WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 649: How to Break a Limit

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The illusory Aetri spoke.

"Seriously?"

Short, but heavy. A question the real Aetri would never have asked.

'Even if I use a different sword for a while.'

He would just shrug it off and work harder than ever to forge something even greater. That was the kind of man Aetri was.

So this would be just as much of a spur to Aetri as seeing a new sword style was to Enkrid. That thought crossed his mind.

"The blade's name is Penna. In the continental tongue, it carries a meaning close to feather or leaf."

As Lafratio spoke, his gaze dropped to Enkrid's hip. More precisely, to Spark.

"You won't be able to use that anymore, so please hand it over."

Coincidence, or had he prepared this already knowing?

The latter seemed far more likely.

Enkrid had shattered the silver-steel sword beyond breaking and cracked Spark partway through as well.

He hadn't noticed while mastering and applying the Wave-Blocking Sword, but looking back after it was over, not a single weapon had come out whole.

The demon's attacks, blazing with orange light, had been that overwhelming. They came like flashes and struck like lightning.

He had blocked them by alternating between high-speed thought and split thinking, manifesting the sword that blocks waves, but in doing so he hadn't only burned through the silver-steel sword. He had pulled out Spark whenever he needed it and used it as a makeshift shield. That was why nothing in his hands had survived.

'When I came out of the Labyrinth, I lost my luck too.'

His luck had burned out saving Sinar's life. Apparently the blade had gone black and crumbled away like ash from a fire. That was what he'd been told.

He hadn't seen it himself. He had blocked that strike and passed out almost immediately.

He was only now grasping just how extraordinary that luck had been.

Enkrid quietly unbuckled Spark and handed it over. Lafratio accepted it and set it down gently to one side.

He learned later that Spark had once passed through Lafratio's hands as well.

"What do you think?"

Lafratio asked in a flat tone, but Enkrid caught something like expectation beneath it.

Penna. Feather.

A blade that matched its name perfectly. The grip fit his hand the moment he closed his fingers around it, the blade curved gently, and only one edge was sharpened.

Lafratio plucked a single hair from his own head and laid it across the blade. There was a soft whisper of sound, and the hair fell in two.

"In sheer cutting ability alone, this is the finest among everything I have ever made. Prinkhe, the best."

Lafratio translated the elven word into the continental tongue as he spoke. True to his word, the edge was keener than anything Enkrid had ever seen.

"No maintenance required either. The vital energy sustains the blade's sharpness. The metal the sword is made from, moonsilver, was forged by tempering true silver that holds moonlight with vital energy."

Silver that holds moonlight, true silver of the highest grade, not merely rare but the stuff of legend.

"This is almost too good. Something like this would count as a treasure even within the city, wouldn't it?"

Enkrid said it plainly. The blade was shorter than two handspans, so it was hard to call it a primary weapon, but it could be put to use any number of ways depending on how he wielded it.

"It is a treasure. That is precisely why I am giving it to you."

The tone said it was obvious. Why even ask?

Lafratio was not finished there. In the days that had seemed spent scrambling through relocation preparations, the elf clan had also been busy preparing gifts for their idol.

"You gave away Penna? Didn't you always say you'd die with that in your hand?"

As Enkrid was receiving the sword from Lafratio, a Dryad came through into the heat-filled area.

She moved only on her tiptoes, barely touching the ground, her whole body looking impossibly weightless.

Watch her long enough and you found yourself thinking of a leaf drifting on a breeze. It was the female Dryad he had seen before at the open ground.

She smiled and turned eyes on him, green as jewels, pupils glowing the same shade, a beauty that was inhuman in a different way from Sinar's.

"Because I didn't die when I was supposed to."

Lafratio said it while she was still approaching. He had expected to be swallowed by the demon and the Cursed Ground, yet he had survived.

Unlike what the Dryad's words implied, Lafratio showed no sign of reluctance about giving the blade away. If anything, he seemed glad Enkrid had accepted it.

"We have something to give you too."

The Dryad said. He had picked this up from conversations with Sinar, but among the elf tribes, Dryads apparently thought more in terms of "we" than "I."

Faeries, the dust-scattering elves, were said to be similar, while Woodguards and the other elf tribes leaned more toward individual identity.

That was apparently how elf society worked, though there was no particular need to know the details.

"Come on."

The Dryad took Enkrid's hand and pulled him along. Ruagarne followed behind, cheeks puffed with what could only be a suppressed smile.

"That irresistible charm of yours is really shining today."

"Word is going around that he's a bride-snatcher, not just a heartbreaker."

Fell's addition made Enkrid glance toward him. The shepherd met his eyes without flinching. Enkrid's sharpened insight weighed the truth of what Fell had said. Then he watched Fell's gaze drift slightly to one side.

Several details overlapped in his mind, clues stacking on top of each other until the truth peeked through.

The bride-snatcher rumor was one Fell had been spreading himself.

"Stop putting out strange rumors."

Enkrid said it with certainty. There was even a faint edge of Will behind the words.

"How did you know that?"

Fell didn't even try to make excuses. There had been no real reason behind it either. Shepherds were a breed that liked to tease people with tall tales and made-up stories. The old fable about the shepherd boy who cried wolf didn't come from nowhere.

Up until now he'd had no one to trick and no cause to use it, so the instinct had stayed buried. That was all that was showing itself now.

There was no deeper meaning to it. It was just that the elves fell for it so easily, and watching them fall for it was genuinely entertaining.

"Your moves are easy to read."

Looking at Fell, Enkrid found a separate thought surfacing, apart from the framework he had established for knighthood. Nothing he could put into words just yet, but some thread had caught.

"Easy to read doesn't mean easy to stop."

Fell said it with a grin.

"Prove it in a spar."

Enkrid said it and followed after the Dryad. They crossed a few narrow paths, and a small stream came into view.

A stream running through a city. That was something.

Across it lay a section thick with leaves that hadn't been visible a moment before.

The air was warm in a way that made winter hard to believe, and butterflies and bees drifted through it.

"It goes under your armor."

The Dryad who had brought him here gestured, and two Dryads a head shorter than her carried over a large leaf.

They spread it open, and the gift was revealed.

Dryads weave threads from the leaves of special trees. Those threads are soaked in Woodguard sap for days at a time, pulled out, and dried in moonlight.

Repeated over years, a single skein of thread is produced. It is called elf-thread.

What they had given him was a garment woven from that thread. Specifically, a kind of inner armor worn beneath the rest.

'Krais would faint if he saw this.'

Not something you could so much as lay eyes on for a gold coin or two.

Just as humans worked the same cloth into many different forms, elf-thread was not all one kind.

What the Dryad had handed over was made from the toughest threads among them.

Shaped like a vest, it covered the torso while leaving the limbs bare, but a single flick of a finger was enough to tell it was as solid as steel chainmail.

"It holds against fire, and since it isn't metal it won't rust. The vital energy woven into it means most Evil Spirits will turn and run just from the sight of it."

Elf vital energy was like life itself. And life was the natural opposite of Evil Spirits.

It was not for nothing that elves lived on the fringes of the continent with almost no Demon Creature attacks to speak of.

He was only now fully grasping it.

'Using vital energy itself is enough to keep most Demon Creatures at bay.'

But now there were things coming that vital energy alone could not repel.

'If you cannot protect yourself.'

Then you accept the protection of others. That was what the situation had become.

He hadn't needed to think it through, but the shape of things had arranged itself naturally in his mind, cause and consequence falling into order.

Asking for help meant setting pride aside, and if Ermen alone made that call as head of the council, there would be resistance from within. Then relocation would fall apart entirely.

Persuading every stubborn elf one by one would take too long. The slow response had nearly gotten them devoured by the demon, but that was the nature of the race, and a nature didn't vanish overnight.

But rush it, and something would break. What plan could silence all that resistance at once?

He thought he could guess.

'Was this Sinar's scheme?'

Or Ermen's.

Enkrid had received an endless stream of gifts and become the idol of the elf clan.

Somewhere in the city, an elf was carving a stone statue of him.

Children took those statues for themselves, one each, like talismans.

It would pass, like any fashion, but for now carrying a small Enkrid figurine had become something people simply did.

And for the elf clan, this was a natural choice.

'They need someone to lean on, but they cannot lean on just anyone.'

Someone they could trust. Someone they could actually rely on.

Turn that person into an idol, and you could smother any discontent that might flare up inside before it took hold. That was how you quieted resistance.

Humans light a fire and put it to use. Frogs, when a fire breaks out, simply watch.

Giants fight the fire. Dwarves heat their iron in it.

Beastfolk avoid it. Dragonkin ignore it.

And elves?

'Douse the ground before the fire even starts.'

It was a saying about the attitude you brought to events when they arose.

Elves were always the ones who prepared. That was how they had survived on the edges of the Cursed Ground all this time.

It wasn't just vital energy they had relied on. Their way of moving through the world was the same. This moment was no different.

Enkrid had helped settle where they would relocate, but honestly, even without that, the elf clan would have found some way to draw him in.

It felt like an exquisite, carefully designed lure. That was the impression he got. Elves didn't speak falsehoods. So instead they would say nothing at all, leaving neither lie nor truth behind.

Strangely, after all the thinking he had been doing lately, this too seemed to touch the edge of something he had grasped.

Not that anything concrete was surfacing right now.

And he didn't find it worth criticizing. If anything, it deserved credit.

He thought he also understood what Ermen wanted.

Not for the clan to flourish. For it to survive. In that sense, Ermen was a very good elf indeed.

After collecting all those gifts and returning, the very fine elf Ermen was waiting in front of Enkrid's lodgings.

"The relocation preparations are nearly done. Will you travel with us?"

"I think it would be better if I went ahead and you followed. If someone sees trees walking, they might take them for Demon Creatures and panic."

Ermen had explained how the elf city's relocation worked before. Enkrid had a clear picture of it.

Nothing like a cart loaded with pots. Entirely different.

"Ah. I suppose humans might be frightened."

Enkrid had been about to say that a few of them would charge rather than flee, but he let it go. Hardly important.

He looked at Ermen's calm expression and spoke.

"Whose idea was the idolization?"

He cut straight to the point without any lead-in, and Ermen answered without a flicker of surprise.

"The thought was mine. Sinar was the one who pushed it forward."

Enkrid now knew Ermen was shrewder than he looked. And Ermen, for his part, now knew this man was more than someone who simply swung a blade well.

That only put Ermen more at ease.

Wasn't it far better for the person their clan would be depending on to be someone like this, rather than some axe-swinging lunatic who split heads on instinct?

He had heard from Sinar there was someone like that at Border Guard.

Someone who got lost and ended up cutting down a knight from an enemy nation?

As an elf, it was simply incomprehensible.

Though, to be fair, the Madman Knights probably didn't make much sense to humans either.

Then again, living alongside someone didn't require understanding them. Just accepting was enough.

That was all Ermen the elf was doing.

"Then."

The full relocation would take several months. A portion of them would leave ahead of the rest.

'Moving in stages with an eye on the dangers is better than going all at once.'

There would be Demon Creatures and Magic Beasts along the road, but given what he had seen of the elves' capabilities, none of it should pose a serious threat.

'If anything, the surrounding territories are going to be shocked when they see the relocation procession pass by.'

Either way, Enkrid left the city ahead of everyone else.

"My betrothed, why do you leave without even making a child together?"

Sinar's farewell was rather memorable.

"Do you enjoy saying things like that?"

Enkrid asked.

Sinar's goodwill toward her rescuer was as deep as the sea. She gave a slow, earnest nod, full of warmth.

"Very much."

When Enkrid moved to leave, the entire elf clan set down whatever they were doing and came out to see him off.

Some pressed letters into his hands. Others gave him cleaned and prepared fruits.

"How dare you make eyes at my betrothed?"

Sinar said it in a perfectly level tone, as though mildly noting something. She wasn't actually angry.

The elves listening didn't so much as twitch an ear.

"Isn't the last one standing the real winner? Lady Kirhais."

One of them even threw down a bold challenge, but it was all elf humor.

Enkrid listened for a while, then gave up trying to follow it.

"See you later."

Sinar was set to come with the next relocation group, so it was a temporary farewell.

Beyond Ruagarne and Fell, Zero joined as a guide. His skill had grown sharply in the short time they'd been here.

His ability to channel emotion into combat stood out above any other elf's. When turmoil struck, he didn't scatter, he drew from it. Easy to say, hard to embody. That was pure talent.

Enkrid's guidance had played a part as well.

He set out, and after walking for a while he opened his mouth and passed along what he had come to understand and realize, sharing it with Ruagarne.

From the outside it might have looked like idle conversation to pass the time on a dull road, but of course it wasn't.

"I see."

Ruagarne nodded, then spoke again.

"You want something."

This Frog missed nothing.

"Yeah. A Frog with Talent-Reading Eyes must have built some kind of internal system around that ability, right? Am I wrong?"

Frogs saw limits. Because they saw limits, they could mark a clear endpoint. With an endpoint came a starting point, and with both in hand, everything between could be broken down and divided into parts.

She was right. The Frog's Talent-Reading Eyes came with a framework.

"Teach it to me."

Enkrid said.

Establishing a framework for knighthood was not the end.

Ruagarne found herself glimpsing, once again, just how remarkable the man in front of her was.

The hunger to learn. That was one of the forces driving him. If he had been a Frog, he would have thrown himself into a furnace if he knew he could learn something from it, even knowing it would kill him.

'If he had been a Frog.'

As long as that one thing didn't give out, you couldn't die, so you'd push yourself without care.

Come to think of it, that wasn't so different from how he actually lived.

"I will."

Ruagarne answered without hesitation.

Nothing to hide, nothing to hold back. This man's relentlessness had shattered one of the ideas she had long carried inside her.

'Limits can be broken.'

She was proving it with her own body. Then, hearing the framework Enkrid had built, another thought followed.

'How to break limits.'

That was the road Enkrid was walking now.

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