A Knight who Eternally Regresses - Chapter 737

WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 737: A Stench Steeped in Human Cunning

= = =

The two spotted Panther Beasts split apart, bounding left and right.

Red tendons stood out over their powerful hind muscles, and the moment their paws hit the ground they blurred into afterimages.

Not an impossible speed to match, though.

Barely catchable. Enkrid set his mind to kicking off the ground with the power of Strong Legs, ready to drive his Will into acceleration and shed all concealment for raw speed.

His accelerated thoughts cleaved that instant apart and took it all in.

Crunch. Crack-crack-crack.

The gravel under his feet shattered and scattered. Branches snapped and drove themselves into the soil. His feet sank halfway into the earth, the ground compressing and massing beneath him before it could hold his weight.

Right foot buried halfway, left foot coiled with tension through the big toe, index toe, and middle toe, one breath from launching.

Chase them down and cut. Even if something unexpected came up, he would at least take the tail off one of them.

The tails had taken on a texture like metal, catching the moonlight even in the dark. At a glance they were blades, plain and simple.

Cutting those alone would already be half a victory.

They serve as balance weights too, he thought. So if the tail goes, the balance goes, and the movement turns sluggish. After that, catching them would be nothing.

He already knew it through instinct and intuition. The tails were not the threat. Even if the two fleeing Magic Beasts became ten, they would still not be the threat.

He was confident he could beat them by digging a trap. If things went sideways, he could pull back for a moment.

A knight is a disaster, and that did not only mean a disaster for humans.

A knight is a disaster for everyone who crosses blades with them.

In this case, it would be fair to say a disaster for anything that raises claw, talon, or fang.

In other words, mere Magic Beasts could not handle Enkrid's sword.

Yet a strange, nagging feeling held him back. Pure instinct and intuition grabbed him by the ankle.

That uneasy shackle added weight to every movement.

Crack.

His calf muscles clenched hard, then released.

He let his hands hang loose and looked ahead. The two Panther Beasts had stopped and turned around. Standing in the shadows, their eyes glowed red.

The moment he bled off his momentum, they stopped immediately. Had they felt the shift in the air through their skin? Or some beast instinct that told them?

Either way, you could not call them ordinary Magic Beasts.

Special individuals.

Enkrid turned around. Once decided, there was no reason to hesitate.

Time that passed did not come back. A road might branch in many directions, but the one he walked was always one.

That was why, once you chose, regret served no purpose.

Of course, if someone asked why he had turned back, the only answer he could give was that it had felt wrong.

He spun on his heel, showing them his back. No other Magic Beast came rushing after him.

He turned back toward the village. There, Harkvent stood frozen with his spear in hand, mouth open, unable to find words.

"If you don't clear this away, it'll start to stink."

Enkrid nudged the Bear Beast's corpse with the toe of his boot.

Harkvent stared at him with deeply unsettled eyes.

Magic Beasts were dangerous, yes, but the man standing right in front of him was just as dangerous, and somehow that had hit him fresh.

Enkrid studied Harkvent in silence.

His head looks busy, he thought.

He could not guess at everything going on inside Harkvent, but the rough shape of it was readable enough.

Not that he had anything particular to say about it.

Nothing he said here would wash that unease away.

The best thing to do right now was get the Magic Beasts cleaned up as fast as possible and leave.

Though if that had been his goal, he should have chased those two down and killed them a moment ago. He had not.

"Is there water for washing?"

"Of course."

Harkvent had drawn water from the spring lower down and kept it stored.

Without stopping to measure how much was meant for drinking or anything else, he handed over most of what he had brought for washing.

Whatever was buried in his heart, this man had saved the village. Showing this much hospitality was only right.

But caution moved through him too. What if there was no water, and the man suddenly turned angry?

His stomach knotted with anxiety. The village's survival depended on this man's mood.

Honestly, it would probably be better for his nerves to have this man leave and fight the Magic Beasts with nothing but their own lives on the line.

"Then."

Enkrid washed himself off, showed Harkvent a calm face, and went inside to sleep.

The night passed quickly. He was up before dawn and began picking over the surroundings. Finding traces of Magic Beasts was not difficult.

Far.

If they were targeting the people of this village, he had assumed they would be lurking close by.

They were not close. Following the trail would take him quite a distance from the village. That was fine, he could do that. But he did not feel like it.

Enkrid walked at an unhurried pace, following the traces.

A rank smell.

The fishy, feral stench particular to Magic Beasts hung thick in the air.

What was that scent called again.

When he had first stepped into the semi-underground dwelling, a sharp fragrance had stung his nose.

The smell was distinctive enough that he had asked about it. A fruit that only grew around here, put it in food and it became a spice that cut right through the fishy smell, or something like that.

Thanks to it, they cooked Magic Beast and Demon Creature meat, he had heard. Though not because it tasted good; only when there was no other choice.

A sharp-looking boy among the children who had gathered after Brunhild took her spear and stuck close had chattered all of that at him.

That scent was new to me the first time.

The smell right now was one he recognized.

A foul, unpleasant reek threaded itself between the fish-smell and the rank animal stench. It was the stench of human cunning, something he had not expected to pick up from Magic Beasts.

Not a smell that actually existed in the air, yet he felt it clearly.

Humans who used their heads put tactics into their fighting. Generously called tactics; less generously, it was cunning that had developed in order to minimize losses on their own side and win.

What he read in the traces left by this pack carried that same human-like cunning.

Enkrid stopped walking.

As if to prove his theory, the pack swept in, reeking of that animal stench.

No growls. Bodies low and blended into the grass, they watched him with burning red eyes.

They used the tailwind.

By moving with the wind at their backs, they had hidden their scent, suppressed any sign of their presence, and set an ambush.

Put another way, they had laid a trail to lure him in.

Droppings and blood, the rank and fishy smells left deliberately.

The image came to him unbidden: Magic Beasts raking their own legs or a packmate's with a claw to draw blood.

What had appeared was Wolf Beasts. A rough count put them at several dozen. Forming a semicircle to box him in was not surprising anymore.

Ambush and encirclement were within what he had expected.

Were the Feral Dog Beasts just the opening move?

He knew the name for the tactic this pack had used.

A feint.

So he also knew where he needed to be right now. He turned and ran back. The uneasy shackle had kept him from going too far, so he could return quickly.

Bark!

The one at the center of the Wolf Beast pack let out a sharp cry, and the semicircular formation began curling closed behind him to cut off his retreat.

Enkrid counted the ones directly in front of him.

Nine.

The third from the left stood the tallest. The second from the right had the lowest stance, pressed almost flat to the ground, a breath from launching.

Drawing Three-Iron made no sound. He had been carrying it unsheathed.

Enkrid marked each of the nine heads as a point and drew lines between them in his mind.

After that, he gave himself half over to instinct. Will surged inside him and drove his speed up as he ran.

He extended Three-Iron to the left and swept it right, and the blade moved in a zigzag.

A variation on Flash born from the optimization of thought.

Consecutive Flash. The optimized mind told him exactly where to extend and draw the blade.

What emerged carried the shape of a white zigzagging disaster.

Lightning.

Crack-crack-crack-crack-crack.

The nine beasts' skulls seemed to split at once. There was a sequence to it, technically, but the gaps were too small for anyone below senior knight level to tell apart.

It was swordwork closer to acrobatics than anything else, achieved through line-burst learned from Alexandra and the optimization of thought.

From the outside it looked like nothing more than a simple, fast cut, but look closely at how the Will was being used and you would see the acrobatics in it.

Nine Magic Beasts died with their skulls split, just like that. Nothing stood in Enkrid's way now.

He ran hard for the village, and when he got there he found a massive snake that looked like it could swallow a child Brunhild's size in one bite.

Crack!

It coiled around a large tree and snapped it, then let out a long, hissing cry. That the cry carried the power to send prey shaking with terror went without saying.

"I'll hold it!"

At the village entrance, Harkvent stood alone facing the creature, spear raised. His forearm was bleeding steadily, when he had been hurt was unclear.

The bright red liquid, unmistakably different from Magic Beast blood, soaked into the soil at his feet.

The moment Enkrid saw Harkvent, he understood what the man was trying to do.

A trap.

He was planning to draw the snake in.

It had even been mentioned before that the Feral Dog Beasts had caught them off guard only because the creatures had rushed them suddenly, and that under normal conditions they could have dug traps and killed them all.

But not this snake. A trap would not kill this one.

Enkrid's feet did not hesitate for an instant. He moved with certainty, closed the distance, and swung.

The snake did not even look back. It swung the log gripped in its tail in a dismissive sweep. Penna flowed downward and split the wood in two.

Shwick.

For sheer cutting power, Penna surpassed Three-Iron. The cross-section of the severed log was clean. The sound was soft, like a knife through tender meat.

Enkrid dove in through the gap between the two halves.

Penna was already back in its sheath. He gripped Three-Iron with both hands.

He came in hard and brought the blade down onto the snake's skull.

Thud. Crack.

The blade drew its line beyond anyone's perception. The edge passed through the snake's head before the sound could follow.

From where Harkvent stood, right there in front of it, all he saw was Enkrid appearing, then the tree splitting, then a line.

The snake's head split along that line. The hardened skull cracked open and the blackened brain inside began to spill out. The sword had moved so fast that the head made no sound being cut, and for a brief moment no blood even seeped from the wound.

It was beyond clean. It was beyond human.

Enkrid had reached the level called Knight, called Disaster. Of course he could swing a sword beyond the limits of what a human should be capable of.

The overwhelming force that went unseen in a fight between knights was laid completely bare in front of Magic Beasts.

Tap. Thud.

Enkrid landed on the ground while still airborne from his swing, and only after that did the snake's body collapse.

The earth shook as though a small tremor had passed through it.

Enkrid raised his head immediately and listened, feeling the pulse of the air.

The snake was not the end of it.

Several deer with fangs that jutted further than a wolf's came bounding into the village.

From up in the trees, a Fox Beast's red eyes glittered.

"Damn it, Harven!"

Someone was calling out for Harkvent.

Their trap was a pit dug underground, with sharpened stakes driven into the bottom. All the pit traps had been placed along the front face of the village.

And the Magic Beast pack had kept finding the sides, over and over.

They know the traps are there.

The Feral Dog Beasts running a delaying action. The Bear Beast drawing attention and luring.

They're trying to pull me out.

It was clear to him now. This pack was thinking. They were clever and cunning enough to make most humans look foolish.

"En-ki!"

Brunhild's voice cut through the chaos.

Calling for him in that moment and not her father was instinct. The one who could get them out of this crisis was the swordsman who had come from outside.

Enkrid moved. He kicked off the ground, ran along the treetops, and cut into the neck of a fang-bearing deer that lunged at him.

Where Three-Iron passed, the beast's head came free and tumbled through the air before hitting the ground.

He dropped from the tree and found his footing, threw a Throwing Spear, then leaped sideways and threw the horn-blade dagger he had already drawn.

Whoomp!

A knight's strength was nothing short of monstrous. The dagger driven by that force punched straight through a deer's skull.

Crack!

The Deer Beast's head burst like an overripe gourd.

Moving through it all, Enkrid spotted the Fox Beast, white-furred and two-tailed.

It was sharp. It watched him finish off a few beasts and then put distance between them.

It sat high in a tree so tall you could not see the top even craning your neck, rising straight as a pole. The Fox moved through the branches with light, easy feet.

Even this felt like nothing more than a test.

Like it was showing off how much more it had prepared.

Enkrid dismissed the Fox Beast that had stolen a moment of his attention and moved again.

A breath of rest and someone was going to die. He could not allow that.

The Magic Beasts that had entered the village numbered fewer than twenty, including the large snake.

But if I had not been here, someone would have died.

Brunhild was catching her breath off to one side. She saw him and smiled, lifting her spear.

"I killed one."

This staggeringly talented child had, in the middle of all that, driven her spear through a Fox Beast. Her spear shaft was half-split for it.

"We need to hold a meeting," Harkvent said, looking around at the aftermath.

Nobody had died. That did not put his unease to rest.

= = =