WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 712: Reducing the Errors

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Countless lines were drawn, erased, and drawn again through the Ruagarne-style Tactical Sword.

'Make my body into a single blade.'

Tactics were a tool of swordsmanship. That was how you cut through a battlefield.

Through restraint, he concealed every trace of himself, every flicker of Will, everything, and ran on the strength of his trained body alone. That was how he found the next target and drove the Three-Iron through.

Pulling his left foot outward would have given the thrust more force, but that kind of luxury was not available now.

So he kept his stride narrow and instead drew on the rotational force wrung from his twisting waist.

He compressed the elasticity of every muscle in his body, let it burst outward, and layered Will on top.

The blade drove expertly through the Scaler's scales, past the jaw, and carved through the crown of its skull.

Thwack. Crunch.

Blood and brain matter followed the blade as he yanked it free, but this was ground battered by a storm. Whatever clung to the steel was wiped clean almost instantly.

CRACK!

A bolt of lightning struck nearby and split the air apart. The world, already blurred to gray lines by the rain, went white. For a moment it was as though the blinding light had stolen his sight entirely.

Enkrid stopped briefly and let his senses go dull.

Moving was difficult right now. Everything in his field of vision shook as if an earthquake had rolled through.

Still, stopping was no excuse to waste time.

Every day he gave his best, never letting any of it pass as just another day, but right now he needed to use every second with even greater density than usual. So that was what he did.

'Minimize movement.'

In that short gap, he replayed the process of killing the Demon Creature moments ago.

Had he wasted time getting to the target?

The result: one of the younger fighters, a kid mixing Eil Karaz style Martial Arts with swordsmanship, had been caught by telekinesis for just a moment.

That alone had nearly cost the kid their life.

He had seen a winged Scaler lock onto the child and plunge toward them in a dive.

Riley's thrown dagger had knocked it away, but the young swordsman's arm was raked open.

It was deeper than a rake, deep enough that blood ran freely, and since the Demon Creature's claws were likely laced with some poison, the child's movements had gone sluggish afterward.

Not going to die, but the count of usable fighters had dropped by one. Let this repeat enough times and their side would eventually be pushed back.

Put it plainly.

'Nearly died.'

A child becoming a corpse, face-first in the mud and filth of storm-battered ground. It had not happened, but his mind had already pictured the moment on its own.

That was not acceptable.

Enkrid had no intention of letting anyone standing behind him die.

So what did he have to do?

"Ask the question. Then find the answer."

That was what the Ruagarne-style Tactical Sword said.

The rain roared and fell in curtains, reopening the black-and-white world. He closed his eyes and saw with his ears.

There was only one answer to the question of "how."

'Reduce errors.'

No one was perfect. Even reducing errors would not be enough.

What then? Shorten the path and buy time. Give everyone room to breathe.

What did moving in the shortest possible path require?

'Plot the points.'

Then connect them by the most direct route.

Like walking a crumbling cliff face, running the very edge of what was possible.

Crunch.

His ankles flexed smoothly and pushed off the ground. The soles of his boots sank into the sodden earth. The wet mud displaced by each step compressed and packed together, forming a solid base.

Enkrid sprinted toward the first point he had marked.

If someone had looked down at the battlefield from above, they would have seen the fluid, curving lines he had drawn before straighten into direct ones.

'Tap lightly whatever crosses the path.'

Only what actually blocked him got shoved aside, struck, or cut.

Three-Iron in his right hand, Penna in his left, he moved forward with small tapping blows. He felt the flow of the battle through his body. Instinct picked the next target. He turned toward it. As he did, he drove the Three-Iron sideways almost casually, without looking.

Thud!

The tip caught the elbow of a Scaler raising a black spear. Enkrid kept moving and ran, blade trailing.

CRACK!

Even the finest edge in the world did not cut by merely touching flesh. These were Scalers, Demon Creatures armored in hard scales. But Enkrid kept thrusting and cutting.

How? By forcing it through with raw strength.

Which meant it was less a cut and more a tear.

He drove the blade into the region near the elbow, did not pull it free, and ripped through by force. The severed edge was ragged, naturally, and the pain was twice what a clean cut would have brought. Also natural.

SSSSSSSS!

The Scaler shrieked. The shriek carried a warning, an enemy is here, and every Demon Creature in range turned its head. But naturally, Enkrid had already vacated the spot.

He was still running, both swords hanging loose at his sides.

KRROOOOM.

The storm soaked his swords and his entire body without pause. At least that kept him from being drenched in blood.

Whether it was Assimilation or simply the wind being too violent, the driving gusts seemed to pass straight through between his ribs. It felt surprisingly cool.

'Or maybe it's just satisfying to be doing this myself.'

The thought passed through him without slowing his hands and feet at all.

Thud, ping, thunk, crunch.

To someone else it would have been noise, but to Enkrid each sound left a clear impression in his mind. He was seeing through hearing, moving, and steadily cutting down the Demon Creatures with extraordinary abilities, those were the sounds it made.

And that alone was already changing the battlefield, the way a river changes course.

Could a single person shift the flow of a river? Place enough large stones one by one, dig persistently, carve out a channel, and perhaps. People like that existed.

The time needed for something like that was days at minimum, months or years at most.

But a knight was a disaster, and a disaster could open new channels in a battlefield river in very little time.

The way terrain shifts when the earth moves. The way earthquakes carve new paths. A knight could do the same.

The way Enkrid was doing it now.

SHREEEEEE!

The Sorcery snake floating overhead cried out. Its voice blanketed the entire field. Hearts pulsed in rhythm with the wail.

'Pressure from a higher Demon Creature.'

Just the cry sent a crawl across the skin, made you feel you had to spin around right now, made every fine hair stand on end.

Formless fear, reasonless dread, demanding a reaction from every part of the body.

Tremble. Be afraid.

Naturally it did nothing to Enkrid. And no one here would crumble from this alone. But there would still be some ill effect.

Right on cue, Riley shouted from somewhere behind, voice full of venom. His shout carried over, and his shape came into view. He was far off, but distance did not matter for sight, not with this kind of vision.

That was one advantage of hearing-based sight. There were drawbacks too. The world was black-and-white, nothing but outlines and achromatic shapes. The swollen veins that rose on a neck when someone screamed, those he could not see.

Not that he needed to see to imagine it. That was well within range.

"Anyone losing steam, catch your breath!"

Riley was definitely shouting that with thick veins standing on his neck.

"Wuhoho!"

Anahehra's cry from somewhere far off said the same thing.

These were people holding a line against a wave of Demon Creatures pouring in. They could not hold it forever.

'Conserve stamina. Fight to the very end.'

In that respect, Riley was an excellent Lieutenant. He fought on one leg from the start, so his stamina burned at twice the rate of anyone else. Which meant even in something this unfamiliar, he already understood that fighting like this would exhaust him into the ground.

So he would be pacing himself.

'Hold on.'

Enkrid had not slowed his stride, had not lifted his head, and yet he felt a gaze on him.

That gaze was violent and heavy with killing intent.

Beyond the black-and-white world the storm painted, the Demon Creature serving as the Sorcery Medium was staring at him fixedly. The Medusa's gaze. He could feel its pressure without using his eyes at all.

'A creature that would never dare charge anything but a knight.'

So it pressed with its gaze alone instead.

High-ranked Demon Creatures used techniques similar to a knight's Pressure on instinct. Toward anything they considered prey, they planted fear.

They made humans, made intelligent races, freeze up like frogs before a snake.

The cry of the Sorcery snake wailing overhead was likely part of the Pressure the Medusa wielded.

The Cursed Ground would be full of creatures like that.

That was why every intelligent race had been forced to fight and hold on, rather than conquer it.

So was he afraid? Not at all.

Someday he would face every Demon Creature that lived inside the Cursed Ground.

If a dream were easy to reach, it would not be called a dream. Enkrid's dreams had always been hard to reach and looked impossible from the outside. That was just how they looked.

'Cut them all down.'

Simple and straight, that goal left no room for minor doubts to wedge their way in.

He felt a fresh appreciation for how remarkable Heskal was, something that landed in his chest with new weight.

Using the Medusa not as a direct combatant but as a Sorcery Medium, that tactic alone was something.

'A more efficient placement.'

A strategy that slowly ground away at stamina.

Heskal was sharp, no question.

How many had he killed at this point? Enough that counting had stopped meaning anything, thrusting and cutting without pause. He had been using Will sparingly, building up the numbers quietly, without unleashing any Pressure or explosive momentum.

Right now his field of perception was twice what his eyes alone would have given him.

So he could read an opponent's movement before instinct even sent a warning.

'Skilled.'

Someone had watched what he was doing and set a net. Marking points and moving through the Demon Creatures, he realized eight archers were positioned on all sides with him in their sights, and even through the storm, dozens of arrows hung in the air, their tips black.

Among them was a single "human" wearing a helmet, dressed in thin iron plate that gave off a faint gleam even through the rain, whatever material it was.

Looking at the situation alone, he had seen the bait and run straight into the net like prey.

The fact that he had only spotted this now, at the outer edge of his hearing-based vision, meant this was not a hastily thrown-together trap.

Could be wrong, but that was what it felt like.

* * *

"Didn't we say he was an ordinary knight-level force?"

Dmuel's top disciple could see Enkrid's movements, thanks to the Demon Creature's eye embedded in his forehead.

Heskal had no such eye, so he could not read Enkrid's presence or follow his movements visually, but he knew Enkrid had been working on something. The moment Enkrid vanished from a spot, the Demon Creatures with extraordinary abilities began dropping one after another. Following the cause and effect, reading the current situation was not difficult.

Being farther back and observing the battlefield also made it easier to grasp the whole picture.

'Stand close and you see the tree. Stand back and you see the forest.'

A woodcutter only had to fell the tree in front of him, but a forest keeper looked at the whole forest and cut only what was needed.

In that way, Heskal was closer to a forest keeper.

"I was surprised too," he said.

"Nothing is going the way we expected."

"The opponent is the Zaun. This much depth is exactly what you'd expect from them."

"The depth doesn't seem to be coming from the Zaun."

That made it all the more surprising. The fact that the curse-like illness had not spread further was already one thing.

'Enkrid of the Border Guard. You fight well.'

That was the more remarkable thing to Heskal.

It was the sort of thing that should have drawn open admiration, but Heskal only opened his mouth in his usual composed manner.

"I have something prepared. It was meant for Lynox, but it should be more than enough for this."

Heskal spoke. The eye embedded in the disciple's forehead blinked twice. With each blink, the perspective it provided shifted. The gaze turned toward the family head and Alexandra.

"Are you going to leave those two alone?"

The words were stripped of all context, but Heskal understood at once. This battlefield had come from a picture in his own mind from the start.

"This hasn't even drained their strength yet. The ones who should be weakened by their chronic illness are still standing fine."

"That is impious. Are you blaming the power of the divine?"

"That's not what I mean."

I expected the Zaun to manage this much.

Milestia was killed before coming here specifically to prevent this, and still they endure.

Well. Things never all go as planned. If it had been that simple, none of this would have been necessary.

"Now it begins."

Heskal spoke and tilted his head up to look at the sky. The dark clouds and the driving rain made it nearly impossible to keep his eyes open.

Unless you had plucked a Demon Creature's eye and pressed it into your own forehead, looking at the sky properly was out of the question.

Perhaps that was something to be grateful for.

"Huu."

Heskal had just said it was only beginning, and yet he exhaled a long breath.

There was something bitter buried in that breath, but Dmuel's top disciple would not have heard it.

The eye was extraordinary. The ears were human.

The disciple could not leave his position, so those who would move were already decided.

Part of the picture in his mind had been damaged, but the overall frame was intact. Heskal looked ahead. Nothing had changed. Victory was his.

"Do you wish to obtain divine power? Then be faithful. Heskal of the Zaun."

"I know."

Heskal said it and moved his feet. It was his turn to step forward as well.

"Have your master give us what was prepared."

"One Death Knight is enough to cut down that family head and everyone standing at his side."

"That is your opinion. Command of this battle is mine."

Andante had become a knight returned from death. Would that be enough to kill Alex alone?

Hard to say.

"If we still lose even after you've come out to guard your master, you won't be keeping your life either."

"If I'm still alive after losing this battle, I'll hang myself of my own accord."

The line about hanging himself if they lost was genuine.

Heskal meant everything he said. And that was something he had learned from the family head.

'Whatever you do, you must do it with full sincerity.'

Even if you set out to deceive someone, you had to put sincerity into it.

Watching the family head's creed and the way he lived, Heskal had come to understand something that became the foundation of his swordsmanship.

Even a sword that deceives must be driven with sincerity.

He did not expect his sword to work on the family head. So where would it go?

The answer was already set.

'I'm sorry.'

Ragna. The prodigal son who had returned. Kill him first, and even the family head's stone-like heart would waver.

That would cloud his judgment. It would create an opening to push this side into the advantage.

In step with four Demon Creatures moving to occupy the family head, Heskal went looking for Ragna.

By coincidence, or something close to it, Ragna had already started walking at the same moment.

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