WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

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A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 732: Come to the Empire

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The Sword of Chance was easiest to draw against an unknown opponent. It took every coincidence and folded it into deliberate intent.

Five senses honed by the Sensory Technique read the air.

'In Imperial Swordsmanship, Pressure Manifestation is a basic.'

His mind picked apart Valmund's words on its own.

Imperial Swordsmanship. Basics. Pressure. Manifestation.

Seeing those words take shape right in front of him made them feel less daunting.

'Tempest Zaun's Pressure came to him naturally.'

It was something reached through years of sword training.

But the man in front of him was different. When Valmund called it a basic of Imperial Swordsmanship, he meant they learned Manifestation deliberately.

So why learn it at all?

'One reason is to press a clear weight against the opponent.'

The second was to reveal part of one's swordsmanship through Manifestation while quietly concealing everything else beneath it.

What Gelt was showing now was a method of hiding himself behind his blade.

It looked like a textbook case of pouring power into defense, but.

'Nothing is certain.'

He dismantled and reassembled the swordsmanship in an instant. The moment it seemed like Gelt was folding himself behind the sword, Gelt closed the distance.

'Footsteps that make no sound.'

He was blending in Assimilation, one of the techniques available to knights.

Air coming through the nose carried a faint metallic smell, and the tongue resting in his half-open mouth caught a sour taste.

Touch responded next, raising the fine hairs along his skin.

No sound, and what the eyes saw was clean, composed swordsmanship. But that was not all of it.

Enkrid pressed his left big toe into the ground, twisted his hips, and swung his sword through the smallest arc possible.

Three-Iron traced a gentle curve from high to low, then leveled out parallel to the ground and cut across the middle of the opponent's torso.

A stroke that could fairly be called acrobatic.

Clang!

The shock ran from the middle of Three-Iron's blade all the way back to his grip. Gelt had extended the arm he had kept hidden and swung a sword two hand-spans shorter than his main blade, and Three-Iron had caught it.

Even after blocking that unexpected strike, the fine hairs on Enkrid's skin did not settle.

'It's not over.'

His hands moved before the thought finished forming.

He dropped his left hand from Three-Iron and drew Penna, swinging it upward.

Gelt was already bringing his concealed blade down in a follow-up.

Clang!

Penna's edge rose and caught it cleanly, threading past Three-Iron and deflecting the falling sword.

With both his attacks stopped, Gelt fell back with those same quiet strides as before.

Shh, shh, shh.

His soles barely seemed to leave the ground, yet he moved to where no blade could reach.

Was Enkrid supposed to stand there and watch? Not a chance.

The moment he blocked, he bent his knees and ankles and snapped them open again.

Thud.

He burst off the earth and charged. It was a step he had rebuilt from what Ruagarne taught him, reforged into something his own.

A straight-line rush so simple that an opponent only needed to thrust a sword out to skewer him.

Gelt reacted.

Mid-retreat, he shifted his weight onto his heels, changed his center of gravity, and drove his longer sword forward in a thrust.

The blade punched through the air and, carried by the speed of Enkrid's charge, became a point faster than any arrow he had ever faced.

Enkrid was already raising his sword as he came in, so that point struck the flat of Three-Iron. The instant it landed, he reacted on touch alone and twisted his wrist.

Ping!

Half of it was instinct responding through sensation. The other half was anticipating the timing of impact.

'The Soft and Flowing Sword doesn't rely only on sensation.'

Experience builds insight.

The Sword of Chance ran on both, sensation and experience harnessed together.

He had blocked, charged, and slipped the thrust aside. Gelt might have been expected to falter, but instead he simply released the sword and threw a punch.

Enkrid ignored the fist, dropped Penna, gripped Three-Iron in both hands, and swung.

Everything had been calculated for this one stroke.

A sword held inside intent, a connected strike carrying speed like a flash. Thought compressed and reached its conclusion in an instant. That conclusion appeared in the world.

Schick, crack!

"Son of a--"

At the last moment, Gelt abandoned the punch and threw himself sideways. He lost his left arm for it.

Had he not, his head would have become two pieces instead of one.

Enkrid flicked the sword he had swung straight down, shaking blood from the blade. Drops scattered across the ground.

Some of it flecked his cheek. The severed arm twitched like a freshly caught fish.

A long fight had not been necessary. The outcome was plain.

Imperial Swordsmanship, was it really so different?

Some techniques might be unfamiliar, but the core was the same.

Cut the opponent. Don't get cut.

Exactly as Enkrid had just done.

"Who raised this monster."

Gelt pressed the cut edge of his forearm together as he spoke. He controlled his muscles to stop the bleeding. Remarkable. He did it like it was nothing. Enkrid watched that too and filed it away.

Gelt kept his remaining hand wrapped around his sword and fixed his gaze on Enkrid.

Watching him, Enkrid felt he had a fair sense now of what Imperial Swordsmanship was.

'A circle with no distortion.'

Every technique raised to a common standard.

He could not say whether that was all of it, but judging from what he had just experienced, that was how it looked.

Deep fidelity to the basics, with clear evidence of grinding them down over years.

Only, the concept of those basics ran on a different track from the continent's way.

This was something even Ragna, Rem, Audin, Jaxon, or Sinar would have struggled to see through at a glance, the underlying principle of it.

Was learning this a stroke of Fortune? No. It was the inevitable result of everything built in order to walk a new road.

Enkrid had been forging his own swordsmanship and setting new signposts with it.

And lately, he had also seen and learned the Zaun method firsthand.

Not in passing, either. He had gone deep, submerged himself in it completely.

Zaun was a place open to anyone who wanted to enjoy it and learn.

'What about the Empire?'

Knights raised knights. What had been systematized through that process had to amount to more than one or two things.

Among those, what the thing called Imperial Swordsmanship itself aimed for was.

'Bringing the extraordinary down to something ordinary people can reach.'

Pressure Manifestation was a technique that even within Zaun, only a handful could use.

On the continent at large, even plain Pressure was not something every junior knight could manage.

'But the Empire is different.'

He could feel it on his skin, a different temperature. Beyond guesswork and prediction, instinct had found the answer and settled it inside his head.

Imperial Swordsmanship could not be understood just by watching.

Without going through the process that made extraordinary techniques into something ordinary to learn, it would remain impossible to predict even that much.

And an Imperial Knight who surpassed that framework would carry a level of skill that ran on an entirely different track from any knight on the continent.

Should that be discouraging? Because the starting point was different? Should the scale of it make him dizzy?

An ordinary person might have felt that way. Enkrid did not.

Couldn't this serve as a kind of guide? Walking a road with signposts was far better than walking one without.

Take what the Empire had found and mix his own into it. Enkrid smiled at the thought of one more thing learned.

"Does this bastard have some habit of smiling when you cut his arm off?"

Gelt asked, watching him.

A deep misunderstanding. But there was no reason to correct it.

* * *

Valmund had felt something like surprise roughly six times watching the fight just now.

The first was mild.

'Not ordinary skill.'

The depth Enkrid had shown. At that level, he might hold his own against Tempest Zaun.

Of course, Tempest Zaun had the 'single strike.' Even Valmund could not stop that.

That sword technique required staying outside its range before there was any hope of winning.

Set that aside, and hold his own was an understatement. Enkrid might actually win.

'He fights that well.'

Gelt always wove deception into his early attacks. Valmund had seen people who didn't fall for it.

'Never seen anyone turn it back on him, though.'

Enkrid had pulled out a second sword to break Gelt's intent, stolen the flow, and then immediately pushed through a charge that was practically a gamble, and made it work.

In short, beyond physical ability, strength, reflexes, and sensation, he simply knew how to fight.

'His experience is something else.'

Valmund could see it because he had come from mercenary work himself. What he had just witnessed required more than natural talent. Experience had to be behind it.

At a glance, it looked like someone who had scraped past hundreds of near-death situations.

'A cliff face climbed by someone with no talent, clawing their way up.'

A weed grown fat on Fortune poured down like rain.

That was the image it called to mind.

Valmund's hobby was painting. He thought he would like to paint a scene like this when he got back.

A cliff and a weed. He wanted to paint something incongruous and make it fit together.

There was more that had surprised him.

'Even fighting like that, part of his attention stayed on me.'

Why? Because he could not fully trust Valmund. And that had been true the whole way here.

Their journey together had kept a quiet mutual wariness alive between them.

Even as they talked and crossed blades in practice.

Gelt was an Imperial Knight. On the continent, he would have cut down three or four greenhouse knights without effort.

'While going up against that Gelt, he still directed part of his attention my way.'

Even during that near-suicidal charge.

Could anyone watch that and not be impressed?

'What a monster.'

Valmund scratched his cheek. That was a habit that surfaced when things got complicated. The scar on his cheek always seemed to itch at moments like this.

What would happen if they fought to the death?

'Would I lose?'

He could not easily call it. He had things hidden, and Enkrid of Border Guard surely had far more tucked away.

Looking at how he leaned on none of the five lineages of swordsmanship, there were clearly things he would do that Valmund had never imagined. He was better than Schmidt had let on.

'Hot and cold at the same time.'

Pure instinct, but calculating too.

Choosing to travel with Valmund had been a matter of mood, but he had never let that distract him from watching and reading Valmund throughout.

He moved on impulse but knew how to use everything around him.

A person like that was not built in a single day.

'What kind of life has he been living?'

That question genuinely nagged at him.

'A successor.'

The thought crossed his mind that he would want someone like this to carry on after him, but he could tell without even consulting instinct.

This was not someone who followed another person's lead.

His stubbornness was no joke, and his streak of madness probably matched it.

Valmund opened the metal clasp that secured his weapon.

Click.

The hexagonal grip settled into his calloused hand like it belonged there.

"Hey."

Valmund said it and spread his momentum outward.

Enkrid felt it and turned. Now Gelt was on his left and Valmund on his right.

Valmund stepped forward, tapping the ground as he went, and opened his mouth to speak. Enkrid watched and turned his whole body to face him.

He had judged that Valmund could not be ignored. That was why Valmund had let the momentum show.

'No hesitation in the response.'

Even his judgment was appealing.

The corner of Valmund's mouth twisted. A satisfied smile settled on his face. Enkrid stopped mid-smile and raised his sword.

Pointed at Valmund. That meant, without a single word exchanged, he was playing along with the rhythm Valmund had set.

Gelt was reading the air, and when both of them suddenly surged, he turned to run.

At that moment, Valmund threw his weapon.

Crack!

The chunk of iron tore through the air and flew in a straight line, connecting with Gelt's head.

Boom!

The skull burst like a pumpkin dropped from a city wall. Fragments of bone and brain and fluid sprayed outward in every direction.

The iron that had crushed his head stopped in midair, then dropped to the ground with a thud.

Whatever he had done with the center of gravity, it fell straight down and came to rest with the grip pointing at the sky.

"Nowhere to run."

Valmund said it with a smile, walked over at a leisurely pace, and retrieved his weapon.

He had scattered part of his killing intent toward Enkrid to fool Gelt, but that had been the plan from the start.

He had used the fact that Enkrid was keeping part of his attention on Valmund.

So that when Gelt noticed and turned to flee, he could kill him in a single shot.

The easy way to finish it.

And Enkrid had caught on and played along.

The more he saw of this one, the more he liked him.

"Come to the Empire."

So he said it, and he meant every word.

* * *

"No."

Enkrid saw no particular need to wrestle with a question like this.

"Didn't you say you wanted to erase the Cursed Ground?"

Valmund asked, and Enkrid nodded at once.

"Whether that's possible or not, if that's what you're after, where you need to be is the Empire."

A definitive statement. Enkrid did not reply. He only watched without expression. That was his way of saying he disagreed.

"Right, thought you wouldn't listen. You've got the stubbornness of the whole continent rolled into one."

He had heard that before.

When he had been powerless, and when power had come to him.

All of that time lived inside him now as Will.

'Stubbornness. Oath. Conviction. Will.'

He now understood the source of a Will that never dried up.

'Will is born from the desire to persist.'

When Esther said they shared a common source, she likely meant it was a variation of mana.

Worth organizing at some point.

"Gelt's dead, so I'll be on my way. Enkrid of Border Guard."

"Good to meet you. Valmund of the Empire."

"We'll meet again."

"As enemies?"

"I'd prefer as allies. Don't make the Empire your enemy. Nothing good comes of it for you."

A threat? A warning? Or simply advice.

"I'll handle that myself."

"Arrogant little bastard."

Valmund left Gelt's crushed head alone. He searched the body for anything that could identify him, pocketed it, and left. The journey together was over.

For Enkrid too, it ended with a walk back. He was alone now, which meant any hope of sleeping easy was gone.

'Then again, it was the same when Valmund was there.'

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