WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Asakusa
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Knight Commander of the Doomed Heroes ◈
Chapter 7: Peaceful Days (2)
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“Sir Soyeon. Go inside first.”
“Then answer me.”
“Answer what?”
“You said he killed a Knight of Eternity. Do you mean he actually murdered one? As in, Headmaster Eihen drew a sword and stabbed them, or blasted them with magic?”
“...It amounts to the same thing.”
“So it was different.”
“...”
Far too quick to catch on.
“Then I really do need to see for myself. See what kind of person he is.”
“Why are you so determined?”
“They say he’s the best-looking man in Estel~”
She gave me a sweet smile.
Baek Soyeon.
For a while, I’d have to replace her ice cream snacks with healthy magical mushroom shakes.
“...I advise you to speak to him as little as possible.”
“Yes, yes~”
I sighed and strode ahead.
Eihen Giheis.
His reasons for coming were obvious.
There would be two.
One was Baek Soyeon.
The other was Unhindered Harmony.
The mansion came into view in the distance.
A man grew larger as we approached.
His long, braided hair was such a pale gold that it looked bleached white.
His blood-red eyes were unsettling.
But his puppy-like smile completely hid the sinister look in them.
So many people fell for that smile.
He was only thirty-three.
Yet he was considered the greatest archmage in nearly a century.
Gentle and kind, but in truth, utterly ruthless.
“Wow. His eyes sparkle like rubies. He looks nice.”
This idiot of a hero.
Eihen waved first from in front of the mansion.
“It’s been a while since we last met in private, hasn’t it, Revel?”
“What do you want? Have you come to apologize for dismissing Unhindered Harmony as a delusion?”
Eihen chuckled.
His bright smile hid those deep red eyes.
“I admit it. I was wrong back then. I called you my star pupil, yet I underestimated your talent. But Revel, you really have started speaking strangely. I’m still your teacher, you know. Aren’t you being a little harsh?”
“The six Grand Dukes are equals. It’s inappropriate for you to criticize how I speak.”
“A teacher and pupil can’t always be so formal, can they? You don’t have to call me Master, but surely you could call me Teacher, at least?”
Teacher?
It was true that I’d learned from Eihen, but I had no intention of using such a respectful title for this man.
“You ask for the impossible. Teacher...? The only title I can give you is ssaem.”
“Cough!”
Sir Soyeon coughed, as though something had gone down the wrong way.
“...Ssaem? What’s that?”
“It means an ugly, boring old guy who can’t be reasoned with. Eihen-ssaem. Of course. I suppose a ssaem wouldn’t know a word like that.”
“...What?”
I glanced at Sir Soyeon to see if she was all right. Her mouth was opening and closing.
She must have been surprised by how quickly I learned and applied new knowledge.
Eihen shook his head and changed the subject.
“Fine, fine. Let’s say that’s what it means. Anyway, Revel, you’ve surprised me again. I never thought you’d actually succeed with that utterly far-fetched spell. And you’ve strengthened the Order’s fighting power, too.”
But I had no desire to talk to him at length.
“Enough. You came because of Unhindered Harmony, didn’t you? I’ll share it soon. That should be all you need. Leave.”
“Wait. This must be our hero? Let me at least say hello...”
“Leave.”
“Sir Seion! It’s an honor to meet...”
“Go. And it’s Sir Soyeon, not Seion.”
Eihen let out a sharp sigh and stared at me.
“Revel. Are you still holding on to what happened back then?”
“Do you want to be dragged out?”
How dare he bring that up first?
“You should have thanked me for that, actually.”
“Eihen.”
With those words, he had crossed the line.
Far beyond it.
Inside me,
the screams of that day boiled up once more.
I fixed my eyes on Eihen. His stance. His gaze. His magical power. I analyzed every detail and gave him one final warning.
“Don’t say another word.”
“No. Let’s get the facts straight. Back then, I was actually helping you...”
Eihen.
You’d been called the strongest mage since I was a student.
Hmm. Let’s see how strong you really are.
Piiiiing!
The moment I took a long step forward, all the magical power around us unraveled.
My specialty was support magic. Buffs, in particular.
It was magic that wove magical power together, strand by strand, to create beneficial effects.
That also meant I could unravel it strand by strand and strip away every preparation an opponent had made. Buffs and debuffs were only a hair apart.
In the brief moment it took me to clench my fist and put my weight on my planted foot, every magical defense around Eihen came apart.
“Huh...?”
Confusion flashed across his face.
Crack!
My fist slammed into his mouth.
“Pff!”
Eihen staggered backward, spraying blood and spit.
I wasn’t done yet.
I raised my left fist and took another step.
“Wait, wait! Sir Baek Soyeon! A gift!”
Wait, my ass.
I threw a left hook straight at his right cheekbone.
Bang!
The air shuddered like a bowstring.
My sweeping hook struck nothing but empty air.
Eihen was already gone.
Blink.
...He’d shaken off my interference and managed to cast spatial magic?
Worthy of the strongest mage, I supposed.
Whoosh! I whipped my head around.
“Ack! Cough! S-Sir Baek Soyeon, a moment.”
“Ah! You startled me! You can’t just Blink right next to me. I almost cut you on reflex.”
Eihen was struggling in Sir Soyeon’s grip. Her left hand was clamped around his throat, and her right held a sword against his neck.
Exactly. Why would anyone teleport right beside a hero without warning? Strongest mage or not, he was little more than a gnat in front of her.
“Cough, cough! S-Sir Baek Soyeon. Here. A gift.”
Sir Soyeon released his throat. After a fit of coughing, Eihen reached into a pocket dimension and pulled out a flowering branch.
“Huh?”
Sir Soyeon, who had just been choking him and holding a sword to his throat, looked bewildered by the branch full of flowers suddenly thrust toward her.
And I released the magical power I had gathered.
He was giving her that?
Then hitting him would be a little awkward.
He must have brought those flowers knowing that. When I’d asked him to make them, he’d dismissed the idea as a waste of funds. What an unpleasant bastard.
“Ahem. Ahem. Sir Baek Soyeon. A gift for you. Ever since you used Ignition, your joints and muscles have been aching as if you had the flu, haven’t they? That wicked pupil of mine can’t fix it. That’s where I come in.”
Pop. Eihen plucked a petal from the flowering branch.
“This is a treasure I created by further improving a very special fairy flower. I named it Fairy’s Sigh. It neutralizes magical poisoning. Just put it on a fingernail.”
He placed the petal on Sir Soyeon’s thumbnail.
It gently melted away, tinting her nail a pale pink.
“Oh? That’s... pretty.”
“Isn’t it? The magical poisoning will be neutralized and released from that fingertip. From what I can see, one petal a day should do.”
“It really works!”
Sir Soyeon spread her fingers. Sure enough, something like a heat haze was escaping from her thumb.
She rolled her shoulders vigorously.
“My body really does feel better!”
“Yes. It’s my secret magic. An extremely precious item.”
Eihen placed the red flowering branch in her arms and smiled gently.
“Wow.”
The wariness on Baek Soyeon’s face slowly melted away.
“I’m sorry. Grabbing your throat earlier really was a reflex.”
“It’s quite all right. Just the skill I’d expect from a hero.”
The mood between Eihen and Baek Soyeon softened.
It irritated me quite a bit, but I stayed quiet. That really was a treasure.
Magical poisoning was the residue left behind by magical power whose phase had become distorted. One hero had once described it as something like radiation. A terrible toxicity that ate away at the human body.
A hero’s body wouldn’t break down from something of that level. But if it could make her even a little more comfortable, or help her feel better, that alone made it worthwhile.
But I couldn’t make anything like that.
It was one of the reasons I needed Eihen, even as I hated him.
“Oh. And one more thing.”
As though he had suddenly remembered something, Eihen searched inside his clothes.
The moment I saw that, a sharp sense of danger ran up the back of my neck.
“Don’t.”
I clenched my fist and stepped in front of him.
The teacher I had respected more than anyone during my Academy days smiled as kindly as he had back then.
“No. I’m going to.”
He held out a rectangular crystal tablet the size of his palm toward Sir Soyeon.
“Sir Soyeon. This is a magical device you can use to contact me.”
“Pardon?”
“Does the shape look familiar? I heard your world has something called a ‘smartphone,’ so I modeled it after that.”
“R-Really? A s-smartphone?”
Baek Soyeon’s voice trembled.
Ah. She’d never made that face even for my ice cream.
“Yes. It’s nothing too impressive, but I made it so you can watch videos of events around the capital.”
“Whoa!”
“And if you call my name, you can speak to me at any time. If you have questions or need anything, please call whenever you like.”
“Oh? But that’s a little...”
Sir Soyeon glanced at me.
I couldn’t say anything.
Instead, Eihen spoke in that despicable voice of his.
“It’s all right. Revel won’t object.”
“No. I think he will...”
“No. He absolutely won’t. Revel doesn’t interfere with a hero’s free will, even when it goes against his own wishes. He might have stopped me from taking it out in the first place, but now that you’ve seen it, he won’t say a word.”
He was so accurate it made my blood boil.
“Ah...”
As Sir Soyeon stood there, unsure what to do, Eihen delivered the final blow.
“Sir Baek Soyeon. Aren’t there things you’d like to know about me, too? Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here. Revel must have tried to stop you from meeting me. So please, take it. You’ve already come all this way.”
He could read everything.
Eihen Giheis.
What a truly horrible man.
So I raised my fist again.
“No more gifts, I assume?”
“Hm? No. Wait. Again?”
I planted my supporting foot once more. This time, I unraveled Eihen’s magical power more carefully and thoroughly.
My target was his cheekbone. I snapped my clenched fist forward.
Craaaack!
“Gah!”
The impact felt good against my right hand.
* * *
“C-Commander?”
Baek Soyeon had never seen Revel like this before. Didn’t he always keep that cool poker face? He was a bit strange, but still...
“Go inside and rest.”
“A-Are you angry?”
“I don’t get angry at heroes.”
Revel’s blue eyes radiated cold like dry ice.
His black hair, which reached below his ears, swept through the air as he took a long stride in the direction Eihen had fled.
“I’ll see you later, then.”
Boom!
With a lingering trace of buff magic, Revel’s body seemed to stretch out and vanish.
“My pupil? Are you trying to kill your teacher?”
“Die.”
Eihen’s and Revel’s voices faded into the distance.
Baek Soyeon stood with her mouth hanging open in disbelief, then muttered,
“Handsome men look cool even when they’re angry...”
Then she smacked her own head.
Smack!
“Ugh. What am I saying? I must be crazy.”
She shook her head hard, glanced down at the crystal tablet that fit neatly in her palm, and hurried to her room.
“Headmaster Eihen!”
As soon as she entered her room, Baek Soyeon took out the crystal tablet and shouted. Her voice was sharp.
“Answer me, Headmaster!”
- Hah. Hah. Hero? Calling already?
Eihen’s breathless reply came back.
“I have a question.”
- A-Already? Whew. I only just lost him...
“Then why did you keep pushing his buttons? Never mind. Just answer my question. Once I’ve heard your answer, I’m returning this.”
- Oh, that’s cruel. Do you know how hard I worked to make it? Can’t you just keep using it? Pleeease?
“Ugh. Mister. Don’t try to act cute. You’re making me sick.”
Eihen was so handsome and youthful that even his attempts to act cute looked beautiful, but Baek Soyeon’s judgment was merciless.
Handsome or not, she was only old enough to be a high school senior in Korea, still a minor. If she called him an old guy, then he was an old guy.
Besides, she didn’t feel kindly toward Headmaster Eihen at the moment, because Revel was very angry. Anyone who made Revel angry was a bad person. At least, that was how Baek Soyeon’s mind worked right now.
“Hurry up and answer me. I heard you once killed a Knight of Eternity. What does that mean? Did you really kill one?”
- Is that what Revel told you? That I killed one?
“Yes. What happened?”
- Now I see. You weren’t curious about me. You were curious about Revel.
“Answer first.”
- I didn’t kill that hero.
“Be specific. Tell me what happened. And swear a wordbinding oath.”
- Yes. I swear by wordbinding to tell nothing but the truth. It happened three years ago.
The slight playfulness vanished from Eihen’s voice.
- Revel hid a hero. A hero who had already promised to make the sacrifice suddenly disappeared... When I looked into it, I found that Revel was responsible.
“...”
Baek Soyeon’s shoulders flinched.
Because she knew Revel was more than capable of doing that.
- There was no problem with the hero disappearing. That was the hero’s freedom. No one in this world can force a hero to do anything. But the same doesn’t apply to Revel. His duty is to manage and persuade the heroes. Yet he abandoned that duty. He interfered with the management of a hero and worked to overturn the hero’s decision to make the sacrifice. It was an unforgivable act of betrayal. He wasn’t even the commander at the time, so insubordination would have been added to his charges.
“...Then what would have happened?”
- Execution, of course. If the Chief Justiciar had found out, that would have been the result.
“...”
- So I stepped in. Before anyone else found out. I found the hero first and explained the truth: if you remain in hiding, Revel will be arrested and executed.
Baek Soyeon felt as if she couldn’t breathe.
It didn’t feel like someone else’s story at all.
What if she had followed Revel’s advice and hidden instead of fighting?
What if Revel had to die as a result?
What if she learned that?
If it were me,
what would I have done?
“...The hero must have chosen to make the sacrifice.”
- Yes. Thankfully. The hero made a noble decision for humanity. Thanks to that nobility, we were able to destroy another apostle and survive.
“Noble? You pushed that hero into it.”
- Pushed? I’m the headmaster of the Academy. A teacher. I merely explained what would happen if things stayed as they were. I laid everything out so the hero could make an informed decision. Yet Revel keeps saying I killed a hero. It really does put me in a difficult position.
Baek Soyeon clenched her teeth.
“Now I understand why the commander hates you. You’re a coward.”
Then she heard laughter.
Clear, bright laughter, like that of the idols Baek Soyeon had heard on Earth.
But the words that followed took her breath away.
- So. What will you do, Sir Baek Soyeon? Will you return this crystal tablet, as you said you would? As you know, Revel places no value on his own life. He’ll try to sacrifice himself again and again. Will you remain ignorant every time? Or will you come to me for knowledge?
Baek Soyeon clenched her teeth.
Footnotes:
“Ssaem” is a casual Korean shortening of the respectful word for “teacher,” not an insult.
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