WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 668: This Is Fun

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"Alright, who wants to die today?"

Rem was putting his heart into the unit's training as usual. Or rather, the kind of training that anyone watching would call abuse.

He picked his soldiers off one by one for individual sparring or forced them into multi-on-one fights. The multi-on-one version meant standing against three opponents of similar skill and holding on, which was naturally still better than facing Rem himself.

Nobody opened their mouth at his words. The only thing running high was the momentum that said they'd beat down anyone who came at them.

The ones who used to grumble and complain had learned to save their breath. They'd figured out the logic: act up, get beaten to a pulp, then do whatever you were doing anyway.

'Clever bastards.'

Rem pushed them even harder for it. The thinking was that brutal training made for better fighting when it mattered.

Soldiers who had been driven to the edge of death by Rem's axe in practice moved with noticeably more composure when fighting Demon Creatures for real. Under the Soldier-Mercenary System, when they went outside the city to clean up packs of Demon Creatures or Magic Beasts, they put on savage performances.

And it wasn't just the fighting.

The unit didn't harass women in the territory, didn't loot or anything close to it, and didn't ask for free food at the mess hall.

You'd never guess it from looking at them, but units stationed in a territory as solid and well-mannered as this were rare.

So Rem's reputation shifted day by day. Everyone who called on them knew they were Rem's assault unit.

Thanks to that, some nobles in the kingdom's south had stopped keeping their distance from Rem lately. Not that anyone who had actually met him in person went out of their way to be friendly.

Rem had spent a good stretch absorbed in his own training, and recently he'd been grinding his soldiers at the assault unit's training ground.

Crunch. Crunch.

The first thing he heard was careless footsteps. Someone with no intention of concealing themselves. The person approaching bled killing intent with every step, making no effort to hide it.

"Is this the Aristocrat Slayer? Gray hair, so it must be. Rough-looking, too."

Someone came walking up and said it plainly. Rem's training ground sat at the foot of the Pen-Hanil Mountain Range. There was a proper drill yard, but they trained under the mountain range whenever they could.

Thanks to that, packs of Demon Creatures or Magic Beasts too dangerous for the local outpost to handle rarely came down this way. It had started as a request from Krais, but Rem had judged it an excellent training site in his own right.

"Demon Creatures and Magic Beasts come down regularly? Perfect."

He'd settled on the spot with those words.

The owner of those careless footsteps descended from the direction of the Pen-Hanil Mountain Range with a drawn sword in hand, black blood still wet on the blade.

Rem had felt the killing intent before the figure even got close, so he'd risen from his seat and was already perched sideways on the steps beside the platform.

The makeshift wooden steps creaked under his shifting weight as he leaned back. Rem hadn't drawn his axe. One arm rested on the steps, legs sprawled out, a posture arrogant enough to speak for itself.

"Wonder where this husk blew in from."

"Husk? If that's meant for me, you die today."

The man answered without hesitation. His armor was thin but carried a quality look, and the sword in his hand didn't seem like an ordinary weapon. He could have passed for a noble, though the vicious killing intent rolling off him said otherwise.

"Is this guy out of his mind?"

One of the unit members muttered it. A soldier with a deep scar under his eye, a former mercenary who had once gone by the name Mad Axe.

These days he had a reputation for being relatively easygoing, but that was only because of where he was stationed.

"Hey, leave if you don't want to die. Shoo."

Another senior member waved the back of his hand at the man. They knew there was nothing to gain from poking Rem's temper.

"You sure you know who you're dealing with? You think this place is some kind of suicide shrine?"

While they all chimed in, the one among them with a slightly kinder heart stepped forward.

"Just go. Act up here and you'll actually die. Try the divine infantry instead, they won't kill you there."

The divine infantry would pin you down and make you carry boulders as exercise, but they wouldn't kill you. This unit was different. Rem's soldiers were rough. They weren't the type to turn down a fight.

The man swung his blood-stained sword with no setup motion at all. Even Rem hadn't reacted until the blade was already tracing its arc. That was how little telegraph there was in the cut.

"Down!"

Whoosh!

The air split at the same moment Rem's shout rang out. A voice carved into the bones through training. The soldier's abs clenched on reflex.

In multi-on-one drills, Rem sometimes threw out advice mid-fight, and anyone who failed to catch it properly ended up seriously hurt. So they'd learned to respond faithfully to his voice.

The soldier dropped backward as though falling. Literally let himself fall to the ground, following Rem's word to the letter.

Clang!

The source of that split air was Rem's axe. The axe that carved through empty space reached the opponent's blade right where the soldier had just been standing, and steel screamed against steel.

It was a hatchet he'd thrown, not his main axe, but throwing whatever was in reach had always been Rem's specialty. The opponent batted it away with a casual sword swing.

And the original target of that cut had been the soldier's chest.

Which meant the man had spotted the axe's trajectory mid-swing, changed direction, and knocked it away, without losing his form or showing any sign of surprise.

"Where did this one come from."

Rem stepped forward, closing the gap in a few quick strides. He'd already kicked off from the steps. The distance between them collapsed in an instant.

The swordsman swung again without warning, bringing the blade straight down at Rem's head. Rem answered with a matching axe strike.

One moving top to bottom, the other bottom to top. Two weapons crossed.

Clang! Screeeeee!

Axe and sword locked and sent sparks flying. Both tried to knock the other's weapon away, but instead they caught and sprang apart left and right.

Rem tightened his thighs to absorb the impact and swung again. His arm became a whip, and the axe blade flew like a bolt of light.

A single strike comparable to the slashing blow Enkrid threw with Will concentrated behind it tore through the air.

Boom!

The axe moved as though it had teleported and grazed the top of the man's head. The swordsman's skull seemed to split. But there was no blood. It was an afterimage.

The swordsman pulled his right foot back, dropped his stance, and slipped the axe.

From one angle it looked like a narrow escape on luck alone.

'Luck my ass.'

Rem knew the man had deliberately dodged it. A gap cut from a sliver of time. The man had thrust his sword as he pulled away.

'Oh?'

Rem was surprised, inwardly. The opponent's read had been too precise. After a clean escape, most would have tried something big, but instead the man grabbed near the ricasso with his left hand and drove a thrust along the most efficient possible line.

A half-sword thrust. Basic technique, but used at exactly the right moment, this dangerous.

'Can't grab him in one go.'

Rem kicked his left foot forward. He'd planned to track the thrust all the way through and only tilt his head to dodge at the last instant.

The opponent didn't push the thrust home. He stepped aside from Rem's foot instead.

Tap, he kicked off the ground, retreated, and raised his sword with the tip pointing upward, both hands already gripping the hilt.

Rem lifted his axe and laid it over his shoulder. Two completely different ready stances.

"Hm. Where did this one come from."

Rem muttered. Something about the man's stance was irritating him. It reminded him of someone.

The swordsman had brown hair and brown eyes. His gaze was like a still lake. His momentum was like a downpour.

An odd one.

"Why do you want to know?" the man said.

"I didn't care either, bastard."

And he had a mouth on him that was real irritating.

Rem didn't pick his words for anyone. Even less so for a stranger with a stance that annoyed him on sight.

The swordsman shifted his right foot forward and changed his center of gravity.

The resolve to stake everything on a single strike translated into Will naturally, without him reaching for Pressure deliberately. The swing still bore down on Rem with force.

The mark of someone who had trained the Heavy Sword Style to its limit and pushed past it.

Rem's thought was simple.

'So what.'

The axe hummed and the blade shivered. Time to blow away whatever the man was performing.

He did.

He brought the axe up to meet the falling blade building all that pressure.

Force routed from toes through the waist, sorcery detonating out. The technique once named Heart of Superhuman Strength came naturally off his body, and the concentrated power he'd shown through Giant-Splitting loaded onto the axe just as naturally.

Boom!

A shockwave burst outward from the impact as though a meteorite had struck the earth.

"Insane. Monsters, the pair of them."

One of the unit members said it, but they were all thinking the same thing.

Rem didn't kill the man. Instead he rested the axe on top of his head.

More precisely, he'd angled the axe to deflect half the force of the incoming swing and absorb the other half with his body, then punched the blade with his left fist. In the opening that created, he hooked the man's ankle and broke his balance.

All of it was technique he'd sharpened sparring with that Ragna bastard after Enkrid left.

Resting the axe on top of the unbalanced man's head was the finishing touch.

With a knight's strength and skill, even without lifting the axe high, a light graze was enough to split a skull.

The man who'd come at him was down on one knee. Blood ran freely from beneath the tattered pauldron.

"I've got one question. Answer it right."

The killing intent threaded through Rem's words was no joke. It was a different shade from the playful killing intent he showed in training.

If his usual killing intent was a sun just rising and starting to throw out its first light, this was the noon sun blazing straight down.

That clear. The words meant exactly what they said: give the wrong answer, and the axe moves. He wasn't hiding the intent to kill.

"What's your connection to the directionally-impaired bastard?"

Rem asked.

* * *

While Rem was locked in that exchange, Audin had his own encounter.

Blond hair, blue eyes, a squared jaw, and a large frame. Not comparable to his own, but large enough.

"I came to meet someone," the blond said. Audin had been about to ask how he'd gotten in, then let it go.

Whether he'd slipped in quietly or walked through the front gate, the guards wouldn't have been able to stop him.

Ruagarne rolled those big eyes of hers right beside Audin.

"Where did this one come from?"

Her Talent-Reading Eyes were well-suited to measuring an opponent's level.

'I can't see it properly.'

With Enkrid she'd watched his growth steadily over a long time and could easily see the limit of his ability. But with others, especially anyone at a knight's level, even her eyes couldn't find the ceiling.

She used that as her benchmark for estimating strength.

Knight level, at minimum.

"I heard someone was here, but I wasn't sure if they actually were."

Every time the man spoke, he seemed to weigh his words carefully. He didn't even finish his sentences properly.

Audin greeted him with a soft smile.

"It would be best if you told us who you are first, brother."

The blond man looked at Audin without any reaction. He wasn't doing anything, but Audin's instincts told him the man could draw his sword at any moment. Audin naturally settled into his stance.

He spread both feet wide and let his arms hang loose. Hands that could snap and break anything they caught were ready to move at an instant's notice.

"So what I want to ask, well, more precisely, I want to ask your name. Are you Enkrid?" the blond asked out of nowhere.

Ropord and Fell, watching from behind, both had the same thought: what the hell is this guy on about.

In this region, Enkrid was the Demon Slayer, guardian of the Border Guard, the man who ended the civil war. There was no one who hadn't heard the rumor that he had black hair and blue eyes and a face that drew women of every race to him.

"Does that face look like a heartbreaker to you? Where exactly? Look at him. Does he look like he could break hearts?"

Fell ran his mouth freely. Whether the nickname went from heart-destroyer to heart-slayer was none of his concern, it wasn't his title.

Audin was fairly satisfied with his own face. So when those words reached him, all he felt was bewilderment.

"...Shepherds of the Wilderness brother?"

"Wrong is wrong," Fell said, looking away from Audin's gaze.

"Absolutely not."

Teresa was there too, and she agreed immediately.

"Not at all."

She offered the second emphasis to make sure no misunderstanding took root.

"Sister Teresa?"

"I'll help make sure there's no confusion."

Is that what this is? Help? Audin said it with his eyes.

"What kind of person doesn't recognize our commander on sight? This man can't kill hearts, but he tears people in two for fun. Watch your mouth. That comment just put Sir Audin in a bad mood," Ropord said.

"So I have a hobby of tearing people in two?"

"Ah. Was that not right? In the divine infantry they always told us to be careful or you'd end up getting split during training."

Is the unit's training methodology somehow off? Audin briefly reflected. It had probably been because the training wasn't intense enough. Good training left no room for stray thoughts.

The blond man blinked a few times. He hadn't heard that nickname. But one thing was plain to him.

That bear-sized man was not someone to take lightly.

"That's not the important part anyway," the man said.

Something new moved across his face, which had held a loose, relaxed look until now. It was anticipation. Enjoyment.

"Let's fight."

Audin knew the man was going to rush him before the words even finished landing. The momentum rose first.

The sword carved through the air and fell, and golden sand gathered and swelled in both of Audin's hands. Armor forged from condensed divine power received the incoming blade.

Clang!

The divine power wrapped around his gauntlets and the Will riding the opponent's blade crashed together, then separated.

Audin used Sacred Penetration out of habit, and the opponent pulled back after the first collision and shook it off.

The man used a classic one-handed sword, and from the blue-white color of the blade and the force felt on impact, it was no ordinary weapon.

'A seasoned fighter.'

Audin read the man's nature. Considerable ability, technique sharpened by real combat.

The opponent read Audin in return.

'Tearing people in two for fun might not have been a lie.'

The grip strength in those hands and the smooth technique made it seem entirely possible.

A moment ago those hands had tried to catch his blade and break it. He'd read that in time and pulled the sword back.

"Fun," the man said.

Audin caught a familiar scent coming off the stranger.

Somehow a mix of someone who resembled Enkrid and someone who resembled Ragna, blended into one and standing in front of him.

"My name is Odinkar Zaun."

"Audin Pumray. I use divine power."

"Let's play."

Zaun, the same family name as Ragna. The man who had named himself Odinkar raised his sword. Light gathered along the blade's surface, a phenomenon born from Will coalescing.

A different quality of Will. This man, too, was a genius who had crossed some kind of wall.

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