WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

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A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 669: The Bewitching Captain

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If there is a beginning, there must be an end.

The indulgence of savoring fine food. The intoxication of losing yourself to music. The hunger two people have for each other's bodies.

Everything ends.

Enkrid raised his forearm and wiped the blood streaming from his nose. The rush faded. He had enjoyed the process more than the victory itself, so calm returned naturally. Just as he had calculated from the start, Penna had been enough.

"I thought you'd drop out halfway."

The female swordsman said it. She was down on one knee, head raised.

People who had hidden themselves away, watching from cover, sensed the tension had broken and drifted out to become spectators.

A young child, eyes wide open, called out.

"Did you win?"

The female swordsman answered for him.

"Yeah. I lost."

There had been no killing intent from the beginning, no desire to take a life. It was not a fight to the death but a fight to measure.

You could call it rough sparring and not be far wrong. So Enkrid had not swung his sword with any intent to finish her either.

'The outcome of a fight isn't decided by skill alone.'

He had come to understand that freshly. Comparing himself to the swordswoman in front of him, the edge in skill was his.

But what if this had been real?

'She didn't show everything she had.'

Of course, neither had he.

"Why aren't you tired?"

The female swordsman asked. Enkrid studied her face a moment longer, then reached back into memory.

"I thought I recognized you from somewhere."

"Hm? You know me?"

It was a brief, passing connection from the past. The reason it had not surfaced immediately was that the encounter had been too short. The reason it surfaced now was that she had left an impression.

Time had passed, but nothing about her appearance had changed significantly. That was probably why the memory, sunken somewhere to the bottom, had finally floated up.

It was the day Ger and Pit died, two names now half-faded at the edges of memory, back when he had still been working as a mercenary. The day the nickname "the one who gets his comrades killed" first latched onto him.

'The swordswoman who killed those bandits.'

She had charged in at the exact moment he was barely holding on thanks to Ger and Pit's sacrifice.

Looking back on it now, that nickname had followed him an impressively long time. Long enough that he had eventually given up mercenary work and become a guide instead.

"Back then I thought you were a woman dressed as a man."

Enkrid said it. Probably because her hair had been short. The breastplate had hidden her chest, so with her face covered, telling the difference would have been difficult.

Her hair was much longer now than it had been then.

A connection that had brushed past him during his mercenary days, and now here they were crossing paths again.

"Huh. I don't remember you at all."

The female swordsman said it. Enkrid had met many people, but a gaze this completely unfiltered was rare these days.

She was genuinely impressed by his swordwork, that was clear, but his face might as well not have existed for all she noticed it.

"We crossed paths once, a long time ago."

Enkrid said it as he sheathed his sword. She had no will to fight, and she was someone who had saved him, intentionally or not. The result was what it was.

"Really? I have a good memory for faces."

Something in the way she said it carried a faint scent of Ragna, for reasons he could not quite explain.

"Why did you attack me?"

It was too long ago for him to hold it against her, so he simply asked.

It was certain she had not come looking to kill.

"Watching you got my blood up."

She grinned as she said it, a grin and words that hid nothing.

Heard by someone else, it might have sounded baffling. Asking whether that was really the whole reason would have been a perfectly natural response.

Enkrid understood it immediately, though. If your blood runs hot enough, you do things like that.

"Insane."

Vengeance, who had appeared at some point and been watching from the side, shook his head. Getting your blood up and charging someone was plain lunacy to him.

He had survived this long by crossing battlefields where swords and arrows flew in every direction, and his first instinct was always that he was alive partly because of luck. One of those times, it was Enkrid who had carried him out of a burning tent on his back while he was pathetically stewing in jealousy.

'One of those times was because Captain Enkrid saved me.'

Enkrid glanced at Vengeance and acknowledged him with a look.

Word had gone out to the security force, and the security commander had come in person. Hearing the scale of what had happened, he would have run here.

Vengeance signaled to the archers he had positioned. The soldiers who had quietly formed a perimeter lowered their crossbows.

Both Enkrid and the female swordsman had noticed the soldiers gathering and the crossbow operators surrounding them, but had left it alone.

Vengeance and the soldiers knew they could not control these two. But they could not simply stand and watch either, so this was the natural response.

The Border Guard security force was not there to stop knights. They were there to buy time.

Looking at the situation now, it illustrated just how dangerous a knight was on this continent.

'A walking disaster that moves alone.'

That was how Vengeance thought of knights. If this particular knight had swung her sword without restraint, dozens, possibly over a hundred people here, would be dead.

After which that woman's head would have left her shoulders on Enkrid's blade.

Normally, no one would bother slipping a single knight into a city just to cause a massacre. Knights were too rare for that.

They were human too, and fire enough arrows and one eventually lands. Iron Body or not, that does not stop a ballista bolt.

Audin might manage it, but an ordinary knight could not.

You dodge a few times, and you keep dodging, but eventually you die or take a wound. So incidents like this were uncommon. Rare, really.

Which meant what the woman had said was true. She had come for some other purpose, saw Enkrid, and her blood ran hot enough that she charged him.

Enkrid was tracing back the reason for the rush he had felt facing her.

'She was not clumsy. She is not a fake.'

Everything he had experienced until now had taught him that.

When walking the road of discipline toward the destination called knight, fixing the answer in advance only produces fakes. The kind of fake the Holy State had manufactured would have been shaped exactly like that.

You cannot let someone run down a path with the answer already decided. A knight built from false conviction and false Will is not a knight at all.

That was his view. So what about the swordswoman in front of him?

This woman had walked her own path and arrived here by it. He was certain of that because they had crossed swords.

"Since you've subdued her, take her in. Commander."

Vengeance said. He looked less than pleased with the current situation, but he had not forgotten what he needed to do. He had sense, he could see the woman had not come here to kill.

Still, the thought crossed his mind: was there some way to stop knights from just wandering into the city whenever they pleased? Or some measure to subdue them on the spot when one went on a rampage?

While listening to Vengeance, Enkrid asked a question. He had just remembered that this woman had been looking for someone earlier.

"Did you find who you were looking for?"

"I think so, maybe. There can't be two people that skilled."

The Border Guard's Madman Knights had become famous. Not in the same way as the old legends, but famous in their own right. The woman had followed the rumors all the way here, and only now asked.

"You're Enkrid the Heartbreaker, right?"

Damn it, Fell.

Enkrid estimated roughly half the blame for that nickname spreading belonged to Fell's mouth.

The other half was naturally Sinar's.

"That's correct."

Vengeance answered. Enkrid looked at him. It almost felt like provocation.

"It's not wrong."

He muttered it.

"And there should be a bear beastfolk who rips men apart."

The rumor had it that the bear beastfolk tore apart manticores, tore apart people, tore apart everything, basically.

"Correct. Though he is not actually a beastfolk."

Vengeance answered again. He still radiated wariness, but that did not mean he would refuse to answer. He had sense. He could tell she had not come here to slaughter anyone.

"And a barbarian who drools at the sight of nobles and splits their skulls open."

That sounded like the rumors had picked up some extra nastiness along the way. Rumors did tend to accumulate embellishments. Either way, Enkrid corrected her.

"No drooling."

"Oh, really? And there's the one they call the blood-crazed youngest, right? That one supposedly enjoys stabbing people in the back? And I heard there's an elf who carries demon blood."

More precisely, an elf who despises demon blood.

"A witch hiding her true nature."

That part was true enough, though slightly off.

Esther had even built her own magic unit. She was not making any particular effort to hide what she was. Yet the nickname Black Flower still stuck.

"And last, a madman who draws his sword the instant you meet his eyes. Blond hair, red eyes?"

Correct. Ragna Zaun, and the woman likely had a similar name. Enkrid put it together quickly.

"My name is Grida Zaun. I'm the blond madman's sister."

The woman said it. Enkrid was not surprised.

He had heard from Ragna at some point that he had left his family without permission.

He had not listened closely. Ragna was not the type to bother explaining things properly even when asked.

The family name was Zaun. A house that, judging purely by swordsmanship, deserved to be called legendary.

"Enkrid of the Border Guard."

He said it and extended a hand. Grida took it and pulled herself to her feet.

"You're not bad. So, what do you think of me?"

"...In what sense are you ask, no. Don't say anything."

Vengeance was standing right beside them with his ears perked up, and among the spectators there was also a hooded figure that looked distinctly like an elf.

"What sense? As a woman."

Oh.

"Truly irresistible."

Someone muttered it. For the first time in a long while, an old nickname echoed through Border Guard.

"The irresistible commander."

"The irresistible knight."

"The irresistible one."

"The heart collector."

About half the people talking seemed to just be running their mouths because they were enjoying themselves. Enkrid knew that reacting to rumors made them spread further. He knew it made the people talking enjoy themselves even more.

So he simply filed away a few faces, quietly, and said nothing.

Thud.

Somewhere in the crowd, the elf dropped the bottle she was holding. She looked quite startled. Then, without stopping to pick it up, she disappeared into the crowd.

Enkrid watched that, then said,

"Ragna will be at the lodgings."

"Okay. But really, no interest at all?"

"None."

"Oh, did you lose it in an accident?"

"Lose what?"

"You know."

Ragna's sister resembled Ragna in more ways than one. Starting with having absolutely no concern for other people's reactions. She raised her arm and dangled her fist, swinging it.

"It's there."

Enkrid answered faster than intended.

"Oh, then maybe it's a matter of taste?"

"Not even close."

"So I just don't have any charm. That's what it is."

Grida nodded with a strangely certain expression. She did not look hurt in the slightest, and was even less bothered than that.

She asked again.

"So when did we meet?"

They had been talking through their blades just moments ago, but now it was ordinary conversation.

Enkrid found this considerably preferable to having the existence of a certain part of his anatomy debated.

"Back when some camp got raided and a few bandits were caught, I saw you then. You might not remember. It was over in a flash."

"That kind of thing happened more than once or twice."

"Did you spend a long time getting lost along the way?"

She was Ragna's sister. It was possible.

"No, that's not it. Honestly, I started wandering and found things more interesting than looking for Ragna. So I was sort of half-heartedly pretending to search while enjoying myself. Then more people came from the family."

"So that's why you didn't come alone earlier."

"Right. By now everyone's probably sizing each other up, and, well, if someone got a bit hurt, try to understand. They're all the type who can't wait to put their skills to use."

Who exactly had gotten hurt remained to be seen.

"That's my line."

He said it plainly, then walked away, ignoring the noise about being irresistible and whatever else they were shouting behind him. Vengeance dispersed the gathered crowd, and Enkrid moved quickly. When he stepped inside the barracks, things were already loud.

"So you're back?"

Rem was visible first. Beside him stood a male swordsman with a sullen expression. Dried blood sat like a scab above the swordsman's brow.

"Did you lose?"

Grida asked the man.

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