WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 725: Since There's a Chance to Choose

= = =

Cold rain swept across the ground in chilling sheets, and lightning split the sky above the dark clouds in rapid succession.

Rumble, rumble, rumble.

A white flash cracked open the distance, followed by the boom. Even the thunder seemed to yield, pulling back from this place.

The sound stayed far off and did not draw closer.

Silence threaded through the falling rain. After a brief pause, the family head's mouth opened.

"I will take all the curse upon myself."

"Ridiculous. Why would I bother with a man who's dying anyway?"

Dmuel was no fool. Tempest Zaun had swung his sword past his own limits.

If they had left even one of the escorts Heskal had sent to kill the family head, things would not have gone this badly.

Clever Heskal. Fox-like Heskal.

For someone called that, was the final tactic being so poor intentional? Had that been what he wanted all along?

'Was even that what he hoped for?'

No answer came. The dead cannot answer.

And blaming the dead now served no purpose at all.

The blade Dmuel had drawn was very sharp.

Was he supposed to let the whole clan die just to save an outsider like Enkrid?

A wife and children, family and friends, comrades? All of them?

'The choices were always limited.'

Dmuel had not merely spoken of curses with words.

If the family head caught Enkrid here and forced him to his knees, Dmuel would pour the curse into him.

But would Enkrid just take it quietly?

If they fought to restrain him, several in the Zaun family would end up walking hand in hand with the royal envoy into death.

'In the end, you would all kill and be killed.'

If Enkrid died, musicians and their instruments would come marching toward Zaun to play his funeral song.

And Zaun would fall.

It had all been a scheme to kill that insufferable outsider here and drag Zaun down with him.

That Dmuel had set all this in motion in so little time proved he was no ordinary creature either.

"Decide. Will you let him run?"

Dmuel said it, and this time his voice carried no layered echo, yet to some of Zaun's blades it landed like a thunderclap.

Every heart wavered. Even after the driving storm had died down and the tempest passed, that much remained true.

Anahehra and Riley spread out, widening the perimeter into something close to an encirclement. They were fast. Whatever choice was made, whatever came of it, the worst outcome had to be avoided first.

If Enkrid bolted, there was no choice left to make. It would simply be over.

Lynox went quiet and stepped back.

The bare minimum of conscience. He did not attack Enkrid's back.

Enkrid had fought for Zaun. His honor deserved that much.

There was no way out. Everything seemed to be playing into Dmuel's hands, when someone dragged themself forward on unsteady legs and planted themself in front of Enkrid.

The greatsword had cracked through the middle and looked close to snapping. It was driven point-first into the ground. Rain poured down in sheets, soaking everything around them.

Through wet golden hair, red eyes blazed with a clarity that had nothing to do with the ruin of the body they inhabited. The will and resolve there burned high.

"Go."

It was Ragna. The family head's emotionless eyes met his.

"What do you think you're doing?"

the family head asked.

"The captain has to be sent out."

His son's answer came without hesitation.

Was Ragna free of doubt? Hardly.

But if he had to choose, there was only one side.

"In return, every moment I have left will be spent for those who remain in Zaun."

Save the captain, absorb the consequences himself. That was the path Ragna chose.

Not everyone would have caught the plague. Those who survived, those in the retirees' village, he would pass the Zaun blade on to them.

Was the sacrifice now being demanded Enkrid's fault? Not at all.

And yet the world had a way of demanding sacrifice regardless of fault.

The family head knew that.

"How many of them will actually survive?"

Dmuel let out a snickering laugh. Only then did everyone see him for what he was, something beyond a foul-looking monster. By this point, calling him the embodiment of a demon felt entirely right.

Could Ragna blocking the way actually protect Enkrid?

Setting aside the family head and Alexandra, those two had taken the worst injuries of anyone here.

The family head's blank eyes turned toward Enkrid, and his lips moved several times without making a sound.

No emotion showed, but in those small movements a flicker of hesitation was visible.

Yet was it right to force this kind of choice on someone who had lived his whole life for Zaun?

More than that, Enkrid seemed to already know what answer the family head would give.

Enkrid pushed the rain-soaked hair back from his face and turned.

"Don't run. Hate us for the rest of your life, become an Evil Spirit and torment me forever if you want. But, ah..."

Riley started to speak, then broke off with tears streaming down. Not because anyone intervened, the words simply would not come.

The gentle rain hid those tears.

What was this to do to someone who had fought for them?

But then what about the people left behind? If anyone asked Riley what Zaun meant, there was only one answer.

Family. Life. Everything.

"I'm not going anywhere."

Enkrid said it, looking back at Riley. He turned away from the crowd and stood before the source of that rotting stench, a thing dying and still reeking of decay.

"Is it a curse or a plague?"

If it was a curse, it would not reach him. The Boatman was there.

His tone was calm, his gaze steady. Clear blue eyes, straight and unshaking as a pillar, met the rotting, crumbling gaze across from them.

He was not using Will, yet force radiated off him. Even without Pressure, a person can become something others look up to through action alone-a living example for everyone around them.

As Enkrid was doing now.

Before the family head could say a word, before every blade in Zaun could turn against the man who had been a friend yesterday.

"...I called it a curse, but it is a plague."

The words were pushed out of Dmuel by that force. The legendary monster who had claimed godhood found himself diminished in much the same way as before, brought low by a single word from an ordinary man.

The dark, deep, foul-smelling curse the demon had spread was defused by the actions of one human being.

Enkrid opened his mouth without a moment's hesitation.

"Bad luck for you, then. That is what I will do."

Bad luck because it was a plague and not a curse, though he had not said it expecting anyone to follow the logic.

"What exactly will you do?"

Dmuel asked, the question coming out on its own from sheer disbelief.

"Pour all that plague into me. In exchange, the plague living inside everyone in Zaun does not detonate. Provided that is not a lie."

"I will use my last breath to make the exchange. It will be accomplished not through magical power but through earnest will. It is also the act of pledging my soul as collateral."

That was the golden covenant scripture. So there was no deception in it.

Dmuel had once been a legendary alchemist and Sorcerer. Even his words carried will within them.

Enkrid had caught that Dmuel might try some clumsy trick. But he did not think Dmuel had prepared for this exact turn of events specifically, and reading the attitude on display now, he judged it was the truth.

'Had Dmuel expected to lose?'

No. That much was clear.

Dmuel had been mindful of Enkrid, Ragna, and Ann, yet would still have counted on victory.

Otherwise there would have been no reason to step forward personally.

'Whatever path it took, Dmuel had come out here with the gut-certainty that he would win.'

It had simply not worked out that way.

And even though all of it felt real, what if this was a trick?

"Could you live through the same today again?"

The Boatman in the vision asked.

Enkrid answered inwardly: he would do it until it worked.

"Are you serious? You would save everyone in your place?"

Enkrid felt almost as if he could see the Boatman, though this was none of his doing, and yet this one was clearly a step below the Boatman in every way.

The Boatman would never stoop to this kind of cheap provocation.

Besides, choices like this were ones Enkrid had made more times than he could count.

When he had no power, he had not even been given the chance to choose, so he had made the decision in his heart alone, and even when he had somehow stepped forward he was thrown back, but right now there was a chance to choose. The strength to carry that will through was in his hands and filled his body.

Three-Iron was that strength. The Will that never ran dry was that strength.

So that was what he would do.

The same as he had always believed. The same as he had always wanted.

"I protect everyone at my back. That is my creed."

A knight builds will through vows. Enkrid, carrying Will that would not run dry, had no need to stake his life on a vow.

Even so, Enkrid had always wagered everything on the words that left his own mouth, and he had always made good on them.

"So do it."

There was no hesitation in his voice.

Nobody had expected the one chosen as a sacrifice to step forward like this of his own accord.

Not Dmuel, and not the family head.

"You're actually insane."

Sheer disbelief stripped Dmuel of words. Only one thing came out.

"Insane. Completely insane."

He muttered it, and just as Enkrid was about to push him to get started..."What the..."

A voice came from behind. Ann had somehow made it out of the manor and all the way here, and cried out at the sight of Dmuel.

Her wet hair was plastered flat against her head, making her small skull stand out even more, and she had her usual leather satchel tucked under one arm.

Beside Ann, Grida rested a hand on her hip, shrugged one shoulder, and said, "She won't take my advice, our healer."

"You said treating the wounded from behind might let me save someone who'd otherwise die, so I followed you right out."

Ann shot that back at Grida, her eyes never leaving Dmuel.

"Is that really Dmuel?"

she asked.

Asking why Ann had come out was pointless.

She was already here, she had already taken in the scene with her own eyes, and she had already heard what had happened up to this point.

"So he really was alive, looking like that. Impressive in a disgusting way."

By any measure, this creature was Ann's direct enemy. Dmuel glared at her.

"Pathetic little girl."

Enkrid considered whether to tell him to at least bring two sword-wielders along when he talked, or to ask whether the plague was coming or if it had all been bluster, then dropped it.

He could feel it. Dmuel was finished. The man could not move a single finger.

All that remained was a fragment of will, barely enough strength for a few more words.

There was no point in mocking him. No need to scatter his focus either.

"Zaun, I..."

As the family head began to speak, Enkrid remembered a scene the Boatman had once shown him.

So that moment was this one.

Before arriving here, something like a vision had been shown to him.

In it, Ann was dying and Ragna was furious.

But not everything the Boatman showed had come to pass.

Enkrid had already known what choice the family head would make, even before stepping forward.

"Whether plague or curse, I will not transfer it."

That was what the family head would have said.

In the situation the Boatman had shown, would the family head have given a different answer? It was possible his conviction had broken and he had chosen his clan instead.

Possibility always exists.

So Ragna would have argued, and the family head would have said it was the best he could do.

"Nonsense."

That was what Ragna had said in the vision, but the Ragna standing here now simply held his ground in silence.

"Are you serious?"

And then Ragna asked him that.

"You think a mere plague can kill me?"

Enkrid answered lightly. Ragna said nothing.

Right. So what else had changed.

"Damn all of you."

The situation between Ann and Dmuel reversed. Dmuel blinked and pressed on with his final incantation.

"You will spend your whole life rotting away before you die. I am the father of all plagues. I am the god who will forge a new order upon this earth!"

The golden covenant scripture scattered its light and dissolved. Enkrid felt something invisible bore its way into his body.

That was the end of it.

He breathed out once, and heat blazed through that single breath.

His organs felt like they were burning.

"Ugh."

With a groan his legs gave out. He dropped to one knee with a thud and drove Three-Iron into the ground to hold himself up.

Three-Iron, planted in the earth, looked like three swords.

"Urgh."

Nausea surged and he opened his mouth. Red blood poured out.

"Son of a,!"

Ann cried out.

At exactly the wrong moment, Ragna vomited blood at the same time. He wiped the corner of his mouth and said, "You said you wouldn't turn down any fight, so don't turn down this one either. Don't lose to something as small as a plague. Captain."

Right, this part was the same. Even in the vision, Ragna had said something like that.

Enkrid focused on the sounds reaching him and held on. It felt as though someone was pressing a fire-heated brand to his throat and burning through his insides.

"All of you, just die."

As Dmuel gathered his last breath to speak, Ann stepped in close, pulled force up from her gut, and shouted.

"You think I'll let that happen? I am the Elixir. I am Panacea. I am Remedium Omnia."

The light went out of Dmuel's eyes. Had he heard Ann's words? He might have.

Was that fear of a moment like this what had made Dmuel try to kill her?

Enkrid carried that thought as far as it would go, then closed his eyes.

Well then. When he opened them again, would it be repeating today? Or something else?

That was not something he could know before he opened them.

= = =

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried