WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ Reformation of the Deadbeat Noble

Chapter 115

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A Person Named Judith (2)

Zet Frost had loved swords since he was a child.

The heroes in the fairy tales his mother told him at bedtime, and the great figures from history he later learned about as he grew older, every one of them had wielded a sword.

Demons and demonoids that plunged the entire continent into terror!

Heroes who cut down every last one of those wretched things with nothing but a blade!

He'd admired them. He'd wanted to become someone like them.

That was how Zet Frost stepped into the world of the sword, and his skill grew at a terrifying pace.

Looking back, it was hardly surprising.

House Frost had produced brilliant swordsmen for generations, and Zet's talent stood out even among the finest of that distinguished bloodline.

His older brothers, two and four years ahead of him, had lost all motivation in the face of it. That alone said enough.

Add to that a passion and fascination for the sword that reached the sky, and word of him spread wider with each passing year.

"That was the happiest time."

Zet Frost gave a wry smile and kept talking.

Five years after he first picked up a sword.

He'd been praised as the best among his peers in the surrounding territories.

None of that mattered to him. Zet swung his sword because it was fun.

Ten years after he first picked up a sword.

Word spread that he was the greatest talent in the kingdom.

He still didn't care. That wasn't why he'd picked up a sword in the first place.

Fifteen years after he first picked up a sword.

He reached the rank of Expert at an early age. One of the Western Five Kingdoms offered him a place in their knight order.

That was when it started. Talk of Zet Frost began spreading beyond his kingdom, across the whole west, across the entire continent.

Whenever people discussed the young swordsmen who would shoulder the next generation, his name always came up.

Whenever people debated who might one day become a Sword Master, his name came up there too.

At only twenty-two, Zet Frost had grown into a figure the whole world talked about.

That was when it started.

That was when he stopped being able to focus fully on his sword.

"Little by little... little by little, other competitors started getting under my skin."

That was the truth.

Before he turned twenty-two, Zet Frost had been the best.

His talent had no rival within the kingdom. Placing anyone above him would have been an insult.

But the moment he reached Expert and his stage shifted from the kingdom to the entire continent, he stopped being the best.

One of the finest talents.

Maybe a notch below that, even.

That was what began to shake Zet Frost.

'Zet Frost? Impressive young man. But isn't he a bit lacking compared to the great sword houses of the Five Kingdoms?'

'Comparable? No, he's definitely not the best. I heard that top student from Krono Fencing Hall this year is the real deal...'

People tearing him down.

'What kind of bullshit is that! Do you have any idea how amazing Lord Zet Frost is!'

'Exactly. They don't even know what they're talking about, dismissing him just because he's not from the Five Kingdoms...'

'You'll regret it later, probably. With Zet Frost's talent, he's guaranteed to reach Sword Master by his early forties, if not sooner!'

And people who pinned their hopes on him instead.

Countless words gathered, mixed, reshaped, and came flooding into House Frost.

No one escaped their influence.

From the lowest servant to the highest lord of the house, everyone began fixating on Zet Frost's every move and every ounce of growth, and that became an enormous weight bearing down on the man himself.

Learning the names of rivals he never wanted to know.

Learning the achievements of rivals he never wanted to hear about.

Being affected by all of it, knowingly or not. Grieving over someone else's sword instead of his own, or celebrating it.

That was how Zet Frost began training with a sword that felt different from before, and the joy he'd started with slipped away bit by bit, like dandelion seeds scattering on the wind.

"Of course, that kind of stimulus wasn't all bad. It helped plenty, honestly. The fact that I earned the title of the 101st-ranked swordsman at the young age of thirty five, maybe that owed something to the brutal effort that came from all that competition. I won't deny it."

"..."

"But that was as far as it went."

It stopped being fun.

It stopped making him happy.

The stimulation from competition wasn't endless, and it had been eating away at pieces of his heart instead.

Five years after he reached the edge of Expert rank, then ten years, still without reaching Sword Master, he finally understood.

Training with a sword wasn't fun for him anymore.

That was how Zet Frost gave up his journey toward becoming a Master, settled into a corner of Partisan, and shut himself away from the world.

"Comparison, competition, the drive to win that comes from it... none of that's bad. Used properly, in moderation, nothing helps you grow more than that kind of burning feeling."

"..."

"But the problem is that 'moderation' doesn't really apply to competition. There's always someone higher, and above them, someone higher still. Anyone consumed by the fight has no choice but to keep struggling in misery until they reach the top. You get impatient trying to pull ahead in the race, you push yourself too far, you end up drawing on more than you actually have. And..."

Zet Frost raised a hand and pointed at Airen Farreira and Brett Lloyd.

"When you keep geniuses like the two of you close, that kind of impatience only gets worse."

"..."

"That's why I brought it up, as a warning. Don't fixate on comparing yourselves to others, on competition. Find your first mind again. The joy you felt the first time you picked up a sword, focusing on that will help you far more in the long run. That's what I meant by it... but it seems it had the opposite effect."

Zet let out a long breath and drank his honey wine again.

Watching him, Airen finally understood why Judith had gotten so angry.

However carefully Zet Frost had phrased it, his words were bound to wound Judith's pride in the end.

Stripped down to its bones, wasn't he saying that she, lacking talent compared to Airen and Brett, was pushing herself too hard out of sheer competitive drive?

'If it's Judith, of all people, hearing something like that would set her off no matter what.'

Airen's expression hardened.

He had never once thought Judith's talent fell short of his own.

Judith probably never thought so either.

But when someone as skilled as Zet Frost said something like that, it was bound to get under her skin.

No matter how good his intentions had been.

"..."

"..."

Silence settled over the room.

Neither Brett nor Airen nor the bald butler said a word.

Neither did Zet Frost, who had been talking nonstop until now. All of their eyes were fixed on the same spot.

Judith had slipped quietly into the room sometime after the conversation began.

She stood facing Zet now, far calmer than anyone would have expected.

"First, I'm sorry."

"..."

"I know you didn't mean it as an insult. And yeah, I'll admit it, even though it stings, that these punks are better than me. And it's also true that I've been pushing myself hard trying to claw my way up to catch them. But you know what?"

"...What?"

"I didn't pick up a sword because it was fun."

"..."

"I picked it up to survive. So I wouldn't die."

Right after that, Judith began telling the story of her childhood.

* * *

As everyone already knew, Judith had lost her parents young.

At seven years old, she'd landed in the slums of the coastal city of Pavar, and to survive there, she'd had to do whatever it took.

No, simply doing things wasn't enough.

Whatever she did, she had to do it better than everyone else just to stay alive.

'You little bastards! I give you a safe place to sleep, I keep the other thugs off your backs, and this is all you bring in? Anyone who doesn't make quota doesn't eat!'

To get a single meal a day, she'd had to hand over enough to satisfy the boss who'd taken her in, and to make that quota, she had to beg better than anyone else around her.

Judith had studied how to win the sympathy of passersby just to survive, and while other orphans starved to death, she'd managed to get her half loaf of black bread.

Of course, that alone wasn't enough.

As she grew older, the boss's greed only grew with her, and once begging alone couldn't cover her dues, Judith turned to pickpocketing.

Fortunately, even at that young age, she had a real knack for controlling her body.

With hand skills far beyond her years, she could skillfully lift money off passersby, and even after paying her dues, she lived far more comfortably than she ever had begging.

Or so she thought she could.

'What is this, you little shit! You've been hiding money!'

'You don't even know how grateful you should be that we feed you and give you a place to sleep...!'

A month after her pickpocketing had made things comfortable, Judith's pockets went hollow again.

Beaten to the ground, she glared, careful not to let it show, at the boss and his men who had just finished thrashing her.

She didn't want to live like this.

She didn't want to leave them be like that, either.

That was the reason Judith picked up a sword.

"Of course, I didn't have a real sword, or a real teacher."

Of course she didn't.

How could a beggar girl scraping by day to day in the slums ever get her hands on a sword?

How could she ever find herself a teacher?

She picked up a reasonably straight tree branch and trained with that instead, watching closely whenever the rough men of the coast got into fights.

Whenever a wandering knight or a swordsman from some fencing hall happened to show off their blade, she calmed her pounding heart at the unexpected stroke of luck and tried her best to copy their movements.

And she thought.

Someday, she'd use this sword to kill the boss and all his men, every last one.

Someday, she'd become skilled enough to look down even on those wandering knights showing off their swordsmanship like they were something special.

She'd build up enough strength that no one could ever look down on her again, a commoner, an orphan, someone from the slums.

The kids her age in the slums had laughed and mocked her for it, but Judith never stopped.

While others sat around with no energy to spare, she swung her sword with everything she had.

While others slept, exhausted, she swung her sword like a woman possessed.

Even while the boss got drunk on money stolen from snot-nosed kids, she kept going.

She lived harder, moved harder, than anyone her age, harder than the boss, harder than anyone.

Years passed like that, and by the time she turned twelve.

Judith's wooden sword split the boss's skull open.

It was the kind of incident that shook the entire slum.

"If I'd had worse luck, I probably would've died there too... but I guess I wasn't completely out of luck, because a swordsman, well, a senior now, I suppose, took me in. That's how I managed to survive."

"..."

"But I still can't forget that time. Not even now."

Even after being saved by that hand of a Krono swordsman, even after becoming a preliminary trainee at Krono.

Judith never forgot what had happened back then.

A hell where you starved to death if you didn't move faster than everyone else.

A hell where you got crushed underfoot if you didn't grow stronger than everyone else.

To her, that was what competition meant. That was what losing meant.

"Of course, I love the sword now. Even the smallest realization lifts my mood, even the smallest bit of growth makes the corners of my mouth turn up. I guess I became a swordsman without even realizing it."

"..."

"But that's not my first mind. My first mind is... competition."

And to me, competition.

Winning and losing, that's a matter of life and death.

Having said that much, Judith paused for a moment.

Her emotions seemed to well up, and she took a deep breath while everyone waited for her.

Then the next words came from her mouth.

"I'll claw my way through it. I'll push myself too hard. If pushing and pushing lets me beat people better than me, if it lets me keep moving forward without losing..."

"..."

"Then whatever suffering comes with it, I can take it. However much it takes."

As though swearing an oath to herself, Judith finished with a voice hardened like steel.

Her eyes, fixed on Zet Frost, burned with something like the heat of a volcano.

Airen Farreira watched that sight, holding his breath.

He stared, quiet and steady, at a flame far fiercer than his own.

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