WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 760: What's Inside the Cursed Ground?

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Enkrid looked at Romen.

Why was Romen here, laid low and struggling because of a Parasitic Worm?

Because there was no threat to the City of Aoara.

That was why Romen could afford to be away.

The City of Aoara was Knight Aoara's legacy. If the city were in danger and Romen had come anyway, cutting off Romen's head would be perfectly justified.

But Romen was not that much of a fool.

So the City of Aoara must be safe now. And what did that mean?

There was no longer a Cursed Ground at Aoara.

The remnants of the Gray Forest would have been cleaned out completely.

Then was there any reason to keep so many high-end military assets concentrated at Aoara?

No.

The conclusion was that it was possible to dispatch part of Aoara's forces here.

Which meant it was possible to protect these people and help them stand on their own.

Aoara was a city of people who knew how to fight.

In fact, parts of the Border Guard Standing Army's training methods had been learned by watching the City of Aoara.

A fortress city. A city built for battle. Its old name was Thousand Bricks.

What if they built a Thousand Bricks here, modeled on that city?

You could not throw up a castle overnight, but human construction had come a long way. With the support of the Kingdom of Naurillia, it probably would not even take a year.

Six months at the earliest. Just raising the outer wall would be enough.

Then they would have new ramparts here, facing the Cursed Ground.

The birth of a new fortress city and an expansion of the kingdom's territory, all at once.

The surrounding Demon Creatures and Magic Beasts had been wiped out in a single sweep, leaving a void in the area. Normally, founding a pioneer city required clearing out the nearby monsters first. That work had already been done.

At the same time, if they redirected part of the western trade routes through here, a new trade corridor would open and the scope of commerce would expand.

In other words, this place could be turned from a city of the Cursed Ground into a city of humans. It was the plan that had come to him the moment he first laid eyes on the Cursed Ground's residents.

"You actually thought all the way through that?"

Rem said, sounding genuinely surprised.

"The fine details I can leave to Krais. Krais will sort it out."

In the meantime, forces from the City of Aoara could be sent over, so they would not need to draw on the kingdom's own army.

"Sometimes, I really wonder what's going on inside your head, Commander-brother."

Audin spoke with admiration. Even if he could not swing a sword as well as he did now, the commander would have found a way to shine anywhere. For Enkrid's part, he had not spent any great effort thinking it through.

It was simply the path he saw the moment he decided he would protect them no matter what.

Repeating so many todays, countless times over, had trained him to pick out the best way forward. That had to be part of it.

The thought arrived naturally, and Enkrid wondered whether he should thank the ferryman.

It was not a dream, so no answer came.

He let the thought go and raised his head to look at the sky.

Several days had passed since they arrived, and by now it felt as though he had thrown not just a courtship dance but a full courtship ball.

Still nothing.

The Balrok was not coming.

The reason was not hard to guess. Not enough yet.

So he would have to light a blaze big enough for everyone to see, something visible even to demonic eyes from far away. Rumors would spread until anyone and everyone knew. In the end, even the demons whispering among themselves would find it impossible to ignore.

Enkrid's gaze drifted in one direction. No line had been drawn, but beyond his gaze lay what could truly be called the interior of the Cursed Ground.

What was supposed to be in there again?

"Just as humans have outpost cities, the Cursed Ground has something like that too."

Zhoroslavb had said that, back before things had come to their current state.

The moment he heard it, his heart had started to pound. Anticipation surged. To make a comparison, if the Gray Forest of the Cursed Ground that had stood before the City of Aoara was a small lake, then this place was an ocean.

An ink-black ocean where he could not see the far shore, where he had no idea what might leap out, and that ocean was inviting him in.

It was nothing more than a gap the sprawling southern front had failed to seal, yet even the most stunning woman in the world, naked and trying to seduce him, would not have set his heart racing like this.

"What are you grinning about?"

Rem asked, watching him.

"Because it sounds like it'll be fun."

"Sounds like another really dangerous idea forming."

Enkrid looked at Rem as he said it. Rem's eyes were probably no different from Enkrid's own.

"You're going in?"

"Yeah."

The answer came at the same instant as the question.

* * *

"It was smart not to fight."

The mayor of the trading city nodded at the mercenary captain.

When they first learned that Enkrid's group was heading in the opposite direction from the trading city, the mayor had felt a brief flicker of regret, but it did not last long.

"Still need to know why they're going there. I'll mobilize all the Information Guilds if I have to."

Enkrid and the Madman Knights were a dangerous group even to the Information Guilds, with their long and storied traditions across the continent.

Several assassination guilds had tried to go after them and been swallowed whole in the attempt.

Swallowed completely. Every one who came at them died, and not just the attackers. Entire guilds that took the contracts were annihilated.

And since Information Guilds typically ran assassination work on the side, it was only natural that they feared this group too.

Then the traces of Georg's Blade, one of the continent's most notorious assassination networks, turned up at the scenes where those guilds met their end, and targeting the Madman Knights stopped being worth the effort altogether.

So there were no longer any assassins hunting the Madman Knights. At least not in what was called the Central Continent.

Given all of that, slipping spies in through some clever scheme was an awkward proposition.

The fortunate thing was that this group made no effort to hide their movements.

Even more fortunate was the fact that an outfit called the Gielpin Guild sold clean, high-grade information on them, practically a monopoly.

The only problem was that it cost a fair number of Krona, but the trading city was, in plain terms, the owner of the greatest golden pot on the continent. The city spent without restraint and got what it needed.

That was how they learned the Madman Knights had gone right up to the edge of the Cursed Ground and killed every Demon Creature.

"I told you. Surrender. Just surrender. If you'd picked fighting, I'd be retiring right now."

The mercenary captain said it.

Still, it stung a little to see the mercenary captain, who had earned the nickname Indomitable, act like this.

The mayor felt a vague pang.

If a knight order like that were under the trading city's command...

The trading city could become a kingdom.

"Tch."

The mayor let out a short breath at the pointless thought. There was no desire to be a king. The mayor had simply been trying to look after family and people, and things had ended up here.

Plenty of people called the mayor an extreme self-preservationist, but then again, the mayor had watched plenty of people who reached for everything, picked every fight, and died for it.

"I started as a peddler at seventeen. Of all the people who started out with me back then, almost none are left. You want to know how I got here? I hid behind and watched the ones who threw themselves at every big score, and I stepped past the ones who had no sense of how much their own lives were worth. That's how I got here. What else? Right, I have a good eye for people. That's another thing I've got. So I rooted out every one who would have turned on me, and here I stand."

"What's all this about?"

In private, the mercenary captain was no different from a close friend. The captain listened to the mayor's rambling over a few drinks with a blank expression. It was the same speech the mayor always gave after drinking.

"My gut is telling me something. Right now is exactly the time to put your head down and endure. Just watch. The world goes to the one who lasts the longest. The one who survives to the end wins."

The mercenary captain agreed with that much.

Which was why the captain had surrendered.

"So you're signing that contract with Border Guard?" the mercenary captain asked.

The mayor nodded.

"Have to."

It was not a complicated contract. It was simply a promise concerning troop support, not aid to be given immediately but a pledge to send support should something happen.

The proposal had come from someone at Border Guard named Krais.

The mayor wondered what Castellan Graham was doing when the castellan had not even shown his face.

Still, that side had been connected to the trading city for a while. More honestly, it had been an easy mark before, but this Krais was different.

The situation had changed. The positions were reversed.

To secure a mere promise of military support from Border Guard, the trading city had to hand over dozens of bags of gold coins. Painful, but clearly something that had to be done.

Because of those Demon Creatures that had been showing up near the river lately?

"We've got enough mercenaries for that."

The Indomitable mercenary captain showed confidence.

Right, that much was fine.

This was more like swearing an alliance.

At first, the trading city had thought about sending a pretty woman to Border Guard and trying to forge a family tie, but after everyone caught a glimpse of the two women called the Golden Elf and Black Flower, they all lost their nerve on that front.

Not that Enkrid was pulling every woman sent his way into his arms, either.

Even getting that far would have been enough for a third or fourth concubine spot.

Now the only option left to avoid becoming an enemy was this.

The mayor felt a little uneasy, but the word from Border Guard was:

"This pledge is rooted in a knight's oath. It will not be broken. As long as you do not turn on us first."

Strip away the flowery language and the courtesies, and that was the substance of it.

"Alright. I'll trust it."

Enkrid's reputation was towering. Trustworthy enough.

And frightening enough.

That madness of walking into the Cursed Ground.

No matter what, this was not someone the mayor wanted as an enemy.

* * *

Holy Knight Commander Overdier had also heard the news about Enkrid.

"The God of the Scales gave him madness and took away his fear."

He said it with a laugh, half amazed and half exasperated.

Noah, who had become Pope, smiled at his words.

"More than that, I think it's his desire to protect the people standing before the Cursed Ground. If there is anything we can do to help, I would like us to."

"There are ways, but none of them will sit well politically, Your Holiness."

That reply came from the Ragged Holy Man.

"I believe protecting people matters more than my political standing."

Overdier heard that and laughed, loud and easy. Right, this was exactly the kind of person who should be Pope.

"Then let's do it!"

Politics, standing, power, influence, what mattered more than all of that?

The will to protect and save people.

So the Cult Extermination Priest Corps moved. They said they owed Noah a debt and accepted without hesitation.

* * *

"He's my friend, but he's genuinely insane."

Crang said it the same way he always had. Sitting on the throne did not mean he had to change how he spoke, even in private.

"That seems like an odd thing to say from a king who once considered going to war with the Empire over that friend's disappearance."

Across the small parlor table, Crang narrowed his eyes.

"I'll have you tried for insulting the crown. Count Marcus."

A king's fury always carried fear with it.

The lord of Nauril, capital of Naurillia, spoke quietly and low, but with the weight of royal anger behind the words.

Even in private, even given their familiarity, for a mere count to dare pick at the king's actions and call them out like that.

"I feel like I might wet myself from fright, so let's drop it."

Marcus said it with a bored expression. Crang had known it would not land. He had known that before he opened his mouth.

"Alright, fine. So is there anything we can actually do to help?"

"If you treat the fight against the Cursed Ground as their own private affair, it does not matter. But if the royal house puts its weight behind it, that changes things. And you know full well we have no one to spare. The knight order holding the southern front has no room."

Moving the Red Cloak Knights as a gesture of support was not an option. Marcus was firm.

There was the matter of the royal house's standing, and they had already stirred up quite a few large affairs on their own side.

"I don't think he'd want military help to begin with."

Crang knew Enkrid well. They did not spend every day together, but they understood one another, which was why he called him a friend.

"He's been clearing out the Demon Creatures and Magic Beasts and settling in, right? We've known that infiltrated city was there all along and left it alone. Once Enki sees that place, he won't just leave it alone."

Wipe it out or save it, Enkrid would pick one of the two. He was not the type to leave things as they were.

Naurillia already knew that residents of the Cursed Ground, eroded by it, lived in that infiltrated city. Leaving it alone had been unavoidable, they said, a lack of capacity, but that too was an excuse if you called it one.

There was a person out there shattering that excuse and pushing forward, so they could ride along and get things done at the same time.

"If we're sending anyone, it would be Andrew Gardner and his private troops. It's not swordsmen we need right now anyway."

"Then send them."

* * *

Deciding to go inside the Cursed Ground did not mean charging straight in. There was preparation to be done first, starting with getting the weapons in order.

They also needed to find a courier to send word to Ann.

For now, leave Romen behind.

They also needed to check whether any Demon Creatures or Magic Beasts remained in the surrounding area.

Ruagarne, well-read as she was, stepped forward.

"The Cursed Ground is also called an erosion zone. You've heard that, haven't you?"

"To go inside, we'll need at least the knowledge held by the people who have lived in this area."

Half of it would be superstition, but Ruagarne believed there would be things worth knowing even in that. In any case, though they served a demon god, these were people who had lived before the Cursed Ground since their ancestors' time.

After that, Enkrid was the same as always. He moved toward his goals the way he did when grinding through the same day over and over, endlessly.

At dawn, he trained. Through the morning, he turned over in his mind the method Ragna had shown him for manifesting the Will as a blade. From the afternoon on, he listened to what the residents had to say.

"Should I show you once more?"

Ragna showed off and preened in between, and Enkrid had to put up with at least some of it.

"Let's get rid of that bastard. I can't put up with him anymore."

He let Rem's complaints pass through one ear and out the other.

"The air here is deeply unpleasant."

He also replied to the repeated remark from someone clinging close to Sinar.

The accounts gathered from the residents between sessions, just as Ruagarne had said, were interesting.

Half were probably stories invented out of fear, and the other half were closer to oral traditions passed straight down through the generations, so you could not call the information reliable. But if you thought of them as a traveling bard's tales, they were entertaining enough.

Footnotes:

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