WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 652: Three, a Spell, and Now an Evil Spirit

= = =

The Apostle did not repeat himself. Instead he shifted his grip on the pole to his right hand and extended his left.

To Fell, the gesture looked strange. He curled his thumb, middle finger, and ring finger together, fanned them open, swept them through the air, and finished with only his index finger and pinky extended, the rest folded in.

He ran through several of those motions, and something incomprehensible spilled from his lips. A drop of black liquid dripped from his fingertips.

Only then did a recognizable phrase leave the Apostle's mouth.

"Hound of Hualin."

Ruagarne had seen this incantation before, the last time she fought Cultists. The black droplet swelled on its own, then set down on four legs.

Grrr.

The creature shook its head and let out a low growl. Something like black steam curled from the corners of its mouth and rose above its skull.

There was no comparing the spells of an ordinary Cultist to those of a Reincarnation Apostle. Even at a glance, this was no trivial beast.

"Tear it apart."

At the Apostle's word, the Hound of Hualin threw itself into the fight. It kicked off the ground with a thud and came in like a black smear of motion.

Enkrid felt it angling for his back, turned, stepped clear, and drove his elbow into the bridge of its nose.

Crack.

A clean, sharp sound rang out. The Hound of Hualin flew backward and hit the ground back-first.

Despite the force of the landing, it made no sound of pain. It sprang to its feet, shook its head a few times, and bared its fangs again. Not exactly threatening, but annoying. After that the Apostle kept chanting without pause.

"Your body is over there. Go take it back."

"The one who killed your mother stands right there."

"Hear my prayer, and mark that man's flesh with the sacred brand."

Between those chants, Enkrid found a narrow opening and drove his sword through it, splitting the Hound of Hualin lengthwise. Cut in half rather than beaten down, it dissolved to ash and was gone.

In that same instant the vampire's claws dropped from overhead. Enkrid caught them with his fist.

Boom.

A shockwave scattered the air in every direction, sending a hard gust rolling outward. The ash left by the Hound of Hualin rode that gust up into the sky and dispersed.

Whoosh.

The wind carried warmth, as though it had soaked up the heat of the red moonlight. It could not be helped. Trading sword blow after sword blow in a running fight meant the air ran hot even in the dead of winter at night. Sparks flew, and concussive blasts cracked one after another.

The night that should have been quiet roared like a festival. A festival where blood served as wine, flesh as bread, and bone as the cup.

Enkrid's blade had begun to shed a pale blue light, close to moonlight in color. A black whip-like blade swung beneath the red moon, the vampire's deep-crimson spells kept pressing in, and that pale blue glow kept parrying them. Three colors tangled in the air overhead, fighting each other.

There had been a time, he could not say exactly when, that he had witnessed something close to this: Aoara facing a Balrok.

Of course, Enkrid was at the center of it now, sword in hand, spilling that pale blue light in every direction, so he could not stand back and watch the way he had then.

The Hound of Hualin, which had seemed manageable on the first exchange, was dead. The Evil Spirits sent after it were cut and pierced by flashes of pale blue moonlight that had no business existing under a Red Moon, and they vanished. Not a single Evil Spirit survived a single cut. Though even if one had not died in one stroke, it looked like he would have found a way to finish it regardless. That was how it appeared.

Enkrid had no breath to spare for words. He just kept swinging.

The Apostle gave up on talking to him and kept chanting without rest. His mouth poured out Necromancy incantations no one present had ever heard before.

Dark shapes flickered into being overhead and lunged with blades. Black masses of something went flying.

Fell, Ruagarne, and Zero were not just watching.

All three drew their weapons. Ruagarne in particular puffed her cheeks out full.

Every time she laid eyes on Cultists, she thought of a dead lover. They were her enemies. The sharpness of that hatred had faded a little with time, but she could not smile and walk past a Cultist because of it.

On top of everything else, what they wanted was to remake the world into a Cursed Ground where demons ran free.

Was it normal to sit by and let that happen? Wasn't something already broken upstairs if you could agree with that?

"Filthy Cultist bastards."

She took her Loop Sword in one hand and her whip in the other.

Crack!

When the whip struck the ground, sparks leaped up from the impact. Fell drew the Idol Slayer and settled into his stance. Zero hung back a step and read the situation.

Could he even join in? He would probably just get in the way. Still, he hated the idea of running.

He had spent his whole life running and hiding.

"If I have to step aside every time I'm not strong enough, I'll never fight properly. Not once in my life."

The person Zero had put on a pedestal, Enkrid, was someone who had spent his entire life fighting his own limits. That much was plain to the sharp senses of an elf reading what lay at Enkrid's core. Zero had seen his idol and wanted to be like him.

That was how he felt. Even so, there was nothing he could actually do right now. Keeping quiet was the right call. With that thought settled, he made himself a promise: if he survived this, he would train so hard it would kill him, even if he had to take a brief detour through the celestial flower fields.

The celestial flower fields were where elves went after death, something like paradise for humans. The fragrance of the flowers there was said to be so sweet and beautiful that you never tired of it no matter how many days you breathed it in, which was roughly what paradise meant.

While Zero watched and steeled himself in silence, Fell kept his eyes on the Reincarnation Apostle. Honestly, he had been ready to rush the man if an opening appeared, but none had shown itself.

As Fell saw it, the Apostle was clearly furious. The veins on his forehead stood out as he chanted without pause.

Should I try forcing an opening even without one?

He made up his mind and shifted his stance slightly. The Apostle's gaze slid his way for just a moment.

Good instincts, or a developed intuition for reading momentum? Either way, it did not matter. The Apostle kept chanting without missing a beat.

"Hualin's Hunt."

He shook the pole as he spoke. Black liquid clumped at its tip and fell, and from it came a dozen or so dogs.

Not just dogs. There seemed to be horses in the mix too.

Fell adjusted his grip on his sword and took a quick look around. Time to reconsider.

I need to take some of the pressure off.

Left alone, this Apostle was going to suffocate Enkrid under a wave of spells. Putting real pressure on the man would help.

He was settling that thought when the Apostle produced a new incantation.

"Come forth, Death Warrior."

The Apostle had memorized a hundred spells, and had once carried the epithet "collector of incantations" because of it.

Compared to a sorcerer like Galapf, who seized a river in his fist, how wide was the gap? With Esther absent, no one here could say.

One thing was certain, though.

This Apostle could take on every person present by himself.

"You think this meeting was chance? It was not. I have been waiting for the right moment. I will kill all of you here, then send a rain of Despair down on Border Guard. I have already dispatched subordinate units toward the city you call home. Now then, did you fail to understand me again? I will say it as many times as you need."

Apparently very angry.

Fell thought that, and looked at the warrior who had appeared from a pool of black mist, pale-skinned, holding a broad flat blade, with black eyes. A monster built from an incantation, though he supposed it still counted as a Demon Creature.

A Death Warrior was commonly described as a Necromancy spell calibrated to fight junior knights. The grade above it was a Death Knight.

Neither spell was easy to cast. Unless the caster intended to offer their own body to their god, they needed an actual warrior's body or knight's body to serve as the vessel.

The Reincarnation Apostle had enough left to call fifteen more Death Warriors.

Fell did not know that, but he knew what he needed to do.

The moment the Apostle looked his way and started chanting, Enkrid glanced over too. At this rate, Fell would become a burden rather than an ally or a subordinate.

I'll catch up, you gifted bastards. Every last one of you.

It was a vow close to what Zero felt, and entirely different at the same time.

Either way, Fell knew exactly what he was there for. He had to help Enkrid, who was already holding two knight-level opponents while fending off everything the enemy kept throwing at him.

Then he could not afford to drag this out.

He steadied his breathing and looked straight at his opponent. The Black Warrior raised its broad blade and took a stance, feet shoulder-width apart, tip angled skyward. The weapon looked light. The forearms looked thick.

There was some gambling involved, but.

I've made this kind of gamble dozens of times, all thanks to that bastard Ropord.

Fell's talent had always been exceptional in certain ways. Add to that the concentrated beatings he had taken from Enkrid on the road here.

He had learned more than just how to provoke people.

The black blade came down at a diagonal slant. There was no obvious gap in the stance. A single thread of momentum ran from the creature's feet up through its thighs. You could call it the skill of a Master. The Death Warrior's swinging blade looked like it would split Fell clean in two. Fell moved then.

He stepped his left foot out wide and drew his blade upward in a single rising stroke. No waste in any of it. That was the point.

Every finger, every toe, existing solely for this one cut.

While Enkrid had watched Fell and quietly learned from his talent, Fell had not been idle either. What he showed now was the technique Enkrid was known for above all else: an all-out slash.

Fell's sword opened the Death Warrior from belly to skull. The Death Warrior's own blade swept through empty air.

Fell held the finish of his rising cut, momentum carrying him forward, and stopped.

For an instant it looked as though the red moonlight itself had been sliced apart where he passed through it. Master-level ability was the floor in this fight, not the ceiling.

Fell said that with his sword.

The water he was swimming in had changed, so he had to change too.

"Hf."

He steadied his breath and looked ahead. The Apostle stood there with his mouth pressed shut.

Should he ask right now, if the man had failed to follow along and wanted it explained again?

Nothing he said at this point felt like it would land with much impact, so Fell kept his mouth shut and raised his sword.

"Mormon."

The Apostle's lips parted. At his word, a figure who had been standing at the Apostle's side, sleeves and ankles bound with cord, stepped forward.

Fell had naturally expected to be the target, but.

One more?

The figure was not heading for Fell. It was walking toward Enkrid.

Each plodding step made it clear this was no ordinary opponent. Fell could not pin down exactly what made the figure dangerous, but it simply looked dangerous. His gut was sending the warning.

If it had come at me, I wouldn't have been able to handle it.

That was Fell's read. Three opponents like that. All three aimed at Enkrid.

Could Enkrid handle it?

"Right, let's do it this way. The rest of us will sit back and watch. Though your hands and feet need something to keep them busy. Come forth, Sham."

The Apostle called four more Death Warriors and assigned one to Ruagarne, one to Zero, and two to Fell.

Then he summoned eleven more corpses and sent every last one at Enkrid.

The quality varied, so they were not all at the same level, but each was at least a rough approximation of a junior knight.

They were corpses, so they could not serve as meat shields, but as corpse shields they could tangle Enkrid's hands and feet well enough.

On top of three powerful opponents, he was throwing in spells and Death Warriors.

"Shouldn't we be calling for backup?"

Fell muttered it. Had they moved in too carelessly? Should they have accounted for the possibility that the Cultists would pour out everything they had? Had Krais missed this? If so, they all died here. Looking at the way the Apostle's eyes fixed on Enkrid, escape did not seem like an option.

All three of them are knight-level.

He could not help but feel it again, fresh and sharp. The water had changed.

The Black Serpent Elle, the vampire, and the fighter who had stepped out last were all knight-grade. The last one to enter the fight clenched fists and charged, and where the first two were specialists in unorthodox techniques, this one stuck to orthodox fundamentals.

Now that there were two Death Warriors to deal with, Fell could not pour everything into a single strike the way he had a moment ago. He had to buy time.

Ruagarne had to fight while keeping an eye on Zero.

Hating Cultists did not mean she had to get someone beside her killed in the process.

Ruagarne had learned more than a little from Enkrid too. How to protect someone was part of it.

Zero's expression went dark as it became clear he was a liability. He was angry, but there was nothing he could do about it right now, so he clamped his mouth shut and kept swinging the Naidhl as diligently as he could.

If Enkrid fell, everyone fell. The whole thing looked like a matter of time.

The strange balance holding the fight together could only last so long. And yet, oddly, they were holding on.

Was it the goddess of scales lending a hand?

Or the goddess of fortune?

"Oh my. Even I'm surprised."

Ruagarne muttered it somewhere in the middle of the fighting. There was genuine surprise in her voice.

Fell had been trading blows with the two blades the Death Warriors swung while keeping half his attention on Enkrid's side. His feeling matched hers. Though if Ruagarne was saying it because she understood something, Fell had no idea what that something was, and if there had been any breathing room, he would have tilted his head and maybe even put it to the two Death Warriors coming at him.

"Hey, how long do you think you could last against three knights?"

He would have put it something like that.

The Idol Slayer cut Evil Spirits, but it could not drop a Death Warrior in one instant the same way, and that had been grinding on his nerves considerably. Then all of that irritation vanished in a single moment.

The place where Enkrid was fighting came into view for everyone. Something unimaginable was happening there.

"What in the..."

The Cult's main base was naturally in the Cursed Ground. That did not mean they ran their regional parishes sloppily.

In other words, the Reincarnation Apostle had the reserves to stand against a knight alone, and with three Apostles under him, killing one knight should have been nothing.

But it was not turning out that way.

Right then, Fell's eyes caught Enkrid's sword splitting the vampire apart.

Gyaaaa!

The pale blue light passed through the blood-drinker's body three separate times. The Red Moon gave strength to the inhabitants of the Cursed Ground.

Under these conditions, the Apostle of Blood-Drinking should have been able to handle Enkrid alone. Instead, limbs were scattered across the ground in pieces.

Am I dreaming?

That was what the Apostle thought.

= = =

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried