WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

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A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 665: Rosy-Cheeked Esther

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"You just keep at it until it clicks."

Ragna followed up after Rem. It was rare for him to pause mid-sentence, chew on his own words a few times, and then speak at length.

He had his own share of things he had heard, gained, learned, and figured out during his time here. Somewhere along the way he had developed something like common sense, the understanding that you did not end a fight just by slashing hard. Or maybe it was consideration for others.

"You have to believe in yourself. You chose a path and you walk it, and if you believe that path is right, then no matter how much anyone jabbers that you're wrong, you ignore them. And if the path veers a little off course, you correct it. Say you need to go this way to reach Martai, but you make a mistake and end up going that way instead. If you notice mid-journey, you just loop back around like this. Then we can reach Martai. That's all there is to it. So the path I walk becomes the right path."

When Ragna first said "this way," he pointed north.

Then "going that way by mistake" pointed west. And when he said "just loop back around like this," his finger ended up aimed south.

Martai was, if you had to pin down a direction, roughly to the east, so his talent for naming every direction except the correct one was genuinely something else.

"That guy is something else. How do you even make it to Aetri and back? Actually, how do you find the latrine? I'm amazed you don't get lost."

The latrine was within fifty steps of the lodgings. Someone had laid a separate stone path leading there. Thoughtful, that. Enkrid found himself wondering about it.

'But when did someone lay those stones, and who?'

No need to think hard.

'Krais.'

Trail markers, essentially, for Ragna's benefit.

Then again, the latrine was one thing, but Ragna did sometimes go out into the city alone.

"What do you mean, how does he manage? There are soldiers all along the way. I've given standing orders for anyone who spots Ragna heading out to stick close to him."

Krais said it while turning sausages over the fire. Juice beaded on the surface like sweat and filled the air with a rich, savory smell.

Oh right, Krais was here.

Rem nodded. That one was the kind of lunatic who would already have contingencies in place in case a meteor fell on Border Guard tomorrow morning.

'Not a normal bone in any of these people's bodies.'

Rem shook his head.

"Stop assigning soldiers to me. It's a nuisance."

"Endure it."

Ragna protested, but Krais shook his head without flinching. He had adapted well to this group by now.

He was busy enough to collapse, and trying to manage every person's mood one by one would turn each day into a war.

Knights, or whatever you called them, those lunatics would generally do what he said as long as he did not cross certain lines they had drawn for themselves.

From where Krais stood, if you left Ragna to his own devices he was the type to wander all the way to the Empire and back. And he might come home carrying the spark for a war, given that he cut down anything that crossed his path.

That was not to say Rem or Audin were any more normal than Ragna. Left unsupervised, Rem would probably end up beating the daylights out of whichever noble had most recently passed through Border Guard. Audin was no different.

'Physical conditioning is all well and good, but why do you have to inflict it on everyone around you, Bear Brother.'

Krais swallowed his grumble without ceremony.

Audin grabbed anyone he laid eyes on and pushed them to train, and anyone caught in his grasp found they lacked the nerve to even try escaping.

When a frame that size smiled and called you brother or sister, the madness behind it was plain to see.

Perhaps that was why the sacred unit Audin ran had the best physical conditioning of the lot.

They cried every single day and still lifted the stones. During prayer time they sat in invisible chairs and called out to their god. Krais felt a pang whenever he looked at them.

'Poor souls.'

Still, if Krais was being honest, he did not genuinely resent any of it.

What he gained just from having Audin, Rem, and Ragna around far outweighed the trouble.

Krais was the kind of person who felt satisfied when the benefit outweighed the cost.

Jaxon was also sitting with them. He had seemed like he might not have any advice to offer, but he drew everyone's eyes without effort.

He spun the dagger in his hand. The blade caught the firelight from the torches lit on either side of the table and scattered it in glints.

Dagger still turning, Jaxon spoke.

"There is no such thing as a 'perfect' person in this world. The difference is only in who has a sharper edge."

Short, but solid. Enkrid felt it cut right to part of the core of the system he had been building for himself.

'What beats a completed circle?'

Was rounding out every ability into a perfect whole the ultimate goal, as an All-Rounder type? No, a sharp needle would still punch a hole through a circle if it struck.

He had experienced that himself today. In a general sparring match against Sinar, he could win eight times out of ten.

But within the specific bounds of the Wave-Blocking Sword, Sinar's blade had been able to slip through and graze his shoulder. What she had shown him was that sharp needle.

The Wave-Blocking Sword was not a style defined by the shape of the swing. It was a sword that responded through thought.

Sinar had exploited the gaps in that response.

'The vital-energy blade.'

She had hidden an undetected blade inside the vital-energy blades he could detect.

Winter's Gentle Breeze.

In winter, harsh gales blow. Gentle breezes do not. Which meant a wind that had no business blowing in winter had come for him.

"Brother, can you calculate everything? You cannot. If that is so, then if you are simply ahead of your opponent in calculation, does it truly matter whether you find the right answer naturally and in the moment? Does your technique need to come out reflexively?"

Audin answered with questions.

'Calculate everything?'

Impossible. So you only needed to stay ahead of your opponent.

And what he said also amounted to the same thing as: pull out what you need, when you need it.

Soft at times, fierce at others.

Correct, heavy, deceptive, fast, gentle.

He felt like he was beginning to understand why a once-in-an-era genius like Leonessis Oniac had divided sword arts into five styles.

'Stay true to the Basics, and everything else can be caught up to somehow.'

The Enkrid before training the Wave-Blocking Sword and the Enkrid after were clearly different people.

Obvious, perhaps, but the same was true of before and after becoming a knight.

Some parts of a person never change. Others do.

Enkrid found part of his answer in Audin's questions.

"So what it comes down to is the swordwork itself."

Boiled down, that was it.

"What does that mean?"

Teresa, who had been listening nearby, asked.

Audin answered.

"It means that in the end you have to punch with your fist, cut with your blade, and thrust with your spear. So all you have to do, sister, is train the Basics."

Be true to the Basics. Train every day. Find the answer with your body, not your head. Audin interpreted his own words once more for the room.

Everyone had their own ideals, their own convictions. Enkrid absorbed every word the way dry cotton soaks up water.

'Calculating everything, even by a different route, is the same as what Rem does.'

Rem grasped everything in an instant and produced the most rational, most lethal response available.

In terms of rock-paper-scissors, he read the shift in his opponent's hand as it moved and called his counter accordingly.

That was how sharp his eyes were, how fast his reactions.

'Puts Beastfolk to shame.'

If a Beastfolk sharpened their mind to that degree, they could fight like Rem. Beastfolk had a naturally outstanding voluntary control over their bodies, so the ceiling was there.

Rem had substituted his own talent for that.

Ragna's words had been meandering, but the core came through.

'Taking the long way around is fine. Just don't leave regret behind on a path you've already started walking.'

It was the same as saying: once you pick up the sword, you need the stubbornness to make even a wrong path right.

'Belief.'

A knight who had found omnipotence could accumulate disbelief through defeat. Especially if their vow was broken, they could end up filled with nothing but doubt.

'Will without belief is only half of itself.'

Ragna was a genius. His genius was something to genuinely marvel at. That was why he could say what he said.

That did not mean it was useless to Enkrid.

Listen, think, carve it in. That was what Enkrid did.

What Jaxon had said was: do not let your opponent loom too large in your eyes.

Audin had said: steady, layered training is the answer.

All different words, but the same message. Words that helped Enkrid, and words that helped Ruagarne, Ropord, Fell, and Teresa too.

"Carving out a path that belongs only to you, that would be one of the conditions for reaching the upper ranks."

Ruagarne, researcher that she was, added her piece.

"That's right."

Enkrid agreed without ceremony and put a piece of meat in his mouth. Pork belly on a skewer, fat sizzling and dripping in heavy drops. He blew on it twice and bit in. It melted on his tongue.

Salt and spices blended with the fat and sent a sharp, satisfying heat through him. The tender meat, slow-cooked, tore between his teeth and wrapped around his tongue.

'Mm.'

Excellent. Genuinely excellent.

Sinar was working through a few ripe fruits with small, neat bites, and even that, viewed objectively, looked like something a goddess would do.

"If things go sideways, let's form the Sinar Knight Order. Gathering people would be no trouble at all. But before that, Sinar, have you ever heard of a salon? Now that I've seen elves up close, I thought it would be worth learning how things work on the continent. Work at a salon to start. Later, open one staffed entirely by elves, and adapting to life on the continent would come naturally."

Krais said it with eyes that shone brighter than the firelight around them.

"There is one family within the clan that takes interest in that kind of thing. They came out of the Ermen family, you've already met them, I imagine."

Sinar answered. They were the elves who handled trade on behalf of the clan. Of course Krais had met them. He furrowed his brow, a rare sight, and let his displeasure show plainly.

There was a moment of wondering what was wrong with him.

"That elf talks too much."

Ah. Self-loathing among kin. That was what Enkrid thought. Everyone else thought the same.

"I do not speak for the clan's wishes. I protect the clan. So I let each of them act by their own will, as they see fit."

Sinar said it, then turned her eyes to Enkrid. In the pause, Ropord murmured quietly.

"So a natural movement, a sword that moves without being consciously directed, is always the right answer."

The condition for an upper-rank knight. Fell picked up the thread, brow deeply furrowed.

"How is that even supposed to work?"

He had a fragment of that talent himself, which was precisely why he could not make sense of it. How could every single movement be the right answer every time?

Swinging and cutting with a sword involved probability. Which meant luck was a factor.

Could you always keep luck on your side? What did you do about variables?

'So make every path the right answer?'

Was that even possible? Was it just a matter of innate talent? Fell's thoughts scattered in every direction. They were questions he could not find immediate answers to.

Sinar answered Fell's question.

"How does it work? By the power of love."

Enkrid seriously wondered if that elf had taken some strange medicine today. Or knocked back a great deal of drink.

Then again, for someone who had supposedly been drinking or drugging, she looked exactly as composed as usual. She would have been exhausted from helping the clan through their final migration, but she would not have done anything else.

So what was her excuse for this today?

"She's excited."

Ruagarne said it with a woman's instinct. And she was right. Sinar had not been able to leave her city Kirhais because she had a duty to uphold.

So she had brought the entire city with her. If that had not been an option, she had been prepared to push for changing the city's name from Kirhais to Ermen.

Either way, because of her duty, the vow she had sworn to uphold for her whole life, she had spent a very long time away from Border Guard.

She had broken free from a demon's binding, and the man who had saved her from that demon was here, and yet she had been unable to stay at his side.

It was not quite resentment, but it had been stifling, and the stifling feeling had made her impatient too.

Among the elves it was already a known story, and that was also why the number of elves sneaking over the wall in the dead of night to get at Enkrid had been rising over the past month.

The odds were better with Sinar away than with her present.

But even without her there, there was no getting to Enkrid. And on top of that, the presence of the witch known as the Black Flower had been pressing down on the elves.

Among the clan's longer-lived members, those old enough that they would have been called elders even in human society, some called sorcerers servants of the demon.

That was a bias born from the era when they fought the demon, when some sorcerers and witches had taken the demon's side.

To elves who had lived in a closed society, a witch was an extremely dangerous thing.

Not that Esther had ever once entertained the thought of separating elf bones from flesh and mounting them on poles for display.

Even if she actually killed an elf, she would not do anything so pointless.

Regardless, the Sinar sitting across from Enkrid right now was content.

It had been a long time since she last had the chance to tease him, and she was more eager than usual because of it. So to be precise, today Sinar was not acting strange because of any medicine. She was simply excited.

From the outside, though, you could be forgiven for assuming she had taken something.

"If you really want to know, come to my lodgings tonight. I'll tell you everything. All of it, every bit, by the power of love."

Saying something like that with a perfectly flat expression and no change in her face, that was what made it unsettling. With a face like a goddess's sister, you could only wonder why she was like this.

Enkrid got a different kind of chill from the one he felt when exhilaration ran through him.

"Should I knock you out?"

He asked it seriously. There was no better way to shut that mouth.

"You'd really go that far?"

Rem caught that one.

Ragna was not about to stay out of it either.

"Go outside and get some air. Don't get lost."

He threw that at Sinar. Then,

"May your god watch over you, sister."

Audin added his piece, and Jaxon kept spinning his dagger. Then out of nowhere he asked,

"Are you going to keep using that grating, unsightly dagger?"

That was not the kind of remark that came out without something bothering him.

"It's a horn-blade dagger. Not an unsightly dagger. I'm more used to the noise when I throw it than throwing quietly."

Enkrid said it plainly. Jaxon did not reply and let it drop. He clearly did not approve, but he was not going to push it further.

"A spell carries intent. A spell without intent is garbage. But as you grow accustomed to casting, you find yourself using simple spells with nothing but a gesture. The reaction comes first, not the intent. A spell that bursts out in any moment, any situation, is called a Glint."

Esther cut in and explained that Glint meant a flash or a glimmer. Tonight she was in her human form, black hair on display.

She was also offering her own answer to the question Enkrid had raised.

But why were her cheeks so red?

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