A Knight who Eternally Regresses - Chapter 727

WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

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A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 727: Let's Just Spar

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"What? You want me on my knees too?"

Ragna frowned when he noticed Enkrid staring at him. Enkrid shook his head.

The family head, who had been kneeling, rose first. The others followed one by one.

The overcast days were gone. The sun was out. A sky scrubbed clean of clouds and bright sunlight would stroke the wet ground and coax it dry.

Even so, not every trace left on the earth would vanish.

Enkrid had stepped forward with clear intent, and not a single person behind him had died. But that did not mean there were no dead at all.

Heskal and the people he had killed, along with those who had followed him, were gone.

Hearing the story afterward, Enkrid learned that the hunters' village had even changed its representative.

A dead man cannot speak for a village.

Kato had apparently chased down the last of them and finished it.

Well, that was none of Enkrid's concern.

Still, the absence of the dead was real. Some people were grieving, some were angry, and some felt they had to be glad they had survived.

No one could call any of that right or wrong. Everyone was healing in their own way.

Enkrid had gotten back on his feet, but he was not yet at his best. His recovery was not finished.

Rest and recovery look like the same thing but are not.

He had rested well enough up to now.

Time to focus on recovery.

Put simply, rest is passive. Recovery is active.

Sleeping and lying still is rest.

Eating and loosening the body is recovery.

On top of that, Enkrid's body had been reborn through training by something called the God of Regeneration, and it healed faster when he kept moving.

So he picked himself up. For two days he cycled through eating, drinking, and resting while setting aside any strenuous sparring.

He held off on swinging a sword too, limiting himself to stretches and light running.

Light running by a knight's standard, that is. To an ordinary person watching, it would have looked like someone running themselves to death, because he ran for a very long time. He spent half of each day at a slow jog.

"That man eats like a horse."

Giants were big eaters. Anahehra was a Giant, and she watched Enkrid with open admiration.

The dining table in the mansion seated eight, and it was packed with food. Today's main dish was pork steamed until tender, served alongside vegetables cooked the same way. Enkrid put all of it into his mouth without reservation, chewing and swallowing. He did not rush. He just kept going for a long time.

Meals ended up taking twice as long as usual.

Slow jogging, slow eating, but never stopping.

"Drink this. It should help."

Ann sat at the same table. She had already cleared her small plate. Enkrid took the medicine bottle Ann held out, tipped it all the way back, and drank it down to the last drop. It did not taste good. Bitter and astringent. He did not scrunch his face over it like a child, though.

Ann watched him and said, "Is someone chasing you? Why do you look so rushed, honestly."

Moving slowly but without pause apparently reads as urgent to other people.

Enkrid's mouth was full of food, so he could only chew and look back at her. Ragna, working through his own fierce meal nearby, answered for him.

"He probably wants to get his body back so he can do something. Sword things, mostly."

"So he's in a hurry to train? Hah."

Ann said it like she found it absurd. To Enkrid, it was obvious.

He had learned a great deal.

He had realized new things too.

All of it needed to be sorted out in his head, and he had no confidence he could do that without moving his body.

He would have to try things himself and plant signposts.

The Wave-Blocking Sword, the Sword of Chance.

Two sword arts, along with various other thoughts, drifted loose in his mind.

He had organized the theory to some extent.

Beyond that, he had more than enough he wanted to do, starting with how to handle Will. All of it would have to wait until his body was properly back in order.

Rush to button your coat and you end up with every button in the wrong hole.

Right now mattered. This was the time to move forward calmly and steadily, one step at a time.

"That is an attitude worth admiring."

Anahehra had eaten separately but for some reason stood beside the table like a guard, saying this.

"Why are you even here?" Ragna asked, looking at her.

Anahehra had no talent for hiding what she felt. She was honest and blunt.

"I feel terrible about trying to kill him. Tell me what you want and I'll do it, anything. If you like, I'll spend a night with you. You know what I mean. The chance to spend time with an attractive Giant doesn't come around often."

"I'll pass."

Enkrid swallowed his food and said it. The answer came like Flash.

"I've said my piece. Tell me if you need anything."

Anahehra finished and turned away. There were likely quite a few others in the same position as her right now.

That would explain all the people drifting around nearby without saying a word.

Even now, plenty of people were hovering aimlessly outside the mansion.

One of the younger ones had come to the door and cried an apology.

The kid who had used Eil Karaz style Martial Arts tried to act bold, claiming they would make the same choice even if it happened again, so Enkrid told them to drop their head and apologize properly, and they immediately planted their face in the dirt.

Pure souls, every one of them. That was the kind of place Zaun was.

Enkrid found himself returning to the thought he had had during the fight.

"Shouldn't you take better care of yourself before jumping in? Why did you do it?"

Even after saving Ragna's family, Ragna threw something close to a rebuke at him. Half gratitude, half awkwardness.

Two days had passed since Enkrid woke up. Ragna was terrible at hiding his feelings. If he was grateful, he should just say so.

Enkrid almost told him to drop his head and say thank you properly, then let it go.

The way Ragna was asking now, it seemed like a genuine question.

Enkrid rested his forearm on the table, fork still in hand, and answered.

"I would make the same choice again."

"But why?"

Should he talk about conviction? Say he did it for his oath?

That he had a chance to act and the Will to carry it through, so he did?

All of that was true, but there was another reason too.

Even in that moment, Ruagarne's tactical swordsmanship had been running. He had calculated the surroundings, fed the full situation into his head, and reached a conclusion:

"I trusted Ann."

He said it simply, without much weight. Ann lifted her head and looked at him.

Ragna's eyebrow twitched once and went still.

Was Enkrid's thinking on some higher plane?

No. He just saw things differently.

So his thoughts branched naturally in that direction, and bloomed there.

If he stepped forward, Zaun would not fracture. Ragna would not raise a sword against his own father.

If his body held out even a little, Zaun would try to save him with everything it had.

After all, he would be a man who had sacrificed himself for the family.

From what he had heard on the way here and seen since arriving, the healer named Milestia was someone of real ability.

Might she have rare medicinal herbs stored away, or medicines she had prepared?

And Zaun was practically legendary.

Could there really be nothing valuable there? He had heard Lynox once spent years wandering the continent collecting relics.

Medicine and relics alike would have been available.

Keep Zaun from splitting apart, and those medicines and relics could be put to use.

With Ann there, she could pick out whatever he actually needed.

"Dmuel called it a sickness, and if it was a sickness, Ann would have cured it."

Taken at face value, that sounded like absolute faith.

Like trust with no calculation in it at all.

At those words, Ann's cheeks went red. Raban's disciples had always been wary of one another, and Raban himself went without saying.

If Raban had not died, he would have tried to kill Ann.

So she had rarely had her abilities recognized.

Among everything, the heart of the Madman Knights and lord of the Border Guard had staked his life to show her that trust, and her chest trembled.

"You're terrible. But no. I have Ragna."

"What are you talking about?"

Ann cleared her throat softly and looked away, toward her partner, naturally.

"How are you feeling?"

"No coughing, no blood."

"Why didn't you say something sooner instead of suffering needlessly? Hm?"

Around the time Enkrid was fighting through the last sickness Dmuel had unleashed, Ragna had finally told Ann about his own condition.

Ann's reaction was not like most people's.

"What were you doing before the coughing started? Did you eat something wrong?"

Not a flicker of panic. The same as herself standing on a battlefield with a sword. This was Ann's domain.

She knew the Madman Knights, and she knew Ragna. She had checked his condition multiple times on the way to Zaun. She had seen no sign of a fatal illness. She did not know every disease on the continent, of course, but it was not common for someone to show no symptoms at all and then suddenly die.

And yet Ragna had coughed up blood.

Ann asked about his condition in precise detail. Ragna told her he had experimented on his own body to master Will Transference and had blacked out a few times.

"Did you have chills or a fever at any point?"

"My head felt warm for a couple of days."

Is this man oblivious, or has he lost his mind entirely.

Ann was baffled, but she understood the situation.

"Does practicing Will Transference put strain on the body?"

"Some, yes."

"Did your throat hurt during that time?"

"It did."

What is wrong with this man.

Ann said it with her expression alone.

Ragna caught the look and turned something over in his memory. Had he been too eager because Enkrid had been changing at such an astonishing rate?

He had been.

The process of putting intent back into Will and guiding it through change had not been easy, and he had thrown himself at it recklessly.

"Eat. Then rest for a day. Not a word."

Ragna was not much of a talker even normally.

He followed her instructions, and even when the coughing came, the pain eased considerably and the blood stopped.

He seemed fully recovered now.

No wonder his throat had opened up and bled during the last battle, right after he poured his Will into killing the three-eyed old man.

"Next time something hurts, come to me right away. I am Remedium Omnia. I am going to become the Elixir. Remember that."

"Understood."

Ragna said it plainly, then stroked her hair and added, "I want to stay by your side too, so let's do that."

That was what had happened.

Enkrid stared at the two of them as some strange current passed between their eyes.

Not his business, really. Whatever was between them, Enkrid could just focus on recovering.

That said, he was not particularly interested in watching them exchange looks indefinitely either.

"Go. Go outside and do that."

At that, Ann closed her mouth, and Ragna answered with practiced calm.

"I should go get Ilchul."

Enkrid nodded, easy enough.

Odinkar came by at least once a day without fail, said something, and left. It did not always make sense.

"I'll probably be the next family head of Zaun, so when can we start sparring?"

He would drop things like that and walk off.

After Odinkar, Grida seemed to have read something in Heskal's actions.

"Being a Guardian seems like a thankless job."

Maybe Grida had pressed the family head for more and heard something.

"Why are you telling me that?"

"Just saying."

Ann was hard to see often. Apparently she was teaching someone Milestia had secretly groomed as a successor.

Ragna went back to being himself.

"So you're not curious anymore about what you'll leave behind?"

Enkrid asked, and Ragna just gave a short smile, like someone who had figured something out and was showing the kind of patience where nothing Enkrid said could rattle him.

Which made him deeply irritating to look at. Enkrid pressed further.

"Can I tell everyone back home that you did all of that because you thought you were dying? Rem, or Rem, or maybe specifically Rem?"

"Do you want to die here?"

Ragna asked it seriously. Enkrid shook his head.

Sparring was still too much.

But another day or two of rest and he should be fine.

Enkrid spent his time organizing his sword arts in his head, sorting out what he wanted to do, and taking care of things that needed handling.

"Riley."

One of those things was this. Enkrid went looking for Riley. It was early evening. As the last light of dusk scattered and the moon and stars moved in to fill its place, Riley sat motionless before a mound of earth. The eyes were blank and the fingertips were black, from days of working the soil with bare hands.

"Did you come to hold me accountable?"

Why would Enkrid hold Riley accountable for something he had never asked anyone about?

Riley spoke again.

"Did you come because of what my father did?"

Before speaking, Riley had looked like someone whose soul had wandered off somewhere. But when the words came, there was force in them.

Riley spent half of each day here. A crude grave was visible nearby, made by someone. A piece of wood stood where a headstone would have been, with letters carved into it using a dagger.

Heskal. He sleeps here.

Riley could not hate him.

Enkrid thought that whatever others deserved to know, Riley at least had the right to hear it.

Riley was Heskal's child.

The family head could tell the story himself, but his voice would carry too much feeling.

It was not necessarily Enkrid's place, but something pulled at him, so he had come.

He took his time passing along the family head's guesses and what Enkrid himself had pieced together.

Riley listened without a word.

And when the story ended, the expression did not change, but tears ran down.

"Heskal knew that leaving you behind meant the family head would let you live. If the plan was to land a perfect blow on Zaun, you would have had to die too. You have no military service, but you were taught basic tactical command, weren't you?"

Enkrid asked.

Riley did not answer. Every word was correct.

Their father had taught them even that.

Heskal had been sharp, cunning as a fox, but he could not throw away every trace of what it meant to be a parent.

He could not kill Riley. He just could not bring himself to do it.

Enkrid turned and left Riley crying.

* * *

By the time the sun had dried most of the ground, Enkrid was out as usual in the early morning working his body loose.

This was also the day he had decided to start swinging a sword in earnest.

Clack, tap. Clack, tap.

A limping figure approached, using a sheathed sword as a walking stick.

The expression was grave. Lips pressed shut, eyes burning with intent. The figure lowered one knee to the dry ground, bending the stiff leg.

"I'll be your slave."

This was, clearly, the way Riley had chosen to make amends.

Words Enkrid had said, to the person who saved Zaun, had stayed lodged in that chest.

And after accepting the fact of a father's death, Riley had figured out what came next.

Whatever mark of soot Enkrid might have been left with had to be wiped clean. That was the thinking.

Riley would become Enkrid's slave, and Enkrid would leave Zaun with no ill feeling.

That was what needed to happen.

But it only meant anything if the other person was actually wounded, actually carrying that soot. And it only happened if the other person agreed to it.

"I don't need a slave."

Enkrid was plain as always.

He had arrived at Zaun without getting worked up, approached everyone evenly, and he was no different now.

"Let's just spar."

The words that came out matched.

It struck Riley again, freshly, that this was simply who Enkrid was.

The grave expression cracked and let go.

"A slave, honestly. And get in line, you're not first."

Well, Riley was not the only one there.

One-armed Lynox said it with a smirk. Behind him stood Odinkar, Grida, Magroon, and Alexandra, all gathered in one place.

This was the moment Enkrid had been waiting for, the one he had looked forward to.

To him, this was play. This was joy.