WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Irevi

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 4: Arts

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When Cecilia opened her eyes, she was greeted by the familiar sight of the estate.

She unconsciously touched her face.

The memory of what had just happened was still vivid.

Halibal Velder, the boy with black burn scars covering his entire upper body whom she had met at the medal ceremony.

She had clearly lost consciousness the moment his final blow landed squarely on her face.

When she looked around, her older sister, Senia Ren, was sitting beside her.

"Cecil, you're awake."

"Sis... What happened to me?"

"If you're tired, lie back down. There might be some aftereffects from the holy power treatment."

According to Senia, Cecilia had lost the spar after being struck by Halibal's fist.

Halibal had been completely exhausted too, so she hadn't suffered any serious injuries. Fortunately, she had recovered through holy power treatment.

"Thank goodness. Your pretty face won't be scarred."

"..."

But scars on her face were the last thing on Cecilia's mind.

'I... lost?'

Cecilia Ren. A girl known as the next Sword Princess of the Ren House.

She may not have measured up to her older sister Senia, but she had been regarded as one of the greatest talents in the entire Empire.

And she had lost to a mere soldier? Even after using Arts?

"Don't take it too hard. You wouldn't have lost if you'd fought seriously."

Senia's words brought Cecilia no comfort at all.

She hadn't fought under the best conditions, but neither had he. Now that she had lost, anything she said would only be an excuse.

More than anything, she hadn't even been able to properly see the boy's sword.

Until now, the only person she had seen wield a sword like that was her father, Duke Ren.

"So, what happened to him?"

"I heard he'll receive a light punishment. I was a little surprised too. My benefactor punched my precious little sister in the face... It was hard to decide whose side I should take."

"..."

"Don't make too much of it. Just keep doing what you've always done."

Senia smiled gently.

At that moment, an unfamiliar emotion rose in Cecilia's chest.

'What I've always done...'

Cecilia had always swung her sword with the goal of surpassing her older sister. Senia was the strongest person Cecilia had ever crossed swords with.

As her sister said, this might have been nothing more than a minor incident.

Still, Cecilia couldn't possibly forget that boy's sword: a sword she couldn't see, and the feeling that, for the first time, someone other than her sister had blocked the path ahead of her.

Her hand drifted to her side.

Most of her wounds had healed through holy power, but a deep blue bruise still remained there.

It was probably the mark that boy had left on her.

"Ngh..."

"Are you all right? Lie down for a little longer. Bruises don't fade easily."

"I-I'm fine."

The dull pain in her side vividly reminded her that she had lost.

For some reason, she was certain that she couldn't keep swinging her sword as she always had.

If she did, the distance between her and that boy would only grow, and she feared she might never see that sword again.

"I... want to train."

"Huh? All right. Do you want me to help you?"

"No. I can go on my own."

Cecilia rose from her seat and headed straight for the training grounds, recalling the boy's sword, invisible to the eye yet carved deeper into her mind than anything else.

Senia watched her retreating figure, and her eyes darkened slightly.

"Hmm..."

⁎⁎⁎

I got transferred.

I guess that final blow was a little excessive after all.

I had punched the cherished daughter of Duke Ren right in the face.

Still, I saved one of them and gave the other some manners training. Shouldn't they be thanking me?

Sigh. How was a poor turn-based commoner supposed to live like this?

Anyway, that was why I now belonged to the 2nd Regiment, 2nd Battalion, 2nd Company, 2nd Platoon.

2222. At least it was easy to remember.

My daily routine hadn't changed even after the transfer.

Fortunately, my spar with Cecilia had given me a direction for my training.

'The answer is Arts.'

To use Arts, I had to raise my strength and agility evenly, so I cut my cardio in half and spent the rest of the time on strength training.

"That's the guy who punched Lady Ren in the face?"

"He's completely insane."

"Seriously. I heard he even deliberately took every hit during their spar."

There was only one thing I disliked about my new unit. Everyone here had pegged me as a crazy deadweight.

I understood why.

I had joined my old 2341st Unit when I was young, so everyone there had thought I was cute. To these people, though, I was just some lunatic who had dropped out of the sky.

Still, 2222.

Why did it sound so familiar?

Was it because it had a stormy sort of name?

As I shook off the thought and focused on training, a familiar blonde woman approached from afar.

Golden hair like sunlight flowed over her shoulders.

Eyes that burned like flames shone beneath it.

She was Adeline Windsor, a named NPC from Academy of the End, the Empire's greatest sword, and the captain of the 2222 unit, known as the Gale Raid Party.

After the Gale Raid Party was disbanded, she became an instructor at the Academy and continued to play an active role until the final dungeon raid.

For the record, the reason the Gale Raid Party was disbanded was because everyone in it died.

Fuck. No wonder the name rolled off my tongue so easily.

"So you're that famous little brat?"

"It's an honor to meet the Empire's greatest sword. My name is Halibal Velder."

She thought for a moment before speaking.

"You. Let me see what you've got."

"...All right."

The test began as naturally as water flowing downstream.

I had braced myself, assuming Adeline would face me herself, but surprisingly, she only sat in a chair and watched.

One of the senior soldiers stood before me instead.

"What are you doing? I said I wanted to see what you've got."

"I thought I would be sparring with you, Captain."

"What are you talking about? If you spar with me, you'll die."

Fair enough.

I began sparring with the senior soldier in front of me.

A blue gem appeared above my head.

I was faster.

My turn.

[Weak!]

I stabbed at his weak point with my first strike, then slashed him with a follow-up.

"Ugh, this bastard... I can't even see his sword strikes properly!"

Just as I thought it was about to become my opponent's turn, Adeline raised a hand, stopped the spar, and walked over.

"I heard your sword looks like it cuts twice."

"That's what people say."

"No, you did cut twice, didn't you?"

This was the first time since coming to this world that someone had seen through my extra turn.

Of course, she probably hadn't realized it was turn-based.

"Interesting. Is it like this?"

Thwack! Thwack!

She picked up a nearby wooden sword and struck me.

Twice.

The impacts came almost at the same time. At a glance, they seemed like one hit, but after taking them myself, I knew they were definitely two.

She copied it after seeing it once.

Was that why she was the Empire's greatest sword?

But why was she hitting me?

As I crouched down, clutching my stomach and shoulder while catching my breath, she looked down at me with eyes full of interest.

"No. It doesn't feel like this. You have quite an unusual talent, don't you?"

I instinctively knew.

This was my chance.

"Please teach me Arts."

I immediately pressed my forehead to the ground.

Even at the Academy, she had been the protagonist's mentor. I probably couldn't find a better teacher anywhere in this world.

"All right. Shall I?"

It took me fifteen minutes to regret that decision.

⁎⁎⁎

A year had passed since I joined the Gale Raid Party.

Every day, Adeline beat me like a dog under the pretense of training, but I still hadn't learned Arts.

Arts were character-specific skills in the first place.

What if Halibal, an extra, simply didn't have any Arts to begin with?

That thought first crossed my mind six months after Adeline started beating me like a sandbag.

Of course, I couldn't say that out loud.

If I suddenly said, "I don't think I can use Arts," that psycho bitch would probably try to kill me for real.

Then one day, a deployment order came down for the unit.

The Gale Raid Party took its name from the dungeon-focused system of Academy of the End.

In this world, the Empire was always sending soldiers to their deaths to clear the Dungeons of the Evil God.

And so, I was forcibly thrown into a raid on the first Evil God Dungeon.

The deployment order came while Adeline was in the capital after being summoned by the Emperor.

That was when I understood why the Gale Raid Party had been wiped out despite having Adeline, the Empire's greatest sword.

Adeline hadn't been there.

"Hey, rookie! Don't fall behind. Keep up!"

"Hah, you think this bastard's going to piss himself in the dungeon?"

"No one's expecting anything from you anyway, so just do your job properly!"

Those were the soldiers' last words.

The first Evil God Dungeon had a Beast Dungeon theme.

It was so much worse than the Spider Dungeon that there was no comparison.

Every basic monster there was about as strong as a Human-Faced Spider.

The Gale Raid Party was stronger than other units, but the monsters here easily surpassed them.

Our mission was reconnaissance. If possible, we were ordered to kill one elite monster and return.

The Beast Dungeon's elite monster was a Kobold radiating demonic energy from its entire body. The instant we encountered it, one swing of its claws sent three soldiers' heads flying.

By the time I came to my senses, I was the only one left standing. Blood streamed from the deep claw marks across my stomach.

If an elite monster was this strong, then how strong were the mid-boss and the boss?

For the record, this dungeon was the first tutorial dungeon the player cleared in the game.

What kind of fucked-up balance was this? No, that wasn't the right attitude to take toward reality.

'Ah, the player really was strong.'

Naturally, there was no hope of taking the first turn. As expected, I started by taking one heavy hit.

My turn.

With everything I had, I thrust my sword toward the Kobold's heart.

But its thick hide kept the damage from sinking in properly. Its counterattack shook my vision, and when I came to, I had a wound like this across my stomach.

I had endured three years of fucked-up training to survive. Was I really going to die here?

Kikikikikik!!

As if mocking that thought, the Kobold let out a disgusting cry.

A blue gem appeared above my head.

Maybe this would be my last turn.

Even so, there was nothing else I could do. I had to gather every last bit of strength and drive my sword into its weak point.

At the very least, I needed to trigger [Weak!] if I wanted a chance.

But no matter how hard I looked, there wasn't a single weak point on its body, which was covered in thick hide.

All I could see were the bodies of my senior soldiers strewn around me.

They all talked like assholes, but after spending a year with them, I had grown attached to them in my own way.

I gritted my teeth.

"You... fucking bastard..."

Then my entire body screamed.

I could hear my muscles tearing.

The sound of my breathing and heartbeat blended together and rang in my ears.

Yet amid that pain, my mind grew clearer.

With the shock of something in my body seeming to snap apart, the world slowed down.

Everything looked divided into individual frames.

A blazing energy surged from my right hand gripping the sword.

It was so hot that my entire arm felt as though it were on fire.

No, this wasn't fire.

Power.

The strength and agility I had honed for three years.

My determination and vow to never die.

All of it condensed into a single point.

'The foundation of Arts is linking movements. Split apart a single movement again and again and again, and it'll naturally take shape as Arts.'

Adeline's voice echoed in my mind.

'Your fundamentals are solid, so if you keep trying, won't you reach it someday?'

Then I realized it.

One slash had become so easy for me after getting used to the turn-based system. If I linked that trajectory, I could make it two.

At some point, I had learned to swing my sword in succession as naturally as breathing.

If I linked them, it felt like I could make something happen.

"If I can't see a weak point... I'll make one."

The first strike shot forward.

The second strike followed.

"Carving Sword."

In an instant, I cut the Kobold's arm in an X shape.

Its thick hide split open, spraying blood.

[Weak!]

A clear X-shaped wound was carved into its arm.

'It worked.'

The three years I had spent after being transmigrated into this world had finally bloomed into Arts.

But something was strange. I had only cut its arm, so why had it been judged as a weak point?

I instinctively knew the answer.

'Arts created a weak point on it.'

Kieeeek!!

With its chilling cry, every sense in my body awakened, and my heart pounded as though it would explode.

An extra turn. I knew that if I didn't finish it this turn, I would definitely die.

I gripped my sword once again.

A normal attack wasn't enough.

What I needed now was a strike that would detonate the weak point carved by Carving Sword. Another Art besides Carving Sword.

At that moment, Cecilia's Shattering Light came to mind along with the image of an explosion.

See? She was useful in the end.

As I steadied my breathing, I focused the strength of my entire body at the tip of my sword.

First strike.

Second strike.

Then the advancing third strike.

"Ashen Light."

An ashen flash burst forth.

Boom!!

The X-shaped wound along the path of my sword turned red, and the Kobold's arm ruptured a moment later.

Kieeeek!!

With blood spraying in every direction, the Kobold shrieked and collapsed.

The red gem no longer shone.

"This actually works."

When I looked down, my arm was completely wrecked.

The bone was bent at an impossible angle, and my muscles were bruised dark blue, on the verge of bursting.

I collapsed where I stood.

As I lay there gasping, I realized the Kobold's dying cry had called other monsters.

Dog-like monsters emerged from the thick darkness.

Their tongues hanging out and saliva dripping from their mouths, they lowered their bodies and approached me.

So what was I supposed to do? I didn't even have the strength to move a finger now.

At least I killed the Kobold, right?

Cheers to that.

Just as my heavy eyelids began to close, a sunlike flash poured down from the sky.

The flash tore apart the dog-like monsters all at once. Then a dazzling woman clad in golden armor appeared.

It was Adeline.

Amid the battlefield of flying blood and flesh, she approached without a word and pulled my body into her arms.

"I'm... so glad you're alive."

The light was too dazzling to fall asleep beneath.

Footnotes:

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