WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 726: Clever Heskal

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"Hey, you're done when you die. Did no one ever tell you that?"

A faint afterimage. A bearded man spoke in a scolding tone.

His name was Rion, the sort who ran around with three or four capable fighters, protecting traveling merchants and the like. Peculiarly, he called his outfit "Comrades." Mercenary companies sometimes gave themselves unusual names, so everyone let it go, but Enkrid had heard later that Rion had chosen the name because he'd served in the Southern Great Power's army, and every man under him was a former squadmate from that unit.

It was not a name easy to forget. Within the reach of his power, Rion protected the weak, and when Enkrid first stumbled out into the world knowing nothing and wandered the continent, Rion had watched his back.

"What good is any of it once you're dead?"

That was the phrase Rion always had on his lips.

Not everyone in Comrades was a good person, not by a long stretch, but Rion himself had a sense of loyalty.

"You only get one life. One."

Die, and that's it. If you want to live, don't pull that kind of stunt.

That was roughly what he said. Enkrid had listened, then gone on living exactly as he always had. He could open his ears to most things, but there were things he would never give ground on.

A faint afterimage, like a dawn lake thick with fog. Rion's blurry shape warped and shifted until his face disappeared entirely.

"If you've got nothing and no strength to speak of, stay out of the way."

There had been so many people who looked down on him like that. Too many to remember by name.

The fog blurred again, and when it cleared, the owner of the night-sky scent appeared and shouted.

"So how do you block a spell? Here, take this. A spring spell and a summer spell."

But why is she swinging a sword?

Behind Esther, who was slashing with her blade, Sinar clutched flowers and branches and waved both arms skyward, dancing. Then Rem fell from the sky. An enormous, massive Rem.

It was a nightmare.

After that, Audin appeared shriveled thin and flew through the air, and Jaxon set up a salon while trailing dozens of women. Enkrid tried to ask if that was a joint venture with Krais, but his mouth wouldn't open.

He saw Ruagarne holding Fell in her right hand and swinging Ropord around like a whip. He saw Dunbakel laughing after transforming into a Manticore, claiming she had come back from the East as a true Beastfolk.

Teresa called Dunbakel a Demon Creature and swung a sword at her.

Hallucinations came alongside the visions.

"Lose your mind and you die."

Who was saying that?

Clang. Clang.

A noise slammed into his ears. He turned to see Aetri hammering at a human body stuffed inside a furnace.

That's me.

He looked closely. Aetri was beating his body with a hammer.

The moment he realized it, he became aware that a scorching heat was still burning through him from head to toe. He half-wondered if he was about to breathe fire, but even Dragonkin couldn't do that.

Esther might manage it, though.

He thought about asking her to show him when he got back to Border Guard.

She'd never do it.

If he actually asked, she would fix him with a look of pure contempt.

The searing heat swept through his entire body. Flowers appeared before him, and those flowers turned into butterflies that flew and then became flames that bored into his chest.

"If you die there, that place will become your cage."

Another hallucination.

Then came another pile of visions, none worth dwelling on. The world spun around him. A sudden cold hit. Someone split his belly open and kneaded his organs, and when he looked, there was a child he had once failed to save, long dead, smiling with pitch-black eyes, innocent and carefree.

It feels nice playing with your insides.

That was what the child seemed to say.

Then the Black River surged, and all the pain disappeared.

Enkrid opened his eyes to the familiar ferry. He was slumped against the railing, and the Boatman stood ahead of him in the same posture as always, lamp in hand, rooted to the deck like a tree.

The fact that even the Boatman's figure looked blurred through a sandy haze was proof enough that something was wrong with him.

Each time the purple lamp swayed, its light raced across the black water before fading out. Watching it, Enkrid had the impression that the river was swallowing the light whole.

"If you die here, all you will do is fight the sickness and die and be born again, over and over. And then you will no longer be able to swing a sword with such pleasure."

Enkrid blinked five times after hearing that.

Very slowly.

Then he opened his mouth and chose his words carefully.

"I think my hearing may be damaged. Could you say that again?"

"My words are shaped from Will and sent directly into your mind. Hearing has nothing to do with it."

Enkrid knew that. He simply hadn't expected the Boatman to offer him something that looked so plainly like encouragement.

"Is this a hallucination?"

He asked it back. The Boatman said only what he had to say.

"How long can you hold death at bay? How long will a lucky death stay by your side?"

With that, the conversation on the ferry was over.

Eyes he hadn't shut opened once more.

This time it was real.

His eyes came half open, but they were so dry and heavy he could barely hold them up. Through the narrow slit of his vision, he made out patterns that were both unfamiliar and familiar.

The stone ceiling of a house he had been staring at for days. Beside a thick wooden beam, pebbles had been pressed into the wall in irregular shapes.

"You're awake?"

Ann was right beside him. His vision was still blurry, so he blinked a few times.

A crust of sleep flaked away from his eyes. They still felt dry, but with the foreign matter gone, the world came clear.

Ann had dark circles under her eyes and hollow cheeks. She looked thoroughly worn out.

"Hm. Alive, then."

"Is that really the first thought from someone who just came back from the dead?"

"Remedium Omnia, was it?"

"You remember."

"I knew you'd cure it."

The Boatman had told him to keep Ann alive, and Dmuel, for whatever reason, had tried to kill her in advance. A threatening enemy, that would be why. Looking back at the result and guessing the cause was simple enough.

Enkrid had also seen part of what Ann had done here. Having seen enough of it, he trusted her.

Even if Ann had failed and died, he would have lived the same day over again, but the truth was that wasn't what had driven his choice. Even repeating the same day, he would have made the same decision.

"You were out for three days."

Enkrid was quiet for a moment, then answered.

"Three whole days of missed training."

"...Sword maniac."

Enkrid knew he had all kinds of nicknames within Border Guard. Sword maniac was one of them, meaning someone gone crazy over a blade.

"That was a joke."

Ann's eyes said, we all know you mean it, so don't pretend to be normal.

"Ah. Right."

He was awake, but he couldn't get proper strength into his arms and legs.

If he fought right now, could he even be sure of winning against Fell or Ropord?

"Rest for now. Stay in bed at least four more days. Eat what you're given, sleep when you're tired."

Ann said it and left.

Ragna came in next and looked relatively fine. He was walking around, which meant he was in better shape than Enkrid.

"Three days of rest is plenty."

"Is it."

He had nearly died and come back, and outside it was still raining. Thunder too.

He closed his eyes briefly, and when he opened them again, Ragna was gone. Had he dozed off for a moment? He looked to the side and saw another hallucination.

No matter how remarkable Ann was, she couldn't bring back the dead.

Enkrid believed the family head had poured his own life force into that final sword strike, beyond Will, beyond whatever his plague-ravaged body had left. Doing that in such a state was not something a man did unless he was prepared to die.

So why was he sitting at the foot of his bed?

"That's the look of a man seeing a ghost."

The family head didn't show his own feelings easily, but reading the feelings and expressions of others was something he knew well.

One arm was wrapped in bandages, a cloth bound over one eye, but Tempest Zaun was sitting there alive.

"I have much I want to say, but I haven't forgotten what to say first. Thank you. Enkrid of the Border Guard."

"I happened to have some time free while passing through, so I just lent a hand."

"Are you trying to be modest? Or do you know full well how extraordinary what you did was, and you're raising your chin even higher by saying it that way?"

Right. Saying something modest here was going to come across exactly like that.

This was genuinely a mistake born from his body not being fully recovered yet. Probably better to just keep his mouth shut.

"Milestia did not die for nothing, apparently. Ann told me she had already worked out a way to address the seeds of every plague that had afflicted us. Continuing that work to compound the medicine was no great feat, Ann said, but I still thanked the girl again and again. To put it plainly, Milestia's legacy and Ann's dedication kept all of us alive. And I got a few more years out of it as a bonus."

He had come to say he was glad to be alive.

"I came because I had something to say, and this stays between you and me. No one else will probably ever know it."

What the family head brought up was Heskal.

Heskal. He had proved that there was a reason people called him Clever Heskal.

Listening to the family head's account, Enkrid had the strange sense that Heskal was appearing through the hallucination and speaking directly.

"If I win, Zaun is reborn. They will survive and become the people of a new Cursed Ground."

Heskal had wanted Zaun to endure.

To make it happen, he had to become a usurper of divine power. Even a small fragment of it would be enough to protect a Zaun that had become part of the Cursed Ground.

The hallucination continued.

"If I fail, that means Tempest won out in all of this. Then Zaun will have taken wounds, but it survived."

The Heskal in the vision smiled brightly, corners of his mouth pulled high, not a trace of any burden on his heart, a smile so clear there was no other word for it.

If he won, Zaun would be reborn. If he failed, Zaun would be reborn too. It would have been even better to clean house while he was at it.

In the hunters' village, the brokers' village, the retirees' village, there had probably been restless ones. People who had coiled up and stayed put so long they were going stir-crazy. People who had sat there letting resentment pile up until they wanted to shake the very order Zaun had built.

They found Zaun too valuable to leave, yet they also wanted to exploit its power. Heskal had gathered every one of those restless elements, spent years among them, and shaped them into a single faction, a group of his own.

"In this area there have always been certain flowers and fruit that grow wild. They're toxic, and picking them carelessly causes various illnesses. From the point when that started getting worse, Heskal saw it as a problem that had to be solved."

The family head continued.

At some point Heskal had learned of Dmuel's existence and likely seen what he had been preparing. That was when Heskal had to decide.

Go back to the family as things stood and start a game of tag that would never end, not even at death.

Or become the hidden hand behind the curtain, the director who would push the villain onto the stage.

Heskal had chosen the latter.

He had died on Ragna's sword, but he had probably been satisfied. He had watched the scales tip, and everything he had prepared had in the end been a strategy to announce the end of that endless game of tag.

Heskal had never gone to the family head in person and said a single word. What the family head said now was speculation.

But he believed Heskal had done what a Guardian was meant to do.

Hearing it, Enkrid could agree.

A Guardian. One who protects Zaun. Heskal had fulfilled the duty given to him.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"I wanted to tell someone."

The family head finished with that and left. A short while later Alexandra came in and said something similar.

"Milestia kept researching the plague right up until the moment she died. And Heskal, well. He must have had a hard time, drawing up all of this."

Her face looked bitter and also somehow relieved at once. After her, Schmidt came in.

"Really no interest in heading to the Empire?"

"Do I look like I have any?"

"No."

"Then why are you asking?"

"To tell you to let me know if that ever changes."

Four more days passed since he had woken. When he heard that Ann had collapsed in exhaustion and was sleeping, Enkrid kicked back the blankets and got up.

It had been raining on and off for days, then finally stopped, and in the early morning hours the rain quit entirely. The damp dawn air swept clean through his lungs.

Enkrid walked outside, took up Three-Iron, and stood.

There is so much I have learned.

Far too much.

Sorting through it all piece by piece was not the work of right now. He wanted to turn over at least one thing in his mind, but there were too many eyes watching.

"You're up?"

As if they had been waiting for him to rise, every last person from Zaun poked their head out, Grida and Anahehra among them. Magroon was there too.

"We owe you our lives."

He had come back to find that the sickness had advanced too far in him, so Milestia had spirited him away and treated him. The final care would have been Ann's.

Standing among them, the one-armed Lynox wore an unusually grave expression and spoke.

"If you wish to settle the blame for what happened, take my head. But please, show mercy to the rest of Zaun."

Dmuel's end had left a stain on them that could not be washed away. They could not forgive themselves for having tried to make an outsider carry their sacrifice.

He understood that feeling. He understood it too well, and because of it he wanted to help them shake off that weight.

"Then step this way."

Enkrid tapped the ground in front of him with the tip of Three-Iron. The scabbard had cracked, so he'd been carrying the sword lashed loosely with cord, nothing to draw.

"Kneel down and stretch your neck out."

Lynox looked startled. He didn't move his feet. His eyes went back and forth between the ground, Three-Iron, and Enkrid.

"...You mean it?"

Enkrid answered with a smile.

"No."

"...You got me."

If Enkrid had wanted it, Lynox would probably have actually bared his neck. These were that kind of people.

People who stood by their words.

And so.

Thud.

Starting with Lynox, every last one of them went to their knees, not one missing.

Where the storm had passed and the mud had churned everything into a mess, they all lowered their heads. He hadn't asked for this, but there was no one who would dislike receiving this kind of reverence for what they had done.

"We give thanks for the grace of our rescue."

The family head spoke on behalf of them all.

Present were the family head and Alexandra, Odinkar, Grida, Magroon, and the rest, every one of them.

Here and there someone let a few tears slip, and Riley stood with a blank, dazed look.

One person, though, stood doing nothing at all.

"What? I was the one trying to stop you from going."

That was Ragna.

Enkrid just shrugged, as if to say it was nothing.

Ragna would probably never read the room for the rest of his life.

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