WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

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A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 731: Imperial Swordsmanship

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Pressure. It was the signature technique of those who wielded Will.

Where did it begin?

A cat radiates killing intent that roots a mouse in place. Demon Creatures could do something similar. They planted fear in intelligent races, humans included.

It was not hard to picture a man dying in front of a Demon Creature, locked in terror, shaking, unable to look away.

Even a Demon Creature of middling strength knew how to use fear. That was where Pressure began. Crushing the opponent's mind, ruling them through it.

The first time he had experienced Pressure came back to him easily. It had felt like a blade already at his throat.

"Same goes for Pressure. Go back far enough, look at where Will started, and you'll find something similar. Imperial scholars have a theory that the first knights awakened Will while puzzling over where Demon Creatures got their monstrous strength from. Oh, another one."

Valmund said it with his lip twisting into a smirk.

Before they had set out, Lynox had mentioned that Valmund had bad habits. Even Schmidt had seemed reluctant to see the two of them leave, his farewell running long.

"I must return to the Empire myself before long. This needs to be reported. A legendary alchemist transforming into a Demon Creature and claiming godhood before being killed is no small matter."

His injured leg kept him from matching their pace, but he also insisted that reporting the incident to the Empire was no trivial thing. Still, Schmidt had pressed Valmund with a few parting words.

"Enkrid of the Border Guard will become a cornerstone of the Empire."

Enkrid had not especially agreed with that.

He had never said he was going to the Empire, never shown any interest in doing so, and could not understand why Schmidt kept at it.

"Me?"

He had cut in partway through to ask.

"That is how highly he values you."

Schmidt said it again. Valmund picked at his ear. There was not much Schmidt could do about that, he could hardly lecture him at length.

The hierarchy between them was clear. Valmund above, Schmidt below.

And the bad habit Lynox had warned about was exactly this.

"Ghoul."

Valmund liked the sound of bones breaking.

He broke off mid-sentence, kicked off the ground, grabbed a ghoul by the arm, and snapped it with a clean crack before the thing could even extend its reach. A few more Demon Creatures lunged, and they all ended up the same way.

Limbs cracked, bodies hit the dirt and writhed, and in the end each one got stamped on until its neck bones gave out.

Only those sounds filled the air. Sharp snaps, wet crunches, grinding pops.

"Demon Creatures don't have much feel to them."

That was all he said afterward.

Valmund never hid what he wanted. He came right out and said it.

"Giants are the best. When something that looks like it shouldn't break actually does, the sound is magnificent."

He said the sound of a giant's bones breaking was like a stone pillar shattering. Hearing that made it clear enough that this man was not quite normal either.

"So Pressure started as an imitation of a Demon Creature's killing intent, and Will developed from observing the impossible strength those massive bodies could produce?"

Enkrid summed up what they had been discussing.

The road was dry under a warm sun. Green grass had crept up from the soil and filled the path underfoot, with wildflowers pushing through here and there, but it was not a road people walked often, and the ground showed it. Exposed roots and jutting stones made what looked flat from a distance rough and treacherous up close.

They had crossed several ridgelines, and none of them pointed toward the Border Guard.

No trail had appeared along the way, no information passed to them from outside, yet Valmund chose his direction without hesitation.

"Some scholars say that. Others argue differently."

The Empire had unified the continent's language and currency. There had been a time when it aimed to control all of central continent, but that drive had stopped.

No one knew why. Which was why even Crang would always keep his senses sharp whenever the Empire made a move.

Enkrid offered some of his own story in return. Receiving without giving back was not the way of things, even if the exchange could never be made perfectly equal.

Count Molsen came up in part of it. Dmuel came up too. He described the chimera, and the process of forcing knights into existence.

"Knights stamped out like coins? No. A knight is, if you must put it plainly, a one-of-a-kind piece made by a craftsman. Simple example: something cast in a mold cracks and breaks easily. You need relentless training, and it only means something if it's carved with a craftsman's spirit. How does the Empire do it? Knights guide knights."

Valmund said it with firm conviction and nothing held back.

He even talked freely about how the Empire cultivated knights.

They kept many knights, and those knights in turn led new candidates.

Circulation.

Round and round, sustaining the numbers and growing them.

Enkrid had learned something else. Was that luck? It had to be counted as such.

He thought that when he returned to the Border Guard, there would be things to try.

Knights guide knights.

The core of it carved itself into his mind.

"Do you think the Empire is evil?"

"I don't know."

He did not judge what he had not experienced for himself. Valmund was quietly impressed.

Enkrid's attitude suited him well.

As for skill, that would take a bit more observation, even with all of Valmund's experience, someone at this level was hard to read from the outside alone.

If a person was genuinely weak, their gait told you enough. A step above that, you could gauge them by their reactions. But this one was different.

He doesn't show much.

On the other side of that, Enkrid could not read Valmund's level either. Both of them understood from experience that this was normal.

Enkrid could tell, using the Zaun family head as his baseline, that Valmund did not fall short of that mark. Valmund, in turn, could tell that Enkrid was not some hothouse knight raised in comfort somewhere on the continent.

"Some Imperial figures call continental knights greenhouse flowers."

Valmund said it with a smile.

Enkrid walked across pointed stones with his footing nowhere near certain, yet his balance never wavered. Flexible ankles, and from the calf up through the thigh and hip, just enough force applied. It looked simple, but each step kept him ready to move in any direction and draw his sword at any moment.

Walking that way should have been tiring, but rough terrain was too familiar to him, and he answered in an easy tone.

"You mean you stagnate unless you're always pushing against something harder."

"You hear one thing and understand ten."

That kind of praise was a little unfamiliar, so it sat slightly awkward on him.

Where Enkrid found footholds and kept his balance, Valmund just pressed down and crushed a few stones underfoot to clear a path.

"The world isn't simple, Enkrid of the Border Guard."

"When did I say it was?"

Never. Valmund quietly nodded.

After a few exchanges, he had worked it out. Winning an argument against this one would be difficult.

So what was next?

Valmund made no effort to hide his curiosity about Enkrid.

By evening the two of them had found a place to stop for the night. A small cave. They built a fire right outside the entrance and, having brought no pot, were making do with dried jerky when Valmund spoke up out of nowhere.

"Want me to show you some techniques?"

Not a spar. Not an exchange. He was simply offering to teach.

Not that Enkrid was the type to refuse something like that.

* * *

Valmund knew a remarkable range of techniques.

"You don't have to master them right away. Just know they exist."

At their core, they were very precise counters. Adapted to whatever weapon and stance the opponent was using, they involved wrestling, arm locks, and breaks, and every single one came from lived experience.

So they were not Imperial Swordsmanship. Not formal techniques.

The wrestling methods for fighting while holding a sword were a different world from Valaf Martial Arts in particular, moves that simply did not exist there.

None of them were individually stunning, but they widened how Enkrid thought about a fight.

Knowing many small techniques was better than knowing few, and accumulated experience only compounded.

Enkrid knew that, so he sweated through every one, letting nothing slip from his memory as he worked through each of them.

It must have looked satisfying enough, because Valmund brought up his past.

"I came from the Ilai Mercenary Company. Heard of them?"

He said it while they had each other's wrists locked. Faces apart, Enkrid's right ankle and Valmund's left ankle crossed over each other.

Hands and feet tangled, bodies separate. Valmund always carried a faint smell like old dust, like the inside of a trunk or storeroom that had not been opened in years.

"Vaguely."

The name had been famous before Mercenary King Anu had swept across the continent. A company built around someone named Ilai, though the story went that three of Ilai's centurions had outfought their own commander.

Valmund was one of those three.

"You must be older than you look."

"Awakening Will slows aging. Will comes from the force of one's resolve, but it's also vitality that fills the whole body."

Now and then something almost scholarly came out of Valmund's mouth. Practical and scholarly at the same time.

Those two seemed contradictory put together, but then again,

The world isn't simple.

A person could not be judged from one side.

What he had learned from watching Heskal was not forgotten, so Enkrid simply took it as it was.

Was the Empire evil?

The same answer could be given to that question.

You did not know until you had been there.

Snap. Tap.

He broke the wrist grip with a twist and felt Valmund put weight into the crossed ankle, which looked like an attempt to rock his balance, but instead Valmund shook free of the hold and stepped back to open distance.

"My main weapon is this, so there's no real need to fight in close, is there."

Valmund tapped his hip as he spoke. A blunt, angular weapon made its presence known there.

His main weapon is a blunt instrument, so creating distance is his first priority.

When you understood someone's purpose, their movements became easier to read.

The core of the Correct Sword.

The more you understood an opponent, the easier they were to read. That was why insight had to be sharpened.

Of course, it also worked the other way. If an opponent believed they had read you, you could use that belief against them.

Either way, knowing the opponent meant holding an advantage.

That was probably why Valmund had offered to teach techniques in the first place. He was measuring Enkrid right now, looking for strengths, looking for habits.

The interesting thing was that in this kind of situation, Enkrid could make Valmund's head work quite a bit harder than he expected.

Not bound by the Five Sword Styles. The more I look, the less I can figure him out.

That was Valmund's growing conclusion.

They talked and trained for about three days, trading techniques back and forth, and then they found their target.

A wide, flat basin set roughly midway along a mountain range.

Short grass covered the ground, and the whole place had a desolate feel to it. Almost no trees stood nearby, and little sunlight reached the floor. Looking around, a few peaks sat at exactly the right angle to block the sun.

In a place where summer heat had given way to a cool stillness, a man stood with a longsword in his hand.

Scars crossed his eyebrows and lips. Even without those, his face would have read as brutal without much argument. His right arm was longer than his left, which said he had spent a long time training his sword grip with that hand. And for someone who had supposedly been on the run for a while, he did not look particularly ragged.

He had eaten reasonably well and lived reasonably well, even while running.

That was the conclusion.

"Tenacious bastards. You never stop coming."

The man said it. Valmund opened his mouth with a broad smile.

"I give you my word."

What followed was something Enkrid had not expected at all.

"Beat the man standing beside me, and you're free. Gelt."

The man's name was Gelt. He had led a bandit outfit, committed a string of offenses, and been run down for them. Before that, he had been an Imperial soldier, a man who had risen to the rank of knight.

"Now then. Didn't you say you wanted to see Imperial Swordsmanship? I seem to have twisted my ankle back there, so fighting is a bit difficult for me."

Valmund offered an excuse that convinced no one, and Enkrid accepted the joke without missing a beat.

"Then you should rest."

Crunch, crunch.

He stepped out across the low, moisture-heavy moss pressed close to the ground.

"What are you? Imperial?"

The opponent asked from where he was perched on a blunt, large rock. Gelt had picked up a sword because he liked cutting people. Fighting the strong made that hard to enjoy. He preferred the screams of women and children.

Valmund had said that on the way here.

Gelt was probably exactly like that. There had been no reason to add any lies to that description.

Shing.

Enkrid drew Three-Iron, raised it, and looked at Gelt.

"No."

"Lackey from your mercenary days?"

"No."

"Then what?"

Gelt pushed off the rock as he asked, raising his sword. The tip angled up on a diagonal toward the sky, with the flat of the blade shielding his body. That was the feeling of it. And in that posture, Pressure took shape.

"That's the foundation of Pressure in the Empire."

Valmund's voice came from behind him.

Imperial Swordsmanship had gone a step further than anything on the continent.

He could already tell from what he had heard. And now he was about to find out by experience.

He focused and looked forward. The wind coming in, the sunlight, the long shadows stretched across the ground, the feel of the earth underfoot.

Everything went into the space of his senses. Enkrid readied the Sword of Chance.

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