WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

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A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 651: The Apostle and Enlightenment

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What he had to do was simple: cut down whatever came flying at him.

The moment he recognized it, his body moved on its own. No calculation needed. The opponent's blade wasn't thinking about a follow-up, it was committing everything to a single strike. Enkrid's accelerated thought stretched the surrounding moment thin.

He saw it coming for him. A long, slender skewer of a blade, a rapier. The thrusting style carried the distinct scent of Jaxon's teachings.

Seeing it, he pressed his right big toe into the ground, drew Penna, and swung.

The speed at which force traveled from his ankle through his hips to his hand was twice what it used to be.

He snapped his knee to load the strike, locking shoulder, elbow, and wrist so nothing wavered.

A Heavy Sword Style thrust. It favored force over speed, and if poorly blocked it punched through almost anything, some called it the battering-ram thrust.

True to that name, the sword flew like a siege engine breaking down a gate.

Technique layered onto a treasured sword with absurd cutting power, and something like a miracle was born.

Shick! Skrech!

The iron skewer was cut clean in half. The attacker who burst from the earth lost his head a moment later, dirt spraying wide.

The sudden motion stirred the air from under Enkrid's feet, and Spark's sheared-off cinders caught the wind, spiraling up like a waterspout before dying away.

To anyone watching without context, it would have looked like he'd conjured a sudden gust and wrapped himself in cinders.

One strike, and he'd gone beyond blocking: he'd cut through the skewer and killed the one holding it.

A harmony of technique and power that could almost pass for magic.

Enkrid finished the kill and flicked his sword clean. Drops of blood from Penna spattered against the ground.

He glanced at the blade. Not a single droplet clung to it. Something about the edge maintaining itself without oiling, wasn't that what they'd said?

Still, they'd also mentioned it was good to wipe it down every six months or so with a special oil: a specific blend of Woodguard sap and camellia flower oil in the right proportions.

He'd nodded and agreed to that, and the elf Lafratio had given him a bottle of the mixture, blended personally.

A good sword, yes, but calling it a treasure wouldn't be wrong either.

"Fine weapon."

The words came from the man with the staff, the one who had spoken first. Enkrid flicked the last blood from the blade and looked forward.

The ambush hadn't targeted only him, but Ruagarne and Fell weren't the kind to die from something like this.

As expected, both had blocked it. Ruagarne had used her forearm as a shield and taken a hole through it, but she was a Frog, so stopping it that way counted as managing just fine.

Fell had jerked his torso sharply back and drawn his sword in the same motion, knocking the blade aside.

Enkrid caught the faint clang of metal from somewhere in the middle of it. That was the sound of Fell deflecting the strike.

Zero had startled and jumped backward, and the quickness of elf feet saved him. His blond hair scattered through the air. A shallow scratch opened on his forehead, but half a second slower and he'd have had a new hole where his nose used to be.

If it had looked like Zero was going to die, Enkrid would have blocked rather than killed the one targeting himself, but he'd read it as something Zero could handle well enough.

"You are a..."

The Cultist with the staff started to say something more, but Enkrid moved first.

Everyone else was holding their breath, looking for an opening, caught in that half-second gap of thought.

Enkrid's left hand brushed across his own chest and snapped forward.

With that motion, a strange sound rang out.

Pwhuuuuu!

What he threw was the modified Whistle Dagger. The silence dagger had never sat right in his grip no matter how much he practiced with it, so he'd reworked it entirely into something that suited his hand.

He'd added a blade to boost the Whistle Dagger's stopping power, which meant the name needed changing while he was at it.

Not a Whistle Dagger anymore. Something more like a horn-blade dagger fit the sound it made now.

Thwhump!

The sound matched the impact.

Enkrid was not a lazy man. Beyond simply training his swordsmanship, he spent every day chewing over everything he'd ever learned.

The knife-throwing technique he'd built on Jaxon's foundations sent that dagger through three ambushers who had burst from the soil.

It didn't just lodge in their heads. It detonated them.

Three of the daggers Aetri had made for him at his request.

He'd brought only six to begin with, so three remained.

'My only sword is Penna now.'

The silver-steel sword and Spark were both gone. Penna was a touch short for a primary weapon, but...'That doesn't mean I'm at a disadvantage.'

Enkrid thought it through steadily. No reason to panic.

He spread his feet slowly, settled into his stance, and raised the sword. Holding Penna upright, the reddened moonlight seemed to split around the blade.

Two moons lit the ground. With the group's backs to the ridge, the man with the staff stood before them and tapped the earth again with a dry crack.

"I'll make one last offer. Any interest in changing sides? It would be a waste to die here with talent like that."

"And who are you, exactly?"

Enkrid asked without any crack in his stance.

Clearly, he was neither rattled nor frightened.

The most surprised person there was Ruagarne. She'd taken one look at the staff and the figure's clothing and, rather than puffing her cheeks, was staring hard.

"Could it be..."

She asked it quietly. Fell stood scowling with a hand resting on the grip of the Idol Slayer, and Zero was holding himself together through slow, shallow breaths.

The momentum the black-armored knight had been radiating pressed down on all three of them like a physical weight. It felt like being pulled back into the Labyrinth.

Pressure, the kind of force a knight wielded as if it were theirs alone.

"You are correct."

The man with the staff nodded at Ruagarne's unspoken question. Enkrid looked at him blankly, and the man continued.

"I am an Apostle of the Second Coming."

Within the Cursed Ground Holy Sect, Apostle was a title that could mean those with exceptional gifts, or those who had met one of the Six Demons and awakened a power through them.

The one standing here now was the First Apostle, and he was the latter kind.

To put it simply: every Cultist operation up to this point had this man behind it.

Sending the Apostle of Curses had been his doing. The forbidden-arts sorcerer who commanded Walking Fire had acted on his word.

"Bewitching even Cultists. What a dark gift."

Fell had been sharpening his taunts lately, and the line tumbled out by reflex.

"Is that right?" Enkrid said.

Fell gave a short smirk. He felt the threat. That didn't mean he had any reason to shrink from it.

Was today the day he died? If dying had scared him, he'd never have picked up a sword.

The Shepherds of the Wilderness grew up trading gossip with Evil Spirits and playing chase with Demon Creatures.

That was the life of a shepherd who wandered the wilderness. If fear of death stopped you from doing what needed to be done, you couldn't even start.

"Wasn't I right?" Fell said. Boldness and ease.

In Enkrid's view, the sharpest talent Fell had was exactly that boldness.

It suited the way Fell was made. He didn't find himself envying it.

The Apostle's line about wasting talent just sounded funny.

"Go tell a Ghoul it's your mama and beg it for more milk. Change sides? Change what."

Enkrid said it to the Apostle, out of nowhere, rough and crude.

The Apostle had never heard an insult quite like it. He frowned before he knew he was doing it.

What did he just say?

Fell felt something detonate in his head.

What was a taunt, at its core? Stimulation. It had to move the other person.

'What you need is to read the atmosphere and throw something they never saw coming.'

Enkrid could twist words to needle someone, but right now he'd gone straight for the throat.

Right. He understood now. The goal was to stir the opponent's composure and crack their calm. Not just swearing for the sake of it.

Fell was pleased, and the urge to try it himself opened his mouth immediately.

"Look at that face. He's well past the age for milk. Asking for it with a face like that. Ugh."

He didn't quite manage the gagging motion, only the sound, but the direction was exactly right.

"Lunatics," the Apostle muttered.

The Cursed Ground Holy Sect's heart was in the Cursed Ground, naturally. This figure was, if anything, the regional director posted out here.

Even so, a few words had turned the stomach of someone personally tutored by a demon. Wasn't that something to celebrate?

Ruagarne's cheeks puffed out. The Frog let out a loud, rumbling laugh.

"Still, I will give you a chance. Elle."

At the Apostle's word, the black-armored knight moved. No, in the instant Enkrid registered movement, a dark line was already being drawn across the air above his head.

A sliver between moments, one line cutting through accelerated thought.

Enkrid raised Penna and swatted it upward.

Clang!

Moments ago he'd drawn a single line through a skewer and cut it clean. This time he was stopped cold.

The black blade trembled in front of him and fractured into three.

'Ankle as the pivot, flicking the wrist to create afterimages.'

The technique was clear to him in an instant, and a counter came to mind just as fast. The opponent used a sword built to deceive.

Enkrid let his thoughts split naturally and brought Wave-Blocking Sword to bear.

Tang tang tang!

Blade met blade and quick, bright noise rang out between them. Wind rose where they clashed.

Between the sparks, Enkrid's blue eyes burned.

The black-armored knight was no easy opponent. Visor down over the helmet, only the eyes showed, and out of that gap came a glitter of cold blue.

Dozens of exchanges blurred past in an instant, and through it all the Apostle spoke at an even pace, neither hurried nor slow.

"Do you believe you live by your own will? Do you believe this world is fair? All people stand equal before the Cursed Ground. If you understood our teachings, you would see."

While he was speaking, Elle's blade split into three again, but this time it didn't duplicate, it lengthened.

With a soft ring, the segments scattered wide, and something like a thin cord connecting them flickered into view for a moment.

A move planned from the start. There seemed to be no way to dodge it. Enkrid had just leaped back to avoid the last one.

And now Elle's left hand had reached out and wound that odd cord around Enkrid's wrist.

Everything looked like the setup for something terrible. The cord locked his wrist; the split blade seemed ready to open his chest, but none of that happened.

Enkrid ignored the cord around his wrist, drew Penna back, and struck the center joint of the suddenly split and lengthened blade.

Clang!

Sparks burst wide and the blade driving toward his chest lost its direction.

The longer a blade became, the more it worked against itself in motion.

Strike the middle, and the angle breaks.

"My name is Black Serpent!"

Elle shouted it. He seemed to be enjoying the fight. Shouting, he swung the blade, that appeared to be his Inscribed Weapon, his signature.

Krrrash!

The sword shattered into segments and stretched. A whip made of blades.

It shifted freely, sword one moment and whip the next, variable, hard to track, the kind of thing that should have been nearly impossible to handle. And yet.

Tang! Clang!

Enkrid held on just fine. It looked precarious, but somehow nothing landed cleanly. From the outside it was almost impossible to read.

Ruagarne had eyes, so she was watching, and the Apostle was watching too.

'He only barely won against Hatun, didn't he?'

The Apostle was thinking. Even granting that Enkrid had won comfortably, how did this make sense?

In terms of fighting capability, Black Serpent Elle was the best in the Apostle's entire district.

In an actual fight to the death, the Apostle had no confidence he could win against Elle himself.

And Enkrid was holding on. Holding on just fine.

'Good thing I came prepared.'

In terms of temperament, the First Apostle was cut from the same cloth as Ermen or Krais. He'd already thought through the possibility that even Elle stepping forward might not be enough to bring Enkrid down. The Apostle's mouth opened.

"Levantine."

A figure in loose cloth stepped out. The billowing sleeves didn't look like fighting clothes.

"May I have a drink?"

"Do as you like."

An exchange no one else could follow. Levantine's lips pulled upward in an unnatural arc. Between those wide-split lips a fang slid into view, and the sight was thoroughly unpleasant.

Saliva ran between the fangs, gums exposed, and black veins bulged and pulsed through the eyes.

"I am Levantine, noble of the night."

Speaking, he lunged, and Enkrid simply slashed casually in the angle he was coming from. Penna split the cloth.

Pfft!

The garment parted down the middle, but Levantine dissolved into mist in that same instant, scattered, and rose into the air.

Vampires were a clan that dwelled in the Cursed Ground, residents who lived off human blood.

Levantine was one of them. Not a knight, but not something Elle could easily claim victory over either.

He was the force the First Apostle had gathered with care. That much was to be expected.

Levantine took human shape again in the air and extended a hand.

The palm split open, black blood poured out and gathered into a clump, formed the shape of an arrow, and flew.

Thud!

Enkrid pivoted on his left foot, spinning like a top, and swung Penna.

The black blood-arrow burst against the blade, and clang, Elle's sword was knocked aside in the same motion.

It looked like he'd scraped through by the skin of his teeth.

"Damn it," Fell muttered.

He'd been watching for an opening since this started but hadn't been able to force himself to step in.

Standing back and watching, he figured the one hanging behind was probably on the same level as the two in front.

If this kept going, Enkrid was going to drop eventually, wasn't he?

So he watched with his sword gripped and his mind on finding a way in, but no opening showed itself. Ruagarne was concentrated on the same problem. Zero hadn't even entertained the thought of jumping in.

In the middle of all that, the Apostle spoke again.

"Become a person made equal before the Cursed Ground. Be one pillar that builds a world of greater meaning. Do so. That is your fate."

Whether he wanted to preach or simply couldn't help himself, his mouth didn't stop.

"I will give you the chance to begin your unfortunate fate anew!"

The Cultist's voice rang out, carrying a force that seemed to have something alive in it.

Clang!

And between the clash of blades,

Bang!

And the burst of the vampire's blood,

Enkrid spoke.

"What was that?"

Thwack! Tang tang!

"Didn't catch it. Again."

"Ah."

Fell let out a single sound of admiration.

Sometimes it wasn't a curse but a plain, flat sentence that could turn a person's gut inside out, and that truth ushered him into an entirely new world of understanding.

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