WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

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A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 638: There's No Such Thing as a Modest Dream

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Enkrid nodded without missing a beat. The gesture was matter-of-fact, as though nothing else had been expected.

The crowd of elves behind him, Bran included, had been reduced to mere spectators. They blinked. Surprise had gotten the better of them.

What did he just say?

"I want to eat an apple while looking at a blue sky and white clouds. I want to sneak into Krais's pockets and tease him, and there were still things I wanted to teach that child, Seiki."

"Yes."

Enkrid answered without cutting her off. The word landed as a quiet acknowledgment, just enough to let her know he was listening.

Sinar added a few more things after that. For wishes, they were about as modest as anything could be.

Things anyone would call small, ordinary dreams.

Every one of them lived inside the time she had spent with Enkrid.

When all that the demon had stolen from her, the stability, the peace, the joy, the hope, had quietly refilled itself inside Sinar, that was when she learned to work with vital energy.

So of course everything she longed for belonged to the life she had lived beside Igniculuse, blazing the way Spark had blazed. It made sense.

An elf's Spark is a life, compressed. It is experience. She had lived all of it at the side of the man standing before her now.

"You should never have come back."

Bran spoke. The voice of the tree-giant who smoked his tobacco carried something thick in it, a regret too heavy and undisguised for an elf who kept feelings pressed behind composed eyes.

"You should have stayed there and lived."

Bran said it again.

"You would have been allowed to," Arcoiris added, opening his mouth at last.

Brisa's face had gone dim. The glow stone in her hand drifted down a little. She had nearly forgotten she was holding her arm up, she was listening that closely.

"So everyone ends up sacrificed just to buy reprieve?"

Only Zero approached it from a different angle. He knew the ones who had died for the city. That kind of question was natural coming from him.

Beneath the words was something else, too. A refusal to wish for Sinar's sacrifice.

Strong, Zero.

That was the thought that passed through Enkrid.

He could almost guess what Zero wanted. Zero did not want Sinar's protection. If there was a demon to face, he would face it. If this was the end, that could not be helped, but he would struggle until it was.

Not a very elf-like way of thinking, perhaps.

But he had been born in an era when the demon was taking everything. Maybe it was only natural.

He had not grown up as a child of trees and flowers. He had grown up as the demon's adversary, and so instead of learning how to live at ease, he had learned how to fight.

Sinar, for her part, had not spent her whole life as nothing but a cursed child, either.

She had put everything on the line to save the city of Kirhais.

The elves here knew that. Only those who knew it had stayed.

They also knew they were hostages. If they ran, the demon would lay every consequence at Sinar's feet.

Yes, they understood. And so did Sinar.

If she left, the demon would wither the elves remaining in the city one by one.

That was the immovable truth. As long as the demon existed, it would never change.

The demon would find another elf, court that one instead, drag them in, and drain their vital energy, chew through it, tear it apart, taste every drop. And in the end, the demon would track Sinar down and lay out before her, in careful detail, every sin she had turned away from.

All of it was exactly what the demon intended.

Each of them had become shackles for the others. The kind cinched so tight around the ankle that skin rubbed raw and blood ran freely, and still they did not loosen by a single notch.

Enkrid relaxed the tension in his arm and straightened his posture. Then he listened, not missing a word, not missing a syllable, that fell from Sinar's lips. Genuine attention.

Anyone watching could tell from his bearing alone how seriously he was taking this.

Listening quietly, he began to hear the meaning folded inside the words.

"I want to stand at your side. I want to spend what remains of my life in the Knight Order, just watching and listening and enjoying things."

Her wish was threaded through every word she let out.

Some might call it a small dream, but there are no small dreams. There is only what is precious. That was how it was for Enkrid.

Which meant Sinar's dream was precious too.

If he could not even save a child who wanted to bake bread, why pick up the sword? Why become a knight?

If he could not protect even one person who stood beside him, what exactly was he protecting?

By the same measure, if this elder elf wanted her dream to come true, he would make sure it did.

That was why he had come.

If he were being honest, saying he needed to know why she left had been an excuse. He had come because he wanted to meddle, to push his nose in, driven by that damned sense of obligation. He admitted it.

Not that he was necessarily going to say that out loud.

And right then, Enkrid thought of the knight who had died defending her city.

He had lost Oara in the Gray Forest. Was this where he would lose Sinar?

He had asked that question before, and he had answered it. The answer had not changed.

He would not let it happen.

"Do you know about the blue-nosed deer? I am that blue nose."

Sinar kept talking.

No one else could have known, but the demon had spent long years whispering into Sinar's ear without pause.

That she was a cursed elf. That everything she was belonged to the demon.

The demon had pressed her too.

If you want to survive, bring someone like yourself and offer them up.

All the years since Sinar had come to believe, because of herself, that every elf around her had died, right up to now.

Memories crashed through Sinar's mind. The painful ones and the joyful ones tore at each other and tore at her.

"If not for you, everyone could have lived happily, couldn't they?"

Naira, her sister, asked from inside a nightmare.

The truth was that it had only been coincidence. The demon had planned it, and the young elf intoxicated by flame had done nothing wrong. She knew that. Her mind understood it perfectly well.

But her chest told a different story.

"Run. You owe nothing."

Bran said it, and the elder of the elves said it too.

There were people who sheltered her. Things she had held onto while enduring the demon's whispers. She wanted to protect them. So her own wishes, her personal wants, were fleeting and meaningless. Even if they were modest dreams, she had no right to reach for them.

"The blue-nosed deer must not live among the other deer."

Sinar had been trying to grab hold of a small boat tossing in a storm and force it still.

Enkrid took a clear-eyed look at the situation. There were parts he did not know, but inference built itself on the parts he did. This was the result.

He had a rough sense of what Sinar intended. It probably was not so different from the other elves who had come with her this far.

She was resolved to die alongside the demon.

The others had been ready to kill Sinar rather than let her endure more years of suffering.

Sinar had been reaching past death, trying to buy the others reprieve. Even if dying was the end, she had been trying to make sure it did not come immediately, trading a crown of flowers for a crown of thorns.

Whether she had been waiting for the demon to weaken or had made some other arrangement, she was not foolish. She had done something to prepare.

Enkrid registered what he had worked out, but he did not let on.

Knowing did not change anything. And that was precisely why certain words were available to him.

"That is none of my concern."

Words built out of Will. Ruagarne slapped her own palm.

"Exactly."

Fell added something too.

"Like his stubbornness is something anyone can talk him out of."

At those words, the small boat buckling in the storm let out a shriek as though it were about to splinter apart.

Sinar knew she would regret this. She knew it, and still she could not hold back. In the end, the boat smashed to pieces and the wreckage scattered.

So what? If there is no boat, you swim. If your legs are gone, you crawl with your arms.

That was what Enkrid's life said.

She had been moved by that life, which was why she had not dared say she was charmed by him, had she not?

Sinar's mouth opened. A plain, even voice, unhurried.

"If you save me, you take responsibility for the entire elf race. That is my dowry."

At those words, Enkrid, who had kept a polite manner until now, let it drop entirely. When he spoke, the bluntness of it bordered on rude.

"That I cannot do."

"You cannot?"

Sinar asked.

"Anything but the dowry, I will."

Enkrid answered.

The Labyrinth around them was very dark. The glow stones were fading, nearing the end of their life. Yet Enkrid seemed to carry a light inside him. Whether it came from how he held himself or from the words he shaped, it was impossible to say, but it was simply felt that way.

"Then, Enki, will you save me?"

Sinar asked.

"I will."

Enkrid nodded.

Everyone had settled into a listening posture without realizing it, and because of that, none of them had noticed. Enkrid had never put his sword away.

His eyes, sword still in hand, moved past Sinar.

The thing that had been pacing behind the chair of bones walked forward with heavy, deliberate steps.

The demon that had tormented Sinar had shed its vocal apparatus long ago and folded itself into the dark. It had sunk itself into silence. Staying still and hidden had not been its intention, of course.

"The Demon One-Killer."

All Sinar knew was the name. The demon that had once handled fire no longer existed in that form. Taking its Will as hammer and time as anvil, the demon had refined and reshaped itself.

Freed from its body, the demon had split into two distinct entities. One existed to fight. The other existed to produce.

Of the two, the one whose sole purpose was battle, the destruction of enemies, that was the One-Killer.

Enkrid felt a sharp, clear Will from the thing in front of him.

It was not violent. Not savage. What he sensed was closer to purity.

Why?

A killing intent with nothing else in it.

If you took everything you had and turned it all into clean, unambiguous killing intent, would it look like this?

Come at me and die. Only that will filled the air.

It had sockets where eyes should have been, but no mouth and no nose. Where the eyes were, instead of anything resembling human organs, there were only openings that seeped a soft orange glow.

And the eyes were not the only source of light.

The skin itself looked like metal, and across it ran irregular lines etched in patterns across the whole body, and those patterns bled light too.

It stood on two feet like a human, but where arms should have been, long blades extended from each side. Something like gripping two swords, perhaps.

The light carried heat. When the thing stepped forward, the glow turned it into its own light source, brightening the space around it without quite becoming harsh enough to blind.

Enkrid read his opponent exactly.

Enemy of all living things. The antithesis of intelligence. Guardian of evil and injustice.

A demon.

The base form looks similar to a Heartless.

In the Cursed Ground, there were beings that had offered even their hearts to the demon god and become Demon Creatures. They were called the Heartless.

Demon Creatures that fought with blades in place of arms. Because they had no hearts, cutting the throat was the only way to kill them.

The throat.

Was that the weak point here? Hard to say. Looking at the outside told him very little.

The One-Killer lifted a foot. Orange light cut through the dark. The movement of that light source seemed to drag at his vision.

Enkrid was not tracking by sight alone, so it had no hold on him.

The feet.

He watched the demon's foot press against the floor with quiet deliberation. Force traveled from ankle to knee.

The motion that followed was the motion of a swordsman who had trained for years.

Thud.

It kicked off the ground and drove a blade straight down. Enkrid swung the silver-steel sword upward to meet the vertical strike.

Pouring all of his Will into the counter would leave him exposed to the second strike. But the first strike was not an opening for going for the throat, either.

His mind accelerated, calculating, projecting outcomes. He met the blade with half his Will loaded into the swing.

Two blades crossed in the air and met.

Clang!

It was like a bolt of lightning striking right beside him.

The One-Killer's frame was lean, but the strength behind it was not. It matched what Enkrid had put into his own swing.

And he had the feeling this was not even its full strength.

Enkrid stepped back three paces to bleed off the force coming through the blade. The One-Killer did the same, tapping back, raising the blade where its left arm should have been and setting it vertical.

Was it waiting for his next attack? Well, if so, apologies were in order. He had gotten a little excited and was catching his breath.

Not that he could have helped it.

"Stay out of this!" Enkrid shouted. He was talking to Fell and Ruagarne.

"This one is mine."

He added, immediately after.

The One-Killer had no mouth. It could not smile. Yet somehow it felt as though the thing was smiling.

Of course, an entity forged entirely of killing intent had no such capacity for expression.

That was an illusion. Maybe he was projecting himself onto it, seeing his own reflection in a mirror.

A demon.

This was the first time he could honestly say he had crossed blades with one.

The Balrok had been a fragment, and Oara had been the one to kill it. Count Molsen had been nothing more than a subordinate. The demon that commanded ten thousand shades was something he had never actually faced.

So.

Calling myself the real Demon Slayer might not be far off, once I get past this one.

The thing let its bladed arms hang at its sides and watched Enkrid with eyes made of light.

Its killing intent fixed on him alone. A phantom blade seemed to slice through the air and tear open his stomach.

There was no real blade, of course.

False Slash.

Just by holding his gaze, the technique born from reinterpreting Vallen's mercenary sword style activated, reaching across the space between them.

Which meant this opponent was strong.

Stronger than anything he had faced before.

How could he not enjoy this?

"This is going to drive me out of my mind."

Enkrid said it, deflecting the phantom blade with the Will of Refusal.

Everyone around them had gone tense, watching the fight with hard eyes. Every word Enkrid spoke landed in their ears with perfect clarity.

"This is too much fun."

He muttered next. Every single one of them heard it and questioned what they had just heard.

That was what someone said while fighting a demon?

Those who knew him would have nodded and moved on. Those who were seeing him for the first time found it startling.

"The man's out of his mind," Bran murmured.

That said it all.

Enkrid himself, for the record, was fully convinced that within his Knight Order, he was the only sane one.

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