WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 728: Drunk on Twilight

= = =

He sparred with all those who came flooding in, then ate well and rested well afterward.

A lot of people kept visiting during the few extra days he stayed, and what they said was mostly the same.

"Training with you is so much fun. Can't you just stay in Zaun?"

That was the kind with no hesitation about showing how they felt.

"Thank you. And I suppose I owe you an apology."

That was the kind who chose their words carefully.

The first sort tended to be the younger ones. The second were those with a few more years on them.

Worth adding that both groups were completely genuine, no performance in their words or actions.

The younger ones kept asking why he was leaving and wouldn't let it go, while those offering thanks and apologies would bow their heads and say that while they weren't exactly offering themselves as slaves, he should feel free to call on them if he ever needed anything.

A few here and there said they were embarrassed.

"What about me in Riley's place?"

Some even said it in complete seriousness.

And he received one offer stranger than all of those.

"Riley said she'd be your slave, so I was thinking I'd be your wife."

A woman from the Zaun family whose name he didn't know. Grida had mentioned she was brilliantly talented, but that her real dream was to be a wise mother, and that her one fatal flaw was a certain deficiency.

He seemed to recall something about her having a lot of anger.

She'd apparently met quite a few people within Zaun itself, but every relationship had ended when things soured midway and she beat them half to death.

She claimed with her own mouth that her dream was to be a wise mother and a good wife, yet during her travels across the continent she'd apparently slit so many throats of men who mistreated women that she'd earned the nickname the Walking Gallows.

Several promising hunters who had followed this bounty-marked woman all the way to Zaun were either dead or had ended up staying in the hunters' village.

Some of those hunters had died in the recent battle, he heard.

Enkrid hadn't gone looking for any of this, but people around him kept filling him in until he knew all sorts of things.

"I'll pass."

"Tch."

Still, she didn't linger or push the way some did.

"There's gold in the Empire."

"There are beautiful women in the Empire."

"There are fine swords in the Empire."

"There are dwarf blacksmiths in the Empire."

"There are absurdly powerful knights in the Empire."

"In the Empire..."

Had Schmidt always talked this much?

When they'd met at Border Guard, hadn't he carried himself with a certain gravity?

Enkrid wondered briefly if he'd been idealizing the memory, given how long ago it was.

No. That wasn't it.

Schmidt was a skilled Talent Recruiter, and he simply gave everything to his duty.

"Does that man come every day?"

Hearing Ragna say it, Enkrid could confirm his own memory wasn't wrong either.

"Getting tired of me? But I can't very well leave for the Empire right now." Schmidt gestured at his own leg. "I took this in the fighting."

He'd looked perfectly fine while talking about the golden covenant scripture, but once everything was over, a deep gash along his thigh had made itself known.

"A little higher and, phew."

He'd never have functioned as a man again.

Schmidt shook his head slowly before speaking.

"Well. There's a silver lining to getting this raked by a Magic Beast's claw."

"What is it?"

Ragna asked. Enkrid didn't bother, he already knew the answer.

"The Empire will see me as a wounded soldier and give me a decoration. I'll be a decorated veteran."

Even though he hadn't actually been fighting for the Empire.

Ask why, and the answer was that a Talent Recruiter's mission itself constituted service to the Empire.

It made Enkrid wonder if there was some separate book called The Omnipotent Empire that Schmidt had memorized cover to cover.

And someone came around even more often than Schmidt. The first face Enkrid saw when he woke before dawn, you could say.

"You're up?"

"...Why every morning."

"To give my thanks. Thank you for saving Zaun."

A small bow.

The family head came every single morning during Enkrid's training sessions, bowed, and left. He still hadn't fully recovered, his balance clearly off even just walking, and yet he never missed it.

Dawn wasn't the only time. He came again when the sun was high. Right as a meal ended, the family head would appear once more.

"Did you eat?"

"You said you only lost sight in one eye. You can see perfectly well that I just finished. Why ask?"

The family head had lost one of his eyes. But one remained, and reading that a meal had just ended couldn't have been hard.

"Thank you for saving Zaun."

Then the bow.

It would have been a relief if that were all, but Enkrid had to face him again before bed too.

"Not asleep yet?"

"Can't you tell by looking?"

"If not for you, Zaun would have lost many people."

"Heskal deserves credit as well."

"His contribution is not something I've forgotten. Either way, thank you for saving Zaun."

"My ears are going to grow calluses."

The family head came every morning, noon, and evening for three straight days.

Having lost the ability to perform at his former level, he had every reason to be consumed by grief, yet he never once missed coming to find Enkrid, even dripping with sweat.

"Ragna."

"Yes."

"Why does your father do that?"

Enkrid already half knew. Still, there was nothing wrong with asking. There might be something he hadn't caught yet.

Ragna found himself remembering a habit of his father's he'd almost forgotten.

Tempest Zaun had always put his whole heart into everything he said and did, from the time Ragna was small.

Because he couldn't put emotion into his words and actions the way others could, he increased the number of times he said something to make the sincerity land.

"He's grateful. That's why."

"Yes. I understand that much."

He just wondered if it wasn't a bit much.

That was what Enkrid had been thinking. And so he stayed a while in Zaun.

"Give me a week. I still have things to take care of."

Ann said as much, and Enkrid himself was content to linger. It was an enjoyable time, and a good one.

He'd heard the saying that teaching was its own form of learning.

He'd had similar experiences before, but Zaun was packed with people brimming with talent.

They enjoyed learning from Enkrid, and he from them. The fit was exact, and it helped.

"There's nobody in Zaun who explains things the way Enki does."

Among them was a kid who'd planted his head in the dirt a few times and then approached with very friendly familiarity.

"You really explain things well. So, how about tonight?"

And there was the giant woman who kept angling for the spot beside him in bed.

He heard later that Anahehra liked making jokes like that.

Except it kept sounding half-serious, which was probably just his instincts misfiring.

"If Anahehra said she wanted to follow you, would you take her?"

Ragna asked it that directly, so perhaps his instincts weren't misfiring after all.

"That would be her own choice to make."

No particular reason to refuse.

"Sinar would be thrilled. I wonder if Esther would be happy for her too."

Ragna's words had a certain edge.

"I don't much care either way."

Enkrid brushed aside Ragna's teasing and went back to swinging his sword.

Teaching so many people, one after another, naturally turned his thoughts back to the road he'd walked.

And that was where the benefit came from.

The road he'd walked. Roads he hadn't walked but could now see. The roads visible to those overflowing with talent. The roads visible to those with talent but not yet the confidence to use it.

He turned each one over and chewed on it.

Walk looking only forward and you can't see what's behind you. So there was wisdom in knowing when to stop and look back.

Enkrid swallowed that wisdom. Another thing learned.

Similar moments kept coming, one after another, throughout his stay in Zaun.

Before, and now too.

One evening the twilight came. The long-stretched sunlight was fading, scattering strange colors across everything around him.

It was personally his favorite hour of the day.

The hour of the dog and the wolf, some called it, when a silhouette approaching from far away could be either, and you couldn't tell which.

The sky was neither fully dark nor fully bright, carrying blue-tinged light and yellow light at the same time, and the air was pleasantly cool.

Days like this were made for things to happen. A man and woman together might fall in love. Some piece of luck might arrive. A person might find a peace of mind they hadn't expected.

A child abandoned by parents might step out from the shadow of those parents and stand alone inside themselves for the first time. A man who'd grown up unloved and learned only to speak in thorns might come to understand love, not just the receiving of it but the giving, and find a new way to live.

Everyone had their magic moment.

Just one instant. One that could change everything about a life.

And even if it didn't change everything, it might be the hand at someone's back, nudging them toward something that looked impossible and unreachable from the outside.

This was the twilight through which that kind of magic seeped in. Where orange and blue met, dozens of shades bled out.

Somewhere nearby, crickets chirped. Fewer people than usual had come to visit since midday.

And for a while ahead, no one else would be coming either.

The family head's greeting would arrive much later, and Schmidt had already come and gone that afternoon, so he wouldn't be back.

Ragna had gone with Ann to the cliffs behind the basin. Some plant they wanted to check on, an herb or possibly a poison, growing wild out there somewhere.

No one to visit, and aside from the crickets, nothing loud.

Enkrid, lost in the strange light, explored his inner world.

Perhaps it was because of the most recent impression that had left its mark on him.

From atop a large tree standing to one side, Heskal dropped down with a quiet thud.

"Think from multiple angles. A person doesn't live as just one thing. And if you want to truly understand someone, find what they really want."

Everything he'd done was impossible to grasp if you looked at it simply.

What Heskal wants is for Zaun to endure.

Before everything began, when Enkrid had asked about his dream, Heskal had smiled and deflected. Now he understood why.

The seizure of divine power had been nothing more than a tool.

Yes. He knew that.

Enjoying the sword and taking what you want with that sword are two different things.

One thought that struck him fresh was that Zaun, the people here, were different from him.

They didn't swing their swords to erase the Cursed Ground or reach for some distant thing.

So he would not force them to. Nothing had changed from when he first met Grida, Odinkar, and Magroon.

Did these people owe him their lives? Was that a reason to force on them something they'd never asked for?

He didn't want that.

The moment his thoughts settled, Aoara stepped out from the shadow between the houses, sudden and unhurried.

The blue light of the twilight passed through her. Aoara's step was light and her face was bright. She came close and asked.

"Doing well?"

She didn't wait for an answer before throwing out a few words.

"The Five Sword Styles, all five. You plan to master every one of them. Even for a knight, there's usually one you rely on most, but you'll do them all. Right? You won't let go of a single one."

Aoara. She had left a deep impression on him before she died.

She'd come out of a vision and left him many things to think about. Not one of them was worth discarding. Everything had been a clue toward a beginning.

And Enkrid had ignored her.

Enough of visions.

The moment he decided it, Aoara was gone.

He had learned and moved forward.

He was here now.

His heart was calm. His head was clear. Rest and recovery had done their work. That calm showed him the answer.

Step past learning and mastering.

His senses said it. Now is the time.

In other words, it was time to establish something new and build on it.

He'd seen and felt a great deal. He pulled out one of those things and set it as the cornerstone.

The Wave-Blocking Sword is the Correct Sword.

The foundation had come from Ragna. What Ragna did through innate talent and pure instinct, Enkrid did through calculation.

The Correct Sword is trained through the Wave-Blocking Sword.

What Enkrid was doing now was fixing the method of training for each sword style.

The thinking continued, and the twilight's magic didn't end, so Enkrid moved freely through it. He flew and ran and swam.

The twilight's light became sky, became lake, became earth.

The Heavy and Fierce Sword is physical training.

The technique from the Valaf Martial Arts closed distance and concentrated force into a single blow. That made sense. Not many people would keep giving ground to someone whose weapons were their two fists.

Then there was the family head's technique of manipulating Will, the point-burst. He'd learned how to release Will in an Explosion from Alexandra, and he could use that as the basis to build a sword style from it. The Heavy and Fierce Sword is Explosion.

No need to build the sword style right now.

All he needed was the cornerstone, so no reason to dig further than that. Not yet, at least.

Deception is grounded in Ruagarne's tactical thinking.

He'd layer in techniques from the Vallen Style Mercenary Sword.

Tactics existed to seize a favorable position, and the Illusionary Sword had never been a simple concept of swinging a sword. It was closer to the concept of tactics itself.

Speed in the sword comes from optimized thinking.

He'd learned that from Rem in the first place.

Rem, who judged and swung his axe in the tiniest of gaps. Of course, he did it by instinct.

Enkrid did it through Flash, through optimized thought.

Purely in terms of speed, Rem was the best.

And then the Soft and Flowing Sword.

The Sword of Chance makes use of every moment.

To do that, he'd need exceptional senses to take advantage of every situation.

The flowing sword had to lean on sensation from the start. You couldn't calculate each impact point one by one and deflect attacks that way.

So he'd have to hear through his ears and perceive even the ripples of air against his skin.

Gate of the Sixth Sense. Sensory perception.

Whatever name you put on it, it was the same. He had to master the Sensory Technique.

Without a particular sharpness, it was impossible.

And on top of that, experience. Feeling it over and over until it became part of the body.

The Soft and Flowing Sword was a territory no genius could reach if they were still young.

The Sword of Chance was that same Soft Sword taken to its furthest extreme.

Cultivating the senses and drawing every moment into your own fortune.

That was the direction the Soft and Flowing Sword pointed.

Established theory became the foundation, and on firm ground it was built.

The twilight had long since ended. Night had passed too, as it happened.

"Sleep well?"

The family head approached, same as any other morning, and asked. Enkrid had been standing through the night and answered.

"Yes, very well."

A path walked not by instruction but by his own feet. It would be a lie to say he wasn't glad.

"Thank you for saving Zaun."

The family head offered the same greeting, putting his whole sincerity into the same words as always.

Enkrid just smiled.

In a way, this blunt and simple steadfastness felt like the very symbol of Zaun.

And that afternoon, a new visitor arrived.

Roughly around the time Ann had said. Which meant the point where Enkrid was starting to think about leaving, and also the point where Ragna had been absent for two days.

= = =

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