A Knight Who Eternally Regresses - Chapter 442



Only Noblemtl

442. What is a knight?

After filling his stomach with crumbled bread, mulberry soup, salted meat, and watery cookies mixed with grain powder, Encred did as he had decided.

“Phew! I’m dying!”

Dunbakel resisted, but there was no way out. Encred slammed her head into the bathtub. The head shot out of the bathtub, spraying water everywhere.

“No, I washed it ten days ago!”

Dunbakel rebelled.

If you say that you washed your face with water droplets, then yes, it would not be wrong.

“You could put Rem in the same bath.”

“I’ll wash by myself.”

While Dunbakel, who had given up, was washing alone, Encrid asked for water to be filled in another bathtub.

“I’ll wipe your back.”

Luagarne showed kindness.

“Okay.”

Encred refused. As he soaked in the warm water, the toxins he had accumulated from his journey seemed to disappear.

I seemed to have forgotten something, but it couldn’t have been important.

After thinking about what I had to do and recalling the article Aura, I felt a little sleepy. I closed my eyes because I didn’t feel the need to hold it in.

Encrid fell asleep with his head leaning against the wooden bathtub.

“You’ve come to a fun place.”

Swaying.

A purple lamp along with the river blocked my eyes. The shadowy face with a black hood turned over became blurry, and soon, eyes, nose, and mouth began to appear one by one.

He had skin like a heap of gray stones, unfocused eyes that showed no emotion, he was a boatman.

“Is something ominous approaching?”

Encred asked.

The boatman did nothing outwardly.

But if he were human, if he were, he would be gritting his teeth and clenching his fists right now.

If it had gone any further, I might have punched that kid in the face without even realizing it.

Purple veins sprouted from the hand holding the oar.

“Isn’t it?”

Encred tilted his head.

The boatman held back the flying spirit.

It was the first time since I started sailing that I felt this emotional.

All this time, I only felt some kind of low pleasure from laughing at and despising my opponents.

I felt something different now.

In some ways, this too could have been a positive emotional change.

Haven’t you been living your life forgetting that you could even get angry?

The boatman thought rationally and suppressed his feelings.

“If you don’t know, that’s okay.”

Encred had no ill will towards him. In his view, the ferryman was some kind of divine being.

So, I just confessed my honest feelings.

I was expecting it, but if it wasn’t there, there was nothing I could do.

The boatman was able to speak calmly because his tone and attitude clearly showed that.

“Get out, you crazy bastard.”

Since you have come to the Demon Realm, I will bless your day.

Perhaps I will regret it only after I face the cruelest day of my life.

The boatman couldn’t utter a single word of the mockery he had prepared.

* * *

Nothing changed just because the ominousness didn’t come.

Encrid adapted on his own from the next day.

“Good morning.”

As I greeted the soldier who was either Rowena’s boyfriend or a customer cleaning up the restaurant, the soldier raised his head.

Dunbakel, whose fur had changed from gray to white thanks to having washed the day before, followed and spoke to the soldier.

“Hello, beggar soldier.”

The title was novel.

“… …Why am I a beggar soldier?”

“I saw you ask for a discount because you don’t have a crona, in that alley.”

Dunbakel made a motion of shaking his waist.

The soldier blushed. It was a very embarrassing thing to do. Even the act of raising his hand because he couldn’t stand it anymore.

“I am also a squad leader.”

The soldier said. Encred passed by, and Dunbakel followed behind Encred without even pretending to hear.

“Aren’t there any roasted larvae?”

The soldier shook his head in response to Prock’s subsequent question.

“There is no such thing.”

“Yeah, work hard. He’s a healthy soldier.”

After the three left, the soldier spat out his words.

“… … I’m a sergeant too, you guys.”

But the reality is that if your contribution is insufficient, you have to have food delivered from a restaurant.

This time, it was because I was too pushy about getting Crona.

That doesn’t mean you’ll regret it.

The soldier kept his mouth shut.

Encred came out and sat down in some empty space.

One city was a huge barracks, with wooden scarecrows here and there.

The houses were built sparsely, but there was a lot of empty space, and any of it could be used as a training ground.

I washed up well and rested well yesterday. I no longer have any aftereffects.

“You have a strong body. Great.”

Luagarne praised. Every day, looking at the sun that greeted her, she repeated the same training dozens, hundreds, thousands of times.

The technique of isolation was a way to train the body to the limits of what it could physically do.

Encred did the same today.

Even if the ominous weather had come, it wouldn’t have changed, but since it hadn’t come, I would have just done what I usually did.

It was training.

Move your body, swing your sword.

Luagarne drew his sword. Tyring, the Frock with the Loop Sword was not to be underestimated.

As I was warming up with some simple exercises, the damp sun broke through the clouds and poured out its rays.

Centered around the light, Encred used the steps he had learned, drawing lines with his sword and shaking Luagarne’s balance with suggestion and restraint.

He appeared to be going to hit the right side, but then showed a stab aimed at the left shoulder.

I wrote down the steps I learned from Luagarne.

It is an action of putting the center of gravity on the left foot and stabbing with the sword held in the left hand.

It was like what a nervous soldier would do. He walked like a frog.

It was a technique inspired by a movement in which the body freezes and the legs and arms move together.

Thanks to constantly writing with my left hand and using it here and there, I am now able to move more accurately than before.

All of these things came together to make this movement possible.

“good night!”

Luagarne shouted excitedly. She didn’t have a strong fighting instinct, but when she faced Encrid, she would sometimes become excited without realizing it.

After sweating so much.

“When someone disappears, isn’t that what you have to do to find them?”

A gray-haired savage approached the empty lot.

“……ah.”

Encred now knew what he had forgotten in the bathtub yesterday. It was Rem.

“Where have you been?”

“Are you curious?”

“no.”

I thought he had gone out hunting or something. Judging from the grass and dirt on his body, it was clear that he had been out and about.

There was also a subtle smell of charcoal there.

It looked like something had been burning all night.

There was also a heavy pouch, probably containing stones and such. Some stones could be seen through the opening of the pouch.

Rem was looking around the city when he found a decent whetstone, and since he was told that he couldn’t get it without a contribution, he set out to find it himself. It was a natural whetstone.

This was the kind that would become harder when roasted. This was what was needed to sharpen a Levis steel axe.

I bought a few whetstones, looked around, and went back to the blacksmith shop to do some baking, and ended up staying up all night.

“Anyway, let’s get some sleep.”

Fatigue builds up, so you need to rest when it’s time to rest.

Whether it was Thousand Bricks or the middle of the Demon Realm, Rem was not a human who was influenced by her surroundings.

He did as he was told.

Encrido also thought so and just focused on training.

As I was swinging my sword for a while, a voice interrupted.

“You said you were going to become a knight?”

When did you come, it was the knight Oara.

He was crouching on a tree stump cut down next to a vacant lot, his elbows resting on his knees and his arms hanging down.

Oara was holding a plum in her hand and her mouth was watering.

With a slurping sound, I saw purple liquid on her lips. A drop of juice ran down her lips.

When I looked under the sunlight, I saw that she had brown hair.

Her moderately curled hair was pleasantly wavy, and she had a neat cloth wrapped around her forehead.

The eyes were round and the gaze was clear.

The alcohol seemed to have already worn off. Oara spat out the seeds with her mouth open. The seeds landed on the ground, the same color as her hair.

“Yes, I intend to do that.”

Encred answered.

“Yeah.”

Oara nodded and said nothing. She just watched.

Encred finished what he was doing.

Oara seemed to watch for a moment, then quickly got up and broke a branch from a tall tree between the houses.

Then he hit the broken branch with the blade of his hand. The leaves fell off with a thud.

Oara took out a knife and trimmed the branch appropriately.

“I need to be nervous.”

Luagarne, who had been watching, said.

It was the moment when Oara, who had been turning her back, turned around holding the trimmed branches.

Bam!

Dunbakel kicked the ground and took five steps backward. She, transformed into a white lion, bared her fangs and crouched.

He raised his head only, with his hands on the ground and his chin almost touching it.

It was a show of caution.

It was an ignorant sense of oppression.

The aura of a knight often felt like a large stone was pressing down on your shoulders, but Oara went even further.

Her pressure was like iron chains. No, it was like being hit with a lump of iron.

It seemed like it wasn’t ‘If you move, you’ll get hit’, but ‘Let’s get started by getting hit once before we move’.

“Oh, it’s been a while since I’ve done this to people, so I’m not very good at controlling myself.”

She said, stepping away. She lifted the branch and stood opposite Encred.

Encrid heard Aker.

Originally, it shouldn’t have been easy to move.

Oara’s pressure was limited to a certain area, exactly five paces radially from the direction she was looking, and within this space, it gave off a pressure that was different from the usual pressure.

It would be natural for a sub-journalist to stutter.

But Encred showed his fighting spirit by simply holding his sword and taking a stance.

The moment he felt an invisible lump of iron hitting him, the will of rejection was activated within Encred’s body.

Will counteracts will.

Therefore, coercion was meaningless.

Although it wasn’t Encred’s intention, Oara became interested.

‘You’re not even a knight, yet you can shake off my pressure?’

Should we consider it as having an unusual means of defense?

It looked like a seven-year-old boy holding a shield made of brass.

A kid who isn’t even a giant should not be able to lift a heavy shield, but Encred somehow managed to block it with his shield. He knocked it away. That was impressive.

The corners of Aura’s mouth went up. She spoke with a faint smile.

“It’s a good sword.”

“It is the royal treasure.”

“They say he’s a hero of the civil war. I’ll give you one too, lethally.”

“Do you know His Majesty?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen it.”

Oara had no involvement in anything, whether it was the civil war or what was happening within the royal family.

My job is to guard this place.

Because that’s a promise I made to myself.

“Want to play?”

She asked. It was a seductive voice. She seemed like an attractive person inviting me to bed in the middle of the night.

Encrid gave in to temptation.

I took off without saying a word. I didn’t try to trick anyone.

I put everything into looking at straight lines, dots and connecting them.

A check to gauge the opponent’s skills? There was no need for that. The opponent was a knight.

So I had to show my best.

The heart of monstrous strength is beating.

Focusing on one point made time feel like it was stretching.

I felt pressure all over my body, as if I was stuck in a swamp.

Encred withstood the pressure and threw down his sword.

Dunbakel, who was watching from the side, opened his eyes wide. Without realizing it, he put strength into his fingernails and cracked a stone stuck in the ground.

The technique you just showed her was something she had seen and experienced too.

Was it called a giant’s strike?

But what she was showing me now was something she had never experienced or seen.

Encred threw his entire body into the technique, one swing of the sword.

I burst all my muscles, trained through isolation techniques.

It was as if someone had grabbed hold of time and stretched it left and right.

In that timeline, Encred alone stepped forward and struck down his sword.

A ray of sunlight split through the knight’s head.

widely.

And then a vain sound rang out.

“It took too much force.”

Encred stopped in his sword-swinging stance. A branch of Oara rested on his wrist.

Encred moved, turning his left foot to the side.

The blade drew a new trajectory.

Oara took off the branch and put it back on, then struck her wrist again.

She saw that the knight, roughly speaking, would knock the sword out of Encred’s hand.

But just because he was a knight, he couldn’t be perfect in every way.

Exactly!

The force exerted on the branch would have broken the wrist of a normal person, but Encrid held on.

The muscles that had been trained for a long time now had a different kind of firmness, and Encrid, who had learned countless times how to hit well from Audin, applied strength at the moment of hitting and pulled his hand to disrupt the point of impact.

He then swung the sword he had been stretching out behind him.

The muscles moved around the right foot, transmitting power to the blade. The sword stretched out and glowed like a white lightning bolt.

Oara let go of the branch. As soon as she realized that she had failed, she grabbed her sidearm and drew it.

earth!

Aker’s blade was blocked.

Oara looked at Encred through the short sword held askew.

Blue eyes shining between brown pupils and black hair met.

Even though the blades met, neither one was pushed nor pushed back.

It was because the force was applied exactly to the center of the impact and stopped.

It was a feat that Oara had used. She held Encred’s sword with as much strength as she needed. Holding a blade was a skill.

“You’re hitting a bit.”

Oara said.

I was sincere.

At this level, it would be fair to say that he was on par with the two knights he had personally raised.

No, but if you just look at the fighting spirit, do you think he’ll fight better?

I don’t know. Because all fights are something you have to experience to know.

But now I could tell without even trying.

I tried to finish him off with a stick, but he pulled out his sword.

Is it because I couldn’t properly gauge my opponent’s skills?

Oara made two mistakes, and now she realizes it.

‘It’s been a long time since I’ve dealt with people.’

The match itself was rare.

This was the first error.

The second is.

‘I didn’t underestimate you.’

What can I say about that guy Encred? He’s tough.

If it was a well-made steel sword made by an ordinary knight, this one seemed to have been made with an absurd amount of care, by gathering scrap metal and melting it down.

Hence the prediction failure.

He was not a neat and tidy guy, but a novice who had crawled up from the bottom.

Since we recognized it, it was natural to respond differently.

“If you can’t stop it, it hurts.”

Oaraga Encrid said, pushing away the sword.

Encred tried to engage in close combat, drawing his blocked sword, but was pushed back. The force of the push was tremendous.

“What is a knight?”

Oara asked, lowering her arm holding the short sword.

Instead of answering, Encred took up his position again.

“They are the ones who bring the intangible power of will into reality.”

It was a very realistic definition.

If you look at it without romanticism, it was true.

Because you can’t talk about the article without mentioning Will.

And Oara showed the definition of the article I was talking about.