WeTried Translations

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◈ I Became the Dark Knight in the Game World ◈

Chapter 4: The Wordless Horse and the Silent Knight (4)

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When word spread that the kidnapped people were alive, their relatives came with carts to bring them home. Kriel, at the head of the procession, pulled a cart as well.

[You don't look it, but you're a decent fellow.]

The floating horse head kept chattering. Kriel raised his right hand and waved it away. The gesture, like shooing off a bird, made it plain that he wanted it to leave him alone.

[Hey, listen. If I don't lead the way, who else knows where to go? The road's boring, so I'll tell you a story.]

The horse-headed Orisin showed no sign of stopping.

'It's the only one that knows where the missing people are.'

Besides, if the horse head had set some kind of trap, Kriel had no choice but to keep it close. Until they reached the place where the missing people were being kept, he would have to put up with it.

Half because he might as well hear it out, and half because walking in silence was dull, Kriel spoke.

“Not my story. Tell me yours.”

[Mine?]

“Why did you take the maidens?”

[Ah! That. I told you, didn't I? I had no choice if I didn't want to eat people.]

Orisin began by cursing the Abyssal Spawn that had planted an Abyssal Seed in it and cursed it. As far as Kriel knew, Bicorns naturally devoured faithful husbands.

[But I'd lived in these mountains for years. I couldn't tear apart and eat people who were born and raised here!]

Murder followed by cannibalism was irreversible corruption. Orisin had agonized again and again over how to resist the Demonic Nature forced upon it.

“And?”

[People say unicorns like maidens, but what they really like is purity. At first, I tried to endure by drinking clean water from mountain springs, but the demonic energy leaking from my body polluted the water.]

“If diet wasn't going to solve it, you should've gone to a temple from the start.”

[This mountain is closely tied to me, so I could at least resist the corruption here. Anyway, then I got to thinking. Maidens symbolize purity, and their hair symbolizes chastity too.]

'This bastard... Don't tell me.'

Kriel stared at Orisin in disbelief.

[I thought eating their hair would make things better. It didn't taste very good.]

There was someone in this world who ate strange things they found instead of seeing a doctor. Kriel felt a headache coming on.

[No one died! Their hair got a little shorter, that's all. Corrupted Spirits show up all the time, so didn't I do pretty well?]

“Be quiet.”

Unable to listen any longer, Kriel swatted at the horse ghost. But a ghost was still a ghost, and his hand passed right through it. Orisin flew around Kriel, crying out in an exaggerated voice.

[You think you can drive me off with a mere swat, gyaaaaaah!]

The gauntlet smeared with holy water worked well on the horse ghost too. After scolding the shrieking Orisin and telling it to move faster, Kriel looked toward the mountain range.

More precisely, he imagined the military camp beyond it. Once this was over, he would be discharged.

Having to return and file his discharge report still bothered him, but he only had to suffer for a few more days. Kriel happily imagined what he would do after leaving the army.

* * *

While the villagers reunited with their separated families, and the child from the house by the potato field tried to beat the horse ghost to death with a farm tool after discovering that their hair had been cut almost to the scalp while they were unconscious, Kriel quietly packed his things.

In truth, his travel gear was so simple that cleaning his sword and maintaining his armor were all the preparation he needed. Priest Jakabil watched Kriel from behind.

“Are you already planning to leave?”

“If an armed knight stays in a village, its people will feel uneasy. Just as helping good people in hardship is a knightly virtue, I believe it is also a knight's duty not to give others cause for concern.”

The knight who had arrived at dusk intended to leave around dusk as well. The priest considered asking him to stay the night, then shook his head.

“Thank you for keeping your promise.”

“I'll pass those thanks along to the commander. I only did as I was ordered.”

The moon was bright, and thanks to the traits of a Dark Knight, walking the forest path was not difficult. Still, a corner of Kriel's mind sensed a subtle wrongness.

“Why don't you come out?”

[You caught me. Damn.]

'That horse head again.'

Kriel considered whether he should soak his gauntlet in holy water once more.

[No, wait, hear me out, my friend. Is it really all right to leave a Spirit's corpse lying around like that? Monsters will smell it and gather, won't they?]

“If I report it to headquarters, they'll send scholars for purification and research. Priest Jakabil served as a military chaplain. He's already taken temporary measures to keep Monsters away.”

[Then I'm doomed....]

There had to be a reason the horse head kept hovering around him. Kriel weighed annoyance against curiosity, then chose curiosity.

It was a choice born from the peculiar ease of someone on the verge of discharge.

“What is it? You've been circling around me this whole time.”

[You're a perceptive knight. I like knights like you.]

Orisin quickly revealed what it wanted. Its physical corruption had left with its death, but the grime clinging to its soul required proper purification.

“What about Priest Jakabil?”

[Ha! That would be too heavy a burden for that old man. He could do it, but he'd die from overwork. It would take several priests to purify a curse powerful enough to affect a Spirit like me.]

What Orisin wanted was a group of priests who could cleanse its soul. It was not difficult for Kriel. During his service with the Western Army, he had become acquainted with its priests whether he liked it or not.

“I'll introduce you to the Western Army's priests.”

[Oh!]

“Be quieter while you follow me.”

[You understand me well, my friend. From the moment I first saw you, I believed you were a true knight!]

Ptooey.

Orisin spat something from its mouth. Kriel found the object rather familiar.

“A Bicorn Horn?”

[Coming out and talking every time is tiring, you know. I don't have the strength to break off my original horn, and it would be a waste anyway, so I took out the one lodged in my eye. I'll rest inside it, so call if you need me.]

It was funny for such a chatterbox to claim conversation tired it, but Kriel had no reason to refuse when it was volunteering to quiet down. Once Orisin disappeared as if sucked into the Bicorn Horn, the night road finally became quiet.

Kriel ran hard toward the military camp and his discharge.

* * *

He could not be discharged.

“What can we do? The commander who must approve your discharge is away.”

“This can't be. This can't be...!”

“You're technically a soldier, but in practice, you're closer to a Free Knight. The commander has treated you well, so I don't understand why you avoid serving with the army so strongly.”

The elderly Treasurer General, with completely white hair, spoke in a teasing tone. Memories of barracks life in Korea surged up within Kriel.

No matter how comfortable it was, the army was still the army. Wanting to stay far from that particular suffocating feeling was an instinct imprinted on him later in life.

“Treasurer General, can't you write my discharge papers as acting commander?”

“You report directly to the commander. If I did it, I'd be overstepping my authority.”

Kriel, filled with gloom, heard the Treasurer General click his tongue behind him.

“Who told you to fight so well? If you'd held back and lost at the Trial by Combat, the commander would never have taken an interest in you.”

“I keep telling you, it wasn't intentional. Damn it....”

He wanted to unleash every creative curse he knew, but doing so would lower his Nobility. Kriel condensed every feeling into the words “Damn it.”

After leaving headquarters, Kriel dragged his feet toward the priests' quarters, where the military priests stayed.

He had handed Orisin over to the priests as soon as he arrived at the Western Army's camp. Since he had brought Orisin there, he needed to check how things had turned out.

[Yet Orisin was never freed from the curse. Having spent too much strength persuading the knight, Orisin was declared beyond recovery during the purification procedure that followed....]

That was the first thing Kriel heard upon entering the priests' quarters. The sight of a unicorn head sorrowfully muttering atop the Bicorn Horn was surreal even by the standards he had developed since falling into this fantasy world.

“What happened?”

His arrival was sudden, but the priests had already grown used to the suspicious appearance of the scorched knight and answered matter-of-factly.

They could not determine whether it was because the Bicorn Horn served as a vessel for its soul or because the curse was too strong, but the Western Army's priests lacked the ability to purify Orisin's soul.

[Waaaaah! What, what are you saying, priests! I'm an Abyss spawn? I can't be purified?]

“Purification is not impossible. It is only that the process may cause irreversible damage to the Spirit's soul.”

They went on to explain that purifying a curse tightly bound to the original soul was like trying to gather only the ink from ink dissolved in water.

“It is difficult, but possible. If you could reach the great temples of each faith in the Sacred Kingdom's capital, or even without going to the Sacred Kingdom, if you could meet someone whom their order calls a Saintess or a Saint─”

[They're wanderlust addicts who travel to every corner of the world to help pitiful people! We'll never find one!]

Kriel could feel the priests staring at him. Everyone knew that among the people involved in the Trial by Combat that had tied Kriel to the Western Army, there was someone now called a Saintess.

“I want to help too, but my discharge requires headquarters' approval─”

An idea flashed through Kriel's mind.

His written orders said, “Resolve the abnormal incident in Laurang Village.” And this unicorn's tantrum was, in a broad sense, an extension of the Laurang Village incident.

Even if Kriel left the Western Army camp to help the unicorn, it would not violate his orders!

[Waaah. I can't live as corrupted spawn. I should die. But if I die buried in the Abyss, even after death─]

“No. Now that I think about it, there may be a way.”

[What!]

“I'll take this Spirit with me.”

Kriel resolved to become a knight making a perfectly legal escape.

Footnotes:

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