WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

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A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 722: Barely

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If he could feel the Will and move it, could he not also redirect it?

Yes, he could.

He had already experienced it in his body, had already made it real. The milky light that flowed through the sword was a phenomenon born from condensing Will and transferring it into the blade.

If he could do it with a sword, he could do it with his body. Gather the remaining Will, condense it, then release it.

That was how Ragna swung Penna four times.

* * *

Ragna was swinging his sword to Enkrid's left front.

Dmuel had separated from his two companions, so in a sense it looked as though Enkrid and Dmuel were one group, while Ragna and the remaining two formed another.

Before Ragna even stepped forward, Enkrid was already grinding through the possibilities, turning over one option after another.

Ruagarne's tactical swordsmanship did not say to rely solely on instinct.

Relying on instinct was Enkrid's own particular skill.

The foundation of tactical swordsmanship was probability calculation.

What path leads to survival?

Or: what choices lead to winning?

On the surface his expression and posture were calm, but inside his head the calculations ran without pause. This situation held a countless number of variables.

Then one of those large variables entered his field of view.

Enkrid had been sitting on the wet muddy ground, conserving even the strength it took to keep his legs taut, and from where he sat he caught sight of the danger closing in on Ragna.

The three-eyed old man swept his hand a few times and threw out lightning bolts.

In front of Ragna, the horned Scaler variant stretched out its hand and worked its telekinesis.

The falling raindrops were caught up in the telekinesis and shaped into form. Two enormous hands made of rainwater closed in from Ragna's left and right. The telekinesis captured even the water pouring down from the sky. It was a far greater ability than any Scaler he had seen before.

The telekinesis and the attack came at once. The Scaler variant kept its telekinesis active while raising its left hand overhead, then rushed at Ragna and brought it crashing down. The speed with which it kicked off the ground and closed the gap was on par with a knight's Strong Legs.

In Enkrid's eyes, that hand descended in slow motion.

The surrounding air warped around the edge of the strike. The instant it seemed slow, the hand blade accelerated.

He could not spare any focus for calculation.

Part of it was that his gaze had been stolen away for just a moment. Part of it was that his body was in no state to run two lines of thought at once.

But the larger reason was instinct.

A voice from somewhere he could not name told him this was a moment he had to see.

The light erupting from the lightning strike was a breath away from piercing Ragna's body. All of Enkrid's focus settled on Ragna's sword.

Light pooled in the blade. Even the falling raindrops seemed to be sheared sideways when they touched it.

The condensed Will had taken visible form. Ragna swung.

The first slash went left. Penna's arc pulled the lightning bolt along with it, sending it sideways into the ground.

The swung blade was already reaching straight forward. It was the exact moment the Scaler variant's hand came crashing down.

Ragna's extended sword punched through that hand and drove on through the horned head.

Boom.

The noise of lightning striking the earth swallowed everything else. It all happened nearly at the same instant.

That was how fast Ragna's sword was. Once to the left, once straight ahead.

It felt as though two Ragnas had swung at the same moment. There was no gap between the two strikes.

He did not stop there.

Ragna pulled his sword free, charged at the three-eyed old man, and swung again.

In that instant, an invisible Veil, a protective spell, and a dozen other artifacts and Spell Objects activated around the old man's body to shield him. The eye set into his forehead blazed red at the very last moment.

And none of it stopped the sword coming down.

The old man never opened his mouth. Ragna's sword drew a clean line across his throat.

Three strikes total. After that, Ragna launched himself one more time.

His body had pushed past its limit, the same way Enkrid had earlier. Anyone who did not know him would have assumed he had chanted a teleportation spell.

Leaving no afterimage, closing the distance in an instant, Ragna's final slash fell toward Dmuel's head.

Regrettably, his sword did not reach its last target.

Clang. Crack, crack, crack.

A barrier.

Bad luck? No. It was only natural.

Sorcerers are treacherous.

Enkrid recalled Esther's lesson.

Cracks appeared around Dmuel's body. Something with the texture of shattered glass materialized from empty air, broke into pieces, and crumbled away.

A spell that had guarded Dmuel's body for forty years had been broken.

"Impressive," Dmuel said, and flung out his hand. Telekinesis activated and struck Ragna in the chest.

Thud.

Ragna had nothing left after four strikes. He was batted lifelessly to the side. This time he could not even keep his balance in the air and rolled across the ground.

Thud, thwack.

At this point he probably could not handle even a Ghoul wandering past. And yet his hand stayed locked tight around Penna.

The fallen Ragna coughed blood. Then he drove Penna into the earth and tried to rise. His body swayed.

He had rolled through mud soaked with rain, and his face was a mess, hair plastered to it. The blood he had coughed mixed with the filthy water and left dark reddish mud trailing down his face to the tip of his chin.

"I planted the seed of the plague inside your body. You can stay where you are. You still cannot die even if you want to."

Ragna could not speak. Blood ran steadily from both his mouth and nose. His pupils had gone loose, so the fact that he had not passed out was remarkable, unless he had already passed out with his hand still gripping the sword.

Even so, he drove his sword into the ground and held himself up, still trying to fight.

Enkrid looked at him and could not keep quiet.

"Did you see that? A mere swordsman just did something like that."

Two of the three you brought are dead. One left standing out of three.

It was a deliberate provocation.

"Every last one of you is insane," Dmuel answered. There was displeasure in it, but no panic.

Why? Because those two had not mattered much to him.

What mattered was divine power. His own manifestation upon this earth.

"Right. So come at me then. I've still got strength left," Enkrid said.

Ragna had fought like that and kept standing. Seeing it sent something hot rising in his chest.

He had wanted to cut down that rotting body in front of him, hadn't he? Good. Let's do that.

He put his hand on Three-Iron and spoke, and then Ragna's voice rang out.

"Come on, come on. I'll..."

Guessing the rest of the sentence was pointless. The will packed into those words was plain enough. That was all that mattered.

Even half-conscious, the will behind the words burned clear.

Enkrid was clenching his back teeth when it happened.

His body was in such a state that he had not even sensed someone approaching.

"It's enough, son."

A large frame stepped up beside Ragna, blocking the rain. The one who had come was Tempest Zaun.

Ragna's father.

He came close and placed a hand on Ragna's shoulder.

"You've done enough."

The family head's words carried no emotion. Only fact and sincerity.

Lynox stepped right up beside the family head, groaning softly like a man complaining his back hurt.

Enkrid had almost asked the two of them why they had arrived so quickly, had almost said he thought they were not planning to come until morning, but he stopped himself.

The variables he had factored in had arrived very late indeed.

Still, he could not quite bring himself to say it.

Neither of them was unscathed. Lynox least of all.

He had lost his left arm.

His eyes met Enkrid's, and the old swordsman who had protected the Zaun family grinned.

"I suppose I'll have to make do with three swords now."

Two arms, six swords. One arm left.

He still cracked a joke in that condition.

Could the arm be regrown? Without Seiki, who had been running from the world because of her divine nature, making some kind of bargain with a god herself, it would be difficult.

"I'll, I'll..."

Ragna did not know whose hand had been placed on his shoulder. He kept repeating the same fragment.

Everyone had seen what he did.

The three-eyed old man's throat had been cut open. The chimera that had sprouted horns and transformed had a fist-sized hole through its head. Ragna had stabbed through with Penna then twisted his wrist and gouged, so the rim of the hole in its skull was ragged, as though someone had forced a blunt blade through by sheer strength, jagged and uneven.

Simply put, dead.

He had killed those two and tried to kill Dmuel, but that last part had failed.

Dmuel had been aware of the two approaching, but he had let them come. They had not concerned him.

"You managed not to die. Quite a feat. Did Heskal fail to do his job properly, or did you simply surpass my expectations?"

Dmuel did not panic. He was impressed. They had shown this much; look at what they had done.

Everything he had prepared lay dead on the ground. He had coffins ready for them, but this was not what he had foreseen. A genuine surprise.

Which made him almost a little pleased.

This was probably the last entertainment he would enjoy before claiming divinity.

Dmuel looked down at those still standing before him. His body had been growing without anyone noticing, his head now two full heads above Enkrid's. Black bones jutted from his rotting flesh like supports bracing a structure from within.

Strips of flesh bulging with veins filled the gaps between the bones, reinforcing those supports.

"All of you will be reborn. I will grant you divine power and show you a new world."

He said it as though someone had asked him to.

"It's you."

Whatever Dmuel said, the family head kept walking straight toward him. The growing body was a strange sight, but the family head did not seem to register it.

He bore many fresh wounds himself. Blood was not flowing, but the wounds had turned black, signs of poison.

Trudge, trudge. He stopped a short distance away. A straight charge with the greatsword from here and a neck would be cut in moments. Within ten steps.

In that interval, Dmuel had grown a neck that stretched long and smooth. He tilted his chin up high and looked down.

The family head spoke plainly.

"You're uglier than I imagined."

Lynox nodded from behind in agreement.

"You are."

Dmuel looked at those still standing before him. Looked down at them, more precisely.

"So it was that child you kept alive. I should have killed them sooner."

No one here could understand Dmuel's words or actions. And he was not asking them to.

Gods did not seek understanding from their creations.

He continued.

"Why do creatures caught helplessly in the middle resist so stubbornly?"

Even without seeking understanding, should he not at least tell them how great and extraordinary he was, what a difficult road he had walked?

Because this was not understanding. This would become doctrine.

"There were times the envoy drew close and whispered. Long before now, far back. At that time I created a very special drug. A drug that gave its maker a different passage of time from everyone else. Listen. What do you suppose it feels like when one day becomes twice as long for you as it is for anyone else?"

Dmuel had possessed extraordinary talent from the start, but he had wanted to go higher still.

He had plunged into alchemy and eventually laid his hands on the World of Spells.

Along the way he had entered the Cursed Ground and visited the Empire. He caught glimpses of the continent's secrets.

Only then did he understand what he truly wanted.

To become a god. That was his wish.

"That drug was a small gain won during my research into immortality and undeath."

The corners of his rotting mouth lifted, and a strip of flesh dropped away and slapped onto the ground. It was enough to turn the stomach.

His skin was becoming smooth and hard now, gem-like.

Not transparent, though. More like a gemstone packed with filth.

"Listen. This is the first proof of my greatness that I speak as I become a god."

Dmuel's voice came layered over itself. Enkrid looked at him and felt something close to what he had felt facing a demon.

A stark wrongness, the kind born from a living purpose and a way of regarding life so completely unlike anything human, unlike any other thinking creature.

A dizzying, crushing Pressure bore down on the air. It made you forget that rain was still falling. A dominion over everything around him, as though the whole surrounding world had been placed inside his fist.

Or perhaps it was closer to a gravity that pulled every mind toward him and held it there.

That atmosphere settled, pressing everything beneath it. Then Dmuel spoke the opening line of his own Holy War with his rotting tongue.

"What was ten days to others was one day to me. I lived a hundred such days. This is how the ordinary surpasses the extraordinary. This is the beginning of one who was born human, rose above demons, and became a god!"

The layered voice shook something deep in the chest. The very air seemed to bend its knee to him, bowing its head in submission.

At that moment, Enkrid let out something true without thinking.

"Just that?"

The murmur was small, but everyone heard it.

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