WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

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A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 658: A Sermon

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What Enkrid had shown was something close to absolute defense. He had built a perfect wall from reaction speed, swordsmanship, and a vantage-like perspective that took in everything at once.

His thinking, above all else, was something else entirely. He did not see points but lines, and past lines he saw planes. He did not look at individual trees but the whole forest, reading his opponent's entire body before reacting. And even with all that, his split-second decisions were no easy thing to get ahead of.

Take it into real combat, trading actual blows, and the result might be different. But that was not something anyone could know right now.

'He mixed it together pretty damn well.'

That was how Rem saw it.

Watching Enkrid actually do what he had been taught gave Rem a flicker of pride.

Making the sharpest call in the shortest moment was one of his own specialties, after all.

That did not mean it was a reason to let the man win, though.

To settle who was better in real combat, one of them would have to die or take serious damage. Winning that way was meaningless.

'So that means I lost.'

He needed to win in a sparring format. Rem put his mind to it. He turned the problem over, pushed at it from every angle, and chased it down.

'Ousque was already his to begin with.'

The sheer size of the Will Enkrid carried was something Rem already knew. On top of that, he had come back with his skills grown far beyond what they had been. That was why he was strutting around like this.

'Why does he always come back different every time he goes somewhere?'

Was there some pot of honey stashed away on the continent? Of course not. Rem had gone along to the West himself and there was nothing like that out there.

'Training every day. Spending every day the same.'

Nothing but grinding through practice until it was boring. That was all Enkrid had ever done.

Rem had been doing the same, though lately his training hours had taken on a fierceness that bordered on savage.

Even back in the West, when he had first found real enjoyment in throwing his body around, he had never pushed himself this hard. It was not about fun anymore. Having a goal made the drive come on its own.

'I don't want to lose.'

The pride burned, but the competitive fire burned hotter. He did not want to kill the man, so the only thing blazing inside him was the hunger to win.

'Nothing but victory.'

Over the next two weeks, setting aside time for eating, sleeping, and everything else, he found his answer.

'Whether I win with an axe or like this.'

Training backward jumps to build mobility. A method he had worked out fresh while sparring with Ragna.

If he had to name it, it was something like a partial divine descent, though a name was not really necessary.

Using what was needed at the moment it was needed, naturally. That was all.

Rem did exactly that.

He put distance between them and launched a stream of high-speed projectiles in rapid succession. This did not eat through his sorcery in any serious way. He loaded a little sorcery into each shot, but nothing unreasonable.

He did not need to burn himself from the inside out to fight like this. With this approach, Rem could run something close to the same tactic Enkrid used with Ousque.

The difference was that his side was all offense, no defense.

The incoming projectiles were a wave. For as long as the wave kept coming, Enkrid had no choice but to keep blocking.

This alone pinned Enkrid's feet to the ground.

Whirr. Bang. Whirrrr. Bang.

Two slings with different rhythms tore through the air in constantly shifting arcs, and still Enkrid blocked and blocked again.

Clang. Clang. Clang.

Every block detonated with a boom. Smoke rose, and the shots that ricocheted smashed into the lodging set against one side of the training ground.

Even the deflected rounds could cave in the skull of a reasonably skilled fighter.

Fortunately, nobody nearby was the type to die from something like that.

Well, almost nobody. Ann, the healer and alchemist, had come to collect the Dryad leaves. The red-haired, freckled girl stepped inside just as a projectile came flying straight at her chest.

Left alone, it would have killed her. Someone stepped in front of her and stopped it.

Clang.

Ragna drove his greatsword into the ground, twisted it, and used the flat to deflect the shot. The round had already lost half its force from its first bounce, so the sound was quieter than when Enkrid blocked one. Still, it happened in an instant. One moment there was open space; the next, a massive back filled Ann's entire field of vision.

"Timing's bad," Ragna said without inflection.

Ann finished piecing together what had just happened and replied, "...So it seems."

Her eyes were wide. Setting Ann aside, everyone else present, Ruagarne, Teresa, Ropord, Fell, could either dodge or block, so they managed fine. The only things taking a beating were the lodging and the structures set up around the training ground.

A fairly tall wall took three rounds before it groaned and came apart. The wall of packed earth, stone, and mortar crumbled, sending a cloud of dust rolling up from where it fell.

Through the rising dust, blocking projectile after projectile, Enkrid's eyes shed a blue light.

He was concentrating his Will into his gaze. The moment a gap appeared, he would close the distance. His way to win was to drag a mid-to-long range fight into close range, within reach of sword and axe. That was how you shut down a sling.

Rem, naturally, knew dozens of ways to detonate or fire a round at someone who got close. But using those meant being ready to kill the other person.

There was a reason knights banned sparring between each other once they reached that level. Put two of them in a real fight and the will to win surged; without a clear gap in ability, it was nearly impossible to stop short of killing the opponent.

Even when there was a gap in ability, serious injury still happened often enough.

Rem's gray eyes shed a faint light of their own. Sorcery moved through his whole body. The high-speed projectiles in his hands seemed to carry a piece of that light within them.

This was a technique he had readied with the half-intention of crippling the directionally-impaired bastard if things got ugly enough to warrant it.

Skills did not need names. But if something new had been opened, a path that had not existed before, it deserved one.

Keeping the divine manifestation confined to just his hands and arms, letting a small wrist flick carry the force of a giant behind it, that did not need a name. It was a derivative of something he already had. He could use it without thinking. But what he was using now was something different.

'Stay.'

Sorcery gathered into the projectile he was about to throw. Inside it, a new working took shape. This was not making an amulet, and it was not quite divine manifestation either.

Long ago, a knight named Aker had made it his specialty to keep his Will lodged in his weapon. Rem did the same thing, but with sorcery.

And not in a weapon he was holding, in a projectile that had already left his hand.

'Lingering / Remaining.'

Stay. Remain. Do not leave.

'Meet and explode.'

A projectile carrying an explosive sorcery inside it.

In the register of pure instinct, Enkrid saw a savage beast hurtling toward him.

Every round he had blocked until now had resembled hail. What was flying at him now was something with intent inside it.

If he had to describe it, it was like a living animal had been compressed and hurled at him. Enkrid did not dismiss that feeling.

In one motion he dropped his stance and shifted his center of gravity. Not a posture to drive forward, but one to redirect. He angled the force down and back and brought Penna up in a diagonal rising strike.

The round, dense as a stone but alive, met Penna.

The fight up to this point had been enough to show why a knight's violence was called a disaster. This went past even that.

A flash of light burst out, and at its center the world split open with sound.

Boom.

The shockwave tore through everything. Ragna, looking mildly inconvenienced, grabbed Ann by the shoulder, moved her behind him, and raised his greatsword with his other hand. Three cuts, top to bottom.

Fwoom. Fwoom. Fwoom.

Three strokes cut the shockwave apart.

Any knight watching would have called it extraordinary, but nobody here had the spare attention to be impressed. Rem had lost his mind and might have just killed the squad leader. That was the only thing that mattered right now.

"Have you actually lost it?"

Jaxon's voice. Rem felt the wildcat approaching from behind and left it alone.

There was killing intent there, but at this level it was the kind that showed up whenever the man was ordinarily annoyed.

Ragna just stared at the center of the blast without expression.

"Father in heaven, has the time come for our barbarian brother to walk beside you?"

Audin murmured quietly, as if in prayer.

"He's dead?" Ropord said, startled.

Fell shook their head.

They had wandered together through the Elf city and the Labyrinth. They had watched the man kill a demon. On the way back, they had watched him cut down Cultists.

That insane squad leader was not going to die easily now.

It was the kind of thing you could not say lightly if you knew how many times he had died trying to kill the demon called One-Killer. But Fell's read turned out to be right.

"Is this what you call sparring?"

Enkrid's voice came out flat and unremarkable. His right arm hung at his side, either broken or the muscle had given out.

At some point he had shifted Penna to his left hand. At least Penna was in one piece. Small mercies.

The elf's treasure had shed a quiet light when the explosive sorcery hit it.

Rem looked at Enkrid and snickered.

"Got a complaint?"

Of course, Enkrid was the same as he had always been. Same as when he became a knight. Same as recently, when he had briefly held the upper hand over all of them. Enkrid did not change.

"One more?"

The insane squad leader asked it with a wide grin. The kind of smile that only came out when someone was too happy to contain themselves.

"You're all actually insane. Every one of you."

Ann muttered it watching him, but to Enkrid this was simply the natural order of things.

It was too much fun. What would have happened if he had failed to redirect that round and deflect it? Would he have lost an arm?

But he had blocked it. Rem had thrown that at him because he believed Enkrid could manage it, and Enkrid had delivered.

'Incredible.'

He thought it to himself. A tingling sensation ran from his feet to the top of his head. The more he replayed that moment, the more it delighted him.

'What if I had changed the deflection angle? But that last round wasn't just a stone, was it. Which means there aren't many of them. Dodging something flying at that speed is nearly impossible. Barely dodge one and the next attack will catch you. Rem is the kind who would throw two of those in a row. You'd have to block them one by one and hold on. But how?'

No clean answer yet. Still, dimly, he had seen something coating the round Rem fired. Something new. A place Rem had reached that Enkrid had not.

How could that not be exciting?

Would Krais feel this happy stumbling onto a mountain of gold coins?

Enkrid figured he would be happier than Krais in that moment.

Right now this was sparring, not a fight to the death.

So he could take his time reviewing it and drilling it in. Honestly, he had no answer yet anyway.

The insight would come back. He knew now how to wait for it. He would still do everything he could in the meantime.

"The stars should be nicely visible tonight, brothers."

Audin said it, looking at the two of them. The words made Enkrid automatically pause the mental replay running through his head.

He followed Audin's remark and looked at what the sparring with Rem had actually produced.

Rumble. Thud.

One side of the lodging wall had just come down, a wall replaced by a pile of rubble on the ground.

It was the side where Audin's room was. Half the lodging had collapsed, and it happened to be exactly the section with Audin's room, making it, quite literally, the finest stargazing spot on the premises.

"Looks that way. Your room became quite the prime location."

Enkrid answered. Audin only smiled and murmured, Lord.

A great deal of feeling seemed packed into those two syllables.

Enkrid looked away and tried to lift his right arm, gave up, and said, "I can't do anything with this arm right now. Need to rest it."

The arm simply would not respond. A reasonable outcome from blocking something brutal with brute stubbornness.

"You call that talking? If you really want to die, I'll give you one more."

Look closely and Enkrid was not the only one hurt. Two of Rem's fingers were broken.

He had handled something close to divine descent or divine manifestation sorcery with his bare hands. In a way, it was exactly the result you would expect.

It was not a technique he could call perfect yet. But did a technique have to be perfect? No. Rem understood that well enough, which was why he had used it without hesitation.

Use it enough and it becomes familiar. The direction it needs to grow in shows itself.

'Anyway, I still need more work too.'

Rem thought it privately, but showed nothing of the kind on his face.

He gathered up his slings and gripped the axe handle, straightening it in his hands, then opened his mouth with a newly serious expression. Loud enough for everyone to hear clearly.

"There's a word in the West: urkiora. In our language it's something like Dusky Sky, which means the dawn before the sunrise. You're all just in the dawn. So push a little harder, that's all there is to it. Don't be discouraged. It's fine. Put in the effort. The eeeeffort. So what if you can't beat Captain Enki? That's just where your limit is. Dusky Sky. The dawn. Sure, sometimes the dawn never turns into morning, but I'm here, so it's fine."

A sermon. He was so worked up that the light in Rem's eyes seemed sharper than anything he had shown during the actual fight. Those gray eyes radiated a vitality they had never shown before. He was brimming with life.

Naturally, the expressions of everyone listening shifted in the exact opposite direction.

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