WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 721: That's Fun

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Ragna had kept pace with Enkrid's lead, and taking stock of the situation, he figured he had more or less achieved what he set out to do.

'If I keep their attention here, no one can go after Ann.'

That had been one of his reasons for going after the Medusa. While they were busy cutting through Demon Creatures and watching that enormous monster fall in a storm of blades, would anyone really peel off forces to kill some girl trampling weeds in the back?

He would make sure they had no room for that. That was his thinking.

So in the end, this too was one way of keeping Ann safe.

The kind of plan only a madman would come up with, perhaps, but it had worked.

Right now, those people were not thinking about some girl at all.

Just two sword-swingers, the kind of line worth setting to song someday, and their faces had gone dark.

Well, their faces were already a bit dark by nature, so the shift in color would have been hard to read with human eyes.

'If I believe it, then it's so.'

Ragna settled his thoughts and felt at ease.

All that remained now was surviving and finishing the fight.

"Can you fight?" Ragna asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

Enkrid opened and closed his hand, then answered.

"About as well as a gentle Rem."

Not quite slang, but it would sound like it. Ragna caught the meaning immediately.

There was no such thing as a gentle Rem in this world. So Enkrid could not fight at full strength right now. He probably could not pull even a quarter of his usual output.

Watching Enkrid sever the Medusa's neck earlier, that tracked. There had been a moment where he looked like he had blacked out.

"That was a reckless strategy," Ragna said.

"It was your mother's."

"I meant it was brave to the point of recklessness."

Even if she was his adoptive mother, Ragna was not about to insult her with his own mouth.

He corrected himself quickly, shrugged, and stepped in front of Enkrid.

"When we get back to the unit, I will have to tell the story of how I shielded our captain after he became a burden."

"And leave out the part where I cut down the Medusa?"

"Who starts the story is the storyteller's choice, is it not?"

Dmuel found the two of them chattering in front of him baffling.

Were they not afraid? Or had they already made peace with dying?

If so, he had something to say about that.

"You cannot die even if you want to."

A calm tone, but the one saying it was a half-rotted near-corpse. It should have sounded grim and chilling. But if the ones listening chose not to hear it that way, there was nothing to be done.

"Oh, I agree," Enkrid said without missing a beat. "I have no intention of dying either."

"That is not what I meant..."

"We didn't gather here to share tea, so why all the talking? Tsk."

He even cut Dmuel off mid-sentence. The skill of it was something, a title like the knight-who-talks-with-his-tongue would not have been out of place.

Tone, content, manner. All three in harmony. Ragna found himself impressed all over again.

Anyone who could follow the words would have felt their temper twist.

And so it was.

"Kill them."

Dmuel let his anger out. The rotted, crumbling flesh around his eye sockets shifted up and down.

Above the socket, where an eyebrow should have been, a blackened lump of something like smeared flesh protruded like a growth, and it quivered.

At his word, his prized disciple raised his right hand. Watching the way he moved, it seemed he had been the one behind that black mass from earlier too.

He was the one with an extra eye in his forehead.

Ragna knew how to handle a Sorcerer. He had picked it up secondhand watching Enkrid, but for him that was enough.

Every Sorcerer is better cut before they cast. A simple principle. So he just had to make that principle real.

He pressed down firmly against the ground, raised the greatsword, and brought it down.

In terms of raw swing speed alone it was not especially fast, though that was by a knight's measure, so to the three-eyed old man it would have seemed very fast. And it was not a simple downward cut; he folded footwork into it.

A forward step built into the slash. Ragna knew without calculating exactly how far his blade would reach.

Matching the arc of the descending greatsword, the tip would cleave the old man's head vertically and drag out whatever foul thing was kept inside.

His foot touched the ground and the sword swung, and before it could arrive, a heavy pressure struck him in the chest. It came just as the blade had reached its halfway point.

Thud.

Ragna's body lifted a hand-span into the air and was thrown back. He did not go far. The moment he felt the pressure against his chest, he twisted his waist in midair and let the force flow past, so the impact was not serious.

"My eyes see the very laws that govern the natural world. Did you truly think a mere sword-swinger could escape my gaze?"

The three-eyed old man let his pride show. Enkrid noted it quietly.

'He said mere sword-swinger again.'

After hearing that line once already, most people would have been more careful.

In any case, the three-eyed old man's spell activation was extremely fast. No incantation either, so there was no way to catch the moment it triggered.

"There is far too much you do not know. You know nothing of the tiers of those who use spells, which is why you simply charge in and swing your blades."

When the moment came to show off, Dmuel could not hold back. That was how Enkrid read it.

He could imagine what Dmuel must have been like when teaching alchemy across the continent.

While Dmuel was still talking, Ragna thrust his greatsword at him.

The target was not a knight. Driving it in should have put him down cleanly, but that was not how it went.

A rush of black smoke billowed up directly in Ragna's path.

The smoke twisted into dozens of hands and feet, swords and spears and hammers, and blocked the way in front of him.

Ragna redirected the thrust and swung without preference for up, down, left, or right. The blade moved so fast the falling raindrops seemed to follow it.

He was carving a small storm with the sword, and the hands and feet and weapons made of black smoke, solid as physical things, were caught in that storm and burst and shattered against the greatsword.

Crack. Bang. Split.

When the noise ended, Ragna caught something heavy aimed at his knee with the greatsword.

Screech.

What had been invisible revealed a blurry shape through the rain. A blade made of compressed air.

A long gouge was left across Ragna's greatsword, and part of the guard covering his knee was torn away.

If he had not been wearing the iron greaves strapped to his shins, he might have taken a fairly deep cut, but Ragna pulled the greatsword back with his usual composure and leveled it forward again.

"Fearless little creature!"

The three-eyed old man shouted and thrust out his hand, and this time lightning struck.

Light gathered in his palm, then white light branched out in jagged, irregular lines like a growing tree and shot forward.

Ragna tossed the greatsword up just above eye level and stepped back.

Crack.

Lightning smashed into the greatsword and sent it spinning far away.

Dmuel watched and spoke again.

"The first is called one who glimpses the World of Spells. The level of just beginning to understand what a spell is. The next is called one who speaks. That tier is the general name for all those who borrow spells from beings of other realms and chant them."

Nothing you do matters. That seemed to be the point he wanted to make.

Dmuel waved his rotting hand, his tone as if everything happening beside him had nothing to do with him.

No particular intent behind the gesture, just something he added while talking. As the hand moved, a foul smell spread through the air. Enkrid raised his hand to cover his nose. A reflex.

Looking now, the source of that thick, rancid sweetness was not Dmuel but the old man with the eye lodged in his forehead.

Dmuel was imparting wisdom to the two fools standing before him. Enkrid could not truly know what was going on inside Dmuel's head, but the gestures and the tone of his voice made it seem that way.

Was that the kind of personality that had led him to teach alchemy across the continent? Not from any good intention, but from wanting to feel superior?

Partly luck, but Enkrid had managed to catch a rough glimpse of what Dmuel actually was.

Dmuel opened his mouth again, still in the tone of someone explaining.

"After glimpsing and speaking, what do you think comes next?"

In the meantime, Ragna had charged in empty-handed, run into a golem made of black stone, and was in the middle of leaping back to avoid it.

The golem had naturally been summoned by the old man.

Whatever Dmuel was saying, Ragna gave no sign of listening. Enkrid looked at Dmuel and said, "Unlike that delinquent over there, I am quite well-behaved. Please, continue, Dmuel, the legendary alchemist."

He even turned his speech polite.

Ruagarne's tactical swordsmanship was earning its keep.

When the body was not at its best, buying time by lulling the enemy into carelessness was a perfectly sound tactic.

With the Medusa gone, Enkrid could lift his head comfortably and feign the posture of an attentive listener.

To Dmuel, the behavior of the man who had mocked him earlier was galling, but he could not stop himself from enjoying the pleasure of speaking.

"Next is one who possesses. A term for the Sorcerer who owns their own world."

Thud.

A sound erupted right beside him.

The noise of Ragna and the golem trading blows.

In terms of pure body control alone, Rem was the better fighter, but when it came to Martial Arts, there was no one in the Madman Knights who could keep pace with Audin.

Though, bare-handed, Enkrid did have confidence he could take Ragna.

That said, Ragna was far from helpless without a weapon.

He took a few hits, waited for an opening, and shattered the golem's head. He blocked the golem's left and right punches with his forearms in turn, then launched himself up in a single motion and drove his knee into its jaw. Whether by luck or design, the core happened to be inside the head, and the golem stopped moving.

Ragna broke the golem's head, and the moment his feet touched the ground he rolled backward.

Boom.

An explosion went off where he had just been standing, and fire bloomed, but the rain put it out almost immediately.

"Hah. Hah."

Ragna was breathing hard. Anyone watching could see he was exhausted.

"Like insects. Nothing but insects."

The three-eyed old man used the word nothing more than once. Whether that pleased him, Dmuel's voice came out a shade warmer.

"One who possesses falls into indulgence, intoxicated by the pleasure of casting, and so that stage is called in the old tongue immoderentia. Beyond that is villis, the actualizer, the level of manifesting one's own world. And what do you think lies past even that?"

The way he broke off at just the right moment, he seemed to have a traveling bard's talent too.

Of course, few would have the iron stomach to sit around that face and listen to a story.

"Tacitus, acquiescence. The tier that has earned the right to stand outside the principles of the world. And so one at that level need not be bound by incantation."

Enkrid could tell that while Dmuel was no man of virtue, he had been an excellent teacher.

Petty as he was, when he taught, he had probably done it properly.

Even now, he started from small concepts and slowly widened them, drawing out each word and explaining one by one.

Thorough.

Humans belonging to certain knight orders in certain cities ought to watch this man and take notes.

"Just do it like this. Go ahead, try."

One demonstration, and then what passed for an explanation was that.

"My disciple is at the tier of acquiescence."

Dmuel finished the thought. Acquiescence, he had said, was the tier at which spells activated without incantation.

Ragna stepped back toward Enkrid and asked, "Still gentle?"

Where he had just been standing, formless shockwaves hammered down one after another and dug craters into the earth.

"Getting a bit annoying, but not enough."

Enkrid knew that at best he had a few sword swings left in him. So those had to count.

Would it be enough to cut that thing down? There was no way to know without trying.

"Finish it."

At Dmuel's word, the three-eyed old man raised his hand.

A horn shot up from the woman standing beside him. Scales erupted across both her arms with a cracking sound, and her muzzle pushed forward.

"Look at this. When I become a god, these will be the new beings that rule this land."

It looked like a Scaler and a human mixed halfway together.

The creature let out a shriek, then lowered its head and let its arms hang loose.

Huh. Huh. Huh.

A monster steadying its breath. With every breath its shoulders and chest heaved, and that alone was enough to fill the air with the presence of something that was neither Demon Creature nor chimera.

The creature shifted, eyes rolling upward, and tilted its head just slightly.

A gaze pressing up from below. The moment it landed, formless pressure bore down.

Telekinesis.

"It is like a hundred strong men holding you in place."

The three-eyed old man's words. If just looking triggered this much, using it in full would be something else entirely.

Ragna extended one hand toward Enkrid.

"There is a real chance both of us die here."

"Then who goes back and tells the story of you blocking my path?"

"You tell it yourself, Captain."

Enkrid handed Penna back to him and said, "If I go back alone, Ann will poison me."

"...That one is out of my hands."

They had joked and stalled for time, but the crisis was a crisis.

If he died the day would repeat, so was that fine? No. Enkrid could not think that way.

If he was going to coast through life, he would not have been thrashing this hard to begin with.

The words the Boatman had said when he blacked out circled in his mind.

That they had made it this far with no one dying by sheer luck, and did he really think that kind of luck would keep holding.

'If it doesn't work, I keep going until it does.'

He steeled himself. Enkrid gathered the Will surging up from his wrecked body.

If it came to it, he would have to dance his own final sword dance.

Ragna gripped Penna and steadied his breathing.

In all his years, how many times had he fought with someone at his back?

Someone he had to keep alive was standing behind him.

Ragna held Penna and took in the Demon Creature standing motionless before him, and the old man standing behind it.

"No one at my back dies."

He was learning again how to fight while protecting someone. Building on what he had learned from Enkrid, adding his own to it.

Ragna was a genius. He had watched what Enkrid did, and he had a rough sense of his mother's methods too.

He had only seen it once, but that he could imitate it clumsily, that he had confirmed when he smashed the golem's head a moment ago.

He folded his own way into it.

If he failed, well, he would probably die. But did dying matter? No. What mattered was getting what he wanted.

Right now, what Ragna wanted was to protect the people at his back.

Looking at the situation, was this an impossible dream? Then he would enjoy it.

"Interesting."

Ragna stole Enkrid's line.

"Hey, that one's mine."

Enkrid complained.

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