WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 24: The Saintess and the Woodcutter (2)
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* * *
Ivan slowly stepped toward the ring.
Step. Step.
They were ordinary footsteps, yet there was something about their silence that drew everyone's attention.
The students' first impression was simple.
That old man sure knew how to put on an intimidating act.
Even when Ivan drew an axe from his waist, they did not think much of it. After all, this was the Knight Department.
Most students believed in one simple rule: the sword was the king of all weapons. Most of the time, that was true.
It was easy to carry, versatile, and well suited to refined technique.
An axe, on the other hand, was simple. Its center of gravity lay in its axe head, so every attack had to travel in one direction.
In other words, its trajectory was easy to read and interrupt.
That was why most of the students looked down on axes.
"Enrika."
Ivan stood still on the ring as he spoke. His voice was heavy.
"Yes?"
"How far am I allowed to go?"
"Just don't kill anyone. The Saintess is here, after all."
Patricia, the Saintess of the Hero Party, was currently the head of Saint Yansk University's Theology Department.
In other words, a trauma specialist better than any healing potion was always nearby.
Good.
Ivan nodded.
"Erikson."
"I knew it. Seeing you this close confirms it. You still have the same face from back then."
"If I win, you'll do volunteer work."
"...What?"
This man was an intelligence agent from the Droan Kingdom.
On the surface, he was a new Knight Department student. Officially, he was Aesidis's personal bodyguard. In truth, he was someone Great King Einar could use as a spy.
Which meant that, at any time, he could join hands with either the Princess faction or the Crown Prince faction as an unofficial diplomat.
He was a variable.
Until Aesidis's course of action was decided, Ivan needed to keep him tied down. The easiest way was to keep him close.
Every hour after school, except for the time he had to guard Aesidis.
"I'll have you do laundry at the orphanage."
Volunteer work was good for character education. That was an undeniable truth.
Looking after orphans did wonders for cultivating one's character.
This was an opportunity to teach civilization to this Droan Berserker Huscarl as well.
"What bullshit."
"Come."
Ivan raised his axe.
The two warriors, both in their forties and taking a first-year university practical class, no longer needed to talk.
* * *
When the two first clashed, the freshmen were somewhat confused.
What was this? Why were they fighting so well?
-CLAAANG!!
Then, as their two axes threw sparks at each other, the freshmen were horrified.
What? How were they moving like that? Did anyone see that? No one?
-CLAAANG! KRRRAK!!
By the time the strongest freshman, a man in his forties, had fallen to his knees and begun panting, the students were finally able to properly look at the man still standing straight.
Vivid blue eyes and a blank expression.
Even after moving so violently, his breathing remained calm enough that he did not so much as tremble.
"Huff... Petrovich... As expected... Little Ivan. Huff...! What the hell are you plotting here...?"
"Safety management."
Ivan passed by Mord, who had been reduced to a rag.
Safety... management...?
Large question marks appeared in the students' minds again.
Then what the hell had they thought safety was until now...?
"Next."
"Uh... Professor, isn't the test range a little too broad? It's our first class today..."
The young man who had flinched at Ivan's words raised his hand.
It was the noble youth who had mocked Ivan earlier.
Enrika grinned and nodded.
"Looks like we've decided who's next. Come on, we're short on time. Hurry it up."
"Uh... Uh..."
No one wanted to go up onto the ring, so with the help of his kind classmates, the young man was dragged onto it.
Breaking out in a cold sweat, he stumbled back.
"Come."
Ivan raised his axe.
* * *
"Come on, if you can just land one sword thrust on our teaching assistant, I'll give you an A+ right away. How's that? Hm? Or better yet... I'm in a good mood! I'll even give you a one-on-one lesson with a gorgeous instructor who's still an active member of the Hero Party!"
Ivan did not bother pointing out the error in Enrika's last statement.
He was a sensible man.
Instead, he raised his axe.
He was a man who took recruit training seriously.
"Next."
After they cleared away five corpses, not really, no one stepped onto the ring.
"Come on! If you all give up now, you'll all fail together! Hm? How about this? If you all get Fs and have to retake the class, next year's class will start exactly like this too. Better to take the beating sooner, right?"
The students clenched their teeth as they watched Enrika smile brightly.
All right. They could not be sure, but...
At least they would not die.
If they succeeded in attacking just once, they were guaranteed a high grade.
This was a three-credit required major course. It would obviously have a significant effect on their grade averages, and Knight Department students were competitive by nature.
They were chicks who had grown up being called martial prodigies and swordsmanship geniuses back home.
Just once.
Only once!
The freshmen did not give up until they had cleared away thirty corpses, not really.
"Next."
* * *
At last, it was Yuri's turn.
Yuri trembled as she held her sword. Never before, in all the time she had wielded a blade, had it felt so heavy.
She took one brave step onto the ring, where dense killing intent swirled, where a chilly wind blew over the bloodstains smeared across the floor.
Yet every time she looked at the man in front of her, she shrank back again.
His shabby work clothes and the old towel around his neck kept reminding her of something.
"Yuri Frank."
"Yek! Y-Yes?!"
Ivan stared quietly into Yuri's eyes.
His sharp gaze seemed to claw through her mind.
Yuri's pupils shook wildly from side to side. Her head spun, and strength kept leaving her hands.
"Top student of the Knight Department."
"Yes!!"
"Lee Yuri?"
"...Hic?!"
"Kim Yuri? Park Yuri? Choi Yuri?"
"I-I don't really understand what you mean...?"
"In Krasilov, Yuri is a man's name."
"Yeees... I have my reasons, so..."
"Come."
Ivan raised his axe.
"We can discuss your reasons later."
"No, no, no! I-I want to forfeit. Is that okay? I'll fail! I'll just fail the class! Aaaah!!"
Before Yuri could drop her sword, Ivan charged.
She instinctively raised her sword and deflected the axe blade, swallowing the scream that threatened to burst from her throat.
It was coiling around her. Like a snake...!
The axe blade climbed along her sword, as if it would bite into the back of her neck at any moment!
-CLANG!
She had already watched the same attack reduce the students before her to rags.
Even so, she could not get used to the assault.
Ivan's axe seemed to have reached some higher realm.
Each blow was not especially heavy. Mord Erikson had hit harder.
But Ivan was fast.
The instant she let her guard down, she was already tangled up in his attacks.
He knew every possible way to use an axe.
He did not simply swing it. He struck the blade, used centrifugal force to close in again, brought it down, then immediately drove in from an angle.
-KRRRRAK!!
He used the curve of the axe head to drag her sword in, then twisted the handle and tore her blade free.
If she dropped her sword from that impact, it was over.
Ivan looked down at Yuri, who had fallen to her knees, then nodded.
"You fight well."
"Thank... you..."
"I'll be watching. Next."
Yuri staggered down from the ring on weak legs.
Miraculously, she had not been injured, but that only made her feel that the monster had gone easy on her.
She stared at Ivan with a terrified face, then squeezed her eyes shut.
* * *
'What the hell are Kim, Lee, Park, and Choi supposed to mean! Wait, Korean? He's Korean...?'
Lee Yuri had been an illustrator.
The last job she had worked on was a freelance commission for an academy adult game.
It was called [Masterpiece 3].
It was the kind of game where students ran away from a gardener who found out their weaknesses and did... indecent... very, very indecent things to them.
That gardener had been a middle-aged man in old work clothes, with a towel around his neck.
And now Yuri had been dropped into that goddamn world.
Right after staying up all night to send the first rough draft of her commission.
A world where a bearded gardener with an axe glared greedily at female students. It was a misunderstanding.
'If he finds out... I'll have terrible... terrible things done to me...!'
Trembling, she remembered what had happened to the students whose weaknesses had been exposed.
The gardener was watching her.
If he learned that she was also from the same hometown and that she too was a transmigrator, the genre might change into a blackmail story through some means or another.
She was... the protagonist...
Well, of course she was. She was an orphan, a full-scholarship student, and a swordsmanship genius.
How else could an illustrator who had spent her whole life drawing possibly become someone like that?
Of course she had to be the protagonist...
She wanted to go home.
* * *
Isabelle lasted three exchanges, while Oscar lasted two.
That put the rankings at Mord, Yuri, Isabelle, and Oscar.
Mord was not a student to begin with, so that was one thing. Still, their relative ability had turned out almost exactly as Ivan expected.
His eye for talent had not dulled yet.
Satisfied, Ivan nodded.
"Are you smiling right now?"
"It's a misunderstanding."
"It looked like you smiled."
"I naturally have a smiling face."
"Pfft...! You lunatic...!"
At the voice coming from in front of him, Ivan had to compose his expression again.
Enrika stood beside him with both hands raised, hiccuping as she fought back a burst of laughter.
Ivan was a sensible man, so he did not react to his older teacher's ridiculous behavior.
While Yuri was shaking in fear, Ivan and Enrika were being scolded by the Saintess.
That was the price of cramming fifty patients into the Theology Department chair's office.
* * *
Footnotes:
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