WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 624: An Earnest Request

= = =

"What does that mean?"

"Sinar-noona is over four hundred years old."

"That many?"

"Yeah."

"You could call her Grandmother instead of Big Sis."

"She'd get mad."

"Ah."

A gentleman did not tease a woman about her age. Crang nodded.

That nod likely carried a firm resolve not to tease her, even if he saw her again.

"So what are you going to do when you get there?"

"Ask her something."

"What?"

"Whether keeping that duty of hers was really what she wanted."

Someone might truly want a life bound by duty. But Enkrid wanted to ask before deciding that for himself.

If pressed for a reason.

'Instinct.'

The things Sinar had said and done over the time they had spent together flickered through his mind.

The words she had let slip the night before she left, in particular, carried a thick regret, like tea brewed too long and gone unbearably bitter.

He had read her as detached back then, but thinking on it now, that detachment itself had been the signal.

"It was fun."

Meaning, up until now it had been enjoyable. And at the same time, that it would no longer be.

'So I'll ask. I have to go and ask.'

That was what Enkrid thought.

"Do as you like."

Crang said it with his legs crossed. He did not know Sinar's true feelings precisely either.

"Where is the Elf city?"

"I don't know."

"Right."

Enkrid nodded, exchanged a few more small words with him, and starting the next day went around asking anyone who might know where the Elf city was.

He tried Krais first.

"I did put the Information Guild on it after Sinar disappeared, but apparently she's somewhere in the mountain range? They say there's a barrier around it, so finding her is difficult."

Krais frowned as he said it. He had looked into it on his own, but he did not know for certain.

Enkrid asked all the others too.

"Like I'd know."

Rem, out.

"My knowledge does not extend that far, brother. When your Grasping Will has ripened, come find me. I have the next stage waiting."

Audin did not know either.

The surprising one was Ragna, who acted like he did.

"Elf city? I've seen the ones who weave their clothes out of grass and branches before. Shall I guide you?"

He declined Ragna's offer, of course. Following that guide might lead him to a dwarf city instead of an Elf one, and it might take years just to get there.

"Would be nice if you wanted to visit another dimension."

Rem cut in from the side at that, which set him and Ragna off fighting each other again. Enkrid glanced over at Jaxon, who shook his head.

"The Elf race is not one unified people. You'd have to find the specific city where Sinar is, among all of them."

Hearing Jaxon lay it out, just locating the place was already no ordinary task.

Right, if it had been easy, Krais would have found it through the Information Guild already.

"By the way, why did you look into where Sinar went?"

He was curious, so he asked Krais again.

"Ah, no particular reason, really."

Instinct, maybe, or some reflexive urge to gather information.

"I just thought that if the captain came looking later, I should be able to say 'she's there.' That's the closest thing to a reason I have. I'm a bit embarrassed that I couldn't actually find it."

They say a wise person looks ahead, and from what Enkrid could see, that was exactly right.

When he said as much, Krais reacted as if he had no idea what Enkrid was talking about.

"I just try everything and poke around everywhere, and sometimes it happens to land right. Otherwise I get anxious."

That was all he said.

Perhaps Krais's chronic anxiety was what drove his hunger for information. Not looking ahead and preparing, but making many preparations and reacting when one of them stuck, though Enkrid figured that preparing at all was itself the wise thing.

So had Sinar made her own preparations?

A curse, a duty, things like that. What had she needed to resolve them?

"I don't know. The Elf settlements don't welcome visitors."

Ruagarne did not know either, and truly no one did.

"I spent my whole life in the wilderness, and I live here now. My talent is limited to swordsmanship. Not to finding paths."

"I'm good at finding paths, so I'll guide you, I said."

Ragna cut in again while Enkrid was asking Fell.

"No, you're fine where you are."

Enkrid sent him off politely. Ragna was probably not lying. He was not the type to lie about something like this.

What remained baffling was how he had managed to get so thoroughly lost that he ended up at an Elf city in the first place.

"Why am I getting annoyed?"

Ragna muttered, and Rem, who had been grinding his back teeth since losing a little ground in yesterday's fight, cut in.

"Teaching a Ghoul table manners would be faster than teaching you to find your way anywhere."

"Hm? Hard to hear you over the sound of the guy who axed his own shin."

Rem had struck his own shin with the axe handle during yesterday's fight, though he had done it deliberately to generate rebound force. Ragna twisted it into a jab anyway.

The two of them started fighting again.

Come to think of it, Ragna's mouth had gotten a lot sharper lately.

Ropord, watching from the side, kept replaying their exchange over and over in his head.

"What are you doing?"

"A while back, I got baited during a fight and lost a war of words. It's been bothering me so much it shows up in my dreams."

He meant what happened with the Holy Warriors. Enkrid looked at him.

Getting baited happens to everyone.

"...The captain wouldn't understand this feeling."

Enkrid wanted to say otherwise.

How much had Sinar mocked him with her Elf-style jokes? He understood that feeling perfectly well.

Being showered with nonsensical wordplay had been rare for him, and hard to fire back at.

Through all of that, asking around and moving all day, Enkrid did not put off what needed doing.

Training, eating, washing, maintaining his weapons. Those things.

He was rubbing linseed oil onto the silver-steel sword following Aetri's advice when it happened.

The light fell earlier now than in summer, casting an early dusk.

Footsteps came through the sound of leaves rustling and tapping along the ground in the wind.

A shadow drew close, cutting across the sunlight pooled on the ground, and overlapped with Enkrid's own.

"I hear you're looking for the Elf city?"

Was the chill in that voice his imagination?

Enkrid looked up. A woman stood there wearing nothing but an enchanted robe, the kind that would have been pitifully thin in the dead of winter. Blue eyes between long black hair, white skin and red lips in a contrast that set her apart. It was Esther, the witch known as the Black Flower.

"More precisely, I'm looking for where Sinar went."

Enkrid answered. If Esther asked why, he had planned to toss her the same joke he had made to Crang, the one about Big Sis possibly waiting for him.

But Esther did not ask. Her lips opened without a trace of a smile.

"Right. You have to ask."

"Hm?"

"When someone leaves, there's a reason for it. And when they leave without even saying that reason, isn't there a reason for that too? That's what I think."

"Hmm?"

"So you need to ask. Why they had to leave. Why they left."

Esther said that, then raised her hand and pressed it to Enkrid's forehead. He did not pull back. Her hand was cold as ice.

"Lower your barrier for a moment."

"What?"

"If your mental defensive wall is too thick, I can't pass this along."

"Pass along what?"

"You'll understand when you receive it."

The chill had not been his imagination. Esther's hand was freezing cold, no breath misted from her lips, and standing close, the cold seeped through Enkrid's clothes.

She did not seem to be there for a hug. It looked like she had been practicing spells somewhere.

Enkrid closed his eyes and thought about what a mental defensive wall might be.

Then he drew a picture inside his mind. The process itself was not as hard as he expected. His time with the Boatman had not been wasted.

Imagine a wall. Put a door in it. Open the door.

He thought it and did it. The moment that image formed in his mind, what Esther meant seeped into his head.

It was a map pointing to a certain place, more than just direction and location, it was a map with annotations added for guidance.

"I heard about her people from Sinar before she left. That's where that Elf lives."

Esther was a witch, and building a cottage in the woods was a process every witch went through at least once. The forest was full of materials that could serve as specimens, so it was only natural. A forest cottage was essential for efficient magical experimentation.

It was not just about looking the part.

And she was not the only one after the materials and herbs that collected in those places.

Seeing Elves or Druid clans living as neighbors was not uncommon.

Working from what Sinar had told her before leaving, tracking down where she lived was not especially difficult for Esther. Sinar had not been specific, but that was enough for Esther to work it out.

Sinar had probably not anticipated that.

"Want to come along?"

Enkrid opened his eyes and asked. Esther pulled her hand back and offered a small smile.

"I'm busy."

"Ah, right."

Enkrid put a similar question to the others.

"Sorry about this. I feel bad turning you down when you're asking so sincerely. But something urgent's come up on my end, I need to split that directionally-impaired bastard's skull open, and I've been taking it easy, so I'm not doing so well. What if I catch up in a few days?"

Enkrid listened to Rem and asked him a question.

"When did I ask you sincerely?"

He had asked one word. Whether Rem was coming.

"It's a bit much when you're clinging to my pant leg like that. I'll come after you when I have time."

Right, he was not going with Rem.

It seemed Ragna had gotten a slight edge on Rem in a few recent sparring matches. Because of that, Rem wanted to put his time into training right now.

And taking it easy, he says. Who was taking it easy?

Rem, too, had reached a point somewhere along the way where he was not resting at all, carving his days up to fit everything in.

That was actually true of everyone in the Madman Knights. Enkrid's influence.

"An important moment is approaching for Sister Teresa, and I am currently laying the groundwork for Sister Seiki, so even so, if you are asking me like this, brother, I suppose I must go."

"I just asked a simple question. Stay here too."

At some point, Audin seemed to have picked up a bad habit from Rem. Everyone around seemed to know it was not a clean one.

"Do you need a guide, after all?"

Enkrid had already turned Ragna down first. And more than anything, Rem would not keep still.

"You chickening out? Scared?"

"Did you get hit in the head so many times it stopped working?"

"Never been hit in the head. You directionally-impaired bastard."

Right, leave those two as they are.

Lately they seemed to be improving sharply from sparring with each other.

Enkrid alone did not know, but most people understood why those two were firing each other up like this.

It was because of what Enkrid had shown during his spar with Rem.

It was only a spar, but he had held his own completely. More than that, a sword that condensed Will into a single strike and drove it out was deadly.

Watching that left no room to feel comfortable.

On top of that, Audin subtly looking down on both of them played a part too.

Audin, who had awakened his divine nature, was a step ahead of the two of them right now.

Rem and Ragna were not the type to miss that.

"Going alone seems a bit lonely, but I'm afraid I can't. I have a date."

Jaxon said it like that and declined. In the end, Enkrid decided to set out with Ruagarne.

Fell attached himself to the group.

"Let's spar on the way."

He had not been this way before, but now Fell's eyes carried respect and admiration. His manner of speaking showed it too.

"Let's."

"I'm sorry I can't go."

Ropord said it with genuine regret. That said, he could not simply abandon the training of the small swordsman unit that Ragna had dropped in his lap.

It felt like a critical juncture was still ahead of them. Even setting that aside, Ropord was genuinely one of the busiest people in the Madman Knights.

"Then."

Enkrid left without waiting, light on his feet.

Crang had come on business and spent a few days there, and he learned that Enkrid had left without a word to him.

He caught Krais and asked.

"He didn't forget me, did he?"

"...No, surely not."

Krais said it, but it was hard to find any real conviction in those words.

It seemed rather like Enkrid had simply forgotten Crang and left.

= = =

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