Eternally Regressing Knight

Chapter 277 – Marcus. This Cowardly Bastard

“There’s something hidden in the forest. As I followed the trail, it led me this way,” Finn said.

Finn had a knack for tracking people. Wherever humans traveled, traces were left behind.

The scent was different, and footprints remained. Even a single broken branch on a body would leave a mark.

Finn was able to detect these signs, and Enkrid, having traveled across the continent and seen various types of people, guessed that Finn had once been a bounty hunter.

Of course, the past didn’t matter—he simply thought Finn’s skills would be useful.

Thus, they found the hidden cave near the village.

It was a small village built near a forest, a little off to the north. In the distance, the Pen-Hanil River could be seen.

The bandits had dug a cave deep within the forest to hide their beasts.

All of them were high on some kind of drug. There were traces of alchemy—the remains of a wolf-like beast, but with deer-like legs, and the scars from previous alchemists who had amputated limbs, chopped off heads, and performed gruesome experiments.

That bastard had his hands all over this place.

The wolf-beast, though, had legs like a deer’s.

Success in such hybridization would make the world call it a chimera—a monster made by humans, neither beast nor man.

“Who’s there!”

Five people, probably trainers or those who served as emergency food for the beasts, shouted.

“If you attack, you’ll die,” Enkrid said bluntly.

They attacked immediately, and they died.

The one who had been nervously watching from behind saw this and released the remaining beasts.

The screech of a manticore with a serpent’s tail echoed as it charged. It attempted to attack but lost its balance and tumbled to the ground.

Enkrid swiftly split the creature’s head in half with a clean sword strike, blood and brain matter spilling out.

Jaxen and Shinar also fought, while Esther climbed a nearby tree to watch.

The one who released the beasts tried to flee but was killed by an arrow lodged in his head.

It was Finn’s handiwork.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

The arrow was one that Enkrid had taken from the Black Blade bandits earlier.

‘It’s being used far better than it was by that bandit.’

Finn concealed the arrow launcher in her sleeve and waited until the target’s attention shifted before shooting, aiming for the back of his head.

Any decent marksman would have found it impossible to avoid the arrow’s path to the skull.

The beasts they released were brutal.

The human-faced wolf with a snake’s venom sacs sprayed poison all around. However, it was half-baked.

There was no need to waste much time on them.

They killed all the beasts, cleared the village, and finished up in just over half a day.

“The next one is four days on foot,” said the fairy commander.

Enkrid nodded.

From then on, it was like a circus troupe on a tour.

Find a village, enter, strike, fight, kill, clean up.

It was a routine.

When the village bandits saw that the village chief and all the beasts were dead, most of them fled.

That made things easier.

“If the higher-ups find out about this, will they let us off? Someone’s gonna think we’ve started a rebellion! Anyone who wants to live, follow me!”

The cunning bandit assessed the situation, fled, and tried to gather followers.

In any organization, there would always be someone with ambition.

Enkrid didn’t bother chasing them down one by one.

It was a waste of time.

“Something feels off. It’s unsettling,” a perceptive bandit muttered as he fled.

Only a few remained. The village that Enkrid attacked soon became quiet.

The villagers, who had been exchanging information, tried to prepare, but it was meaningless.

Five of the guards who were stationed throughout the village were silently killed by a slash to the carotid artery, and the remaining bandits were filled with fear.

“Shit! Did a ghost come out of nowhere?”

The leader, an elite assassin, was overwhelmed with fear.

Impossible things were happening.

Six of his personal guards had vanished without a sound.

But he didn’t sense a thing.

No, he had seen it.

In the corner of his bedroom, hands emerged from the darkness, grasping his guards by the neck and twisting with a practiced motion, as if they had snapped hundreds or thousands of necks.

What was most terrifying was that there was no sound as the necks were snapped.

Even more terrifying was the fact that the guard who died didn’t even realize he was about to die.

The guard’s expression didn’t show any surprise. He remained alert, his lips tightly sealed, and his neck twisted and snapped without a sound.

“There!”

The assassin-turned-village-chief quickly threw a poisoned dart.

The dart, coated in a deadly toxin, disappeared into the darkness.

Several of his guards stabbed at the spot where their comrades had disappeared with their spiked swords.

As they flailed, a horrifying scene unfolded.

A hole had been pierced through the ground behind their fallen comrade’s body, and it was clear it had been made some time ago.

“When?”

That was the dying chief’s final words.

A blade streaked down from above, slicing through his neck.

It was an alchemical assassination tool—a string knife.

The razor-sharp blade, thinner than a pinky finger, severed the village chief’s neck, leaving his head suspended in mid-air.

“Uaaagh!”

Dealing with the remaining guards was a trivial task.

In their panic, the guards ended up stabbing each other.

Jaxen, hanging upside down from the ceiling, watched for a moment before throwing two Silent Knives to finish the job.

Well, what else could be done with such a situation?

The villagers were all too busy running away.

The place where a group had been staying had become deserted, as if a ghost might appear.

A gust of wind swept through the village center.

“If only a wraith would pop up, this would be a perfect scene,” Finn said.

Enkrid agreed, but that didn’t mean he was slowing down.

Of course, this wasn’t going to be left like this forever. After dealing with the village’s combat personnel and taking the chief’s head.

Shinar extended her arm toward a tree, and a black bird flew over to land on her arm.

The trained crow immediately flew off to the border guard to deliver the news.

It meant that forces were on the move to seize the village abandoned by the thieves.

Meanwhile, Enkrid’s group kept moving, heading toward the next village.

They bought horses when needed, and let them go when they didn’t, crossing cliffs along the way.

The path was steep, but the rough mountain roads didn’t pose much of a challenge.

Dust scattered beneath their feet as they made their way down.

If someone were to fall, they would never be able to walk again, given the height of the cliffs.

Yet, no one felt a sense of danger.

Finn wedged a dagger into the crack of the cliff and, using her elbow protector, pushed the weapon in deeper, gripping it tightly as she climbed. With a confident air, she looked down and spoke.

“If someone falls and dies here, it might actually be funny.”

It was a statement that made sense.

Starting with people, what about the leopard trailing them?

Its claws seemed like they were tearing through the cliff like a deadly weapon, easily scaling the surface as though it were flat ground.

It wasn’t surprising.

The claws and skills were suited for vertical walls.

The rest of Enkrid, Jaxen, and Shinar were no different.

They all knew how to take care of themselves.

Enkrid steadily climbed, one step at a time, while Jaxen seemed as if he had glue on his hands.

Shinar made jokes as she expertly scaled the cliff.

“Have you ever kissed a cliff, fiancé?”

“…Do you think so?”

“Sometimes I wonder if my fiancé is still a virgin.”

She made jokes as though falling off a cliff was as trivial as sipping tea in a sitting room.

Enkrid, however, found it fascinating that he was the one responding to such jokes.

In any case, the likelihood of these people dying here was as slim as a crow being killed by an ant.

Eventually, they reached the next village.

In a place where many slaves were gathered, Shinar found three of her kin.

She didn’t show a single sign of displeasure.

“Captured like idiots.”

She scornfully criticized them, but the three didn’t respond.

One of the male fairies, upon being freed, grabbed a dagger that had fallen to the ground and stabbed a smooth-faced thief in the belly.

“S-s-splurt! Gah!”

The thief, who had been begging for his life, wasn’t prepared, and received six holes in his stomach.

A sense of vengeance was clear in the fairy’s actions.

“An idiot who wouldn’t even be eaten by a bug, like a peach.”

Enkrid overheard the male fairy’s muttering and pondered the meaning.

He was accustomed to fairy expressions thanks to the fairy commander.

It wasn’t fairy language, but the common tongue of the Empire, so he understood.

It referred to a fruit that, despite being untouched by bugs, was utterly useless and worthless. A metaphor for a person who was equally useless.

Enkrid wasn’t surprised by where this vengeance came from.

The two female fairies had likely met a similar fate.

They had been targeted for their bodies. Even the male fairy had fallen victim.

“Seems like he doesn’t discriminate between men and women,” Enkrid thought.

The guy had very broad tastes.

While such acts weren’t rare across the continent, it wasn’t a pretty sight.

Could this all be fixed by cutting them down with a sword?

When Enkrid was young, he thought it was possible if he became a knight.

After leaving the village, he realized it wasn’t possible.

It wasn’t a matter of talent.

It wasn’t even a problem that a boy of only a few years had beaten him.

Enkrid had been young and naive.

The concept of a village expanded into a fief, and a fief into the entire continent, changing his perspective.

Then he realized.

Even if he became a knight, a battlefield disaster capable of cutting down a thousand people with a single sword, he couldn’t solve this kind of issue.

So, was he supposed to give up?

Was he just supposed to remain a flashy swordsman, nothing more?

When he dreamed of becoming a knight, was it because he desired to wear shining armor and radiate a halo?

Was that all?

That was not the case.

Enkrid had never thought that way.

What he dreamed of being wasn’t just a tool of slaughter skilled with a sword.

As these thoughts filled his mind, Jaxen spoke up.

“Do you want to wipe them all out? Burn it all down? I’ll help you if you need.”

Jaxen’s eyes were burning red, and his words didn’t seem like something he’d thought through.

It seemed more like something he said out of the heat of the moment.

That made Enkrid wonder.

‘Is he in pain?’

He did tend to say strange things from time to time.

Enkrid paused, gathering his thoughts, before replying

“Your eyes are burning,”

At his words, Jaxen briefly closed his eyes, then opened them again.

The flames he had seen earlier were gone. At least the destructive blaze Enkrid had spoken of was no longer there.

“Let’s go.”

Enkrid refocused on the task at hand.

Had the newly acquired sword skills or the knightly training triggered these other thoughts?

That wasn’t it. The ember in Enkrid’s chest had always been burning; it was just now becoming visible.

“Oh? A dwarf, too?”

Was this some kind of race-collecting game?

This was a village that had dug tunnels all over to hide slaves.

“Damn, what are these bastards?”

A few thieves, as soon as they resisted, had their throats slashed open, blood spurting from them.

It was Jaxen’s work.

With silent steps and concealed presence, he used the tools he had gathered.

“I received a useful relic as a gift.”

Picking up the dead man’s possessions with pride, he showed that he was no different from the rest.

The thieves, caught unaware by Jaxen, didn’t even have time to react before they were swiftly dealt with.

Jaxen systematically cut down each of them with his dagger, and soon, eight trembling thieves lay dead, their bodies sprawled across the ground.

The village chief had already been slain.

This wasn’t a mage or assassin they were dealing with. He wasn’t even skilled with a sword.

All he did was exploit gaps, repeatedly trying to pull tricks, even setting traps in his bedroom.

“Good job.”

Once again, Enkrid didn’t need to intervene.

Well, there was one time he had to swing his sword.

When two somewhat skilled men from the village tried to ambush him, he parried their attacks with his blade, then struck with a serpent strike.

Thunk, thunk!

Two loud thuds echoed as their bodies hit the ground, and no one dared challenge Enkrid after that.

With such brutal measures, Enkrid and his group subdued the village.

The remaining slaves were freed, and those who still resisted were cut down.

Most of the village had been like this. Some so-called strongmen tried to fight, but once they were slashed and defeated, the rest either surrendered or fled.

Over the course of two months, they moved from one village to the next, hunting down the hidden villages of the Black Blade Band.

It had only taken two months.

Considering the pace they had set, it was nothing short of impressive.

The Black Blade Band’s leaders hadn’t even realized half of the villages they had set up were falling before they noticed.

They were fast.

By the time they figured it out, the remaining villages were already beyond saving.

“Damn bastards!”

The leader of the Black Blade Band slammed a candleholder onto his desk in frustration.

The wooden desk, made from rosewood, cracked in the center, and splinters flew everywhere.

“Huff, huff!”

Still, the leader’s anger didn’t subside. If anything, it surged.

He threw the silver candleholder out the window in a fit of rage.

Crash!

The high-quality stained-glass window, which had been painted with red, yellow, and blue, shattered, and glass dust filled the air.

The silver candleholder fell into the garden of the three-story mansion.

The gardener, who had been trimming the bushes with scissors, startled and lowered his head, trying to stay out of sight.

He quickly picked up the fallen candleholder and went to find the butler, concerned something was wrong.

Of course, neither of them could figure out what was happening.

The leader of the Black Blade Band had kept his true identity hidden well.

Most of the mansion staff just thought of him as a noble from the royal palace, a mere bureaucrat.

The leader seethed in frustration but felt helpless.

A new guild had risen in the royal capital, and they were uniting the back alleys at an alarming rate.

“What the hell is this Language Revival Guild?”

The purpose the guild claimed to uphold seemed ridiculous.

Many of the criminal gangs they were targeting had been supported by the Black Blade leader himself.

That’s why he couldn’t just back out now.

“Dammit.”

He couldn’t do anything about the men who were gunning for his hideout.

The truth was, even if he stepped in, it wouldn’t make a difference. He had no troops left to send and no capable fighters.

The enemy’s preparations were far more solid.

They were systematically wiping out the villages.

He had no choice but to send word to the main base.

A thought that he might die filled his mind.

“Damn it, damn it!”

His empire, the very one he had built over a lifetime, was crumbling.

The leader wanted to scream, but the attendant stopped him.

“Are you really going to throw everything away? Find out the name of one of them. That’s the best option.”

It was sound advice.

The leader had already used his connections. He’d bribed the information guild with gold coins and hired mercenaries.

Through these efforts, he had learned a name.

“Marcus, that damn bastard!”