WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

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A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 654: Both Sparring and the Real Thing

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The elf who had stepped up as guide had learned a great deal during his time as a mercenary for the Information Guild. His eyes swept the surroundings out of habit, committing everything they landed on to memory.

Those eyes found the black-armored knight sprawled on the ground. A familiar face.

'Black Serpent Elle?'

They had crossed paths once, a brief and passing encounter, but he had not forgotten the look of that armor. Too distinctive to forget. The name carved neatly into the black plate caught his eye. The armor itself radiated a grim, ominous energy, yet the name engraved on it seemed filled with something close to tenderness.

'Olivia. Sofia.'

Hard to overlook details like that. Reading the context of the scene, the situation came together clearly. The elf chosen by Ermen as heir was the same one now acting as guide. His gaze moved continuously, reading the traces of the fight.

'He took them all out alone.'

Even if the three of them had piled on to bring down Black Serpent Elle, that would have been impressive. The scene in front of him suggested the opposite had happened.

"A Cultist. Called himself the Reincarnation Apostle, wasn't it."

Ruagarne said it right on cue. The elf nodded carefully and shifted his gaze.

That would explain the figure gripping the staff with the iron ring at one end.

Apostle of the Second Coming Sect. Continental menace. Mouthpiece of the demons.

There were so many names for what Enkrid had just killed. Not a demon itself, but one that had done worse than most demons ever had.

The elf had heard that this Apostle, alone, had wiped out an entire city. Had heard too that the creature had cursed hundreds of people and turned them into wraiths.

Left to their own devices for another decade or more, this was the kind of being that could have stepped into the realm of legend.

That was the elf's read of it.

"Pretty tough, sure, but not exactly a stretch."

Fell said it with a swagger.

With the picture now fully assembled, the elf could not help being stunned. Stunned enough to forget his usual composure.

Was this actually real?

"You killed an Apostle?"

"Though it might have been a fake."

The question came out of genuine shock. Enkrid's response was flat. And he meant it sincerely. The elf judged it to be the truth.

To look at them from outside, it was the elf who had lost his composure, not Enkrid. The elf's eyes had gone wide while Enkrid stood perfectly calm.

"A fake?"

That didn't seem right.

When the elf pressed again, Ruagarne shook her head and called out to Enkrid.

"Enki."

"What?"

"When you get back, have a spar with Rem."

"I would've done that anyway without you telling me."

"Then you'll understand."

Understand what, exactly, was unclear. And yet, dimly, it was also kind of clear.

"If this is a fake, then whoever staged all this deserves to be crowned the greatest traveling theater company on the continent as of today. And if not, then they must be thieves who've pawned their own souls to put it together. Either way, that armor and the staff the Apostle was holding are both extraordinarily rare."

Ermen's chosen heir had many strengths, but he had his weaknesses too. For an elf, he talked quite a lot.

He rattled all of that off in one breath, then looked at Enkrid.

"Is that so?"

Enkrid gave the faintest nod. The elf drew in a slow, full breath and began speaking at a leisurely pace.

"Yes. That there is the symbol of Black Serpent Elle, and what the Apostle held is made from magic metal. Do you know what magic metal is? Ah, this goes back to my first year as a mercenary with the Information Guild. There was a woman at the reception desk named Emily. She was always brusque with me, so at first I thought she disliked me. Yes, that's right, I hadn't adapted to the human world yet, so I didn't understand. My instincts told me she was fond of me, but her manner was utterly curt. That did teach me a great deal about how humans speak and act. Especially about certain manners in, ah, private situations. Not that I'm saying I fathered a half-blood child. Thanks to Emily looking out for me, I ended up setting out on my first assignment, and..."

Elves were not naturally talkative. This was a side effect of adapting to the human world.

Elves could not lie. But working as a mercenary for the Information Guild often required crafting something close to falsehood.

After agonizing over it for days, the elf had found a solution: instead of lying outright, he buried the relevant point under a flood of other talk, leaving his listeners thoroughly confused. It had hardened into habit.

He saw no particular reason to fix it, which was why it had persisted this long. Among other elves, speaking this way was fine, they were patient listeners who could pick out the core of what was being said.

Enkrid could pick it out too, but that did not mean it was pleasant to sit through. The preambles were far, far too long.

"Short version."

Enkrid cut him off. The elf had just been getting to his second date with Emily.

"Pardon?"

The elf was good at listening. This was his idol speaking, after all.

"Condense it."

"Ah, um."

The elf blinked, caught off guard, then realized he did not actually need to bury anything here. He compressed it down.

"It's expensive."

Watching him, Enkrid thought it wasn't Ermen this one resembled, it was Krais.

'Like a Krais of the elf race.'

Compress everything down to a single line, and it turns out to be about Krona. Worn down by the hard world, was he?

Though that wasn't quite a fair way to put it. The elf had been involved in trade on behalf of his people, so this way of thinking had built up naturally over time.

It wasn't a bad thing, either.

Now that they were out on the continent, learning to live alongside humans and other races meant learning to communicate rather than close off, and it was obvious that the first common ground would be trade.

Negotiating mutual benefit was a more practical starting point than mutual respect and consideration right out of the gate.

Not that Enkrid had worked through all of that carefully. He figured someone like Krais or Abnaier would sort the details. So he simply asked what he wanted to know.

"Why is it expensive?"

"The staff is made of metal that absorbs magical power. As it keeps absorbing, it becomes seasoned over time, some call it living stone for that reason. Others call it the philosopher's stone. I'll correct myself: it isn't just expensive. Something like that could buy you a small castle."

Fair enough. Who would be happiest receiving it as a gift? Esther? Krais?

With thoughts like that drifting through his head, Enkrid gave a single nod.

After that, no one else blocked their way back.

The death of an Apostle would ripple across the continent, but not like a downpour. More like a drizzle.

The Reincarnation Apostle had never been one for the front lines. Hidden work, quiet schemes. That had always been the way of it.

If Enkrid had not been so relentlessly disruptive, the Reincarnation Apostle would never have needed to step out personally. Looked at the other way, the list of the Cult's schemes Enkrid had dismantled up to now was long.

On the smaller end: the collapse of a Gnoll Colony. On the larger end: the end of Naurillia's civil war.

Along the way, the Apostle of Curses and the Apostle of the Forbidden Arts had also died.

From the Reincarnation Apostle's perspective, this had become something that could no longer be ignored.

Even setting aside other work, even calling on every resource available, this problem had to be solved. Objectively, direct action made sense. If anything, you could ask why it had taken this long, but that was Enkrid's fault.

No matter what was done to him, he would not die. Curses did not take hold. The Forbidden Arts did not finish him. Every famous assassin sent after him came back with their own head missing instead.

Well, Enkrid had in fact died countless times, but no one besides himself could know that.

"Rain."

Fell said it from up ahead. Sure enough, drops began to fall. Not snow, but rain. The sky seemed to be announcing the end of winter.

Several days later, after the return to Border Guard, Ruagarne felt the change in Enkrid with absolute certainty.

"...What the hell did you do out there."

Rem had been broken. The result of a one-on-one spar with Enkrid. Enkrid himself stood in a slightly awkward posture and asked back.

"Stop playing around. Come at me for real. You don't need to go easy on me."

"Fine. Let's stake our lives on it, you lunatic."

That day, Rem came at him in earnest.

* * *

For sparring rather than a fight to the death, there was little that matched the Wave-Blocking Sword.

A technique built on a foundation of hundreds upon hundreds of sparring matches. That alone might explain it.

A moment ago, Rem had shifted his footing in an instant, swinging the axe toward Enkrid's head while trying to stamp down on his foot with his right.

The idea was simple: if Enkrid pulled his foot back to dodge the axe, Rem's right foot would land exactly where Enkrid's had been, seizing the positional advantage and letting him chain his attacks without pause.

It was an improvised attack, the kind the Numbers Game could not read ahead of time, and clever in that it drove the opponent onto the defensive if they tried to evade.

The old Enkrid would have trusted his durable body, caught the axe with his sword while letting his foot get stomped, or given ground and fought from a defensive crouch before working his way out. This time was different.

Enkrid lifted his foot and kicked Rem's aside, then knocked the axe away with the short sword he had received from the elf.

Neither of the two simultaneous movements carried less force than Rem's own, and the timing was clean. The kind of thing that required two separate lines of thought running at once.

For a brief instant, Rem was surprised that his attack had been countered. Not that his hands and feet stopped.

Clang.

The sound of blade meeting axe was not especially loud. Even so, Rem felt a threat in that same instant.

That threat materialized and came down. Using the rebound from deflecting the axe, Enkrid drove the short sword straight down.

Rem had no gap to dodge and no way to block, so he caught Enkrid's wrist with his left hand.

He thought he had the sword hand secured. Then he felt the impact on his forehead.

Thud.

A headbutt. Numbers Game or no, Rem stumbled back. His vision flashed white. He swung the axe down in front of him on instinct, and naturally it caught nothing. That was as far as it went. Enkrid did not press the follow-up. He only watched with that unreadable look in his eyes.

Even accounting for this being a spar, where full force was off the table, something slightly unsettling had just happened.

He didn't say it out loud, but the fact was clear.

'I lost?'

Rem's pupils shifted. Even going up against that Ragna bastard, he had never been pushed around like this.

Using full divine descent or divine manifestation, he would not be pushed back like this. And getting caught by one headbutt didn't quite count as losing.

But this was sparring. By those standards, he had lost.

After that headbutt, what if Enkrid had pressed a full-force follow-up?

Arguing about what didn't happen might be pointless, but.

'I might have lost.'

Rem revised the thought slightly. In terms of odds, his chances of losing had climbed to somewhere around eighty percent.

He had been so surprised that he asked what Enkrid had been doing out there, and Enkrid told him to stop playing games, so this time Rem had let real intent into his axe swings.

"Damn thing blocks everything like a wall."

All of it deflected.

"I named it the Wave-Blocking Sword."

"My axe hits harder than any wave."

"Does it?"

Trivial words, but the playfulness was gone from them. That was how serious it was. And still, Rem could not overwhelm him. If anything, Rem was the one being pushed back, just slightly.

'Ousque!'

A spring that never runs dry. That was Enkrid's Will. Rem would not fold easily, but he knew that a war of attrition was unwinnable.

'Even in a real fight, not just sparring, I couldn't beat him.'

His innate talent told him as much. How could he not be surprised.

And on top of that, what Enkrid held was not even his main weapon, just a short blade.

A treasure among treasures, he could see that. But the weapon itself did not give him some overwhelming advantage.

It was short, after all. That alone was a disadvantage.

"Let's go again."

Another short exchange followed. Truly short this time.

"Done."

With the word, Rem rolled his wrist and slashed with the axe four times in succession as he stepped back.

He had used that technique against Ragna recently, and Ragna's hand had gotten tangled up trying to block it.

Channeling divine power into his body through divine descent made even this small movement carry brutal force. Enkrid tilted his sword at an angle and caught every one of the axe's strange, shifting trajectories, deflecting them all.

Clang, clang, clang, clang!

The two weapons sang against each other like instruments ringing out a rhythm. By the time Rem finished those rounds of sparring,

Audin, who had been quietly off to one side reciting prayers and passages from the Holy War, had stood up at some point and was watching.

On the other side, Ragna had been napping under the warm sunlight like a blanket, but he too had risen, one hand resting on the grip of his sword.

Jaxon had crept to the very edge of the rooftop he was perched on, chin cupped in both hands, eyes bright.

All three of them had seen the same thing. Felt the same thing.

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