A Knight Who Eternally Regresses

It lasted an entire month.

Lua Gharne closely observed Enkrid’s transformation. She watched him without fail, not missing a single day.

She was one of the Frokk with the sharpest senses and eyes across the entire continent.

When it came to reading and teaching talent, she could be considered above even knights.

So simply watching was enough.

Enkrid had already reached his limit. This was the end. This was the final stop.

It was like eating a steamed potato and suddenly choking on it.

The conclusion was obvious.

“He’s blocked.”

Stagnation.

“What a shame.”

The thought came with emotion.

For an entire month, he lived as if scraping together time that would never return.

Like someone who had received a terminal diagnosis.

“You’re going to die at this rate.”

The fairy he was facing said so.

“Overexertion is forbidden.”

The man demonstrating knightly swordsmanship added.

Even the half-bear man had tried to persuade him with his hands and feet to take a day off.

Though whether knocking him out during a sparring match was truly the right way to give him rest was another question.

“This is one of the martial priests’ traditions.”

Putting someone to sleep by beating them up?

Audin’s words were true. Martial priests of the war god often destroyed their own bodies through excessive training, and when that happened, it was necessary to tend to them with fists and feet.

That was a duty of a senior priest.

Lua Gharne was a broad-minded Frokk, so she nodded in understanding.

But the others reacted a little differently.

Dunbakel, watching from the side, widened her eyes in disbelief. “He’s taking that kind of beating and not running away?”

Pell, with a stiff face, said, “A shepherd can endure this much,” but no one took it seriously.

“I’ll get some proper rest, thank you.”

Rophod said with conviction. He often rushed at Ragna begging for a spar, but getting quality sleep courtesy of Audin’s fists was a different matter.

In a way, it was a wise decision. He hadn’t been chosen for the knight order for nothing.

In any case, Lua Gharne saw Enkrid’s desperate struggle.

“He’s flailing like that...”

And yet it wasn’t growth. It was stagnation.

Even that—barely.

He was just barely holding off regression.

Why hadn’t he regressed completely?

“It’s thanks to all the techniques he’s mastered.”

The brutal training regimen he inflicted on his body each dawn had shaped him into something unlike ordinary humans.

He had already attained Will, and his body must have changed to match it.

Will—sheer force of intent. Techniques driven by will placed tremendous strain on the body, and enduring that strain hardened it further.

There was a reason why even a junior knight could demonstrate otherworldly combat prowess.

Lua Gharne pulled out a wriggling, high-quality grub from a leather pouch and placed it on her hand. With a quick flick of her tongue, she swallowed it whole.

Eating helped her think more clearly.

She had spent the entire month observing Enkrid, devising various plans.

“What would actually help him?”

There was no definitive answer.

She immersed herself in thought with desperation.

Seated on the chair Rem had crafted, she hugged one knee to her chest.

Sometimes she puffed out her cheeks with a gurgle, ate a grub, or sniffed Epiprimum, a Frokk-exclusive herb known for its calming scent. Aside from that, she did nothing.

Frokk generally preferred summer to winter. It wasn’t that they were pathologically averse to cold, but dry climates caused their skin to crack more frequently, which was intensely unpleasant.

Their skin dried and split like parched earth during a drought, sometimes bleeding—what joy could there be in that?

To a human, it would be like someone slicing a blade across their skin every day. The pain and discomfort were comparable.

Cold and wind dried Frokk skin easily, so of course they preferred summer.

Lua Gharne was glad it was summer now. She didn’t even have to waste time spraying her skin with water—she could just observe and think.

Why is that man struggling so desperately?

“I understand.”

Lua Gharne heard Enkrid speaking through his actions and demeanor.

Even if the heavens did not permit it, he would keep moving forward.

It was a cry, blasted out at the world with his entire being.

At least, that’s how Lua Gharne saw it.

Then, what should she do for him now?

Something for the stagnation he was trapped in.

Thinking alone wouldn’t solve anything. What mattered was action. Lua Gharne rose to her feet.

“You can’t stay like this.”

Enkrid was training, swinging a sword ten times heavier than a regular one.

Whoosh!

Unable to fully control the weight, the blade wobbled and stopped mid-air.

Beads of sweat flew from his forehead and scattered through the air.

Through his wet, black hair, his shining blue eyes were visible.

“You know, don’t you?”

Lua Gharne spoke again.

“Is there another way?”

Enkrid replied calmly. He already knew.

If Lua Gharne had noticed his stagnation and block, then for Enkrid, it was a foreseeable outcome.

He had always expected this.

He’d wrung talent out of nowhere and relished a new kind of growth, but the limit had always been creeping closer.

He was familiar with this kind of thing.

He recalled what the ferryman had said last night.

“Tsk, tsk. You should’ve stayed in a joyful today. You wanted to feel the thrill of progress, huh? Wasn’t there such a today? There must have been—if only you hadn’t longed for tomorrow. You’d return each day to the today of yesterday, feeling the same joy again and again.”

The ferryman had scolded Enkrid.

Of course, after that, he had revealed the true nature of the ominous signs. That was when Enkrid dreamt again after they parted in silence.

“There’s no such thing as perfection in this world.”

He said that as if flaunting it. Enkrid didn’t care.

Did he hate stagnation enough to wish for a wall to appear in his path?

It wasn’t hatred. He had simply found a method. It was something he had expected, so instead of entertaining other thoughts, he kept moving his body to avoid stopping.

He understood the fragments of the path to becoming a knight.

“Watch other knights’ swords and learn even one thing.”

At the same time, polish his own skills and keep moving forward.

That was the path Enkrid had come to understand.

Was it the right path? He never wasted time wondering.

This translation is the intellectual property of Novelight.

In the time spent agonizing, he took one more strike from Ragna’s black lightning blade, dodged Shinar’s invisible sword, and worked to decipher Jaxon’s Lethal Thrust.

He did whatever it took—literally everything.

That’s what he believed.

And yet—

“There once was a very gifted bard. He stayed in his room, never stepping outside, in pursuit of something special and great. He repeated his tasks, believing that was the best way.”

It was an old tale of how a foolish bard didn’t use his legs.

The story taught that inspiration comes from experiencing and seeing the world anew.

Enkrid also knew the next part of the tale.

“It was his friend, who had spent his whole life baking bread, who made him realize the truth. Thanks to one remark from that friend, the bard composed a song that still survives on the continent—‘The Frog in the Well.’ Yes, I know the story.”

The bard had been a Frokk.

He had clearly realized his mistake and composed a song.

Now, everyone from children to adults knew it.

Did he think the sky was round?

Did he think the world was round?

Was his world really that small?

“Oh frog, oh frog, unless you leave the well, you’ll never gain a thing.”

The lyrics repeated, and their meaning was clear.

“Will you try doing what I tell you?”

Lua Gharne was the greatest teacher on the continent, yet she had never had a student like this.

So then—what should she do?

She decided to try everything. Every single thing she could do.

“Let’s do that.”

Enkrid nodded.

He had no choice.

He had experienced this kind of stagnation multiple times. Even if it didn’t drive him mad, it wasn’t a welcome state.

It was like walking by moonlight, only to be suddenly covered in thick storm clouds.

Those clouds blinded his eyes.

Like a perfectly intact cloud bridge suddenly breaking in the middle.

He could see the road laid out with signposts, but the world told him not to keep going. That was all.

And in such moments, Enkrid closed his eyes and walked [N O V E L I G H T] anyway, or tied a rope across the broken bridge and dangled his way forward.

It was no different now.

***

This summer was unusually long.

The heat didn’t just blaze down—it felt like it was turning people into barbecue.

“This is insane, Instructor.”

Just before the torture known as a march began, one of the soldiers raised his hand and spoke.

He was the son of a noble family studying in the capital.

Though from a collateral line, his house served the Duke of Octo, who had just been elevated to the title.

Confident in his skills, he had come to the Border Guard, believing that with a bit of training and luck, he’d soon stand out among the so-called Mad Squad.

But what was this?

These lunatics carried a longsword, two daggers, a heavy wrist-mounted hand crossbow, armor made of layered linen and leather, bracers and greaves with at least three throwing knives each, a hand axe, a small customized round shield, a helmet, and even a short club.

And that wasn’t all—they carried backpacks too.

This, they called being fully equipped.

This isn’t armor—it’s torture.

To him, it was nothing but torture.

The commander and instructor leading the reconnaissance troop training nodded once and said just one thing.

“Then get lost.”

She was brutal.

The soldier couldn’t protest further. He knew there were already plenty who’d tried to fight back and ended up beaten to a pulp.

And even if he managed to knock her down—

Next would be that monster.

If that one called Rem showed up, it was over.

He hadn’t been around much lately, but there was a time when he’d show up constantly, complaining that the training was too soft, and beat people down one by one. It was one-sided violence.

And he always picked nobles to hit.

The noble-killer.

The noble-born soldier knew Rem’s nickname well. It was notorious among the nobility.

“Run!”

Even though they were fully geared, sword belt to backpack—she told them to run.

The soldier clenched his teeth and stepped forward.

“You’re in reconnaissance troop training. If you can’t handle this, go die.”

It was a three-day drill. They were to cross the mountain, dig a smokeless pit at the target zone, eat, and return.

Even a demon-slayer couldn’t handle this.

This wasn’t training—it was sadism.

Still, the soldier pushed forward, gasping for breath.

He cursed at everyone, then blamed his father for sending him here after seeing the demon-slayer’s exploits. Then he cursed the demon-slayer himself, until he was too exhausted to think.

That’s when he noticed a soldier.

Iron helmet?

Everyone else wore leather helmets, but this guy had an iron one. His backpack was also bigger—and heavier.

He carried three hand axes, two longswords, and a gladius strapped horizontally across his back that, while shorter, could easily serve as a main weapon.

And that wasn’t even the end of it.

For some reason, he had two throwing spears resting on his shoulder.

A spearman?

It was common knowledge within the standing army of the Border Guard that gear differed by unit.

Once you did full-gear training, you figured that out whether you wanted to or not.

Lose even a single piece of your equipment, and the whole squad got beaten to hell as collective punishment.

So yes, this definitely was a reconnaissance drill.

It was hellishly hard, but that much couldn’t be forgotten.

Then why was he carrying spears?

Now that he looked, the guy had iron greaves strapped to his legs too.

He already looked overloaded—this guy was carrying gear three times heavier than anyone else.

Was it a hallucination? Was he so tired he was seeing things?

He kept going, thinking that, until he caught a glimpse of the man’s face.

The noble-born soldier knew that face.

“The demon-slayer!”

He blurted it out in surprise, but his voice was weak. He was too exhausted.

At the sound, the one who ruled this area—granted rank above general by the king himself—turned his head.

“If you drag your feet, it’ll be even harder.”

With that short bit of advice, he walked on.

The soldier was speechless.

The demon-slayer was walking, carrying gear that weighed several times more than his own.

Just for a moment, the defiance that had been rising among the other soldiers—centered around the noble-born one—vanished completely.

Commander and instructor Finn moved up beside Enkrid, who was leading the march.

“It’s been a while.”

Finn saluted with a casual hand to her waist.

She was also in full gear.

“Looks like you’ve improved.”

Enkrid commented, and Finn, recognizing the same man who always judged with his eyes before his words, brought up Torres.

“He said the Martai frontier defense unit had toughened their training. Told me to show you sometime. You should come by.”

Torres, huh. He’d seen him once already—back when he took his position as a general.

There hadn’t been a formal ceremony, but he had at least met the lords of each city. He’d seen him briefly then.

“If I get the time.”

He had designed this training course based on Lua Gharne’s advice. Right now, there was no time to spare.

Finn clicked her tongue.

Even after all this time, he was still a training maniac.

Well, that’s why he became the demon-slayer.

She had once been his superior, later served under him, and now she was just a unit commander under the man who had become a general—but she couldn’t help but feel proud of all of it.

There was something about Enkrid—something that made the people around him feel fulfilled.

***

“Clearing a blocked perspective comes from diversity. Do everything.”

Following Lua Gharne’s advice, Enkrid walked and ran among the fully equipped soldiers—carrying even heavier gear than them.

“Run.”

Splash!

He even climbed the ridge and jumped off a cliff into a lake.

“How do you break past your limits? I don’t know. But I do know that just gripping a sword isn’t enough.”

You can only see some things once your perspective expands. That was how Lua Gharne saw the world.