WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

A KNIGHT WHO ETERNALLY REGRESSES

Chapter 748: Enkrid-Style Orthodox Swordsmanship

= = =

A superhuman's senses perceive things ordinary people cannot. And Enkrid could now be counted among the superhuman.

'Frog's Talent-Reading Eye.'

The principle was not exactly the same, but he could do something close just by watching.

The weave of muscle, habitual posture, the look in someone's eyes, all of it became the basis for judgment.

He could not do it at Frog's level, of course, picking apart whether someone had the makings of a knight or not. But still.

'I can see it.'

Through experience, sharpened senses, and pure intuition, Clemen's weaknesses stood out clearly.

'Because she trained everything evenly, her traits blur together.'

Against anyone weaker than her, she would look overwhelming. Against someone stronger, she would struggle to win.

The result told you something about the process.

By reading the depth and manner of her conditioning, he could read her way of fighting.

Krais would have said that kind of reasoning was only for people whose heads actually worked, that not everyone shared that same capacity for thought. But still.

Whatever the case, what mattered right now was clear.

Keeping her Basics solid was a given, what had to be layered on top was technique.

The solidity of her Basics was obvious just from looking at her lower body.

'The most important thing in physical training is strengthening the lower half above all else.'

Clemen's lower body looked rock solid. That he liked. It was the mark of someone who had trained with real diligence.

"Shall we spar?"

Clemen's eyes lit up at those words. Receiving instruction from a knight was an enormous stroke of luck.

And the man in front of her was more than a knight. He was called a hero, the Demon Slayer, the Iron Wall Knight, commander of the Madman Knights, the man who had led those under him toward knighthood, and on top of all that, the nicknames Heart-Breaker and Knight of Fatal Charm had attached themselves to him as well.

Those last two had come together rather naturally, but that only showed how extraordinary he was.

"It's an honor," Clemen said, soldier-straight, and drew her weapon.

Shring.

A thin, long rapier. Longer than a standard longsword, and far thinner. One look and you could tell it was no ordinary piece.

"Who made it?"

Enkrid asked out of genuine curiosity. A craftsman capable of producing something like this would not be common.

"A dwarf craftsman attached to the standing army."

"There's someone like that here?"

"Yes. He came here running from debts, ended up in prison, and took over the standing army smithy on the condition he'd work there for ten years."

That sounded vaguely familiar somehow.

It had not seemed important at the time, so the memory was hazy. Still, turning it over a few times, he thought he knew who it was.

'The dwarf who was there when I first met Aetri.'

From what Clemen was saying, it sounded like Krais had stepped in to sort out the relationships and the situation. That was his style.

Apparently the dwarf had gotten his head on straight, because the sword's condition was not bad at all.

"Squad leaders can receive one weapon beyond standard issue, so that's what this is. The knight order's weapons are all sourced individually, so you probably wouldn't know the details."

Clemen was still talking when she flinched and leaped back two steps.

The speed with which she kicked off the floor and retreated was solid.

He liked that she raised her sword as she moved back, and he liked that she gripped with her toes and braced for whatever came next.

"Pressure."

Enkrid murmured it. This was a guidance spar, nothing more.

After that, Clemen came at him in earnest, thrusting, extending, swinging, looping her blade into a sweeping strike.

Enkrid picked up a training sword and met her.

'Straightforward.'

Her nickname was Fallen Clemen, but the way she fought looked like someone desperately trying never to fall.

'She minimizes mistakes and steers everything toward favorable, high-probability exchanges.'

But what did Clemen's face look like while she fought that way? She did not look like she was enjoying it. Did she train alone like this too? The thought crossed his mind.

Her spirit was tough, her body was tough, but her swordsmanship looked like someone thrashing in water. She stayed afloat, but too much force was going into it and she was not moving forward the way she could. More accurate to say she was capable of moving faster but was paddling in slow motion.

'She's showing less than she has.'

He took the conclusion, worked backward to the cause, and folded in the mental side.

'There are too many people around Clemen who fight better than she does.'

People you could not easily look down on.

Closest was Ropord, then Fell a step further out, and beyond them the Madman Knights, himself included.

That had sharpened her drive to improve, but it had also broken something in her.

Fallen Clemen. Being called that and clawing not to fall had shaped her too.

Put another way.

'She has never been pushed to the absolute limit.'

She had avoided those fights.

She would have only fought battles where she won overwhelmingly, or lost overwhelmingly.

Why was it that the Empire knight Valmund's words surfaced here?

Greenhouse knight. That was the phrase. If Clemen became a knight as she was now, would she be one raised like a hothouse flower?

Clang. Ting.

In the middle of the light guidance spar, Enkrid's momentum shifted for an instant. Clemen's pupils shrank to pinpoints.

Survival instinct fired through all five senses.

'I'm going to die.'

If she stayed still, she would. In that sliver of a moment, years of memory and a dozen thoughts flashed through Clemen's head.

'Fallen Clemen.'

After that nickname stuck, she had turned it inside out and clawed not to fall. As time passed and her skill grew, Clemen's thinking had narrowed to a single point.

'Don't fight battles you'll lose.'

Ropord had helped her reach that. Ruagarne's teachings were woven in too.

It was as though Frog's tactical swordsmanship had developed in a warped direction.

Clemen did not start fights she would lose. She did not even start them.

Which meant, unless the perfect opening arrived, she never committed a real strike.

This moment was the same. Clemen's sword waited for the perfect chance. But her opponent was a knight. Naturally, no such chance ever came, so what continued were nothing but probing attacks, feeling him out and nothing more.

Had that irritated him?

Clemen had experienced death. Her head had been cut off. The world spun. Then darkness.

* * *

'Physical ability is excellent.'

Her muscles were flexible and tough. She had not stopped at building raw strength but had put in sustained, varied training.

The foundation for that was, naturally, Audin's physical conditioning method.

The training Audin had spread while drilling the troops under him had by now become the standard conditioning method for the Border Guard Standing Army.

'Using that as a base, she took in only what suited her own body.'

Her perception and agility were excellent as well. She knew how to see and react. Her endurance was the same.

You could tell she had put in consistent work.

'The mental side is strong too.'

Set aside the fact that she did not commit boldly, and she never panicked and her judgment was sound.

Enkrid even caught a glimpse of the Will hidden inside Clemen.

He had not seen it literally, but there was something he sensed in an impressionistic way. Whether it would awaken or not was another matter entirely.

'The choice isn't mine to make.'

He could open the road, but walking it was the walker's job.

You could lead a horse to water, but you could not make it drink.

Still, even as only a vague feeling, Enkrid knew Clemen would move forward to the next step.

This kind of intuition had tended to be right.

'What she lacks is creativity and the mindset to press for a decisive finish.'

Fighting to win, not fighting to avoid losing, that was what Clemen needed right now.

From the first moment Clemen retreated under his Pressure, Enkrid's thinking had already reached this conclusion.

The layered thinking he had always carried combined with the instinct and sixth sense of someone who had reached the superhuman realm, along with everything accumulated over the years.

In the process of working out what Clemen needed, Enkrid laid out his own foundation once more.

A process he would likely have to revisit again and again, for as long as he kept going without giving up.

'There is no end to the training of swordsmanship.'

Knowing that made it thoroughly enjoyable.

Whatever he was doing now, it was not the end.

This time it had amounted to reorganizing what he had established before, but in the course of that, he had created one new sword technique.

The Wave-Blocking Sword was the method for training the Correct Sword style, and Valaf Martial Arts' approach to the body fitted the Heavy Sword style perfectly.

Then there was Flash, the swift sword born from optimized thought, and the flowing sword, built on Jaxon's Sensory Technique with experience layered over it, had been refined into what he called the Sword of Chance.

What remained was the deceiving sword.

'One step further from the Vallen Style Mercenary Sword.'

The deceiving sword existed for one reason only: to win. Doing whatever it took to survive and win, that was the Illusionary Sword.

'Mixed with Ruagarne's tactical swordsmanship.'

Tactical swordsmanship was about seizing the advantageous position and fighting from there. Enkrid took the best of both, combined them, and recreated something new.

"Is this heaven?"

Clemen opened her eyes. She had been knocked out by the Pressure and the light impact.

"Not yet."

"Oh."

She blinked a few times and quickly took in her surroundings.

Not dead. Alive. Passed out like an idiot.

She jumped to her feet, and watching her, Enkrid thought: saying something clumsy about stimulating her creativity and competitive drive would be worse than just speaking through the sword.

The name of the technique he had organized and established came out of his mouth.

"This sword technique is called Enkrid-Style Orthodox Swordsmanship."

Clemen steadied her breathing and asked.

"Pardon?"

"Learn it."

The meaning of the swordsmanship was deception, purely.

The training method was devising ways to deceive creatively.

Its form was every action taken to seize an advantageous position, the desperate struggle of the weak to overcome those stronger than themselves.

That was why even the name itself was designed to deceive the opponent.

The actual techniques relied on trickery, but the name went the opposite direction: orthodox swordsmanship.

"The principle is simple, and the rest you work out yourself. I'll show you a few basic techniques."

Anyone looking at her lower body conditioning or her posture would assume Clemen fought by the book. Her Basics were that solid.

"This technique is called Feigned Breath."

Enkrid taught her several techniques drawn from the Vallen Style Mercenary Sword. Clemen listened with complete focus, then asked.

"Is this really how you fight?"

She was not slow. She understood why Enkrid had spoken through the sword rather than explaining outright.

"Yes."

Enkrid told her to survive shamelessly and win shamelessly, and Clemen took it in.

After that, Enkrid looked after the training of the personal guard, the direct company under his command.

'Their baseline fitness is a little short, isn't it?'

His standards were considerably high, so the thought was understandable. He had come out partly to assess their condition in the first place.

"Let's run."

At those two words, the personal guard began a non-stop round trip on foot all the way to Martai.

Running there and back on foot, a distance that would take a good while even on horseback, was not easy.

The gatekeepers of Martai were startled by what came toward them, and Odd-Eye, apparently bored, ran alongside the unit as if keeping pace with them.

When they returned from that run, they were taught: pretending to lose, kicking while feigning a sword strike, the dual sword draw, and Feigned Breath.

Even through all of it, what Enkrid emphasized most was the Basics.

"You need to know how to fight properly before the opponent falls for your tricks."

That was why the Basics mattered.

Whatever road you took, it had to lead upward.

Better to do something, anything, than to hesitate and stagnate, and to do that you had to survive. Survive, and tomorrow comes.

Enkrid-Style Orthodox Swordsmanship soon became the official swordsmanship of the personal guard.

Clemen grasped the core of it, and Ropord helped partway through.

"It only has meaning when you're true to the Basics. No matter how sharp the sword, if the one swinging it is a seven-year-old child, it means nothing."

Ropord, in turn, picked up Enkrid-Style Orthodox Swordsmanship himself, and what he came to understand in the process he passed back to the others.

Enkrid also passed along the insight he had gained this time to Aetri.

"So all five become paths leading toward knighthood?"

The swordsmanship Enkrid considered his core numbered five.

Aetri grasped the key and asked. Even while hammering iron all day, once Enkrid arrived his mouth never stopped. He asked, answered, went back and forth, and found himself understanding more with each exchange.

"That's what I'm hoping for."

Enkrid's answer was brief. As he said it, his eyes drifted to the iron Aetri was hammering.

The iron was changing shape. A long bar. He was folding it over and hammering it flat, folding it again and hammering it flat again, over and over. This had been going on for three days.

Aetri's eyes were brighter than they had ever been, but his skin had turned rough and his body was getting thinner.

It looked as if he were pouring every last bit of his life into each hammer strike.

"Come again tomorrow," Aetri said.

Outside of watching over the personal guard's training, this was Enkrid's whole routine now.

Half a month had passed since Aetri first spoke to him. Even Rem had not once pressed whether it was time to leave.

Every last member of the knight order knew an Inscribed Weapon was being forged for Enkrid.

And every wait has its end. So this was that end.

= = =

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried