WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 706: Justification

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Heskal stood beneath a black Veil that blocked the pouring rain.

This was made with magic too, apparently.

Strange enough to marvel at, perhaps, but Heskal felt nothing in particular.

A storm was raging and the world ahead had gone gray. Weather bad enough to blind any line of sight, knight or otherwise.

Yet not a single raindrop fell on his shoulders. Oh, great and wondrous magic. Maybe he ought to say something like that, but Heskal was unmoved.

"So. Did it go according to plan?"

Another figure stood inside the black Veil.

Could this one even be called a person?

By Heskal's measure, no. What's more, the figure had never called itself a person either.

"It did," Heskal answered.

"Good. Then I will make a place for Zaun to stand. And I will become a god and lay down new rules over this land."

Heskal's gaze settled on the one who had spoken.

The skin was dull and flaking, like someone who would be dead soon. The facial muscles had necrotized, making the figure look grotesque. Cheeks sunken deep, eyes bulging as if ready to fall out.

Near the jutting cheekbones, patches of bare bone showed through.

No explanation was needed. The body was rotting.

The genius alchemist, Dmuel.

Word had once spread that half of every alchemist on the continent had learned from him at one point or another.

They had read the books he wrote. They had built their own craft on the foundations he left behind.

That was how old a ghost this was.

In other words, someone who should have died long ago was still alive.

Looking at him now made that plain.

"You have to be on the winning side to survive. Tempe."

Heskal murmured it inwardly.

How to live afterward was a problem for later. You had to be alive first before any of that mattered.

Right now, Zaun had no one with any command experience, and every single member was sick.

Victory and defeat are decided before the fighting starts. That was Heskal's conviction. In the middle of that thought, a rank and putrid stench hit his nose.

The smell of a rotting corpse was Dmuel's perfume. He took one step closer. If he came any nearer, Heskal would have to bolt out from under the Veil.

Simply standing close to that thing was dangerous. A symbol of power so aberrant it could claim godhood without shame.

"Your friend will lead."

Heskal, Lynox, Andante.

Three swords who represented Zaun.

Of those three, Andante had died long since and been reborn.

When a knight dies and comes back, what does that make them?

The alchemist, the mage who had stepped beyond all proper boundaries, had remade Andante as a knight reborn from death: a Death Knight.

The rain thinned, and through the Veil an army enduring the storm came into view. Scalers, Medusas, a mass of Owlbears, nearly a thousand of them.

A Demon Creature army.

Behind them stood a figure with its head bowed low, serpents hanging down like hair.

A mage who scattered plague with a wave of the hand.

A Sorcerer whose soul had been bound by that mage.

And those inside Zaun had been poisoned by the "seeds" Dmuel spread, leaving them weak and failing.

Heskal had taken the antidote. They had not. So this was a fight won before it began.

By now they would all be coughing blood or burning with fever. Some would be seeing things.

Lost in those visions, some would go mad. Others would burn long enough for the heat to cook their brain, and then they would simply die.

"The way my son died."

The disease Dmuel had spread would dry them out slowly. Break their spirit before they ever raised a blade.

"Why did you want that girl dead so badly?" Heskal asked.

Dmuel had declared himself on the path to godhood. For someone like that, the scheming he had spent on killing one girl was considerable. He had used the people he had won over in the hunter village, and he had used Sorcery.

Most of the power behind it was Dmuel's own, but knowing where to spend it and how to hide it had been Heskal's doing.

"She annoyed me."

Heskal wanted to ask why, but Dmuel had already turned away.

That was his signal for not answering.

Two of his disciples stepped forward in his place.

One of the three disciples had already been sent into Zaun and had failed. Not something Heskal knew from watching, he knew because the time to return had passed and no one came back.

Ragna had been at the girl's side, guarding her.

"Did Ragna cut him down?"

If so, Ragna might be poisoned and dead by now. Dmuel's disciple had the ability to make that happen.

"Even if he wasn't killed, he can't be walking around unscathed."

That meant one less fighter on the knight side. Heskal set aside the question of why Dmuel cared about the girl and mapped out a hypothetical battle in his head.

Victory was the obvious outcome.

* * *

Cough, cough, retch!

One of the Zaun men spat blood. The cloth clamped over his mouth turned red. When the coughing stopped, he pulled it away and stared at it.

"Am I dying?"

Grim words. Coming from a man who had just coughed up blood, they carried weight.

He had been ready to nod at whatever the answer was. If he was going to die anyway, wasn't dying after one more swing of the sword good enough?

Resolve sharpened. Will steadied itself.

And then Ann smacked him on the back.

Smack.

"Who's dying? A little blood came out, that's all."

An irritating thing to say when she was run off her feet. Even after the smack, Ann's hands kept moving. She was checking things all over the place, grinding herbs, mixing medicines.

The man had coughed up blood right after taking the medicine Ann had given him.

At some point, phlegm had started rattling in his throat and his breath had gone foul. After that, the will to do anything had drained away with each passing day.

Those days had dragged on long enough that he had quietly decided to head to the retirees' village, the place where people who couldn't hold out in Zaun ended up. He figured he fit right in.

He had thought that much, and then she told him it was a disease.

"Crybaby," said a friend behind him.

The man noticed that the strange sensation in his throat had thinned since coughing the blood out.

"So I'm getting better now?"

"You need a month of medicine. I can't mix it right now, but once that rain stops I'll get the ingredients and put it together. Come out."

Ann spoke without stopping and the man stepped back quietly.

She went person to person, either giving medicine or drawing a blade to cut through skin.

Some of them watched things like leeches come crawling out from under their own flesh.

What kind of disease is this?

Their eyes asked the question.

"It's not quite a disease, it's more like a curse. A curse mixed into a disease."

Ann said it as if it were nothing remarkable, which was itself remarkable.

The middle-aged man who had just had something leech-like pulled from his arm felt the same way.

A curse?

Curses were supposed to go away only when you destroyed the medium or killed the Sorcerer who cast them, weren't they?

"A healer fixes visible abnormalities. If you can see it, you can fix it. A curse and a disease are the same thing as far as the body is concerned, both cause physical change."

That was the kind of statement only a genius could make. Why? Because no alchemist could say that.

Not just the people being treated, Schmidt was shaking his head in disbelief.

"Remarkable. She thinks differently."

The look in his eyes said that once this was over, he would probably ask Ann to come along too.

Even in a moment like this, the imperial Talent Recruiter's eyes lit up at the sight of real ability. Professional spirit, or just a sense of duty?

Still, he had enough sense not to try anything right now.

Ann did not take long to identify the illness and deal with it.

A full day passed, and not a single person collapsed coughing blood. Not one burned with fever or started seeing things.

"You need to eat well and rest well. I'd like to tell you to hold off on using your bodies, but that's not going to happen, is it?"

Ann didn't address anyone in particular, but she said it, and then,

"It's not," Ragna answered.

"At least rest for whatever time is left."

Well, the part about resting was sincere. A sick body does not snap back into shape. So what Ann said was true and they all knew it.

Everyone found their own way to rest.

They fed every piece of firewood they could into the fireplace at the center of the manor and built a bonfire out front as well, to dry clothes and get some warmth.

Food was brought out and eaten where they sat, field-ration style. No one had the leisure to go into the dining hall and cook properly. Most of the Zaun family had gathered here, and there was barely room to sit.

Some caught a short nap. Others checked their weapons.

For these people, checking their weapons was a form of rest.

Enkrid checked his blade and pulled on the inner garment he had dried out, the one the Elf had given him as a gift.

Everything about it was fine except the feel against skin. Wearing it was like draping yourself in rough, scratchy leaves.

At first it had felt like it clung to him well, but that had changed as time passed.

"Can't ask for silk out here."

He knew that well enough, so he said nothing. It just wasn't the right fabric to wear next to the skin.

"That's that for now."

At some point Ann raised both hands. Sweat beaded on her forehead and dark circles had set in under her eyes. She looked like she had burned through everything she had.

"I'm going to die."

She said it and dropped flat where she stood. Anahehra slipped a pillow under her head before it touched the ground.

Where had that come from?

Lynox appeared from somewhere with a blanket and draped it over her.

Someone else told her to call out if she needed anything.

That if it came to it, they would do the cutting for her.

Without Ann, far fewer people would be standing here able to say anything at all. No one knew what trick Heskal had worked on his way out, but Lynox and everyone else had felt something go wrong in their bodies. The sickness that had been gnawing at them had accelerated, and an outsider named Ann had stopped it cold.

Heskal had killed Milestia to strip them of a healer. That much was clear.

One miscalculation on the enemy's part.

Ann had not died.

Maybe a little of that came down to the Boatman.

He had kept telling Enkrid to protect Ann.

Credit where it's due.

Enkrid made up his mind to tell the Boatman about this if they ever met again.

The sound that had started as a deafening crash, like the rain was drilling through the earth, had softened to a steady pour, and somewhere along the way the storm had stopped.

That did not mean the sun came out. The wind was still strong and thin rain still drove through the air, but the worst had passed.

"They're coming."

The family head said. Probably the small hours of the morning, if Enkrid had to guess.

He estimated the time silently and rose.

The family head spoke again.

"Everyone who can fight, come out."

Speeches are not a skill available to someone who cannot put feeling into words.

So the family head did not use words.

He was always someone who showed it through action.

He took up his greatsword and walked out. Watching that, Enkrid stood beside Ragna and observed him for a moment. Unlike his father, Ragna's feelings showed clearly on his face.

He was furious. Expressionless on the surface, yes, but the killing intent in his eyes was sharp.

"You're allowed to be angry," Enkrid said.

The Zaun family gathered one by one and moved out. Grida tried to fight with a hole in her stomach, and Ann looked at her and said, "You can knock that woman out right now if you want to." Grida had to stay behind.

Enkrid stood there with Ragna, watching the backs of people gathering and heading out one after another.

"Why would I be angry?" Ragna asked.

Enkrid felt a twinge of frustration.

"You can be honest with yourself."

He kept his voice mild. This one should have understood by now.

Standing beside him, the signs were obvious. Why hadn't Ragna taken Ilchul? He had said that was his purpose, and yet he was just standing there doing nothing.

It was plain as day.

"...What are you trying to say?"

Sometimes Enkrid looked at the people around him and felt the urge to pull his hair out. He never let anger show, but this was really something.

"Even if you were away, no one would have said a word about it."

"I'm fine," Ragna said.

"I don't think you abandoned your duty. But I also don't think one swing of a sword fixes everything."

Ragna said nothing.

"When you left here, did you really go off to enjoy yourself? Was that why the time felt lighter? Hazy? Thin? Did you waste it? Did you really enjoy any of it? Or were you just lost? Really? Looking straight at something and refusing to see it isn't being lost. That's turning away."

You regret things after they're gone, and the regret always arrives too late. It keeps the ones who are waiting in misery.

Enkrid knew, because he had lost things, that you had to move before the loss came.

Old memories surfaced. He pushed a little harder than he meant to.

"Your anger is justified," Enkrid said.

Ragna blinked once. Then he thought.

Am I angry?

He was.

The speech Enkrid had built up and then brought quietly back down had dragged in front of Ragna what he had been turning away from.

Someone had hurt his family. His home.

Ragna understood that now.

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