WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 620: The Fairy's Four Seasons

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"Am I a boulder? You think I'll just stand there and eat your swing?"

That was the heart of what Rem always said during sparring.

Cutting down the Walking Fire had been easy enough, it had no technique and couldn't move fast. People were a different matter.

Pouring Will into a single blow only meant something if it actually landed.

You could load power into a strike, sure. But what did you do when your opponent slipped it or deflected it?

"Too slow!"

That was where Rem pushed Enkrid hardest.

Split-second judgment through accelerated thought. Breathing Will into the narrowest gap.

Rem said all of it was necessary, and he showed it through action rather than words.

He did speak first, but his explanations came out about as useful as a Ghoul's, so watching him do it was far more convincing anyway.

"Look, think of it this way. You throw a rock and the other guy dodges. What happens? You don't get the throwing force back and you've lost the rock too. So cutting down that Walking Fire, or Crawling Fire, whatever it is, was fine, but that alone won't cut it."

Enkrid listened. He understood the broad point but decided there was no need to say so out loud.

"Alright. Let's spar. You can drop the lecture."

"How am I supposed to explain it any simpler than this?"

There were a hundred and one simpler ways to say it, of course, but there was no point arguing that. So the sparring continued. Enkrid repeated it for days, and every time it was maddening how much he enjoyed it.

Rem's axe would catch his sword and shove it off line at every turn, and those constantly shifting feet kept him from ever landing the single blow he'd used to cut down the Walking Fire.

"You need to at least be able to fake that 'one big swing' from any position before I can say you're actually useful. Sure, some fool who doesn't know any better might eat it, but anyone at a knight's level will see it coming a mile away if you telegraph it that hard."

The way Rem described it, gathering Will and swinging a sword was like letting out a sudden war cry. Whether you wanted to hear it or not, your ears caught it. Whether you wanted to look or not, your eyes followed. He wasn't wrong.

"So split the Will or flood it all in, just decide in the moment."

It was a deeper pass through what Enkrid had done when facing the gray pack forces. Cutting momentum had been possible through accelerated thought, so Rem's argument was that the same should work against knights.

Watching from the side, the barbarian doing the teaching looked like he was having a fine time, and the one doing the learning looked no different.

Both of them went at it like they were half out of their minds. That was the only way to put it.

The Boatman even appeared in a dream to ask about it.

"Enjoying yourself?"

Rather than answer something so obvious, Enkrid tried to read why the Boatman had come at all.

"Is a wall coming?"

The Boatman hadn't gotten an answer to his own question, but he responded to Enkrid's calmly enough.

"Why would I tell you that?"

Hadn't he always seemed almost eager to say so before?

Enkrid didn't push it. Whether a wall was coming or not, nothing would change.

His heart was, as it always had been, hard and unyielding.

"You didn't answer my question," the Boatman said.

"Exactly as it looks."

The answer carried everything without saying it. I'm doing it because I enjoy it.

Enkrid answered and parted from the Boatman. And though it was only a feeling, something seemed different about this Boatman compared to the ones he had seen before.

Same face on the outside, but a different something inside.

That was just the impression he got. There was no way to verify it, and even if there were, it wouldn't change anything.

Enkrid simply did what he always did.

His days ran full. Split-second judgment sparring with Rem. Learning to distribute Will across every cut rather than concentrating it all into one blow, with Ragna. Brutal physical conditioning with Audin. Sense visualization drills with Jaxon. He barely had time to breathe.

"Do you want to feel a spring breeze?"

Early afternoon. Winter's cold still sitting heavy all around. Sunlight threading through a clouded sky in thin, slanted lines across the ground. That was when Sinar came.

"It's the middle of winter," Enkrid said.

"I know."

He understood the spring breeze she mentioned wasn't actually spring. He remembered her using that phrase once before, so he asked.

"You've said that before. What does it mean?"

"Hard to put into words."

Sinar drew her sword, the one called Naidhl. Srrring. The sound of it leaving the scabbard was clearer than any time before.

That sound carried something inside it, like a Will that said, look at me.

A faint green light clung to the drawn blade. It wasn't blinding, but the presence it gave off was unmistakable.

Vitality, or maybe liveliness, something in that range reached him through the senses.

Whether it was from the sense visualization training he'd been doing with Jaxon, or simply from what Sinar was showing him, Enkrid felt it: that glow living in her blade.

The very vital energy of life and motion, sitting there in the edge.

"Gather your vital energy and this becomes possible," Sinar said.

The Naidhl in her grip looked exactly like a leaf that had just pushed out in spring.

So that's why it's called the leaf sword.

Enkrid thought it as he raised his own sword to meet her. Aetri's silver-steel sword. He carried a shortsword angled at his lower back, and Spark dangled at his right hip.

No armor on him, the cloth gauntlets he usually wrapped his hands in left off as well.

The days of sparring and hard training had left muscle soreness scattered all over his body and a fair number of bruises besides, but turning down a spar with Sinar never crossed his mind.

A thin smile came to him from the anticipation.

The spring breeze would be swordsmanship. She was here to show it to him. That thought alone brought a quiet rush of joy.

This was an elf showing him a new way of the sword.

Sinar's expression was what it always was, difficult to read anything in it.

That a smile ever crossed that face at all still struck him as remarkable every time.

"They're doing something interesting."

Rem had gone out for two days claiming he was training his unit, then come back and slept late. The gray-haired barbarian stood yawning wide in front of the lodging.

Sparring with Enkrid, training his unit, and somewhere in between keeping up his own personal training so Audin, that great bear, didn't pull ahead of him. Rem's days had been just as packed. There were moments he thought the conditioning was harder than the fighting itself.

Was he complaining? Not really.

This morning he'd been working Enkrid's thigh when he caught one to the forehead instead, and now he was rubbing at the lump that had risen there.

Hard as he was pushing the man day after day, he had to admit Enkrid wasn't easy anymore.

A little frustrating that the improvement wasn't faster given how relentlessly he was being driven, but it was still faster than before.

He was at a level now that you genuinely couldn't ignore.

The elf was no small thing either, from what he'd heard. He was curious how it would go, and found himself looking forward to watching.

"Bored, are you."

Ragna was there too, not just Rem. He'd stayed because he meant to teach Enkrid how to distribute Will across every cut and thrust.

How did you put concentrated Will into your swordwork at any moment, from any position?

For Ragna himself, he just did it. He did it and that was that.

But Enkrid was different.

Repetition until it's built in, Ragna thought.

Teaching Enkrid wasn't new to him at this point. He'd adapted, grown used to it.

What he was doing now was teaching the art of repeating and repeating again, day after day. And through that, Ragna's own techniques had moved past mastery into something more settled.

They say you learn by teaching. In Ragna's case, he was actually improving by doing it.

There was a reason he was a genius.

He'd always skipped steps and gone straight to results. Now he found himself turning back to examine the steps he'd jumped over.

You couldn't truly teach what you hadn't completely grasped, so all of this was natural enough.

Ragna's gaze drifted to Sinar and Enkrid.

He wondered for a moment if she was doing it out of boredom, then decided the spar itself would do Enkrid good.

Experience as many opponents as possible.

Those had been Mercenary King Anu's words, offered to Enkrid before any of this. Had Anu seen what Enkrid would need even then? Or was it coincidence?

Either way, varied opponents were exactly what Enkrid needed now.

He'd accumulated plenty of experience already, but higher-quality experience was what he still lacked. That was Ragna's conclusion.

"Is this the elf race's own swordsmanship?"

Ruagarne was there too, so three people were watching.

She was also in the middle of helping Enkrid build a foundation in the sword. Her reach might not match up anymore, but a Frog's eye for combat and the experience of long years didn't go anywhere.

Sinar swung her sword regardless of the audience.

Enkrid took in her footwork, her breathing, the angle of her arm all at once and readied himself.

Watching. Taking it in.

Floating.

That was the feeling. The blade was clearly cutting through the air and coming at him, but it felt like something drifting down on the wind.

Enkrid didn't dismiss the feeling.

Turning away from what you could perceive and recognize was no way to claim mastery of an unseen force.

Rem, Ragna, and Ruagarne all knew Enkrid's skill had jumped sharply in recent days. So what came next didn't particularly surprise them.

Clang.

Sinar's sword had been trying to settle like a falling leaf, but before it could land where it wanted, it was stopped.

Enkrid had lifted his own blade up into it and, controlling the force, pressed them together in a Bind, locking the edge in place.

Whatever it was, a sword had to move for anything to follow. Lock it down and there was nothing.

He'd shut down the technique before it even began.

It was like clamping a hand over someone's mouth before they'd drawn breath to sing.

Sitting there watching with wide open eyes just to admire the technique would have been something a Ghoul's best friend might do. Idiotic.

So this wasn't cheap. This was the right approach.

Trying your hardest to break the other person's technique was how you actually got to see the real power of what an elf's swordsmanship could do.

If it stopped this easily, then that was all it was.

"Good," Sinar said, without a trace of amusement, and drew her sword back toward her chest.

Trrring.

The blades scraped against each other a few times and separated. Enkrid had tried to keep them locked, but Sinar had worked the pressure, pushing and pulling just enough, to pull the blade free.

The control she showed was something even Rem or Ragna or Audin would have struggled to replicate. That was how fine it was.

The leaf sword pulled back quickly. Then, as she had said, the spring breeze arrived.

A warm current.

A style of swordwork that had no place in winter sunlight descended alongside a blade sharpened by vital energy.

Among the soft, descending cuts, Enkrid felt something brush his shoulder before he'd registered anything else.

Strange.

The elf swordsmanship called Spring Breeze wove invisible sword strikes between smooth, flowing blade lines.

Invisible sword strikes, which meant an vital energy blade.

The sword spread like a wide leaf and covered his front.

Force through it? Or throw it aside and go for the flank?

Both seemed worth trying. Enkrid went back and forth between them.

He pulled up his Will and traded blows. Sinar was skilled enough to deserve the name of elf knight.

Pinning her down in one go wasn't going to happen. Not that it needed to.

Neither of them was straining to show off. They were trading techniques instead.

Press through, and leaves layered over to block. Go for the flank, and leaves moved to wrap around entirely.

Enkrid stepped away, struck with force to knock it aside, and kept himself out of danger that way.

"That's enough for today. See you tomorrow."

After a long exchange, Sinar said it and turned away. None of her usual dry remarks.

"Not bad."

"It's a defensive style. Built to suppress fast, powerful swords."

Rem and Ragna each offered a word. Enkrid nodded at that.

Sinar came again the next day. Late afternoon.

"I'll show you the summer downpour."

"I'm ready."

No reason to say no. They started again. Enkrid's eyes went wide.

"The sword changes?"

He said it watching the leaf sword stretch out like a long whip.

Trrrring.

The moment Sinar named the downpour, Naidhl's blade swayed and lengthened.

"Magic Sword," Ruagarne murmured.

The blade thinned as it extended. In an instant it had become a long, flexible blade. Then it swayed and scattered light and began falling like actual rain.

A downpour of steel from above.

Enkrid chose to meet it rather than retreat. Instinct. He judged that if he tried to dodge, the rain would follow him, and that burning strength on evasion instead of counterattack would be what cost him the fight.

The time with Rem hadn't been wasted.

Ta-da-da-da-da-dang!

If the silver-steel sword had been any heavier, holding back all of it would have been beyond him.

Between the pouring cuts, a sharp blue vital energy stabbed in.

Yesterday it had been green. Today it was blue.

Fast and sharp, those sword strikes danced inside his accelerated thoughts.

If I can block a wave, I can block a downpour.

Enkrid hadn't yet completed the swordsmanship he'd realized before, the one he'd named Wave-Blocking Sword. He dug up that unfinished technique and barely held on, and then the blade began curving every which way, probing at his ankles, trying to coil around his wrists.

Get wrapped up and I lose the hand.

Rain moved with the wind. So this was possible too?

Either way, the spar wound up the day.

"Tomorrow it's the autumn leaves," Sinar said in the middle of a push, then turned and walked off.

"Looking forward to it," Enkrid answered.

The next day he got to see the autumn leaves technique, and by that point the number of onlookers had grown.

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