WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 759: Flame Blade

──────

For two full days, all manner of Demon Creatures and Magic Beasts kept showing up. The ones that gathered drooled for the taste of good meat and blood.

Though corrupted, the people living here still bled red. No one had been seriously hurt, but Enkrid had seen blood from a child's scraped knee after the child tumbled in fright.

Even as the child fell, the words "Knight of Fatal Charm" had spilled from their lips.

To Enkrid, it sounded exactly like a plea to be saved.

No explanation was needed for how intoxicating that red blood, that smell of blood, was to the Demon Creatures.

They had come in droves, after all.

And if one had to pick the most troublesome among them, it would be the magical creature wrapped head to toe in iron, commonly called a giant iron puppet, an iron golem.

Its steel-like body deflected ordinary sword strikes, which made it a nuisance. Anyone short of a Knight would exhaust themselves just chipping away at it.

So how dangerous a foe was that?

Arrows did nothing. Blades did nothing. Smashing it apart with blunt force and hunting for the core was the most sensible approach.

Even for a Knight, that was not so different. Being able to cut steel did not mean one could actually slice through iron like a turnip or a bundle of straw.

Still, accounting for all that, a golem was no real threat to a Knight. It would take time, but neither the technique nor the strength nor the tactics needed to kill one were lacking.

That said, did the magical creature now stepping forward even feel hunger? Or did it only have the urge to break things?

Enkrid's musings scattered with the sound of its footfall.

Thud!

The ground shook with each step. The thing had to weigh several times more than the rhinoceros that had been charging around earlier.

The earth seemed to sink beneath it. Each stride stirred momentum, and Pressure rose and bore down on everything around it.

'About the same level as the Bull Swordsman.'

That was Enkrid's read.

It was twice as dangerous as a run-of-the-mill iron golem.

It had no mouth, so it made no howl. Instead, the long iron rod in its hand did the howling for it.

Clang!

The rod was shaped like a sledgehammer, its end beaten into a blunt lump.

It swung that club into the ground, and the crash sent vibrations crawling up through the soles of Enkrid's feet.

Iron golems that survived long enough were said to turn part of their own body into a weapon, which reportedly made it no different from an Inscribed Weapon. In traveling bard stories, they were always depicted as dull guardians of ruins, but facing one in the flesh, it was anything but easy.

Still, someone had to stop it. Ragna was closest, so he stepped up. With his eyes half-open, he tried to take in the golem at a glance and found his head tilting back. The thing was too big to see all at once from below.

'Big.'

It looked at least three heads taller than the bear beastfolk zealot. Up close, the sheer scale wrecked any sense of proportion entirely.

He vaguely recalled hearing, somewhere in his travels, why magical puppets, golems, were born in this land, but the memory would not come.

It was a simple chain of thought. Big or not, nothing changed. Forgetting the story behind a golem's birth changed nothing either.

Grrrk.

The sledgehammer-shaped iron rod scraped along the ground.

Ragna watched it with half-lidded eyes and thought he could do it now. Do what? A cut one step further than before.

He had been moved and spurred on by what Enkrid had shown him, and he had worked out his own answer in return.

'Will Transference.'

Where Zaun had focused on controlling Will, he had focused on changing it. He pushed Will out, gave it a tangible shape, and held that shape fixed.

He shaped intent, reshaped it, filled it, and poured his wish into it.

A will to cut through whatever stood before him, filled to the brim, breathed into the materialized Will.

'That shape is a blade.'

Over the heat-radiating Ilchul, a faint red-tinged blade overlaid itself.

'Wrapping the whole sword is too much.'

Ragna felt the Will breaking off midway and fixed the shape there. One edge only, flushed with red light.

It looked exactly like a tongue of bright red flame beaten into the form of a blade.

As the golem swung its iron mass, Ragna drew the sword diagonally upward along a slant.

No great technique, no great strength. His footing was light, his speed moderate.

He did not wring his muscles. If anything, it looked almost like a casual checking swing, but the result it produced was anything but.

Shhhk. Whooomph.

The Treasured Sword Ilchul passed through the iron like slicing bean curd. In its wake, fire bloomed along the cut.

The sledgehammer rod snapped in two, and a diagonal line of flame was left burned across the golem's midsection.

Ragna leveled the sword and brought it straight down once more, vertically, splitting the golem from head to body.

Every motion looked effortless.

A Knight can kill a golem, can't they? Yes. Of course. But not like that.

You could swing many times, gather your strength, batter it apart, hunt for the core, and kill it that way. But two strokes, clean as that? No.

Once the core was exposed, killing the golem was easy. Ragna drove his sword tip into the pulsing round sphere inside the split body, the one shaped like a human heart.

With a wet crunch, the core shattered, and dark yet gleaming water poured out.

The golem crashed to the ground and scattered into fragments of broken iron, thick liquid seeping between the pieces.

Everyone had watched it happen, even mid-fight. Everyone who had seen Ragna's cut was astonished.

The moment the fighting more or less wrapped up, Rem spoke up.

"What did you just do?"

Ragna did not even look at him. He answered without turning.

"Sword work."

Pressing for more detail would get no better answer than that.

"That's your explanation?"

Rem griped, but Ragna ignored him.

Enkrid had seen the same cut. Was "as expected" the right way to put it?

Geniuses, every last one of them, definitely pull off things that make no sense.

Making a blade out of Will? This crazy bastard.

Just grasping the structure behind it was not easy.

How did he do it?

He wrapped materialized Will around the blade, and anything the edge touched was split apart.

"Flame Blade?"

Teresa murmured. It brought to mind what was written in the holy scripture, that the God of War swung a blade of flame that cut through all things.

"No, sister-in-faith."

Audin disagreed. That was not divinity. It was the realm of technique, of craft. Not just fine control of Will, but manifesting it in an entirely new form.

Audin knew he could wrap himself in divine power as a form of protection. He had seen the same thing, and thought flowed naturally from there.

'Could I gather Sacred Light Armor into the shape of a blade and do that?'

The process would be grueling. But it was possible.

'Not just a blade. Other forms would work too. Lord Father, is this a gift you have given me? Are you showing me this through that lazy brother?'

The moment he saw it, he felt his mastery of divine power growing. He had seen it, so he could do it. Audin's talent, too, stood at the pinnacle among all who had ever served as Apostle of the God of War.

Rem's lips opened and closed a few times. Enkrid knew he wanted to unload a string of curses but had nothing to say.

"Feel like you lost?"

"Shut it. I can do that much too."

He was stirred up because he had seen Ragna's cut. Enkrid knew that.

Ragna knew what he had done. A new path no one had ever walked, a new world, a new way.

After a long time, that sense of omnipotence returned, and with it came superiority.

He lifted his chin slightly and took everyone in at a glance.

The Madman Knights were gathered from those who had killed Demon Creatures and Magic Beasts.

Their commander stood at the center. In that case, he had only one thing to say.

"That makes me Vice-captain."

Everyone hit back without so much as drawing a breath.

"Where do you get off talking nonsense?"

"That position requires experience."

"Did you overexert yourself and hurt your head, lazy brother?"

"If you're going to do the same thing as that Barbarian, shouldn't the two of you just go play together?"

Rem, Sinar, Audin, Jaxon, in that order. It almost sounded like they had all spoken at once.

Jaxon's line in particular raked like a sharp blade.

Some time ago, Rem had used lingering to fire a projectile, destroy Audin's room, and get the better of Enkrid. After getting one step ahead, Rem had been in the middle of lecturing. Jaxon's words meant there was not much difference between Rem then and Ragna now.

"Want to try taking it? The Flame Blade?"

Ragna had caught Teresa's murmur and tacked on a rough name for it. Aimed at Jaxon, naturally.

"Not much point if you can't even hit me, is there?"

Jaxon shot back, and fierce momentum passed between them.

It was like watching two snarling beasts. Neither bared fangs outwardly, but for anyone watching it was frightening enough.

"It will be fine. They won't fight to the death."

Ropord soothed the Cursed Ground residents who kept poking their heads in one by one.

Fell's eyes went wide. "What on earth is that now?" he muttered, then told himself over and over, alone, that talent meant nothing. Hard work was the answer. Effort alone would get him there. Fell steeled his resolve again.

"If you don't give up, you'll get there. Isn't there someone right over there who proved it?"

Ruagarne had caught Fell's muttering and spoke up.

Enkrid seemed not to hear any of it. He had not even reacted to the Vice-captain remark.

Was he shaken by seeing a genius take that step forward?

"This is going to drive me mad."

Enkrid murmured. The emotion behind the words was not hard to read. He was no elf.

And at a moment like this, the feelings he showed were not like throwing a stone into a lake but like hurling a boulder into it, the ripples surging up like a fountain, spreading wide and deep.

Like the mountain air, the scent people call the fragrance of vital energy, drifting through the heart of a forest, it was that dense.

If you had to put a word to what he was feeling right now, it was elation. Or joy.

The corners of his mouth rose. He smiled. The moment Sinar saw it, she opened her mouth.

"Should we have only three children?"

At some point, Sinar's jokes had begun leaping well over any line. Enkrid seemed not to hear even this.

"Yes, I've fallen for him again, all over again."

Ruagarne felt the same. If you could see that and not fall a little, what would it take?

Not in any romantic sense. The charm the man himself gave off was simply on another level.

The corrupted residents watched all of this and grew even more frightened.

Why, after killing every last Demon Creature, were they talking among themselves? The one standing at the center was smiling, the elf was saying she would have children at the sight of it, and Frog was saying she had fallen for Enkrid all over again.

Even the demon Balrok, who was said to do nothing but fight from morning to night, would not enjoy fighting this much.

They served the demon god, but they were human.

More than that, they were people who had lived shut away in here, like Frogs at the bottom of a well.

Situations that blew far past the edge of their understanding kept coming one after another. Their fear was entirely natural.

And so they all dropped to their knees and pressed their foreheads to the ground toward Enkrid.

It took another two days to settle everything after that.

Even after clearing out all the Demon Creature and Magic Beast carcasses, the foul smell lingered, but no more came charging in.

Which made sense.

Beyond the iron golem and the Harpies, there had been several unusual variant Magic Beasts as well.

A gremlin faster than an arrow, and something called an Armored Bear, a bear-shaped Demon Creature whose fur had hardened into iron, had both appeared.

Jaxon killed the gremlin, and Teresa killed the Armored Bear by caving its skull in with her shield.

The residents who had seen all of it pulled back in a state of fear. Many were trembling outright.

Enkrid thought nothing of their reaction.

Would being kind to them now change anything? It would not.

What mattered more was this.

"You're asking what we'll do now? He probably hasn't thought of anything. He's always been the type to move on a whim."

It seemed Romen had just asked Rem what came next. Rem was at least someone Romen knew.

"I have something in mind."

Enkrid, who had heard it, said.

Ragna showed no interest. Audin asked whether the Lord had delivered an oracle. Ruagarne rolled her large eyes and said,

"Such as?"

Footnotes:

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