WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

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A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 625: Peace Made by the Sword

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"Ah, Crang."

Enkrid said it out of nowhere while walking.

"Pardon?"

Fell asked.

"I left without even saying goodbye."

"Humans are creatures of forgetting. It happens," Ruagarne said.

"Yeah."

Enkrid answered and kept walking.

They had not brought horses. Odd-Eye would have been fine, but the route crossed mountains and rivers along the way. They had not taken a maintained road to begin with, this was simply the fastest path.

Everyone in the group was more than capable of looking after themselves without a road. Beyond that, the number of Demon Creatures in the surrounding area had been cut down sharply in recent times, so the journey carried little danger.

Not that any Demon Creature out here would have posed a real threat to this group even if it had.

The day was clear, and when the sun passed directly overhead, there was a warmth to it that felt nothing like winter. They had left Border Guard about half a day ago, setting out before dawn and walking on through sunrise. A few more hours at this pace was nothing.

When the sun went down, they would make camp. That was the natural order of things.

"Fall behind and we leave you," Ruagarne said, tossing the joke at Fell in an uncharacteristic way.

"Do I look like someone who grew up eating bread handed out by some knightly order and doing whatever they were told? Among the Shepherds of the Wilderness, walking matters more than swordsmanship."

Fell was a Shepherd of the Wilderness in every sense of the name, and walking was where he had his confidence. There had been a time in his life when he spent his days herding sheep from place to place.

And not the docile, gentle kind of sheep, either.

Fell was capable enough on foot, but Ruagarne was no stranger to travel either.

"True enough."

She was a Frog, and Frogs were by nature a species more suited to travel than humans. Preserved rations could be replaced entirely with dried insects, which cut down on pack weight considerably, and their bodies were durable enough to shrug off damage that would stop most people cold.

The one drawback was that they needed a lot of water, but unless you were crossing a desert, following waterways was common knowledge on the continent, probably third on any experienced wanderer's list of the most essential things to know.

First was obvious: never travel alone.

Second: stay on maintained roads whenever possible.

Enkrid's group was cheerfully ignoring two of those three. They could afford to.

Enkrid tracked the setting sun and made small adjustments to his bearing. He was walking southeast, cutting diagonally away from where the sun went down.

The road to the elf city meant descending with the Pen-Hanil Mountain Range at their backs.

From Border Guard's perspective, everything to the north included what had been Count Molsen's territory before becoming part of the Border Guard domain, and the city that had nearly been named after Enkrid before it was called the Gnoll's Lament instead.

The Pen-Hanil Mountain Range was to the north as well.

Geographically, the range ran like a wall above the region, which was why some geographers called it the Ceiling Range or the Roof Range. The theory was that the mountains pushed temperatures lower on this side compared to other parts of the central continent.

Something to do with the winds coming off the peaks, apparently. Krais might know more about that. The others had no particular interest.

Most people just felt cold when it was cold and warm when it was warm and left it at that.

Enkrid was no different. Someone had told him the elf village was south and that it existed, so south was where he walked. He had not given much thought to the geography or why elves had settled there to begin with.

Going south was what the route required, so he went.

The first day passed without incident.

Enkrid trained during whatever spare time they had, and Ruagarne and Fell sparred. Watching them, he let out a small sound of surprise.

"You've gotten better."

He was not talking to Fell. Ruagarne's skill had improved in ways that were hard to miss.

"I endured pain that truly carved away at the flesh," she said with a smile.

That seemed right. During the spar just now, Fell had brought his sword straight down from above, a strike he had been hiding behind his back and then whipped forward, a prepared blow by his standards. Ruagarne had moved her left arm to meet it and driven the Loop Sword in at an angle.

Neither of them had followed through. No arm cut open, no throat pierced.

At this level, the right place to stop was where skill was measured. Going all out would have left one of them hurt.

"I'm better in real fights," Fell muttered, dissatisfied.

Enkrid nodded. That was fair. Fell's sword was built for real combat. The Numbers Game put him at a disadvantage.

Still, he handles it better than you'd expect from someone who doesn't enjoy that style.

The way Fell dealt with the Numbers Game felt carved into his bones, completely natural. It was not hard to guess why. He had spent every day by Ropord's side.

Ruagarne was second only to Ropord when it came to the Numbers Game. So losing a spar to her was nothing to be embarrassed about.

Enkrid set himself a small goal for when they reached the elf village.

Fill in the gaps in Fell's technique.

It was goodwill on his part. Fell might not see it that way.

They had eaten breakfast in Border Guard. Lunch was preserved rations on the move.

"Did you know they had a new seasoning and buy this on purpose?" Fell asked, chewing on seasoned jerky with something close to admiration.

"I had no idea. Krais packed it."

"Ah."

Fell nodded. Krais had a knack for stocking travel supplies with quiet thoroughness, and receiving things like this always left you feeling oddly grateful. Fell seemed to feel the same.

Both Enkrid and Fell had been too busy with training to notice the seasoned jerky shop that had swept through Border Guard's market and expanded all the way to Martai, let alone hear about a new sauce they had developed. They had only caught wind of it in passing.

For dinner they cooked properly. A pot came out, water drawn from a nearby stream, and dried vegetables, carrots and squash among them, went in along with edible things gathered along the way and a piece of luck fish. They let it all simmer.

Once the broth had deepened enough, Enkrid sliced a deliberately hardened loaf of bread into chunks with his knife and dropped them in.

"What's this?"

"Back when I was a mercenary and there was almost nothing to eat, I used to boil water and throw in half-made bread. This is that, done a bit more properly."

Enkrid cooked field meals only rarely these days. His technique was not remarkable, but it was not bad either.

"This is more like raw dough than bread."

Fell was skeptical, but he ate the broth and the chunks anyway, then held his breath for a moment before letting it out in something close to a grunt of satisfaction.

"Kheuh."

"I'll make it better tomorrow with beef. Just eat."

"Didn't you say you weren't a good cook?"

There was genuine surprise in his voice.

"I said there were only a few things I could make," Enkrid answered plainly.

"Better than insects?" Ruagarne cut in from beside them.

"Is that even a question?"

Fell looked at her like she had said something absurd.

"Want a handful of these?"

Ruagarne pulled out a dried caterpillar. Fell declined with a flat expression that held no particular disgust.

"I'm fine. I know they're precious when there's nothing else, but right now."

He went back to spooning broth and picking out the soggy chunks, cooked just enough that you could argue whether to call them bread or raw dough.

"It coats the mouth perfectly."

Fell kept giving a thumbs up, even muttering that maybe this too was some kind of talent.

"Yeah."

They ate, then made camp. There was no need for a cave or shelter. Spreading a wide cloak under a large tree was enough, and that was what they did.

The second day was much the same.

Breakfast and lunch were preserved rations.

The seasoned jerky was good, but at most three more days and they would have to switch to plain salt-cured jerky. That was not bad either, especially since they had stocked up properly in the city, but next to the heavily seasoned kind it would fall a little short.

Not that anyone in the group was the type to complain about food.

On the second day, they passed near the area where the harpy attack had happened some time ago. Before, the place had carried the cold smell of blood and a lingering chill. The atmosphere had changed completely.

"You've arrived, sir?"

On the first day they had cut straight across the land and missed it entirely, but this time there was an outpost. A soldier in a thick gambeson stood before it, recognized Enkrid, and gave a military salute.

Tracing the layout in his head, Enkrid pictured three outposts arranged in a loose ring around the area. The center point would be just beyond a small rise in the ground.

A town would be awkward to build here with the waterways positioned as they were. A temporary market might work better.

He had heard the trading city was pushing to use overland trade routes as actively as the waterways these days.

Having a field market somewhere around there would serve them well.

Something like that would have been unthinkable before. Who in their right mind ran a field market without walls? You would be hosting a blood feast for Demon Creatures every night. Canvas tents and a quick palisade might stop stray animals, and that was about it.

Things were different now, though.

The Border Guard Standing Army had killed off the Demon Creatures across this entire area.

Outposts had been raised. Regular patrols ran through the region.

Demon Creatures and Magic Beasts had become rare sights. Bandits followed naturally from that, and there was no room for them.

Banditry inside Border Guard's territory was a genuinely stupid idea anyway.

You could eat just hauling bricks for wall construction. Why steal?

Of course the world always had its share of fools, and people who formed bandit crews or outfits like the Brotherhood were never going to disappear entirely. But operating openly was out of the question.

Still, it was not as though not a single Demon Creature would ever appear again.

Come winter and heavy snowfall, something called an ice devil showed itself, and sometimes a yeti, a giant built from snow, came down from the Pen-Hanil Mountain Range.

Even so. Right now, yes. It was peaceful.

A small peace, built from swords and force and politics and Krona poured in without reserve.

Could you call this a forced peace?

No, you could not. Just behind the soldier, four traveling merchants walked together in a loose group. They did not even glance at Enkrid's party, a group that included a Frog and three armed individuals, and did not care.

In the old days, people who met armed strangers on the road fled immediately.

They would not have been walking in a group of four out here to begin with.

The merchants talked without stopping, a steady stream of chatter. Listening loosely, Enkrid caught fragments about something they had seen, how frightened they had been, how they had barely made it out alive.

Boasting with a generous helping of exaggeration.

"I'll have a room ready for you at the outpost tonight, sir," the soldier offered.

Enkrid shook his head. "We're in a hurry. We'll keep moving. Anything to report?"

"Nothing unusual on duty, sir. There have been a number of reports recently about someone sighting a giant, though. Wanted to mention it just in case."

"A giant?"

"Some of the traveling merchants passing through said they saw one sleeping under a tree and snoring. Another said the giant stared directly at their face and said, 'Your eyes are different colors.'"

The soldier was not a post captain for nothing. The report was thorough.

"We'll stay alert."

Enkrid gave the soldier a pat on the shoulder, and the soldier answered with a pleased look.

"Thank you, sir!"

To the Border Guard Standing Army, Enkrid was more than a superior who held responsibility over the land. He was something closer to a hero, a man who had become a knight starting from the very bottom.

His rank had risen suddenly and people looked up to him from all sides. Another person might have drawn envy, but envy had its place and its scale, and the time for that had long since passed. The scale of things was simply different now.

Whether it was his character or the reasons behind it, Enkrid had the respect of most of the soldiers, those who had known him from before and those who had newly joined the Standing Army alike.

"Then."

"I wish you good fortune in battle, sir."

Somehow the trip had taken on the shape of an inspection, checking in on the outposts stretching south one by one.

Not a bad thing to see.

Every one of these was a result of the sword he had swung.

"The Shepherds believe in protecting yourself with your own hands, and I still hold to that, but something like this isn't bad either," Fell said.

They had passed the outpost and crossed two dry ridges when he spoke. He had been wearing a thoughtful expression the whole time, turning over what he had seen back there.

"Fair enough. Let's spar," Enkrid said.

"Right now?"

"Right now."

The sun was just beginning to set. Winter meant short days. Fell nodded and raised his sword carefully.

Enkrid had been working to establish his swordsmanship along several lines. He reached for one of them now.

Iron Wall was for stopping.

A blow carrying full force poured everything into a single moment.

He reached for a technique from Vallen's mercenary sword style, one he had refined from what he had come to understand recently.

Vallen's mercenary sword.

Intimidation without a blade.

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