WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 679: Enkrid Knows How to Lose

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"Why do I feel annoyed?"

Rem muttered, watching the group leave. Audin let out a low chuckle beside him.

"Perhaps he reached some kind of realization."

He meant Ragna. The change in him was plain enough.

"Or maybe he just lost his mind."

"That's possible too."

Rem glanced sideways at Audin. He had watched Enkrid spar with Audin the night before they left. More precisely, Enkrid had shown up out of nowhere and asked for it.

"I'd like to go one round before I go."

Leaving tomorrow but asking to spar today? For Enkrid, that was nothing out of the ordinary.

Rem had settled in to watch without worry, and Enkrid lost. Not just lost, either. He got beaten thoroughly and enthusiastically.

Audin had figured out the point of the match partway through and asked, "Did you learn much?"

"A little."

In Rem's view, Enkrid was the kind of man who, even if he were dying, would squeeze in one more lesson on swordsmanship before he went.

It was an offhand thought, but it was accurate. Enkrid had died over and over, repeating today, clawing his way to where he stood now.

"You said something about blocking with a wave and striking with light?"

"Yeah."

"In that case, you'll be putting your specialty on full display in the process."

"Probably."

"From a strategic standpoint, that's a foolish thing to do. Though I'm sure you already know that doesn't mean it's wrong."

Rem agreed with that too. He didn't cut in, though. The bear beastfolk devotee had already said everything that needed saying.

Enkrid had nodded, the skin around his eyes bruised a deep blue. One unlucky hit could have burst an eyeball, but he had built an Iron Body.

When he swung the sword, he hadn't reached the upper tier of the system he himself had constructed. But when he took a hit, he had.

He had reached the point where his Will rose on its own to shield his body, without conscious thought.

How had he managed just that one thing?

Because he's taken so many beatings.

That was Rem's conclusion. He'd been hit so many times that taking blows had become something he channeled Will through unconsciously. By rights, he should be able to do the same when swinging the sword.

To Rem, Audin, Jaxon, and Ragna, the fact that he couldn't was the strange part.

If you could open a door with your left hand, you could open it with your right.

And yet he couldn't.

He had become a knight, and there were moments he surpassed even those around him, yet watching him grow at such a crawl was exactly the sort of thing that should have driven someone to frustration. Honestly, though, it didn't make Rem that angry.

He had accepted long ago that Enkrid moved on a different track from everyone else.

"He'll come back stronger."

Rem set the thought aside and said it. Slow, but steady. That was Enkrid.

"Yes. I know."

Audin nodded.

"And that directionally-impaired bastard might be out there preparing to die, so I may need to have a funeral prayer ready."

Rem said it half joking, half meaning it, but his instincts were frightening in their accuracy.

Ragna had changed because he knew he was sick.

"Surely it won't come to that."

Audin knew Ragna's talent. He himself had been called the most gifted among the Apostles of War, yet even measured against that, Ragna had something particular. The way Ragna grasped principles through a single moment of concentration and pressed forward from there was nearly impossible to imitate. Not that Audin envied him for it.

Audin knew himself well. He knew what he had and how to value it.

He only knew one way forward, steadily, so he would do exactly that again today.

And the commander who had taken his teachings would do the same.

* * *

Enkrid and the others left the city and set off in a rough direction.

The weather was fine from the very first day. That was no surprise. North of Border Guard, rainfall dropped sharply come spring. Rain was infrequent. Summer would bring storms crashing down, but for now the days stretched on warm and calm, one after another.

Occasional light spring showers fell, but a true downpour was rare.

Some said a long dry spring meant the summer storms would hit all the harder for it, but that was something you could only know when the time came.

"Ride hard and head for roughly the right wing of the Pen-Hanil Mountain Range, ah, you wouldn't call it that. We call that section the wing. Ride along it and you can cross over from there."

The only commotion at the start had been holding Ragna back from taking the lead.

"If you lead us, we'll end up circumnavigating the continent."

Enkrid reminded him of the reality.

"Hey, Sena was it? Get him under control."

Grida nudged Ann from the side.

"It's Ann. I'm tired of giving my name. That's more than five times now."

"Oh, sorry. I'll just call you Freckles."

"That's worse."

Ann took it in stride and grabbed Ragna by the arm, pulling him along.

"Just keep pace with my horse. I'm not used to this."

Watching her ride, she looked well past used to it and into genuinely skilled, but Ragna didn't dig in his heels.

"This isn't the time to fuss over small things anyway."

That exchange happened right after they cleared the city. Immediately after, Magroon kicked his horse forward.

"Hria, hrya! Hryat!"

Odinkar and Grida matched his pace, and Enkrid did the same. Ragna and Ann falling in behind went without saying.

They had no particular urgency, no pressing errand, but they pushed hard from the start.

"Why waste time on the road? We can only ride for ten days at most anyway. Until then, riding and riding again is the right call."

That was Magroon's reasoning. They were people who despised squandering time on the road.

They would rather ride hard through the day and swing a sword one more time at night.

For Enkrid, it was entirely satisfying. For Ann, the schedule was something closer to hell.

"Are you all out of your minds?"

And yet Ann kept up without complaint. She had said as much herself, she wanted to identify the disease quickly.

More precisely, she was going there to kill it.

She had that kind of momentum. She looked like someone who had decided to fight this sickness and win.

"I just made a decision at some point. If there's still some disease out there hurting someone or killing them, I'll be there."

She said it to Ragna, in a quiet aside. Enkrid heard it clearly.

Either way, they rode through the days and rested at night, and as time passed, Enkrid sank inward and sorted through his thoughts.

There were times like this, when he let everything else go and just moved, that his mind ran faster for it.

Ragna he left to Ann. Magroon handled the navigating. Grida managed the camp on her own.

With the small concerns stripped away, what occupied his mind was what Audin had shown him.

He hadn't spent that time before leaving on a pointless spar.

Enkrid had felt his own shortcomings on an instinctual level and used the spar with Audin to confirm them.

Everyone pulls out a counter to my specialty too easily.

Only in sparring, for now, but if it kept happening, it would affect real fights.

Battles he should win, he could lose.

Rem, Ragna, Audin, Jaxon. All of them had broken through his wave-block, and Grida had dismantled his calculations.

Odinkar's sword was trending the same way, and even talking with Magroon had given him the same feeling.

"You're a bit predictable, you know."

Grida had said that to him. Her eye for observation was something else.

Would Ruagarne have said something similar if she had been there?

Setting skill aside, that Frog had a different kind of eye.

Ruagarne had left with Teresa and Sinar, something about a special training session they needed, and Enkrid hadn't seen her before departing.

He turned it over and over in his mind.

Enkrid replayed that final sparring moment with Audin over the layer of other thoughts.

Audin had favored a style where he showed gaps through his divine armor, and outside those moments too, he deliberately left openings and then closed them. It wasn't because his technique was lacking.

It's deception.

He showed openings on purpose. Left weaknesses on purpose.

He used even that deception as one more tool. The moment anyone thought Audin was dull, they would find themselves unable to beat him.

He was the strongest in the unit, sharp with calculation, outstanding in technique, and he had no hesitation about deceiving.

Did having an outstanding specialty mean you could only fight with that one thing?

What about Jamal, from Azpen's Royal King's Knights?

He showed his real methods last.

It wasn't that you needed to master deceptive swordsmanship above all else. It was that you needed to know how to use everything you had.

Oara had once looked at him and called him scattered. Told him to cut things away.

Had it been greed, keeping everything instead of cutting it away? Had he taken a wrong road?

Enkrid was human too.

Sometimes a certain unease wrapped itself around him.

A sharp sensation ran across his skin. An unpleasant premonition made his heart beat faster. Only for a moment, of course.

If he had let that unease stop him, he would have settled at his best possible today a long time ago.

When you feel unease, what do you do?

You swing the sword. He knew that from years of experience.

There was nothing else he could do, anyway.

That was why he sorted things out in his head through the day and swung the sword alone at night.

From the outside it must have looked mind-numbingly consistent.

"Today's effort will save your life tomorrow."

That was Ragna speaking, the man who had gone from layabout to diligence itself. Naturally, everyone who heard it just stared at him.

"I know."

Only Enkrid answered quietly, and went back to swinging the sword.

Magroon watched him and found it genuinely strange.

Going to die tomorrow?

Magroon might. The curse worked that way. It started young and wore you down slowly. His had progressed faster than most. That was why there were things he needed to leave behind. His entire life could be called an effort toward that end.

A life spent leaving his mark on Zaun.

That was Magroon Zaun's existence.

But even so, Magroon had never run a schedule this brutal. And Enkrid had been like this from inside the city.

Every single day, the same dense, grinding effort at an intensity Magroon himself wouldn't attempt. The things this man did without blinking were things Magroon couldn't begin to imagine doing. It was impossible not to find that strange.

"Magroon, free for a round?"

In the evenings Enkrid came looking for him. In terms of skill, Magroon knew winning would be difficult. Already knew. Even throwing everything in, that was a wall that couldn't be cleared.

That Rem was something, but when it came to pure sparring, this one was more.

Magroon spoke harshly but was quick to acknowledge things. That was one of his greatest strengths, and it was what had opened his eye for pulling apart techniques, letting him pick up new ones faster than others.

Magroon was known for a natural talent for absorption.

But this one is slow.

He had seen no shortage of geniuses. Growing up in Zaun, you couldn't avoid it.

None of them had talent as dull as the man in front of him. And yet this man was the more remarkable one. Magroon believed that.

"Anytime."

Clang.

Swords met and the spar began. After a short exchange, the winner was Magroon. That was the first reason he found Enkrid remarkable.

"I lost."

Enkrid knows how to lose.

"Yeah."

Magroon nodded. Then Enkrid asked, "Anything you can tell me?"

"A few things."

Magroon spoke in a flat, measured way, going over what he had seen and felt. Enkrid asked follow-up questions, turned them over, and nodded.

Everything else aside, there was no getting around it. Knowing how to lose, and the attitude Enkrid showed right now, those were real skills, whatever his level.

Open your heart and fully open your eyes.

He asked for help from someone below him in order to learn even one thing. Not groveling, not flattering, not angling to please.

Just sincerity. He listened properly, asked properly, sought properly.

Was this kind of exchange normally possible with someone weaker than you?

Not easy. Truly not easy. He had never seen it in Zaun.

Usually, the one who had gone further pulled the one who hadn't. That was the normal order.

In Zaun, where competition was the baseline, that was even more pronounced.

But Enkrid did it. He knew how to lose. He opened his ears to his own shortcomings, acknowledged them, and took them in.

How could that not be strange?

Magroon wasn't the only one who felt it. Odinkar was the same. Grida went without saying.

Ragna came at Enkrid with deliberate ferocity.

"If you half-heartedly hide your specialty and look clumsy doing it, that's where it ends. Don't you know that? If you don't, then we go again. Again!"

Ragna was burning in a way he hadn't before.

If Sinar had been watching, she would have called it the Igniculus, the time when the Spark catches.

Enkrid didn't waste a single stretch of that journey.

He kept at it the whole time they rode. And since there were no safe roads or checkpoints out this way, the occasional Demon Creature or Magic Beast that turned up made for a good sparring partner and Offering.

Watching the others fight was studying, and reinforcing what he had learned by fighting himself was just as good.

That was how things stood as the mounted journey neared its end.

Technique, craft, physical ability, tactical thinking, strategic planning, judgment and reasoning, situational response, decisiveness, boldness.

Enkrid knew that everything had to come together for any of it to matter.

Come together.

What did he need to do for that?

Dozens of images and memories flashed through his mind. His thinking opened wide in the space between recall and deliberation. The process of finding answers in old memories compressed itself, and he arrived at a conclusion in a single stroke, reaching the endpoint.

The hands that grilled the jerky.

It rose up from a quiet corner of the memory library, shy and half-hidden.

From that same shy memory came Aetri's hammer strikes, Frog's hands working beside them, the Giant grown into a capable merchant, the shop owner making marmalade, the craftsman stitching shoes.

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