level.

He walks forward and acts first. Of course he asks.

That was just the kind of person Enkrid was. No resentment about a god's silence, and yet still capable of leveling that question at everything that stood still. Even at a god.

Of course, if he asked that question in front of the Holy State, there would be an uproar about blasphemy. The more zealous types would call for an inquisition on the spot.

Though in the current situation, perhaps not.

Audin thought it over. Enkrid saying something like that might draw anger, yes, but suppressing him by force was another matter entirely. Overdier would never allow it. Even when they had traveled together before, Audin had seen it, but watching Overdier step so decisively to Enkrid's side this time made it certain. He had chosen where he stood.

A man like that would not move to brand Enkrid a heretic over a few words.

And setting Overdier aside, Naurillia stood behind Enkrid. The king had always been in his corner. Even if someone wanted to come at him with force, Enkrid's own capability was one thing, but the Madman Knights at his back left no clean way to apply pressure.

Enkrid, for his part, had not been picking a fight. He had thrown out a genuine question and received a genuine answer, and the answer made enough sense that his head dipped in a nod before he thought about it.

"True enough."

"What is wrong with both of you, the one asking and the one answering, nodding along like you figured something out?"

Rem cut in with a flat look.

"That too," Enkrid said, absently nodding again, and something in that expression got under the skin in a way that was hard to explain.

"You are doing that to mess with me, aren't you?"

"Sharp," Sinar said, praising the barbarian's instincts. She had a gift for that kind of thing.

"You are right." Enkrid said it and nodded once more, which made Rem pull off his insulated leather for a moment. Not that anyone stopped sparring over it.

Audin smiled to himself and thought, I ended up saying back to the captain-brother what I learned from watching him.

The answer he had just given was something he had arrived at by watching Enkrid. Saying it back the other direction gave him a strange feeling.

He had once seen a man burn through each day on meager talent alone.

Watching that was what had ended his own wandering and brought him to where he stood now.

Releasing the Prohibition Seal, feeling no regret about it, all of it traced back to things he had come to understand by watching how Enkrid faced his life.

"So why did you come back, anyway?"

Rem, apparently still looking to vent, lobbed the question at Audin for no particular reason.

"Hmm." Audin glanced at the distant sky as though thinking it over.

He could have returned to the Holy Knight Order once the seal was lifted, but he had no intention of going back to serve as an Apostle of the war god. He was not foolish enough to be lost about where he belonged.

"Would you get in trouble if you went back? Is that it?"

Rem pressed again. Audin nodded.

"That part is also true."

The exact same unhurried nod Enkrid had given a moment ago.

"……Damn it. Have you all lost your minds? Fine. We all die today. Captain, rank, none of it matters. The knight order is dissolved as of right now."

"Says who? Go back west on your own. Oh, you never knew the way, did you? Is that why you stayed? Want me to guide you? Out of the affection I have built up, I will walk you to the road."

Ragna cut in, and the conversation collapsed naturally into a sparring match. Enkrid was the most eager and the first one off Odd-Eye's back.

"Come at me. Gray-top."

"Not even going to bother with a real taunt anymore?"

That was about right.

Jaxon drifted off to gather dry branches nearby, watching the snowflakes fall as he went. Ropord and Fell started setting up camp.

"Entertaining," Ruagarne said, settling to one side as a spectator. Sinar sat down next to her.

"Watching your fiancé work up a sweat is always a pleasure."

Everyone did as they pleased, but nothing was wrong with any of it. If anything, it was its own kind of fun.

After sparring and cooking and eating dinner, the question Enkrid had tossed out before dismounting finally found its way back from ontology to something more practical.

"Divine power is a force the god gave us to protect ourselves while we live on this earth, and it differs from Will in a few ways."

Listening to Audin talk about divine power drew in a bit of theology along the way, and everyone leaned in. Ropord and Fell and Teresa had more to learn than most.

Afterward, Enkrid turned to Rem and asked about sorcery.

"What makes sorcery different?"

Someone had said it was easier to give shape to intangible force with sorcery, but couldn't Will do the same? Ropord raised that question partway through.

"That is not the only difference."

Rem answered without irritation, and it was not one long speech, just a word here and a word there as everyone kept doing what they were doing.

Nothing complicated. Jaxon brought back branches. Esther snapped her fingers to light the fire. Ropord and Fell set a pot over the flames with practiced hands, boiled water, heated stones. Jerk meat went on to roast, some grain flour stirred into water, and a field meal came together without fuss.

Rem, who had finished sparring, had also brought back three rabbits and cooked them himself.

"I had a few good bottles of wine," Audin said, pulling them from his pack. Everyone dug out their cups, tin or wooden, and wine poured in a thin stream. They held them loosely in hand.

Enkrid took a sip and nodded. The aroma alone was worth it.

Ruagarne ate dried locusts and such. Sinar made do with dried fruit. Both shared the grain-flour soup as well.

Frog did not eat only insects and bugs. She simply enjoyed eating that way when it was possible.

That said, no one had ever seen her flick out her tongue to catch a fly buzzing past in midsummer. Enkrid had asked about it once.

"Would you want to eat a live cow right there on the spot, blood and all?"

The answer was that some things were better eaten alive, but flies were not among them.

Frog understood the concept of cooking. She even had herbs she was particularly fond of.

Everyone occupied themselves with something, but at the center sat Enkrid, Audin, and Esther in her human form, and conversation flowed around those three.

"So divine power is stable, that is what you are saying?" Ropord took a sip of wine, accepted the bottle Fell passed over, and poured again.

The snowfall had been thickening, but they had found a small cave nearby and rigged a simple lean-to with poles and blankets in front of it, so the snow was no problem and there was enough room.

The conversation continued over wine and the crackling of the campfire after the meal was done.

The differences between divine power, sorcery, and Will went around the circle, each person giving their own take. Even when opinions diverged, no one snapped or argued. They all knew the others had carved their own paths at a high level. The occasional jab was made in jest. No one pushed.

Enkrid sat among people who burned with something. Watching the fire and the falling snow, talking like this, a thought settled in him.

This is good.

It sat somewhere between enjoyment and happiness, balanced on the line between the two.

Enkrid was the kind of person who lost sleep over honing real sword technique while pushing toward his goal of becoming a knight. It would have made no sense to dislike a moment like this.

There was the thrill of growth, yes, but talking openly like this was its own kind of pleasure.

He had imagined it once, as a child, after becoming a knight, gathering with people who understood, talking about each other's techniques, pointing out weaknesses, filling the gaps. They were not doing exactly that right now, but the mood was close to what he had pictured back then.

That alone made him glad.

He was also picking things up.

Enkrid organized what was being said and stacked it inside his head. Remembering and turning things over was something he was good at.

One thing he had learned went like this.

Will brought depletion. Divine power did not.

"You will grow tired and drained after using it all up, yes, but it is not that the will weakens. Rather, the vessel is no longer able to receive more of the force the god has given. So there is no depletion in that sense. Though you may be unable to use divine power for several days after."

Sorcery was different from Will in its own way.

"Make a mistake with sorcery and it does not end at depletion. The worst case is possession."

"Possession?"

"Think of it as a god entering your body, but not the kind the glowing one speaks of. An easier way to put it is being seized by an Evil Spirit, though the nature of it is different from that too."

"How is it different?" Fell asked. The Shepherds of the Wilderness dealt with Evil Spirits often enough. This part interested them.

"It is not that the Evil Spirit gives you orders. More that you fall into some primal instinct or obsession and cannot leave it. Hard to explain. Just know that it happens, and that someone taken over by sorcery that way becomes far more trouble than usual."

Enkrid could not say he fully understood it, but having spent time in the west, he had a rough sense of what they meant by spirits like Grime, or the various divine spirits they named out there.

"If a mild one like a bear spirit borrows your body, you might eat a bit of wild honey, have a stomachache, and wander back. But if it is not something mild, things can go very wrong."

So where Will brought depletion, sorcery brought the loss of self through possession.

On the other hand, sorcery power almost never diminished permanently, and with luck it could even grow, though no one with a ghoul's worth of sense would burn it recklessly chasing that.

Looking at all of this, divine power was remarkably stable. But that was not only an advantage.

"It is difficult to use explosively. Doing so requires exceptional innate talent. Think of divine power as a long, firm cord."

"Sorcery can put out several times what you would normally be capable of. That is probably the biggest difference. But using it that way always comes with a cost."

Sorcery could use mediums to amplify force. If divine power was endurance, sorcery was the explosive output that shone in short fights. Like exaggerating words to inflate the truth, the force itself could be inflated.

And Will? What made Will different?

That answer came from Ragna.

"Will is entirely determined by how the person using it chooses to use it. The color is completely different depending on who wields it."

As he said it, Ragna glanced briefly at Jaxon, as if to say that the two of them worked in ways that could not be more different.

Divine power and sorcery had a certain consistency to them. Will did not. A hundred users could show a hundred different colors.

That was also part of why things like Future Sight and Endure existed as Basics. You had to reach at least that level before individual character was even worth discussing.

By the time the conversation wound through all of that, the pleasure of it had not stopped at pleasure. For Enkrid, everything being said had become a process of awakening and naming things he had sensed but never quite put into words.

And then, on top of all of it.

"The origin is the same."

The sorcerer's perspective entered the circle.

It gave Enkrid a different way of seeing.

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