WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 772: Mixing What Belongs to Elves and Humans

──────

At her cry, both witches immediately raised their hands, and a single gesture wrapped their bodies in a black barrier. Jaxon did not stop.

More precisely, he had already drawn the thing needed to deal with that barrier.

The moment the black barrier formed, Jaxon's left hand swept naturally across his own chest, and a short dagger appeared in his grip.

'Every situation, like water flowing.'

A method aligned with the Sword of Chance.

More than that, this was a situation he had anticipated. The insight born from experience had already accounted for this moment.

A witch of this caliber would never just stand there and take a blade unprepared.

He held the drawn dagger in a reverse grip, closed his fingers tightly around it, and pressed his thumb against the pommel as if pinning it in place. A grip built for driving straight down.

He handled relics. To be more specific, he was the best in the Madman Knights at handling relics and Spell Objects.

So what he now held was a dagger made specifically to tear through spell-forged barriers. It was a replica of the relic known by the alias Spell Breaker. The blade itself had been hammered and forged by a dwarf artisan, and the runes etched across it were Esther's work.

The handle curved to match the shape of Jaxon's hand. That had been the dwarf's thoughtfulness.

The base was Valerian Steel with Nuairian Wrought Iron mixed in, making it hard and sharp enough on its own, though it was a tool with a clear and singular purpose.

His thoughts were brief. His movements were fast.

He had not even locked eyes with the red-eyed witch yet. With an impassive gaze, Jaxon drove the reverse-gripped dagger into the Veil.

Thud!

The blade punched into the Veil, and with a sharp crack, a shockwave rolled across the black surface and shoved him back. It felt like a bear beastfolk throwing a full-body check.

A telekinetic spell that automatically repelled anyone who struck it had triggered.

He could have held his ground by force, but Jaxon went with the push instead. As he did, he tucked himself low, slipping into the shadow carved out by sparks from the severed fire-lightning.

Only then did the red-eyed witch notice him. Her neck still angled down, she dragged her gaze up with a vicious glare.

How dare this thing?

That was what her eyes said.

A moment later, a crackling sound rose, and the dagger blade buried in the Veil started to split.

What now?

The red-eyed witch could not finish the thought.

Bang!

The instant she registered that the embedded blade was fracturing, it burst. It had been a single-use item from the start.

Something that shattered and exploded under this level of impact should have been dangerously unstable, but Esther had cleverly stabilized that part with her own skill.

Two conditions had to be met for the dagger to detonate.

It had to be swung with force above a certain threshold, and it had to strike something composed of magical power.

Both conditions were now met.

The tradeoff was that materials like true silver could not be used in its construction, but the effect was satisfying enough.

The dagger burst, and the Veil broke with it. There was no sound of a spell shattering. The black Veil scattered like shards from a shattered window and dissolved into the dark.

As the Veil vanished, fragments of the broken dagger struck the witch's body, but to no effect. The gem-hardened flesh had more than enough hardness to flick aside shards of blade.

Even so.

Crack. Crrrk.

What it could not withstand was the Stiletto arriving at her throat before she even saw the assassin move.

Naturally, that blade belonged to Jaxon, the same one who had driven in the Veil-breaking dagger and been shoved back by the telekinetic pulse.

He had hidden himself in the shadow, dropped to a crouch low enough to nearly brush the ground with his chest, sprinted in, and circled behind her again, all by the time the defensive field shattered.

Put simply: he rode the telekinetic shockwave, bled off the force, melted into the darkness and went low, then charged the moment the Veil broke and drew the Stiletto across her throat. Easy to say. A different matter to do.

Not even enough time had passed for Enkrid to breathe three times after cutting through the fire-lightning.

One of the two witches had a dangling neck. Black blood ran through the cut flesh, not nearly as much as a normal person would bleed. The viscous, tar-thick blood clung to her skin and slid down in streaks. It looked like pine resin.

Pine resin, though, did not carry that fishy stench.

"Unleash your power!"

The Apostle saw the severed neck and screamed.

The red-eyed witch, her throat half-cut, let out a rumbling, gargling, guttural sound. Black bloody foam began to rise through the gap in her neck. The blood that had been flowing started to bubble.

Jaxon had already seen the black blood before he cut her. He had watched her retch and vomit earlier.

Which meant he had gone in knowing she was not an ordinary human.

So as he drew the blade across her throat, he simultaneously produced three more daggers and planted them in her body. One in the stomach, one in the back of her skull, one in the thigh.

The whole sequence looked as though he were steadying her, or smoothing out her clothes.

Then Jaxon danced. It was a man-killing art he had never shown even in sparring.

The first move was to grip the daggers buried in her stomach and skull and pull.

Rrrip.

Not to Audin's standard, not to Enkrid's, but Jaxon carried a level of raw strength that went beyond the ordinary.

He knew how to layer Will on top of that trained muscle.

The buried daggers carved black trails across the witch's body. Dark resin poured from those lines. He did not pull the blades free after cutting. He dragged each one roughly three handspans and let go.

In the original man-killing art, you drag the dagger back out and bury it somewhere else. He had modified the technique.

More honestly, there had been no time to pull them out.

Between the black bloody foam, a hand tipped with sharp points erupted from her sliced neck, grown straight from the wound.

It lunged for Jaxon's throat. The nails, honed to a fine edge, looked sharp enough to punch through a decent iron plate.

The red-eyed witch had been confident this hand could pierce a block of hardest iron, given it connected. That was the condition, of course.

Jaxon released the two daggers in his hands and slipped the attack, and even then he showed something remarkable.

He dodged at that close range on pure instinct. The nails tore through empty air, and his hand was already closing around the handle of the dagger planted in her thigh.

His posture had dropped low, almost as if he were wrapping his arms around her leg.

This time it was a hammer grip, not a reverse grip. The five fingers of Jaxon's right hand locked tightly around the handle, and with the witch at the center, Jaxon spun once around her.

The movement was as fast as a squirrel bolting from a predator. An afterimage bloomed around her and was gone.

Crunch.

The blade was still buried in the thigh as he rotated, so the blood that poured and the leg left half-severed were inevitable.

He wrenched the dagger out of the half-amputated thigh and drove it into her other leg.

With each new wound, the witch's body sprouted something else: hands, feet, fangs honed to needle points. Any recognizable human shape had long since vanished.

Jaxon did not stop, no matter how she changed.

His dance included gripping, dragging, slashing, and stabbing. He stood his ground and butchered the witch's transforming, black-foam-drenched body.

By the end of it, her throat was cut, her legs were torn free, and half her innards were spilled before her full transformation could complete.

When the storm of movement finally stilled, the red-eyed witch had become a body less than half the weight it had been. With only one limb remaining, her left hand, and on that hand only the index and middle fingers, she dragged herself across the floor.

"Li-"

Whatever she meant to say next would never be known.

Thunk.

Jaxon drew one more blade, about the length of a forearm, and drove it through the back of her skull to mark her grave.

That mouth had already been torn open and regrown on her back by then, and Jaxon's blade pierced straight through it. The doubled row of jagged teeth made it plain this had never been an ordinary human.

One witch was dead.

"AAAH!"

The watching Apostle screamed, and a crystal-armored mass began slamming its legs against the ground.

A Death Knight, an imitation knight made from a modified body.

For some people, it might have been a threat, the stuff of nightmares.

But the ones it was up against were Ragna, Fell, Ropord, Audin, Teresa, and Ruagarne.

"We just have to cut it all down," Fell said, stepping forward with an easy stride. As Fell moved, the sword rose, ready to come down in the same motion. Fell carried the knack of Vortex drilled into the body through countless repetitions.

The crystal armor knight displayed knight-level force built from its modified body.

The thing that had been stomping the ground with heavy thuds turned into a streak, afterimage trailing, as it charged. A sudden change in speed. Fell had stepped forward just before it kicked off and brought the sword down.

Matching that shift in speed, Fell accelerated the descending sword as though yanking it downward.

Crack!

The most terrifying thing about a crystal armor Demon Creature was that it did not slow its attack even as its own body broke apart.

When Fell's Idol Slayer split the crystal armor knight's skull and lodged in its chest, and the soul inside was a breath away from being scattered by the Idol Slayer, the crystal sword in the thing's hand was already flying at Fell's throat. A savagely fast strike.

For Fell, who had already committed full force to a single blow, it was a strike nearly impossible to predict or dodge.

Fell flinched back in an instant. If a blade was going to hit anyway, it might as well hit somewhere that would cause less damage.

A snap decision, but it turned out to be unnecessary.

Fell was not alone here.

Clang!

The dwarf had made it and called it something close to a masterwork sword.

Ropord thrust a blade out and caught the crystal sword. The crystal sword struck the extended blade and stopped cold.

Ropord felt both arms ring with the impact. There had been no choice but to block and endure it through sheer force.

Redirecting the force at all would have sent the strike into Fell and left a fine new scar.

"You owe me," Ropord said.

Fell straightened the tucked neck and pulled the sword free.

The crystal armor, which had served briefly as a scabbard, crumbled to the floor and scattered.

Whatever had been inside was gone. The crystal armor turned to lumps of rock and rolled uselessly across the ground.

Fell looked the chunks over. "I'll forget what you said earlier."

Ropord caught the meaning immediately.

"Sworn promise?"

"I swear it."

"Good. We're square."

Ropord had made some remark about having a charm that bewitched even witches, which had given Fell a hold on Ropord, and now Fell was letting it go.

If that bastard Fell had kept digging at it, Ropord would have been hearing about it for months.

No, not just months. Fell might have brought it up again whenever Ropord was about to forget it.

Not a bad trade for one sword thrust.

There were more crystal armor knights. There were more than ten in all.

Looking at the actual internal construction, they were not true Death Knights but bodies rebuilt with Evil Spirits seeded inside and then soaked in potions.

Enkrid and the others had no way of knowing that.

They only recognized that these were not easy opponents.

"That sword!"

The Apostle of the Red Foot was hit by one surprise after another. Fell's sword, a blade that could cut down and kill Evil Spirits.

It appeared to strike at the crystal armor knights' weakness.

The shock lasted only a moment. The Apostle had work to do.

"All of you, get out here!"

At the shout, more Demon Creatures poured from every direction in waves.

They came one or two at a time, and they came in mobs of dozens at once.

Ruagarne took in the sight and swung the flame whip and Loop Sword, one in each hand, cracking them out.

The crystal armor knights were one thing, but this lot looked genuinely strange too. An Ogre with three hands, a Troll with a horn growing near its navel, these were Demon Creatures she had never seen before.

There was even a Ghoul that had three legs but could not keep its balance, so it held one leg up as it ran.

What in the world are these?

She had that thought, but satisfying the curiosity would have to wait.

It was not pressing enough to demand an answer right now.

These were the Apostle's personal collection from inside the thornwood fortress, spilling out all at once, but to everyone here they looked like nothing more than things to kill.

While Ruagarne focused on her own work, Sinar moved as though she had already chosen her opponent from the start, planting herself in front of the corrupted spirit.

The corrupted spirit set their longbow on the ground and drew their sword. A smooth ring, then a sharp tap.

The sword struck the band wrapped around the scabbard on the way out, announcing its presence.

It looked like a Needle Blade, but the tip was curved, shaped perfectly for tearing flesh. Because of that shape, the only way to draw it was to strike the scabbard band first. Even then, the final motion required pulling the sword slightly forward, and the corrupted spirit did exactly that as they opened their mouth.

"Have you come to become nourishment for the Cursed Ground? You low-grade, unevolved lesser kin?"

The corrupted spirit knew how to run their mouth. The problem was their target. Sinar was Enkrid's fiancee, by her own claim, and an elf who had spent a long stretch of time at his side.

Calm as ever, the elf's mouth opened.

"......Nourishment? Me?"

Elves could not lie, but she knew exactly how to get under someone's skin.

Sinar shrugged, and it did not particularly suit her, then spread the hand not holding the Leaf Blade palm-up and swept it lightly to the side, as if inviting her opponent to look around.

Take a look at the situation.

It was plain to anyone with eyes who was winning here. So wouldn't you be the one becoming nourishment, not me?

That was the meaning.

Leaving it all unsaid and letting the other party guess from a single gesture was advanced provocation by any measure.

"Me-e-e?"

Drawing out the end of her response like that would sharpen the effect, and she had more to add.

"Wouldn't you be the one turning into fertilizer? Oh, actually, the odds are higher you end up as Demon Creature dung. You half-grown potato-sprout bitch."

On top of that, Sinar now knew how to mix elf insults with human ones.

It was phrasing no ordinary elf would ever use, which made it impossible to predict. The expression drained from the corrupted spirit's dark blue face.

Pure rage.

Footnotes:

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried