WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 724: Even If I Die, You Must Fight

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"Snapping a cord pulled taut only takes one cut of the scissors."

There's a saying that a single pebble is all it takes to tip a balanced scale.

Enkrid thought Dmuel might have foreseen this situation before he did.

Heskal could have warned him. Or maybe Dmuel had simply felt some dark premonition.

If not that, then there was something else to consider.

'Just a pair of swordsmen and some girl.'

Why had he said that? Why had he fought so desperately to kill Ann?

'If he hadn't known something, he never would have bothered.'

That was what it came down to.

If Heskal had made a serious move, keeping Ann alive would have been very difficult. Looking back now, that was the conclusion. No matter how closely Ragna guarded her day and night, Heskal was the kind who would have found a gap and driven a blade through it.

But that hadn't happened.

Those small pebbles had gathered and piled up on one side of the scale, and the gravel labeled "just a pair of swordsmen and some girl" had tipped it.

* * *

The shiver born from witnessing the family head's sword had already swept through Enkrid's body and passed.

He had no gift for prophecy when it came to how a fight would end, but looking back on the outcome was not difficult at all.

Alexandra had accelerated her Will, drawing on greater-than-usual physical strength, sharpened senses, and Dynamic Visual Acuity. That was how she had achieved the line-burst.

Put more simply, it was a fight of lighting a single candle and enduring until it burned down to nothing.

Tempest, on the other hand, had changed the form of his Will and detonated it all at once.

The point-burst. Everything staked on a single stroke.

Not a candle, but the spark from a flint. A flash that only ignites in the instant of striking.

The difference was that its heat was several times more intense than any candle flame. It was like releasing, in a single breath, the fire needed to burn that candle away entirely.

'That's no sword stroke for a sick man to be making.'

The reality Enkrid had briefly forgotten in all the excitement forced its way back into his thoughts.

Dmuel was still radiating that rotting stench even with half his body cut away. Black viscous fluid seeped between the partially crushed entrails, and rainwater poured into the severed trunk.

Even so, he wasn't dead yet. He seemed almost determined to prove it.

"Die."

Dmuel's left hand, attached to the relatively intact half of his body, rose. The words he murmured filled with dense Will and magical power and shaped themselves into a spell.

Black mist gathered before his hand, twisted into the shape of a long rod, and came flying.

It wasn't much different in form from what the Scalers had been wielding.

No one needed to say it out loud. The rod was clearly saturated with poison.

Fwwng.

As the spell-conjured rod took on physical form, the sound of air tearing open was unmistakable.

Would a mere rod like this be enough to kill the family head? Not under normal circumstances.

But the family head had burst every capillary in both eyes with that single sword stroke, and blood was seeping through.

Everyone who turned to look could see his eyes going red.

It wasn't only his eyes. Blood began running from every opening in his face, his nose, his mouth, his ears.

And right into the middle of all that came the flying spell.

Ragna watched but couldn't move to intercept. Not passing out right now was already something of a miracle for him. Anything forceful was out of the question. His body still responded honestly enough that he half-rose, but someone else had moved before him.

Enkrid. The moment he registered reality through the haze of exhilaration, he had already started moving.

He knew from experience, didn't he? That kind of monster always prepared something for the very end.

After killing the One-Killer, he had nearly lost Sinar. How could he forget that ugliness at the very last moment, the way it had stretched out its blade and tried to shove everything it owned, soul and all, inside Sinar?

Right. He hadn't forgotten that moment.

Even with his whole body creaking, Enkrid stepped in front of the family head.

A simple sequence of movements. He wrung what he could from his muscles, lifted his foot, and reached a position in front of the family head just before Dmuel launched the spell.

From that footing, he snapped his wrist and flicked Three-Iron in a sharp rotation, catching the dark rod square in the middle. There was a sharp crack, and the rod shattered into fragments that scattered across the ground.

He hadn't had the strength for a proper swing, so he'd used only the wrist rotation, relying on the sword's weight and centrifugal force. Lucky would be a fair word for how it turned out.

If he'd struck the spell's grain wrong, he would have taken a hole in his own chest instead of shielding the family head.

'The body really is...'

There was nothing to be done about the state he was in.

Even deflecting the spells Dmuel had been firing off all this time had been barely manageable.

Honestly, if he hadn't been bold enough to let some of those spells graze him on purpose midway through, he'd have had more than a few holes in him by now.

Enkrid exhaled and looked up. The half-dead Dmuel glared at him with savage intensity.

Enkrid didn't need to hear it to know what Dmuel was thinking.

Then again, Dmuel opened his mouth and said it anyway.

"Hate you. I hate you."

"What is it you hate so much?" Enkrid asked. Something gentle had crept into the question. Was he planning to hear out a monster's grievances as it teetered on the edge of death?

That was what everyone around them was thinking, when Enkrid spoke again.

"Is it that I look young?"

No. Enkrid was needling Dmuel right to the end. Not because he had developed a taste for mockery.

There was calculation behind it. More precisely, it was the product of Ruagarne's tactical swordsmanship combined with Krais's brand of quick thinking.

'Dmuel still has enough left to pull something.'

To use it cleanly, he'd need to settle his mind. Which meant keeping him rattled was the better play.

Don't let him calm down. That was the idea.

Even the smallest edge was worth taking. Enkrid was unapologetic about it. Without Ruagarne's tactical swordsmanship, there would have been no reason to act this way. All of it came down to Frog's teachings.

Besides, if Dmuel had challenged him on terms of honor and fought openly, Enkrid wouldn't have gone this far.

But this was a wraith who had lurked in the shadows, running schemes and going after Ann.

So a little needling wasn't out of the question, was it?

Dmuel couldn't get the words out.

"You, this. This, this."

Even now, if he had somehow found peace with being mocked, he might have experienced something close to enlightenment.

Reaching that kind of peace would practically make someone a god.

He hadn't become a god, but when everything he wanted collapsed and the rage surged past a certain line, reason and emotion merged inside Dmuel into a single purpose.

Whatever happened to the family head who had cut him in half didn't matter. That one bastard right there had to die. No matter what. No matter how.

And Dmuel was not a fool.

'No. Killing him isn't enough.'

He wasn't going to abandon the Zaun family just to put down one man. Was the one talking the only problem?

No. The Zaun family, the family head, everyone holding a sword, they were all objects of his hatred.

And there was something he had only now understood.

'Heskal, you.'

He had been deceived. Looking back made it clear. That man's goal had never been to seize divine power. His real aim had been the life that would follow the seizure.

That meant Heskal had always intended to survive and had things left to do. He couldn't afford to let things end the way a dead Heskal would have wanted.

'I'm going to die.'

Maybe it was because he had struggled so desperately for so long to avoid death.

Dmuel knew he was dying. And he knew clearly what he could still accomplish before he did.

Death was a certainty.

'Zaun comes with me.'

Once he died, the seeds of the plague he had scattered would sprout and grow all at once.

Most of the people tied to Zaun would die. Eight out of ten in the hunters' village, the brokers' village, the retirees' village, all of them.

This was a secret he hadn't even shared with Heskal. If Heskal had known, he'd have beaten the earth with his fists even in death.

It had been decades since Dmuel first settled here. Most of that time he'd spent in a dormant state, but the last few years were different.

He had prepared this much.

Only, this was all he had.

'And then it ends.'

That bastard barking in front of him would somehow survive, and that would be that.

'He'll go around spreading the word that he killed me and soak up the praise?'

Since childhood, people had said he had a serpent's soul. Dmuel had always carried deep envy. He'd often been told he was a snake that had turned into a man.

The thought of Enkrid receiving praise disgusted him. More than that, the simple fact of that man surviving made him furious.

At the edge of death, Dmuel placed everything he had onto the scale.

How to kill both the Zaun family and this bastard?

Things had gone sideways and he'd taken this beating, but Dmuel's mind was sharp.

He arrived at a method for killing that insufferable man in very little time.

"I am going to die," Dmuel said.

"Even a human-faced dog passing by could tell you that much."

Enkrid cut in, but Dmuel didn't rise to it.

"Hear me, family head of Zaun."

His voice layered again. Enkrid read this as his final move.

Whatever spell came flying, he could block it at least once more.

His body was creaking a bit, but cutting spells down with his sword had grown somewhat more refined, built on Esther's training and the live experience from a few moments ago.

He'd learned something from letting those spells graze him at the end, too.

'Even if fifty of those black rods came flying at once, I could find a way to stop them.'

A few holes in his body, maybe, but if they passed through the right spots, he wouldn't end up crippled.

"You're not handling this alone," Lynox said, stepping up beside him.

Behind Lynox were Anahehra and Riley, along with several more of Zaun's swordsmen.

Their resolve wouldn't be any less than his own.

This fight belonged to Zaun. They had drawn their swords to protect themselves.

The family head, through eyes going faint and dim, kept his gaze fixed on Enkrid's back, then felt his vision fade to black.

Had he gone blind? Possibly.

The sword stroke he had unleashed a moment ago was something he had never done even in his prime.

It would be fair to say he had thrown everything into that one swing. At the time, he had truly been prepared to die the moment it landed.

Having used his Will so savagely, the depletion was eating through his entire body, and all he wanted was to sink down and rest. Yet the man he had cut was still running his mouth.

Blood trickled from inside his ears. They had gone somewhat muffled, but he could still hear.

"I'm listening," the family head said.

At that, Dmuel began speaking in a tone that was far too calm.

"I'll let you decide. There are two choices."

What was this talk of choices at a time like this? As they listened, the owner of that rotting body, who had clung to life with remarkable stubbornness, continued to work his foul tongue.

"If I gather what strength I have left and release it, everyone in Zaun who carries the seeds of my plague will die. The seeds of that plague normally grow slowly over time, but if I die, they will sprout all at once and take their lives, that is the form in which I planted them. However!"

He stopped mid-sentence. The delivery was loaded with force.

Ragna, listening, felt a pounding ache spread through his head.

Dmuel's voice came in multiple overlapping layers. It was the voice of a monster who had sought to become a god, squeezing out and detonating the last of his remaining power.

"Instead of that, I will give everything I have, every curse, to that one man. Then the curse that makes the plague in Zaun sprout all at once will be undone."

Dmuel lifted his remaining fingers and pointed at Enkrid.

Was he saying he hated Enkrid so much that killing him alone was enough?

No. Dmuel understood people. More than just understood them, he had manipulated their hearts.

Hadn't that been how he wound Heskal around his finger and made him his sword?

Thinking back now, it seemed like Heskal had turned on him, but in the beginning, drawing him in and binding him had certainly come from reaching into human desire and the human heart.

'I know people.'

Dmuel was confident.

Enkrid would refuse this offer. No one in the world wanted to die. That was a truth.

'And far fewer still would die for strangers.'

A parent dying for a child, that was possible.

But someone dying for total strangers? Would anyone do that?

Because of what Dmuel had just said, the family head would have to weigh Zaun against an outsider, and which way that scale would tip was obvious.

Enkrid would resist. And the family head would try to grab him and restrain him.

'Even if I die, you must still fight.'

That was the first thing he was aiming for.

And hidden behind that was another aim.

What if the family head and Zaun dragged Enkrid to him?

He had said the seeds of the plague wouldn't sprout all at once. He hadn't said the plague would disappear.

Even if everything fell apart, the difference would only be dying sooner or dying later.

"And we're supposed to believe that?" Lynox cut in.

"Watch."

Dmuel spoke and waved his hand. A square golden border appeared in the air behind him, and words rose up written in gold.

"You've heard of it, I imagine. The golden covenant scripture. I will write my intent into this scripture."

A rare artifact had surfaced.

Words written in the golden covenant scripture would come to pass without fail. And the price was the soul of the one who wrote them.

Word had spread widely that the owner of that gleaming golden scripture was one of the demon gods who ruled the Cursed Ground, known by the name master of Forbidden Sorcery.

Lynox knew what the golden covenant scripture was. That thing was a death sentence there was no avoiding. More than that, it was an act that mortgaged a soul.

"That's real. That golden covenant scripture," Schmidt said, stepping forward.

He had been there in the thick of the fighting, holding his own the whole time. He trained in both magic and swordsmanship, and his knowledge of magic told him that what Dmuel had said was the truth.

He had clearly fought hard as well. One side of his cheek was split open, the wound darkened to black.

Schmidt spoke again, deliberate logic in his words, from someone who had assessed the situation fully.

"It doesn't add up as something prepared to deceive anyone. No one in Zaun has particular aptitude for magic, and the fact that I happened to stay on here wasn't exactly something anyone could have planned for."

If Tempest or anyone else refused to believe it, something truly catastrophic would follow.

Schmidt didn't want that.

He couldn't afford to lose his half-sibling and a close friend in the same moment.

"There is no lie in what I've said. Believe it or don't-that's up to you. But all of it is the truth."

There was ease in the way Dmuel spoke.

Quite bold, for a man about to die.

The people standing behind murmured questions, asking what the golden covenant scripture was, whether this was real, whether it could be trusted. But they gradually fell silent.

No matter how they looked at it, the atmosphere said that every word of this was true.

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