WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 663: A Price and a Gift

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Both Azpen and the Holy State had tried to cultivate knights of their own, only to discover that shortcuts had clear limits. Against ordinary soldiers, those shortcut-made knights were still a disaster in their own right. But they were no match for true knights.

Enkrid had known none of that background, yet he had chosen the proper path regardless. He had caught on to the situation through instinct, and it was not something that needed to weigh on him.

He moved according to the theory he had built from the road he had already walked.

Ropord and Fell stood before him, lips pressed shut, watching.

"If I asked again, would your answer change?"

Enkrid asked once more. Reaffirming one's resolve was always the right call.

"No. I want to become one."

"Ask three times and the answer stays the same. If you're worried about my talent, then sure, maybe from where you're standing you have reason to be. But I'm not stopping here either."

Ropord answered plainly. Fell bristled a little, but Enkrid nodded as though it made no difference to him.

Ropord bit down hard on his back teeth. He might have fallen short when it came to trading barbs, but he had no intention of falling short in this.

If there was a path toward becoming a knight, he would walk it. Whatever training came his way, he would take it.

Ropord's resolve shone like a star.

Fell was no different.

I have talent too. Not as much as the captain, but I have it.

The Idol Slayer was said to be a blade that ultimately consumed its owner. Even so, he had taken hold of it because he believed he could overcome that. So he would prove it. Would the Shepherds of the Wilderness stop at something like this?

Endurance and self-discipline were the basic virtues of a shepherd. His resolve was more than sufficient.

Anyone watching could see that. Enkrid settled his thoughts and spoke.

"Set your weapons down."

"...Excuse me?"

Ropord, wound tight with nerves, answered the sudden words.

"Disarm yourselves."

Enkrid said it again. The two of them felt a vague, creeping dread at that.

Fell and Ropord glanced sideways at each other. Unarmed conditioning? The Isolation Technique? They had done plenty of that already.

In the meantime, Ann had walked into the training grounds from the morning hours.

"Why are you calling a busy person over here?"

"To give you work to do."

"What in the world are you planning."

Seiki came after Ann, her steps light and bouncy. The Ragged Holy Man walked alongside her.

"If I guide them, their skills will improve faster," the Holy Man said.

Guide them in what, exactly?

"Let me try first," Seiki said.

Try what first, exactly?

The same question rose in Ropord and Fell's minds at the same moment.

Audin appeared at Enkrid's side, carrying an iron club. It looked small in Audin's hand, but it was thicker than the forearm of a grown man, a proper weapon. And Audin was not the only one carrying one. Rem had one too.

"I was against this," Ruagarne said from somewhere nearby.

"I've chosen to walk a different path," Teresa added.

Ropord felt the same instinct that had struck him as a child, the moment his mother found the bed sheet he had wet and hidden.

This is bad.

Fell felt something similar. He thought of the time he had been caught stealing the aged cheese the elder had been saving, back in his shepherd days.

This is really bad.

Both of them felt the blade of their instincts sharpen to a fine edge.

"They said their resolve was sufficient, so if they run, beat them and drag them back. Ragna, Jaxon."

"Fine by me."

"I won't cut their ankles off."

Ragna and Jaxon's voices came from behind. The exit was blocked.

Ropord turned to look back and met Ragna's eyes.

He knew exactly how little mercy Ragna showed during sparring. And yet that same Ragna was looking at him now with something close to pity.

"Sir Ragna?"

"Accept it," Ragna said, shutting down the question.

Fell figured if there was ever a moment, it was now or never.

"Run!"

He shouted it, but it was already too late. What could they do when the core of the Madman Knights had gathered in one place?

Shortly after, the two of them put their weapons down and stood before Enkrid stripped to a single thin layer of clothing, boots off.

Rem, club in hand, grinned from ear to ear.

"Aw, I really hate this kind of thing. Hate it so much, the last thing I want to do is this, but what can you do."

"It is for the sake of you two brothers," Audin said.

"We start with a full-body beating," Enkrid said.

"...What did you just say?"

Fell refused to accept reality.

"Audin."

"Yes, brother. Ready."

The starting point of everything was drawing Will from the unconscious. If you were beaten all over your body long enough, it would come. Enkrid believed that.

Being beaten to within an inch of death might even make it more effective.

"What the hell, are you all insane?"

Fell protested one more time. Ropord lowered his head and resigned himself. Even so, Enkrid clearly saw the difference in their temperaments.

Ropord had calculated quickly and accepted early that there was no escape. Fell had known it by instinct and was simply in denial.

Thwack.

"Ugh!"

A single blow and Fell's legs buckled. That was how precise it was. Rem had trained in a fury to surpass Enkrid, and his control of force was flawless.

Audin was a veteran who had made a career of beating Enkrid's body. He had long since moved past merely being used to it, he was simply skilled at it.

The club swung and cracked into Ropord's shoulder.

Crack.

"Aagh!"

A cry tore itself out of Ropord's mouth. The clubs then went to work over the junior knights' entire bodies. After a long stretch of beating, Rem spoke.

"Isn't this more like establishing a system of punishment than a system of training?"

It was very Rem to beat them thoroughly first and then make his point. It was not an entirely wrong observation.

Say that before you hit us, you savage.

Ropord and Fell shared the thought for a brief moment, in perfect unity, though neither voiced it.

The same routine continued the next day, and the day after that.

"There's always a place for you if you want it," Enkrid said, extending the offer to Teresa, who was standing off to one side.

"I'm all right."

Teresa declined without even a pause to breathe. It was not that her resolve was lacking.

She just had not found a way to put it into words yet, but she had already found her own path. Her way was quite different from theirs.

The beating was, quite literally, only a way to sharpen an individual's senses. For something like that, she did not need a clubbing.

After that, Enkrid led the two of them down the road.

Not vague advice like "swing hard." These were the words of someone who had actually walked from the foot of the mountain to its summit, every step of the way. On top of that, someone who had cut a path through and set up signposts along the route.

"You want to meet Fell's flashes of instinct with the same kind of method? Block them your own way," Enkrid said to Ropord, then turned to Fell.

"Same for you. Don't try to read one step ahead by predicting Ropord's calculations. Don't predict, flip the board itself. Whether you use your physical ability or something he'd never see coming, whatever the means, do that."

The point was simple.

"There's no need to hand a bow to someone who's good with a blade."

Rem, listening from the side, nodded.

"True enough. That's why I gave every soldier in my unit an axe. It suits them."

It was a little forced, but not wrong. Rem's unit members looked reckless from the outside, but their breakthrough power was exceptional.

Ragna, Audin, even Jaxon listened carefully to what Enkrid said.

Lethal, Sustaining, All-purpose. Those were the three broad categories, and beneath them came the further split between Craft type and Conditioning type. But right now it felt more accurate to divide them by instinct and calculation.

Or instinct and calculation could simply be folded into the categories themselves.

No theory was perfect. He only believed that fixing things one by one would eventually make a path.

"Is this actually reliable?" Fell asked, bruised all over.

Enkrid was honest by nature, even without any elf's influence on him. Especially when there was no reason to lie.

"No."

"Then?"

"I believe it'll work."

Fell ground his back teeth. There was an audible creak.

"Just wait until I'm stronger than you."

The grudge in those words rivaled any Evil Spirit. If Fell died right now, the kind of spirit born from him might be the sort that devoured demons.

Revenge type?

No, that one's off.

Enkrid thought it through and inwardly shook his head. Ropord stared with bottomless, gloomy eyes, resigned, then reignited his resolve all over again.

From what Enkrid could see, Ropord looked calm on the surface but had a fierce hatred of losing.

Personality can be a way to sort temperaments too.

That was also what his Conditioning type and Craft type classification came down to.

Fell spent his time mastering techniques. Ropord spent his time hardening his body. Neither was more correct than the other. Ropord disliked showing things openly, so he tended toward directness, while Fell talked about his own talent freely and put everything on display, which drew him toward the technical side.

The swordsmanship of those two comes down to instinct and calculation.

As test subjects, they were ideal. It was coincidence, but they were a pair with completely opposite temperaments who were keenly aware of each other.

And even if the current training did not become a signpost toward becoming knights, there would still be something gained from it.

At minimum, they'll get Iron Body.

Normally it was something that only became available above the knight rank.

They need to use it at the junior knight level.

Future Sight, Iron Body, Strong Legs, all of them.

Knowing how to use those is what lets someone draw on Will unconsciously.

The path toward becoming a knight. No, the prerequisite for becoming a knight. The foundation, you could call it.

Enkrid was learning while teaching. Besides, these two already met certain conditions to some degree.

Except for Iron Body.

So that was the part to fill in.

Future Sight could be learned or skipped depending on temperament, but knowing the basics was still necessary.

Beyond that, what was needed was Strong Legs and Iron Body.

Strong Legs was the technique that had left the strongest impression on Enkrid. How could he forget that moment on the battlefield, a junior knight kicking off the ground and launching forward, the first time he had ever seen it?

Ropord and Fell could already use Strong Legs, just not with any polish. He helped them train that part too.

Pushing leg muscles to the point of tearing and drilling it in through repetition, that was all it took.

For his own reasons, Ropord made a request midway through.

"I'd like to pass this special training method on to the soldiers under my command."

Enkrid was not yet sure whether this current training regime was a reliable system for producing knights, but he did believe it was something that would help everyone.

At this level it's an entry point, even by my own training standards.

Sharing built systems and raised the overall level of strength for everyone. The Border Guard Standing Army had been walking that road without even intending to.

Now they were no longer called the Standing Army at all. The Madman Squad was what they went by these days.

"With a system, you can see the path. And if you can see the path, you may not overtake talent, but you can chase after it."

Enkrid said it aloud and turned the meaning over in his own mind. Either way, it was something that needed time. For some people, it could be quite tedious.

But Enkrid went about it quietly, the same way he repeated each day.

That was one of Enkrid's strengths.

"It doesn't look boring, but want to spar with me too?"

It was on one such day. Esther appeared in human form during the early morning training. Sparring against a mage was a different track from ordinary sparring, but it was not something he had no interest in.

There was no reason to refuse. He nodded, and Esther said to go right now.

"Audin, take over training today."

"Of course, brother."

Enkrid left Ropord and Fell with Audin. Esther wore the same robe as before and carried a long staff.

It was the first time he had seen her with a staff. It had appeared after Enkrid retrieved the Apostle's staff and gave it to her as a gift. Part of the metal making up the staff she had kept for herself, and another piece she had snapped off and brought to Aetri, or so she had said.

"I received this properly. So what we're about to do is something like a return for that," Esther said as they left the city.

Enkrid thought she almost seemed embarrassed, but that attitude suited a witch so poorly that he decided it was his imagination.

Reading the emotions of elves or witches was no easy thing.

The two of them headed toward the mountain range. Along the way, a soldier at a tower-shaped outpost recognized them and gave a military salute.

"Keep at it," Enkrid said in greeting as he passed. Esther walked by without sparing a glance.

"Do you remember how to deal with a mage?"

"Yeah. See them, cut them first."

"All right. From here on, this is how you deal with a prepared mage."

Hm?

The words had barely left Esther's mouth when Enkrid felt his senses shift. Suddenly she felt not right beside him but far away.

At the same moment, he saw a mud giant rising from the ground and grabbing at his feet.

Only a pair of hands, a head, and shoulders had emerged from the earth, gripping his ankles.

Confuse the senses, lock the feet. Simple tactics, but effective.

Enkrid reacted the moment he registered it.

He cut through the wrist of the mud giant gripping his foot. Penna flared with a pale blue light and sliced through the spell creature's wrist. There should have been a splash as the mud scattered into the air and vanished, but instead it gathered in midair and changed into a net.

That was outside what I expected.

Future Sight had not activated. His opponent was a mage, someone who lived for transformation. That made it perfectly natural.

"Magic always seeks change. If that change gets read by the opponent, you might as well put down the staff and quit. Though, I do enjoy making something they can't stop even when they see it coming," Esther's voice reached him from somewhere.

Enkrid answered not with words but by swinging Penna.

Both feet stayed on the ground. He watched the net flying toward him and pulled up the same sensation he had felt when he cut through the Walking Fire.

Do I dodge? No. I don't dodge.

If Esther was going to demand unpredictable change, the answer was to hold his tactical position and take what came, disrupting as little of his footing as possible.

Magic and spells had a grain to them. The only way to describe it was like catching the scent of something for the first time.

Invisible, yet present.

Present, yet hard to put into words.

But he could perceive it, and so he could grasp that grain.

It was the result of countless days spent cutting through spells and enduring them.

Rather than move carelessly, Enkrid drew his right arm repeatedly from low to high and high to low, cutting through the spells with his sword in a steady line.

The net, which had shifted from mud to a sticky web, was cut through. Penna's cutting power was not wasted simply because the target was a spell.

Esther chanted and launched spells one after another.

She had watched carefully, and now she understood. Since cutting the Walking Fire, Enkrid had developed the ability to see the grain of a spell.

He reflexively pried and tore at the gaps in it. By doing so, most magic simply failed to connect.

Spell Severance.

A little more development and Spell Suppression might be possible.

A non-mage suppressing magical power?

The sparring they were doing now was helping to bring that about. If that man ever became an enemy, she was essentially teaching him a lethal method. But she did not particularly mind.

Other witches or mages would be horrified if they saw, but if they were horrified, Esther would be the one criticizing them.

Say there was a technique for severing spells. Then the answer was to research new spells that could still land on that opponent, not to stop the spread of knowledge. What possible reason was there for blocking it?

Absolute idiots, the lot of them.

She knew there had been those who had fought over exactly that kind of thing across an absurdly long stretch of years, but Esther considered it none of her concern.

Enkrid sparred with Esther once a week. By the time rumors had slowly begun to spread through the barracks that the Black Flower had won out, it happened.

"The Golden Witch has returned."

Sinar came back when spring had fully settled in.

"I brought a gift. Fiancé."

The notorious title of Golden Witch was unchanged. Her golden hair and green eyes looked straight at Enkrid.

She pulled out the Naidhl without a moment's hesitation and spoke of the gift freely.

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