WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

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A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 742: A Man Who Received Kindness Opens His Heart

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Enkrid wrapped his injured forearm in bandages and walked away.

Black blood clung to the soles of his boots, stretching out in a long, viscous trail before finally dripping free. The Tiger Beast's blood was a little thick.

The beast lay dead with its ears torn, one foreleg severed, its skull split open, and its organs scattered across the ground.

One look at those wounds made it clear the fight hadn't been settled in one or two strokes.

Even against a knight, one with considerable skill at that, the beast had come at him eagerly. That had made it interesting in its own way.

'Not bad.'

The Tiger Beast's movements had been dynamic, slipping past his predictions again and again.

Enkrid layered the Sword of Chance over the Wave-Blocking Sword to defend, then drove in with Flash, thrusting, cutting, striking.

As he fought, he kept his focus on the beast's dynamism. There was a lot to learn.

'How it loaded force into each motion.'

The core of Valaf Martial Arts lies in rotation. More precisely, in twisting the body and wringing power out of it.

And to generate that kind of raw strength, the vessel holding it has to be equally solid.

That's why the body has to be trained to its limit.

Dense bones and honed muscle, combined with a physical structure that executes thought the instant it forms.

Every element Enkrid had been thinking about was present inside the Tiger Beast's dynamic movements.

'Every swipe of those forepaws was heavy.'

It also had techniques that defied prediction.

Whoosh.

It breathed fire from a distance, then raked the air with its claws, and an invisible blade came flying in.

Clang!

If he hadn't sensed it with something beyond instinct, a sixth sense, and swept the Three-Iron to knock that invisible blade aside, it would have opened a deep gash somewhere on his body.

It couldn't be called common for a beast to use special abilities and spells. And on top of that, it thought.

'Hit and pull back.'

Up close it knew how to load a single strike with everything it had; at range it fell back on its special abilities.

That was its approach, its tactics. He watched and learned from it.

'Even mastering many sword arts, it's still the wielder who uses them.'

That was what the Tiger Beast, with its dynamism and its special abilities, had taught him.

It was like watching theory he had already understood be laid out and proven in front of his eyes, and it had been genuinely good study.

"Hah."

Enkrid let out a slow breath, picked some broad leaves nearby to wipe his blade clean, then rubbed the blood off himself well enough.

He had been planning to leave just like that.

'Whatever the village was hiding.'

That was theirs.

And he hadn't fought expecting anything in return.

To be precise, he had stepped in because it felt like coming face to face with an old regret, and walking away after explaining all of that, asking for nothing, then simply saying he had helped, seemed a bit ridiculous anyway.

If Rem had been watching from the side, he probably would have helpfully explained: 'You want to look good about it but can't, because that'd ruin the effect, so you just have to say you're leaving, right?' But what did that matter?

What mattered was that they would survive for a while.

If Eirik and Brunhild kept growing at the rate they were, they would survive even longer.

It wouldn't be bad if those two found their way to the Border Guard someday, but that wasn't something to push for.

He would give them the chance to make their choice, but he wasn't about to cut up those kids' futures for them.

"Feel a little better now?"

A woman came out to the village entrance holding a small child's hand, just as she had once done before, and said that.

She looked the same as when they first met. Clothes worn but carefully mended with neat stitching; a child not plump with extra weight but with clear, bright eyes.

One of the many people he had placed behind his back and still failed to protect.

The village was already gone. Those people were already dead. But Enkrid found comfort in her words.

'If you spend your whole life living in yesterday, you won't even notice when tomorrow's sun has risen.'

Nobody had taught him that. It just came to him. He would keep walking toward tomorrow, even if he had to repeat today. So he couldn't afford to stay stuck in yesterday.

'And I've been dragging my feet long enough as it is.'

He had already spent close to a month in the village. That was a lot of time spent.

The mountains were thick with summer green. The weather had turned warm enough that if you didn't dress lightly, heat rash would bloom at every joint. Enkrid walked in the direction of the sun, and his shadow stretched long behind him, trailing in his wake.

He stopped at a stream to wash up, and he hadn't even walked half a day when it happened.

He shouldn't have been anywhere near the Border Guard yet, but he felt the presence of a great many people.

'Refined blades.'

Like steel hammered for days by a skilled smith. The presence of the grouped figures felt exactly like that.

Properly trained elite soldiers were encircling the area and closing in.

Compared to them, the beast pack he had faced for days on end might as well have been children.

Where Enkrid stood was a steep downhill slope, so he could look down from above, but the undergrowth below was dense and he couldn't clearly make out the people approaching.

Rustle. Crunch. Thud.

Only faint, deliberate sounds reached his ears.

Enkrid waited with his hand resting on the Three-Iron's grip. The sword was bound to his waist with twisted bark and vine. A little force and it would be ready in an instant.

He masked his presence with Assimilation, but one subtle presence locked onto the space behind him.

'Quiet.'

Not just ordinarily quiet. Quieter than a fox with a dozen tails. Better at hiding its presence than any beast-turned-creature, and radiating a more dangerous edge than any Demon Creature he had encountered in Zaun.

Enkrid shifted his footing. Getting attacked from both front and back here would be a bad position. He moved naturally, just enough to take an angle that gave him even a slight advantage. Instead of facing straight down the slope, he turned his body sideways.

Now the quiet one was on his left, and the soldiers were climbing up from the right.

He had just finished repositioning when one figure, standing out above the rest for the sharpness of its presence, lifted its head above the brush.

Gray hair, dull gray eyes. The axe hanging loose at the waist swayed as Rem looked his way, and the wildness in those eyes would have matched a Tiger Beast King's without losing an inch.

Ready to move at any moment, like a bowstring drawn to its full tension.

His hair had been dyed brown the first time they met, but now he had stopped bothering to hide its color.

"What are you doing out here?"

Enkrid asked, and Rem lifted the hand he had resting on the axe and scratched his chin.

"...Taking a walk?"

Taking a walk, and he'd brought his whole unit along. Every one of them fully armed, too.

Beside Rem, a man broad enough to pass for a Bear Beast stepped out as well.

How he had fit inside that undergrowth without making a sound was a mystery.

Straightening up from his crouch, Audin smiled and spoke.

"I was walking in accordance with the teachings of my god."

"...And those teachings happen to require bringing your entire unit along?"

Behind Audin, the ones called the Fanatics within the Border Guard watched with quiet eyes.

Anyone looking could tell they were ready to fight.

"Tactical swordsmanship at work, isn't it? You've gotten better."

Ruagarne was there too. More than anything else, she had her attention fixed on the change in Enkrid.

Who cared about running into each other out here.

What mattered more was that he had gone and changed again.

Frog's bulging eyes glistened with curiosity and hunger. That was because actual oil had seeped in from outside and gotten into the corners of her eyes.

Jaxon, who had been the first to kill his presence, came down from above. Enkrid looked at him and asked.

"And you?"

"I could ask the commander the same. Where are you coming from?"

"Was traveling with an Imperial knight."

"Traveling with?"

Somehow, Krais was there as well. That last line had come from Krais, standing behind Ruagarne. Enkrid met his eyes and continued.

"And found a village that had been in hiding."

"Found a village."

Krais's interjections were as sharp as any of Ragna's cuts.

What was he supposed to say here.

That he had come back from saving them?

"There were a lot of beasts, so I dealt with them for a while and then left."

Part of the reason he hadn't been able to drag things out was these people. He had figured that if he stayed put too long, they would eventually move to look for him.

He just hadn't expected them to come out fully armed and ready for a real fight.

"Ragna said nothing would happen, so why do you always pull something like this and drag everyone out?"

Krais's tone was scolding.

In truth, the moment Enkrid mentioned a village with beasts involved, most of them had probably worked it out immediately. Oh, he went off to help someone and came back late.

Rem was the one who said it out loud.

"So you went somewhere to help people, told the ones standing at your back they wouldn't die, and that's why you kept us waiting? That the story?"

"...I didn't say anything like that."

"You probably said something close enough."

"I didn't."

The villagers' guards had been too high for him to have said anything of the sort.

Krais shook his head and added, "Regardless, if you'd taken much longer, His Majesty the King was on the verge of going on a tour of the Empire, never mind the southern border."

"Was he?"

"Yes."

Rem, Audin, and Jaxon had all come up with their own excuses, but this had been a search for Enkrid.

Had they actually been prepared to go to war with the Empire?

Those three might well have been.

Enkrid didn't know it, but Jaxon had been ready to draw on Georg's Blade as well.

He thought he understood why Krais had come.

'Even if he couldn't mediate, it wouldn't do to enter a losing fight from the start.'

You couldn't negotiate from a position of strength if you couldn't manage that much. Or perhaps, if it came to a fight, he had come to try one last time to stop it.

Still, it was surprising. The fact that that coward had stepped out himself.

Enkrid had guessed as much, but the reality was quite different.

Not that Krais hadn't agonized over it. His worry had been: what if this lunatic had kicked something off inside the Empire.

Ragna, who had come back ahead of Enkrid, had simply said it looked like the commander had gotten lost and offered to lead the search himself.

No one within the Border Guard was going to allow that.

Even Ann, who had returned after resetting her relationship with Ragna, had talked him out of it.

What Ragna had finally said after giving up on his idea was this.

"Nothing will go wrong."

His words were full of certainty, the kind that said no Imperial knight could do anything to Enkrid.

Anyway, Krais had made it this far less out of a desire to stop a fight, and more because if a fight had already been decided on, the right move was to strike before the other side was ready. And this wasn't even the half of it. Ropord and Fell would be following behind him with their units, so it had turned into a full commitment either way.

'If something had happened to the commander.'

If the Empire had been responsible, they would have had to pay for it.

Inside, Krais let out a quiet breath of relief. He had come out hot-headed, but seeing Enkrid cooled the heat and brought reality back into focus.

'Going to die before my time at this rate.'

That thought crossed his mind too.

"By the way."

Enkrid opened his mouth to ask something, but Krais beat him to it.

"Esther said a Mage is meant to appear from somewhere no one expects, and she would be joining afterward. Sinar said there were quite a few things she wanted to show people who underestimate the power of elves, and she went to the city of Kirhais. She's joining as follow-up, obviously."

If Enkrid had waited even a little longer, it would have become a full-scale war.

"Is everyone crazy?"

Enkrid asked it sincerely.

"Is that really something that should come out of your mouth right now?"

Rem scolded him for it.

Then came the rare sight of Audin smiling and nodding in agreement, while Jaxon bobbed his head in solidarity with Rem.

To Enkrid, the three of them moving in that kind of harmony was remarkable all on its own.

Well, running into each other out here meant it was settled, and nothing else unfortunate would come of it.

Enkrid scratched his head.

"Shall we head back?"

He didn't have much else to say.

"Yes."

Krais answered on behalf of everyone.

When they returned to the Border Guard, Ragna, who had said everything would be fine, had already finished preparing to head out with ten members of his direct unit.

They also saw a gathering of elves whose sharp, focused energy made feelings look like a luxury.

The Dryads' green wave and the Wood Guard's brown wave, and between them, Sinar had drawn her sword.

"Let's go. We ride to avenge my husband."

"Who's anyone's husband here."

Enkrid stepped in front of the elf army.

"I was about to trade stargazing for a survey of the largest nation humans ever built."

Esther had heard the news about Enkrid and come back too.

Not even two days later, a letter arrived from Crang.

-Was on my way to see the Empire.

Short, but it said everything.

Enkrid thought the whole thing was absurd, but honestly he didn't feel bad about it.

After that, he found a little time and went to see Leona to ask a few things of her, then passed a message to Krais as well.

* * *

Harkvent drove off the remaining beasts, dealt with the aftermath, and waited for Enkrid. If he had to put his current feelings into words, it would have been half anxiety, half anticipation.

'We can get free of the beasts' reach.'

That was the anticipation.

'What will he want in return.'

That was the anxiety.

But four days passed, and the answer never came back with him.

The beast attacks grew sparse, then stopped.

Even as the village began to pick itself back up, he didn't return.

'Why?'

The question lingered.

He found his answer in a conversation with the old woman who served as the village midwife and healer.

"Looks like he just helped and left. Like something got into him."

She said it plainly, and Harkvent understood how poorly he had behaved.

'He hadn't been after anything.'

And he hadn't turned his back on them, either.

He felt ashamed. Humiliated. He wanted to crawl into some hole and hide.

He hadn't even managed to say a proper word of thanks, had he?

He had taken a long wound across the chest fighting the beasts, but the scar cut deeper inside. That one would carry the name of shame.

"Why."

Why help and then just leave.

And the help hadn't even stopped there.

The beasts were dealt with, but reality remained. Even in summer, they had burned through all their stored food, and that weighed heavily.

"Good day."

A merchant arrived, a cleaner-looking man than the ones who used to come.

"I'm Malton, a trader with the Rockfreed Trading Company. Have you got anything to trade? I've brought some food, clothing, and basic supplies for now."

The trader named Malton set his bundled goods down. More than ten guards had come with him, sturdy men and armed fighters.

Harkvent raised his head at the sight, and Malton delivered his prepared words.

"No intention of causing trouble. If you don't want to trade, I'll leave these here and go. But if I were you, I'd do business with me. The ones who used to deal with this village were pretty rotten. I think you know why I came all the way out here, it's because of the one who passed through and stayed a while."

What Malton said was true. The merchants who had previously found their way here, buying up the village's medicinal herbs or selling them goods, had taken far too much margin.

Sold their conscience at a discount was the right way to put it.

Malton had run that same game plenty of times himself, so he knew it well.

"What do you say?"

Malton asked, and Harkvent nodded. And so the man who had received grace so one-sidedly opened his heart.

"There's something precious in our village. It has to be passed on to him."

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