A Knight who Eternally Regresses - Chapter 715

WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 715: You Dog

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"Do you know what separates a truly exceptional con man from the rest?"

Krais had said it out of nowhere.

After the day's work was done, whoever had free time would sometimes gather around a campfire to roast chestnuts or walnuts, and that was when it came up.

Just idle chatter with no real point to it. The kind of thing you said while you set a too-hot chestnut on the ground to cool.

"Isn't it this thing working right?" Rem said, tapping the side of his own skull. His other hand was cracking walnut shells with the butt of his axe handle.

Thunk. Crack.

The right force, the perfect strike point. The walnut split open with a clean snap instead of flying off.

At Rem's answer, Krais shook his head in an exaggerated show of disappointment. Rem found it unbearably irritating and threw his axe.

He did not kill Krais, of course. Enkrid, standing right beside them, caught it.

"Thank you for saving my life, Captain."

Krais said it without missing a beat, and Enkrid nodded just as calmly.

"Right. That makes sixteen times now. Is that any way to treat your lifesaver? Could you at least peel these chestnuts a little more carefully?"

"Yes, yes, here you are, sir."

Krais worked his knife with practiced ease and held out a chestnut, pale and clean without a trace of skin.

Sinar sat nearby, eating walnuts wrapped in flower petals. Esther had a few pine nuts and watched quietly.

Rem took his axe back and said, "That bastard doesn't even flinch anymore."

Ragna offered advice from the side. "If you want to kill someone, it's better to swing the axe up close."

"You crazy son of a bitch, you think I don't know that?"

Rem flared up, but it didn't go further than words. Jaxon was calmly arranging his chestnuts in a neat row off to one side, and Audin was going on about how one could not help but be grateful to God for giving them something this delicious.

Enkrid nodded at the sweetness of the chestnut and listened to the rest of what Krais had to say.

"A clever con man ends up trusting only his own head, and sooner or later gets blindsided and ends up knocking on heaven's door. They say he falls for his own tricks. So a truly exceptional con man doesn't trust his head."

Enkrid was chewing through a few chestnuts at the time and washing them down with water, so he couldn't answer, he only gave a small nod.

"The exceptional ones are very careful about who they pick."

That was the real point. A sharp and skilled con man doesn't choose difficult targets. Krais had gone on to say that gamblers worked the same way.

"Getting a sucker to sit down at the table is the hard part, they say."

Right.

Tricking a clever person is hard. Tricking a naive one is easy. The hard part is finding that naive one.

Enkrid was feeling that truth in his bones right now.

"Well, did you predict this too?"

Fanito, the man who called Heskal his master and fancied himself his right hand, asked the question. His tone was like wood that had just caught fire.

The look in his eyes, the way his hands swept through the air as he talked, the words spilling through his lips and teeth, all of it blazed with heat, and underneath that heat was envy.

Not that it mattered. Even if the man breathed fire, Enkrid would have stepped aside and said, oh, so you breathe fire, exactly as planned. He ignored the tone entirely.

Fanito raised the sword in his right hand. Whatever had been done to it, something like dark ripples rolled along the blade.

Keeaaaagh.

The sword cried out. An Evil Spirit had taken up residence in it. An Evil Spirit sealed inside a blade, was that enough to call it a self-aware sword? An Ego Sword? No, Demon Sword was probably more accurate.

"Of course," Enkrid said, nodding.

Fanito's eye twitched.

Enkrid kept turning the thought over as he watched. Piece together everything before and after, fit all the coincidences inside a single intention, and the answer appears. Scattered, they're just beads. String them together and you have a necklace.

Who gave him the Evil Spirit sword, and what kind of power does it have?

Think it through from every angle, attach evidence to the guesses, and the answer comes out.

"You're putting your faith in the sword Dmuel gave you? The one that suppresses Will and uses an Evil Spirit to steal control of your body?"

Phrasing it as though you know every detail, when really you're being vague, could fool someone completely.

He said it and watched for a reaction.

Fanito's surprise was plain. His shoulders actually trembled.

The man had shown off his sword proudly. He believed a graze would be enough to win.

Fell had carried a sword like that too. That was the encounter that had given Enkrid the Will of Refusal.

Fell's Idol Slayer hadn't worked easily against a knight or junior knight who could use Will. So this weapon was likely more threatening than the Idol Slayer, and better suited to the current situation.

Fanito is barely at junior knight level, and yet here he is, stepping forward like this.

He didn't look particularly frightened, either. All of it had been guesswork, words thrown out as an educated guess.

"How did you know that?"

Fanito's mouth fell open. Rain was getting in, and he couldn't think to close it.

"Didn't I say everything was going according to plan?"

Enkrid said it, and as he did, he recognized something: this man had spent most of his life inside the Zaun family. He had never been swindled wandering the continent, never sat down at a gambling table. In other words, he was naive.

"Go ahead and bring out whatever you have waiting behind you."

That one Enkrid just threw out blindly.

"Wait, how did you..."

Fanito was shocked again.

"According to plan."

Enkrid said the same line one more time, and won the psychological battle decisively.

With that, two swordsmen appeared behind Fanito, figures Enkrid's black-and-white world had never caught.

More precisely, they were the kind you saw but registered nothing about until they chose to be seen, erasing their own presence.

They wore hooded cloaks, and those cloaks were Spell Objects that reproduced the Veil spell.

Swordsmen, but with pitch-black eyes. Human in shape, not human in mind. One was large. One was small.

Honestly, he was a little surprised. But Enkrid had always had a solid talent for fooling people. That was part of why he had relied on the Vallen Style Mercenary Sword for so long.

"So it's all going according to plan."

He had decided to fold every coincidence and stroke of bad luck into his intentions, so he kept his reactions consistent, and pressed one step further.

"I can know what's happening a thousand steps away without leaving my seat."

That was basically him saying whatever came to mind.

"Oh, so that's why..."

Fanito's open mouth dropped wider. You could have fit a fist in there.

"I can even know what will happen tomorrow."

Another throw.

"That can't be right. That's impossible."

His eyes went twice as wide as before. He said it was impossible, but he looked very much like he was starting to believe it.

"I can see it. The future."

At that, Fanito's cheeks quivered. Then he closed his mouth and opened his eyes back to their normal size.

He was easy to play with, but he was also a skilled swordsman in his own right. He had the will not to break easily.

"Even so, nothing changes."

He said it and waved his hand. The judgment that standing here and getting pulled along was getting him nowhere made his hand move.

At his signal, more than fifty arrows came flying in.

There was no dodging that with a twitch of the head. The intent was to turn him into a pincushion from head to toe.

Alongside the arrows, an invisible hand formed in the air and knocked aside the rain. A telekinetic hand, close enough to reach out and touch, was a breath away from seizing him.

While Fanito lowered his hand to give the signal, Enkrid was already gone.

If you've gained an advantage by getting inside someone's head, you use it, naturally.

The Ruagarne Style Tactical Sword uses everything the surrounding environment has to offer.

The very first lesson of the Vallen Style Mercenary Sword: if you can deceive, deceive the heavens themselves.

"Fanito, watch out!"

Enkrid had jumped sideways, and he called out with his eyes still closed. The shout rang with momentum.

It was also the shout he released while dodging the arrows and the reaching telekinetic grip.

Just as family head Tempest Zaun shaped his Pressure into the form of a great sword, Enkrid did the same.

The momentum he spread out became a shaped Pressure that bore down on Fanito.

A straight, square wall.

Momentum that spoke of honesty without a crack in it, of an upright will.

Through Fanito's eyes, Enkrid's back foot was just now pressing into the ground. Every sign pointed to a hard, driving charge.

Fanito's thinking sped up. Death felt close enough to touch. The momentum Enkrid had projected was that strong.

Inside his high-speed thought, Fanito brought everything he had to bear and prepared.

I'll block.

His armor carried a spell that would deflect most attacks. That would hold through a few hits.

In that window, if he thrust or slashed with the sword Dmuel had given him, the Evil Spirit sealed in the blade would plant a seed of confusion in the enemy's mind.

That seed would make the target see things that weren't there, hear things that weren't said, until they couldn't tell friend from foe and lost all control.

There was more to his plan. The moment the Evil Spirit scrambled the mind, the two swordsmen behind him would rush in for the opening, so it might not even come to a rampaging state.

In truth, if you were naming the most lethal thing here, it wasn't the Evil Spirit sword in his hand. It was the two human-shaped golems that had lost all reason.

Flash Golems, built with great care by an alchemist of a past generation.

Come on then.

Ready. He brought his resolve up high and was a breath away from reacting.

"You... dog."

Fanito swallowed the curse that had started climbing out of his mouth.

Fwap-fwap-fwap-fwap!

Fifty arrows slammed into the ground.

The telekinesis lost its target and vanished, swallowed by the wind and rain.

The two sword-carrying golems were already locked into their stances, ready to lunge.

It was the very moment Fanito braced himself for the straight, honest charge of a clean swordsman like Enkrid.

Bang!

Enkrid jumped backward. The ground he kicked from cratered. He had poured that much savage force into going backward. No, into charging.

Moving like a knight commanding Strong Legs, for a moment he seemed to vanish from sight entirely.

Everyone was fooled.

And having thoroughly fooled one great fool, Enkrid threw himself between the two swordsmen who had been holding the rear.

If they had known, they would have reacted. But this was the kind of trick where you blink once after seeing it, and only then find words for it. A perfect deception.

You could call it sleight of hand.

Fool them with Pressure, jump back, then swing your sword at full force. The first strike took off the large swordsman's head.

Thwack.

The sound of the blade cutting through the neck was rough. The outer hide was that dense.

And because he had swung so fully, there should have been a window for the small swordsman to prepare.

But Enkrid, that bastard, swung the sword in his right hand while simultaneously throwing the blade in his left. The moment the big one's neck was cut, the thrown blade buried itself in the small swordsman's head, its legs left the ground, and the body flew back and tumbled through the mud.

Thud. Crack.

Heskal had known Lynox. His methods, his nature, every small habit of his.

Lynox's techniques were strange, but in actual combat he never resorted to tricks. That was the kind of person Lynox was.

Enkrid was not.

Deceive.

Enkrid had understood the core of the Vallen Style Mercenary Sword and used it to its fullest.

The Ruagarne Style Tactical Sword reads the situation and uses the environment. The Vallen Style Mercenary Sword uses technique trained into the body to fool the opponent.

"You swindling bastard!"

Fanito screamed.

This time Enkrid cut down the two swordsmen, then paused as though he needed a moment, and charged. To any observer, that should have been exactly the kind of brief breathing space you'd expect. So once again, the charge came from nowhere.

The Scalers numbered more than ten, and every one of them had outstanding visual reflexes.

But they can't use telekinesis on what they can't see.

He had watched them use telekinesis plenty of times by now.

"If you've watched them that much, you should know their weakness."

That was the kind of thing Frog of the Madman Knights might say, if she were watching.

The foundation of the Ruagarne Style Tactical Sword is insight. Seeing one moment into the future is a split-second act of perception, but what she described was a little different.

Keep a blade-sharp eye to perceive the tactical situation and shift it in your favor.

And pull it out when the moment comes.

Deception through environment and circumstance.

Up to this point, Enkrid had never once exploited a Scaler's weakness.

He saved it for exactly one attack. A sudden stop followed by a sudden burst of speed wiped him from the Scalers' field of vision.

No matter how sharp a monster's tracking vision is, a living eye is weak to changes in speed.

Enkrid knew it firsthand. Alexandra had landed a hit on him with exactly that.

Using the variation in speed, Enkrid closed the distance until he was right in Fanito's face.

"You're insane!"

A startled Fanito swung his sword upward. Enkrid was taller, and Fanito had felt a downward strike coming from above, so it was pure reflex.

Enkrid had already identified the sword Fanito held. An Evil Spirit blade. Even a graze was too much. But he had faced this kind of thing more times than he could count, he had faced it against the demon One-Killer. This was a degraded imitation of that.

Instinct said it: getting cut by that sword won't kill you. His cold, clear head agreed.

But there's no reason to get cut if I don't have to.

Three-Iron came straight down from above and met the black blade rising from below.

That too was a deliberate tactical choice. He had the strength advantage, and in terms of body mechanics, he also held the better position.

Clang!

When the blades met, the sound was immense. Like a rockslide dropping a boulder onto the earth. The noise pushed back the raindrops, pushed back the storm.

It didn't end there. The locked blades didn't separate.

A Bind. What Enkrid did next was simple. He pushed the blade down.

Say you're wearing enchanted armor and carrying a good weapon.

What about raw strength?

Sheer physical force alone, even Rem would have to yield a step to the senseless power behind this.

Will moved and added to that strength. It's precisely because a knight who has awakened to Will shows strength and movement capacity beyond any limit that they become an asymmetric force on a battlefield.

Fanito had good weapons and good armor, but his strength was nothing exceptional.

"Ngh!"

As he strained with everything he had to hold, the sword he gripped worked its way horizontally into his helmet. The blade he had raised to block had become his own guillotine. Enkrid pushed straight through and brought it down.

Clang, crack, scrape!

The Evil Spirit blade split open its own master's helmet. Sparks flew bright even through the rain. The edge cut through the helmet and put a lid on his skull.

Fanito's elbow bent the wrong direction, and bone punched through the joint where the armor gave no protection.

"You, you..."

Naive Fanito lasted a moment even after his skull was split. He had not one finger's worth of strength left to lift, so all that remained was a pair of eyes filled with nothing but the deepest sense of injustice.

You could tell just from the look. How wronged he felt was not hard to read, with something like tears of blood running from those eyes.

"The people Heskal killed probably felt the same."

Enkrid said it flatly. Among those Heskal had killed were people Enkrid had spent a few lively days alongside.

Only a few days, and he was still angry.

That was how he felt. Others must have felt it even more.

And among them was one who was angrier than Enkrid, without even knowing why.

Kreee!

The Evil Spirit trapped in the sword shrieked and shot skyward, gathered into one mass, and flew off over the enemy lines.

The light faded from Fanito's eyes, and rain fell into them unimpeded.

With a wet, rattling gasp, Fanito murmured his last words.

"Did... did this... work out?"

No one knew who he was asking. With that, Fanito died.