WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

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A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 633: I No Longer Wish for Talent

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Silver-steel sword in the right hand, Spark in the left.

Chching!

The silver-steel sword whipped from his left hip and shed a faint gleam. The blade flew level with the ground.

At the same moment, Spark drew from the right and punched through what stood to his left front.

Slash and thrust. Simple movements, but add enough speed and they become the scythe of death.

Enkrid repeated the same slash-and-thrust once more without pause.

Not a hair of error. His hands found the throats, cut and pierced with perfect precision.

Four rude attendants who had crept out of the dark to greet guests fell with their necks either sliced open or skewered.

Throughout it all, Will brushed past the corners of his eyes and helped him adjust to the dark.

If there was one clear difference between a junior knight and a full knight, it was whether Will moved consciously or without thought. Right now Enkrid used it without thinking, letting it serve him however the situation demanded.

He could not see the enemy as clearly as elves with their heat-sensing sight, but he could make out the rough shape of what faced him.

Four drowned corpses. Their bloated bodies tilted and dropped.

Splat.

The sound of them hitting the ground, the wet squelch felt through his boots, the damp air thick with rot, all of it woke his senses at once.

Water?

The inside of the labyrinth was soaked.

And that was not the only thing. An unpleasant pressure came with it, bearing down on his whole body.

Suppress it.

Something was trying to crush the Will he had activated without thinking. The air itself tasted of poison, and the hostile force pressing down on his shoulders felt like it was ordering him to leave right now.

To put it plainly, the place was a duet of discomfort and foreboding, and something in it actively worked to smother Will.

Even so, it did not affect Enkrid much.

He was a knight, and the Will of Refusal fired reflexively.

Not quite a natural counter, but enough to shrug off the influence.

What remained was damp air, a foul smell, and an unsettling atmosphere. That was all.

Not long after Enkrid gave those four drowned attendants their rest, Fell, Ruagarne, and the elf company came in behind him.

"...What a smell."

Fell said it flatly.

The sheep tended by the Shepherds of the Wilderness had their own powerful stench, but this was worse, stabbing straight into the nose. The same unsettling air Enkrid had felt reached Fell as well. His hand had already drifted to the Idol Slayer without him realizing it.

"Ominous, and foreboding."

Ruagarne added her own word and glanced around. Even without a single ray of moonlight, in darkness blacker than the blackest night, they could still make out the shapes around them.

Being unable to see did not mean the other four senses went blind too.

Then one of the elves drew out a small stone, and a light source appeared.

Soft radiance poured from the glow stone. It was not particularly bright, but it was enough.

Elves were born with sight that pierced the dark as a racial trait, and some came into the world with outright heat detection. Several of those who had followed along were among that number.

Even so, having a light source made a considerable difference in how wide they could see.

The glow stone was not something prepared with Enkrid or the others in mind, it was simply something they had brought from the start.

"You started the moment you arrived, it seems."

Bran said it. In the dark, he pulled out a tobacco stick and put it between his lips. He struck the flint twice, and the leaf caught with a hiss, sending up something close to a small spark.

The tobacco's little flame burned oddly against the glow of the elf's stone.

The acrid smoke seemed to push back the stench hanging inside this Cursed Ground they called the labyrinth, at least a little.

"Have you been here before?"

Enkrid asked.

"Once."

"Ah."

"I'm here as the guide, among other things."

The inside of the labyrinth was not as cramped as it looked from outside. Bran's large frame had room enough.

He had not expected to be exploring a tunnel like this, but knowing that ahead of time would not have changed anything.

A cave with slick moisture running down the walls, a floor of uneven ground, limestone closing in on either side, this was the entrance and gateway into the Cursed Ground known as the labyrinth.

"Sinar would want to turn back even now."

A female elf spoke. A swordswoman with a blade at her hip that resembled Spark. Whether she was speaking on Sinar's behalf, testing Enkrid's resolve, or simply voicing genuine worry was impossible to tell.

She was extraordinarily composed, her emotions tightly locked away.

"That person was always stubborn and never listened to anyone."

Fell answered for him instead. Not an inaccurate answer.

"Let's go."

Enkrid said it and moved forward. The unpleasant, unsettling air and the stench pressed against him, but calling this a wall would have been an insult to walls.

The elf holding the glow stone raised it high.

The four drowned corpses that had greeted him, and the Manticore after them, were clearly not all there was. He had been right.

Walking down the wide tunnel passage, Demon Creatures came out without stop.

"Grrk-kuaagh."

The reek of rotting flesh hit first, and the moment that grotesque roar reached his ears, something burst from the dark beyond the glow stone.

It felt like they had barely walked at all, just turned one corner, and already the Demon Creatures were on them.

"Drowned corpses mixed with human-faced dogs."

Ruagarne observed them with a Frog's keen eye and said so. Not that she had to. One look was enough.

Their appearance made it obvious. Some were swollen and waterlogged, chunks of skin dropping off and hitting the floor with wet slaps. The rest were human-faced dogs, four-legged Demon Creatures, dozens of them, all looking alike. They lined up, rolling their pitch-black eyes, and blocked the group's path.

Was this a threat? Not really.

"We'll handle it."

Bran stepped forward. Naturally, they were not fools, and they had come prepared for entering the Cursed Ground.

The elf swordswoman who had trained her body as a weapon in place of vital energy was proof of that.

Enkrid crossed his arms and watched for a moment.

Time to gauge his allies.

Elf combat was a model of efficiency.

Bran of the Woodguard, and the others, Brisa, Arcoiris, and Zero.

Apart from Bran, Zero stood out clearly above the rest.

"Not bad."

Ruagarne said it. Enkrid nodded in agreement.

Zero kicked off the ground and drew his sword as he charged. The Naidhl, the blade unique to the elf race, slid from its sheath and bared itself in the dark.

The advance and the draw happened at the same instant. Zero wrung out his muscles and drove force through ankle, knee, hip, shoulder, and wrist in one chain, bringing the sword down.

The Naidhl in his hand seemed to bend in midair, an illusion born of pure speed. In the soft glow of the stone, the blade split a human-faced dog clean down the middle.

Fwwack!

Even with the glow stone lit, the jet-black blood of the Demon Creature soaked the floor. The already-wet ground grew wetter.

"He seems conscious of you."

That was Ruagarne's read.

The strike just now was close to how Enkrid had cut the Manticore. Not identical, but the framework was similar.

Is this what outstanding talent looks like?

The source of an elf's power was vital energy. Yet even unable to draw on it, Zero swung his blade without hesitation and cut down the human-faced dogs.

The other two elves were no slouches either.

Enkrid himself felt as though an iron leg brace had been strapped to him. That was the Cursed Ground's air pressing in, separate from whatever the Will of Refusal had pushed away. Those two would feel it the same.

Quick on their feet.

Light steps and vicious sword strokes.

Where Zero's blade focused on driving strength into every cut, the other two worked within their limits, piling up wounds rather than hunting kills.

Not a glance, not a hand signal, not a word passed between them, yet those two fought like twins.

One would casually turn her back, a human-faced dog would lunge for the opening, and the other elf would cut its throat.

They're deliberately showing a gap to draw the attack, then finding the weakness in a creature that can't resist its own instinct and cutting it down.

That was the tactic the elves were demonstrating.

Rush forward and your back empties, and they were forcing that motion on the Demon Creatures.

Simple enough to say. Hard to actually do.

Bran was a step apart from the rest. His method was far simpler than the other three.

Grrr!

A human-faced dog charged and bit down on Bran's arm. Its fangs could not pierce his armor, and while it clung to his forearm, Bran's thick wooden fist came down on its head.

Thud!

Not slow, not fast, but the force behind it rivaled a Giant's. One hit and the human-faced dog's head burst.

Bran's way was simple.

Take a hit, give a hit.

The body of a Woodguard elf was bark, and that bark was plate armor that almost nothing could break through, armor that protected even the eyes and organs.

Born into a wooden body from the start. That was what a Woodguard elf was.

Would a Woodguard even have organs?

If the outside won't do, break what's inside. A reflex thought, rising even when there was no reason to fight.

Eventually Zero rejoined the other two elves.

More than twenty human-faced dogs had come flooding out, but Enkrid had no need to step in.

He only watched and took it in, and somewhere in that observation, a small unexpected realization crept up on him.

Zero.

That elf was not swinging his sword with his head. He was swinging it with instinct.

He had closed his mind and hidden his feelings. He fought with only battle-thought left running inside him. Watching him move made that plain.

And yet he was still thinking.

Raw instinct-driven combat thought and rational judgment could not coexist.

And yet there it was. That was how it looked.

How is that possible?

In terms of accumulated experience, no one on the continent could match Enkrid.

Thought acceleration kicked in, and he devoured what the elf was doing. Devoured was not quite right, though, absorbed was closer. A fascination so strong he sank into analysis without noticing.

The whole process was similar to what Ragna usually did.

The difference between Ragna and Enkrid was that Ragna saw something and simply knew it, while Enkrid could not do that. He had to chase the reason, trace the process. So that was what he did.

It did not take long. The thinking was extensive, but the actual time was short.

Enkrid understood the tactical thinking the elves used.

What I use is thought acceleration.

Seen from outside, it probably looked like thinking dozens of things at once in an instant. But from inside, it was just sequential thought, moving one step at a time. The speed was simply abnormal.

What the elf was showing was different from his own method.

Right hand, silver-steel. Left hand, Spark.

Using two swords at once. What the elf was doing was the same thing.

Dividing the use of both hands, in other words, dividing thought itself.

He had seen it and understood it, so trying it a few times might tell him whether he could manage it.

Not something to attempt right now, but Enkrid still could not simply know something and immediately do it.

He had not been born with that kind of talent.

There had been a time when he had wanted it, that kind of talent. Not anymore. Even if he could not do something at this very moment, there was a seed newly sprouted inside him, and that was enough.

Grasping something in an instant is different from spending years working it into the body. What is learned through years of effort is not easily forgotten, and every step of the process can be revisited and reconsidered.

Said more simply, he understood with reason what he had already learned to feel by instinct.

Enkrid did not mind that about himself. That was exactly why he no longer wished for talent.

"Our job is to find the stairs going down."

Bran said it after finishing off the Demon Creatures.

They kept coming after that, too. Drowned corpses were so common at this point that nothing about them registered anymore.

At one stretch, two Manticores came out at once.

There was no time to rest, but nothing rose to the level of crisis or real threat.

At most, just Demon Creatures.

None were at the Manticore-class that had shown up outside the Cursed Ground entrance, and none were Colony-class either. The elves could handle them on their own.

Of course, the stamina problem is still there.

Too many nuisance Demon Creatures for that not to be a concern.

Even simple repetitive labor wears you down if it never stops.

Fell and Ruagarne took turns stepping in, and Enkrid did not sit still either.

The corpses of Demon Creatures piled up, and they pressed forward across a wet, uneven floor that grew harder to walk with every step. Along the way, annoyances like Vampire Flies and large leeches hiding underfoot and trying to bite through their shin armor showed up too.

The Vampire Flies were especially irritating. Get bitten by one of those things and the bleeding would not stop easily.

So getting bitten was not an option. One bite and it would become a real headache.

The elves swung their swords with fine precision and picked off the insects, but the things seemed endless.

"These pests gave me trouble last time too."

Bran said it. His own skin could take a bite without consequence, so he did not actively chase them.

He just swatted a few with his hand and left it at that.

Thwack.

He caught one and threw it against the wall. Black blood and crushed bits of flesh smeared down the stone.

Not a pleasant sight.

Enkrid had not even drawn his sword. He was punching them out of the air with his fist when it happened.

"Annoying."

Ruagarne said it, and kindled fire along her whip. The area lit up suddenly.

She swung the whip in a wide arc and sent a wave of hot air rolling outward. The heat wave incinerated the Vampire Flies mid-flight.

The heat rising from the spinning whip looked no different from a fire-breathing spell.

Enkrid was watching with open curiosity when Ruagarne caught his gaze. "How you use a magic weapon changes everything about what it can do," she said.

After dealing with the Vampire Flies, they walked on for a long time still.

"This place is too big."

Fell said it, and Bran nodded.

"Two days at the shortest, three at the most."

It was not called the labyrinth for nothing. Just finding the path was work in itself. Without Bran, they might have wandered considerably longer.

Either way, by the time roughly half a day had passed by their reckoning..."Found it."

Bran said. He had not memorized the routes inside the labyrinth. He was reading the Demon Creatures, not the terrain, to judge their position.

"Those are the ones guarding the stairs."

At his words, they looked ahead. A few drowned corpses came into view. Unusual ones. They did not look like ordinary creatures, and there were not a few of them.

"They're the kind that don't die when you kill them."

Bran added. The elves went visibly tense.

Even to Enkrid's eye, these were clearly not easy opponents. Above the shoulders of those drowned corpses, a shifting, formless mass was visible.

More precisely, a shapeless existence with no fixed form, an Evil Spirit had taken up residence inside the drowned corpses.

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