WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 785: Difference

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The savage fire serpent severed his ankle, and the sword wreathed in black flames split half his body from the shoulder down.

"That was fun. See you again."

The Balrok offered the same farewell he did on any other day. His "see you again" did not mean another repetition of today. It meant trapping Enkrid in the Labyrinth.

Though the meanings beneath their words differed, they still understood each other. Enkrid nodded and died. It was his answer to "see you again." And so, it was time to face the nineteenth today.

The flame-cradled moon lost its light and fell, and the Boatman aboard the ferry received him.

"Heh heh heh."

The Boatman let out his laugh and opened his mouth. It was little different from a pitch-black hole without even a tongue. The laugh merely passed by, short and sharp.

Whenever pitch-black darkness appeared and vanished, the Boatman conveyed his meaning through Will.

"You are trapped in this today."

"Are you in agony? You brought this on yourself."

"You will only struggle like this and fade away."

"There is no flame that burns forever."

Creak. The ferry groaned as it rocked on the river. The sound grazed his ears.

"You can never escape this place."

The Boatman appeared time and again, and whenever he did, he spoke of a fixed future. Unlike usual, Enkrid read the meaning woven into the Boatman's Will. It was not precise, only a feeling. Could the realm of instincts and intuition honed in the real world affect this place? Or had he simply seen the Boatman so often that he could see it now?

The reason was not especially important.

"Do you want me to move beyond it?"

The dark eyes of the Boatman shifted, the pupils rolling several times in a deep gray. No, they were not a color that could be defined as deep gray.

They turned gold, then red, then blue, and then seemed about to take on a green hue before all the colors mingled and became black.

A Demon Creature's eyes were black, and the Boatman's eyes were black as well. The difference was that a Demon Creature's eyes looked as though they had been dyed black, while the Boatman's looked black because countless things had tangled, twisted, and clumped together.

"Can you move beyond it?"

The Boatman asked, but Enkrid did not answer. Without opening his mouth, the Boatman conveyed his meaning again.

"There is a way to move beyond today. If you wish to know it, speak then."

Compulsion, oppression, threats, coercion, suppression.

There was not the slightest trace of any of those things.

Green glimmered in the two pupils set in the Boatman's face, as though green had seeped into the black. It was a dark green. Compared to Sinar's pale-green eyes, it was far too dull, but the Will contained in those eyes was something Enkrid had never seen from the Boatman before.

There was a glimpse of pity, sympathy, and compassion.

Enkrid's mind and Will had always been firm and straight. Even at a time like this, he knew how to steady himself. Otherwise, he would have fallen for Sinar's jokes long ago.

"...I almost fell for it."

Enkrid muttered and neatly brushed aside the Boatman's meaning. The dark green in the Boatman's eyes seemed about to vanish at once, then twitched before settling heavily in place.

"You really are a lunatic."

The tone was slightly different from before. The Boatman at first had been as usual, like an inanimate object that showed nothing, while the Boatman offering him a way had revealed a fragment of an emotion called compassion.

Perhaps because he had watched Sinar's emotional states for so long, Enkrid had noticed it without realizing. The fragment of emotion leaking from the Boatman's words had been tiny and insignificant. But now, anger was clear. More precisely, irritation and bewilderment.

He did not know why that memory came to mind now.

There had been a time when he was gathering Krona from all over the place and, through good fortune, earned a great deal at once. He had not earned it by selling his swordsmanship, but he had ended up with a pouch of gold coins all the same.

At the time, Enkrid visited a rather famous Training School. The continent was full of Demon Creatures and Magic Beasts, and given the state of the world, it was natural for people to learn to handle at least one weapon from childhood.

That was why there were so many Training Schools and training grounds throughout the cities. Enkrid had taken his pouch of gold coins and sought out a renowned instructor among them.

At first, that instructor had gently advised him to give up the life of someone who lived by the blade.

Enkrid let the instructor's words go in one ear and out the other, obsessing over techniques and the like.

"You should quit. Even though I serve as an instructor here, I am not strong enough to count among City-class warriors when measured against the entire continent. I make a living through my talent for teaching, that is all."

She spoke humbly, but she had once stayed with a transport unit of the Rengadis Trading Company. Her skill was genuine. Enkrid wanted to learn that skill.

"So what should I do next?"

Enkrid's questions never strayed far from that.

At some point, the brows of the woman who had been speaking so gently began to twitch.

"I said you should quit."

Her words also became shorter.

"You only choose to hear what you need to hear, Enkrid. You have remarkably convenient ears."

A hint of reproach crept in.

"Do you not understand when I tell you to quit?"

Then she grew irritated.

The memory had simply come to mind. The Boatman now seemed to overlap with her.

The sight of someone looking at him with pity before growing angry briefly stirred an old memory. Enkrid let the brief thought pass and merely shrugged. It was his answer to being called a lunatic.

His gesture could have meant, You only realized that now? Or it could have meant, What does that have to do with anything? Both meant that he would not listen to the other at all.

"Fine. Playing around in a prison called today may not be so bad."

With those words, the dark green eyes blurred and receded. Enkrid felt his body float into the air. Without even blinking, the surroundings distorted, and the process of passing through darkness, opening his eyes, and seeming to open them once more came to an end.

It was today again.

As he conversed with the Boatman, the afterimage of pain had faded. Thanks to their exchange, Enkrid now lacked time to think. Matching the Boatman's unexpected behavior had delayed his review of the fight.

The strategy he had believed would succeed, if not perfectly, then at least roughly, had been shattered.

'It was not that my calculations had been wrong.'

Enkrid had found the best Attack Line in every calculation, while the Balrok had not. Therefore, Enkrid had been ahead in insight.

"A visitor?"

The man had just spoken to him. Enkrid had been about to cut him down at once, but believing him to be no great threat, he merely looked at him indifferently.

"Wait a moment. I need to think."

"...What?"

The man's bewilderment was none of Enkrid's concern.

"If you come any closer, I'll cut you down. So wait."

Enkrid released Pressure, a formless force given shape. He had fought the Demon of Strife, the Balrok shunned even within the Cursed Ground, eighteen times.

Every time they fought, the Balrok had tried to crush Enkrid with his Pressure. Only after enduring it did the fight with actual swords begin.

It was a test the Balrok had devised for Enkrid. Enkrid had overcome it every time.

During that process, the Refusal that stirred and responded within him changed little by little. The first method of using Will he had learned existed in the realm of the unconscious, not the conscious, but that alone made it difficult to easily shake off the Balrok's Pressure.

'If the path from junior knight to knight is learning to use Will unconsciously, then becoming a Knight again means I must condition Will consciously.'

It was one of the theories he was gradually establishing under the name Will conditioning. He repeatedly shook off Pressure consciously.

The Balrok's Pressure took the form of burning chains of flame. From the moment Enkrid faced it, the heat made his flesh feel as though it would cook and burn, and the slightest lapse made it seem as though the Pressure would crush him to death. Enkrid had shaken off those chains and released his own Pressure, and he showed it now.

His Pressure took the form of a wall, an immensely thick wall whose depth could not be measured. It was a rampart that could block most Pressure, a wall that could not be overcome with something like a metal skewer held in one's hand.

The man ignored Enkrid's words and took a step, then stopped. The fact that he did not flinch was proof enough of his courage and skill.

Still, he could not come any closer. Facing the wall Enkrid had created, he saw the Balrok's shadow and recalled a truth: resisting the fear carved into one's soul was little less than the fate of any being possessed of intelligence.

That was the only way to avoid submitting and bowing one's head.

But was now the time to submit? He had bowed countless times before the Balrok, but not now. He began to fight against Enkrid's Pressure.

In the time he bought, Enkrid reviewed the fight.

It was not important to replay the fighting process itself over and over. Instead, he dug deeply into it. Rather than repeatedly reviewing the fight, he examined every aspect of one fight in depth, every movement, what came before and after, and every mental state.

But this was something like lingering attachment. There was nothing to examine.

The truth was simple and clear. Enkrid gathered the loose threads of his thoughts and arranged them clearly.

'I was ahead in calculating the possibilities.'

He counted the possibilities, assessed them, and struck. The entire process resembled a system established by someone who had spent a lifetime handling numbers.

There was no waste. The blade moving along fixed lines was graceful, the movements behind it were clear, and the swordsmanship containing such logic was beautiful enough to behold.

In each moment, the blade catching the light seemed as though it could split one of the crystals at once.

'I cannot get any further ahead than that.'

What most often rushed in alongside Enkrid's calculations was Salamandra, the flame whip. As though boasting of having a will of its own, the whip enjoyed the Numbers Game. Then the Balrok swung his wings, fists, feet, and sword, moving as he pleased within the picture Enkrid had predicted.

At that moment, Enkrid mixed in the Sword of Chance. It was the process of binding the demon back into a web when he moved beyond calculation. Yet he could not stop the Balrok, who moved within the bounds of calculation.

'It was different.'

The Balrok's swordsmanship was different. For an instant, it was fast, heavy, and intense enough to escape calculation and prediction.

"Look."

In the midst of the battle, the Balrok conveyed his meaning through telepathy.

Enkrid's gaze was drawn to the Balrok's right hand. There was a Demon Sword wreathed in black flames, Urtran.

That Demon Sword flared with flames again and again, as though breathing fire. Enkrid already knew that once its flames caught, they would not go out, so he avoided every attack.

His bangs had been singed, and he had needed to remove and throw away the cloth gauntlet on his left hand, but he had endured somehow. Reviewing that battle process would take a long time.

'It is unnecessary.'

There was no meaning in assigning meaning to the process. The outcome of the fight had not been decided by calculation.

The flames of the Balrok's Urtt plunged inward instead of flaring outward. Then they took shape atop the dark-red blade.

'A blade.'

Rather than burning and blazing, the flames had been formed into the shape of a blade. That sword could not be blocked. It was beyond anything calculation could handle.

That was the difference.

And Enkrid saw something there.

'Difference.'

He had seen that difference not only in the Balrok, but in others as well. Ragna's blade, Audin's holy armor, Rem's axe, Jaxon's thrust. It was the difference he had felt from them as well.

What was different? What had been different?

Now that he had realized part of his old dream, he recalled those who had brought him this far. He did it countless times, relentlessly, like a lunatic.

He searched his memories and reviewed, one by one, what they had shown him then.

"Haaah!"

The man had just overcome Enkrid's Pressure. He drew swords from his sleeves and held one in each hand.

"Where did you crawl out from?"

He shouted, pretending to charge before throwing two daggers. It was skillful. Throwing daggers while holding a sword in each hand was almost strange enough to be fascinating.

Clang!

Duskforge in his right hand, Penna in his left.

Enkrid faced the man with a sword in each hand. The fight did not last long. Enkrid subdued him before he could use his specialty. More than ten repetitions had made the man's weaknesses stand out more clearly. His strengths had faded, while his weaknesses had become distinct.

Enkrid moved forward again. His train of thought had never reached a conclusion. The review was still ongoing.

Enkrid faced another today and died again.

The dark-red sword made from condensed flame could not cut everything. The blade of Will Enkrid had displayed could block it.

'But.'

He was outmatched in strength. In the end, he was cut down.

What was different?

Twenty, thirty, forty, more than fifty todays passed.

Amid days of pain and suffering, Enkrid had the freedom of time to review and reflect without end.

Footnotes:

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