WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ Ode of the Brave ◈

Chapter 51

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The red sunset looked stained with blood, or perhaps as if it were burning. More than a hundred pairs of eyes watched the duel beneath it, each carrying their own feelings.

Some watched with support in their hearts. Some with anticipation. Some with curiosity. And some...

Marie saw Ricart’s back. The boy who had stepped out for the duel was not trembling. Rather than brave, he somehow looked like someone with no attachment to life.

That was how it felt to her.

The enemies had climbed the high ground to watch the duel more closely. They were scattered here and there, but they had come so close that it was worrying.

Yet the boy paid them no mind at all.

As though it made no difference whether a hundred came at him or a thousand.

The red sun lay between Ricart and his opponent, Eberstein. Far away, it hung over the ridge as it slowly sank.

Ricart’s left side and Eberstein’s right side were dyed red by the sunset, while their opposite sides were dark in the backlight.

Who would move first?

In a duel with real blades, that was always the most important question.

Superior skill did not make a fight last longer. On the contrary, most ended in an instant.

Many ended with the first move. Even the winner could be badly wounded. That was what sword fighting was like.

So anyone entering a real duel had to stake all their skill and their entire life on the tip of their blade.

Sometimes, even their death.

The red sun sank lower and lower. The spectators began to worry that night might fall before the duel began.

As the world slowly, gradually lost its light, there came a brief moment when it grew noticeably darker than before.

At that moment, Eberstein stepped forward.

It was light and brisk.

But the sword would only swing after the step. That was true of every sword, because otherwise its power would lessen.

So Ricart watched his opponent’s eyes while taking in everything around him. Before Eberstein’s advancing foot had even touched the ground, Ricart shifted slightly to the right.

Then, in that very brief instant, Ricart felt that the distance was wrong.

In other words, Eberstein had not put his full intent into the attack.

When Eberstein’s foot touched the ground again, someone sprang out from behind a rock to Ricart’s right.

So that was what they were after.

Eberstein’s foot landed.

Then two blades cut through empty air without meeting.

Whoosh! Whoosh!

“Ricky!”

“T-There!”

The spectators cried out in alarm.

The attackers had staged it as a one-on-one duel to set up an ambush.

The person who had suddenly appeared rushed at Ricart. Ricart turned toward them in haste.

But even that rush was a feint.

The ambusher did not approach Ricart all the way. Instead, they ran swiftly around him while throwing daggers with both hands.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

The daggers carried mana. They looked capable of piercing iron plates.

With a method like that, the ambusher must have earned quite a name somewhere.

But what was more frightening was that the first dagger forced Ricart to dodge, the second blocked his escape, and the third was the real attack.

It was that meticulous.

In fact, Ricart avoided the first two daggers, but not the third.

His upper body twisted and bent sharply backward. From a distance, anyone would have thought he had been struck by the dagger.

“Ricky!”

His friends shouted.

But Eberstein was closest to Ricart. He rushed toward him to finish the job for certain.

Then what was this?

The tip of a dagger suddenly appeared before his eyes.

Ricart had caught the third dagger and thrown it at him.

Wait, was that possible?

That could not be possible.

For an instant, Eberstein felt as though time had slowed. But because he knew better than anyone that he could not evade it, it only made the terror and despair of death last longer.

Thud!

The dagger embedded itself precisely between Eberstein’s brows.

The entire blade sank in, leaving only the hilt exposed, and reached his brain. The force behind it snapped his head backward.

At that moment, the other person who had been about to join in with a dagger and kill Ricart hesitated at the unexpected turn.

To their eyes, Ricart’s cape seemed to spin like a top amid his violent movements.

The red cape swept aside sharply, and from beyond it, a sword point shot toward them.

“Urk!”

It was a situation they had never imagined. Their steps tangled, and they staggered as though they would fall backward.

In the end, they could only thrust out a hand. It was not even a defense.

Ricart’s sword pierced their palm and continued forward, driving precisely through their throat.

“Ghk!”

As though there was no need to confirm their death, Ricart immediately pulled out his sword and swung it through the air to shake off the blood.

Then he swept back his slightly disheveled cape with one hand and looked from side to side, as if checking whether anyone else would come at him.

Two corpses lay sprawled on the ground.

Despite the sudden ambush, Ricart had killed both skilled opponents and now stood there calmly, without the slightest sign of panic.

He did not even make a show of it.

Friend and foe alike could only gasp in admiration. Even a staged acrobatic act could not have been performed so perfectly.

It was skill at its peak.

“Wow...”

His friends, who had been running to help him, stopped and could only stare blankly.

What had just happened?

But there was another problem.

Reinhart, the leader of the Widowmaker Clan.

“You cowardly motherfuckers!”

He was so enraged by their cowardly ambush during a sacred duel that he came down the slope, dragging his enormous club along the ground.

The ground did not actually shake, but he was so huge that his heavy steps made it feel that way.

“Hey, you dogshit bastards! You call yourselves men!? Aren’t you ashamed!? Huh!? What are you looking at, you motherfuckers!?”

The sun had already set, and the surroundings were dim. But his booming voice made his presence impossible to ignore.

And when their leader moved, his subordinates came charging down after him.

Ricart was momentarily flustered.

Wait. This didn’t seem right.

Who was guarding the defense tower?

Then people rushed at Ricart.

They were fools who dreamed that if they killed Ricart, they would take the vacant place among the Nine Swords of the Empire.

But each of them had the same thought, so they were not allies. They were rivals.

“Move! Get out of the way!”

“I’m first!”

Ricart quickly checked his surroundings again, then charged at them instead.

He angled toward the outer edge and swung his sword beneath the dim evening sky.

Whoosh!

The sound of something cutting through the air rang out as Ricart’s sword crossed with his opponent’s weapon.

The other weapon cut through empty air, while Ricart severed the tendons beneath his opponent’s arm.

The enemy’s arm hung loose, not quite cut off.

“Argh!”

From then on, the enemies charged in recklessly, tangling themselves up with one another.

Then Reinhart, who had been thundering down the high ground, swung his club wide and smashed one enemy to pieces.

“You shameless bastards!”

Crunch!

It was an attack that simply crushed weapons, armor, and everything else beneath its enormous weight.

After killing one enemy, he swung his club back and forth.

It looked like he was merely swinging it wildly, but it was so powerful that the enemies could not carelessly approach him.

Then Reinhart’s subordinates rushed at the enemies who were backing away.

“You motherfuckers!”

“If you don’t want us making your wives widows, get lost!”

“Long live the Widowmaker Clan!”

The Beringen Guild had far fewer people than the enemy, but the situation was already half chaos, and the evening was too dark to make sense of anything.

The hundred or so enemies divided into those charging at Ricart, those fleeing from the Widowmaker Clan, and those who stood far away and only watched.

The most absurd sight was the people pouncing on their allies’ corpses to loot their equipment.

Did they not care who won or lost the guild war, as long as they made some money?

Everyone simply did whatever they wanted. It was less a battle than a brawl between people armed with blades.

Yet amid all that, the smarter enemies tried to seize the defense tower through the confusion.

Even while it was difficult to tell what was happening in any direction, Ricart caught their movements precisely.

The enemies charging at him were too busy getting tangled up among themselves to attack properly, so he did not need to worry much about them.

But the enemies rushing up toward the defense tower were a clear threat.

“I’m fine! Stop them from reaching the defense tower!”

Honestly, Ricart did not even know where his friends were.

The sun had set, and darkness was rapidly closing in around them.

Amid the chaos, Ricart quickly assessed the battle. It was too late to stop Reinhart now, and too late to return to defend the tower.

So he simply charged into the enemies.

Everything around him was dark and confusing, so he swung his sword wherever he could.

Arms were severed. Sides were slashed. Heads flew.

The enemies could not distinguish friend from foe, nor did they know who was cutting them down.

“Fuck!”

“Arghhhhh!”

“Who is that!? Move!”

Through the gap, Ricart broke through the enemies and raced down the high ground.

Meanwhile, Boribori clearly picked out Ricart’s voice even amid the noise.

So Boribori stood firm at the narrow path leading to the defense tower, blocking it to protect the tower.

Boribori’s weakness was that his swordsmanship relied on writing characters, making his footwork less nimble and limiting movement through open spaces.

But in a fight fought while standing firm in one place, Boribori was truly terrifying.

Sure enough, Boribori swung the sword swiftly at the enemies rushing forward.

The mana-infused blade left black trails darker than the night.

Whoosh, whoosh. Chop, chop.

It sounded like a butcher chopping and slicing meat.

Heads and limbs fell with a thud, thud, in front of Boribori.

Boribori retreated little by little, calmly swinging the sword. Enemies who did not realize that mangled corpses lay at their feet tripped over them and fell in heaps.

“Boribori! Boribori of Fivefold Dismemberment!”

Someone shouted.

It was frustrating that everyone gave such awful nicknames, but there was nothing the person being nicknamed could do. Other people were the ones who gave them.

But there was one problem.

Boribori could deal with enemies charging head-on, but those who stayed back and threw iron weights or nets were troublesome.

Perhaps because they were all people who had made names for themselves in their own regions, none of them were amateurs when it came to handling all kinds of weapons.

Boribori was struck on the fingers holding the sword by an iron weight.

Crack!

“Ugh!”

The index and middle fingers of Boribori’s right hand broke at once.

Boribori gritted his teeth and tightened his remaining fingers and his other hand, thankfully managing not to drop the sword.

But he could not display his full skill like this.

“Bori!”

It was Marie’s voice.

She could not be seen behind the enemies. She was probably somewhere beyond them.

“I’m fine!”

He was not fine, but he shouted that he was.

He had to let his allies know he was still alive, or they would lose their nerve. Besides, it was not a vital injury. If he gritted his teeth and kept fighting, he could endure somehow.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

The sounds of blades colliding rang out nearby and in the distance. Every now and then, someone’s dying scream could be heard.

Breath came faster, and lights flashed here and there in the dark night like fireflies.

Those lights were traces left by people skilled enough to wield mana in battle.

They were not Sword Masters, but they could infuse their weapons with mana to some degree.

The situation seemed to be stabilizing around those people, and Marie was among them.

When they struck the unguarded backs of the enemies trying to climb to the defense tower, the enemies began scattering to the left and right.

There had been no plan prepared in advance, and their fighting spirit was not especially strong. Once they judged that things had gone wrong, they scattered in every direction and rushed down the high ground.

Dismembered corpses were piled knee-deep along the narrow path, and Marie barely managed to join Boribori.

“Are you okay?”

“M-My fingers. Where’s Ricky?”

“I don’t know...”

“He’ll be okay.”

Boribori spoke with certainty.

Marie wondered how Boribori could be so certain, but there was something more urgent to do now.

“Let’s give you first aid first.”

“Okay.”

The two headed toward the defense tower.

Then flames suddenly surged up below the high ground.

Both of them automatically snapped their heads in that direction.

Ricart had started the fire.

When the melee broke out, it was the best move he could make in that situation.

Since no one could tell friend from foe anyway, Ricart charged into the enemy camp and set their supplies ablaze.

He ambushed and killed enemies who had remained far from the fighting in their makeshift camp, confident that they would be safe. Then he used nearby bonfires and torches to set fire to everything in sight.

The fire rapidly grew, illuminating the Kaits Highlands in place of the sun.

An eerie red glow reached halfway up the high ground, revealing the chaos that had been hidden by darkness.

The enemies fighting on the high ground suffered a severe psychological blow when the flames suddenly rose.

Regardless of who had more people, the thought suddenly struck them that they had nowhere to return to.

Most of the corpses scattered around them were clearly their allies.

They might not have known in the darkness, but now that they could see, fear seized them.

Were they losing?

Then Ricart began climbing the high ground again, sword in hand.

He did not run. He walked up slowly.

What was astonishing was that he had not launched an ambush and slipped back into the darkness. With numerous enemies clearly watching, he boldly climbed toward them.

His red cape fluttered.

It made him look larger, and the shadow at his feet stretched huge like a giant, swaying wildly.

Ricart panted heavily.

Like a machine, he calculated how many more enemies he could kill with the strength he had left.

Dozens of tactics came to mind accordingly.

That one is clumsy. That one has some skill. That one has little stamina left. If I move right while fighting, I can use the advantage of the flank.

Such thoughts spun through his mind like a machine.

Even without consciously thinking about them, the enemies’ weapons and their condition entered his sight and were processed.

Ricart looked at the enemies with eyes deeply absorbed in thoughts that were neither fear, courage, nor madness.

To those standing there in shock and staring at him, Ricart no longer looked human.

There was an indescribable aura about him.

That bastard is not human.

Then one person ran first.

After that, no one bothered to wait for anyone else. They all ran.

Ricart, who had been climbing the high ground, stopped where he was as the enemies fled before him. He looked around as though surveying the scene.

Corpses lay scattered around Ricart, while the terrifying flames burning below illuminated him.

To those watching from afar, it was utterly terrifying, as though it had been staged.

A gigantic shadow that looked as though it were dancing in delight.

Those who had fallen dead. Those who had fled. And the one person standing alone.

The difference between them was stark.

Reinhart also watched Ricart from afar.

He too was nearly bathed in enemy blood, but Ricart’s appearance reminded him of the first time he had seen Steiner.

There were things that were not human wandering the world.

A person could not kill a monster.

Only another monster could kill a monster.

That was what Reinhart thought.

In the end, that boy in the red cape was not human either.

But to Ricart, the landscape around him was familiar.

No, it was a familiar sight he had forgotten for a while.

Fire and steel, blood and death.

He could see it all and smell it too.

The past and present overlapped before his eyes.

Perhaps because he was exhausted, Ricart’s hearing had grown muffled.

He could barely hear anything else. Only the pounding of his heart and the sound of his breathing were loud.

It felt as though a hand had suddenly risen from the abyss, gripped his ankle, and dragged him down.

Into deep water.

Or into the past.

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