WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: nemui
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Forgotten Curse Knight ◈
Vol. 1 Ch. 7: We Who Drift Along the Boundary
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Elbert was drinking coffee with a gentle smile, while Beryl gave a friendly little wave.
Olivia was seated across from them.
（They're already here...）
To be honest, Theo had planned to return home, speak with Olivia, and then go pick up Elbert. The son of Duncan Lawrence you are looking for is in this house.
But it seemed Elbert and the others had asked around and found the house on their own.
With his face stiff as a board, Theo bowed his head.
“I sincerely apologize for my rudeness earlier. Please forgive me.”
“Rudeness? Not at all. Right, Beryl?”
“Yeah, yeah. Besides, we’re the ones who barged in this time.”
Neither Elbert nor Beryl seemed inclined to blame Theo for his bad manners.
As expected, Holy Knights must be broad-minded, decent people. Though Theo still was not quite sure whether Beryl was a Holy Knight.
Allen voiced Theo’s question.
“And this woman is...?”
Even with the hero Elbert right in front of them, Allen was not excited. Instead, Allen was looking at Beryl. Their eyes seemed a little sharp.
Beryl did not take offense at Allen’s blunt attitude and answered casually.
“I’m a Gray Knight.”
“A Gray Knight...?”
Allen repeated the words suspiciously, then looked at Theo. That gaze seemed to ask, “Do you know what that is?”
Theo pursed his lips and furrowed his brow. He had never heard of Gray Knights. Yet he could not shake the feeling that he knew the name.
Maybe he had skimmed over it in a book at some point? If so, it was a failure in his studies. How frustrating.
As Theo groaned in thought, Olivia modestly spoke up.
“It is understandable that neither of you knows. There are very few Gray Knights. You would hardly ever see one around here.”
Olivia had originally been a nun at the Reyel Holy District in Erington. That was why Olivia knew a great deal about organizations connected to the Holy Knight Order.
Theo had always begged Olivia to tell him stories about the Holy Knights, but he did not think he had ever heard anything about Gray Knights.
Beryl glanced at Elbert.
“El, can I explain it properly to these kids? It has something to do with why we’re here.”
“Of course. If you are all right with it, I have no objection.”
Once Elbert agreed, Beryl gestured for Theo and Allen to sit down.
After confirming that both were seated, Beryl began to speak.
“When someone is cursed by a Termea and becomes Cursed, the curse gradually eats away at their whole body. In the end, their entire body turns black, and they become a Termea themselves. Right?”
That was common knowledge to anyone on this continent.
Once someone became Cursed, they either lost consciousness or turned violent, and eventually became a Termea themselves.
To save them, the Termea that inflicted the curse had to be killed before the curse spread through their whole body.
“But every now and then, there are Cursed whose curse stops progressing.”
Beryl stood and placed a hand on the buttons of her wrap skirt.
“Like this.”
Before Theo could cry out for her to stop, Beryl undid every button.
Her wrap skirt slipped to the floor, revealing short shorts that reached only to her upper thighs.
Theo hurriedly tried to look away, then noticed something.
Reddish-black markings covered both of Beryl’s long, toned legs.
“Could that be...?”
Beryl nodded at Theo’s mutter.
“That’s right. It’s a curse. Both my legs were cursed, but the progression stopped miraculously.”
The black markings that appeared on the body after being cursed by a Termea were called Curse Marks. Yet the Curse Marks on Beryl’s legs were not simply uneven black stains. They resembled a pattern.
The Cursed either lost consciousness or lost their reason and became violent. But Beryl spoke clearly, and there was no sign that her mind was clouded.
“People like me, whose curse has stopped progressing, are called Mad Walkers. It isn’t like the protection or blessings of Holy Knights, but by controlling part of the curse... well, we can do all sorts of things.”
Allen reacted slightly to Beryl’s explanation. In a low, probing voice, Allen asked, “...What do you mean by all sorts of things?”
“Strengthening our bodies, using the curse like our own limbs or weapons, interfering with people’s minds... Really, all sorts of things.”
Beryl picked up the wrap skirt from the floor and tied it around her waist again.
Honestly, Theo was relieved. He had been too distracted by Beryl’s thighs to properly take in part of the explanation.
（It’s not like I was staring at Beryl’s thighs... Well, I did look! But I didn’t mean to look. It was just that, to see the curse pattern, they had to be in my field of vision...!）
As Theo wrestled with himself, Allen asked with an unusually stern expression.
“...When someone becomes a Mad Walker, do their Curse Marks turn into patterns like that?”
“That’s right. We call them Curse Sigils. The Cursed simply turn reddish-black, but Mad Walkers develop pattern-like markings like these.”
As Beryl said that, she lifted the hem of her wrap skirt.
At the brief glimpse of bare skin, Theo hurriedly looked away. It was only proper consideration for someone aspiring to become a Holy Knight.
Meanwhile, Allen stared intently at the Curse Sigils on Beryl’s legs.
“...Does that mean every Mad Walker has a Curse Sigil somewhere on their body?”
“Exactly. And Mad Walkers with Curse Sigils could turn into Termea at any time, right? Naturally, the country wants to keep strict control over them.”
“Is the way to free them from the curse the same as for the Cursed?”
Beryl nodded at Allen’s question.
“Yeah. Like the Cursed, Mad Walkers are freed from their curse if the Termea that inflicted it dies. So the Mad Walkers who swore to use their own curses as weapons and devote themselves to hunting Termea were gathered together into...”
Beryl tugged at her collar. Beneath the gray uniform, a black choker could be seen around her neck.
“‘We Who Drift Along the Boundary. Gray hounds before they turn black.’ That’s the Gray Knights, allowed to go out only with collars around their necks. Gray Knights hunt Termea alongside Holy Knights in order to kill the Termea that cursed them.”
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