WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 778: Answered the Call

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"People die eventually anyway."

"Ha, that felt good."

"Romen, I leave the city to you."

"Enkrid, thank you."

"Ah, that was fun."

The words Aoara had spoken just before she died were more than merely remembered. They had been carved so deeply into him that they could not be forgotten.

Some memories refused to leave his mind no matter how many times he repeated today.

Hadn't someone said that repeating today came without the blessing of forgetting?

The ferryman had said something like that once, telling him that if he wished to forget those painful things, he had only to remain in today.

Crackle. Crackle.

Smoke from the burning campfire rose to the cave ceiling, seeped into the stone, and disappeared. A sharp, acrid smell worked its way into his nose.

The Aoara who had cut off the Balrok fragment's head.

The Aoara who had been dragged away by the Balrok in his dream.

The Aoara who had used her vow as a shield and Smile as her sword.

Knight Aoara, who had at last protected her city, carved her name into it, and departed, sat before Enkrid and waved him over.

"Hey, come here. Let's talk for a bit."

That easy familiarity made Enkrid move. As he walked, his eyes swept the space behind where she sat, then returned to hers.

Would she suddenly lash out with a sword? Would her eyes turn red, and would she come at him looking for a fight? Call it instinct, but that did not seem likely.

Aoara sat on a small boulder. On the other side of the campfire was another rock of similar size. Enkrid sat down on it.

Aoara opened her mouth and asked, "How have you been?"

"Very well."

"You look it. A Knight now?"

"Yes."

"Then I suppose I'll have to call you Sir Enkrid from now on."

Aoara smiled as she said it. She showed no surprise at seeing him.

The red light of the campfire lit half of Aoara's pale face. Only that familiar smile showed through. When Enkrid said nothing, she spoke again.

"How is Romen doing?"

"That half-wit was running around on his own trying to get stronger and nearly got swallowed by a Parasitic Worm."

"Romen? That Romen?"

Aoara burst out laughing, then said, "Tell me everything."

The two of them chatted. It was neither hot nor cold, and though they were inside a cave, it was neither damp nor dry.

Cozy, quiet, and peaceful.

Like coming home through a blizzard in the dead of winter, washing up, and sitting down with a hot mug of chocolate to talk.

"Fools."

Aoara sometimes laughed and frowned. She carried on like a living person.

But she was not. The night she had killed the Balrok fragment, she had been taken by the Balrok in that night's dream.

Soul Collector.

That was the Balrok's other name.

Before Enkrid could even ask what had happened, Aoara smiled sheepishly and said, "That bastard was hard to beat."

What sat before him now was a part of Aoara.

He had been through something similar with Tutor and with Aker, the weapon of a knight left behind. The difference was that she had died at the Balrok's hands against her own will, and so she was bound here.

"Well, it'd be nice if you could set me free. I tried to do it myself and failed."

The cozy, quiet, peaceful air vanished. Aoara's smiling face did not change, but the mood did.

"It's here."

Aoara spoke and pushed herself to her feet with a grunt. Someone who had become a Knight had no reason to grunt just from standing up. She was signaling to Enkrid that she was rising.

"Be careful."

She meant it.

The space around them was like a wide-open clearing.

The ceiling was high, unlike the passage he had come through, and the walls were far away. By Enkrid's senses, it was wide enough for hundreds of people without crowding. The ground was level, and there were no real structures to speak of.

The only unusual thing was that the walls narrowed as they went up.

Through the narrow opening in the ceiling, moonlight had begun to filter down.

Tonight's moon was red. A Red Moon. Both moons were dyed crimson, and their light fell over Aoara's body.

She walked out beyond the campfire's reach, but the flames followed her, and soon they stretched long down her left arm.

Fwoom.

The trailing fire coiled three times around her hand, and the rest hung down below. A whip made of flame settled onto the ground. Coiled in a tight ring, the fire looked like a serpent of flame that would squeeze and burn whatever it caught.

Enkrid had noticed her shadow the moment he first saw Aoara.

In that shadow, two horns rose from Aoara's head, and folded wings clung to her back, wings that when spread would more than wrap around her whole body.

The demon shed the husk of the soul it had collected and revealed itself. It had deliberately worn Aoara's form while it waited.

Looking more closely, the Balrok's shadow had shifted to match Aoara's.

So was the shadow Aoara now, the two of them merged together? No. Just a trick of the eye.

A deliberate deception, a twisted pastime.

"Nice to meet you," Enkrid said, standing to greet it.

Aoara's body grew larger as it darkened to pitch black, muscles swelling and its whole frame expanding.

What had been visible only in shadow was now visible in the flesh.

Crunch.

The wandering Demon Creature, the Demon Creature that slaughtered demons, rolled its neck as though relieved now that its two horns had worked themselves free, and let out a long breath.

A short burst of flame shot up with that breath.

"You breathe fire too," Enkrid said, watching calmly.

The fragment's master looked down at him from above.

-You called so loudly, so I came.

To be precise, it did not speak through vocal cords. It transmitted its meaning through Will, a means of communication that needed no language. Nothing to be surprised about. It was what the ferryman did too.

"I called, and you really came."

Enkrid answered without hesitation.

The skin across its entire body was dark, and where there should have been pupils, burning red flames filled its eyes instead. Spinning tongues of fire were its irises.

-I am the master of the Labyrinth, Balro-g. Mortal, did you call to me dreaming of eternal life?

"No."

-I thought as much.

Enkrid laughed. He was finally meeting the bastard that had been so hard to track down.

The Demon Creature that bore the name Demon of Strife suddenly laughed as well.

One human and one Demon Creature, facing each other and laughing.

If a painter had been there, they would not have been able to stop themselves from putting this scene on canvas. The standoff was that striking.

The Balrok's smile came into Enkrid's sight. The corners of its mouth curled up, and white fangs showed between them.

Why are the teeth white?

While he was staring, the Balrok's mouth opened again.

-This should be fun.

The anticipation packed into those words, the pleasure, the thrill, all of it came through, and Enkrid felt a strange sense of loss. He followed that feeling and said, "That's my line, you bastard."

The Balrok was a great Demon Creature, strong enough to earn the name Demon of Strife. On top of that, it had just demonstrated the Divine Power to scatter his companions across this place.

Enkrid did not know every detail of what had happened or where things stood, but he had a rough guess.

This was a demon's Divine Power. Demons were not simple creatures. Their Divine Power made them beings nothing else could dare challenge.

The Balrok's Divine Power was Labyrinthification, transforming the territory it occupied into a Labyrinth.

So why use a crude manner of speaking against an opponent like that?

There was no particular reason. He would do anything it took to win. Enkrid fought in his own way.

Demons had emotions too, so if he could shake them, he would. He intended to deliberately undermine the Balrok's dignity.

An ordinary Knight would not have dared even attempt it.

The funny thing was that the Balrok was trying something similar against Enkrid.

-Everyone else who came here is dead by now, except you. Their bodies wouldn't have been in any kind of shape either.

Enkrid replied without pausing. "I tested things on my way here, and nobody's dying from something like this."

He had passed through three Knights trapped in the Labyrinth to get here. They had been decent sparring partners.

-You think that's all there is?

Momentum gathered in the Balrok's voice. One moment of carelessness and it felt as if his lungs and heart would shrivel. This had to be the original form of Pressure.

The contents of its words were also plainly meant to shake his composure.

The unknown was fear. It called up dread. The Balrok was trying to plant unease in Enkrid's heart.

The lunatic who repeated today turned the Balrok's tactic against it.

"Oh."

He feigned surprise and showed an opening. The Balrok saw through it at once.

What hid behind the title Demon of Strife?

It was a name earned not just from enjoying battle, but from pouring everything into a fight.

-...This bastard.

The Balrok's tone had grown crude too. It now spoke like a mercenary in some tavern, not a being of its reputation.

That was a little unexpected even for the Balrok.

A human who did not flinch before its momentum and continued saying whatever he pleased was truly rare, even over the course of its long life.

"Not biting," Enkrid muttered to himself.

Enkrid-Style Orthodox Swordsmanship: Showing an Opening had failed.

The Balrok stopped communicating. Enkrid naturally stepped forward. He shifted his center of gravity as he stamped into the ground, then brought his sword down in the posture of someone lunging forward.

A strike derived from Aoara's flowing sword. A fitting first gift for the Balrok's face.

Enkrid's blade closed the distance as if folding space. The Balrok blocked it with a bare arm.

Clang!

A shockwave spread out from the two of them. Fwoom. The Balrok's flame whip flared savagely as if it had a mind of its own.

-Say hello. This is Salamandra.

The Balrok raised its forearm above its brow as it spoke. Its eyes met Enkrid's. One pair blue, the other red.

Its flame eyes burned fiercely. At the same moment, the whip, no different from a fire serpent, moved without any warning.

The coiled flame tried to seize his ankle. Enkrid naturally stepped back and pulled hard on the sword pressed against the Balrok's forearm. Duskforge answered its owner's call and sharpened its cutting edge.

An Inscribed Weapon imbued with Will. In sheer momentary cutting force, it would outdo Penna, the elf's treasure.

Grind, grind.

But the blade could not do what he wanted.

The still-smiling Balrok's forearm bore neither a scratch nor even a mark.

What kind of forearm is that?

On top of that, the whip made of flame moved however it pleased, as if it had a will of its own.

The arm muscles did not even move.

Not just the arm, there was no trace of movement from any muscle in the body at all. The whip had launched its attack on its own, with no momentum or forewarning.

The flame whip dragged itself across the ground with a hissing sound, then raised its head.

Looking at it, one could easily say a Snake Beast was moving around on its own.

-This one is Surt.

The Balrok then drew a sword blazing with flame in its right hand and introduced it. That flame burned black, beyond any ordinary color. The sword was three times the size of Ragna's Ilchul.

The Balrok's body was slightly bigger than Audin's, so even for something its size, this was a large and heavy greatsword.

When it spread its two wings, its body looked three or four times larger still.

At the same moment, the Balrok unleashed Pressure Manifestation, a momentum that crushed and overwhelmed every creature before it.

It felt as though chains heated red-hot had wrapped tight around his entire body, and above his head, a boulder bigger than a house was falling.

He would lose. He was going to lose. There was no winning. Surpassing something like this was impossible. It was not something permitted to a human. Would a Giant do better, then? Would a Dragonkin be any different?

These thoughts were just forming when Will moved on its own inside him and refused. It tore apart and stripped away the Pressure the Balrok was pouring out and threw it aside. The chains broke, and the boulder crushing his mind disappeared.

Enkrid had overcome the Pressure his enemy poured out, but he realized a large opening had formed in the meantime. The Balrok did not press an attack into that opening.

-You adapt quickly. Good.

It was satisfied instead.

It had no intention of attacking from the start.

Is it testing something? Getting a read on my level? Playing it easy?

It did not matter either way. Enkrid did not waver. Whatever the other side was doing, he had not forgotten what he was there to do.

Cut it.

He poured Will in with his full intent. In that moment, he caught a glimpse of what Ragna's trick had actually been.

Variation of Will.

Putting something different into the nature Will already carried. How? By pouring intent into it.

He had watched what Ragna did and practiced it countless times, carved out time to think and puzzle over it, and added the experience built up against three Knights on the way here.

Everything came together and settled into the blade. Duskforge's pale sky-blue thinned and sharpened to an edge.

Just as a sword swung with the full intent to cut carried cutting power, pushing that to the extreme produced a blade of manifested Will.

It felt like an extension of something he had learned before, and also like discovering something entirely new.

Whatever the process, the one fact that remained was that a sky-blue edge had layered itself onto Enkrid's sword.

Thud.

Sky-blue or not, the Balrok simply jumped in place. Airborne, it vanished with a rush.

It reappeared behind Enkrid.

Enkrid's blue eyes traced two lines. Those lines swept around his body in a half-circle.

He spun and swung his sword. The blade that cut steel like tofu was stopped by Surt.

Thud.

There was little sound. Instead, the black flame flared up once, just slightly larger than before.

Fwoom.

It was as if the Balrok was saying Duskforge was something it could easily handle, that this much was nothing.

Through the flames, the Balrok's fist came flying.

Enkrid tightened his knees and elbows and tried to catch its wrist and snap it, but the Balrok's punch accelerated and varied its speed.

Boom!

So he took it clean.

Sword of Chance, calculation, optimized thinking, Wave-Blocking Sword, all of it used in sequence, and he still got blown away.

His body lifted off the ground and slammed into the cave wall.

The Balrok immediately opened the fist it had punched with, grabbed the whip's handle, and swung it at the wall. The speed was different from when the whip moved on its own.

The fire serpent's head swelled and became something like a massive blunt weapon, and it struck the wall faster than sound.

Boom! Crash!

A whip hit the wall, and it erupted as if a boulder had slammed into it. Through the debris, Enkrid could be seen rolling clear.

Blood ran freely from the corner of his mouth as he rolled, as though his organs had taken damage.

It's not working.

A blade that seemed like it could cut anything would still be stopped by a blade of matching shape. That was what the Balrok had done. A wandering demon, a living legend, it was capable of that.

-Is that all?

The Balrok said. Its sword, Surt, had taken on a form similar to Enkrid's, a blade made of flame, roaring and blazing.

Footnotes:

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