WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ Reformation of the Deadbeat Noble

Chapter 137

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Ember of Life (1)

"...!"

The moment he laid eyes on Illia Lindsay's Aura Sword, Airen Farreira couldn't help but widen his eyes in shock.

Was it the emotion of witnessing the pinnacle every swordsman dreamed of, the rank of Master?

That wasn't entirely absent, but he'd already met several Masters by now, so that part didn't hit him as hard as it once might have.

What actually startled him was the sequence Illia went through to summon her Aura Sword. It looked familiar to him. Too familiar.

When I use the man in the dream's strike, this is close to how it feels!

More precisely, it resembled the instant right before he unleashed that strike.

Drawing aura up from within the body, channeling it into the blade, condensing it there.

From that condensed state, a few more steps followed, and then a brilliant silver flash appeared. Unfortunately, Airen couldn't quite catch the details of it.

Partly because Illia drew out her Aura Sword so fast, and partly because his own knowledge and experience with aura still fell short.

Even so, it was fine.

The match had only just begun, and Illia would keep her Aura Sword active through the whole duel.

Sure, it would end quickly, that much was certain, but even a few moments of watching her through his Eyes That See Aura would teach him plenty.

That was what he was thinking when it happened.

Illia suddenly sheathed her Aura Sword.

The blade returned to its ordinary form, like a candle snuffed out with a breath.

Airen's face went blank with confusion, and then he caught the voices of the audience around him.

"So it's true. She said she wouldn't use the Aura Sword anymore."

"Huh? The champion said something like that?"

"Not sure, exactly. I just heard it secondhand, that one of the reporters said something like it. Not that anyone's doubting the skill of the youngest Sword Master ever, but if you're just talking pure swordsmanship, there are plenty of fighters at Proof Land who could match her."

"Someone actually said that..."

"Well, I think they meant it as a compliment to the Proof Land duelists, saying how good they are... but from the champion's side, it probably stung her pride."

"Huh, I had no idea something like that happened."

"Impressive either way. Even after hearing something like that, deciding to seal away her best weapon and fight anyway."

"..."

Listening to the two spectators talk, Airen's expression hardened.

It wasn't because he could no longer watch the Aura Sword.

It was because he'd just been reminded, all over again, of the mindset Illia carried onto that stage.

A life spent endlessly proving herself.

Unable to acknowledge herself, swinging her sword only for the recognition of others, only because of others. That image of her still looked precarious to him.

At least, that was how it looked through his eyes.

Of course... none of that will stop Illia from winning this match.

Airen's gaze shifted to the right.

There stood Grayson, ranked fourth, glaring at Illia with a stiff expression, clearly displeased.

Not just his outward bearing, but what lay inside him too.

He fell far short.

And not just compared to Illia.

Set against the other high-ranked duelists, his aura looked woefully thin.

Not quite Queen-level, but not far off from the weakest of the King-level fighters either.

How on earth did someone with that much aura climb to fourth place?

No small amount of doubt rose in him.

Of course, the doubt wouldn't last long. Airen turned his focus back to the stage, and soon, at the referee's call, the match began.

Fwash!

Illia Lindsay moved first.

As if sealing away her Aura Sword had been concession enough, she slid forward and swung her blade at Grayson's flank.

Grayson didn't panic. He stepped back exactly one pace and avoided it.

But that was only the opening move.

The tip of her blade curved like a serpent, stabbing toward his torso at an unnatural angle, and this time Grayson had no choice but to meet it with his own sword.

Clang!

A clear ring of metal echoed through the arena.

From there, a dazzling exchange unfolded between the two duelists.

Clang!

Clang, clang!

Kwaaang!

Sometimes light and fast, sometimes heavy and crushing.

The champion's blade drove her opponent back without pause.

Attacks flew in from high and low alike, and Grayson kept retreating, again and again.

"Grayson! Do something!"

"The champion's holding back! Are you just going to run all day?"

Watching him scramble to defend, the crowd hurled complaints.

But Airen didn't join them.

His eyes, wide with astonishment, tracked Grayson's every movement.

Incredibly refined!

As Airen saw it, the gap between Illia's aura and Grayson's wasn't something that could even be compared.

Not something decades of experience could close, not even a hundred wins out of a hundred in tactics and mind games.

He'd felt something like this before. His sparring match with John Drew had been exactly like that.

Strategy commanding the whole fight, tactics stacking small advantages in the details.

On both fronts, John Drew had outmatched him completely.

But if it had come down to a real duel, Airen couldn't have lost, because the gap in their aura had simply been too wide.

No matter how refined the swordsmanship, no matter how many steps ahead the opponent's combat instincts were, honed through experience.

None of that mattered in the face of an overwhelming gap in raw strength, in aura.

No.

That wasn't right.

What Grayson was showing right now was shattering that very assumption of his.

Clang!

He caught Illia's incoming sword early, scattering the point of impact.

At the same time, he shifted his weight back to bleed off most of the shock, retreating into a stance ready to absorb the next strike.

This wasn't something simply excellent swordsmanship or sharp footwork could produce.

It only worked because of the flawless aura control supporting it underneath.

The instant he caught the blade, he reinforced only his muscles and joints with aura, just for that moment. And when he pulled back, he focused the aura only in his feet, conserving it the rest of the time...

Using aura only when needed. Conserving it fiercely everywhere else.

That wasn't all, either.

When an attack came in too strong to block even at full power, he pulled the aura sitting uselessly in other parts of his body and concentrated it into his arms, waist, and feet, the parts that mattered, closing the gap in raw power.

None of this was something Airen had never seen before, of course.

Other swordsmen, even he himself, could pull off some version of this strategy.

But the level of completeness in Grayson's aura control went far beyond anything Airen had encountered at Proof Land.

Kwaaang!

"Match over! Winner, Champion Illia Lindsay!"

"Waaaaah!"

"Champion! Champion! Champion!"

"The youngest Sword Master ever!"

"Illia Lindsay!"

Of course, that didn't mean there'd been anything close to an even fight.

Even with all of it on display, even with swordsmanship and aura control bordering on the miraculous, even conserving every drop of aura with everything he had, Grayson was still the one who ran out of strength first.

Amid the cheers pouring down on the champion, the challenger stepped off the stage in silence, and Airen watched his retreating back for a long moment.

An unexpected pang of regret rose in him.

But stronger than that was his hunger to grow.

I need to get back and train, fast.

Illia Lindsay's Aura Sword.

Grayson's near-miraculous aura control.

Short as the time had been, both were burned perfectly into his memory.

Clear enough to replay again and again, clear enough to try and copy.

Wearing a serious expression, Airen Farreira left the arena at once, headed straight for training.

* * *

To cut to the point, despite throwing himself into training for two straight days, Airen failed to grasp either technique.

Just as he'd feared, his experience and knowledge of aura simply weren't enough.

Illia's Aura Sword wasn't something he could copy just by observing the aura moving inside her body.

Unless he mastered a whole web of hidden steps he didn't even know existed, it was a technique so advanced he couldn't dream of reaching it yet.

Grayson's aura control, though, wasn't easy either, as it turned out.

Unlike Illia's Aura Sword, he could understand every part of how Grayson handled his aura.

But understanding it and actually being able to copy it were two completely different things.

If it had just been a matter of fixed sword forms, how each body part, muscle, and joint functioned and interacted through them, he could have absorbed it without much trouble.

But aura wasn't like that.

Mastering a concept far more complicated and abstract than moving one's own body, entirely on his own, just wasn't possible.

Even if he could see it clearly with his own eyes.

Of course.

"Kubharu. There's someone I need to convince... could you give me a hand?"

"Hm? Of course. If it's that kind of thing, I'm the expert. Ha!"

Airen had no intention of stopping here.

He couldn't exactly walk up to Illia, currently in what he'd call a "minor spat," and ask her point-blank how to make an Aura Sword.

Do that, and she might actually cut him off for good.

But Grayson, someone with no connection to him at all, might be a different story, depending on how he approached it. That was Airen's thinking.

If what Hints told me holds up, it's not hopeless. He's supposed to have a solid character, and he's known for being generous when it comes to exchanging swordsmanship...

On top of that, Grayson apparently loved his drink.

That was exactly why Airen was bringing Kubharu along.

For John Drew, who was obsessed with money, he'd brought Lulu, the continent's richest.

For Grayson, obsessed with drink, he was bringing Kubharu, the continent's finest drunkard.

Matching the right companion to the right target, Airen figured, would raise his odds of success far higher than going alone.

"Ha, don't you worry. Nobody who loves a good drink has ever hated me." Kubharu said.

"I'm counting on you, Kubharu."

"Good. You can. This Grayson fellow, he's fifty this year, was it?"

"Around there, I think. Why?"

"Because I've got a joke ready that people his age always love. Want to hear it? Do you know what happens when sand cries?"

"...What happens?"

"It gets grainy."

"..."

"..."

The two of them walked a fair distance in silence.

About five minutes later, Kubharu, who'd been sneaking glances the whole way, finally spoke up.

"Sorry about that."

"It's fine. Just don't do that once we're there."

"Right, right. Now, I wonder what kind of drink the man prefers. I brought a bit of everything just in case... ah, is that the house?"

"Looks like it."

Airen nodded.

A modestly sized mansion sat at the edge of Aienmarc.

Given that its owner was one of the top-ranked duelists at Proof Land, it looked remarkably plain.

Most other high rankers built palatial estates, complete with gatekeepers and private guards standing watch.

If he's the type to live like this, Kubharu was definitely the better pick over Lulu.

He didn't seem like someone money could buy.

Airen was reaching out to knock when it happened.

Airen Farreira's face went rigid.

Kubharu, catching the sudden shift, asked in confusion.

"Airen? What's wrong all of a sudden?"

Kwaaang!

"Ai, Airen? What are you..."

Kubharu stammered as he watched Airen tear the closed front gate apart by force.

Judith he could understand, but seeing Airen act like this left him utterly baffled.

He looked at the blond young man, silently pleading for some kind of explanation.

But Airen had no room to spare for that.

Feeling an ominous energy prickle against his skin, he shot into the mansion in an instant.

"Wa, wait! I'm coming with you!"

Kubharu chased right after him.

Something serious was happening. He didn't know what, but there was no time to waste.

His own face hardening as well, he called up his spirit power in full and moved with a speed like an explosion of flame.

What they burst into was a room that looked like a training hall, every light in it snuffed out.

And at its center...

Grayson sat there, cross-legged.

"..."

Something was clearly wrong.

Obvious at a single glance.

Blood trickled from his closed eyes, and from both corners of his mouth.

No, judging by how long it had clearly been going on, his face had hardened into something like a tattooed mask, and Kubharu swallowed hard at the sight of it.

The transformation into a Demon-person, it's already underway!

He had no idea how this had happened.

There had to be some reason behind it, but right now, figuring out how to handle the situation mattered far more.

At the very least, they had to deal with him before he fully turned into a Demonoid.

But it was too late. As if he'd sensed Kubharu's thought, Grayson, who'd kept his eyes shut the whole time, snapped them open.

"...What business brings you here."

"..."

"I don't recall inviting anyone."

His voice bubbled like blood-froth.

An unpleasant, wrong sensation radiated from it.

Kubharu's expression turned grim as a thought crossed his mind.

It's probably already too late.

This is bad. A fighter of Grayson's caliber, turning into a Demonoid...

There were various theories about what determined a Demonoid's strength, but generally, it came down to three things: how great an obsession the person carried, how heavy a price they'd paid to chase it, and finally, how much raw power they'd wielded back when they were still human.

Judging by Kubharu's own eye for these things, Grayson fell short in none of the three.

He'd almost certainly emerged as something stronger than he'd ever been as a duelist.

And that wasn't even the only problem.

How Airen would react, caught in the pull of that demonic aura, mattered just as much.

If, like Ignet warned, he gets swept up in the man's power...

There's no telling what might happen!

Weighed down by that worry, Kubharu forced himself to turn and look at Airen.

Turning his gaze away from a powerful Demonoid standing right in front of him wasn't easy, but he had to check on Airen's state no matter what.

But then.

"I'm fine, Kubharu."

Airen looked nothing like what he'd expected.

"I haven't fully turned into a Demon-person yet."

He looked far calmer than Kubharu had braced himself for.

Sensing something, Kubharu turned his spirit mage's eyes on the young man.

"...!"

The steel-like presence of the man, stirred by the demonic aura.

It wasn't gone.

If anything, it was showing itself far more vividly, far more powerfully than usual.

But...

This isn't the shape of an uncontrolled iron stake.

Kubharu swallowed hard again, and looked even more closely into Airen's depths.

No, he didn't even need to look that closely.

A massive blaze, unmistakable even at a glance.

And because of it, the man's presence, now fully reforged into a "sword," showed no sign of slipping from Airen's grip. It followed his will, obedient and calm.

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