WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Reformation of the Deadbeat Noble

Chapter 134

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The Third Storm (1)

"....."

Lucas Gibson.

An Expert, known to carry skill worthy of the Queen-level stage.

That didn't mean he'd walked in expecting to win today, though.

Honestly, Lucas Gibson accepted, to some degree, the crowd and reporters' prediction that he was the underdog.

'The guy Airen Farreira just fought... I've crossed swords with him before too.'

Clearly weaker than himself.

But not a bad swordsman by any means, from what he remembered.

If that Krono trainee could put someone like that down in a single strike, then age aside, the kid's skill had to sit above his own.

'Best to play it as tight as possible.'

So Lucas Gibson's opening strategy leaned hard into defense.

Keep his eyes wide, read every motion the opponent made, and hold a stance that could absorb whatever came at him.

Nothing particularly clever about it.

Probably every swordsman who'd faced Airen Farreira so far had walked in with the same mindset.

Everyone knew what the kid had said in his interview, after all.

But there was a massive gap between those men and himself.

'I'm an Expert. None of the ones he's faced so far were.'

Right before the match began, Lucas Gibson set his face with resolve.

He didn't know if he could win.

But win or lose, he wasn't about to let the kid walk off this stage feeling comfortable.

He was locking eyes on the talked-about prospect with that mindset when it happened.

'Huh?'

An opening.

Yes. What his eyes caught was a clear, unmistakable gap.

It hadn't come from any lack of skill.

Slack in the mind.

To put it more bluntly, carelessness.

The moment that hairline crack, born from it, spread across every inch of Airen Farreira, Lucas Gibson felt an impulse he couldn't hold back.

"Begin!"

Fwoosh!

The referee's voice rang out, marking the start of the match.

Right after, Lucas Gibson surged toward Airen Farreira.

In his eyes, the obsession with victory that had briefly gone out burned bright again.

If he hesitated even now and let the chance slip away, he had no business calling himself a swordsman!

Shouting that inwardly, he gripped his sword one-handed, like he was holding a rapier.

Then he extended his right arm and drove it deep, straight at his opponent's solar plexus.

Not much power behind it, but perfect for exploiting the gap in an instant.

But right then.

Looking into Airen's eyes as they came into view, he immediately sensed his judgment had been wrong.

"...!"

The expression shifted, from something beyond relaxed, almost blank, into something else entirely.

Light flashed in eyes that had looked dull a moment before.

The stance, once riddled with openings, filled in densely, and the presence radiating off him hardened beyond words.

Lucas Gibson felt his skin crawl.

But it was already too late to pull back the blade he'd committed to.

Before he could, Airen Farreira's massive sword began moving, fluid and clean.

Clang!

...Clatter!

One strike.

With a single motion, Airen sent Lucas Gibson's sword flying, then bowed in respect to his opponent.

Even then, the referee and every spectator wore the same blank expression.

That didn't last, of course.

A beat late, the referee caught up to what had happened and called out the result in a loud voice, and only then did the crowd erupt, chanting Airen Farreira's name with wild enthusiasm.

"Whoaaa! What was that!"

"Another one-hit win! Another one!"

"He actually kept his word to the end?"

"No, but the other guy's an Expert, how did this even..."

"Airen Farreira! Airen Farreira!"

"Airen Farreira!"

The roar of the crowd shook the ground.

In the middle of it, Lucas Gibson, standing there stunned, shook his head once and forced himself to run through what had just happened.

Losing his sword in one hit?

That part alone wasn't strange.

He'd been unable to check the forward momentum of his own thrust, and his opponent had turned that against him.

He'd also been gripping the sword one-handed instead of two, so the moment his attack got read, this outcome was practically inevitable.

'...The real question is that he steered this whole thing from start to finish.'

Thinking it over carefully, he understood.

That first opening hadn't been an opening at all, and attacking it hadn't been his own choice, it had been the opponent's design.

Absurdly enough, the man who'd been so sure his experience outmatched his opponent's had fallen for the scheme of a swordsman barely into his twenties.

That fact didn't sit badly with him, though.

Reading the opponent, tricks, seeing through them and turning them back around, all of that was part of swordsmanship too.

Looking at it that way, he'd lost, completely and fairly.

Lucas Gibson gave a rueful smile and spoke to Airen.

"Congratulations on the promotion. Good match."

"Thank you. It was a good match."

With those words, the loser left the stage, and the winner stayed standing for the interview the match host would soon conduct.

In that brief stretch of time, Airen Farreira, like Lucas, ran the match back through his mind.

Flawless.

A clean victory, unfolding exactly as he'd intended from start to finish.

And yet Airen's expression stayed far from bright.

He knew his current skill still fell well short of Illia Lindsay's.

'What if my opponent had been Illia Lindsay?'

She probably wouldn't have fallen for his setup in the first place.

Not even twenty years old yet, but a Sword Master was a Sword Master.

Thinking about the hardship she must have endured climbing to that level, it was safe to assume her experience, if not in quantity, ran far deeper in quality than his own.

'No, before that, if Illia had thrown that same one-handed thrust Lucas Gibson used, could I have deflected it?'

Airen thought it over and shook his head.

No, he couldn't have.

He'd only managed to knock Lucas's sword loose because his opponent's skill sat well below his own.

Flip that around, imagine facing someone whose skill towered over his, and the exact opposite picture formed.

Himself, failing to block Illia Lindsay's lightning-fast thrust.

'In the end, to beat Illia, I need to get a lot stronger than I am now.'

How?

He didn't know.

But he wasn't worried.

Confidence still filled Airen's heart, whole and unshaken.

Confidence so groundless even he couldn't quite explain it.

While he steeled his resolve like that and mapped out his next steps, the host, who had made their way to his side, said something and thrust a microphone toward him.

'Didn't quite catch that.'

Didn't matter, though.

Whatever question the host had asked wasn't really the point.

At least in this moment, on this stage, he was the one everyone's eyes were on, and the words he'd already prepared were more than fit for that role.

Airen Farreira took a deep breath and swept his gaze slowly across the crowd surrounding him.

The noisy chatter died down in an instant.

"....."

"....."

A strange sight nobody could quite explain.

In that odd hush, Airen paused for a beat, then spoke.

"The interview I gave in front of the reporters gathered at the Starting Ground, that promise everyone pointed fingers at and called impossible."

"....."

"I've finally kept it."

"Whoaaaaa!"

"Airen Farreira!"

"Airen Farreira! Airen Farreira!"

The bold declaration from the rising young star sent the crowd's voices crashing through the arena all over again.

Nobody could dislike someone with skill, talent, looks, and now, on top of all that, a knack for a good line.

His delivery wasn't especially polished, if he was honest, but the content was what mattered.

By that measure, you could search the whole of Proof Land and not find another talent like him.

But then.

"Of course, this isn't the end."

"Now that I've graduated from Opportunity Land and I'm moving up to a new stage, let me lay out a new ambition."

That wasn't the end after all.

The whole arena held its breath, watching the rising star speak with a serious look on his face.

The referee, the host, even a few duelists already up on the higher stage, all turned their focus toward him.

Airen didn't drag it out.

The shocking words spilled straight from his mouth.

"Within the next three months, I will challenge Illia Lindsay, the champion of Proof Land."

"And this isn't just a challenge for the sake of challenging."

"I'm not doing this to hear people say I gave it my all, or that I fought well even in defeat."

"I will win. I will win without fail... and become the new champion of Proof Land."

With those words, Airen Farreira left the arena in an instant.

Just as confident as when he'd first shown his face there.

That evening.

All of Aienmarc erupted over the "challenge" the bold newcomer had thrown down.

* * *

"Isn't he taking this a bit too far?"

"Right? Does he think a Sword Master's some kind of joke? We let it slide and let it slide, and now this brat keeps crossing the line..."

"Guy's got some nerve. He'd be lucky to survive meeting the high rankers of King-level, let alone the champion..."

"Got a little drunk on the attention, did he?"

"Tch, I hope he climbs to King-level soon. He needs a proper beating to knock some sense into him."

Airen Farreira's post-match interview became, almost overnight, the hottest topic among the residents.

Nothing like the attention his earlier interview had drawn.

Part of it came from how much Airen Farreira's name had grown, but most of it was pure backlash at him daring to say the word "champion."

Who was the current champion, anyway?

A Sword Master, no less, and the youngest one on record.

A genius from House Lindsay, one of the Five Great Sword Houses, out of the west where swordsmanship ran deepest. Illia Lindsay!

To westerners still smarting over the pride wound dealt by Ian of Krono, a central-region man, and Julius Hyul of the Holy Kingdom, she stood as something close to sacred ground.

'And this kid dares throw down a challenge to her?'

'Someone who's barely reached Queen-level?'

'Talking that big to the greatest genius of the age, someone even the high rankers of King-level bow their heads to?'

Of course, the people of Aienmarc didn't always play favorites for western swordsmen.

Whatever else you could say about them, they were people who took fighting and gambling seriously, and if a challenger from anywhere else had the skill and the standing to back it up, they'd cheer just as loud.

But Airen Farreira didn't have that.

His skill still needed plenty more proving, and as for standing, there was none to speak of.

At the very least, he'd need to rank in the top ten of King-level.

Or have some deeply tangled history tied to events outside Proof Land!

One of the two, at minimum, would have earned him some benefit of the doubt, but right now, he looked like nothing more than a green kid drunk on attention he'd never had before, running wild.

That, at least, was how most people saw it.

Reflecting that mood, Aienmarc's dueling magazines rushed out special evening editions with columns on the matter that very night.

Most of the weeklies, Weekly Valhalla included, acknowledged Airen Farreira's baseline skill while delivering a cold verdict that he wasn't ready to back up an interview like that.

A few reporters went so far as to write, in what read almost like a taunt, that a mid-tier King-level fighter could put him in his place easily enough.

The residents nodded along, agreeing.

But the next day.

Weekly Arena, the one publication that had stayed quiet while every other weekly rushed out special editions, finally unveiled a long-hidden truth about Airen Farreira.

[Six years ago, the man who fought Illia Lindsay for the top spot at Krono!]

[Digging into the roots of a mysterious figure who's stayed hidden behind a veil for years!]

A secret, shocking episode that no one but the trainees of that era could have known.

Reading an article verified under the byline of the trusted "Senior Reporter Hints," people found themselves reacting in a way completely different from the day before.

Thirty-five days since Airen Farreira had arrived in Aienmarc.

The world, at last, was beginning to prepare itself to welcome a new genius.

Proof Land had just felt the first gust of its third storm.

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