WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 151: The Road Flows with the Traveler - 7

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Everyone remembered Partlaxion a beat too late. He had disappeared so naturally, leaving no trace of his presence, that he had slipped from everyone's attention.

General Partlaxion sat on top of a container, looking down at them as if bored.

"I was on vacation, so I wasn't planning to work. I was just curious why you were poking around containers full of mail and chimera bean seeds, so I thought I'd watch."

The General hopped down. He landed without a sound and walked forward with the leisurely stride of someone out for a stroll.

Partlaxion held no weapon, yet Sir Baltzroy could not take his eyes off him, every muscle in his body tensed.

It was as though the armed and unarmed sides had switched places.

"Come on, man. A duel against an old man? Someone who'll die soon enough if you leave him alone?"

Sir Baltzroy gritted his teeth and shouted at the familiar face that had appeared out of nowhere.

"...Why are you here? With them coming down now, no one should be heading this way!"

"Looks like information really is leaking somewhere. The Resistance knows the operational guidelines better than we do, and they were only issued recently."

The General scratched his head.

"Have you ever seen me obey anyone's orders? The moment I read that order, I took leave and came running. If I'd come without taking leave, it would've been insubordination."

Their meeting here was nothing more than a coincidence born of whim and chance. Realizing that, Sir Baltzroy muttered hollowly.

"...Damn it. What rotten luck."

"Rotten luck? Isn't this better?"

General Partlaxion held out his empty hand and grinned.

"Here I am. I have no weapon, and no subordinates guarding me. If you duel me here and win, the military state will stagger and your reputation will rise. What do you say? Isn't that far more worthwhile than quietly looting containers?"

Yet Sir Baltzroy knew better than anyone how unrealistic that was.

Now one of the military state's Six Generals, Partlaxion had once been a promising knight of the kingdom.

He had defeated the strongest guardian knight of his age and brought down the kingdom with his own hands.

The traitor knight, Absolute Spear Partlaxion.

Partlaxion looked down at Sir Baltzroy with eyes full of delight.

"Show me your spirit. Show me your resolve. Challenge someone you cannot defeat to a duel, and entrust victory and defeat to the glorious embrace of god. Come on. Your enemy, the traitor who destroyed the kingdom, is right here. Judge me honorably through a duel!"

Sir Baltzroy gripped his spear firmly against the wind, but despair swelled in his heart despite the strength in his grip.

He steadied his trembling hand and shouted to hide his fear.

"How dare the traitor who destroyed the kingdom speak of a sacred duel...!"

"Traitor? What nonsense."

Bang!

At that moment, a Resistance member keeping watch in the rear suddenly fired. At the same time, the General casually swept a finger to the side.

The wind stopped.

When it came to strength, a little finger could not overcome a thumb. Even if it trained enough to become stronger than someone else's thumb, it still could not overcome that person's leg strength.

A hand cannot reach behind its own arm. Even with flexibility training, reaching that far is the limit. The body was not built that way.

It was an obvious truth. Strength had limits, whatever form it took, and weakness could not overcome strength. A fundamental truth.

Yet when energy arts reached a certain realm, there came a point when they surpassed ordinary strength by a vast margin. A moment when power changed from a matter of size to one of intensity.

A bullet was caught between the General's fingers. Even a specialized round designed solely for increased penetration to break through bullet-repelling energy arts was still far from enough.

The General radiated energy arts from his entire body and took command of the space itself, so thoroughly that a mere bullet could not dare pierce it.

Spinning the bullet caught between his fingers, the General said, "What I did was not treason."

There had been a time when private duels, borrowing god's name, ran rampant. A time when it was considered natural for the strong to exploit the weak and fill their bellies.

Corrupt merchants colluded with armed knights, learning to amass wealth unjustly and spread that harm throughout the world.

Indiscriminate duels continued. The weak had to submit to survive. The strong sought out those weaker than themselves who had gathered wealth, pursuing riches and glory.

God blessed the winners, while those dying were branded evil.

"I challenged the kingdom itself to a proper duel. I simply won."

It was a tale now spoken of as legend.

Absolute Spear had stood with both feet outside the capital and cried out the words of a duel toward the distant royal castle.

The challenger was himself. The target was the kingdom itself.

The most brilliant knight had become a traitor knight.

The twilight of knights, and the first morning star to rise.

The man who had changed history lowered his shoulders as if disappointed.

"I did it, but you can't even duel one person? Are you calling yourself a knight without even that much courage?"

"Are you provoking me?!"

Without warning, Sir Baltzroy's spear flashed. Even with the General's energy arts gripping the wind, Baltzroy shook it off with his own and thrust forward. A fierce stab meant to break through at a single point, without even considering how much strength it would leave him afterward.

The General lightly caught the spear with the bullet between his fingers. The spear tip and bullet tip met exactly, balancing each other perfectly as they came to a stop.

The General muttered, "Your basics aren't bad, but you're lacking. You've been slacking off on training lately, haven't you? Well, there aren't any duels anymore, so I suppose you have no reason to practice."

"You bastard!"

Blocked, Sir Baltzroy gripped the spear and twisted it. He intended to spin the bullet off through rotation.

Yet the spear did not move. Baltzroy groaned and twisted his arm. He tried wrenching it free, then gathered his strength and shoved.

The bullet did not budge. The General was taking all that force on its short, blunt end as though performing a trick.

All the knight could do was retreat.

"Try harder. Put some strength into it. Hold it with both hands."

The General playfully moved the bullet along with Sir Baltzroy's spear.

Then, amid that strange standoff, an opening appeared in the General's guard for the briefest instant. Sir Baltzroy's expression filled with delight.

"You let your guard down, Absolute Spear!"

Click. Sir Baltzroy pulled something attached to the spear tip. Acrid smoke rose as the entire spear turned red. The shaft sucked in the surrounding air.

Sensing something was wrong, the General muttered, "Huh? Did I let my guard down?"

Baltzroy's weapon was a spear, yet not merely a spear. Its hollow shaft also served as a single-use barrel, with something built into it to fire one shot.

By the time the General noticed, the explosion had already happened.

"Wow."

A deafening blast erupted with those words. The spear shaft detonated the air it had drawn in and fired a shell from within.

Its accuracy was terrible, and its durability worse, but once, just once, it could deliver a blow more powerful than anything else. The spear tip glowed red and spewed fierce flames.

It was the hidden trump card of a knight who had honed his personal martial strength.

"What? You use guns too?"

Even that was powerless before strength that had reached a higher realm.

There was no spear in the General's hands, but that did not matter much. Even the tiny bullet held between Partlaxion's fingers could be used as a spear.

A secret technique unfolded from the General's hand.

The bullet was only as long as a finger, but the General swung and threw it like a spear. The world's shortest spear raced up the barrel.

The bullet fired from his fingers pierced straight through the center of the explosion, carrying a tremendous torrent of force.

Guns and cannons were nothing more than steel barrels enclosing an explosion on every side and forcing its power in one direction.

Put simply, if energy arts were stronger than steel, overcoming guns and cannons was easy.

The General's energy arts were stronger than the barrel. Blocked by the storm carried by the bullet, the explosion inside the spear shaft scattered in every direction like a disorganized mob.

Unable to withstand the force, the spear shaft finally exploded from within. Even his hidden trump card rendered useless, Sir Baltzroy stared blankly at the broken middle of his spear.

"Could knighthood not overcome the flow of time after all? You abandoned spears and started using guns... Still, my spear won, so doesn't that mean spears are better than guns in the end?"

There was no awareness that what Partlaxion had just fired was a bullet rather than a spear. Sir Baltzroy staggered back until a container stood at his back.

'...We're in completely different leagues. I can't win. I probably can't run either. Damn it.'

Realizing the gap between them, Sir Baltzroy glared at General Partlaxion in frustration. His heart held no shame or anger at defeat, only resentment.

Sir Baltzroy shouted, "Damn it! Why? You could've lived no differently from a king in the kingdom! No, you could've ruled like a god! Why? Why did you turn your back on the kingdom?!"

At the cry of someone driven from the privileged class, General Partlaxion calmly picked his ear.

"If you want to play god, crawl into a well and become the god of frogs. Why struggle so desperately to climb out? If you're going to fight, fight someone strong. Isn't that the true flavor of a duel?"

The meaning was clear. You were no more than a frog in a well.

Humiliated, Sir Baltzroy gritted his teeth and muttered lowly, "...Everyone."

The Resistance members had been crouching inside the containers, sensing something ominous. They waited for Sir Baltzroy's command.

Having called them, Sir Baltzroy muttered with an ominous gleam in his eyes.

"Scatter. Run! Take hostages or flee! Survive however you can!"

At that moment, the Resistance burst out in every direction like rats pouring from a rat hole. While the General turned his attention toward them for a moment, Sir Baltzroy kicked off the ground as well.

'Hostages! I need hostages!'

Looking around for the only way to survive, Sir Baltzroy spotted a mother clutching her son tightly. He immediately moved toward them, swinging his spear wildly in every direction.

It did not last long.

"I thought you'd do that."

Colonel Gand, General Partlaxion's disciple, blocked his path. A crude standard-issue spear lightly knocked aside Sir Baltzroy's weapon.

Blocked again, Sir Baltzroy glared at the Colonel's spear.

"You dare use a spear in front of me?!"

Losing to Absolute Spear was one thing. Losing to one of Partlaxion's subordinates was impossible.

Half out of stubbornness and half from cold calculation, Sir Baltzroy extended the broken spear shaft. The shortened spear cut through the wind, repeatedly striking at Colonel Gand's vital points.

Colonel Gand avoided and deflected every attack by the width of a sheet of paper.

"I was disappointed that after knights went extinct, I never got to cross spears with one."

Clang.

Gand swung the standard-issue spear wide, forcing Sir Baltzroy away, then muttered indifferently, "Now that I've actually fought one, this is disappointing. Is this all?"

"You dare speak of spears before a knight! Pay for that arrogance with your life...!"

Enraged, Sir Baltzroy drew out the energy arts from his entire body. Turning his whole body into a spear, he lowered himself and thrust diagonally upward from below. Ghostfire bloomed from the energy-laden spear tip.

His all-out killing move, Goblin Spear. A technique whose embarrassing epithet claimed it took one life each time its goblin fire flashed.

Seeing the spear rush up beneath Gand's chin in an instant, the colonel thrust back. Their shafts crossed, and their blades ignored defense as they targeted each other's lives.

Screech. The spear shafts scraped together. Drops of blood fell from the spear blades. Victory and defeat were decided by someone's death.

Colonel Gand muttered indifferently, "You of all people. Who do you think my master is, that you dare challenge me with a spear?"

"Ghk...!"

A voice comes from the throat. Therefore, if a spear blade is embedded in the throat, one cannot speak.

Sir Baltzroy could say nothing. Foaming blood at the mouth, he collapsed limply. Gand pulled back the spear and spun it once.

General Partlaxion strode over to Gand.

"Hey. You've improved a lot. You could get a star now, couldn't you?"

"Stars aren't handed out just because someone asks for one. I need to build up achievements."

"You've already got experience. What achievements are you talking about? If you want achievements, go around on your own. Your achievements keep getting buried because you're always with me."

"I haven't even learned your secret techniques yet. How could I go around alone?"

"Did you leave something with me? Why are you looking to me for your secret techniques?"

Colonel Gand looked around for the other Resistance members, but soon realized it was pointless.

The Resistance members who had scattered in every direction were already corpses.

Only the Captain, the old engineer, and I remained. Oh, along with the mother and son who had nearly become hostages.

The General shrugged amid the scene of slaughter and said loudly, "Well? Surprised? I'm General Partlaxion, currently on leave. I had personal business to attend to, so I hid my identity. Anyone got a complaint?"

Of course, no one stepped forward. The Captain and I shook our heads. We were relatively calm, but the old engineer was so overwhelmed by meeting a legend of the military state that he could barely breathe.

The General turned toward me and grinned.

"Hey, little brother. Let me ask again. Which is better, a spear or a gun?"

I answered readily.

"Without question, a spear."

Footnotes:

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