WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 656: This Is No Joke at All

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"Heart of the Beast, was it? Teach me."

That was how it started, someone asking, then learning.

Rem had figured the man would be dead within a month at most. When the next battle was two weeks out, he revised that to two weeks.

Ragna had no interest in any of it. As long as nobody bothered him, that was enough. He figured the troublemaking squad would move on when the time came, and until then he would just keep going.

He had no idea when that time would be.

A lost swordsman who had not yet found what he was supposed to do or what he even wanted, he only started walking after he met Enkrid.

Before that, Ragna was a cart with no wheels. A child whose growth had stalled. A stone statue frozen mid-step.

It was only after he started walking that Ragna found a will of his own.

And it had all started with that squad leader.

For Audin, Enkrid had been no different from a messenger sent by god, though even that thought had changed by now.

'Not a messenger. Just a man living his life.'

There are people like that in the world. Realizing it alone had brought great change to Audin's inner world.

'What matters is the state of the heart.'

He no longer needed an immediate answer when he asked something of god.

'What do I fight for?'

It did not need to be noble. It did not need to be holy. The meaning behind it did not need to be lofty enough to command respect.

Only those who could believe in themselves would remain unshaken.

And being shaken was no sin. You corrected what was wrong, and if you thought it was too late, you moved anyway.

Even when god's voice did not reach him, the Lord's will had already seeped into him.

All of this had begun with that madman squad leader.

"Does memorizing it bring you peace?" Teresa had asked him that the first time.

Audin answered. "Not exactly."

"Then why do you read it?"

"It's interesting."

"Interesting?"

"Yes, I read it because I find it interesting. Sister, go ahead and say what you want to say."

Teresa opened up about what was weighing on her.

"Do you think the world is trying to crush you? That the giant's blood mixed into your body will eventually eat away at your reason until you become a beast drunk on instinct? And that if you must die because of it, you want to die by Enkrid's sword?"

That was what she said.

And while those words were for Teresa, they were also for Audin himself.

Sealing away divine power and wandering battlefields. Was what he wanted life, or death?

In the middle of all that, the person he found was a man named Enkrid.

A madman walking a tightrope at the edge of a cliff called death.

"What is it that makes you move like that, brother?"

"Hm?"

"What do you fight for?"

"I want to become a knight."

A simple dream, unadorned and unhidden.

That was the first time Audin knew what it was that he himself wanted to do.

'Lord, have you been watching over us?'

While everyone was lost in thought, Jaxon dropped down from the roof with a quiet thud.

"I see no option other than killing. And right now, even that isn't possible."

Master of the assassination guild Georg's Blade, and owner of the morning dew.

Anyone who knew Jaxon's true nature would understand just how unexpected those words were.

He had said it himself, that right now he had no means to kill Enkrid.

If his subordinate and lover had heard, they would have told him to stop joking.

Everyone had been pushed back. Everyone had lost. Whether they said so out loud or not, all of them had accepted it in their hearts.

They were all people who had made a habit of fighting tooth and nail rather than lose by even a little, and yet, strangely, not one of the four showed any sign of feeling bad. Jaxon was the same.

The person who had walked a road drawn not in blood and steel and poison but in life and living and dreams stood right in front of them.

A man who should have died and disappeared had become a knight, and now he had come back from cutting down a demon with that sword.

He had killed the demon, killed Cultists, and realized something in the middle of all of it to arrive at this moment.

"So how does it feel?" Jaxon asked again.

Not just the four, but Ropord and Teresa were there too. Under the eyes of all six, beside the roof where Jaxon had stood, a leopard on four straight legs was also watching.

Enkrid sheathed his sword with a ring, then raised one hand above his head. Everyone waited for what he would say.

Becoming a knight was already remarkable enough, but now he had moved a step ahead of his own soldiers.

They all wanted to know how it felt to reach a moment like this. One mind looking at him together. The competitive spark in their eyes had given way to something warmer, a hopeful expectation.

Scratch, scratch.

Enkrid twitched his eyebrows, wore an uncertain look, and glanced around blankly before scratching his head and speaking.

"This is all real, right? Not some kind of joke?"

Nobody could say a word.

What the hell did he just say?

If it had been a taunt, it would have been a razor's edge. A vein bulged across Rem's forehead and Ragna clicked his tongue.

Audin quietly began a silent prayer...'Lord, shall I send one of them?', and Jaxon had a silence dagger in his hand before anyone noticed.

Rem asked, "...Should we just kill him?"

"No need for all four at once. Two is enough," Ragna answered.

After Enkrid left, the two of them had gotten so bad that they had gone past throwing killing intent at each other to the point where people wondered if one of them might actually end up dead.

The soldiers under them had already drawn blood once.

Rivalry pushed people to improve, but everything that had light also cast shadow.

Unchecked competition always led to trouble when nobody above stepped in to rein it in.

Young soldiers with hot blood were especially bad, and the soldiers under Rem were, young or old, uniformly the hot-blooded type.

Not that Ragna's soldiers were any calmer, so conflict was inevitable.

It had gotten serious enough that Krais had been managing their activities to keep the two squads from crossing paths. Now those two squad leaders, who had not been getting along at all, spoke with one mind and one voice.

"I distract him from the front and the wildcat stabs him from behind. Done," Rem said.

"That works. You take left? I'll take right," Ragna answered.

"Take whichever. Just keep his eyes on you."

"Sure."

Rem and Ragna clicked into sync perfectly. If Krais, who had spent his time watching them with a tight chest wondering whether those two would actually kill each other while Enkrid was gone, had seen this now, he would have felt happy and sad at the same time.

If they could manage this, why had they spent all that time ready to tear each other apart?

After they had nearly killed each other in a spar, the air had turned so vicious there was genuinely nothing to be done about it.

The Madman Knights without Enkrid had been quiet in their own way.

Everyone kept training their soldiers and staying active, but the old energy was gone. The density of it was different, you could say.

The problems had been piling up, but Krais had known the cause of all of them, so he had done nothing more than keep the big disasters from happening.

All it needed was Enkrid coming back.

"Let's talk again later. This feels too strange," Enkrid said with complete sincerity after watching their reactions. It still had not sunk in.

He had figured that Rem and Ragna and even Audin had all just stopped short of doing something. And that was not entirely wrong either.

"One more step past that and it becomes a fight where people die. Even then, I can't guarantee I'd beat you right now."

Ruagarne, watching from the side, read Enkrid's state of mind and spoke. Measuring actual skill and deciding a winner would take a real match, but you could feel something just from the atmosphere.

Rem, Ragna, Audin, Jaxon.

None of the four would guarantee an outcome.

"There's a gap between what you feel and what you know to be true. Let me work that out and we'll talk again."

He had planned to go find Aetri too, but properly telling that story would take some sorting first.

So the moment he got back, Enkrid barely finished unpacking before he started swinging his sword.

Seen one way, it was very Enkrid. Seen another, it was thickheaded. He had said his senses and his understanding were out of step, and his answer was to move his body first.

Even so, it was not unpleasant to watch.

"Hey, you directionally-impaired bastard. I'll personally show you the way. Get in and train," Rem said. The corners of his eyes curved. Seeing the captain act like that madman again stirred something in him. That relentless, quitting-is-not-an-option lunatic.

"I was about to say something similar. Come to the mountain range." Ragna wore the same look. He wanted another round with Enkrid right now, but if he did that, he could not hold back the way he did against Rem.

He did not trust himself to stop without drawing real blood. He could not beat Enkrid in a spar right now. That was the conclusion.

'Why am I excited?'

Ragna felt a rush he had never experienced in his life. Which meant he wanted to draw his sword and train like a madman right now.

Audin watched the two of them and straightened his clothes. He would pack up and move too. He had decided to put off squad training for a while.

"Sister Teresa."

At Audin's call, Teresa, who had been watching everything with a complicated mix of surprise and joy, asked back, "Can I be of help?"

"You can."

Audin chose Teresa as his training partner. She alone did not know it, but in Audin's eyes her potential went past surprising into something outright extraordinary.

Teresa felt something shift in her when she heard the Apostle was dead, but she pushed it down quickly.

She had long since stopped being the Cult's Teresa. She was the war god's Teresa now, the Madman Knights' Teresa.

That had become the anchor in her heart, holding her steady against any sway.

The four of them were glad to see an Enkrid who had grown, but that did not mean they were happy to have been caught up to. Was it over just because he had closed the gap?

"If you think it's too late and do nothing, then nothing happens."

Something Enkrid said often. Those words said it all. So they had plenty of will to move forward by the same measure he had gained on them.

"There's someone I'd like to introduce you to later, so let me know when things settle down," Audin said.

Enkrid was off refining his senses alone and nodded. "Understood."

He was back, and yet daily life was unchanged.

After that, Krais came to find him, and Enkrid asked what he needed to ask and passed along what he needed to pass along.

"A Cult unit? Something like that would have been reported long before now. Ah, there are plenty of cases where people who look like Cultists disguise themselves and slip in, yes. Not long ago, Captain Vengeance said he nearly died because of that. Tracking them down one by one is hard."

There was no Cult unit sent by the Reincarnation Apostle, who had gone on shouting even with nothing left but a severed head.

Even if something really had been coming, Enkrid would not have worried about it, though he had believed what was said at the time. It looked like it had been pure provocation talking.

"So what's coming?" Krais asked again.

"Elves."

"And what should we be careful about?"

"Tell the men not to get startled and attack walking trees."

"...Do I have time for an explanation?"

"They should be in sight of the safe road within two days at the latest."

As if to prove it, Zero came over and added more detail. Krais listened to all of it, nodded, and asked, "So, a big tree is walking over here, and we shouldn't panic?"

"Not careful. Don't be startled," Enkrid corrected.

Krais decided here and now not to be startled.

'Save the startling for when I see it in person.'

Putting emotions aside was how reality came into view. Lying awake anxious and getting nothing done was not in Krais's nature. He grasped the situation and responded. Deferring his feelings was one of his strengths.

'An elf city.'

The Elf Spring full of hot water, pleasant to step into. Nothing to eat except wild fruit and leaves, but even at the early stages of settling in, nuts and produce would not run short.

'And that entire elf city is migrating here.'

Trees walking in migration. Was this real? No, put the feelings aside. Now was not the time for that.

Save the startling for later.

He had to decide it again, which said something about how startling it was.

Krais pulled his focus back and sorted his thoughts.

'They shoot well, and those walking trees of theirs serve as sturdy walls in their own right. Where Demon Creatures would live, Elves live instead, and the place is full of vitality-vital energy in the elf sense. There are skilled craftspeople, and the fruit they prize gives the body a boost when eaten.'

There were also those with a gift for alchemy, the Dryads, and the Woodguard who smoked tobacco, so don't be too surprised.

Right. An elf city was coming. The whole thing.

'Then what's the gain?'

What would be good about taking them in as neighbors? What problems might come up?

The gains came to him before the problems did.

For one thing, it would be no different from having a natural wall on the southern side.

A forest where Elves lived rather than Demon Creatures would itself serve as a barrier blocking both Demon Creatures and Magic Beasts.

'Trade.'

And dealing with them would bring things worth having.

Enkrid had not said it with any particular intention, but Krais had heard enough to want.

'They have skilled craftspeople, and if they use fire, they need metal. A migrating forest cannot have ore veins inside it. Metal could be an extremely valuable trade item for them.'

Grain from farming would not be bad trade terms either. Outside of fruit and leaves, grain from cultivated land would be precious to them.

This he had learned from observing Sinar before.

That was what they could offer. What could they get in return?

'Ann.'

She was a healer and an alchemist. Ann had said it herself, the materials in an elf's forest were like treasure to an alchemist.

"Ask any healer you can get your hands on. If you can get Elf Spring water, that's not just treasure. It would be something people would kill each other to have."

For some reason, Ann had taken to coming to the Madman Knights' training ground every chance she had and napping there.

No idea why, but she was a peculiar woman regardless.

Maybe she slept better there. Maybe she had fallen for Enkrid. Krais had mentioned the Golden Witch and the Black Flower, but all he got was a dismissive snort.

"Even if you offered, I wouldn't take it."

People had different tastes. Not his place to judge.

'It's not just the Elf Spring water. From an alchemy standpoint, this is no different from a city full of treasure.'

The moment the calculations started, reality rushed in.

'A gold mine.'

One where you did not even need to weigh the cost of extraction. No idea how deep the vein ran, but no need to hire separate workers to dig it out either.

'Give them what they need, using the Krona you would have spent on miners.'

A gold mine that ran on trade. Not literally pouring out gold, but worth that much.

"A windfall," Krais murmured.

That was the conclusion.

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