WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 626: Wrapped. Where. Nicely. Killed.

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What he had originally learned from Vallen-style mercenary swordsmanship was this: keep the blade sheathed, bend one knee, and hold the opponent's gaze steadily, as though you had all the time in the world.

The most important things, supposedly, were the eyes and the position of the hands.

Never grip the sword handle. Let the hand hang loose.

When he was learning it, he had thought that deceiving an opponent to this degree was a genuine commitment, and he had admired the tenacity of whoever invented this sword style.

Now he thought something different.

Vallen-style mercenary swordsmanship was, at its core, a sword art built on Will.

'If you have Will, you can do more than deceive. You can crush.'

An evolved form of Pressure, perhaps.

Enkrid had interpreted it in his own way and renamed it the False Slash.

He knew he did not need to name techniques, that the better way was to let them flow out as they came. Rem had taught him that, everyone else had said the same, and he had come to understand it himself.

But doing everything naturally was still hard. So naming a technique and giving its mental image a fixed shape still felt more comfortable. You cannot walk before you stand. No one sprints from a seated position. First, you stand.

Here, standing meant defining and naming the technique.

'Sinar's vital-energy blade helped.'

A vital-energy blade was a blade formed from intangible force. He had faced it countless times, and that experience had carried him naturally to this point.

So it was one of Sinar's gifts.

In some ways it resembled the Correct Sword Form, Aker's Web, but the density was different.

It also burned through a considerable amount of Will.

His left foot pressed into the ground. Rising momentum said he was about to surge forward. Enkrid's dangling right hand swung forward and back, twice.

That was how he drew out Will and shaped it into a blade rather than an Iron Wall. A false blade, invisible and without substance, one that would not leave so much as a scratch if it connected, fell toward Fell.

"What the,!"

Fell drew the Idol Slayer and swung. He had promised not to draw it during spars. His sword cut through empty air.

* * *

"What was that?"

They stood facing each other, and just from holding that gaze for a moment, cold sweat poured down Fell's forehead and spine.

He had clearly seen Enkrid lunge at him, sword raised to split his head open. The body and the blade had both grown several times larger, all at once.

So he had swung on reflex.

'Nothing happened.'

Fell was not the only one who had reacted. If you described it as an actual sword stroke, Enkrid's slash had been brutal. It was the same as sweeping a massive blade wide enough to pull the people standing nearby into its range.

Ruagarne had been standing to the side and reacted too.

Without anyone noticing when, she had drawn her whip and sword and settled into a defensive stance.

"Vallen-style mercenary sword. A False Slash, reinterpreted from the bladeless intimidation technique."

Enkrid explained helpfully, though he had compressed the entire process into a single line.

"So what does that mean?"

Fell was rattled, which was rare. A moment ago he had experienced something close to death, fake as it was. It had not actually happened, but his head had definitely been split open, and he had felt something like pain.

No wonder he could not settle down.

"Stay calm."

Enkrid said it while looking at Fell. More precisely, he started by maintaining calm himself. When the mind shakes, the body follows. This spar had begun because he was trying to teach Fell something.

He was also planning to sharpen his own technique in the process, of course. And to pick up what he could from Fell along the way.

Reading gaps, capturing weak points, whatever you wanted to call it. There was an element of studying and internalizing Fell's particular talent.

Nothing ever has only one advantage.

"Sir?"

"Start by watching calmly. You did not actually die."

To Fell's ears, the way Enkrid said it sounded exactly like someone who had died countless times.

"It felt like I died and came back to life!"

A vein rose on Fell's forehead. At those words, Enkrid understood that the deaths he had lived through across each repeated day had seeped into the technique without him intending it.

It was only natural for one's own experiences to become part of one's sword.

'So it became a slash that shows the opponent their own death.'

He had died in so many different ways that carving those deaths into Will and showing them to someone else was not difficult.

Enkrid went on to explain patiently, then returned to sparring.

"Again?"

Fell grumbled but took his stance anyway. It was a rare experience. It felt like some new form evolved out of Pressure. That made it fascinating, even if experiencing the dying part was honestly unsettling.

After that, Enkrid killed Fell twice more.

Even knowing the structure, Fell could not find a way to block it. Amusingly, Ruagarne found the answer first.

Since she would not die as long as her heart was not destroyed, she simply shifted her thinking toward offering up an arm or a leg, and that let her slip free of the pressure.

'It probably would not work easily on Frog.'

That was how the second evening passed. When he fell asleep, the Boatman appeared. The Boatman looked at him in silence for a moment, then said just one thing.

"I have seen it."

"Seen what?"

"Your future."

Enkrid had not meant to play around, but the words came out on reflex.

"A son, or a daughter?"

"You thought about having children? Do you mean to take a wife someday and raise a family?"

"No. You said you saw my future, so I made a joke."

With Sinar gone, he was the one making elf-style jokes now. Which made him think he really needed to see her soon.

"A resilient one, not easily broken. Very well. I will show you."

The Boatman raised the hand that was not holding the lamp.

'He feels a little different from the Boatmen I met before.'

That was the impression. The Boatman turned his palm outward. A pitch-black hole inside the gray skin suddenly expanded. It wrapped around Enkrid entirely, and all that was left before him was darkness.

From inside that darkness, the Boatman's voice reached him. No, more precisely, a meaning rooted in the Boatman's Will was conveyed.

"Inside a dark tunnel, you will meet a wall you cannot escape."

Enkrid focused on what he could see. There was something beyond the darkness. As he kept looking, a shape drifted into view. He concentrated harder and looked at whatever stood before him.

No face, no scent, but he could guess the identity from the silhouette alone.

It was a shape far too familiar to pretend he did not recognize.

"That will be your wall."

The Boatman said it. The words carried the weight of a curse.

"I see."

But curses depend on the one who receives them, and Enkrid was far too unmoved.

He should have been shaken, at minimum. Nothing of the sort.

One of a curse's effects was to throw the recipient's heart into turmoil, but Enkrid simply thought it over calmly.

The silhouette was a woman's, and a familiar one. No need to think long. It was Sinar. The destination he was heading toward.

Enkrid had spoken with the Boatman countless times over the years. The Boatman had rarely offered a friendly explanation of anything.

Because of that, Enkrid had grown skilled at finding clues from short exchanges.

'Not she. That.'

The Boatman had not said she was the wall. He had said that was the wall. That would not have been a slip.

Meaning Sinar was not the wall.

Enkrid woke immediately.

The Boatman, after sending him away, sank briefly into himself.

"Who made him like this? I hit him with a curse and he was not even frightened. Why does he pick out the gaps in my words so cleanly?"

The Boatman muttered, having caught a glimpse of what was running through Enkrid's mind.

The distinction between that and she had been caught, and it was deeply irritating.

The Boatmen who had met Enkrid before all fell silent.

The ones who had tormented and hounded him for sport were the very ones who had made the current Enkrid what he was.

"You made a sly old snake."

The Boatman lamented.

* * *

Enkrid paid no mind to walls or last night's dream. Worrying over what the Boatman had said would keep him from doing what needed to be done.

Besides, knowing a wall existed, did that change anything? No. He had not the slightest thought of turning back.

The third day went much the same. They chose a similar route and kept walking south. Then they passed through a small forest and a stretch where stones were heaped in mounds, and from somewhere far ahead came a deep, rolling snore.

"Some lunatic must be sleeping in the middle of the road," Fell said.

Ruagarne tilted her head. Whoever was sleeping was not Enkrid's concern. He kept walking.

Eventually a large creature came into view, back propped against a boulder, fast asleep.

The size of it made a mockery of perspective.

A bipedal race known as Red-Blooded Beasts. A Giant.

As Enkrid approached, the snoring thing gave one twitch of its nose and slowly opened its eyes.

The pupils were a vivid blue. Oil ran freely from its matted hair, and the clumping told Enkrid the Giant had not been near water for at least two weeks.

The smell matched. Scattered around it were a few bone fragments and pieces of hide.

"Uurrp."

The Giant belched, and the stench reached Enkrid from where he stood. Even sitting, the Giant was taller than him.

Enkrid's gaze traveled upward on its own. He tilted his head slightly, and their eyes met. The Giant spoke without a trace of humor.

"Blue eyes."

A booming voice rolled out. Sound from that enormous frame seemed to spread outward like ripples. Fell wrinkled his brow in time with it.

He was not the only one suffering that breath, which was worse than sheep dung.

"Yours too."

Enkrid answered. Equally humorless.

"Yeah, I know. Heave-ho."

The Giant pushed itself off the boulder it had been leaning against. The rock scraped back with a low grinding sound, as if proving by that alone how heavy and powerful the Giant was.

Giants do not float, they say. Too heavy, they just sink straight to the bottom.

If Frog feared a ruined heart, Giants feared water. Drinking and washing were fine, but past a certain amount, meaning not a stream but a lake-sized body of water, something about it unsettled them, like a rash settling into their bones. They could not sit still.

There was no sound of flowing water nearby, so nothing here gave the Giant reason for discomfort. A relaxed attitude showed through.

The Giant bared its blackened teeth.

"Name."

"Why do you want to know?"

Fell cut in. The Giant looked at Fell.

"Wait your turn. You're after this one."

The Giant raised a finger and pointed at Enkrid.

"After for what?"

"I'm going to kill you. So I kill you after this one."

"Kill who?"

Ruagarne cut in, and the Giant smiled and asked again.

"You're Enkrid, right?"

Enkrid answered in the same easy manner.

"Didn't expect to be received on the roadside. Do we know each other? Did someone send you? Maybe someone wearing a black hood and carrying a lamp?"

The Giant just kept smiling faintly.

"You really should have kept a lower profile."

"Doesn't seem like someone I know sent you. So how did you know I'd come this way? That's what I'm curious about."

Enkrid ignored the remark and held his own pace.

"Act that conspicuously and you end up running into assassins. Get really unlucky and you run into this old one right here."

In the end, both of them were simply saying whatever they felt like. Then Enkrid asked out of nowhere.

"How old are you?"

"Old."

"How old?"

"Past a hundred."

"Just?"

"You little human."

"A woman I know is past four hundred."

What was he supposed to do about that.

The conversation had no spine. They were each spouting whatever came to mind, trading nothing but noise. And yet somehow it scraped against the Giant's nerves.

Was this one fearless, or was there something backing him up?

Was it Frog standing there as support? That Frog was not even at a threatening level. Why was this line of thinking dragging on?

The content of the words, the prey's attitude, the tone of voice, all of it grated. The Giant was being scratched at.

"You're not dying cleanly. I'll chew you alive."

"I'll kill you cleanly. Where should I mail your head?"

"GRAAHHH!"

The Giant suddenly roared at the sky. A sound that would freeze most people solid.

Some Demon Creatures used howling to plant fear in their targets. Same principle.

In other words, a technique built on Will.

Enkrid triggered the Will of Refusal naturally and deflected it.

Fell let out a slow breath and stepped back once. Ruagarne stepped back twice. Then both of them jumped further back to open more distance.

One roar was enough to know. That Giant was knight-class.

Enkrid knew it too. Before the roar, the posture had already set his instincts on edge.

He gripped the silver-steel sword and kept his eyes on the Giant. The Giant opened its mouth again.

"Say something else."

"Wrapped up. Where. Cleanly. Killing."

Enkrid needled the Giant the same way he needled Rem.

The Giant did not like that its roar had not made Enkrid flinch, and it did not like the way Enkrid spoke.

"I am Hatun, Apostle of the Cursed Ground Holy Sect, and a Giant!"

The Giant announced it and reached behind itself. Cunning. It had hidden its weapon behind the boulder.

What it pulled out had the shape of a whip but could not honestly be called one. It was a massive iron chain.

WHOOOM!

The steel chain tore through the air, whipped down in an arc, and shattered the ground where Enkrid had been standing.

BOOM!

Soil and rock fragments scattered in every direction. The force was so extreme that stones did not just crack, rocks buried in the earth were ripped out and hurled away.

To call them flying pebbles would have been almost accurate, except the sun would have to be a firefly for that to make sense.

CLANG!

Fell knocked a boulder rocketing toward him aside with his sword and deflected it. The weight was immense. The stone he had batted sideways hit the ground with a heavy thud.

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