Eternally Regressing Knight Chapter 817

817. The Burning Crow, Promiser of Abundance, Companion of Heat, Destroyer of Pure White, Loner of Distrust

“Kill him? Should I kill him? He stink.”

Dunbakel suddenly interrupted Rem’s words. Her training in the East and the various experiences she gained there had developed her sense of smell into a new form, one that transcended her sixth sense.
She could smell the scent of malice. It was similar to the sixth sense of sensing force, but she perceived it as a scent.
The stench from the three of them was giving her a headache.

‘Why does it smell worse than the monsters of the East?’

Don’t you walk around without washing?
“Washing” here doesn’t mean actually drawing water and pouring it over yourself.

“What good is it to just cleanse your body? You need to cleanse your mind.”

The East is home to many eccentric individuals. Among them, there was one who swore to never kill a human, only to deal with monsters. He was said to be a priest of the god of the underworld.
He once said that to truly cleanse and purify, one must cleanse one’s heart.
I don’t know the method, but I do understand one thing.

‘deep waters.’

They smell something that makes you want to hold your nose.

‘Malicious, twisted desires, twisted desires.’

There are many similar smells, similar but not intertwined. It was like the smell of half-siblings with the same father but different mothers.

‘This expression is also strange, though.’

Dunbakel expressed his will rather than expressing the smell I smelled.

“Aren’t you going to kill me?”

She asked again. This was filth that needed to be cleaned up. That’s her judgment. If it were the East, she would have acted long ago.
This was the Border Guard. Someone had to move before she could. More importantly, just a moment ago, when she unconsciously tried to move, Rem the brat subtly blocked her.
And hadn’t Rem even muttered something as she blocked him?

“You’ve become a scoundrel from the East. Is that the title you want?”

Moderate and restrained.
Rem’s gray eyes spoke those words. Dunbakel had received a similar rebuke from Anu before.

“Overcoming fear doesn’t mean everything is over. In some ways, Suin is even more obsessive than Prok, and unless she cultivates self-control, she won’t be able to advance any further.”

Anu had been mumbling about the meat of a steamed demon beast, then spat it out.
Several of his loyal servants, his guards, had laughed heartily at him.
Back then, Dunbakel couldn’t cultivate self-control. Life in the East was fundamentally one of neglect.
They fought, ate, and did their own thing. Otherwise, the Eastern Expeditions couldn’t survive. They
wandered around constantly, promising to explore new places, and aside from the central camp, there wasn’t a single place they could properly call a city.
Perhaps the advantage was the near absence of monster attacks.
But it was equally as harsh. The wasteland was rife with places devoid of grass.
It wasn’t a desert, but an extreme environment, where survival was limited to lakes.
A child born in the East had to contribute from an early age. They had to find food, and unless they proved their worth, survival would be difficult.
Anu had always sent such children to the continent.
His visit to Encred and his continued letters to him were part of this.

‘You are very generous.’

Anu is like that. He paved the way for those who couldn’t settle on his land. He paved the way for them to make a living as Border Guards.
In any case, Dunbakel, having reached his current state based on such laissez-faire, never developed self-control.

“What? Should I pluck out one of your eyes? It’s golden, so I think King Nun would pay a lot for it.”

Here, Rem was the epitome of self-control. This kid was prone to causing trouble, was interested in various things, and was a very intelligent person.
Having restrained Dunbakel, Rem’s gaze turned to Encred. Encred remained silent. He remained the same.
He simply stared calmly ahead. That didn’t mean Rem’s gaze was questionable.

‘Why leave it alone?’

Curiosity? Perhaps.
It didn’t smell like Dunbakel, but Rem’s senses were also different.

‘Ominous and disturbing.’

It’s not that they’re spreading curses. To put it in Western terms, they’re like “days without sunrise.” They’re
like dark clouds that fill the sky with pitch-black clouds.
Today’s sky is unusually clear and the sun is warm, but the atmosphere they’re giving off is the opposite.

‘But I’m still curious, you know.’

The other person has clearly captured that point.
Their very existence is irritating, not to mention their talk of eternal life. That irritating feeling is unfamiliar.

‘The beast that came back from the East, to put it in a beastly way, smells like rotten meat.’

More than anything, it was a smell I’d smelled before. The stench of a demonic realm, you could say.
I’d smelled something similar from Balrog. However, while Balrog had a pungent, burnt aroma, this one had a stronger, fishy stench, like rotten fish.
Of course, Rem hadn’t smelled it directly. Her sixth sense, honed by sorcery, was telling her.
Those were utterly evil.
One of the eight gods seemed to be telling her it was her turn to act.
The god that hated and loathed all things evil and treacherous whispered that he would lend her his power.
Rem suppressed his anger, leaned on his knees, and swayed his shoulders from side to side, lifting the axe onto his shoulder.

“They’re funny guys, huh? Very funny.”

Rem muttered. Like everyone who saw Rem, the three, unsure if they were guests or intruders, felt a sense of foreboding.
If left alone, this guy would chop off his head with an axe at any moment.
This bastard felt more dangerous than the sword-wielding man they’d encountered on their way here.
The black-hatted wizard dropped his arm. If they failed, they’d have to prove their strength against them, even if it meant unleashing a barrage of spells.
In this situation, the unexpected voice spoke up.

“Anything!”

Was it because he sensed the mood shifting strangely? Or was it because he decided he couldn’t continue being dragged along?
It was probably both. The man with the potbelly trembled and shouted.
He was a merchant, a natural born businessman who couldn’t let the atmosphere get the better of him and sell off his possessions cheaply.
He had built an outstanding career in his field. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been chosen as the envoy to deliver the message.
His merchant instincts told him the moment was right, so he spoke again.
Encred’s gaze turned to him. He seemed indifferent, but his gaze was drawn back because he felt interest.
While not as strong as Krang’s, his voice, with its appealing power, had the power to capture the attention of those around him.

“You don’t have to make a decision all at once. When buying something expensive, shouldn’t you consider what’s good and what benefits you’ll gain?”

The words of the man, who had been hunched over by the atmosphere, gained strength. He didn’t go with the flow, but created a new one.
Of course, this flow was the kind that would split in two with a single swing of Rem’s axe, turning into a mess of blood, brain matter, and shattered bone.
Still, the merchant showed courage. If he were a man so great that he couldn’t even speak, there would be no reason to come here.

“That’s so true.”

And the one who answered that question entered the training hall. Next to him was his brown-skinned escort and lover, with glossy brown hair. Behind him was a man named Abnayer, who, despite not having converted, was working beyond his limits.
The sunlight illuminated them. Abnayer stared blankly at the three, meeting their eyes one by one. He
secretly judged them to be formidable opponents. It was a habit of his, a way of assessing their power.
Of course, compared to the man named Encred before him, the three lacked the momentum.

‘Balrog Slayer.’

Abnayer’s heart raced for days after hearing the story through Christ. He
would suppress the demonic realm, strengthen the nation’s internal structure, and establish a solid foundation. A nation with strong roots would gain an advantage in future battles against the demonic realm and would be unshaken by external forces, whether empires or otherwise.
This was the nation Abnayer dreamed of. What was the most crucial aspect of his dream?

‘article.’

Or perhaps a wizard.
More precisely, a force beyond the norm. A force composed of a small elite.
And not just any knight or wizard, but those who fought to prove themselves.
That meant they had to be energetic even after destroying a few colonies.
But fighting the demon of struggle? Defeating it? And then returning?
He couldn’t even imagine it. Before him stood someone who had achieved it.
That’s why he remained indifferent to the strange aura displayed by the three standing before him.
Would Chrys be similar? Abnayer wasn’t sure. Chrys’s words upon hearing that he had killed Balrog etched themselves into his memory like a brand.

“Well, Ab, you have a big house. And there’s a fire right next door. Wouldn’t you be curious to know who started it? Or at least, wouldn’t you want to know why it started? And what if you found the person who started it?”
“And what if you did?”
“What would you do with that person?”

He might set my house on fire.
There’s someone with that kind of mindset by his side.
Abnayer is a designer of various traps on the battlefield. He possesses an intelligence that’s beyond ordinary, reaching the extraordinary.

“If it were me, I’d order the enemy threatening my home to burn down.”
“Yes. That could be true, or it could be an attempt to erase the variable. Right?”

Abnayer had difficulty predicting how far Christ’s imagination would reach.

‘House and fire.’

Anyway, I knew that Encrid was the one who started the fire, but what happened after that was completely unknown.
Chrys’s voice rang out, shattering my thoughts.

“What a strange bunch of people. One of them is a wizard, right?”

Kreis wasn’t a knight, or even a quasi-knight, but his intuition far surpassed that of the average person. He could read others based solely on their appearance and aura.
The man in the wide-brimmed hat turned his gaze to Kreis.
Those were some strange eyes. He’d experienced many absurd things since coming here.
Still, he realized that the man with the wide eyes was the most rational and capable of a reasonable conversation.

“that’s right.”

Esther answered. Meanwhile, the man with the greatsword rose unsteadily. He couldn’t dare to attack any further.
Having been defeated by a single blow, he had nothing left to say. If he had fought properly, he would have had the means to resist, but now he had come as an envoy. He must not defy his master’s will.

‘I was left in shock.’

Above all, the blow to my stomach tore through part of my internal organs. It was a blow that would have killed an ordinary person.
The blow that struck my torso must have reached my master.
Perhaps it was thanks to that. My master’s intentions, originally cleverly guarded against the odds, were now tilted in one direction. The
balance between elimination and appeasement, the two weights on which they rested, had tilted to one side.
The direction of the tilt was not toward elimination, but the opposite.

‘I’ll lure you out somehow.’

The other self within me intuitively conveyed the master’s intentions. The man with the greatsword stood up and quietly put the sword away. The merchant spoke.

“Can I introduce myself formally?”

He looked around the room as he spoke, his gestures and demeanor remarkably natural. He was used to this kind of work.
He had extensive experience dealing with people, whether as a vendor or a peddler.
He was in charge of a branch of the Rengardis upper house. He had proven himself in ways other than military force.

“I am here at the call of the Master of the Golden Words and the Golden Devotee.”

He puffed out his chest and spoke, scanning everyone’s expressions as he spoke. He wasn’t surreptitiously peeking, but confidently looking at everyone.
He meant to see if they understood what he meant, and if so, how they would react.
The water man still looked ready to beat him up, and the barbarian’s gaze asked, “What the f—k?”
The man named Encred remained calm, and the wizard named Ester muttered, repeating the words “people, magic, people, magic.”
At least the brown-haired man and the green-haired man standing behind him seemed to understand each other. A faint curiosity flashed in their eyes. The merchant’s gaze turned to him.
If he were going to target the general, he should shoot his horse first.

‘They start by targeting those around them.’

That brown-haired man, in particular, feels like he shares a similarity with me. In other words, he’s someone who can defy conventional wisdom if it means taking advantage of it.
If so, then the conversation will be convincing. At the very least, he’ll be able to convey the master’s will.
Isn’t that why I came here in person?

“Do you know about the Demonic Realm?”

The merchant asked. Information is an invisible, intangible thing. Moreover, captivating others by offering a portion of their goods was a fundamental aspect of business.
He increased his value by extracting information unknown to his opponents. The other two remained obedient bystanders.
If anything, that man was the best at speaking, so they left him alone.
Of course, if he tried to meddle in the process, he’d immediately be stopped.
The merchant lacked force, but the two of them did. That gave them relative leeway.

“There are many people in the Demon Realm who you call devils.”

“Devil” isn’t a derogatory term, but it’s also not an honorific. Those who actually reside in the Demon Realm call themselves something else, but there’s no need to go into that here.
The merchant knew how to choose his words.

“The burning crow, the promiser of abundance, the companion of passion, the pure destroyer, the unbelieving loner.”

The merchant paused appropriately and then continued.

“You all look like you’re hearing this for the first time. These are all terms you use to refer to the devil.”