WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 673: With Similar Eyes

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Grida had liked it here from the first glance, and the longer she stayed, the more she liked it. If that had not been the case, she would have wrapped up her business and left after two months, no question.

She had wandered the continent and seen a great many things, yet few places had suited her as well as this.

And she was not the only one who felt that way.

"This is absolutely incredible."

Odinkar seemed to feel it even more keenly.

He was working through the day's special, ground meat mixed with onion and flour, shaped into a patty, grilled, and tucked into bread, and did not hesitate to raise a thumb.

Juice and grease ran down the corner of Odinkar's mouth.

It was the kind of sight that made you want to bite into whatever was in your own hand.

Sizzling, charred on the outside, the meat's juices rolled across the tongue before sliding down the throat.

Fine. She admitted it. It was delicious.

Grida agreed. She raised her own thumb. The food here really was exceptional.

The seasoned jerky and well-baked bread were great, and the pulled pork barbecue, slow-roasted all day, then torn apart with sauce and stuffed into a long roll, was even better.

What was it called again? A pulled pork sandwich? And that was not even the half of it.

Pumpkin soup and juice, too.

The hot broth warming your stomach from the inside was something else entirely.

Zaun cooking held its own against anything, but here there was a character all its own, something you could not find anywhere else.

Some dishes were familiar, but others had a flavor you could not replicate. That was what made it such a pleasure.

Odinkar had always been the type who loved eating, so it was no surprise when he said what he said.

"Can I just not go back?"

"Can you?"

Grida knew he was joking and talked him down gently. What about the four wives and children he had left behind at home?

"Joking. Just joking."

Odinkar laughed, bright and easy.

"Hey, if you're done eating, come out and let's go a round."

Enkrid called to him from beyond the dining hall.

"What are we doing today?"

Odinkar swallowed what was in his mouth and asked.

"You want two at once, or just one?"

Enkrid called again from outside.

Odinkar knew no restraint. That was the problem with sparring against him, every session had to be treated as life or death. Enkrid had gone a few rounds with him before Ann gave him a warning.

"Was your dream a worn-out stuffed doll? Are you planning to sew every limb back on?"

Even after Odinkar nearly had his collarbone sliced through, the two still sparred twice more, and in one of those sessions Odinkar won. That time, it was Enkrid who nearly died.

A blade was about to sink into his throat when Jaxon pulled a sharp dagger and blocked it.

At the same moment, Audin caught Odinkar's arm.

After that, the two of them seemed to decide this kind of sparring could not go on.

It really looked like it would only end when one of them was dead.

Then Rem offered an interesting suggestion. Back in his unit, he said, they made one person spar against three others of similar ability at the same time.

"Wasn't that just for hazing purposes?"

Krais chimed in from the side, but everyone knew it was not purely hazing.

Well, no one could doubt that a bit of Rem's personal taste was mixed in.

Making someone fight three opponents at once from the start was already telling. On top of that, he never explained the point of the exercise, never laid out a way through it, expected the person to figure it out with their body alone, and then snickered while watching them get beaten.

"That's not bad at all, brothers."

"Not bad. If three skilled fighters pressure one person, that one person will have things to learn. And those three, working together, will have things to learn as well."

Jaxon spoke at unusual length, probably because he wanted to tell them to scrap that kind of sparring entirely.

Either way, there was no reason a knight could not do what Rem's unit members did.

After that, the style of sparring changed.

Enkrid fought two or three at a time, and Odinkar did the same.

Rem or Audin sometimes stood in that position too.

From where Grida stood, the strangest thing to watch was Odinkar slowly starting to control himself.

Rem watched it happen, snickered, and said, "You get hit enough and it all comes together."

Jaxon said he had simply been broken of a bad habit and drilled back into a better one.

Audin said all of this was the grace of God, and that he had merely delivered the words of the divine through his fists.

Three different ways of saying the same thing.

Is the solution to every problem just hitting it?

But whatever they said, their actions were precise. Their techniques, their behavior, the way they sparred, all of it was meticulous in practice.

He changed from getting hit?

Was it really that simple? Odinkar had walked a tightrope between life and death since childhood to become what he was. That was not a habit that changed in a single go.

So what was really behind it? What sat at the core of that change? Watching alone could not answer that. It would take real study.

Would Magroon have caught on by now? That sort of thing was precisely where she was exceptionally gifted.

Either way, at the center of all of it was a man named Enkrid.

Once the sparring style changed and a degree of safety was guaranteed, these lunatics became truly unhinged.

Enkrid in particular left even Odinkar shaking his head.

It was not just his attitude toward sparring. The way he spent an entire day was what shocked people.

He rose at dawn and trained his body, then in the morning headed out under the banner of a walk, sometimes with a panther, sometimes with a witch in a revealing robe and long black hair, but a quick look made it clear that was training too.

A sparring session with a mage.

He did that at least twice a week, and beyond that he trained separately with a barbarian, an assassin, and an elf.

And while doing all of that, he was teaching the rest.

He also managed his own direct unit, though for the most part he only set the training direction and left the rest to them.

"I'm not going down!"

One of them stood out, a squire named Clemen, who had in fact gone down. Her burning enthusiasm was remarkable, ability aside.

A girl named Seiki who came by occasionally had rare natural talent, but seemed to have little genuine interest in it.

The actual training of unit members was handled by others.

What mattered was the time Enkrid had left over. He spent all of it fighting. Sparring.

No end to it, no rest. He simply did it. Without exception. He repeated this schedule every single day.

Can the mind hold up under that?

The body was not the issue. If the mind wavered, the body would follow. So the mind came first.

But Enkrid absorbed all of it without expression. That was what made it remarkable.

Grida thought it over and called out to a man walking past. She had more or less learned the Madman Knights' names by now.

"Hey, Ropord. Want to go a round?"

She called out to the first member she spotted, and he answered with undisguised irritation.

"My name is Fell. Fell the Shepherd. Why do you keep mixing me up with that bastard?"

"Oh, really? You two look alike."

At that, Fell drew his sword.

"A duel."

Fun people to be around. Grida went a casual round with Fell as he came at her. That was enjoyable too. A Frog named Ruagarne came over and raised a theory for discussion, and Magroon was delighted by it.

"The polish here is hard to believe from someone who learned and built this out in the wild."

Grida had not expected to hear something like that out of Magroon's mouth. Not criticism, not a complaint, but a compliment? From Magroon, who had a needle for a tongue?

"Frog, is this your work?"

That was what Magroon asked afterward.

"No. That one."

Ruagarne's blunt finger pointed at Enkrid. Seeing that, Magroon only tilted her head.

"Really? Interesting."

Magroon's plain response after looking at Enkrid. No venom in the words. Inside Zaun, there were very few people Magroon treated this way.

You could count them on one hand.

Enkrid had become one of them. Yet watching from the side, he had not done anything extraordinary to make it happen.

He had simply walked over, exchanged a few words, and engaged in discussion grounded in theory. Neither Enkrid nor Magroon raised their voice or dug in their heels. Both were calm.

Enkrid set aside time once or twice a week to talk with Magroon alone.

Interesting.

But then, so was her own situation.

At the start, it had been about men and women. Now she no longer wanted that.

If two people parted ways, things got awkward.

She did not want that. The way things were with this man right now suited her.

"I'm not standing in line."

She mentioned it to the elf, and the blond elf was openly pleased.

"Should I bring you some spring water?"

Grida had a bruise on her forearm from sparring, and the elf was already offering something like this.

"Glad you thought better of it. The line is long, I hear."

Though for all the talk of a long line, Grida could not recall hearing any names besides Black Flower and Golden Witch.

Ah, but letters certainly arrived often enough.

Party invitations, introductions from someone acquainted with a certain lady, letters like that came in remarkable quantities.

Mixed in among them were letters from the king, from the Pioneer King of the East, and even from some divine order.

He's popular, all right.

Even walking outside the city, many people recognized him. Besides the elf called Golden Witch, there were other elves throwing quiet glances his way too.

"Commander Sinar is older, but I'm young."

The archery instructor from the security corps slipped over and said this. Grida happened to be standing near Enkrid at the time, so she watched the whole thing closely.

What would he say to that?

"A little past four hundred isn't really that much, is it."

Enkrid returned the elf-style joke without missing a beat.

"I'm not even half that."

"To a human, two hundred and four hundred are both a lot."

"...Two hundred and four hundred aren't the same, though?"

The elf blinked innocent eyes, and behind those eyes something scheming was visible. They did not speak outright lies, but they twisted things. That was what elves did. Grida knew that too. The elf blinked those innocent eyes and pressed the point of the age difference.

"You know what I mean."

Enkrid turned the elf down, flat and clear.

Hm. So that's how it is.

Beyond that, the innkeeper had a fondness for him, and a giant merchant had shown goodwill as well. Then a Frog who made jewelry puffed out her cheeks and went on at length about what materials she had found and what she was planning to make.

Even with all of that going on, Enkrid listened to every word. Always attentive, always present.

Watching it, Grida realized she had genuinely fallen for this man.

Not man and woman. The person himself.

"You really listen well."

"I like the passion that comes through when they talk."

The way he said it, just tossing the words out, was captivating. So Grida said it.

"Any thought of coming to Zaun?"

He would not. A month of watching had told her that. This man would refuse the offer.

But here again, an unexpected answer came.

"Can I visit sometime?"

"Hm?"

"I'm asking if dropping by is fine."

"Oh. Yeah. Come."

Right. This man was not coming to Zaun. She could not keep him. The light he gave off was too bright for that.

Zaun was a lake that settled and held still in the end, but this man was like wind that could fly anywhere.

Wind could rest beside a lake, but it would not pool there like the water did.

"Wind Blade. Have you ever heard that name? A sword with that name?"

"Isn't that from a traveling bard's song?"

"Right. One of the founding ancestors of Zaun."

"That's the first I've heard of it."

Grida shared this and that with him.

"If you two stand this close together, people will get the wrong idea."

Sinar cut in partway through with a joke. Then the three of them talked for a good while, and when Esther came over they sat quietly and drank tea instead.

Silence was good. Conversation was good. All of them were good people, one way or another.

Was this why Ragna had not wanted to go back?

Then an unfamiliar face walked into the unit grounds.

Grida was out front and called out to the blond visitor with red eyes.

"Who are you?"

The person blinked slowly, shook out their disheveled hair, and spoke. They looked like they had lost their way somewhere. There was an odor about them, and their appearance was rough.

One greatsword in hand was respectable enough, at least.

"Grida?"

"Mm, you know me? You look familiar, but I can't place you. Who is this again?"

A recognizable face, but. Grida frowned.

"It's Ragna. Why are you here? Did you get lost?"

"Oh, Ragna."

Right, the road she had set out on to find this one had led all the way here.

At first she had searched in earnest, but later the wandering itself became fun, and she had been taking it easy at a comfortable pace before things ended up like this.

"I came to find you."

"Me?"

"There's someone who wants to see the one who ran off from home."

"If someone wants to see me, they can come themselves."

"They can't, so I came."

Honestly, if no word had come from the family, Grida would have enjoyed the trip a little longer. It had been so long since she had gone out that there were genuinely pleasant things to be found along the way. Plenty of miserable things too, but still.

Either way, Ragna was here now, and Grida had things to say.

"Father is looking for you."

Grida said it. Ragna looked at her, and his eyes said everything.

So? What? And what am I supposed to do about it?

Well, Ragna has picked up some bad habits here.

Her sibling had not had eyes like that before. Those eyes looked just like the barbarian Rem's.

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