WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 720: If We Join Forces

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Coming to the Zaun family, Enkrid had learned several techniques. The most unusual among them was the one involving Will.

He had seen something similar within the Madman Knights, of course. Rem had done it too, hadn't he.

Transference of Will.

That was Rem's method. He severed a portion of Will and loaded it into a projectile.

You could say it was a domain you would not even dare attempt unless you had reached the level of a knight.

A junior knight could only scrape by, loading Will into a single technique for one-time use.

So naturally it was the exclusive territory of knights, and naturally it was harder than simply moving the body. What was funny, though, was that for Enkrid it was twice as easy to pick up as the physical techniques.

Having Will that never ran dry made for good conditions for repeated training.

Half-dozing through it and picking things up loosely would never have cut it, of course, but Enkrid was the kind of person who gave everything his best no matter what he was learning.

And whenever even a sliver of talent showed itself, he found learning so enjoyable he could not stop.

Controlling Will itself was difficult. Even so, he had thrown himself in completely, absorbed by sheer enjoyment.

To be honest, even when working on restraint and control, he had poured Will out without holding back.

He had wrung that never-drying Will down until he felt something close to depletion, and he had done it again and again.

Along the way, he had received considerable help.

"It's not enough to just use it. You have to be able to reshape it however you want."

That was what Lynox had said about Will.

Alexandra had shown him something similar as well.

Those two held the most outstanding skill in wielding Will within the Zaun family.

Between them, Lynox's was like performing a musical piece without a single mistake.

Knowing when to apply force and when to ease off, executed perfectly, without the slightest margin of error.

He did it by carving away exactly as much Will as he needed, no more. Restraint, in a word.

Enkrid's Restraint was something he had taken from Lynox and made his own.

And Restraint was comparatively difficult. It demanded constant concentration to keep Will under control.

A fair comparison might be filling a vessel to the brim with water and then carrying it without spilling a single drop.

Walk carefully and you could manage it. Lose your composure even slightly and drops would run to the floor.

But this was not just walking. He was fighting in that state.

So Enkrid had spilled a few drops along the way. To be a little more honest, you could say he had soaked his clothes.

That was how difficult controlling Will was for him.

Alexandra's method was the complete opposite.

That phrase, "Restraint is comparatively difficult", the "comparatively" there referred to Alexandra's way of using Will.

Hers was different.

Setting fire to the tail of a galloping wild stallion.

A stallion with its tail on fire will run in a terrifying charge.

No rationing of stamina, no room to think about what comes next. What thoughts could you spare when flames are chasing you from behind?

It was like sprinting full speed downhill. Running downhill is faster than on flat ground, but harder to control. Alexandra, however, clung to a form that threw control to the dogs entirely.

Where Lynox tried to regulate the shape of his Will, Alexandra tampered with speed.

Depending on how fast she released Will, the sword in her hand changed speed to match.

And Will that never ran dry was far easier to release freely than to control. The sheer volume of it made that unavoidable.

That was what made control so difficult, but it made Restraint all the more interesting as a challenge in return.

Call it the pleasure of endurance.

Enkrid had always known how to suppress an immediate desire in order to claim a greater reward later.

And now it was time to claim that greater reward.

The fire burning inside his body scorched away the dregs and surged through him in a wild sprint.

Hot. His hands, his feet, his head, everything was hot.

Explosion.

Enkrid turned over just that one word. If Lynox was Restraint, Alexandra was Explosion.

Burst.

As the Will boiling through every part of him broke into a charge, Enkrid lifted his foot. He stepped onto Ragna's shoulder and ran. He raised his head and faced forward. Before the exploding Will, the petrification curse the Medusa was scattering meant nothing at all.

It truly was nothing. The Medusa's curse was useless. The Will of Refusal became a shield twice its usual size and deflected everything.

His toes caught on scales. He stepped on scales that jutted up like knife blades, bent his knees, and leaped upward. The staircase was rough. But had he not always enjoyed walking rough paths?

And this was not even that rough.

No room for stray thoughts to creep in. He could not properly use the slowed perception he had gained as a knight.

The air that usually felt suffocating, like wading through a swamp, now felt ordinary.

His body was that light. He was on the verge of feeling omnipotent.

He stepped on the scales and stepped again, throwing force into every push. His body forgot its weight and shot upward.

If someone with a poet's eye had watched, they might have called it the advance of an imugi swimming against every current.

Kyaaaack!

The Medusa lowered its head and opened its mouth. Green venom fanned out in a wide arc, scattering the raindrops and blocking the way ahead.

Enkrid held his breath and tightened his grip on Three-Iron.

A low grinding thrum ran through the air, then a sharp metallic ring.

It sounded like hearing something underwater, sounds muffled as though filtered through an invisible wall.

A sharp crack.

The scabbard split. Three-Iron, driven by savage force, tore through the scabbard as it was drawn.

Enkrid's blade reached out toward the Medusa's neck. The edge was the hardest iron side. Even through perception pushed to its limits by that charging speed, the blade was fast.

* * *

"Crazy bastard."

Anahehra had stumbled off-balance and was only just getting back up, but she could see what Enkrid had done.

It was thanks to punching through the pack of Demon Creatures and pushing to the front. From where she stood, everything Enkrid had done was clearly visible. Others could see it too.

Nobody here was too dull to have noticed the Medusa spreading its petrification curse from up ahead.

How could you miss someone dancing with a blade on top of it?

It helped that the Medusa had stopped scattering its curse broadly and focused it entirely on Enkrid, which gave everyone else a little breathing room.

Every eye was on it.

The figure who had sprung up from the Medusa's tail, burst open his scabbard, and swung the drawn blade like a thunderbolt.

Even the climb had looked like lightning surging upward against the earth, and the swinging sword looked even more so.

Lightning had taken the form of a blade and struck the Demon Creature's neck.

Crack!

A sound like a boulder hurled from a catapult hammering a castle wall exploded through the air.

The scales along the Medusa's neck bristled and rose up like a shield to block, but Enkrid shattered through them by force alone and tore the neck open. Black blood gushed from the shredded throat in torrents.

A black downpour mixed into the thinning rain. Still the Medusa endured. Perhaps because its neck had not been fully severed.

With its neck half cut, it still spat venom from its mouth, and the snakes covering its head in place of hair, as if to prove they were no mere decoration, came streaming downward.

Anahehra nearly screamed a warning without thinking.

Before she could, Enkrid's sword moved like something had snapped loose inside him, drawing lines through the air. The blade that had burst free from the scabbard kept moving without pause, slicing off every snake head coming for him, then finished cutting through the Medusa's half-severed neck.

Thwack!

A nauseating sound rang out again and the Medusa's head dropped through the air and fell.

A dying screech tore from the creature's mouth.

Kiaaaaaaaaaaah!

Thud.

The head hit the ground.

The form of the sorcery serpent that had been wailing overhead immediately blurred.

Rain came sheeting down.

Through the downpour, with another heavy thud, the Medusa's enormous body collapsed.

And above it, standing on the fallen creature's neck with his blade still buried there, was a man.

"Holy hell."

Anahehra could not contain the trembling and let out a roar.

Uoooo!

The cry from a giant's throat.

"Uaaaah!"

Human voices joined it.

Everyone watching poured out that shout together.

Something had seized scales tipping toward ruin and thrown them back, all in one moment. The reaction was only natural.

Then, from behind where Enkrid stood, a large black mass came flying and burst.

Bang.

Black flames engulfed his body.

Nobody had expected it in that instant, and everyone stood with their mouths open, unable to react.

What is that? Why won't the fire go out even in the rain?

The question settled into Anahehra's mind.

Alexandra, watching from one side, was in much the same state.

"Odinkar."

"Yes, I see it too."

The one who had appeared behind her in those final moments was Odinkar. He had been fighting in her place. The family head had told her to stay hidden and live to fight another day. But.

"I've been around Ragna too long. I caught something from him."

That was what he had said as he walked into the battle.

"A Zaun child who listens when told to stop isn't a Zaun child."

Alexandra had nodded and answered that. After fighting for quite a while, slashing and cutting to keep her safe, here they were.

Once her safety was secured and they were watching the perimeter, Enkrid cut down the Medusa. Ragna's presence in the earlier fighting had not been small, either.

The sorcery serpent vanishing was a moment that gave everyone a flash of hope.

And the person who had done all of it was now wrapped in black fire.

Alexandra's body was not in good shape. Detonating Will put a load on the body. It severed nerves and tore muscles.

Controlling it carefully and using it in moderation was the right way, but there had been no room for that.

"Hold this position. Audin."

The family head came over and said it.

Tempest Zaun had ultimately killed the four Demon Creatures that had pushed toward him.

Each one alone would have been enough to kill a knight, but he had held on.

Lynox had taken serious wounds in the process, and the family head's face looked haggard, though he was still walking on his own.

"I'm going too."

These were people who would not rest even if told to. Odinkar wanted to tell both of them to stand down, but he knew this was not a situation where that was possible.

"I should be the one to go," he offered instead.

"That's an order. Hold this position. I'm going to see the face of whoever has tormented my family for twenty years. I won't give that up."

The family head said it with finality and turned away. Enkrid was still wrapped in black fire even then.

* * *

However easy it might have been, relatively speaking, to pick up techniques for wielding Will, they did not naturally settle into the body in a single attempt. Of course they did not.

Restraint was one thing, but Explosion was the same.

Both needed more research and more training to be properly absorbed, and he had reached in and yanked them out ahead of time.

It hurts.

The moment the Medusa's neck only half-severed in that one strike, pain had begun flooding through his entire body. But.

Not yet.

He could hold on. The sprinting Will was still running wild inside him. Like a stallion demanding its freedom.

Enkrid gave it freedom.

He spent Will in rapid succession and kept swinging the sword. He balanced himself in midair, cut down the snake heads flying at him, and then finished severing the Medusa's head with the true silver edge of his blade.

And for a brief moment, he blacked out.

The gap was extremely short, but it was enough for the Boatman to lean his face in for an instant.

Before he could even feel the ripple of the Black River, the Boatman standing at the prow spoke.

"If you did this once more, do you think you could do it better? Do you think that kind of Fortune would come along again?"

What came through his short, blunt words was neither malice nor goodwill. He spoke of reality in a flat tone.

It was a warning. Repeating today did not mean the same today would come again.

No time to answer. His mind snapped back to the real world.

The Boatman at the prow vanished as quickly as he had come.

You might as well call it the blink of an eye.

He stood on the dead Medusa's body with his blade lodged near its neck. No matter how hard you hit him right now, he could not move.

He needed at least a few breaths to gather some strength back into his body, and right at that moment a thick, sweet smell reached his nose.

A spell.

He registered it, but his body was too slow to react. A black mass came flying from behind and burst.

Whomp.

Flames spread across his entire body. Ordinarily it should have been agonizing heat, but it was not.

Enkrid saw a faint green light wrapping around him. From that light came the scent of Sinar.

The smell of grass you might breathe in a deep forest, and the cool freshness you might feel drinking morning dew.

Rustle.

Enkrid felt the inner garment the elf clan had given him crumble against his skin.

The cloth dried out and disintegrated like dead autumn leaves. A scratchy sensation was left directly on his skin.

But Enkrid was free of the black flames.

He let his body fall back and rolled, catching himself against the ground.

Every part of his body that hit the ground in the breakfall seemed to cry out. Blood ran freely from the hand gripping Three-Iron as well.

A mistake in Restraint only spilled a few drops of water, but Explosion, once triggered and not properly stopped, was like running knife blades through your own muscles.

He should probably count himself lucky that no bones had broken.

God, this hurts.

Depletion hit him on top of it.

Used without control, this technique might fairly be called a suicide art.

Get drunk on the feeling of omnipotence, throw Will around carelessly, and you would bleed from every hole in your body and die.

A future clear enough to see without any great insight.

"Is that an elf's doing?"

An old man with an eye on his forehead.

Beside him stood a young woman with a horn on her forehead, and behind her was something grotesque, a skull draped in a robe with chunks of flesh stuck to it in a rough approximation of a face.

Yes, a monster. Calling that thing a person would be an insult to every thinking creature.

"Well. You managed to bring down even the Medusa. That Heskal was so confident, and look at this mess."

Only the old man spoke. The monster standing behind him only watched Enkrid and Ragna in turns with bulging eyes that looked ready to fall from their sockets.

Without anyone saying a word, it was clear enough who this was.

"Good to meet you. Dmuel."

Enkrid opened his mouth. The words were aimed past the old man, toward the monster standing behind him.

The diseased soul dwelling in a body rotting with necrosis opened its mouth.

"Yes."

Even the voice seemed to carry the smell of rot.

"I suppose I should introduce myself," Enkrid said, then coughed, hacking once. His gut ached. His body was a wreck, no question. Still, this part had to be said.

"I am one swordsman."

Then the man who had been moved by Enkrid matched his rhythm from beside him.

"I am two swordsmen."

Enkrid stifled another cough and finished the jab he had set up for his opponent.

"Together we are a grand total of two swordsmen."

A chance to mock the enemy had arrived. How could he let his tongue stay still?

"...You're both out of your minds."

Bewilderment bled through Dmuel's voice, and for just a moment, he almost seemed human.

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