A Knight who Eternally Regresses - Chapter 780

WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Chapter 780: Whirl the Sacred Light

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Audin had been helping Romen train when he spotted a group of around fifteen closing in from all sides.

None of them had normal eyes. Some had pupils spinning in circles, others had eyes pointing in different directions, and quite a few were drooling.

Even so, their momentum was anything but ordinary.

Every one of them gave off something akin to Pressure, as though they were using Will. Yet that power was unrefined and chaotic, so something did not add up.

'Knights?'

Audin had reason to be suspicious. At the very least, a question mark floated through his mind.

Knights were those who had established convictions and sworn oaths. Their mental strength differed from that of ordinary people. They were not people who broke easily.

Then what were those things?

Their bodies were strong, but their minds had collapsed.

The fifteen or so fighters with the strength of Knights charged at once. Knight or not, they were dangerous enemies. Audin responded immediately.

Audin had been among those least injured during the battle at the thorn-wood wall. He had been exhausted from overusing his divinity, but a few days of rest had seen him recover.

In other words, he was in no bad condition.

"Lord."

As he watched them approach, Audin wrapped his entire body in sacred light.

Then he struck the face of the one who came straight at him, swinging a huge axe.

He moved his feet in a brief burst, accelerated, and launched a fist at the end of it. By varying his speed to slip beyond his opponent's perception, he left the man unable even to think of dodging.

Bang! Crunch.

'Whirl the divinity.'

Sacred Light Armor. Ragna's blade. The experience he had gained by unleashing his divinity. The words his foster father had left behind when he departed.

It was the result of everything condensing and coming together.

The divinity in Audin's fist rotated. He had moved it using the principle behind Vortex.

It was a truly remarkable feat.

The struck man's face twisted in a spiral and burst apart. Helmet or not, nothing could survive that blow.

After killing one, Audin looked beyond the mindless monsters. Behind them, someone holding what looked like a flute was smiling unpleasantly.

The flute was held sideways over the person's mouth, perpendicular to their face. No sound came out. Instead, the ones in front grew even more frenzied.

Through the black mist scattering from the shattered head, a spearhead shot toward him, while two figures spread out to either side and thrust their blades forward.

They were no different from monsters, yet they charged in formation as though they had practiced fighting together.

'Or else that brother's flute is directing them.'

That much tactical judgment was basic. Whatever the case, the only remaining fact was that he had to fight them with force.

Audin took a step back, held his left hand rigid like a blade, and swung it.

The light forming Sacred Light Armor gathered at the edge of his hand and took the shape of a blade.

One of them, clad in armor so rusted it had corroded half brown, thrust a long spear straight at him.

Audin's step was slightly slower than his opponent's, but he moved forward. That avoided the blades coming from both sides. At the same time, he evaded the thrusting spearhead with the smallest motion, a slight twist of his body, bringing the spearman's face within reach of Audin's hand.

It was a movement that looked almost like a prearranged sparring match. Audin's left hand brushed across the man's neck.

Swish.

The sound was almost nothing, but the result was not.

The rusted helmet sprang into the air with a thump, and black mist surged like a fountain from the severed surface.

After taking down another, Audin leaped sideways to evade the axes, Maces, and blades aimed at him.

His movement drew a long line through the air, leaving an afterimage. The clustered monsters followed along that line.

Audin's yellow eyes turned cold. Instead of their usual gentle warmth, they seemed filled with a biting wind.

If one were to ask a Priest whom they hated most, who would they name?

Cultists? Bandits? Demon Creatures?

No.

Those they hated most were the ones who raised the dead and made them serve: necromancers. They were few in this world, yet they used souls and corpses for grotesque deeds.

'Why would you do this to those who should have gone to the Lord above?'

Part of the reason the Cult Extermination Priest Corps, who lived solely under the banner of exterminating the Cult, hated the Cult was tied to this.

They had lost friends or family to the Cult, and some had been forced to fight resurrected corpses that wore the faces of those loved ones.

Having to kill the people they loved once more was what drove the Cult Extermination Priest Corps to fight until the Cult was exterminated.

'Draugr.'

Those who should have gone to the heavenly prison had been bound by spells and raised back into existence.

They were collectively called Draugr.

'Lord.'

Praying inwardly, Audin shifted his weight backward as though retreating, then sprang forward at a speed no one would expect from that massive body.

From above, it would have looked like a great bell moving back and forth beyond the laws of physics before being flung forward.

It also resembled a stone hurled with all its might by something larger than a Giant.

In other words, he looked like a boulder hurled through the air.

Armor carrying the light of divinity covered his whole body. His hands and feet became Maces and blades imbued with light.

Audin knew well what he possessed. Mixed into it was what he had realized through his time with Enkrid and the pitiful brothers of the Madman Knights.

'There is no reason to use Sacred Light Armor only for defense.'

That simple, clear realization was the source of the violence he now displayed.

Hummm.

Sacred light whirled around his entire body. The rotating light became the violent force of a spiral carrying destructive power.

Bang! Boom! Crash!

The light in his swinging fists became Maces, and every place they struck proved the power possessed by an Apostle of Battle.

When it struck a head, the skull shattered.

When it struck a torso, black mist burst outward from the body.

A Morningstar studded with sharp spikes fell toward his head from above. Audin received it with his shoulder.

Tiddididing.

The rotating Sacred Light Armor deflected it to the side.

Then the body of the one who had swung it split in half. Audin had swung his Hand Blade down vertically.

The two halves sprang apart as though someone had pulled them to the left and right.

Force and speed created pressure, and the shockwave born from that pressure was the cause.

Audin turned halfway around and extended a leg behind him. The movement was swift, but the leg was not light at all to those it caught.

Bang! Whoooosh!

Black mist spread outward behind the body struck by his kick.

Its upper body vanished as though crushed to pieces. The remaining lower body leaked black mist before fading away.

Beyond the Draugr Knights scattering and disappearing, the one with the flute furrowed their brow.

'What is this monster?'

They were a Knight who controlled the dead.

Once, they had shaken the continent under the epithet of Death Knight.

Raised by an old gravedigger, they had grown up alongside Evil Spirits since childhood. Through a teacher they met by chance, they had walked the path of a necromancer.

Later, they discovered they had talent with a blade. They trained relentlessly and rose to become a Knight, but in the process, they came to see their limits, a wall.

'My talent for the sword is lacking, but I have other talents.'

That was how they came to dream of wielding the might of a knight order alone, with the souls of others at their forefront. Their desire had been to make every person on the continent kneel beneath their feet, until they encountered Balrok and died.

Even so, their wish remained unchanged.

'Gather forces here, then strike at Balrok.'

Within the Labyrinth, locked away by Balrok's Divine Power, there was nothing to enjoy besides fighting. Thus, those trapped there fought and fought and fought again.

In the process, some had their minds collapse. Those whose minds broke would ordinarily wander the Labyrinth as Wraith Knights, but the one talented in Necromancy had gathered them together.

Their gaze also fell upon the woman off to one side, who was facing two Wraith Knights with sword and shield while protecting the man behind her.

That woman's skill was no trifling matter either.

While fighting, she had looked in their direction several times.

The woman's eyes and the eyes of the man who had just burst apart every Wraith Knight they had gathered were both settled into the same cold stillness.

When they noticed those gazes, they felt a chill despite having no physical body.

"Tch."

The Death Knight clicked their tongue and drew their sword instead of raising the flute, but they could not defeat the monster that had come flying at them with his entire body turned into a weapon.

In truth, they had always known that they had been enduring only by using false hope as a shield.

How could those killed by Balrok and made subordinate to Balrok rebel against their master?

Once again, they gave up easily, and Audin stood before them with a clenched fist.

"Please release them all."

Release what? The Wraiths they had bound with their flute.

"......Try it yourself, if you can."

The Death Knight mocked him. In any case, all of this was merely entertainment.

It was the entertainment of the monster called Balrok. Everyone trapped there was nothing more than that demon's toy.

If they disliked that, they only needed to kill the demon called the War God. If Balrok died, everything would end.

Of course, that would never happen.

The Death Knight knew that if they died now, they would awaken again after forgetting part of their memories.

If they preserved their sense of self through that process, they could do the same thing once more. Otherwise, they would remain nothing more than another Wraith Knight.

'Damn it.'

At that moment, they reached a realization.

This was not the first time. They had already died many times.

Memories bloomed afresh. As death approached, the memories they had sealed away naturally surfaced.

'If I do not want to give up, I have to remain unaware.'

It was a desperate struggle to turn away from reality and rebel against Balrok.

On some days, they had died as Balrok's sparring partner. On other days, they had died fighting other Wraiths. Most recently, they had fallen to the blade of some female Knight.

And now it was happening again.

Boom!

Audin's fist cut off their recollection.

"It seems what Captain Brother wished for has come to pass."

Audin spoke as he withdrew the sacred light. He had guessed why the surrounding terrain had changed and why this commotion had begun.

Everything around him stimulated his divinity. It was no different from being inside the Cursed Ground.

'Why?'

He had learned long ago that demons wielded Divine Power. It was knowledge he had gained while learning various things as a martial priest.

He did not know what that Divine Power was or what form it took, but he instinctively knew that this was part of Balrok's Divine Power.

'Where are you, Captain Brother?'

And perhaps Enkrid was now facing the owner of that Divine Power.

Darkness crept in where the light had vanished, expanding its territory and filling the space. When the Death Knight died, the Wraiths they had controlled swayed before sinking into the ground, turning into black mist and scattering away.

Teresa calmly caught her breath and looked beyond the area that had transformed into an enormous, strange cave.

"I think more things will keep coming."

After becoming a Holy Canter, her intuition had grown sharper than Audin's.

She did not know what had happened immediately before, and there were too many things she could not understand, but more things like this would continue to come. They would appear without end.

Until when?

Until they died.

Teresa listened to what her intuition told her.

"Then I suppose I must keep swinging my fists until the end."

Only now did Audin smile faintly. One of the things he had learned from Enkrid was that one only needed to do what could be done right away.

For now, he could not find or help anyone. Instead, he could fend off whatever came at them and protect those whose skin had turned purple.

'This, too, must be Captain Brother's will.'

The Lord Father in heaven would be watching. With that thought, Audin steadied his heart.

Behind them, Romen rose using his greatsword as a cane.

His right leg would not obey him because his thigh had been cut in the ambush. Seeing that, one of the locals approached and held out something like a bandage.

It was a bandage made from Magic Beast hide.

"Thank you."

Romen wrapped the bandage tightly around his thigh.

More things were coming? And every one of them would be at the level of Knights, like those they had just faced?

Should he fall into discouragement, collapse beneath despair, kneel, and wait to die? Or should he clutch a sword and charge forward despite knowing he would die?

'Neither.'

He would endure. No matter what awaited at the end, he would fight and endure until the very end.

Romen's mind no longer broke easily. He was different from before he met Enkrid again. If a Parasitic Worm tried to control his mind now, he could cast it off.

He deliberately drew up his Will and felt it. He could not become a Knight right away, but he could still swing a sword.

'Even if this is the work of something beyond my ability to handle.'

He would remain faithful to the present.

If even Romen was this resolute, the others did not waver at all. More precisely, the Madman Knights remained calm even in such a situation.

"We need to gather the locals in the meeting hall."

"I'll make the rounds."

Ropord, who had been watching, stepped forward and spoke. Fell answered Ropord.

They only had to herd all the locals into the meeting hall as though gathering sheep. It was familiar work to Fell.

Boom!

A deafening explosion sounded in the distance, drawing everyone's attention in that direction.

Rem came into view. Above his hand floated a disc. It was not a real disc, but an illusion created by whirling a tough leather cord over his head.

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