WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

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A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 675: Stagnant Water

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"Ready, Samcheol?"

Enkrid said it to the sword, and Grida, watching, chose her words carefully.

"I keep telling you to stop doing that. You look genuinely unhinged."

She was serious. It wasn't even a sword with a self, so why did he keep talking to it?

Enkrid said nothing back. He spoke to it because it was worth speaking to, and that was all.

The sword's name was Samcheol, the Three-Iron Sword, meteorite iron at its core, with hardest iron and true silver edging the blade. A masterwork.

'If it were only filled with Will, you could call it an Inscribed Weapon without any argument.'

Not everything Aetri made was like this. Samcheol was different. Where Penna felt like it settled naturally into the hand, Samcheol felt like it became one with it entirely.

And like that, the sword spoke to him.

It wanted to run wild, to play, to make an ensemble with other blades of iron. That was what it longed for. A voice only Enkrid could hear.

Honestly, he couldn't actually hear it. Not exactly.

"Samcheol just whispered that it wants to harmonize."

"...I'd rather not agree with that under most circumstances, but do you realize you look significantly more unhinged saying that out loud?"

That was Rem, who had appeared at some point and was watching.

It was after rising at dawn and sweating through training. The wind was shifting, starting to carry warmth now instead of a cutting edge.

The sun was rising earlier, but the early morning sessions hadn't changed, so today's sweat was the same as any other. Two months of mornings, all the same. Grida watched Enkrid and admitted it to herself.

Training obsessive.

Even within the Zaun family, where swordsmanship obsession was the norm, this type was rare.

'I didn't think someone like this existed on the continent.'

Sometimes a strange genius appeared like this.

Well, the strangest thing here was that someone who was clearly a genius somehow looked like he was treading water.

Two months of sparring, and she had not seen any major change in Enkrid.

'There must be something.'

Something she couldn't see, something that had made him a knight and earned him everyone's recognition.

Spring breezes moved through the air, but a single cool thread slipped against her chest. Grida felt her muscles tighten with a familiar tension.

Her heartbeat quickened slightly. Just right. A little tension sharpened response time.

'I've been playing too much, honestly.'

Even when she had come out to the continent and wandered under the excuse of looking for Ragna, she had never let the training lapse.

But there was a clear difference between training with people who had settled somewhere and committed themselves to it, and training alone.

'That's probably why I've fallen a bit behind.'

Well, it was the path she had chosen. Something to endure. She hadn't chosen it without knowing this might happen, and she certainly hadn't done it out of laziness.

She had only done what she needed to do. The family head's order to find Ragna, with no deadline attached, carried a similar meaning.

'Wandering around, eating and drinking, that was fun, at least.'

Along the way, some noble had claimed to be smitten with her and tried to take her as a concubine, which had been quite entertaining.

The look on his face when she cut all three of his bodyguards at the wrist was something to remember.

The moment a man she had taken as a lover set off to find his own path was now just a memory.

She shook away the brief reverie and spoke.

"Did you figure out the secret of Zaun?"

Enkrid gave a loose nod, sword hanging easy at his side. There hadn't really been anything secret about it. Grida and the rest had hidden nothing, showed everything.

"You didn't even pretend to hide it, so what secret?"

"Saying it that way makes it sound more impressive."

Grida showed her white teeth. Clear signs of someone who had kept up with dental hygiene even while wandering.

Once you became a knight, ordinary illnesses rarely touched you, so teeth tended not to suffer much either.

They circled each other, swords in hand, measuring distance.

Not just Rem but Audin had come out too, and Ropord and Fell had tied cords around each other's wrists and ankles and turned themselves into spectators.

Alongside the consecutive club strikes, their training these days included sparring with limbs bound and restricted. Looking at the two standing ready, both felt a pull of impatience.

'Two months already.'

And still nowhere near even grazing a knight's toes.

But that made sense. No matter how carefully you built a system and changed training methods, if you could become a knight overnight, knight orders would never be as rare on the continent as they were.

Still, both were closing the gap quickly enough.

That was clearest through Magroon's eyes as he watched from the side. Grida had relayed two months' worth of observations to him just before this.

Magroon had come out to watch, and his gaze naturally fell on Fell and Ropord. From both of them he felt something close to a premonition.

'Those two will make it.'

Zaun raised knights in its own particular way. Measured against everything he had seen, the feeling he had now was close enough to certainty to call it that.

Even the impatience those two felt would become fuel for their growth. Naturally, Zaun did the same thing.

'Zaun pursues competition.'

That competition goaded ambition, but there was something here that went even further.

Border Guard paired competition with training that felt designed to kill you. The opposite of Zaun's self-directed approach.

Enkrid kept his eyes on Grida. She was never a soft opponent on any given day, but if he was being honest, her skill ranked slightly below Odinkar's or Magroon's.

That assessment had not changed.

"So what did you figure out?"

Grida asked and shifted sideways one step. The sunlight at her back poured straight into Enkrid's eyes.

He turned half a step to the right, shielding his sight from the glare, and answered.

"Never stopping. Always competing."

He had watched the three from Zaun for two months, talked with them, listened, studied. Through the desire to learn and the drive to understand, he had thought it through.

It was easier to grasp what they valued through conversation than to embody their techniques with the body.

That was how he had come to know it.

Zaun always competed, and underneath that competition lay desire.

If someone asked Enkrid how to cultivate Will, he would answer this way:

"You need passion that moves toward what you want."

The Zaun family taught something similar. How do you cultivate Will? Through endless fervor.

That was Zaun's teaching. And Enkrid had seen through to its core.

It took talent to see that. It was probably that talent, gathered together, that had been the founding of the family.

Zaun's teaching was not that fervor alone could carry those without talent, that was different from the path he had chosen. Even so, there was plenty to learn from it.

"Encourage those who are already good to get better."

Enkrid continued. He raised the tip of his sword as he spoke. His mouth moved, but his eyes had already taken in all of Grida.

The calculations began. Before the fight, he projected every possible movement and weighed the probabilities.

Grida stood still and smiled.

"That's right."

"Those who fall behind will be pushed out."

Only those who enjoyed competing among themselves remained. And so they improved.

"That's right too."

Grida nodded.

After Ragna had come back, there had been a conversation about his childhood.

"Ragna? When he was young, I'd say he was a bit lacking, maybe. But there was one clear difference. My brother was strange. The talent was real."

What took others grinding their teeth to understand, he grasped on his own without effort. And yet he had no fervor. It was down to innate talent, and that was both a blessing and a curse.

"Ordinary talent gives a person fervor, but talent that overflows takes fervor away."

That was how it ended. The elders gave up on Ragna, and Ragna didn't even care.

That was arguably where Ragna's laziness began.

"He was always finding things bothersome from a young age. But once he went somewhere, he liked wandering around. Said something about how walking a new road was fun?"

Enkrid had never heard the full depth of Ragna's inner life, but he had heard something close.

Ragna had said that paths where you could already see the destination held no interest for him. So how much fun would it be to set out on his own?

'Since he can't find his way, every path ends up being a new one.'

Which meant getting lost wasn't a curse for Ragna, it was a blessing.

The opposite of his talent.

Back then, had the family held Ragna by force? Or had he been free to do as he pleased? If what you were good at and what you wanted to do didn't align, what was the right choice?

Enkrid knew the answer. He also respected it.

"Zaun does not seek the fight against the Cursed Ground, nor does it seek anything beyond. We devote ourselves entirely to the single pursuit of swordsmanship, exploring and savoring every moment."

Grida finished saying it.

Right. That was the Zaun system.

In competition, they learned from one another, taught each other, and did not hesitate to share what they knew. And they spent none of their strength anywhere outside that, only remaining within it.

"You might call it stagnant water, but to keep from stagnating, we make wandering an obligation. Most of the family is out on the continent at any given time. Some among them stay with like-minded people and leave their mark on history."

Enkrid had no intention of criticizing them for it.

Did having power mean you were obligated to use it? Probably not.

If needed, he could make use of them, give them what they wanted in exchange. But he didn't want to do that.

Shouldn't they be able to live as they wished?

It was a choice that came from respecting an individual's will and desire, separate from their power.

A group of people who looked at nothing but swordsmanship and hungered for it.

A group that burned with fervor competing within that.

That was why they didn't hesitate to exchange techniques, and were not stingy with teaching.

'Would you sell your soul to a demon for the sake of swordsmanship?'

Zaun could. But they didn't choose that path. He had gotten the answer from Odinkar.

"If I sell my soul to a demon, there's no me left to train swordsmanship, right? Don't want that."

Completely selfish, but that was exactly what made them interesting.

"Magroon's been watching you for two months."

Grida raised her sword. Enkrid matched her and angled his blade. Both sides were ready.

"Watch yourself, Enki."

As the two shifted and repositioned, Rem, Audin, Jaxon, Esther, Sinar, Teresa, Ropord, Fell, and Ruagarne stood behind Enkrid.

Behind Grida, Odinkar stood with arms crossed, and Magroon had brought out a chair and sat down.

The eyes of Enkrid and Grida met.

Was Grida the same as when they first met in the market?

Enkrid asked himself and answered.

'Different.'

The woman who had tempered her body like iron for two months threw her sword forward. Her left foot came out, and the attack registered a beat before it arrived, the scene insight showed him first.

Left foot stamping the ground as she drove a thrust out. The moment he recognized it, a blade strike sharper and more pointed and faster than before came flying at him like a single point.

Clang!

The white blade met the Three-Iron Sword and glanced away. No need to read her breathing. Enkrid crossed his feet and pushed forward.

He closed the distance in an instant and drove Samcheol's pommel down at Grida's skull, an unexpected, off-pattern attack. Grida raised her forearm to block it.

Thwack!

The difference in strength was plain. The blow sent her sliding back. Holding firm would have strained her arm, so she let herself be pushed rather than resist.

At the same time, Enkrid calculated the dozens of attacks Grida might follow with.

And Grida chose none of them.

Tap. Tap.

Having stepped back, she stamped her foot twice, the sole of her foot kicking the ground.

To an outside eye it was a meaningless motion, but to Enkrid it branched into dozens of possible follow-ons.

'Why did she stamp?'

Misdirection? The start of a technique he hadn't anticipated? A footwork step? Repositioning? A tactic using the environment?

Dozens of thoughts flashed through in an instant.

'If I can't figure it out, I watch the reaction.'

The reason she did something like that would answer itself with the next movement.

Enkrid flipped his sword, reversing the blade edge.

Samcheol had two edges. One hardest iron, one true silver.

Put that way, it sounded like the sword's center of balance would be a wreck, but Aetri had adjusted the proportion of meteorite iron to balance it out.

That didn't mean the metals on each edge were the same. Which made this possible.

He brought the hardest iron side forward and loaded weight into it. The heavier edge added more acceleration to the cut, a technique that used the difference in blade weight.

Enkrid pushed off his right foot, turned his waist, let the motion flow through his elbow and wrist, and cut.

Whomp!

The blade split the air and carved through the space where Grida had been.

Grida rolled sideways to dodge. As expected, the roll wasn't all she did. The moment she came out of it, her left hand drove into the ground and she flung herself back upright, then struck her own chest with the right hand holding her sword.

Thud.

Hard enough that the sound came through.

'Why?'

What was the reason for that motion? Preparing an attack? Had she lost her balance?

'No.'

After the same motion repeated a few times, Enkrid's foot caught and he stumbled, and Grida, waiting for exactly that, drove her sword tip forward.

Clang!

He blocked it, but blood poured freely from Enkrid's nose.

"Fun, isn't it?"

Grida asked, watching, and Enkrid answered even as the world spun around him.

"Yeah."

Tracing back the sequence, understanding what she had done wasn't difficult.

'A string of unpredictable motions that overturns the calculations.'

Put plainly, that was it.

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