WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 702: Monsters and Talent

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The man who looked like Odinkar had come here on his master's orders.

The master's words had been simple.

"Go and kill her."

Why? No need to know. The master was a god. Obeying a god's words was only natural for a follower.

And killing one little girl, was that really so difficult? He had set out with a light heart.

His real work would come after all of this was done. In that sense, this errand was no different from luring a child out of the city slums, the kind who ran errands for the Thieves' Guild and ended up losing a hand or a leg, fated to become a pickpocket or a beggar.

That was how easy it was, and how little it mattered.

Finding a single test subject, he could have sent any of his underlings for that.

A small flame of resentment flickered inside him at being handed something so beneath him.

Was he not meant for greater things? So why this?

'Impious.'

He scolded himself. He was a follower. He owed his god loyalty.

Even if it was not visible on the surface, the master surely had a grand design behind all of it.

That was what a god was.

A god tested faith by stripping away wealth and killing children. A god watched to see if you still believed even as boils covered your body and you drowned in an ocean of agony. Some might call that a warped hobby, but to the man, it was faith.

Coming back to this insignificant task: the child resisting changed nothing.

He had a pack of mutated Demon Creatures at his back, and he himself worked with poison.

A resisting child could simply be subdued.

One knight stood in the way, but that too should have been nothing.

"That my poison could be resolved so easily..."

The man shook his head, ready to say something to the fool making a show in front of him, but the words were cut off.

A tremendous noise tore through the pouring storm.

Bang!

Someone had swung a sword and split the air open.

A greatsword cleaved through a Scaler, a Demon Creature whose armored hide alone made it comparable to the follower himself.

More precisely, the Demon Creature had lunged for the woman's back, but the one gripping the greatsword spun easily and swung, and that was that.

The man holding that sword was poisoned.

'Why is he unharmed?'

Knights were monsters. He knew that. Which was exactly why he had scattered poison and sprayed the compound that melted flesh down to the bone.

Roar!

The rain's roar filled the brief silence carved by the sword. It looked ready to flood.

Water flowing in from the room had pushed into the corridor and lapped at their feet. That should have been a nuisance, but Ragna kicked through it without care, shifted his footing, and swung the greatsword in both hands.

Thud, slash, crack!

Two Owlbears that had charged blindly at him and one black-scaled Scaler split apart and sprawled across the floor.

In the flooded corridor, the Scaler's black eyes spun and spun before going still. Even with its body split in two it had thrashed with stubborn vitality before dying.

The thing rolling its eyes twitched what remained of its legs, then stopped.

Right in front of it stood the monster with the greatsword, holding the blade one-handed without a care and rotating the other arm in lazy circles.

He was checking whether his shoulder had stiffened.

"What was the drug?"

The monster with the greatsword asked the woman beside him.

"Nothing special. It looked like a crude nerve toxin, so I gave him an antidote I'd already made. One look and I could tell it was nerve paralysis poison, probably extracted from snakes. You take a few vipers, draw out the venom, introduce small amounts into something like a goat or a camel, and the blood develops a resistance. That becomes your base. But would you even follow if I explained it?"

The target, the woman, stopped talking and looked up. Those red eyes held no pride in what she had done. Her tone said it was nothing.

"That's impossible!"

The follower cried out. He had refined this poison multiple times right up until recently. How could she possibly have an antidote?

The nerve paralysis poison's formula had only been developed last month.

What the woman had said made no sense.

"What's impossible about it?"

the woman asked.

"You could not have made an antidote without knowing my poison."

And the woman spoke as casually as snapping a flower off a roadside stem.

"What's so special about a poison made through the same crude methods everyone uses?"

Right. To make her words make sense, one hypothesis was required.

The poison he had refined over decades, a lifetime of research, would have to be, to that woman, nothing but a clumsy beginner's formula.

Meaning his life's work would have to be just one passing theory among many to her.

Did that make sense?

If it did, that woman was a monster among monsters.

To the follower, she was more monstrous than the one holding the greatsword. That was how it looked to him.

"Die."

The follower's eyes burned with boiling envy. He had to kill that person right now. He did not know why, but a sense of mission surged up inside him.

He drew out a new poison. This one caused hallucinations, a frenzied euphoria, and death in the throes of it.

If they were outside, the storm would have scattered it, but that was their bad luck.

The follower rubbed the powder between his palms. It crumbled into finer particles and spread through the air.

A different poison. Nothing could stop this one. He muttered to himself as he released the toxin powder.

"You just keep wasting your time. And what happened to your face? You had surgery, didn't you?"

Ann reached into the bag she always carried, the one wrapped three layers deep in oil-treated leather, made for her by a former Border Guard Standing Army seamstress with exceptional stitching skills, paid in gold coin. She pulled something out, placed one tablet in her own mouth, and put another into Ragna's.

The monster with the greatsword, despite having perfectly functional arms and hands of his own, accepted it without complaint.

The follower found even that unbearable to watch, unbearable enough that the calling to kill them, especially the smaller monster, flared back to life.

The powder poison spread, but both of them were fine. No flush to their faces, no reddening of the eyes. Not even an ordinary cough.

When the powder poison failed, the man threw a liquid vial. The same compound as before, a substance that burned through armor made of Magic Beast hide and right down to the bone. Human skin it would dissolve to vapor.

He sprayed the compound through the air while throwing a Short Spear with his other hand.

His augmented muscles matched a knight's raw strength. In theory. But trying to match a knight through physical power alone was a foolishly naive idea.

The follower knew that. Which was why he used Short Spears coated in poison.

He still had three of the short-handled throwing spears at his hip, the ones he had modified for close-range throwing. He had started with five, thrown one from the window and one after entering.

The monster swept the Short Spear aside with the greatsword like a fencing blade and stepped clear of the falling compound. All while keeping the other monster in his arms.

"That son of a..."

The follower screamed, losing his composure. His heart hammered and his vision went red. He had to kill them right now, especially that small monster.

More than a dozen Demon Creatures rose out of the dark and charged. Scalers modified with bat wings ran along the ceiling of the corridor above.

'The dangerous one is the small monster. The one with the greatsword I can kill somehow.'

He understood immediately that this was a delusion. The moment the greatsword moved, it moved at a speed his eyes could not follow.

Bang! Bang!

The sound of tearing air rang out back to back. Four Demon Creatures that had charged were ripped apart and sent flying.

The follower froze mid-throw, arm stretched back with another Short Spear in hand.

"...You absolute monsters."

Not quite the right thing to say for someone who had rebuilt his own body and replaced his face through surgery, but given his circumstances, it was understandable.

He had abandoned what it meant to be human, living among Demon Creatures, because he wanted to become a superior specimen. More honestly: he had wanted to close the gap on the talent of so-called geniuses and taste superiority over them.

And now two monsters who calmly negated everything he had built stood in front of him.

Watching beings who had not abandoned their humanity surpass him through talent alone brought a self-loathing he had never felt before.

'Why? Why? I gave up being human, so why?'

The Demon Creatures he had brought should have given even a competent knight serious trouble, and with his poison added on top, they should have been enough to kill.

'Not even close.'

The monster with the greatsword protected the smaller one and cut down every last Demon Creature as if it were nothing, then brought the sword down on him as well.

After that one first glance at Ann, the follower had never once managed to keep her properly in his sight. The monster with the greatsword had not allowed it.

The end was no different.

He came straight at the follower, brought the greatsword down, and pulled back. The line of movement kept the woman shielded behind him the whole time.

The monster's retreat was faster than his advance.

There was nothing left hidden, but it would not have mattered if there had been. That man had not dropped his guard for a single moment, right to the last.

"Grk."

The greatsword split his skull, and the poisons that had been balanced within his body ran wild, tearing through his organs and devouring him from inside.

As a result, the corrosive poison would kill him before the sword wound did.

Before the last candle went out, he understood why the calling to kill the small woman monster had risen up inside him.

'She threatens the master.'

Talent too exceptional is frightening. And that woman looked to have exactly the kind of talent that could undo what the master had prepared.

Thoughts at the moment of death cannot be passed on to anyone. He simply died.

"You all right?"

Ragna stepped back from the bodies of the dead Demon Creatures, wiping the greatsword's blade as he asked. Looking at it, the nicks and dents were plain to see. The edge had taken damage.

The Demon Creatures had been entirely poisonous in their bodies. One of them had blood that matched the compound thrown by the man mimicking Odinkar.

A substance that burned through anything it touched.

Having an antidote was one thing, but contact still damaged skin and caused wounds on the spot. That should have been dangerous.

Ragna had simply watched the angles the blood would spatter and dodged every drop.

A few droplets of the compound had caught his upper garment. That was all.

The Arming Doublet he wore over his shirt, reinforced with quality Magic Beast hide, was sturdy enough on its own to serve as armor.

Ideally iron plating would be layered over it, but this had held.

A few holes had opened up in that armor. The blade was a little nicked from cutting through Demon Creatures soaked in poison.

"Other than feeling a bit queasy, I'm fine."

Ann answered. As she spoke, she replaced the three layers of cover over the bag, a bag that could only be called a masterwork.

Roar.

In a storm like this, anything inside would not be damaged. The bag had been made to keep out every drop of water even when fully submerged. A storm was nothing.

"I think we should go to the captain."

Ann said.

There would be noise outside too, but she had no way of knowing. Even Ragna would have had trouble picking out any particular sound through a storm like this.

Crack!

Lightning kept striking one after another. Ragna walked slowly with Ann behind him.

He was on guard against any enemy he might not have noticed yet.

"Are you protecting me?"

Ann asked. Ragna said what was in his mind, directly. He was not a man for pretense or lies.

"You won't die before I do."

Ann's face went slightly red.

Was that a confession?

* * *

Enkrid stood with the Zaun family head in front of him and behind him the fastest swordsman he had ever seen.

That swordsman's name was Alexandra.

And wedged between them was the foreign element named Schmidt.

An Empire man with a fast sword and the scent of spellwork about him.

"What in the world is going on here?"

Schmidt said it soaking wet as a drowned rat.

Drenched through, hair plastered across his face, he had not even thought to push it away. His bewilderment was genuine.

'If this is an act.'

Schmidt might as well have been the finest actor on the continent.

Setting aside a knight's instincts, that was from the heart.

Enkrid asked the family head.

"Why did Milestia die?"

He was asking 'why.' He did not know all the details, but he had gathered enough to sense that her death had been planned.

With that meaning behind the question, he asked why she had died, and the family head, sharper than appearances suggested, caught it immediately and answered.

"She died to draw out that situation."

The family head answered and turned toward Enkrid.

Roar.

The rain, like hammered iron, had not let up. Lightning cracked and struck again, unsettling those who carried steel.

A stray bolt could kill you. Normally during this season in Zaun, fighting with iron weapons was forbidden.

The geography of the basin, combined with lightning's attraction to metal, meant that with genuinely bad luck, you could die struck by a bolt.

"May I ask a favor?"

the family head said. Grida's suspicion had centered on the family head, that he had, for some unknown reason, betrayed the family and was orchestrating all of this.

"Yes."

Enkrid answered plainly.

"If I happen to die, I would ask you to handle the aftermath. My successor..."

He stopped and drew closer. The family head brought his face beside Enkrid's ear and finished what he was saying.

Enkrid heard it and nodded.

"I'll do that."

"Thank you."

"It's nothing."

"That Ragna came at this time, and that this friend came with him, that must be our good fortune."

In the middle of that near-private exchange with the family head, Alexandra spoke. She glanced briefly at those standing off against each other in the downpour. There might have been longing in that look, but to Enkrid's eye, it held nothing but fighting spirit.

She added.

"Even if it isn't, well. Nothing to be done about it."

True. Enkrid agreed, on the part about nothing being done about it.

'The family head is not an enemy.'

Grida had suspected otherwise, but Enkrid judged it differently. Looking at it from the outside with a wider view, it became clear.

'The family head already has the most influence without doing a thing. He has no reason to make a move.'

And if the intention was to destroy the Zaun family, there was even less need for any of this. He could simply call them in one by one in secret and have them killed.

Odinkar's disappearance was also likely the family head's doing.

More precisely, it was probably not a disappearance but a request, or an order, to vanish.

Odinkar had said his reason for coming to Border Guard was the family head's order, and if he had not left on his own, only one possibility remained.

Much was still unclear, but Enkrid could piece this much together from guesswork alone.

'Well, there is the possibility the family head got caught up in some cult and did something strange.'

But would someone who had risen to become a knight be so easily swayed by others? People who wielded Will as their weapon?

'The odds are too low.'

Of course, there could be some unknown reason why the people standing in front and behind him had become enemies.

But even that did not matter much. It was why he had followed alone this far.

The one who had called out loudly to the family head earlier stepped forward.

His name was Lynox. He had the most complaints about the family head's conduct, but he had not betrayed the family.

The reason he had called out to the family head was to ask him to do something about the situation.

He had just barely managed to calm the two groups that had split apart and were working themselves up to fight.

"Damn it all. Anyone who draws a sword at someone on their own side gets their skull caved in. I mean it. Don't fight. Understood? No warning. Not joking either."

Was he even listening to himself.

His words were a mess. Still, the meaning got through, and the two divided groups did not come to blows right then.

Lynox, having settled them, walked over and said.

"Heskal stabbed Grida."

Enkrid watched Lynox arrive through the downpour, all six swords wrapped tightly in cloth. To guard against lightning, no doubt.

He had probably been in his room quietly working out how to spar despite the lightning when things suddenly erupted. He had likely been attacked as well.

There were scrapes on his cheek and shoulder. Dark blood had beaded in those cuts.

The family head answered Lynox's report.

"I see."

"Now is not the time to be calm about it. Andante is dead too, I was told. I was attacked myself. Some of them are saying Heskal would never do that, but Heskal killed Jeri, Iben, Royce, and Fail. And a few people followed him. What are you going to do about it? Tempe."

The family head's name was Tempest. Tempe was what only friends called him.

Lynox was personally a friend, so the nickname was not out of place.

Tempest Zaun weighed what he needed to do, between what he had anticipated and what had gone beyond his expectations.

"We find the enemy."

"And then?"

Lynox asked.

"Fight."

Things had happened. Now there was only what came next.

Enkrid nodded at the family head's measured answer. He was right.

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