WeTried Translations
Translator: Coughing Baby
Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 84: A Bundle of Inferiority
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There had been many things I hated since childhood.
Well, I had a shitty personality.
-Caitlin.
I hated people better than me.
I hated people worse than me.
I wished every last one of them would just die.
I hated the talented ones enough to want them dead, and I despised the worthless ones like garbage.
-What the hell are you dissatisfied with?
-Why are you so twisted?
Shut up.
You fucking idiots.
-You have plenty too.
-You have talents other people would envy...
What was I supposed to do about being born this way?
I wished they would all die.
I wished there was no one left in the world better than me.
I wished everything brighter than me would die, so I could become the brightest person beneath that night sky.
‘If only that happened...’
Would I,
at least be able to look at myself then?
* * *
Sand swept through Area 3.
Golden grains stretched out like an ocean, rippling over the ground with every gust.
If someone forgot it was a field, they might lose themselves in the view.
The sun blazed overhead, and fine sand slipped between their toes.
“Haah, haah...!”
A neat splash of paint.
A landscape like a painting.
Crackle-!
At the center of that canvas, a chase was in full swing.
A girl’s yellow hair streamed behind her as if defying the headwind.
Caitlin was covered from head to toe in electricity.
“Urgh...!”
Her breath came in short gasps.
Still, she couldn’t stop running.
High-voltage sparks flashed amid the scattering grains of sand.
Crack-!
‘Damn it, my stamina’s running out...’
If Area 1 was grassland and Area 2 was jungle, then Area 3 was a desert.
Sand covered the entire field, and the sun shone down without a single patch of shade.
It looked as if someone had taken a slice of a real sandy desert and dropped it here.
Strangely, though, the temperature inside the field wasn’t hot at all.
Whoooosh-.
Far from hot, it was cold enough to make her hands and feet ache.
White crystals that should never have fallen from the sky drifted down.
Caitlin pushed through the desert blizzard.
“Fuck... who changes the entire climate?”
That monstrous bitch.
Caitlin ground out a curse.
She held the red flag against her chest.
‘If I can just make it back like this...!’
Whoooosh-!
Something rushed at her from behind.
Caitlin quickly swung her fist to meet it.
“Hup...!”
Bang-!
A heavy impact ran through her bones.
What struck her from behind was sword energy chilled to extreme cold.
Ice crystals clung to the back of her hand.
Caitlin roughly shook them off.
Electricity crackled, melting the ice that threatened to freeze her hand.
“Ugh...”
“I told you to surrender quietly.”
A blue-haired girl emerged calmly from the churning storm.
Rin stood atop a dune.
Her usual lifeless eyes looked down at Caitlin.
A white sword tip, gleaming with sword energy, pointed at her.
“...Damn it.”
When had she caught up?
Caitlin had no choice but to frown.
She thought she had left Rin far behind, yet Rin had appeared only a few meters away.
“If you’re leaving, put down the flag first.”
“Ha.”
Caitlin let out a hollow laugh.
She never expected things to get this tangled.
‘Why did I suddenly have to get caught up with this monster bitch?’
A few minutes earlier, Caitlin had fulfilled her duty as the sprinter.
She had gotten past the keeper at an altar in the middle of the desert and seized the flag.
As she was about to return, the keeper suddenly vanished, and Rin had popped out in its place.
“You... weren’t you supposed to be fighting the crazy bastard on our side? You looked desperate for a fight.”
“That can wait. Winning the match comes first.”
“The match? I didn’t know you were the type to obsess over petty wins and losses.”
“Yeah. I have to win today.”
Her voice carried a chill.
There wasn’t a trace of life in it.
“You should surrender.”
“Fuck off.”
“You know it. You can’t beat me.”
“Who said I was going to fight you head-on? All I have to do is run well enough to win.”
“You’re weak.”
“...”
“You can’t shake me off and escape.”
“Fuck, you really pick only the worst things to say...!”
Crack-!
Caitlin fired a bolt of electricity without warning.
A high-voltage flash wove itself into thorns and lunged for Rin’s throat.
It was a clean attack, without a wasted movement.
“It’s useless.”
Shrrk...!
The lightning spear was torn apart in midair.
Swarming cold swallowed the blazing sparks.
Rin had done nothing more than lightly draw her sword through the air.
“You’re fast. But you’re not fast enough to make my sword miss.”
“...”
The sword tip did not so much as tremble.
That indifference left Caitlin with a strange sense of loss.
“You won’t move another step.”
Whoooosh-.
Cold condensed over the pure white blade.
It was utterly different from the force Rin had shown until now.
The raging blizzard stopped.
More precisely, it was sucked into the single thin sword.
For an instant, the roaring storm went quiet, and the desert cried out in silence.
-Rin Glacia-style Domain Swordsmanship, Seventh Form-
‘Snowfield’
Thud-.
Rin’s sword tip touched the ground.
The landscape froze outward from where she stood.
The desert climate was cast aside, and white flowers bloomed across every grain of sand.
Rumble-!
Area 3 no longer resembled a desert.
Covered in snow blossoms, it had become a ruined snowy mountain blanketed in deep snow.
Even if it was a prepared field, Rin had overturned an entire natural landscape.
“Haah...”
Rin breathed calmly.
Even that exhale became a work of art, turning into white mist.
Caitlin, frozen in place as she stared, could only mutter one thing.
“...What a monster bitch.”
“Give up.”
An unfathomable gap.
That monster was showing Caitlin that there was a distance between them Caitlin could never cross.
“I’m not going easy on you from here on.”
“...”
Crackle-.
Caitlin kicked off the ground anyway.
She tried to escape in a burst of explosive speed.
But sword energy was already striking her back.
Shrrk-!
“Ghk...!”
Cold.
It felt as if thousands of awls had stabbed into her back.
Caitlin staggered, then lost her footing and collapsed.
The pain made her consciousness fade.
“Ghk, urgh...”
“I told you it wouldn’t work.”
Rin stood some distance away.
She didn’t even look like she intended to approach.
She simply looked down at Caitlin with dead eyes.
“Fuck...”
Caitlin’s lips trembled.
She barely raised her head.
“Surrender.”
“Ugh...”
It had been a long time.
Back when they were children, the two had met a few times through their families.
Every time, Caitlin had been trampled by Rin.
She had been overwhelmingly crushed, rolling across the floor after every spar.
Whenever she sat alone in frustration, Rin would always look down at her from exactly that distance.
Caitlin clenched her fist.
“Don’t... look down on me like that!”
Crack-!
With one hand pressed into the ground, Caitlin detonated her electricity.
Snow and sand exploded from the shockwave, clouding the air.
Using that opening, she forced herself upright.
Her body swayed as she desperately kicked off the ground.
“Haah, haah...!”
Crack-!
She pushed her speed even higher.
But even that was still within Rin’s control.
“Stop.”
Shrrk-!
Once again, white sword energy rushed at her.
This time, it struck her leg directly.
Caitlin couldn’t even take a few steps before she fell face-first into the snow.
“Khk, aaagh...!”
“You know it’s meaningless.”
There was no malice in the sword energy.
That made Caitlin feel even more miserable.
Rin quietly held out her hand.
“Just give me the flag. I don’t intend to hurt you.”
“...”
Her entire body trembled.
Frost covered her back and legs.
She could barely feel them, as though she had frostbite.
Face-down in the snow, Caitlin clenched her fist around flickering sparks.
‘My body... won’t move.’
Her stamina was finally reaching its limit.
Caitlin gritted her teeth.
She had been born with little mana.
According to the doctor, hers was the worst kind of body for learning magic.
Her poor endurance was a flaw, one that had always held Caitlin back.
‘This is my limit.’
The girl lay sprawled there, thinking.
Her consciousness blurred, and strength began to leave her body.
‘...Why am I doing this?’
A thought suddenly crossed her mind.
She had been dragged into this against her will, so why was she clinging to it so desperately?
If she lost like this, she could even escape that devilish bastard.
-Let’s do this.
-If our team loses this match, I’ll consider our previous bet settled.
It suddenly felt stupid.
Why was she lying here in the snow?
-Miss Caitlin? Please take the role of sprinter.
-It means I trust you that much.
Who the hell did he think he was, trusting her?
Spouting things he didn’t even mean...
‘Who would trust someone like me?’
She hated it all.
She was sick of it.
Beyond her blurry vision, she saw the blue-haired girl.
Without a scratch on her, Rin casually shook her sword tip.
That impossible gap caught in Caitlin’s throat like a thorn.
‘Trash.’
Trash.
Trash.
Trash.
Who was she aiming those words at?
The string at her lips was pulled taut, but there was no target.
-Caitlin.
-What the hell are you dissatisfied with?
I hate them.
I hate people brighter than me.
I hate the people who eat away at my mind.
I wished they would all be ruined in accidents, or just fucking die.
-Why are you so twisted?
I wished they would disappear from my world.
I wanted to curse all of you with every ugly word I could find.
-You have plenty too.
-You have talents other people would envy...
There are people with more than me.
There are people brighter than me.
What good am I in front of people like that?
What meaning does this pathetic, useless talent that only looks decent on the surface have?
If I was never a bud that could become the best, they should have crushed me from the start so I would never bloom.
‘Why?’
I hated talent.
More precisely, I hated talent greater than mine.
Instead of admiring it, I envied it. I hated it enough to want to kill, and I cried from sheer frustration.
I hated people better than me enough to want them dead, and I treated people worse than me like garbage.
-There can’t be anyone as twisted as you.
-You have so much, yet you’re not satisfied and want to hate the whole world?
What was I supposed to do about being born this way?
I wished they would all die.
I wished there was no one left in the world better than me.
I wished everything brighter than me would die, so I could become the brightest person beneath that night sky.
-Miss Caitlin is the fastest runner.
Shut up.
Don’t pretend to trust me.
Words you don’t mean, praise you don’t mean.
There’s no way anyone would trust someone like me.
‘Liar.’
They were laughing at me on the inside.
They were probably calling me a worthless talent, a garbage bitch.
They were all the same.
‘Caitlin Lettus.’
The name I distrusted most.
The name I resented most.
An incurable bitch.
A woman filled to the bone with inferiority, living with envy, jealousy, and self-hatred.
-Miss Caitlin.
-I’ll leave the flag entirely to you.
-Now, show us you’re the fastest runner in the academy.
What else could I do?
I was born this way.
“Cough, ugh...”
“...You’re not seriously planning to continue, are you?”
Caitlin forced her unsteady body upright.
Rin still watched her without expression.
She only asked because she seemed unable to understand why Caitlin would go this far.
Crackle-.
Caitlin looked utterly miserable.
She was covered in sand, with frost clinging to her here and there.
Even so, she stood with her eyes wide open.
‘Why am I going this far?’
Yeah.
Of course she wouldn’t understand.
It was an emotion too insignificant for someone like her to understand.
Caitlin tightly clenched her reddened fist.
“I...”
Her voice had gone hoarse.
She muttered through slurred words.
“...I hate losing to people better than me more than anything in the world.”
Crack-!
The next moment, electricity wrapped around Caitlin’s entire body.
Bright yellow sparks shone clearly over the snow.
She scraped together the last handful of mana from her nearly empty reserves.
She looked ready to pass out at any moment, but her stubborn consciousness didn’t break so easily.
“You’re casting magic in that state? It must feel like your muscles are melting.”
“Huff, huff...”
“You’ll get hurt. Don’t push yourself, just surrender.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
Caitlin clearly raised her middle finger.
She gritted her teeth.
Then she kicked off the snow once more.
The output of her electricity multiplied several times over, tearing apart the cold around her.
Crack, crack, crack-!
“Hup...!”
Caitlin raced across the snowfield.
The edge of Area 3, the passage leading into Area 2, was right in front of her.
She tore through every obstacle and ran in a straight line.
Of course, Rin wouldn’t simply watch.
She immediately raised her sword and sent several more slashes at Caitlin.
Shrrk-!
Shrrk-!
Not one blast of sword energy missed.
Cold stiffened her body, making her limbs feel as though they were being crushed.
“Khah, urgh...!”
Still, Caitlin did not fall.
Instead, she accelerated.
She suppressed the pain of extreme cold with sheer willpower.
For the first time, confusion appeared on Rin’s usually expressionless face.
“You’re ignoring my sword energy even after being hit?”
It was insane determination.
No matter how many times she was struck, Caitlin just kept running without reacting.
Rin had clashed with Caitlin several times, but she had never seen her this desperate.
Crack-!
Caitlin’s retreating figure grew more distant.
Rin belatedly began to chase after her.
But Caitlin was already crossing the boundary between areas.
“I can’t allow that.”
Shrrrk-!
Shrrk-!
Shrrk, shrrk-!
The moment Caitlin stepped onto the boundary, several blasts of sword energy struck in succession.
Even Caitlin, blinded by determination, couldn’t ignore that relentless barrage.
“Ah...”
Her body finally gave out.
Caitlin was thrown aside and sprawled at the edge of the snowfield.
“Haah, haah...”
The pain adrenaline had briefly made her forget.
The backlash from scraping together mana.
Her hands and feet, frozen red.
All of it weighed down on her body.
Her vision spun, and she felt as if she would lose consciousness at any second.
“Ghk, hngh...”
The girl had fallen with Area 2 right in front of her.
She could barely hold onto consciousness, much less move.
She had no strength left to cross that boundary.
Yet even then, Caitlin wore a ragged smile.
“Ha, haha...”
Her right hand.
The hand clutching the flag had crossed into Area 2.
And someone beyond that flag was looking down at her.
“Miss Caitlin.”
A masked boy.
He stood at the boundary as if he had been waiting.
The piercing cold faded, and a person’s warmth wrapped around her.
“Hey...”
He had been waiting.
As if he knew she would come.
-Miss Caitlin? Please take the role of sprinter.
-It means I trust you that much.
Stupid mask.
Why did seeing that face make her feel strangely relieved?
The pursuit must have been close behind, yet she felt neither fear nor concern.
“I brought... what you asked for...”
She forced out a few halting words.
With her consciousness fading, Caitlin barely held out the flag.
“If you lose this... I’ll kill you...”
“Good work.”
A hand gently took hers.
Caitlin was laid down in a soft patch of brush.
Right before her vision went dark, the boy’s words echoed in her ears.
“I’ll make sure we win.”
Now that she listened properly, he had a rather nice voice.
With that pointless thought, Caitlin lost consciousness.
Footnotes:
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