WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 739: The Smiling Demon

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"Inside."

Enkrid kept it short.

He had no need to dole out hits the way he had with Harkvent, either. There were plenty of other methods.

"Inside where?"

Jeri asked. The man had backbone, but his voice was trembling now, just slightly.

Enkrid's Pressure was sitting on him, steady and measured. To Jeri's eyes, Enkrid looked far more dangerous than usual.

You step out of line, and I cut you.

He did not have to say it. The meaning carried on its own.

Harkvent limped and glared at Enkrid with sharp eyes, but what lay behind that glare was less anger than a desperate bluff to hide how frightened he was.

In front of them all was a deep pit. It had been dug as a trap for when large Magic Beasts came near. The sharpened stakes inside had been removed, but the depth was no joke.

As Jeri read it, even if you stood on Harkvent's shoulders, your hands still would not reach the rim.

The walls were not perfectly vertical, angled just slightly, but that did not make them easy to climb.

Everyone began exchanging nervous glances.

We're really supposed to go in there?

Why is this outsider suddenly acting like this?

Didn't he say he would help us?

The whole meeting ended with Harkvent going to ask him for help.

Enkrid said nothing. He only shifted his stance. He could project his intent without moving at all, but that would make things rougher. Uncontrolled Pressure drained the strength from people's legs. What he needed here was not overwhelming terror, just the sense of a threat about to arrive.

He opened his chest and twisted at the hip. The hilt of Three-Iron, resting at his side, came into view for everyone watching.

It was the moment they all understood what Harkvent had already figured out.

The Magic Beasts were a distant threat. The sword in front of them was very close.

No need to weigh which was more dangerous.

Jeri went in first. A rope dropped from above into the pit. Enkrid spoke from the edge.

"Climb back up."

Surviving out here, even by exploiting the territorial fights between Demon Creatures and Magic Beasts, was not something ordinary people could manage. Muscles built themselves whether you tried or not, and grit came with the territory.

But grabbing a single rope at the bottom of a pit and hauling yourself up was a different matter entirely.

"Huh! Huh!"

Jeri climbed with everything he had. His palms ached from the grip by the time he reached the top.

"Run. Over there. Fast."

Enkrid raised one finger and pointed, his tone flat and bored.

The Pressure had not let up. It said, plain as anything: I can cut you whenever I want, and doing so would mean nothing to me.

Jeri ran, panting hard.

"Here! Touch this one, then over there!"

Children stood at intervals like signposts and shouted out the route.

He looped around a few trees and ran back, and by the end the sky had gone yellow.

"That was one. Next."

Enkrid's voice reached him. The next was a stocky woman. Stronger than Jeri, decent with a bow, and not the sort to back down easily. She was just as frightened as the rest, so she climbed down without a word of protest.

After her came the timid man who had sat in on the meeting.

He decided to cheat. It was scary, but he did not think cutting corners would get him punished.

After crawling out of the pit, he ran in a way that looked breathless while actually keeping a comfortable pace. He had been fast on his feet since childhood. This was nothing.

Enkrid kicked the man in the thigh when he came back.

Thwack.

A light kick to the lower leg. The man collapsed and started beating the ground with his fists.

From the sounds he made, it clearly hurt.

"If you cheat..."

Enkrid did not finish the sentence.

Everyone who could fight went down into the pit and climbed out and ran. They did it more than ten times each. By the end, their legs shook and their arms would not rise.

If a Magic Beast had attacked right then, they would have been easy prey.

"We're digging another pit."

Enkrid said it in a few words and walked back to where Brunhild and the children had been watching.

Then, as if nothing had happened, he went back to teaching them how to handle a spear and throw an axe.

"I know someone whose axe work is a lot better than mine," he remarked, even as he taught the throws.

What is this? What does he want? No one could ask, and no one could argue. They had a feeling he would not answer anyway. Even Harkvent had gone quiet.

The same thing repeated for three days.

"Are you a devil?"

The timid man asked, half on the verge of tears. He was so exhausted he had stopped filtering his words.

Enkrid smiled at him and answered.

"Think whatever you like."

If he walked into a salon in the capital Nauril wearing that smile, it would have put a blush on more than a few ladies' faces. Even at the market in Border Guard, more than a few people would have stopped mid-step to look twice.

If Leona Rockfreed had seen it, she might have said something like, "That smile is nothing but trouble. Stop it. I have no desire to die on an elf's blade."

But to the timid man, it looked like the grin of a devil without horns.

What else do you call someone who drives people to the edge of death and smiles like that?

* * *

The Boatman narrowed his eyes.

In his gaze, he could see what Enkrid was doing right now. Should he say the last three days had been quite surprising?

That wretch.

Under normal circumstances, Enkrid should have been scrambling to save these people, and the Boatman should have been watching and saying something like this:

Do you think they will listen?

And beyond that: Do you think training will change them?

That was the conversation that should have happened. Instead, every step of it had been skipped.

Enkrid had done that. A few words to read the situation, and then he had looked several moves ahead and acted.

The man was already first in raw drive, and now he was thinking carefully and trusting his instincts on top of it.

That was the result. He had anticipated what the Boatman would say and moved before it needed saying.

That wretch.

Not that the Boatman could do anything about it right now. The only thing left to say when he called Enkrid out at night was this.

"Do you think it will go the way you want?"

It might. The Boatman could not see the future, but he had lived long and seen a great many things. All that compressed experience let him read what lay ahead from what surrounded him.

It will work.

Watching the man, a new phrase came to mind.

A skilled seizer of today.

Enkrid blinked and answered.

"Yes."

"Go."

"Yes."

"Get out of my sight."

Two plain answers, and then the man moved away from the ferry.

The Boatman closed his eyes. It was one unsatisfying thing after another, and yet a low, quiet expectation was stirring in him.

Will it actually go the way he hopes?

He heard another voice from somewhere inside himself but did not answer it.

Whether something would succeed could only be known by seeing it through.

You have gone soft enough to think like that.

The Boatman agreed with that much.

Repeating today would always be the anchor that held Enkrid to this place. That fact would not change.

And yet he found himself watching for something to happen?

No. It was not that. This had simply become part of what he found entertaining.

The Boatman laughed. The sound drifted out across the Black River, spread wide, and came back as an echo. A prisoner was only ever given a confined space, so his laughter would always find a wall and bounce back.

* * *

Do what you are told, or die.

While all this madness was going on, a pack of Wolf Beasts and other Magic Beasts attacked three separate times.

"You have no sense of timing."

Each time, this merciless swordsman slaughtered them without hesitation, hacking and crushing and cutting them apart.

He did not only use his sword. He threw in his fists and his feet, and the result was something close to terrifying. His movements barely registered before Magic Beast heads were caving in.

The fact that he had gathered everyone in the village to one spot made the perimeter smaller, yes, but what he did was still staggering.

He was the kind of fighter who could kill an entire pack of Magic Beasts on his own.

"Oh."

Someone watching let out a sound, half breath and half voice.

Was it admiration? No. The fight had just ended too quickly.

The sword cut down Magic Beasts for now, but the moment the fighting was over, it came prodding at the backs of anyone still moving. Enkrid had literally done that, pressing the tip against the spines of people gasping and bent double with exhaustion. No wounds were left, but having a blade against your spine was chilling by itself.

"Stop?"

He said it as he did it.

It felt like some kind of magic. That one word, with the sharp point pressing into your back, was enough to drag up strength you did not have.

"Hah!"

Three days ago, everyone's face had gone pale the moment Magic Beasts attacked. That was no longer the case.

The smell of blood spread through the village, and Jeri found his nerve.

"We should clean up the area," he said.

Enkrid only nodded.

It meant everyone got a short rest.

But anyone who moved slowly, pretending to be more tired than they were, somehow earned that smile aimed right at them as he came walking over.

And that meant the rest was over, and hell started again.

On top of that, they had to do it all while the stench of Magic Beast blood hung in the air. Clean it up, and there would be more to clean after the next attack.

They had been tough people to begin with, but after all of this, they were sharper than before.

Roles had sorted themselves out naturally, with Harkvent stepping in to coordinate from the middle, as he always did.

Only after three days of that did Enkrid give them something different to do.

"Everyone grab a spear and fall in."

His word was law now.

Either that, or you braced yourself to come at him, and the toughest among them, Harkvent, was the first to follow. The timid man fell in beside him without argument.

"Getting hit once is worse than dying."

In a way, the timid man had real courage.

After what Enkrid had done to him, he had still tried to cut corners while clearing the Magic Beast carcasses.

Enkrid kicked him twice more for that.

The man wept and crawled on the ground, but strangely, nothing broke. His legs did not buckle for long either, just bruised, and back upright before much time passed.

He knows how to hit.

The timid man understood that. And this man hits with a smile.

He could do this hundreds of times over.

Without ever killing anyone. People who have never been through real punishment have no tolerance for it. To the timid man, Enkrid's kicks were torture.

"Behave yourselves and do as you're told."

He said it to all of them, no room for argument.

Harkvent had actually worked out what Enkrid was doing.

Two things, in broad terms.

The first was stripping away the fear they felt toward Magic Beasts.

Start by burying that fear under something bigger, then keep them in front of Magic Beast carcasses until the sight of one stopped meaning anything.

The second was making everyone move as one.

Fewer than seventy fighters, and not one of them had received any formal combat training. Harkvent's strength was natural, not trained. He had never been through military drills.

Responsibility and ability were not the same thing.

But he had eyes, and he understood what he saw. That probably came from spending years responsible for the village.

They had learned to read each other's breathing, to know each other's state from a glance.

Only then did Enkrid gather them, put spears in their hands, and start teaching them formations.

They picked it up quickly. The progress was visible. It made sense, they had spent three days being ground into the dirt.

Outside of the pit climbs and the running, everything they had done came down to matching their steps and shouting calls in unison. Anyone with military knowledge would have looked at what they had been doing and recognized it as drill training.

* * *

Interesting.

Running these people through it, there was something enjoyable about teaching raw recruits.

Not easy, but he had to admit it had its own kind of fun.

The Boatman's guess had been right.

The time in Zaun had widened Enkrid's perspective. He had looked several moves ahead from there.

He also knew the Boatman could not see the past, only the present, and predicted from that.

People who shut others out, but people worth protecting.

A pack of Magic Beasts of unknown size that would not stop coming. The location deep in the Mountain Range, the resources these people had, Brunhild's talent, the complete absence of combat training.

A lot to take in.

All of it arranged itself in his head and showed him the path.

That compression of thought was what had cut out the near-argument he would have had with the Boatman, and brought him to where he stood now.

A month was short, if you called it short, but used well, that time was more than enough.

The Boatman had probably wanted him tangled up here, repeating today in this place for a lifetime. That plan had been doomed from the start.

By around the halfway point, something had lit up in every eye in the village.

Enkrid had ruled over all of them through fear, the whole time.

Brunhild was young, but quick. She asked questions with her eyes, but put more energy into learning the spear than into finding answers. When training for the rest of the village began, she dove in even deeper than before.

The girl was sharp. She sensed, roughly, that the time Enkrid had set aside was running out, and she spoke up.

But she had layered one misreading on top of another and decided Enkrid was an enemy.

"Stop tormenting them."

The young talent leveled her spear at Enkrid.

He could have called it a feeling worth savoring. The first time he had left the village, he had lost to a child half his size. A lot had changed since then.

"Hyah!"

Brunhild thrust for the people of the village.

Enkrid caught the spear, then flicked his middle finger against her forehead.

Thwack.

"Ow!"

The girl grabbed her forehead and rolled on the ground.

"Don't get ahead of yourself."

Even a genius had a gap that could not be closed so easily.

Either way, her instincts had been right. The end was coming. Getting ready for it was part of what Enkrid was doing. He decided the time had come for something closer to real practice.

"Bring out all the stored food."

Harkvent nodded at Enkrid's order.

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