TL Note: Hey guys, quick question â are yâall cool with how Iâve been translating this book? Do you notice a lot of mistakes or weird stuff? Iâm just genuinely curious, so feel free to be honest.
Iâm asking because someone accused me of using MTL and said my workâs sloppy and lazy. It honestly got to me and kinda killed my motivation.
Would really appreciate hearing your thoughts.
The beastmen changed their approach several times. At first, they attacked every other day, then once every three days.
A few swift fox beastmen had even circled wide around the village and hidden along the road leading to the lake, but none of them could deceive Enkridâs senses. Above all, it was all within his predicted range.
If beastmen have learned human cunning,
Then it just meant he had to account for that and prepare accordingly.
âHow are you able to know all this and prepare so precisely?â
Aitri asked during a break.
Enkrid, since they were at it, decided to share a few things with the boy before him. When Aitri asked which way was east, Enkrid pointed toward the sea and said, âThat way.â Aitri listened intently, his ears practically perked, and his blinking noticeably reduced. He was fully engaged.
âEven if you donât need it right now, itâs best to have at least a bit of strength. That might become your fang, or the last resort that saves you from danger.â
This foreigner who appeared by chance was no ordinary man. He was extraordinary.
What Enkrid said was grounded in Kraissâs way of thinking. Back when Kraiss barely escaped death, the very first thing he had said was this:
âAnd if you can manage to get yourself abs that make women look twice, even better.â
The follow-up wasnât worth passing on, so Enkrid skipped it.
âYouâre not going to kill dozens of beastmen right now, of course, but start building strength. When you use your body, your mind starts working better too.â
Enkrid said this while tapping his own head with his right index finger.
He layered his own experience on top of Kraissâs philosophy and passed it on. People would call this teaching. Training.
After preparing for the beastmenâs attacks, he focused the villagers on maintaining formation drills. For Brunhilt, he taught fighting techniques, methods, and conditioning routines. With Aitri, he mostly conversed.
To Aitri, those conversations were like reading a secret manual on swordsmanship.
âItâs not about knowing and preparing for everything. Itâs about preparing for everything that can be predicted.â
Some might tilt their head at that, but not Aitri.
âAh.â
A quiet exclamation of realization.
Kraiss was always anxiousâand to suppress that anxiety, he prepared for everything.
If you applied that logic to this village:
Narrow the area to defend and gather every resource available.
Ordinarily, they wouldâve needed to guard their stored food and the road to the lake. They wouldâve had to prepare for beastmen targeting children or the elderly. But now, none of that was necessary.
Reduce whatâs needed, and prepare for everything within your limits. That was precisely what could be called Kraiss-style strategy.
Enkrid followed that, applying it in practice. He didnât rely solely on instinctâhe actively made preemptive moves. He wasnât afraid to use his head.
And so the people raised their spears and fought the beastmen. Enkrid sat in the trees, watching them stab with everything on the line.
âIf it breaks!â
âWe die!â
Now they even had their own rallying cries. Enkrid hadnât taught them those.
âIf it gets too hard, fall back! Donât force it!â
Repetition breeds familiarity. If one out of ten started lagging, theyâd rotate out. The circle could still hold with nine. The fallen would be tended by non-combatants.
Two villagers skilled with bows stood firm in the center of the circle. Two nights ago, theyâd nearly lost a shoulder to an owl beastman attack. Since then, theyâd taken up the center voluntarily.
One man with thick forearms kept glancing nervously overhead. If owls came, crows could too. Just because it was daytime didnât mean he let his guard down.
They werenât predicting beastmen behavior. They were focusing everything on holding the line. And Enkridâs guidance was becoming reality.
âDonât pull out just because itâs hard! Endure!â
They even had their own squad leaders now.
Some beastmen had tried poking into the gaps in formationâ
âNot happening.â
Brunhilt blocked them.
Natural talent shone. His spear shattered sunlight as it drove into a beastmanâs skull.
It was a simple thrust, but his wind-up was incredibly short. The wolf beastman facing him died before he could even flaunt his fangs.
Pivoting on his left foot, he twisted his torso and drove the spear through the beastmanâs hide.
More precisely, he pierced through the soft inside of the mouth rather than the tough hide.
The image of him yanking the spear back outâits tip emerging from the back of its headâwas dynamic and brutal.
Lifting himself into the air, Brunhilt kicked both feet off the beastmanâs shoulders and pulled the spear free.
What he lacked in raw strength, he made up for with explosive movement. He slammed the spear into the ground as he somersaulted and landed cleanly.
It was proof that his body control was exceptional.
âSomeone might say he's unnecessary.â
His heart thudded.
He remembered thinking that once, while watching people dying.
What if those who needed help had instead possessed the strength to protect themselves?
Even if you tossed a gold coin to a beggar, theyâd return to begging once it was spent. But if you taught the beggar how to work, theyâd learn to live through labor, not begging.
Even if I leave, the threat of beastmen remains.
Last night, the Ferryman had whispered it into his ear:
"Look. Say you help and then leave. What then? These people will die eventually. Can you walk away knowing that?â
Was it an attempt to find and stab at Enkridâs weakness?
Enkrid was unmoved. He would do what he could. After that, the choice was theirs.
He would give them deterrence, in accordance with the laws of the continent. This was the same principle used to establish frontier cities.
Kill beastmen again and again. Set milestones with blood and death. Declare territory.
It was territory claimed through strength.
You canât kill all the beastmen.
But these people had already stood up on their own. All they needed now was a bit of power.
Most didnât understand Enkridâs intent. But Harkventyo seemed to have caught on. Aitri figured it out long ago.
Brunhilt and a few others hadnât even thought that far.
âSomeone might say he's unnecessary.â
The same thought resurfaced again.
Heâd seen the charred corpse of a child. And the body of the mercenary whoâd died trying to protect herâhis head ripped apart.
Among the dying, Enkrid had once thought those thoughts.
And nowâ
âHah!â
He saw the ones who had fought off the beastmen, shouting their ki-haps. Not a single one of them had died.
Enduring.
Aitri had seen it right. Enkrid had made them endure.
That alone was enough.
From his perch in the trees, Enkridâs gaze turned toward a specific direction.
His senses, far superior even to most knights, had not missed the malicious gaze trailing him for days.
âYou plan to watch until I leave, huh?â
If there were ones like Aitri and Brunhilt among the humans, then there was a similar one among the beastmenâone who could think, strategize, and command.
That beastman was the core of all this.
Even if Enkrid couldnât kill all of them in one sweep, he could still deal with the troublesome ones.
The beastman horde was like dozens of colonies clustered together.
Each colony had a core beastman responsible for its movement.
If he killed just those few, the immediate threat would shrink drastically.
Enkrid stepped off the branch and flew.
Enkrid stepped off the branch and flew.
He leapt from tree to tree like a flying squirrelâonly far faster.
But just as he landed on the ground where there were no more stable footholdsâ
Two spotted leopard beastmen lunged at him from either side.
They had approached so silently that Enkrid didnât even sense them until they were right on top of him.
He felt the hairs on his back stand on end.
His instincts screamed a warning.
The moment he recognized it, he shifted his weight. The momentum of his sprint transferred into his left foot as he stomped and stopped.
Boom!
The ground exploded. Dirt, rocks, and twigs shot up to eye level.
Through the dust, claws from both leopards reached for his head and side.
They werenât just splitting left and rightâ
They were coordinating vertical and horizontal attacks.
Cunning bastards.
But that was all they had.
Enkrid didnât even move from his stopped stance. He simply extended his blades to both sides.
The sun was directly overhead, casting clear light.
The arc of the Three Iron moving in either direction painted a perfect circleâlike a second sun forming behind his back.
Instead of heat, it was the sharpness of the blade that scattered like light.
Squelch.
The sound that followed was soft.
He didnât even need to swing faster than sound.
He simply let the incoming momentum meet the blade and pushed it through.
Three Ironâs edge was more than sharp enough.
Enkrid slashed the one on his right with meteoric iron. The one on the left with black gold.
He cut, then sprinted again.
All of itâdone in a single breath.
Behind him, the two leopards collapsed to the earth, black blood and guts spilling everywhere.
As he launched forward again, it felt like a long line trailed behind him.
He could chase them using endurance alone, but that would take time.
Even if the people he left behind were enduring, they wouldnât be safe forever.
So he had to chase within a limited time.
Was that difficult?
No.
Not all bursts of force are the same. There are thin lines and thick ones.
What if you combined the burst method learned through Will with Ganggak, the technique of imbuing Will into your legs?
The result was a lighter, smoother body.
Trees bent and twisted beside him as he rushed past. His reflexes naturally scaled with his speed.
Which meantâno scratches, no cuts. No branches hitting his face.
Enkridâs sprint brought him face-to-face with a fox.
Rather than run and be caught from behind, it chose to stand and fight.
Smart.
The moment they faced off, more than a hundred fox beastmen surrounded him.
They hid in the shadows, gleaming eyes but no presence.
Techniques learned in the wild.
They say knights learned from fairiesâbut seeing these beastmen, Enkrid wondered if that was even true.
If fairies learned from the footsteps of predators, then wasnât it just as likely they had learned from beastmen instead?
He recalled a story Valphir Valmung once told him.
Humansâ
âLearned intimidation by watching monsters.â
If fairies learned from beastmen, then now, perhaps monsters and beastmen were learning by watching humans.
âWhat else lies within the Demon Realm?â
Suddenly, he was curious about the Demon Realm again.
The ones who fought thereânot just fragments, but the real Balrog.
The fox beastman hid blades in its tail and claws in its hands, but compared to what heâd faced today, this was easy.
Enkridâs Three Iron and Penna entered the ballroom.
With the sun as a chandelier and the beastmenâs black blood as the carpetâ
The stars of this ball were two swords.
Slash. Stab. Burst. Kill.
And when he returned to the villageâ
The people, their faces a mix of relief, awe, and shock, stared wide-eyed at him.
â......Bring water to wash.â
Harkventyo was the one who said it. Enkrid was soaked in black blood, a ghastly sight.
Still, no one rebuked him.
Enkrid sensed multiple staresânot just one.
Among the beastmen targeting this village, three more dangerous ones remained.
He didnât change his strategy.
Kill the key beastmen while the villagers held the line.
The beastman horde couldâve retreated at that point, but they didnât.
âTheyâre hoping for something.â
He could guess, but didnât ask.
Enkrid, in two more chases, killed a small but lightning-fast bear, and amidst a pack of five hundred hyenas and wild dogs moving as one, he cut down a single black dog.
The last one was a tiger. Its hide tougher than steel.
Until now, he had always been the one chasing.
But this last beastmanâwaited for him.
Growl.
âYou dreaming of becoming Beast King or something?â
Enkrid asked on instinct. Naturally, beastmen canât respond in human language. But the grrrr it let out felt like a yes.
When you see the essence of something without need for thought, memory, or deductionâthatâs called intuition.
Enkridâs intuition had long surpassed ordinary men and most knights.
It was the culmination of todayâs experience, his past, and the knowledge gained from battling inhuman monsters and demons.
Beast King.
He didnât know its name. But the tiger did dream of becoming king.
In the Pen-Hanil Mountains, even beastmen couldnât rest easy in their place as predators.
The tiger, now a beastman, dreamedâ
To claim the mountains as its territory. To race across the continent. To chew human flesh by morning, and drink fairy blood by night.
Grrr.
A bold and daring dream. And it couldâve come true.
What this tiger sought from this village was the ore hidden behind it.
If it could consume that, it would become something new.
If not for the human before itâ
If not for the others who had interferedâ
The reason this village had survived this long was because Enkrid had dealt with the other monsters attacking from the opposite front.
Enkrid didnât underestimate his opponent.
This one had unified beastmen beyond species. Reached the top. Changed the domain of the mountains.
Just as humans had knights, Beastmen could produce exceptional individuals too.
âThose among monsters who surpass the norm.â
The Demon Realm was full of such beings. Much like the one standing before him now.
The tigerâs shoulder muscles contracted. It didnât show outwardly, but his sixth sense caught it.
The moment it put force into its hind legsâits front paw fell from above.
While it was crouching, Enkrid hadnât realizedâbut now that it stood, it was bigger than a bear. And faster than the quick-handed bear heâd fought earlier.
The sound vanished. The air itself grew heavy, pressing down on /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ his shoulders.
It felt like fighting in a swamp. Time stretched out around him.
To break free of that pressure, he needed strength that surpassed human limits.
Enkrid squeezed every fiber of his muscles and added his Will. He swung Three Iron.
And just as the tiger raised its pawâit opened its mouth and breathed fire.
An unexpected move.