WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

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A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 630: A Reprieve from the Devil

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The white-haired elf was not an easy one to read.

He stared at Enkrid for a moment without expression.

Where Frog had an eye for reading talent, elves had a keenness for detecting lies.

Enkrid had spoken in earnest, and the white-haired elf understood it as such.

The method, though, he simply could not fathom.

The white-haired elf had taken a seat against the wall and now leaned back against it. He straightened his spine and regarded the man across from him in silence.

Through the round window behind him, Enkrid caught several young elves peering in with undisguised curiosity. They stood a few steps back from the glass, watching intently.

Too young to have trained themselves in the emotional discipline their kind valued, their curiosity showed plainly on their faces.

As Enkrid watched, a few elves who appeared to be adults, similar in build to the children, came over and said something in a language he could not follow at all.

Something like fluus, dekedo, words along those lines drifted over.

'Now that I think about it, language has never been a problem between us.'

And yet elves had their own tongue.

When the adult elf spoke, the children squirmed and fell back.

Must have told them not to peek.

He was still turning that thought over when the three adults who had shooed the children away took their place at the window and pricked their ears forward.

'They ran the children off and claimed the spot for themselves.'

That was how it looked to Enkrid. It was also exactly what had happened. Excessive interest, masked by the appearance of restraint. Their actions gave them away.

"You should apologize," Fell said from behind him after a moment. This was the same man who had actually considered sewing the swordswoman's mouth shut. Not worth heeding.

"I meant it," Enkrid muttered.

"At least drink some tea first. Take a mouthful and hold it there. Don't swallow. Please."

Fell was a Shepherd of the Wilderness. He had always thought himself too dull to get along with people. That had been a mistaken impression.

The real dull one was standing right here.

Ask how to cut down a devil, and the answer comes back: slash hard, slash until you die.

This man was genuinely out of his mind. Though then another thought followed.

'Is it the talent?'

Maybe his gift ran so heavily toward swordsmanship that everything else came up short.

Similar to Ragna. The man could watch the sun rise and still somehow walk west.

A tremendous misconception, but no one was around to correct it.

Enkrid was also being sincere. It was not as though he had forgotten how to deal with people.

He had felt the sincerity in the white-haired elf's words and felt compelled to answer it in kind. If complications arose later, he could always explain further.

While that small farce played out, the white-haired elf gathered his thoughts and spoke.

"Elf society is governed by a council drawn from several great families."

An abrupt thing to say, but clearly necessary, so Enkrid listened.

When the elf opened his mouth, attention naturally followed. He laid out elf society in an even tone.

The head of each family became a council member, and from among those members they elected a presiding chair.

The chair heard everyone's opinion before deciding. That was how elf society functioned.

Within this system there was also a separate family that served something closer to a royal role, though by human understanding they were better thought of as guardians than kings.

"And I am the head of the Ermen family."

Enkrid had not known this, but Ermen was one of the families that formed the backbone of the city at present.

They had not proven themselves through force of arms. Rather, across the long years the gifts of the Ermen line had served the city greatly, and that was how they had become its pillar.

"At present I am the only remaining council member, so my choice speaks for everyone."

Mid-sentence, the white-haired elf pulled away from the wall and leaned forward. When he dipped his head slightly, his silver-grey pupils fixed directly on Enkrid. He settled into that posture before speaking again.

"I will fight alongside you."

The words carried an unmistakable gravity.

Out of nowhere? Enkrid realized he had fallen behind in the conversation.

"Fight what?" he asked, setting formality aside.

"Did you not come here knowing something of the situation?"

The elf raised his head and asked in return.

"I know nothing," Enkrid said.

"Then why did you come here?" the elf asked, straightening fully.

"I came to ask why Sinar left."

"You simply came to ask? Did Sinar say nothing? About her duty, or the danger facing her people?"

He had genuinely heard nothing of the sort.

"No."

The white-haired elf, Ermen, turned something over in his mind briefly and murmured.

"So you tried to carry it alone from the beginning, Sinar. You always did."

That was directed at Sinar, who was not in the room, yet his tone did not change. No surprise, no emotion, only the sound of someone quietly revisiting what had passed and accepting it.

"What a foolish thing to do."

The words that followed were not entirely even. Regret surfaced again.

For Enkrid it was a string of things he could not quite follow. Words were words, but understanding was harder.

Thud.

Enkrid knocked lightly on the table with his fist. A reliable way to draw attention, and it worked. Ermen's gaze came back to him.

"Would you mind explaining the situation?"

"It is a difficult story. Worse than poison ivy, and none of it pleasant to hear. Still, if you want it, I will tell it."

He began.

"Inside our city there is a cave where Demon Creatures spill out. And in that cave lives a devil."

Elf society was in decline. A leaf slowly withering, destined to fall and dry and die on the ground.

"Now we draw on children's hands to make arrows, and some elves wander the continent as mercenaries."

In any society, children are precious. They are the future.

In this elf city, children made arrows. They too had to contribute.

In a place crumbling and breaking apart, there was no talking about the future. That was where these people stood.

All of it traced back to the devil living in that cave.

The misfortunes that had come to this withering society had not arrived one at a time.

There was the oppression from the elf kingdom under the Empire, and there was the schism when the Druid faction broke away.

Every one of those misfortunes began with the cave where the devil dwelt. And that devil, it was said, had come as warmth before becoming a flame.

Enkrid sat straight and listened carefully.

"Sinar made killing the devil her duty. If I may say so, for the elves that was a blessing. For her as a person, it was a curse."

Sinar's duty pointed toward the devil in that cave.

The devil had made its wishes plain.

Bring me my bride.

Sinar was not the first to be called the devil's bride.

Those who could be called elf knights had gone in to slay the devil. They failed. They died.

After that, Demon Creatures poured out. The city fought and paid in blood. Misfortune came in waves.

Time passed. Another elf knight went to kill the devil. Died again.

The misfortune did not stop.

What the devil used to drain and wither these people was time.

It sent Demon Creatures out from the cave without pause.

Elves who wielded spirits, elves who had become knights, elves who commanded magic.

The finest among them died in a line.

Every attempt to destroy the devil failed.

Only then did the devil demand a bride. When the first elf gave herself, peace came.

The devil's reprieve.

Demon Creatures stopped emerging. Then, a dozen or more years later, they came again.

The elves had been desperate to kill the devil. They had not let that time go to waste.

There was nothing they had not tried. Enkrid could tell that without being told in detail.

A few things had been learned.

"To become the bride is to become the devil's plaything, until it grows bored. And yes, a hollow peace settled over the city. That cursed peace wrapped itself around us."

What lay beneath that flat, dry voice?

Regret. Anger. Worry. Remorse.

Day became night. Enkrid felt hunger and ignored it. He listened to all of it in silence, then distilled it into a question.

"The point is that Sinar went into that cave to become the devil's bride?"

"She went to beg a reprieve from the devil. Yes. In the end, the curse was never resolved."

The white-haired elf nodded. Sinar's mind carried a brand the devil had burned into it.

She had suffered nightmares, and at times she must have heard the devil's whispers as well. Wounds carved into her in childhood.

If Sinar found a partner and wed, the devil's curse would fade for her. In exchange, her partner would inherit that curse.

That was the structure of it, as he understood it.

Was that why she kept calling him her fiancé with that teasing air, yet never came any closer?

"When she was small, the devil whispered in her ear. Told her she was a cursed child. There were those foolish enough to drive her further down that path. Every last one of them left this place eventually. They abandoned it, even knowing they would lose the vital energy of the forest. They simply wanted to live."

Enkrid caught a sharp smell woven through the forest's scent. Blood and iron, not something easily found inside an elf city.

"I am sorry, but I need to go now. You came at a poor time."

The white-haired elf rose at a pace that was neither hurried nor slow. In the three steps he took from where he stood, Enkrid sorted the information, chose what mattered, and turned it into something he could use.

'A devil appeared and burned the city. Afterward it carved a cave inside the forest and made it its den.'

'So the devil sleeps inside that cave.'

'Once every few decades it demanded a bride.'

'The elf city spent its combat-capable people trying to destroy it.'

'Those who could be called elf knights died one after another.'

Misfortune had followed misfortune, and all of it looked like the result of a devil that coveted elves.

He had never seen this devil himself, yet he could already sense its possessiveness, its fixation and tenacity, a greed soaked in malice.

The cave was a small Cursed Ground, and from inside it Demon Creatures emerged without end. When a bride entered, the Demon Creatures stopped.

The devil living in there was deeply sinister and cruel. It was probably watching a city wither and die and finding the whole thing entertaining.

A vague image formed in Enkrid's mind.

Something cackling with Sinar at its side. A long red tongue dragging along her expressionless cheek.

Past simply sorting information, he was building a picture. All of this in the time it took the white-haired elf to take three steps.

His speed at hearing a story and seizing the heart of it was something else. Several orders sharper than his swordsmanship. Krais had acknowledged it more than once.

And there was something else everyone who knew Enkrid acknowledged, not just Krais.

He grasped the core of things. He knew the situation was bad. He knew it was dangerous.

And knowing all of that, if he believed he was right, he did not hesitate. That was the sort of madman Enkrid was.

'A devil was at the root of every danger here. More precisely, a Cursed Ground.'

A Cursed Ground was the problem on this side too. That damned Cursed Ground.

He had lost Aoara in the Gray Forest. Was it Sinar's turn this time?

A ripple moved through him.

Urgency and irritation and anger and stubbornness, all tangled together.

His face did not show it. If anything, his expression was more impassive than the elf's.

He simply sorted what needed doing and turned it over in his mind.

"What did you mean when you said you would fight alongside me?"

Enkrid threw the question at Ermen's back as the elf moved toward the door.

Like a stone thrown into still water sends out rings, Enkrid's words carried Will behind them, and whatever they struck, lake or river, it was going to react.

"I am going into the cave. To kill the devil," Ermen said.

Whether elves had loyalty was not something Enkrid knew.

What he could see was that these people had not placed Sinar on one side of a scale and their entire race on the other.

They were simply choosing to walk the path they believed was right.

"We should have done it long ago," the white-haired elf added.

Enkrid had risen without noticing and fell into step beside him.

"Is your name Ermen?"

"When one becomes head of a family, we set aside our name."

"Why is the city called Kirhaeis?"

He had heard the name mentioned partway through and asked.

Ermen answered without rushing. Behind the willingness to answer lay a hope for help, the help Sinar had never asked for, leaving Enkrid no chance to respond.

"Did you not know? Kirhaeis is the name of the family that has protected this city from generation to generation. By your people's terms, the queen's family."

He added that elves called them the elf guardian family. He was repeating an explanation he had already given, yet there was no impatience in it, only calm.

'She was a queen?'

A new ripple moved through Enkrid's composed mind.

A queen, really? That was genuinely worth being surprised about.

Maybe he would call her the old queen later.

Ah, but if he did that, she would put a hole in him with Spark.

That was not such a bad thing. Even if it put a hole in him, the fact that she would come back and match that kind of joke, that was truly not a bad thing.

"Where is the cave?" Enkrid asked.

"If you have not come to fight alongside us, I suppose I ought to try to stop you."

Ermen's pupils wavered. Unease settled into those silver-bright eyes.

No matter how much one suppressed emotion, how could anyone be unmoved by all of this?

Elves were people too. They held their feelings in check. That did not mean the feelings were not there.

Sinar had gone into the devil's cave, into the Cursed Ground, to protect them.

Crang had told her to abandon that duty.

Which was to say:

'Don't stake your life for the elves.'

Sinar had not listened. Enkrid respected her, and so he respected her choice as well.

Enkrid had come to see the Cursed Ground of the elf city Kirhaeis.

Since he had come all this way, he figured he might as well shout toward the cave.

Call out to Sinar, tell her to come out and play. That would be something.

Walking behind Ermen, he heard Fell whispering to Ruagarne.

"I'm kind of scared."

Not something to admit out loud if you had any pride, but the words came out on their own.

"Not of the devil, I'm guessing?" Ruagarne asked, knowing the answer. She had felt the same dizzying edge herself more than once.

"No. Of the captain," Fell said.

And rightly so. Enkrid was showing a cold kind of anger. Like a fire that burned cold, frigid, but burning all the same.

And beneath it, expectant, his momentum rose like a spike pushing through.

Ermen walked a narrow path between the trees.

The ground was knotted with roots, and with each step the scenery slipped past with that strange feeling again, the sense of things rushing by.

Just walking, yet the trees that had been right in front of him fell away the way scenery does from a carriage window.

"Here," Ermen said, and the path ended.

They had arrived. The destination opened into another small clearing.

The moment they stepped in, a foul stench hit. Nothing like the smell of animal waste or anything in that range.

It was the kind of smell that came from a body left so long it had rotted into maggots.

Some devils were said to carry a foul stench.

The devil in this cave might be that kind.

Before the cave mouth, a mass of elves had already gathered.

A rough count put them above one hundred.

Ermen stepped in front of them and spoke.

"The time of the devil's reprieve has ended. No, we are ending it."

Sinar had meant to protect them. That was her heart.

But the heart of her people was different.

Rather than lose Sinar, they would fight the devil. That was what they had decided.

Enkrid found their spirit admirable. He meant it.

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