WeTried Translations
Translator: Coughing Baby
Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 20: Declaration of Victory
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Swoooosh!
The sound of air being violently torn apart.
Over ten arrows rushed toward me.
Roaring flames, the air around them rippling and breaking apart.
That fiery demon raged as though it would devour me whole at any moment.
“Stay back...!”
The girl glared at me murderously.
Regardless, I pressed the watch's button once more.
Click.
My vision dulled, and every flow in the world slowed.
Through it all, the colorful blade shot forward.
The next moment.
“Hmm.”
Boom, craaash!
The deflected arrows exploded behind me.
Heat swept over me.
Even so, my gaze didn't waver.
I simply took one step, then another.
My pace was neither hurried nor sluggish, but relaxed.
“I told you, didn't I? It's useless.”
I slipped in a mild provocation.
Even her relentless attacks had begun to bore me.
Perhaps she was being rattled by that.
Shariel's rhythm was steadily falling apart.
Breathing hard, she bit down on her lip.
“I told you to shut up...!”
“Oh dear.”
Fwish.
I parried the sudden attack.
The arrow's trajectory twisted again, sending it harmlessly into the ground.
I lightly waved the Balloon Knife.
“You missed again.”
“How dare an E Class piece of trash...!”
“This pattern is getting old. Is that all you know how to say?”
“I don't know what trick you're using, but I'll make you regret it!”
“I've heard that line already. Exactly eleven minutes and twenty-four seconds ago.”
“You...!”
She was different from before.
Her usual beautiful, deceitful smile was gone.
Only a furrowed brow remained in its place.
Click.
Large drops of sweat rolled down her pale cheeks.
Her stamina was clearly running low, and her movements had lost their sharpness.
‘Well, she had been going wild like that.’
After my first parry, Shariel had unleashed a relentless assault like a madwoman.
Like someone refusing to accept reality, insisting this couldn't be happening.
‘In a way, it's only natural.’
Imagine the magic she had honed her entire life, the field she had devoted herself to, being undone by a single Balloon Knife.
It was ridiculous.
And overwhelmed by that absurdity, she was suffering an even more absurd defeat.
-Aren't you starting to worry? About how humiliated you're going to be.
-Would you like to surrender? If you crawl on all fours before the whole school, I might go easy on you.
All that from someone she had looked down on moments ago.
Few people would remain unaffected in a situation like this.
Especially when the opponent was still a child.
Click.
She was still at an age before she had fully matured mentally.
Slowly wearing away at her pride was an excellent strategy.
“Haa, haa...”
“You seem short of breath.”
“Ugh, shut up... I still have plenty left in me!”
Ten minutes had passed since the spar began.
The flow of the fight was one-sided.
Click.
She attacked, and I parried every single one.
Shariel was clearly the one pressing the duel.
I had only defended myself. I hadn't launched a single attack.
“Is that so?”
But.
“No matter how many times you repeat it, I think the result will be the same.”
The momentum had already shifted to my side.
Pressing an opponent and taking control were two entirely different things.
Click.
I reset the watch and knocked away another incoming attack.
The combination of the bug and parrying sent the arrows astray one after another.
The Balloon Knife didn't receive so much as a scratch.
‘This matchup really worked in my favor.’
I shook out my hand as I thought.
Parrying was a technique that demanded intense concentration.
It could only be applied to one attack at a time.
It was especially difficult against projectiles.
‘I'm getting as much efficiency as possible from the watch bug, but...’
Fights where the enemy overwhelmed you with sheer numbers were still naturally disadvantageous.
In Shariel's case, she carefully committed to each individual attack, which made her easy to parry.
Click.
If she hadn't used a bow...
If she had overwhelmed me with quantity instead of quality...
If she had deployed magic like an ordinary flame mage...
‘I would've lost. There are limits to defending with parries.’
The technique she had refined to its limit was what had ended up holding her back.
Click.
“You're really good at knocking them away!”
“Hehe, thank you.”
“You're like a gnat! One hit... Just one hit, and you'd go flying!”
“Then try hitting me.”
“Urgh, argh...!”
Fwish! Craaash!
We continued trading blows without pause.
The more spectacular the trails above the sparring ground became, the louder the murmurs from the stands grew.
-What is going on? The top student of Class E is keeping up with Lady Shariel...?
-Keeping up? It looks like he's completely overwhelming her.
-Is that thing in his hand... a balloon? He deflected magic with that?
-Fuck, I've never seen anything like that in my life.
The faint chatter reached my ears.
Shariel's expression darkened further.
Urgency slipped through her tired lips, something she couldn't bring herself to swallow back.
“Ghk...!”
The gazes gathering around her.
The attention focused on her squeezed Shariel's ragged breathing even tighter.
-She can't even pop one balloon? Didn't they say she was a pretty skilled flame mage?
-Even if her opponent is unusual, should she really be struggling this much? This is disappointing...
-Didn't she always walk around acting so superior?
-She's the top student of Class C, but she can't beat the top student of Class E?
-More importantly, that Class E guy is pretty good. Was his name Viktor?
Voices erupted from every direction.
Doubt, disappointment, ridicule, admiration.
Those emotions became pressure, bearing down on the testing ground.
The one under that pressure was, of course, Shariel.
-She isn't really going to lose like this, is she?
-No way. She's the top student of Class C.
-Looking at how it's going, it does seem pretty even...
-She should drop out, then. How could she keep attending the academy after something so embarrassing?
With every comment, the girl's steps became more frantic.
Her arrows wavered, and mana scattered in every direction.
“You seem to be getting more and more impatient.”
“Haa, haa... Shut up!”
“Well, really. You can't exactly be struggling against the top student of Class E, can you?”
“Shut up! You're the one who keeps doing nothing but dodging!”
Her pride had once soared to the heavens.
The words, and the situation itself, struck at the very core of her pride.
‘It should be about time.’
She had reached her limit.
Shariel's stamina must have run out a long time ago.
Yet she had kept forcing herself to draw that bowstring.
Now, even that was nearing its end.
The girl prepared her final attack.
Whoosh!
The air suddenly grew hot.
The inferno drawn along the bowstring was savage, dyeing even the scene red.
Perhaps she had scraped together everything she had left, because it was far stronger than her previous attacks.
Shariel declared in a clear shout.
“I'll end this! I'll show trash like you the difference between our levels...!”
Unlike the others, the arrow compressed under intense heat was black.
Layers upon layers of flame had been stacked together and concentrated in a single direction.
Shariel released the taut bowstring.
-Shariel Style Flame Arts, Secret Technique-
‘Hellfire’
A vicious storm shot forth.
It charged through the blazing heat haze.
The blow was powerful enough to shock even the spectators.
Craaash!
‘But.’
The trajectory was obvious.
Her unraveling reason awakened instinct, and instinct spurred straightforward actions.
And I had anticipated that reflexive response from the beginning.
In short, ‘It’s easy to dodge.’
Click.
The scene slowed as always.
I barely brushed past the incoming arrow and parried it.
Fwish.
“...!”
Craaash!
The explosion was loud enough to deafen me.
Without stopping, I rushed into the opening she had exposed.
Shariel had badly overextended herself.
“Ugh...!?”
I quickly closed the distance.
She looked flustered.
The girl steadied her broken stance and drew the bowstring again.
But magic hastily thrown together was inevitably crude at the seams.
The flames still blazed, but their power was noticeably weaker.
‘I’ll break through.’
Click.
Click.
Click.
I pressed the watch again and again, sharply swinging the Balloon Knife.
The weak flames died out without even brushing against me.
The gap had narrowed to a single step.
“Got you.”
I whispered softly.
Then I drove my foot hard into the girl's stomach.
I had no strength, so I needed to put my weight into it.
A moment later, the impact echoed through the entire training ground.
Thud!
“Ghk...!”
The girl let out a strangled breath and was sent flying.
Was it because she was exhausted?
The attack seemed to deal more damage than it should have.
Shariel hung in the air for several seconds before falling.
Thud.
Her body sprawled across the ground.
The girl couldn't get back up.
She only breathed heavily.
“Haa, haa...”
“Oh dear.”
I stood straight and looked down at her.
I still didn't have a single scratch on me.
Swish.
I gripped the colorful blade again.
Then I pointed it at the red-haired girl, now helpless.
The taut balloon rested against her pale throat.
“It's over, isn't it?”
I made the declaration with a faint smile.
There was no one who could object.
《...The test is over. The victor is Viktor.》
And so, the duel ended.
At the same time, a familiar mechanical sound rang out.
Ding!
[Condition fulfilled! You have obtained a new title!]
[A hidden function in the status window has been unlocked!]
[Reward Details]
- Obtained the title, ‘The One Who Collects Misunderstandings’
- Unlocked the status window function, ‘Misunderstanding Collector’
A blue window appeared before my eyes.
Footnotes:
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