WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 647: Inspiration Struck

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The elf city was not small. What Enkrid had seen and stayed in was only its outskirts.

'Quite vast.'

In terms of sheer size, it might even have been larger than Border Guard.

The elf city was divided into several distinct districts, connected by narrow forest paths and what could only be described as magical elements.

If Ragna ever came here, he would call it the Labyrinth for good reason.

'Ragna would spend a lifetime getting lost.'

Even climbing up into the trees to find your bearings was no help in many places, where the dense canopy of leaves sealed overhead like a ceiling.

So Ragna would never find his way in here. Then again, most ordinary people would lose their way easily enough in a layout like this.

Not that the elves minded. They knew it by heart.

'So this is why old stories circulate about woodcutters getting trapped in the elf city and stumbling out decades later.'

There was one such tale. A folk tale about a man who found a spring, spotted an elf bathing there, stole her clothes and ran, then spent some twenty years wandering the forest before finally finding his way out.

From that seed, dozens of other stories had branched. In some versions the man and the elf had a child together. In another, an axe dropped into the spring came back up forged from true silver.

'Fairy tales are fairy tales.'

Still, he could guess why stories like these kept circulating. There was enough mystery inside this city to birth them.

They had wrapped everything in trees and built the city within. The general structure was beginning to take shape in his mind, pieced together from answers that passing elves had cheerfully given whenever he asked.

'In a way, it becomes a natural fortress.'

That was why the elf city needed no walls.

Would fire be the weak point, then, if someone decided to attack from outside? Pour oil on the outer tree-wall and set it ablaze?

Burn the outer shell, start a massive fire, and the elves inside would come spilling out one by one.

But would that actually work?

'The demons succeeded because they struck from within. Anyone attacking from outside would have had no chance at all.'

These were people who wielded vital energy and commanded spirits. The combined strength of the elf kin, Dryads and Woodguards included, was not something to dismiss.

Setting aside their spirits, the very "walls" of the elf city used for the outer shell were the bodies of dead Woodguards.

Even burning them would not be easy. He had watched Bran burn tobacco against his own skin without leaving so much as a scorch mark.

Though a Woodguard who kept fire that close was admittedly unusual.

Enkrid thought it over as he lowered himself into the pond. Calling it a pond was being generous. It was closer to a lake.

'This is included in the relocation package, they said?'

The Healing Spring, or the Elf Spring. A hot pool that eased tired flesh into pleasant numbness.

After finishing training and sinking into it, he felt something close to paradise.

Add a single sip of chilled leaf tea the elf kin had prepared, and it was complete.

Gulp. Gulp. Gulp.

Enkrid savored a moment of pure bliss. Hot energy scrubbed across the outside of his body, flushing impurities from his skin and pores. A cool breeze drifted above his head, and the chilled leaf tea hit the back of his throat like the first water after ten dry days.

'Incredible.'

After a full day of training and turning ideas over in his mind, soaking here for a couple of hours had become his daily routine.

He had been surprised when the relocation list included a lake-sized pond. Now, the thought of leaving it behind felt genuinely painful.

He was resting like that when someone came splashing toward him through the steam rising off the surface.

The pond was wide. Lake would not have been wrong.

The high temperature kept a constant veil of steam rolling across the water, so anyone a short distance away was easy to ignore. But when someone drew close, his senses registered them whether he wanted it or not.

His five senses worked out who it was before he had to think about it.

"What is it?" Enkrid asked.

"Today is a day for soaking."

"Is this some kind of holiday the elf kin observe?"

"No. I decided it myself. This morning."

Crazy elf.

"Your expression is disrespectful. I am queen of this city."

It was Sinar, of course.

"And I am this city's savior."

"Savior, you say. Right from your own mouth."

It was a joke, thrown because she knew what he was like.

"Am I wrong?"

"No, you're not."

Enkrid gave a faint smile. Sinar pushed through the steam and drew closer, close enough to see clearly. Even so, they were both in the water, submerged to the neck, so nothing showed but her face.

'Was that disappointing?'

No. Not really.

"I heard you suggested a location for the relocation," Sinar said, splashing the water with a wave of her arm. A spray carrying the scent of flowers and grass hit Enkrid across the forehead. The motion lifted part of her body briefly above the surface, visible for a moment.

A flash of something pale and round, and the line of a forearm.

Enkrid nodded without argument.

"I happened to know a good place."

"Thank you."

Somehow Sinar had been saying that word more often than before.

"I thought you were the one pressuring me, telling me I couldn't leave the city."

"I was stating facts."

"Distorted facts. I heard that was a specialty of the elves, and I've experienced it firsthand."

"What are you talking about? Our society has no such thing as lies."

Looking at Sinar blinking at him with that blank, innocent expression, even calling her shameless came out awkwardly.

With that face, doing that. It was fraud. Any ordinary man would have had hearts for eyes already, ready to hand over his soul and everything else.

"Right. I suppose you've erased the memory of lying inside the Labyrinth."

She could not have already forgotten the string of falsehoods she had told, including that business about deciding to become queen of the Demon Creatures.

"Your tone is disrespectful."

"Ah. Yes."

A beat of pointless banter, another exchange of thanks, and then..."Well, then."

Sinar stepped out of the pond. Enkrid did not look away, so he caught glimpses of her bare body. Not with any particular intention.

"When did you get those scars?"

A scar he had glimpsed on her forearm continued all the way down her back. Burns, twisted and savage.

Sinar knew her own body was disfigured. That was why, even with opportunities to bathe near Enkrid, she had never done so.

She could have pushed her way into the same water easily enough, but she had deftly avoided every such situation.

Water ran down the burn marks carved into her back, tracing the scars from her shoulders down, trickling past her thighs and falling.

The burn marks ran vivid from her back to her calves. It looked as though someone had been methodical with a branding iron. Just looking at them made him feel the pain.

"The Healing Spring has many uses," Sinar said, answering in place of an answer. Until now she had kept those scars unhealed because she needed to remember.

Enkrid tilted his head, and Sinar smiled and continued.

"These burn marks, most of them can be removed. Save for a few. Then you'd see pale skin again."

"Yes. And?"

"You could touch it too."

"......"

"It would be enjoyable. Very much so."

Why did I get drawn into a serious conversation with this elf?

Enkrid turned his head, eyes full of self-reproach.

"Stay by my side. Child of dreams and possibility."

"Is that a curse?"

"A blessing."

Sinar smiled like a flower in full bloom. It was the same smile she had worn in the dream.

Seeing it, Enkrid smiled without meaning to.

Whatever else was true, the worry she had been carrying seemed to have lifted.

Sinar left.

Enkrid wanted to stay in the water a little longer. He closed his eyes and let himself float, and warmth folded around his body. Within that warmth, he sank into a deep current of thought.

Sometimes inspiration arrived without warning, and now was one of those times.

'Sinar did not remove the scars.'

That was probably so she would not forget her own failure.

She had decided to face that failure and push through it. Not to assign blame, but to take steps toward tomorrow.

Just as his own nature had an effect on those around him, sometimes the positive changes he sparked came back around to him in return.

Sinar's change stirred something inside Enkrid.

He could not quite say what the connection was, but inspiration suddenly flooded his mind. Scattered threads mixed and dispersed, over and over, then wove themselves into a steady pattern and formed a single framework.

Through the steam rising off the pond, a vision appeared.

"It's thanks to me, you know. So don't go forgetting me."

Was that a remnant left behind by the demon?

Or had his thoughts simply been reaching outward and picked up some stray interference along the way?

It did not particularly matter. When Enkrid entered a state of focus, he forgot everything around him.

The vision scattered. He did not bother committing it to memory.

He bored down into the one thing before him, forgetting himself, forgetting his sword, forgetting the world, drilling into nothing but the task of taking the inspiration that had surfaced and giving it form.

He was lucky. There was nothing to interrupt him. The vast pond they called the Healing Spring gently kept his body afloat, so there was no risk of sinking. His body temperature would not drop. He had no need to worry about food.

He would get hungry inside the spring, but it also supplied part of his body's needs without him eating.

Well. That was why it was the Healing Spring.

Some of the Dryads would deliberately fast and lie in it for two days at a stretch. They knew it improved their recovery, and that was why they did it.

On top of that, hot water moved the blood through the body and sharpened the mind.

Had the old Elf Council once held its meetings while submerged in the Elf Spring?

Mingled inspiration, forming into theory. The first thing that surfaced was self-reproach.

'I was arrogant.'

He had finished Wave-Blocking Sword and told himself his inspiration was sufficient. It was not.

'There is no end to it.'

Back then it had felt like reaching a finish line, but no. Thought stretched itself out on its own and opened new roads. A new world was trying to open within Enkrid, different again from the world of swordsmanship that had opened before.

He was in the middle of that process now. For everything needed to receive that newness, he reached back and used what he had.

That meant tracing through a few memories and pulling out one situation from his past.

The one that came now was when he had entered the elf city and been met with arrows.

He had sensed the arrows and shattered them.

He had heard the wind. He had done it through the Sensory Technique he learned from Jaxon.

Enkrid had given that a name at the time, called it the domain of a sixth sense, or something like it.

Jaxon had not tried to stop him, but later he had shown Enkrid that it all fell under one umbrella: Sensory Technique was a single category that held everything.

There was no real need to divide sensory work by name. That was probably what he had wanted to say.

Another example was Endure. If concentrating Will to raise the toughness of skin and muscle came naturally, there was no need to call it a separate technique.

'But can anyone do that?'

Using Will and techniques naturally, without thinking? Was that easy?

If he had trained from the beginning without naming any technique, without those labels to hold onto,

He would not have given up. But getting to where he stood now would have been far, far harder.

He had enough doubt to wonder whether he would have reached even the rank of Knight.

Just imagining it made him dizzy, a floating, groundless feeling. Like being bound hand and foot and dropped from a cliff.

He had been lucky. Maybe the goddess of fortune had truly been keeping an eye on him.

Either way.

'Stepwise growth is necessary.'

Especially for someone like him.

His theoretical foundation, his base of knowledge, had been built by wandering the continent and meeting one instructor after another.

Some had said the same things. Some had said entirely different things. Others had tried to organize their theories and build a proper system.

"Something that works for someone else might not work for you. The method I developed wasn't made to teach people with less talent than me, so please, just go. Now."

The words of one instructor came back to him. A man who had practically begged him to leave, saying he had nothing more to teach. He was not a bad person.

He could have used threats or force to drive him off, and instead he had done it with words.

Not that force would have worked either.

Even after being told that, Enkrid had spent three months stubbornly hanging around to squeeze out a little more knowledge before finally leaving.

Then came the words of an old swordsman who had settled in a coastal city, words that had stayed with him longer than most.

"You need to find your own way. How? You look back and you chew on it. Walk the roads other people walk, but pick out from those roads the paths you can take, use what's worth using, and throw out the rest."

He was partly right. Partly wrong.

'There is nothing to throw out.'

He could not move forward unless he used everything he had and clawed ahead with all of it. So that was what he had done.

'Even if it looked like flailing.'

He would crawl forward if that was what it took.

Resolve became Will and shone, and Will lit up his dream as it blazed.

Everything stored in the library of his experience came pouring out, churning through his mind without order. Days passed like that. After wandering through it for days, Enkrid saw a signpost.

'Yes. A signpost.'

Techniques are signposts. You name them and set the method of training them.

'A knight at the beginner stage must train the techniques for handling Will.'

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