WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 689: Welcomed with Open Arms

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"Where's Audin? Didn't he come ahead of us?"

Magroon asked.

It was the same question Enkrid had been turning over in his head, so it made sense they landed on it together.

Audin was Odinkar's nickname. He and Magroon were as close as two people could be. Magroon's face went a shade darker.

"You all left together, so why are you asking me?"

Was there anything to read in the family head's expression or tone?

The truth or falseness of what he'd just said, for instance.

'Impossible.'

Enkrid didn't think the man was like an elf, incapable of lying.

What the family head said wasn't necessarily the truth.

But could it be called a lie, either?

'No.'

Nothing came through. That was the honest answer. Nothing came through, and it was precisely because nothing came through that he'd tried to read something hidden in the family head's words in the first place.

Completely unreadable? That was a first.

'Why?'

He ran what instinct and intuition had caught back through deliberate calculation. The process was brief. He was thoroughly used to it by now.

'I feel nothing.'

No worry, no suspicion, nothing. The family head's words carried no emotion at all.

"I sent you to bring back Ragna and you came back having had a grand time."

"Yes, it was quite entertaining to watch. So Odinkar didn't arrive. Is everything all right with the family?"

"Same as every day. What would be different?"

Enkrid felt like he was listening to an orchestra playing different melodies at once. Dissonance.

'Nothing wrong with the family.'

Yet outside, a sorcerer had blocked their path, a mage had attacked them, and they'd encountered a rare Demon Creature. Grida had said the Scalers themselves were a species no one had seen in this area before.

"And no trouble with the people traveling to and from the villages?"

The Zaun family kept ties with three settlements: a hunters' village, a retirees' village, and a brokers' village. People moved between those villages and the family estate constantly.

If something was wrong, they would have noticed it too.

"The way you keep pointing out problems tells me something happened on the road. And the way Magroon's face just tightened at the mention of Audin not arriving tells me it was serious. If it's something recent, the most likely thing would be a few village elders coming up here. Heskal handled their escort."

The family head seemed to look right past Ragna, Enkrid, and Ann entirely. Ann couldn't manage a single word under the strange weight pressing down on her, and Enkrid was busy observing.

'His words are still hard to read.'

But the family head's eye for detail was clearly not ordinary. A shift in expression and a handful of questions, and he'd already pieced the situation together and adjusted his answers accordingly.

And there was one person present who paid no attention to any of that and did as he pleased.

"I've come to take Ilchul."

Ragna announced his prodigal return.

The family head answered without surprise or confusion.

"You should know the method for taking it."

"I do. That's why I came while you're still alive. It seemed more meaningful that way."

To anyone hearing this without context, it would have looked like a son turning his back on every duty a person owed a parent. A scene of filial betrayal, plain and simple.

Yet in the Zaun family, this seemed ordinary. The family head replied without missing a beat.

"Right. That makes sense. Good that you came."

Was "good that you came" really the right response here?

The thought crossed Enkrid's mind, but it wasn't his place to step in. This was family business, a matter of the household.

"You crazy bastard, that was your purpose? What was it you said you were coming to get?"

A normal reaction, and it came from Grida. Magroon looked startled too, muttering "Where did Audin go, then," before turning to stare at Ragna.

It was clearly the kind of statement that warranted shock. Enkrid kept his mouth shut, knowing nothing of the specifics, and kept watching the family head.

The man stood before the gate in the fence and hadn't moved a finger.

Then at some point he placed a hand at his hip, and Enkrid missed that brief motion.

His attention had been pulled elsewhere for just a moment.

The family head shifted his Will, tensing the muscles of his left hand as though he might move it, and Enkrid caught it through raw instinct.

Perception born from a sixth sense.

"Sharp reflexes."

The family head said it and drew his sword. Not a single motion was stiff. It was like hair lifting in a breeze.

The swordwork was so natural you couldn't help but watch.

The sword left the scabbard without a sound and came straight for Enkrid's forehead.

Flinching would have been reasonable, but Enkrid didn't move.

He simply reacted the moment he judged the blade had crossed some line he'd drawn in his mind.

Ching.

The Three-Iron flew up out of its sheath. Speed that earned the name Flash. At the same time, he calculated dozens of paths the family head's sword might take.

Read and track the movement. Hundreds of attacks could branch from that single blade.

'If I try to calculate everything, I'll exhaust myself first.'

The shift to Wave-Blocking Sword was instantaneous.

The Three-Iron cut out like a bolt of light and sliced through empty air.

Clack.

The family head had already sheathed his sword. Enkrid spun his own blade back and slid it into the scabbard.

Ting.

Aside from that small sound, the two motions looked nearly the same, but...'I lost.'

Enkrid knew it was a defeat.

The family head hadn't fully extended his sword, hadn't swung it, yet Enkrid had swung his.

'And that was exactly what the opponent intended.'

Would a real fight be any different?

Fighting spirit boiled up. There were people who shrank the moment they met someone stronger, but Enkrid had clawed and crawled his way here through the company of people better than him at every turn.

Even after becoming a knight, he had never gotten drunk on omnipotence. He only enjoyed it, moved forward, and kept dreaming.

So there was no shrinking.

"One bout?"

Ragna wasn't the only one here who ignored the situation entirely.

Grida and Magroon, who both understood what "one bout" meant coming from Enkrid, had a brief and shared urge to throw these madmen back out the gate they came in.

The family head, for his part, let one corner of his mouth twist into something close to a faint smile.

Why only close to a smile? Because there was no feeling behind it.

"You brought an interesting friend, Ragna."

"He's the commander of the brigade I belong to."

"The brigade you belong to? Not you as commander, but someone above you?"

Under normal circumstances that should have sounded surprised, but the words were still stripped of emotion.

'More precisely, it seems like the emotion has been cut out entirely. Still, couldn't he just agree to a bout?'

An irreverent thought and a measured observation, running in parallel.

"Welcome. I won't refuse a spar, but looking at the state of things, you're not at your best right now. Shouldn't you rest first?"

"I'm at my best right now."

Enkrid said.

"You crazy bastard, do it later. We need to find out where Audin went first."

Magroon said, and Enkrid had no choice but to agree. That said, he didn't believe something had happened to Odinkar Zaun.

The logic was simple.

Was it possible to detain a knight of that caliber without any commotion?

Second, Odinkar had traveled the same road they did. If there had been a fight to kill or subdue him...'Could it really leave no trace?'

It couldn't. There was no spell or sorcery that could reattach a broken tree and make it look untouched.

"Spells pursue change, but that doesn't mean they can do everything. Audin would work miracles better than I ever could."

Something Esther had mentioned during a spar.

So how had Odinkar disappeared?

Only one explanation remained.

'He disappeared on his own.'

Enkrid drew a logical conclusion from minimal information.

Everyone else was rattled by the impossibility of it, by the back-to-back attacks and then the sudden calm the moment they entered Zaun territory. But viewed objectively, anyone could have traced the same line of reasoning.

"Come inside and explain the situation. Our guest is welcome too."

The family head spoke and turned inward. His footsteps were remarkably, almost eerily silent.

His frame was larger than Enkrid's, and still not a sound.

'Jaxon would be startled to see this.'

That was the only way to put it. A body that moved without disturbing the air.

The sword on his sword belt didn't rattle. The soles of his boots barely registered against the ground.

Facing him head-on had felt like standing before a mountain.

'Watching him from behind, he feels like a breeze you can't even sense.'

The thought came on its own as Enkrid followed.

"The family head is strong, isn't he?"

He asked as they walked. Grida scratched his head with visible agitation and answered.

"One guy says he came to take Ilchul, the other one says out of nowhere, one bout. Look at you two. Are you all insane? And what? Is the family head strong? Of course he's strong. Even three of me would lose."

Enkrid gave a small nod.

Three of Grida would mean he'd have to fight for real. Which meant he'd only win going for the kill.

Sparring made wins and losses clear, but that was because Grida didn't care much about winning or losing.

Magroon was the type who hated to lose, but if someone asked Enkrid to bet gold on a fight between Magroon and Grida...'He'd put it on Grida.'

Having faced them both firsthand, there was a clear gap. That probably explained why Magroon survived charging at Rem too.

If Rem had genuinely felt threatened, his axe would have split Magroon's head in two.

"An outsider?"

"Haven't seen one in a while."

"Did you see Heskal? He promised to watch my swordsmanship today and went off to work again. So petty!"

Enkrid glanced around as they moved and caught snatches of conversation.

The clan settlement was built in a basin and wasn't densely populated.

The people visible along the way numbered fewer than twenty.

One woman stood out. She wore armor made from thick iron plates split to cover her forearms, thighs, stomach, and chest.

'Taller than Teresa.'

Their eyes met. The woman tilted her head and grinned.

Humans and Giants were broadly similar in appearance aside from size, but up close there were subtle differences.

Giants had larger, more prominent features, and carried a kind of force that humans simply didn't have.

The way a human could always crush an ant underfoot without a second thought, a Giant carried that same feeling about humans.

"Wow."

The woman said. Grida noticed where Enkrid was looking, raised a hand in greeting toward her, and told him:

"Anahehra. Best-looking woman in our family, within her own species."

Judging people by their looks was something Enkrid generally had no interest in, but even by common sense, protruding cheekbones and jutting fangs weren't typically counted as the standard of beauty.

More than anything, her neck looked thicker than most men's thighs.

Her flattened ears did lend her face a certain something, at least.

"A Giant."

Enkrid recapped what Grida had said alongside what he'd observed himself.

"You catch on too fast. No fun teasing you."

Meeting with the family head seemed to have let Grida set some of his worry aside.

Something like, whatever happens, the family head would handle it.

The settlement was called a clan village, but the buildings were set wide apart, each with generous open ground, and at the center rose a spire that looked like it belonged on a castle.

Not a real castle, more of a manor, but the resemblance was there.

The family head led them toward that central building.

Along the way, he listened to Grida and Magroon's account of events and answered without a long pause.

"I believe he disappeared by his own choice."

Easy enough to see from the outside, perhaps, but when it concerned someone close to you, objectivity was hard to come by.

The family head managed it without effort.

"But why would Odinkar do that?"

Magroon asked, keeping pace beside the family head.

"That I don't know."

The family head answered plainly.

"Our guest seems to have already figured it out. Why didn't you say something?"

"I was going to once we were inside. Or if someone asked."

The family head glanced at Enkrid briefly, but Enkrid still couldn't read anything in those eyes.

'A personality made for keeping secrets.'

Enkrid thought it and followed behind.

"Who's come?"

A blond woman approached as they reached the entrance to the manor and asked. She wore an apron, but Enkrid's practiced eye caught that she carried two short swords tucked under her skirt.

Her ability was clearly not ordinary either.

Her gait alone, the lean muscle visible on her forearms, that was enough to tell.

"Our guest. And this one is my son."

"He's my son too, so I'd recognize him. You actually made it back? I thought you'd be lost and wandering forever."

The mother greeted her son after all this time apart.

In reality, not even a passing ant was shedding tears, and the woman who appeared to be Ragna's mother said it with a thin smirk.

"Finding the way is my specialty."

Ragna returned the greeting.

"Sure it is."

His mother raised a hand in welcome.

Ching.

With a sword drawn in that hand. Both hands, in fact, each holding a blade, which meant this could only be called a welcome with both hands raised.

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