WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 644: Until Eternal Rest

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"My fatigue was too high."

Two straight days of grinding down both body and mind. He had not been anywhere near his usual state.

"Under normal conditions, I would have blocked it with room to spare."

It was not carelessness. And he was not rationalizing either.

This was the kind of review he ran out of habit. If the same situation came up again, what should he do? Or better yet, how could he avoid it altogether?

The second question was Ruagarne-style thinking. Not every Frog thought this way, so she called it that.

It was a training method and a combat philosophy built by an individual, not by the species.

The split thinking he had gained this time depended on what filled it, and Ruagarne-style combat thinking had filled one of those slots.

Enkrid turned the idea over, pushing his thoughts further.

"Battle starts with claiming position."

A spot out of direct sunlight. A spot where the glare did not blind you. A spot where the wind blew against your enemy.

Seize every small advantage you can.

It was not a complicated problem, so the answer came quickly.

If the second question was combat thinking, the first touched something more native to Enkrid himself: a disposition toward patient inquiry, using deliberate thought and time as weapons.

Out of that brief review, he arrived at something close to a conclusion.

"There is still room to harden both mind and body."

Running Will through the whole body made the flesh tough. That, put into words, was Endure.

"Naming the technique."

Move Will, endure impact and pain, and the skin begins to resemble a Giant's. Iron Body.

"Will strengthens the body."

Whoever first developed Endure or Iron Body had probably aimed at replicating a Giant's skin. After toughening the skin, they would have tried to harden the organs, muscles, and tendons next.

So was Will all that mattered?

No. Before enhancement could do anything, what you started with had to be solid. A sturdy body and a strong mind from the beginning, that was the foundation.

That was something repetitive training could build.

His current level already surpassed an ordinary knight's, but if desire was a flame, Enkrid's burned hot enough to set a mountain alight.

Which led him to the same two-word conclusion as always.

"Train."

Just those two words remained. He felt an urge to throw himself into training and conditioning unlike anything he had felt before.

He had killed a demon. By any measure, a person might sit back and feel satisfied. Not a trace of that moved through him.

Inside a mindscape, the world of dreams. The Boatman read what was in Enkrid's heart.

The swelling river had gone perfectly still. The Boatman watched him in silence, then spoke.

"Even now, it's training and conditioning?"

"Ah."

Enkrid raised his head as if only now noticing the Boatman. He did not make a fuss about it, though.

"Stop pretending you just found me, mortal."

"Ah."

Enkrid gave a small nod.

"I know you saw me and registered me long ago, then ignored me while lost in your own head. Do you think I can't read your thoughts and intentions in here?"

"Ahh."

Enkrid had nothing to say, so he let exclamations stand in for a reply. He was not trying to be annoying.

Fortunately, the Boatman neither flared up nor grew agitated.

"Right. That's just what you are. There's something important I should tell you. The blade that struck you carried a demon's will inside it."

"I see."

He nodded without fully understanding. The Boatman usually stopped there. No further explanation followed.

"If you lose to that will, yes. We would get to watch a new demon take shape."

But the Boatman seemed almost to be in a helpful mood, so Enkrid asked.

"Is it something like a curse?"

"A curse? Do you think something like that would dare affect you?"

The Boatman's eyes lit up. Purple light actually flashed from them.

"No curse exists with that kind of nerve."

From the Boatman saying it twice, Enkrid pieced a few things together.

There had been a genuine curse on the demon's blade, and the Boatman had dealt with it.

"Should I say thank you?"

"No need."

Neither of them thought inside ordinary boundaries, so they tossed conclusions back and forth in clipped, compressed exchanges.

Enkrid held the Boatman's gaze. Separate from the rough gray skin, he noticed piercing eyes and a sharp ridge of nose.

Strangely, it resembled the shield-bearing warrior he had once seen in a dream. If the coloring were gold hair and blue eyes, the likeness would be uncanny, close enough to call them twins.

"Did you always look like that?"

"So now you actually look at my face."

"It's just visible."

Was it that he had grown closer to the Boatman's existence, or was this the Boatman's own doing?

Enkrid had no way to know. It felt like coincidence, or perhaps the Boatman had let his guard slip slightly.

Asking would get him nowhere.

"Why did you help?"

The Boatman seemed to be the same person he had seen before, and the warning against Walking Fire had also come from the Boatman, so he asked.

"If you had gotten stuck in a day like that, watching you would stop being interesting."

The Boatman answered. Something close to a smile crossed his face. Only the corners of his mouth twisted, so the expression looked strange rather than warm.

After holding that odd, brief grimace, the Boatman continued.

"If you don't want to die, keep thrashing. You don't want to repeat a day like this, do you? I left it open on purpose rather than blocking it. I thought I might enjoy this too."

Something was crawling slowly toward them from behind the Boatman as he spoke.

His words had thorns. The malice was undisguised.

Enkrid watched quietly as the Boatman finished what he had to say.

"If it swallows you even once, it's over."

He could not make sense of the words. You cannot understand what you have never experienced.

Enkrid blinked once. The river, the Boatman, the lamp, all of it disappeared. In their place stood a demon.

Not the demon as it was now. What he saw was what it had been before anyone called it a demon.

No one told him, yet he knew this was the one.

The demon that had craved elf flesh and blood.

Originally, it had been an elf. An elf that had reached beyond drawing in vital energy and wanted to climb higher. Drunk on desire, it had been willing to become a demon if that was what it took to rise.

Emotion cut like a blade, driving itself in without mercy. That desperate longing and hunger, who could understand it if not Enkrid?

"Look at me!"

Memory invaded. The elf's will crept forward like fog and seeped in.

"Witness my whole life!"

What lay at the root of why the elf had become a demon?

The will began to cloud. Color shifted, blurred. This was what the demon wanted.

Enkrid glanced over what the demon was showing him and let it slide past. So it was not especially difficult.

Letting the Boatman's words wash by while thinking about training methods, or ignoring the life story some elf-turned-demon was trying to force on him, those were not so different.

The demon raged. It needed to pull him in.

"No good. Accept my will. I will give you power beyond anything you can imagine. I will grow your Will!"

Enkrid had never once felt his Will was lacking.

"I will harden your body! I will let you break past the limits of a human frame!"

Audin had said everything outside of eating, drinking, and exercise was the wrong approach.

Drugs could build a body, but the muscle you gained that way turned hollow and withered once the drugs wore off.

When it came to muscle and physical conditioning, Audin gave not a single inch. Even the Madman Knights respected him on that point.

Even Rem, when it came to Enkrid building his body through training, handed everything over to Audin entirely.

"You are stacking up today after today, sir. That is what training is."

Audin's words.

Right. He had accepted it, believed it. That was why he had carried those damned stones and taken fists to the face and drilled Endure until Iron Body wrapped around him.

So the demon's pitch landed on deaf ears.

The demon's manner shifted. Inside the mindscape, a scorched smear of black soot sweated and spoke in desperate haste. The soot pushed out its will and transmitted its meaning.

"I will give you a charm that lets you attract anyone you desire."

He genuinely did not need that.

"...Damn it all."

The demon repeated its name countless times, and Enkrid let it go in one ear and out the other.

He knew how to listen, so he also knew how to ignore.

Calmly, without drama, Enkrid erased the elf-turned-demon's very existence.

The elf kin refused to even give the demon a name, so as not to grant it even a sliver of power.

That was how the elf kin treated the demon.

Enkrid went one step further.

Complete erasure. The demon had tried to linger by asserting its presence through fear, but Enkrid was not the kind of person that worked on.

"Insane human."

That was the demon's dying cry. He let it drift by too and forgot it immediately. Enkrid felt light seeping in, the opposite of darkness, and opened his eyes.

"Slept well."

He woke from the dream. Every muscle in his body still ached faintly. Not as bad as wandering a desert, but his throat was a little dry.

An answer came back to him as he sat up.

"What are you talking about, slept well?"

It was Ruagarne. His eyes were still blurry. A few blinks brought his vision back.

"Had a dream I can't even remember."

If the dead demon had somehow overheard that, it would have cursed not just Enkrid's parents but his entire line of ancestors.

"Talking about dreams at a time like this."

That was Fell. Enkrid looked at an unfamiliar ceiling. It looked like one of the rooms in the elf settlement. Through his nose came the scent of grass, and the ceiling was woven from interlaced branches and tree limbs.

Threading through that was a sharp, acrid smell that pricked at his nostrils.

"The hero has opened his eyes."

Bran. Only then did the room around him come into focus. Dozens of quiet, still pairs of eyes stared back at him. It was a sight that made the room feel cramped. Elves filled it wall to wall, every one of them standing.

"What is everyone doing?"

Enkrid asked, startled, though only slightly. It was the kind of scene you might believe was a nightmare.

"We just gathered those who said they'd pool their vital energy to help you if something went wrong. Quite a few of them, aren't there?"

Sinar answered. She sat in a chair placed at the head of the bed, green eyes steady. Her voice was as cool as always, controlled emotion, with warmth showing faintly through the cracks.

For Enkrid, things like that were just part of everyday life.

"You slept for ten days."

Fell added the detail.

"No wonder my body feels lighter."

"Do you know you nearly died?"

"No."

Enkrid had forgotten the demon that raged in the dream. Not just in words but genuinely and completely, blown to the far side of memory.

He listened as someone gave him a rough account of what had happened afterward.

His eyes had turned red, blood had leaked from them, his nose had bled, veins had risen all over his body and swollen tight.

He had burned with fever, and his lips had cracked dry, apparently. There were still signs of that on his lips, dried blood clung to them and nagged at him.

Strange, though. For someone waking up in that condition, he was not especially thirsty.

"Sinar never left his side for days, feeding him water."

Bran said it, and Sinar, right there beside him, tilted a wooden water bottle and took a long swallow.

She held the water in her mouth for a moment, smiling faintly, and it looked very much like she was showing him exactly how she had fed him. Then she swallowed.

In truth she had used a specially shaped leaf-tube to do it, but Enkrid had no way of knowing that.

The elves gathered here numbered in the dozens.

He could see the elf who had guided him once before, though the name escaped him.

This most recent stretch had dragged on too long, and killing the demon had cost him everything he had. There had been no spare room to remember things.

He had very nearly forgotten the paths through the Labyrinth as well.

"Ah, you over there, Jormen?"

Enkrid called out to the elf responsible for the council.

"Who is that? I am Ermen."

To the elf's reckoning, the name had been forgotten after only a few days, yet Ermen showed no displeasure. He simply corrected him and looked at Enkrid with nothing but warmth.

You could tell without words, just from the mood he gave off.

He had a rough grasp of the situation now, and he could also tell his body was not in bad shape.

At that, Sinar rose from her seat.

The elves around her stepped aside in neat, unhurried order.

Sinar Kirhaise. The Golden Witch at Border Guard, and here, an elf measured against the queen herself.

She stepped back a few paces to give Enkrid a clear view, then went down on one knee. Head bowing, she spoke.

"I speak on behalf of all elves. I express gratitude to you, Enkrid of Border Guard. And with all the family heads of every elf house gathered here, along with your Frog and your squires as witnesses, I say this."

"Who's being called a squire," Fell muttered.

Other than that, not a breath sounded louder than it had to.

Whether this had all been arranged in advance, or everyone had simply expected Sinar to do this, no one could say.

Everyone was silent.

Enkrid, barely awake, had no idea what was happening, but the weight of the moment kept his mouth shut.

Sinar smiled. Not the Golden Witch's smile, something that could just as well have been called a golden angel's. Two perfectly symmetrical eyes bright with that smile, a straight line of nose, and below it, pink lips parting.

"From now until eternal rest, whenever you wish, at any time you like... I will spar with you."

Enkrid noticed that Sinar had broken off mid-sentence in a strange place before getting the words out, but he let it go.

What Sinar had said was the phrasing from an elf wedding ceremony.

The original ran:

"From now until eternal rest, I will remain at your side."

She had changed it.

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