A Knight who Eternally Regresses - Chapter 723

WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 723: The Explosion of a Single Point

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His mouth opened on its own, though he could hardly help it. He was trapped in a curse that looped the same day over and over, and sometimes he had lived through that single day more than a few hundred times.

Add all those repetitions together and the count was not in the hundreds but the thousands.

So the word "merely" slipping out was only natural. Anyone who knew his situation, the Boatman, for instance, would nod at that.

Fair enough.

Of course, anyone who did not know would hear it in an entirely different way.

A taunt, now of all times?

Well, that was probably how it looked.

That single word, "merely," was nothing remarkable to Enkrid, but to everyone else it sent out a ripple of something else entirely.

Moments ago, that layered voice had made even the rainwater seem to bow. It had made Dmuel look like a being from another world, not this one.

A dignity so untouchable it overflowed around him.

Then one word..."merely", and he became it again: a hideous soul clinging to a rotting corpse, a monster kept alive by potions and spells. Worse, he had shown pettiness by reacting to a handful of words.

"I'll grant you have a talent for getting under the skin. Creature."

Dmuel said it to Enkrid.

"I'm just a swordsman," Enkrid replied, lifting Three-Iron. His arm rose slowly, pointing to one side. Then he added, "Two swordsmen between us. That's all."

Shhhhhh.

Only the wind and rain spoke after that.

To keep that kind of nerve in the middle of all this, one would have to call it something beyond ordinary.

Crack!

The sky split open as if startled by Enkrid, spitting a thunderbolt. White light flooded everything, then vanished. His shadow stretched in four directions with his body at its center, and when the light left and darkness rushed in to fill the gap, the shadows slipped back into him like something returning home.

Through all of it, Enkrid's posture had not shifted a fraction.

"No wonder they call you a lunatic," Lynox said, impressed.

Enkrid wanted to argue. That was not something he needed to hear from a man who had just lost an arm and was already joking about fighting with three swords instead of four.

But the family head spoke first.

"Now it's my turn. Enkrid of Border Guard."

Tempest stood before the creature whose strange skin had turned to black stone, battered head to foot, yet the Pressure coming off him had not faded. He looked less like a man and more like a greatsword given human shape.

Not Pressure, the man himself was the blade. A greatsword with its edge raised and its battle-will burning. Where that tip pointed needed no asking.

"Don't worry. Meat-shield Lynox is right here," Lynox said.

"You mentioned that other people's single day is ten days for you?" Enkrid cut in, and before Dmuel could answer, he kept going. Another question right after.

"Is that why you look so weathered?"

At this point one could fairly say he was risking his life just to get a rise out of someone. The delivery was dressed up like something out of a heroic ballad, but the words themselves were something else. It was a gift for provocation that drew involuntary admiration.

Now, of all moments..."weathered"?

"I have a youthful face."

Every time Enkrid opened his mouth, Lynox clicked his tongue.

"You are a man I would very much like to tear apart," Dmuel said.

The fury in his voice was thick. Over his many decades of life, there must have been at least one or two who had looked down on him. But to hear something like this, it had been a very long time.

No. Had it ever happened at all?

He had no reason to spell out his own story, but he had spent the last several decades living like a man asleep. Before he slept, and after he woke, there had only ever been those who revered him.

"My god!"

"Master, who shall become the new god of the Cursed Ground!"

The only one who had never shown him fear was Heskal. Heskal had approached not out of reverence but out of self-interest. And even Heskal had tried to abandon Zaun and build a new Zaun around Dmuel himself, had he not?

Something twisted inside Dmuel.

Wanting to become a god did not mean the heart behind it was broad. That was Dmuel's nature. He had never let live anyone who had fallen from his favor.

He had never even fully trusted Heskal, had placed a Prohibition Seal on the man's heart, and in the end Heskal had made a choice Dmuel could not begin to understand.

Trust and faith were words that had no place in his life.

He had been a narrow man who had never given trust to anyone.

Now he was a narrow monster.

"You I will kill without fail."

Dmuel raised a finger toward Enkrid. Across the rotting flesh, patches of skin turned to black stone looked grotesque.

"What did I do to deserve that?" Enkrid asked.

Well, having an enemy mark him for death was hardly unusual. He was not genuinely aggrieved, and that came through in his tone, calm even as he protested, which only made it more grating.

"Let's agree not to meet as enemies," Lynox said, shaking his head with fresh admiration.

The family head raised his sword without a trace of humor.

It was not every single one of those twenty years, but Zaun had been forced to pick sides internally. For a long time they had needed to suspect, cast out, and test one another.

Tempest had hated that deeply. And now the one who had dared to split his entire family stood before him.

The true source of all these schemes was not Heskal but the monster in front of him. Tempest knew that.

"Should have tracked him down and killed him long ago," he murmured.

Dmuel's gaze shifted to him.

"Arrogant."

The one who had scattered curse and plague for more than a decade, found at last.

Dmuel's time of actual activity had been brief. In between, his disciples had acted in his place. Without Heskal's help, he would still be hiding somewhere in a near-death state.

He had woken roughly a hundred years ahead of schedule.

Not that it mattered. Waking up a little early was nothing.

Either way, the divine was now within his grasp.

A fish swimming in the lake called Zaun, however large it grew, was no match for him.

That was why he had started everything despite knowing he was not yet perfect.

Dmuel no longer needed to instruct anyone. This was the time for punishment.

Black smoke rose from his hands, and across the ground, beetles gathered and writhed. Each one the size of a palm. To say a bite would merely sting would not be accurate.

Enkrid raised Three-Iron and stood ready. Lynox rose on one arm, and from behind the group, presences began to stir.

No one needed to look back. It was not the feeling of Magic Beasts, and voices followed immediately.

"Anahehra is here."

The most beautiful woman among the Giants limped toward them, helmet gone.

"This is what I trained my sword for. I'll help too," said a man who already walked with a limp, stepping in behind her.

Anahehra of the Giants and limping Riley.

"Is that him?"

"You cut down Heskal?"

"Is Ragna dead? He can't die yet. He has to wait until I surpass him."

The rest of Zaun's blades gathered.

"If you lose, I'll be next."

Among them, Alexandra came too, half-leaning on Odinkar's shoulder with her arm draped over him.

"Have no fear. I'm here, Alexandra," Odinkar said.

He had done a fine job reining in the rage that had risen to the top of his head. It had been a short time, but he had grown. His old habit was crossing the line during sparring, but getting knocked around in Border Guard had knocked that habit right out of him.

Zaun's blades gathered, to protect the place they lived.

This reserve was surely beyond what Dmuel had expected.

Even with the Medusa and the sorcery serpent gone, he had not imagined every last member of Zaun would be alive and defiant before him.

Still, Dmuel believed it did not matter. He was alone now, but that was no problem.

Heskal, and the ones he called disciples, had been nothing but expendable pieces.

He was one who would become a god and open a new Cursed Ground here. From there, all creatures on the continent and in the Empire would praise him, and he, as a god, would set new laws.

"Protect the family head."

Enkrid followed the instinct and said it, then without stopping for breath continued.

"Anahehra, fall back to the side! Kal, cover the rear. Riley, lead the group. Kill all the beetles."

With a few gestures from Dmuel, beetles rained from above and black-earth golems heaved themselves up from the ground. A black mud golem's fist was the size of a man's head.

Was it going to be another long fight?

No. It was not.

Tempest tipped a medicine bottle to his lips, swallowed it down, then let his sword hang loose and steadied his breathing.

A potion, now?

It was Ann's medicine, something that eased pain, even if only for a short while.

He swallowed it now.

That meant he had been fighting all this time with his body in ruins.

Why?

For this moment.

The single moment that Tempest, a man with a gift for strategy, had been waiting for was now.

Separate from what his mind understood, Enkrid felt something different in Tempest's momentum, something unlike before.

In the meantime, Dmuel summoned beetles, golems, and flying Evil Spirits, and scattered plague. The black smoke he breathed out was itself a poison, a sickness that delivered death.

Breathe it in and lumps would form inside the body. Eyes would go blind.

Every sword-hand of Zaun fell back at measured intervals and began to fight for time.

Dodge the black smoke, cut down the beetles.

Circle the golems, sever their legs to strip their mobility, cut them again when they regenerated.

The fight unfolded like that, and Tempest stood with his sword in hand, still as a dead man, then raised the hanging blade and brought it up close beside his face.

Watching him, Dmuel swept both hands and hurled a clump of black water the size of a human head. Enkrid did not want to imagine what would happen if it burst.

"Stop it," Tempest said.

Whether he knew exactly what he was asking for, Enkrid did it anyway.

Enkrid could sense the shape of a spell by feel. That was how he had cut the Walking Fire too. Sparring with Esther had sharpened that sense further.

A spell.

Reading its grain, he raised Three-Iron and swung. Drawing his left foot back as he thrust, Three-Iron carved through the black water clump with a soft thud and split it in two.

Thwump.

The two halves fell to the ground and mixed into the mud without a trace.

It was power borrowed from the master of sulfur, the one that dissolved everything it touched. But it was useless now, because the core of the spell was broken, the form of its magical power had collapsed.

"You cut a spell?"

Dmuel was genuinely startled, and fair enough. A strand of magical power, severed clean. Could a mere swordsman do something like that?

"How dare you."

He hurled five more black clumps in rapid succession, and from behind him, chains of black smoke shot out in every direction.

They slid along the ground without a sound, quick as snakes, tangling around Enkrid's ankles.

Enkrid cut all five clumps in order. Setting aside the fact that they were spells, the cutting itself was not that difficult.

They were not fast and they did not veer off-course mid-flight. Easier to cut than the pumpkins Rem threw barehanded.

The chains were similar.

The strike-points where force concentrated were visible here and there, so he moved steadily and cut each one.

Step, kick off to buy time, pull Three-Iron back and scrape it low along the ground.

Every muscle ached and his head pounded.

Thin and long.

Having used the burst once, he found he could also draw Will out thin as thread through restraint. Controlling Will was twice as easy as before.

He wanted to try something like what Ragna did, but right now swinging the sword through sheer grit mattered more.

"Ha!"

Dmuel glared at Enkrid. Because of this one, nothing was going the way it should.

Enkrid's lips moved. He seemed to be trying to say something. Was he about to admit he could not hold on? That he had nothing left?

Blood ran steadily from his nose, so he was clearly not in good shape.

Dmuel kept throwing spells while watching Enkrid's mouth.

Enkrid swallowed back the blood welling up in his throat and spoke. A speaker ought to pitch their words at a volume fit for the listener. In that regard Enkrid was an excellent speaker.

He spoke at just the right volume for Dmuel to hear.

"What do you think of what two mere swordsmen and one girl managed to do?"

Now, of all moments, this?

"Kiaaa!"

Dmuel let out a shriek. His fury spiked.

The variety of incoming spells multiplied.

Black clumps, chains, black hands thrusting up from the ground without warning.

Patches of rainwater turned black and warped into something dog-like. Lightning crackled through the gaps. Enkrid dodged it all and cut down every spell threatening Tempest.

He rolled across the ground in the process, soaking himself head to foot in mud, and somewhere in the violent motion a fragment of the elven inner lining he still wore broke apart and slid loose.

Soaked through, rolling in muddy water, he looked like some rat caught and wrung out, yet Enkrid's blue eyes never lost their light, even in the dark.

When he felt himself nearing the limit, Tempest lunged toward Dmuel.

What did Dmuel trust in that moment? The protective spell wrapped around his body?

One of the world's truths, though, is that faith can always be betrayed.

It is in every Holy Scripture.

Take in hundreds of disciples, and without fail, one will betray the master and sell him out.

Every Holy Scripture has a parable about a disciple's betrayal. It turns up in old tales passed down by word of mouth too.

"Ah."

Ragna let out a single sound, as if he had just come back to himself.

Enkrid fixed his eyes forward too. He had no strength left to move, and Three-Iron was planted in the ground, holding him up.

Rain drove into his eyes, but he could not blink.

Tempest Zaun ran and swung his sword.

A single stroke.

He had staked everything on it, his accumulated experience, the years of training, even the years ahead of him.

Light burst from his sword. Nothing like Audin's divine power, this was the shape of Will made visible.

The light wrapped around the blade curved and severed the world.

A sword that would cut anything. You could see it the moment you saw it.

Tempest's sword shattered the protective spell and everything behind it, entered at the shoulder and exited on the diagonal, splitting Dmuel's body apart.

To the eye it looked like light crashing through and cleaving an ugly creature in two.

Through all of it, Enkrid felt the Will inside Tempest heave and detonate.

It was not because his senses were special. Anyone at junior knight level would have felt it.

Will was formless, invisible, but perceptible. Right now it was visible to the eye.

And Tempest's Will did more than show itself. Like wind that is invisible yet undeniable when it scatters your hair, it made the change felt in everything around it.

Burst.

He had burst his Will too.

The method was simply different from Alexandra's.

Experience and instinct, alongside the theory built up through training, all came together and let Enkrid understand clearly what Tempest had done.

Point-burst.

Alexandra distributed her Will across time when she fought. A line-burst. Tempest, by contrast, had staked everything on a single stroke.

A sword style built to pour everything into one cut.

That was Tempest's secret technique.

And that technique had cut down Zaun's long nightmare.

Black blood soaked the ground. The rain thinned to a drizzle and the wind eased with it.

Dmuel looked down at his body, half-severed. Half-rotted organs slid to the ground.

"Why?"