WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Reformation of the Deadbeat Noble

Chapter 132

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Rapid Promotion (3)

A very long time ago. Back when John Drew had first stopped focusing on visible strength and shifted his attention to invisible mind games and calculated maneuvering.

Ever since then, he'd liked to compare a duel between swordsmen to a game of chess.

But comparing the two didn't mean he thought they belonged on the same level.

'Obviously a sword fight is far more subtle and complex than chess!'

For one, the backdrop of the contest itself was different.

Chess only ever played out within a limited eight by eight grid, while a fight between swordsmen unfolded across far wider, far more varied environments.

Even a relatively confined dueling stage offered far more freedom than a chessboard.

And that wasn't all. The range of techniques available was beyond comparison too.

Chess only gave you seven kinds of pieces to work with, while the forms a sword could take were too numerous to count, and the swordsmanship branching off from them was just as varied.

"Chess masters would be furious if they heard that."

Lulu, footing the bill, tossed that in, and John Drew flinched a little, but he held onto his opinion to the end.

And Airen, a fellow swordsman, found himself agreeing with the sentiment too.

The parade of tricks pouring endlessly out of John Drew, like a river that never ran dry, had left him utterly unable to keep his footing.

Of course, John Drew's style of swordsmanship wasn't without any structure at all.

There were similar flows, similar situations, that inevitably arose whenever swords clashed.

He sorted those into broad categories, then deployed tricks tailored to work generally within each one.

And he approached the question of "why does this particular move work" from a theoretical angle.

Listening to those explanations, you could tell there was a core and a system behind even the trickery.

But absorbing the dozens of branching variations that followed from there was, even for Airen, a tall order.

That was when it started.

Instead of obsessing over the surface details, Airen began focusing on the underlying core of John Drew's swordsmanship.

'What is a trick, really?'

A trick.

At its core, the word meant a petty method or means, a technique meant to deceive an opponent.

Something like faking scissors in rock paper scissors, then throwing paper instead.

The opponent, thinking they were up against scissors, would throw rock to counter properly, but paper would eat rock instead.

For the one on the receiving end, it was infuriating.

'Though, of course, it comes with risk.'

The most efficient way to throw paper is to just throw paper from the start.

Faking scissors and then throwing paper is inherently inefficient, so if the opponent doesn't fall for it, you take the loss.

That was exactly why anyone who used tricks worked to hide their intent more carefully, more elegantly.

They worked hard to make their paper look even more like scissors, and they layered on all sorts of peripheral techniques to keep the opponent from focusing too closely on the real move.

Airen decided to start by observing those tricks rather than trying to learn them outright.

'This much, at least, I can manage.'

Fortunately, his senses and concentration were currently at their sharpest.

Details he never would have noticed before, a foot angled slightly off, a shift in the shoulder, the smallest change in a gaze or expression, all of it now flooded into his head.

He compared each of those details, one by one, against the orthodox swordsmanship he already knew.

Doing that, he could tell relatively quickly and easily which parts of John Drew's movements were unnatural, and at what point they carried some hidden, murky intent.

Compared to being walked through it verbally, step by step, it felt dozens of times faster.

Of course, that alone didn't solve everything.

He could tell when his opponent was scheming, but predicting exactly what the goal behind it was remained difficult.

That part came down purely to a lack of experience.

Still, just noticing that something was off, and holding a thread of tension in the back of his mind instead of naively going through his own motions, made his responses far better.

Not falling for the paper disguised as scissors, watching to the very end to see what the opponent actually threw before moving.

That kind of faithfulness to the fundamentals alone made Airen's swordsmanship far more stable.

He thanked John Drew, sincerely, for making that growth possible.

"Thank you. I learned a lot thanks to you."

"Oho, Airen! Did you have some kind of breakthrough? Thanks to your sword teacher?"

"Yeah. It helped a ton. Thank you again."

"I see! Well then, as Airen's closest friend and a fine master besides, I can't just sit here and do nothing."

Tap, tap!

Jingle, jingle!

Lulu floated over to John Drew's side and clapped her paws together, elegant as ever.

Three gold coins came jingling down out of thin air.

Startled, John Drew snatched them up, and once he looked closer, he saw they weren't ordinary gold coins at all.

A beautiful gem was set right into the middle of each one.

'Wait, isn't this a gold coin from an ancient kingdom that fell seven hundred years ago?'

Rare not just in monetary value but historically as well.

Whether or not she knew that, Lulu gave John Drew's shoulder a satisfied pat.

"Keep up the good work!"

'...What exactly have I even done here?'

John Drew thought, his expression grave.

He'd certainly done his best as a swordsmanship instructor, and his efforts hadn't gone entirely to waste, since his client had shown a bit of genuine progress.

But the real, significant results had come from somewhere else entirely.

The orthodox, fundamentals-first movements he'd never actually taught.

Getting praised and encouraged for that stung his pride more than it pleased him.

'Why does the student keep figuring out things the teacher himself doesn't understand?'

What in the world was even going on here?

He wanted to shout it out loud.

But he couldn't do that.

Like he'd already said before, the first reason was that the money kept coming in, far too much to turn down.

'...And it'd be way too embarrassing to ask what he actually learned from me.'

That was the truth of it.

John Drew had already retired from the front lines a while back, but he was still, at the end of the day, a swordsman.

And there was something he hadn't told a soul. He'd been thinking about systematizing his current swordsmanship and opening his own fencing hall someday.

He might not have achieved the results he wanted as a swordsman, but as a sword teacher, he carried grand ambitions.

Given that, watching Airen achieve more in the parts he hadn't taught than in the parts he had lit a competitive fire in him.

'Fundamentals? Basics? Sure, fine, they're good. But I'll show you there are tricks that break even those!'

He'd pass on the deadly tricks he'd researched and refined, no matter what it took!

Having made that resolution, John Drew looked ahead.

Airen Farreira flinched at the look in his eyes.

'What's with that stare?'

Far more intense than before.

A feeling close to passion, something he hadn't felt from the man until now.

"If you don't mind, I'd like to drop everything else starting today and focus entirely on you... how about it? Sound alright?"

"...Of course! Thank you!"

Airen offered his thanks.

He had no idea why.

Why John Drew had suddenly made that face. Why he was saying all this.

But it didn't really matter either way.

Smiling wide enough to show his white teeth, Airen spoke again.

"I look forward to it going forward too."

"...Likewise."

John Drew answered half a beat late, thinking to himself.

'He's even more handsome when he smiles. Annoying.'

* * *

Another ten days passed.

Through it all, John Drew set aside even the golf and the luxury shopping he loved so much, and poured all his effort into Airen Farreira alone.

He'd always believed in giving his best to a client once he'd taken their money, but this time, he tried to hold nothing back, teaching with the mindset of someone passing everything on to a prized disciple.

Maybe that sincerity had gotten through.

Airen Farreira's skill with tricks had visibly improved compared to ten days ago.

"Whew, this makes it all worth it."

John Drew looked at his client with a satisfied expression.

Airen's swordsmanship wasn't smeared over entirely with tricks, the way his own was.

If anything, he still stayed faithful to his own fundamentals.

He didn't throw out some huge, reckless gamble on top of that. Instead, he worked in only the low-risk moves, blended in so seamlessly it was like watering down wine, barely noticeable at all.

But even just that much changed the pressure he gave off, and dramatically so.

Someone who only knew the textbook approach and someone who stayed faithful to the textbook while occasionally slipping in a clever trick were worlds apart.

Showing even the slightest hint of a variable forced an opponent to keep countless possibilities open, so Airen Farreira's swordsmanship had become far trickier to deal with than before, in a way that couldn't even be compared.

Still, even with training going this smoothly, this cleanly, not everything was satisfying.

"Finding a sparring partner isn't easy."

The problem was that he couldn't find anyone willing to clash at a hundred percent.

Every session of instruction up to now had been carried out with both Airen Farreira and John Drew holding back.

If the two of them went all out, no matter how outlandish and ever-changing John Drew's swordsmanship might be, he simply wouldn't stand a chance.

'Can't be helped. There's only so much of a gap tricks alone can cover.'

Because of that, the techniques Airen had learned so far hadn't gotten nearly enough practice.

No matter how much theory he heard, how well he grasped the flow, how hard he trained alone, none of it was the same as an actual duel.

To get even a taste of something close to real combat, he needed to cross swords with someone close to his own level.

Of course...

'The kind of swordsman who could actually stand up to this monster would have to be King-level, even at the Proof Land.'

And there was no way a swordsman of that caliber would agree to face Airen Farreira.

John Drew could vouch that Airen's skill was the real thing, but the public still had no idea.

Over the three weeks of training, Airen had racked up two more wins, but none of his opponents had drawn out his true strength, so if anything, he was still being underrated.

Given all that, it was safe to say there was no King-level duelist out there who'd carve time out of a busy schedule just to come all the way here.

No, if anything, knowing Airen's actual skill would probably make them avoid him even more. It would only get in the way of their own dueling career.

John Drew's forehead creased deeper and deeper as he sank into that worry.

"Master, you have a visitor."

"A visitor? Who..."

"Well... not your visitor, sir. It's a visitor for Master Airen Farreira. Someone named Judith... what should I do?"

One of the three rookies who had come to visit the Proof Land.

Hearing her name, John Drew's expression brightened for a moment, then darkened again just as fast.

No matter how much of a Krono Fencing Hall classmate she was, he doubted she could hold her own against Airen's absurd skill.

'I heard she's not even twenty yet... no way she can match a monster like this.'

Of course, that didn't mean he could turn her away.

John Drew ordered the servant to bring Judith in.

A moment later.

"....."

Seeing the red haired swordswoman with his own eyes, he finally understood just how absurd a group the Krono Fencing Hall's 27th cohort really was.

But...

"You. What is this."

John Drew wasn't the only one taken aback.

Judith, back from a month of hellish training, looked at Airen Farreira and spoke.

"What the hell did you even do for a whole month... your posture's completely different. This much?"

That wasn't her usual voice.

Anger, a kind of hollow disbelief, embarrassment, and a tangle of other emotions all mixed together in her voice and her expression.

Sensing her presence, John Drew broke into a sweat and stepped back. This wasn't his place to be.

Airen Farreira, of course, didn't step back.

He'd been quietly checking over his own swordsmanship ever since he'd heard Judith was coming, and now he spoke, his voice low.

"Feel like crossing swords again, for old times' sake?"

"...Sure, you bastard."

With a thick curse, Judith drew her sword.

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