A Knight who Eternally Regresses - Chapter 713

WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 713: Against the Waves

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The moment Lynox felt an invisible force tighten around his body, he lightly knocked the two swords in his hands together.

He used the sword in his right hand as a brace and gave the one in his left a light tap.

Ching!

The faint metallic scrape spread like a sharp blade cutting through the tempest.

The small sound was swallowed almost instantly by the storm's howling, but the sound itself had never been the point. He was not trying to feel anything through his ears.

His specialty was vibration. The two swords, struck with Will channeled through them, sent out a pulse that only Lynox could perceive and read.

That pulse was the secret technique that had made him the finest scout in the Zaun family.

"Well, look at these bastards."

He found the three Scalers using telekinesis immediately. All three had their hands stretched toward him, and in front of them stood a large, thick-bodied Scaler blocking the way.

They worked in pairs, and their coordination was almost too clean, as if they had drilled it.

"Did you train them yourself, Heskal?"

Could someone actually hold a conversation with Demon Creatures? It was just a passing curiosity, and something told him he would never get an answer. A sudden premonition.

Lynox drove the sword in his right hand into the ground as if throwing it. It punched halfway into the earth with a thud.

He left it there, wedged in at an angle to serve as a makeshift sheath, then reached back and drew the third sword from behind his shoulder and hurled it forward with full force.

Whick.

The sword, no longer than a man's forearm, flew in a perfectly straight line. A storm could howl all it liked, but it had no say over a chunk of iron thrown by a knight's arm.

Crack!

The large Scaler snatched the thrown blade right out of the air. Its scales were dense and hard enough to inspire wonder on their own, but catching something that size, thrown from that distance, mid-flight, that was a different kind of remarkable.

"Nice try."

Lynox pulled his outstretched hand back.

Skritch.

The blade wrenched free of the Scaler's grip and returned to him. His sword came back when called.

Whoosh. Thwack.

The spinning sword flew back into his grip.

The telekinesis users kept at their tricks without pause.

He found the force coiling around him irritating, if not especially threatening.

A net tangled around your legs or arms did not stop you from moving, but that did not make it any less annoying.

Lynox threw the sword in his hand again. This time, though, he did not just throw it.

As it left his fingers, he left the first sword where it was in the ground and drew a new one instead, the sword from behind his right shoulder. It looked like an ordinary longsword at first glance, but a closer look revealed the edge had never been sharpened.

It looked like a practice blade. He let it hang low as he moved, the tip dragging along the ground.

Rrrk-rrrk-rrrk-rrrk!

He ran, and a long furrow opened in the earth behind him. The storm would erase it in moments, but that hardly mattered.

This time, the large Scaler did not try to catch the thrown blade with its hand. It blocked with the back of its hand instead. The edge bit into the skin but did not go through. It used its fist as a shield.

Sharp instincts, or just combat sense baked in from birth.

It stopped the sword with its left hand and then gripped the blade with its right. The intent was plain: this time, it would not let the weapon be called back.

But this time, the sword's owner did not call it back. He came running in instead.

Crack!

Throwing a sword and charging in behind it was one of Lynox's favorite approaches.

And closing the distance was not even the end of it.

The first thrown sword's name was Prey. The sword now in his right hand was Hunter.

Prey always does its best to flee from Hunter.

The blunt longsword traced a short arc and drove forward.

Clang! Boom!

Hunter existed to strike Prey, which was why it needed no edge of its own.

He swung Hunter into Prey from behind, catching the flat near the wide pommel, and the vibrations overlapped and detonated. Prey shot forward at twice the speed it had been traveling.

Boom!

It was an arrow the size of a sword blade, tearing through air and storm alike.

The large Scaler's head had been halfway in the blade's path. One side of it exploded, and the blood and flesh were swept away by the rain.

Prey had been aimed past the large Scaler all along, at the telekinesis-using one standing behind it. After punching through the back of the hand, it blew through that one's skull as well.

The Scaler that had tried to bring both hands together to block never got the chance.

With Hunter drawn, Prey would not return no matter how many times it was called. That was how the Inscribed Weapon worked, bound by a knight's oath, one of Lynox's own signature techniques.

Everyone had at least one move that did not translate well to sparring.

Lynox swung the other blade in his left hand, a matched paired sword, and cut through the neck of the Scaler with half its head still attached.

Crunch. Slice.

He had not put much force into it, yet it cut clean. Given the durability of Scaler bodies, that should have been impossible, but Lynox's swords had cutting power far beyond any ordinary blade.

Their weakness was that they broke often, even as Inscribed Weapons, but technique could cover for that.

He had even reworked his swordsmanship to build around what his weapons did best.

The defensive style of constantly deflecting the opponent's blade while his own edge ate into theirs had come from exactly that.

It was not a common approach even within the Zaun family, and not a common order of skill.

"Next."

Lynox said it aloud, sheathed Hunter, and held out his hand.

Sheathing Hunter brought Prey back. The blade responded to the Will in his palm, trembled, and flew back into his grip.

Prey had exactly one purpose: to be thrown, to return, and to be struck by Hunter. That was the full extent of what it could do.

The tip on this one, though, had been worked differently.

The very end of the blade was made from true silver, fitted separately and diamond-coated. It cost enormous effort to make, and not just anyone could do it. Strike it from the wrong angle and even that piece could shatter.

Lynox figured it did not matter. He only used it for thrusting and throwing anyway.

Prey was more honestly called a cudgel. Hunter was the sword. The whole approach was odd from the ground up, a procession of techniques that had long since abandoned anything resembling standard form.

Using the same method, he finished off the last two Scalers that had been trying to bind him, then cut back toward where he had left his sword in the ground and knocked a winged one out of the air with Prey as it went for the family head's back.

While he moved, Tempest Zaun was crushing three Demon Creatures outright with blunt, nameless swordwork, hammering them head-first with the flat of his blade and driving them into the mud. The owlbear's head and upper body sank knee-deep into the wet earth, then burst apart, the pieces swept off by the rain.

Lynox watched, then struck his swords together again.

Clang!

A narrow, concentrated pulse carried farther than a wide one. He sent it tight and sharp in Enkrid's direction and read the rough shape of things.

"I should have been over there," he said.

Looking at the trap Heskal had laid, the intent behind it was clear. Everything had been arranged to counter the specific techniques he carried.

Enkrid of the Border Guard. A promising one. Whether he had enough to push through a trap dug by that fox Heskal, that, Lynox genuinely did not know.

Whoooosh.

The rain held steady, but the wind had eased a little. The sheer volume of water coming down was still no joke, yet even this much was twice as manageable as before.

"What's ahead of us isn't easy either," Tempest said.

Lynox turned to look forward. Then something surged in the back of his throat, and he bent over and retched onto the ground.

Rain and wind together could not hide blood in bile.

"I won't last long," he said, smearing the mess with his boot.

The medicine Ann had given him was keeping his body functional, but it had a time limit. That was why he had pushed out ahead of Alexandra and Tempest on purpose, making himself the obvious target.

Showing off like that had drawn the ones with extraordinary abilities onto him.

His body had paid for it.

He had made it look easy, but every one of those Demon Creatures had been genuinely difficult.

Constantly sending out pulses to detect the ones sneaking up from behind had added to the strain.

"This won't be your grave, Lynox."

Tempest said it and settled into his stance. Four Scalers were walking toward them in the distance, measured and unhurried.

Crack!

Lightning split the dark and flooded the world white. A knight's eyes could see through most darkness, but the bolt brought everything into sharp relief, and the shapes of the Scalers ahead snapped into clear focus.

Four of them.

Black scales and red scales, split roughly half and half. In Lynox's experience, the higher the proportion of red, the stronger the extraordinary abilities.

Which meant these four were more trouble than anything he had faced so far. Every opponent until now had, at most, one arm's worth of red.

"Tempe. The time has come to keep a childhood promise."

Lynox had no gift for seeing the future, but he knew. Even if he survived this battle, there was no path out for him personally.

"You need time. Six months, and I can fix it. But the state of your body right now..."

That was what Ann had said after examining him and pressing one medicine after another on him.

He knew. He had known for a while.

Since Heskal's blade had found him, the decline had accelerated.

Fever. A dull ache behind the heart. Blood coming up as though something inside had torn.

Ha, looks like I'm done for. He had said it as a joke, but somewhere beneath the joke he knew this was the end.

What was left? Plenty of things, honestly, but right now all he could think of was a childhood promise.

That if one of them was going to die, it would be him before Tempest.

They had sworn it as friends, men who had spent most of their lives side by side from birth, who had once fought over the same woman.

"Go help Alex."

Tempest had no way to load his words with feeling, so he simply put the truth in them and spoke.

"I don't need it!"

Alexandra's voice carried across more than ten paces. In front of her, something like black soot gathered and coalesced, and from among the Demon Creature corpses a hand in black iron gauntlets began to crawl free.

A Death Knight.

It was the pinnacle of Necromancy, built from the corpse of a knight.

Even Death Warriors, which ranked well below it, were a nightmare for most people. A Death Knight was something past nightmare, terror given flesh and form.

"I go first. You're the family head."

Lynox said it again. Tempest's gaze touched his wife for just a moment.

She spoke.

"Trust me, Tempe. I'm Blitzkling. Lightning Blade."

There had been a time when Tempest could not even dream of matching her. A long time ago.

"Guard Lynox's back. I'll say it once more: this will not be your grave."

Hold on. That was the resolve that had to be made.

The family head believed every battle had a flow, and that the moment that flow reversed was the moment to decide things. So right now, it was time to hold on.

Four Scalers stepped up in front of Tempest and Lynox. Two carried short clubs; the other two had Katars fitted over both hands. A Katar was a weapon built around a horizontal grip, with a pointed blade and two parallel bars connected by a crossbar, designed to be punched and thrust forward.

Their weapons told the whole story. Both men had come through enough battles to read it at a glance.

Short weapons. Compact muscle layered dense over bone. The rain bounced off those scales as though the drops could not find purchase.

The attacks would lean on physical ability pushing near a knight's level.

And the weapons would almost certainly be poisoned.

"Ha."

Tempest steadied his breathing.

His wife trusted him. He owed her the same in return.

"Just watch my back. That's all, Lynox."

Far across the battlefield, a Medusa watched. Because of it, a portion of his Will had been held hostage since some time ago.

Tempest bowed his head. That was enough to avoid Medusa's gaze, keeping just the feet of his opponents in view was sufficient.

Learning various techniques had never come easily to him, even as a child.

What he did have was the strength to wield a heavy, direct blade. That had not changed.

Tempest Zaun's greatsword angled upward at a slant through the air. He was ready.

Lynox stepped in behind him to guard his back, and from somewhere among the four Scalers came a familiar voice.

Heskal, speaking from somewhere on the other side. It came through sorcery or some kind of spell, a voice carried through nothing.

"Tempe. These four are special Demon Creatures. They are chimeras built and rebuilt for the purpose of fighting knights. A genius of alchemy, a monster from a previous era, put seventy years of work into them."

An odd moment for an explanation.

"Keep them occupied. I'm going to kill your son. I don't know where you've hidden Odinkar, but I will find that child too."

Heskal had read part of the family head's mind. That was how he could reach into it and shake it.

Lynox felt a flicker of unease, just briefly, and glanced at the family head's face, but Tempest was unchanged.

Nothing surfaced. It was a deficit he carried, but in moments like this, that expressionless mask held without a crack.

The moment the voice dissolved in the air, all four Scalers launched off the ground.

Pak.

Lynox narrowed his eyes, avoided Medusa's gaze, and turned his back.

From here on, guarding his friend's back was his only job.

Even if his guts churned and the urge to retch came clawing up, he would swallow it down.

If he did not, his throat would be the next thing cut.

* * *

"Even as a child, you always had your eyes on what came next."

Andante had been one of Alexandra's oldest friends.

That friend had now refused the rest that death offered, risen again with black blood thick in her lungs.

No reason left. Only combat instinct.

Andante, that old friend, had turned away from love and children alike.

The only thing she had ever wanted was the next step, the next height to climb.

"What comes next? I can do more."

It was a dream that could easily curdle into something wrong. But for a Zaun, it was a dream that could be held.

Looking at her now, failure might be the honest word for it.

"One day I'll surpass you. Alex."

The one who had held her back was Alexandra.

No continent, no empire, nowhere in the world could afford to release a swordswoman born with killing instinct in her blood.

Andante had needed to cut down something with red blood at least once a month, and at minimum once every three months, she had needed to kill a person.

She had always hungered for it.

"Now you can kill to your heart's content. Andante."

Alexandra said it.

Hissssss.

The Death Knight, born from Demon Creature corpses, said nothing. Black soot filled the visor, and only black vapor poured from it.

Not even the rain and wind could dissolve it. The vapor pushed through the downpour and coiled around the helmet.

It was not a sight you would call mystical. It was the kind that locked your knees and planted dread straight through you.

When a knight dies drunk on omnipotence and a sorcerer deceives that death, the knight becomes a Death Knight.

And that knight then carries combat ability far exceeding what they had possessed in life.

This would be no easy fight. That much was certain.

This was the blade Heskal had prepared for Alexandra.

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