Eternally Regressing Knight Novel - Chapter 974
Chapter 974: Chapter 972 – In the Border Guard Too
Chapter 972 – In the Border Guard Too
‘Whoever moves first loses.’
The demon, a Lord of the Demonic Realms—the entity that styled itself as the ‘Pure White Destroyer’—thought exactly that.
Naturally, this assessment and attitude were aimed entirely at the human named Enkrid.
The hilarious irony was that if this human ‘Slayer of the Demonic Realms’ had been a clumsy amateur, all it would take was one of them stepping forward to brutally crush him, and this whole mess would be over.
‘But if we actually fight him, we will inevitably suffer massive losses to our own power.’
One Lord of the Demonic Realms was already dead, but the remaining five were still fiercely keeping each other in check.
Meaning, they absolutely could not afford to recklessly deplete their own strength.
It was exactly the same reason they hadn’t simply killed Beelrog and instead left him alone.
Only now, that human had completely taken Beelrog’s place.
So, what was the optimal play here?
He had initially intended to lend his strength when the Empire and the Kingdom clashed, but those insidious bastards who shared dominion over this realm would undeniably wait for the exact moment that human weakened to strike.
And the result?
Driven entirely by the desire to weaken him, they had seeded their minions everywhere and pulled their strings, yet absolutely nothing had gone exactly as any of them desired.
“Shall we fight?” his subordinate asked.
They were inside a castle painstakingly constructed by stacking pristine white stones one by one.
The Pure White Castle; the place where he resided.
The Pure White Destroyer currently stood within the grand audience chamber of the castle he had built.
Despite being called ‘pure white’, it wasn’t truly a pristine white.
Thickly layered with dust and the grime of countless years, it looked far closer to a bright, pallid gray.
Between the towering colonnades, it was a massive, empty space completely devoid of stairs, containing nothing but a single chair and a large, thick rug woven from the pelts of demonic beasts.
“No. We simply continue as we always have.”
Even if they lost one pawn, they would simply gain another.
That was the fundamental way entities known as demons fought their wars.
***
When Enkrid arrived in Naurill, exactly two minions initially revealed themselves—meaning exactly two Lords of the Demonic Realms had actively reached out.
The second demon was currently violently furrowing his brow.
His ultimate objective had been to strike after the Pure White Destroyer made his move.
He had planned to publicly expose the Pure White Destroyer’s pathetic schemes and offer his assistance to the humans in killing him.
He had actually put quite a bit of effort into orchestrating this operation.
‘And he refuses to even engage him?’
How dare he?
It put him in a foul mood.
But that didn’t mean he was willing to step forward himself; the risk was far too great.
If that was the case, his only option was to simply sit back and watch the show.
The demon bearing the moniker of the ‘Burning Crow’ gently stroked his horns and slowly descended from his throne forged entirely of bone.
Instead of fur, dense, overlapping bird feathers completely covered his legs, rustling with a sharp swish, swish sound with every step.
It was a terrifying sound that explicitly signaled the texture of those feathers was fundamentally different from that of an ordinary bird.
Aside from these two, the ‘Promiser of Plenty’ and the ‘Mistrustful Loner’ hadn’t even attempted to open a dialogue, yet the minions they had meticulously planted everywhere were currently being ruthlessly slaughtered.
The final Lord, the ‘Father of the Dead’, simply smacked his lips in contemplation.
A bizarre, highly precarious balance of power had been established.
Right now, it was incredibly difficult to recklessly lay a hand on a single human.
Furthermore, hadn’t another swordsman recently breached the borders of the Demonic Realm and started wreaking absolute havoc?
‘Is this an era of turbulence?’
Just as it had been during the era he was born, the violent winds of change were undeniably blowing once more.
Was this an opportunity?
‘Ascension.’
Every single one of them harbored the exact same long-cherished desire.
To achieve Ascension felt exactly like a massive, lumbering bear desperately trying to squeeze through the eye of a needle.
That was the exact physical sensation they felt when contemplating it.
Therefore, it was an absolute certainty that not all of them would be able to cross over.
While competition was certainly one way to go about it, the absolute most efficient method was to completely eradicate the others before the opportunity for Ascension even arrived.
To achieve that end, they would use any means necessary.
They wouldn’t hesitate at any method.
If it meant slaughtering every single living creature on the continent, they would do it without a second thought.
If that alone had been enough to secure their goal, they would have turned the entire continent into a blazing sea of fire ages ago.
Applying that exact same logic…
‘If we can just shatter that bastard’s mind…’
Losing a few pathetic minions wasn’t something worth mourning.
‘Even after witnessing the sheer, grotesque depths of human malice, will you still sing praises to humanity?’
The demon asked the empty air, silently waiting for an answer.
***
Jaxen stared blankly as the man kneeling before him openly wept and sobbed.
“Please, I beg of you, spare my life! What exactly did I do to deserve this?! Isn’t this what absolutely everyone does?! Tell me! This was the only possible way I could save my child!”
“Do you think there are more inherently good people in this world? Or do you think there are more evil people?”
One day, his master had casually asked him that exact question.
Jaxen hadn’t answered carelessly.
After agonizing over it for two full days, the only answer he could muster was, ‘I don’t really know’.
Hearing that, his master had burst into hearty laughter.
“Yeah, honestly, neither do I.”
He vividly remembered how violently the urge to punch his master directly in the face had flared up inside him that day.
“If it looks like there are too many evil bastards around, just thin the herd a bit. That solves it.”
His master’s thought process was undeniably bizarre, but it was incredibly refreshing.
He lived exactly as a man who treated assassination merely as a trade should.
“If you eventually decide to walk a different path than mine, you can just approach the problem differently.”
Perhaps, from the very beginning, his master had perfectly anticipated that Jaxen wouldn’t remain a mere assassin forever.
He suddenly thought of his master.
The man weeping uncontrollably before him had just attempted to brutally slaughter an entire family, desperately claiming it was the only way to save his own child.
Were those tears genuine?
They certainly looked like it.
This man absolutely wasn’t skilled enough to deceive Jaxen’s hyper-tuned senses.
He was merely a pathetic human who had eagerly lapped up the sweet honey a demon offered, completely unaware that he had been corrupted.
“You do realize the whites of your eyes have completely vanished, don’t you?” Jaxen asked coldly.
“Wh-what are you talking about?”
This bastard had gone far beyond mere corruption; he was actively possessed by an evil spirit.
He was literally cultivating an evil spirit within his own body.
Jaxen’s razor-sharp senses perfectly detected the intangible entity—a cluster forged entirely of concentrated malice—firmly entrenched within the man.
The man looked genuinely bewildered.
All he had done was casually sell some information to a demon and run a few trivial errands in exchange for some petty benefits, right?
So he killed a few people?
Given the brutal era they lived in, wasn’t that completely normal?
Was he the only one doing it?
Of course not!
What about murdering a powerless child or a woman?
Nobody knew about that.
He had made absolutely sure no one found out.
So didn’t that mean he was innocent?
Morality?
Listen here, what kind of bullshit are you spouting?
If you’re strong, you can do whatever the hell you want, and if you’re weak, you get crushed.
Isn’t that the fundamental law of the world?
Those were the exact justifications violently spewing from deep within the man’s heart.
Although Jaxen couldn’t physically hear the words, he felt as if he had heard every single one of them perfectly.
The malice and sheer selfishness entrenched within the man had grown exponentially until, eventually, murdering a few innocent people felt completely justified to him.
Jaxen stared down at the man with utterly apathetic eyes.
“Please.”
The man desperately begged.
Using his own child as an excuse, he desperately begged to save his own life.
‘He makes me sick.’
It was his honest, unfiltered sentiment.
When exactly had this specific operation started?
It all began with Krais’s letter.
Upon receiving that letter, the very first person to mobilize was Edin Molsan.
He perfectly understood the specific vulnerabilities inherent to a city like Rockfreed.
“I suggest you temporarily attach the entirety of the Gilpin Guild directly under my command. The moment official soldiers march in, every single rat will desperately scramble to hide their true identities. We need eyes embedded deep within the populace, watching from the shadows before that happens. In that regard, the Gilpin Guild is the absolute perfect organization for conducting covert surveillance without raising suspicion.”
He rapidly outlined the objective, his argument, and his reasoning in a single breath.
It was a flawlessly articulated proposal.
“Proceed exactly as you have suggested. If we simply march troops straight in, there’s no telling what horrific stunts those bastards might pull.”
Abnaier agreed.
He was one of the individuals officially granted command authority in Krais’s absence.
It was a strategic meeting that included Leona, and the sole subject of everything currently being discussed was the city of Rockfreed.
It was the very city she had built by betting the absolute rise and fall of her merchant company, and her entire life.
Her face was etched with a deeply grave expression.
If there were multiple demonic minions secretly operating within the city, there was no telling what kind of apocalyptic disaster might unfold.
However, just because she was terrified didn’t mean they could afford to just sit back and watch.
Abnaier continued.
“Please summon Sir Jaxen.”
Krais prepared for absolutely everything to a truly horrifying, obsessive degree.
Driven entirely by his chronic, borderline pathological anxiety, he had meticulously preordained the exact countermeasures to be taken if a scenario exactly like this ever occurred.
From one perspective, it was undeniably brilliant; from another, it was pure, unadulterated psychotic paranoia.
Yet, seeing how effectively his plans worked every single time, one couldn’t help but praise his terrifying foresight.
Although, since their enemies were entities who constantly pulled off entirely illogical stunts, his predictions lining up perfectly wasn’t necessarily something to celebrate.
“We need you to infiltrate the city and personally oversee the eradication operation.”
Jaxen casually nodded his agreement.
Abnaier and Edin flawlessly filled the massive void left by Krais’s absence.
Ten elite swordsmen—handpicked even from the highly selective ranks of the Border Guard—covertly infiltrated Rockfreed, while Vengeance, the Commander of the City Guard, used the excuse of conducting massive group training drills to meticulously scrutinize absolutely everyone entering or exiting the Border Guard headquarters.
Simultaneously, the Gilpin Guild mobilized, and Jaxen slipped silently into Rockfreed under the cover of night.
Naturally, his subordinates were right there with him.
“There are several highly suspicious individuals. However, systematically verifying them one by one will consume far too much time.”
That was the message relayed by the messenger Edin had dispatched.
“Then this sounds exactly like a task for Sister Theresa.”
Audin had suggested.
If a heavily armed Knight like him personally moved, the minions would easily notice.
While concealing his presence and moving covertly wasn’t inherently difficult for him, Theresa and Jaxen could execute the mission far more quietly and efficiently.
And that was exactly what they did.
“It’s a beautiful night for a song.”
Even on ordinary days, Theresa frequently crossed over to Rockfreed or Green Pearl, bringing joy to the people by singing in the bustling streets.
She sang her songs subtly imbued with gentle divine power, and every single person who exhibited a visceral reaction to that holy energy was instantly added to a kill list.
From that point forward, Geor’s Daggers moved much more aggressively.
They meticulously investigated every minor behavior, every subtle slip of the tongue, and every single associate of the suspected individuals.
And so, some were personally verified and quietly assassinated by their own hands.
Others were brutally swept up by the ten swordsmen who had covertly infiltrated from the Border Guard.
“How the hell did they find out?!”
Among the targets, there were a few anomalies—bastards whose fingernails had grown to the length of full fingers, or those who had fully encased their bodies in heavy steel armor corrupted by demonic artifacts.
But…
“They’re a lot softer than Sir Audin.”
“Comparing these pieces of trash to him is an insult.”
The ten swordsmen deployed here were directly under the command of the Madmen Knights.
They were individuals who had been brutally beaten into shape by Ragna and personally refined by Audin’s grueling training.
Against swordsmen of that caliber, pathetic trash who had permanently ruined their own bodies by accepting demonic corruption didn’t even qualify as a proper warm-up.
The exceptionally rare minions who actually possessed the ability to cast spells or showcased extraordinary combat prowess were personally handled by Theresa.
Over in the city of Green Pearl, Ropord and Fel executed a remarkably similar operation, systematically rooting out and eradicating the minions hiding there.
Because their grip and control over the city were already absolute, it wasn’t even a particularly difficult task.
And the man currently kneeling before Jaxen was one of the few remaining minions uncovered during that meticulous purge.
“Forgive me.”
The eyes of the man speaking violently rolled backward into his skull.
The flesh of his face grotesquely contorted and twisted; his eyes violently sank downward, while his lips were sickeningly yanked up toward the right.
Remaining in that horrifying state, his mouth wrenched open, revealing his true, inner thoughts.
“You won’t even forgive trash like me? But you know perfectly well that trash like me is the absolute norm in this world, don’t you?! The world is inherently evil! The only reason you look at something ‘good’ and praise it is precisely because you are inherently evil yourself! It’s pure instinct! Humans, giants—it doesn’t fucking matter, they’re all exactly the same! The same! THEY ARE ALL EXACTLY THE SAME!”
Jaxen swung his dagger, heavily imbued with Will, cleanly severing the back of the man’s neck.
Squelch.
Pitch-black smoke violently erupted from the severed wound.
Dark blood rapidly poured out.
KREEEEEEEK.
The evil spirit that had kept spewing its twisted philosophy until the absolute bitter end rapidly faded into nothingness.
Watching it dissolve, Jaxen suddenly thought of another man he had encountered right before he met this one.
He was a man with a remarkably neat appearance who made his living buying and selling secondhand clothes.
“If you kill me, Lone will live, won’t she? Then it’s fine. I will die.”
He had stared desperately at his unconscious fiancée.
He completely understood that she had been hopelessly ensnared by a horrifying curse cast by a demonic minion.
While the unconscious woman wasn’t exactly a breathtaking beauty capable of toppling kingdoms, to him, she was his absolute other half, an irreplaceable companion he would never find again.
The man violently proved that exact fact.
“If my death means Lone gets to live, then I will gladly do it.”
There were no tears.
Only a terrifyingly solid resolve and an absolutely unwavering Will.
“It said if she murdered the person she loved most, she would be freed from the curse. So I will die for her.”
Those were the exact words the evil spirit had gleefully spat right before it collapsed—or rather, right before Jaxen suddenly appeared from the shadows and brutally struck the back of the woman’s neck, instantly knocking her out.
That man wasn’t a minion; he was merely an innocent victim caught in a horrific, sadistic game orchestrated by one.
Jaxen hadn’t said a single word; he simply waited for Theresa to arrive.
This specific type of problem wasn’t his area of expertise.
If the man’s horrifying assertion was genuinely the only way to break the curse…
‘Do you wholeheartedly support a dream like that too?’
Jaxen internally asked a question to a man who wasn’t even present.
Soon after, Theresa arrived, gently placed her hand upon the unconscious woman’s head, and sang.
Under the pure divine power radiating from her song, the evil spirit violently melted away exactly like frost exposed to the blazing morning sun.
“Is Lone… is she going to be okay?”
He was a man actively bleeding from a gaping stab wound in his stomach.
While it wasn’t an immediately fatal injury, he completely ignored his own agonizing wound and only asked about her.
“She will be perfectly fine, Brother.”
Theresa replied warmly, gently sprinkling the soothing light of healing magic over his bleeding stomach.
Watching that unfold, Jaxen felt as though he finally understood the answer to the question his master had asked him all those years ago.
‘I don’t actually need to know.’
Because regardless of the answer, he was going to live his life exactly however the hell he wanted to anyway.
Why did it matter whether there were more good people or evil people in the world?
‘Now that I think about it…’
His Captain seemed to have already figured out that exact answer long ago.
“Why are you trying so hard to protect them?”
It was a deeply loaded, implicit question.
He had blurted it out purely out of sheer disbelief while watching Enkrid train like an absolute madman.
The war was essentially over, he had officially become a Knight, and if he truly wanted to, he could easily walk away and live a much more comfortable, significantly better life.
Yet he refused.
“Turns out, there are actually a lot of genuinely good people in this world.”
Enkrid didn’t just look at one single, ugly facet of the world.
Because he had witnessed the absolute worst, he was also capable of seeing the good.
Whether those two forces perfectly balanced each other out, or if one side drastically outweighed the other, he didn’t know.
He had already chosen his path.
And Jaxen was exactly the same.
‘Regardless of whatever the Captain thinks…’
He personally found it all incredibly entertaining now.
“Thank you so much.”
The man had wept openly, expressing his profound gratitude.
He had looked Jaxen straight in the eye and said exactly that.
“I hope you find happiness.”
Jaxen replied quietly and turned to leave.
As he turned his back, his master’s daughter—and his current lover—asked him a question.
“Happiness? I’d really like some of that too, you know?”
“Yeah. We’ll be happy too.”
“I was just joking around, why did you have to make it so serious?”
Jaxen smiled.
The once cold, apathetic assassin now smiled remarkably easily.
“Why do you keep getting more and more charming the longer I know you? Whatever you had planned, just completely scrap any idea of going back to your own quarters tonight.”
His lover declared boldly.
All of this unfolded precisely while Enkrid was brutally slaughtering a Master of Astrael.
***
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***
If you enjoy the series and want to get more chapters early, head over to https://payhip.com/Samowek
Next 100 chapters – 25e [Be sure to message me on discord for any information]
[SHOP BEST BUY] – 50e – Every chapter translated – Latest WN-1120+ daily chapters from monday to friday for a month.
-KNIGHT – Cost 20e – Chapters 1050-1120 + daily chapters from Monday to Friday for a month
I welcome you to join our discord https://discord.gg/RY7BbJpeAZ
**ANY INFO ONLY APPLIES TO THE LATEST CHAPTER HERE ON WEBNOVEL**