WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Ode of the Brave ◈

Chapter 1: Prologue

──────

Fire and steel, blood, and death. That was my life in a few words.

I had once been a shepherd in Haiden, in the north of the Empire. Like so many people of this age, I was one of countless orphans who did not know their parents.

I did not know when I had begun tending sheep, but for ten years I moved from field to field across Haiden, almost cut off from the world, grazing my flock.

Just as flowers of every color bloomed in the fields with the seasons, stars burst into bloom across the black sky at night. Cool winds blew in summer, and in winter, snow covered the world.

I had no desires. I did not know boredom. I was neither happy nor unhappy.

As stars shone at night, flowers bloomed in the fields, and snow fell when winter came, I simply lived as a shepherd.

Then, one day, something unusual happened in that place where the same things repeated every day. The lord passed through the Haiden fields on horseback.

I knelt, and he smiled with the sun behind him like a halo as he spoke from high above.

“Shepherd, how old are you?”

“I don't know my birthday, so I cannot say. I have tended sheep for ten years.”

“Then you must be at least fifteen. Should you not marry?”

“I don't know any women.”

“The village head will arrange it. Live happily, one like a star.”

After saying that, the lord rode across the field and vanished suddenly like scattering clouds.

Not long afterward, the village head truly arranged my marriage to a young widow from the village.

Once I had a wife, I stopped being a shepherd and became the village miller. As the lord had said, I learned what happiness was for the first time in my life.

Several more years passed. Then one day, a cavalryman carrying a red flag came to the village.

He said they were selecting able-bodied men to go to Fernland. Lots were drawn among the strong men of the village, and I was chosen.

I told my wife that I would definitely return. Until then, I would send my wages, so she should not worry about making a living.

I wandered from place to place with the cavalryman. With people who joined us, two or three from every village we passed, I walked eastward without end.

For a day, two days, three days, for over a month, I headed east like autumn leaves drifting down a river.

Fernland was a land of steel and corpses, surrounded by forests. I had never imagined it when I first arrived, but I remained there for ten years.

If anyone asked me where I had learned to use a sword, I would answer: war.

Thrusting, slashing, chopping apart. I would say I had been forged by the barbarians’ hatred, by courage I never knew I possessed, by my comrades’ sacrifices, and by the luck of arrows grazing my cheek.

“Where’s Thomas?”

“Dead.”

“Damn it. Falke?”

“This morning.”

“...”

Once in a while, we had a good day. Most days were hard. Uncomfortable beds, moldy bread, dying of disease, dying when wounds festered, being eaten by monsters, being dragged away by barbarians, having their skin flayed and hung up.

At night, soldiers who had nightmares or trembled with fear were no different from babies. They seemed to need mothers, not harsh veterans or stern commanders.

Then, one day, I realized that everyone I had met when I first arrived was dead, and I alone remained.

On the front line, where seven out of ten soldiers died or were badly wounded whenever battle broke out, I had survived dozens of times. Why wouldn't I die? It felt as though my time had come.

My comrades jokingly, and sometimes seriously, called me “Lucky” Ricky. They said that if I were beside them, they might survive too. Yet none of the comrades I had grown attached to survived.

My first commander was the second son of a count. He was a very brave young man with a cheerful nature, and when battle broke out, he often led the soldiers in a charge on horseback.

To be honest, when I charged behind him in that terrible war, I sometimes felt relieved. I even thought it was fun.

But that brave young man fell from his horse and died in his fourth battle.

My second commander feared the enemy and was cruel to his own men.

Even when we had to go out and fight to defend our garrison, he only wanted to remain inside and hold it.

When we found the courage to say that this could not continue, we were beaten. I watched a comrade weaken and die after a severe beating, so I kept my mouth shut. I was a coward.

We were surrounded. After starving for days, we lost the garrison to a massive barbarian assault led by trained trolls.

I resolved to die and fought to the end, but I fled only after seeing that incompetent commander seized by a troll, his arms torn off while he was alive, and his head torn apart and eaten.

After losing a battle and fleeing, there was nowhere suitable to go. If we did not want to starve to death, we had no choice but to head for the rallying point. But even reaching it was no easy task.

By the time I killed the barbarian pursuers and reached the rallying point, I was alone. The others had not fled home. They had died, whether from starvation, monsters, or capture by their pursuers.

At the rallying point, I was assigned to a unit led by Caldebert, the fourth prince of Adelorne’s royal family.

At a glance, Caldebert looked like a scholar. He had beautiful blond hair and a somewhat delicate body that seemed too slight to bear chain mail.

Yet the commander ordered him to retake the garrison. Perhaps because of that, he asked me many things about the terrain there, the situation, and the barbarians’ traits.

Maybe because we were close in age, I found it strangely easy to speak with Caldebert. We became close quickly, despite the gulf in status between us being as wide as heaven and earth.

He liked hearing about my hometown, and he quietly listened even when I spoke about the dull, peaceful work of tending sheep.

“Ricky, you have the makings of a poet. Listening to you puts my heart at ease, even in a place as grim as this. I thought all northerners were rough.”

“Well, I cannot even read.”

“How could the first song have been written?”

Even the way he spoke was elegant. The language nobles used sometimes sounded like a foreign tongue.

Once the preparations were complete, Caldebert led his unit to retake the forward garrison. I joined the battle.

Caldebert was the finest commander. He was thorough and meticulous when devising plans, and brave in actual battle.

Risking encirclement, he boldly drove deep into the enemy camp, struck the enemy’s rear, forced them far back, then defeated them one by one.

But the barbarians could not surrender the garrison they had only just reclaimed after nearly ten years. They made their final desperate stand.

Caldebert’s plan was a gamble as well. If he retreated, he would be in danger instead, so he could not withdraw.

Both sides fought with everything they had, and the battle became truly brutal. Limbs not fully severed, hanging loose. Corpses piled like mountains. Great pools of blood. Cries of agony. The dying, calling for their mothers at the top of their lungs.

Amid it all, Caldebert fought with everything he had. Then he was put in danger of dying, and I fought with all my strength to save him.

As I grabbed the back of his neck and pulled him to his feet, I heard a thunderous shout.

“Iron Reaper Ricky! A duel! You and I will end this war here!”

The one who had suddenly appeared and demanded a duel was Besprim, a warrior famed among the barbarians as a legend. Among the imperial soldiers, he was called the Meat Cleaver.

He stood twice as tall and broad as an ordinary person, encased in iron armor from head to toe, including his head and face. He wore a necklace made from dozens of severed imperial ears. Skulls still streaked with flesh dangled from the belt at his waist.

His great axe was a broad blade crudely but firmly bound to a handle. It was famed for chopping people apart in a single blow with its crushing weight.

Ricky and Besprim had known each other only through battlefield rumors. This was the first time they had met face to face.

Perhaps that was why Besprim identified Ricky, rather than the new commander Caldebert, as the leader.

In the middle of that battlefield where lives were at stake, the nearby soldiers stepped back and made space. Both enemy and ally briefly forgot to fight as they watched the two face each other.

Besprim’s axe was larger, but Ricky’s sword was also a greatsword, larger than an ordinary blade.

The ground was muddy like a swamp, and the smell of iron and blood was thick in the air.

A match that would decide fate? I did not think of such things. I merely threw everything I had into following the point of my sword.

After a standoff that felt both long and short, the duel ended in an instant.

I precisely deflected Besprim’s savage axe strike, moved to the side, and brought down my sword with all my strength. At that moment, sacred golden flames rose along the blade.

Besprim fell sideways and raised an arm to block. With a tremendous metallic crash, his arm was severed. Blood poured out. The match was over.

The duel itself was one thing, but those watching were left speechless in horror at the golden flames that had risen from Ricky’s sword.

What was that? A warrior sent by a god.

But at the time, I did not care much about that. I only saw Besprim’s blue eyes beyond his helmet. They trembled with fear.

At the sight of those eyes, the flame in my chest cooled quickly, and the flames on my blade died away as well.

With allies and enemies alike watching in breathless silence, everyone thought only Ricky’s execution of Besprim remained.

But the truth was the opposite. In some ways, it was more shocking than the flames that had just blazed upon the blade.

I slowly lowered the sword I had raised above my head as though I would cut off his neck at any moment.

“Go. Forget the war. Return to your homeland and live in peace.”

Why had I done that? I did not know either. Perhaps I saw myself reflected in those fear-filled eyes. Perhaps this man had also been innocent before he left his homeland. That was all I thought.

The imperial soldiers watching could not understand, but they did not dare object. In that moment, in that place, Ricky was an absolute being.

The battle ended just like that. The dispirited barbarians withdrew on their own, and the imperial army did not pursue them.

It was as if there had been a temporary truce.

Even though both sides had fought while hating each other to the extreme for the past ten years.

But when the garrison was retaken, my war ended as well. I asked Caldebert for a discharge and told him I wanted to return home.

Caldebert looked as though he had much to say, but he set it all aside and simply accepted my request.

I was the first person to be discharged with all my limbs intact. In Fernland, there was no normal way to leave the army except by dying.

So I returned home after ten years. To the Haiden fields. To where I had tended sheep. Though I would not be a shepherd anymore. I would tend the mill, I supposed. That was not bad.

But when I returned, my wife had made a new family. She had a new husband and children.

I could never forget what she said to me with cold eyes.

“What did you ever do for me? Don't act as if you know me.”

What did that mean? What about my wages? What had I spent ten years in that hell for?

What had kept me going for ten years was terribly flimsy. When the truth was revealed, that frailty tore apart as easily as paper.

Trembling with betrayal, I drew my sword and slaughtered the entire family in an instant. Before I even had time to restrain myself, the sword honed over ten years on the battlefield acted faster than I could.

Then I learned that the village head had been taking my wages for himself. So I killed him and his whole family too.

While killing the village head, I learned that even the drawing of lots had been rigged. Then had I ever had a choice? I killed every person in the village.

Just as I had done on the battlefield, I painfully killed the children in front of their parents first, then locked the rest in storehouses or barns and burned them to death. Those were the only things I had learned, so I was astonishingly skilled throughout it all.

I became wanted throughout the Empire, beyond the kingdom. I no longer knew what anything meant. Let them all die.

Many came to kill me. Bounty hunters, adventurers, thugs, bandits, robbers, wandering swordsmen, renowned knights.

Sometimes a small elite group came. Sometimes many came at once.

I survived several brushes with death, and in the end, I killed them all. Countless people. My ability in battle grew without limit.

I was neither wanted nor a fugitive. Because I went after them and killed them all instead.

I stormed castles alone and killed their lords. I destroyed famous swordsmanship guilds and adventurer guilds as well.

Holding a sword burning gold, I looked down upon the world from atop a mountain of corpses.

Then people began calling me the Demon Lord. The worst among demons, the worst among murderers, Ricky. Even the emperor trembled with fear.

After ten years passed that way, it was almost funny that a faction devoted to me appeared. A human could not possibly be that strong without having been chosen by a god.

But my body was already ruined. I had too many wounds seared shut by red-hot blades to count, and several fingers could not properly bend or straighten. My mind was as worn down as it could be. My life was running out.

Ten years as a shepherd, ten years on the battlefield, ten years as an infamous murderer. I decided to go somewhere no one knew and quietly meet death.

As I wandered without purpose, I found myself in the Haiden fields. Sunlight fell between dark clouds like several spears driven into the earth.

Far away, white sheep were scattered like tufts of cotton as they grazed. A young shepherd sat in the field like I once had, simply watching the scenery.

Then someone approached on horseback again. As before, the sun was behind him, and his face was hidden by a pitch-black shadow.

This time, I did not kneel before him. I merely drove my sword into the ground, sat sprawled beside it, lowered my head, and spoke.

“Liar.”

“What do you mean?”

“There is no such thing as happiness.”

“There is no unhappiness either. Both are like mirages. So it depends on what you choose. You were the one who cursed yourself and burned yourself at the stake.”

“...I don't know. I'm tired now.”

“Then rest. But after rest, another task awaits you. Even I can do nothing about that.”

My eyes slowly closed. Was I dying? Or merely sleeping? As my consciousness faded, I asked him.

“...Who are you? A god, or a demon?”

At the edge of my consciousness, I heard the man’s answer.

“As you saw the stars, I saw you as well.”

With those words, I think my first life came to an end.

Fire and steel, blood, and death. That was my life in a few words.

Prologue: A Memory That Can Never Become a Fond Memory. End.

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