WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ Reformation of the Deadbeat Noble

Chapter 138

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Ember of Life (2)

In a room drowned in black, watching the young man who seemed to shine alone in the dark, Kubharu found himself thinking of the past.

So long ago now that he couldn't even recall exactly when it had been. Back then, Airen had carried himself like something colorless, painted entirely in ash gray.

No vitality of youth, not even the faint flicker of emotion any ordinary human should show. All of it locked away tight.

He'd looked so much like cold metal that Kubharu had misjudged his very age.

And yet.

That same young man now carried a flame this hot in his chest.

What in the world had brought this about?

Was it the ambition he'd kindled at Alhad Den?

Or the fighting spirit he'd carried since meeting Ignet Crescentia?

Or maybe it was something that had shifted in his heart during the reunion with Illia Lindsay.

There was no way to know for certain.

Maybe all of it together had become kindling.

Either way, it didn't matter now.

What mattered was this: Airen Farreira, right now, wasn't being dragged around by the man's will. He was controlling that power entirely on his own terms.

"....."

Had he only just now noticed it?

Airen, who'd been about to say something, stopped short and looked down at his own body, almost scanning himself.

Slowly, as if trying to carefully take stock of this new version of himself.

He didn't even stop there. He closed his eyes too.

Probably to look inward at himself, Kubharu guessed, but watching him do it left Kubharu's nerves fraying.

They weren't alone in this room, the two of them. Grayson, now turned into a Demonoid, was here too.

Airen had said he wasn't fully transformed yet, but to Kubharu's eyes, the man looked like nothing but a Demonoid.

And a powerful one, at that.

The one saving grace was that Grayson, his eyes soaked red like blood, hadn't made a single move.

He still sat cross-legged beside the sword driven into the training hall floor.

"Whew."

After a stretch of time that felt both brief and endless.

Airen Farreira opened his eyes with a long exhale.

At that instant, it looked as though two flames had bloomed in the darkness swallowing the room.

It didn't stop there. The bright light blooming from his eyes wrapped warmly around Airen's whole body.

At least, that was how it looked to Kubharu.

Had Grayson felt it too?

His mouth, closed heavy until now, finally opened.

"You don't seem like a thief. You don't carry yourself like some common thug."

"....."

"I'll ask again. Why have you come here. State your business. If..."

Fwooosh!

As Grayson murmured in a low voice, a violent energy burst out from his body.

It was Aura. But not the pure Aura it should have been, tainted with impurities, giving off a foul, wrong feeling.

Kubharu fought to keep his expression steady and opened his mouth to try to calm Grayson down. Or rather, he tried to.

But the words that followed forced him to swallow whatever he'd meant to say.

"...If you can't make me understand, leave your head here before you go."

Horrifying words.

But worse than the words themselves was the fact that they weren't bluster. He meant it.

Kubharu broke into a sweat, seeing a side of the man nothing like his reputation among the public, and it was then that Airen, who'd stayed silent since opening his eyes, took a step forward.

Grayson rose to his feet and fixed his eyes on him.

One second.

Two seconds.

After about five seconds locked in a staring contest, both men gripped their swords at the same instant.

Fwaat!

Shwoosh!

A greatsword summoned by Sorcery, and a black blade steeped in darkness.

With the tips of both swords leveled at each other, Airen spoke.

"Let's make a bet."

"A bet?"

"Yes. I hear the people of Aienmarc love a good wager almost as much as they love a good duel."

"...True enough."

Grayson nodded. His memory of it wasn't sharp, but he recalled enjoying his fair share of bets and gambling once.

Watching him, Airen continued.

"This isn't the arena, but let's have our own sword duel anyway. Whoever wins gets to name whatever they want from the loser, and the loser has to give it without complaint. That's the wager. What do you say?"

"Fine. I'll tell you now. What I want is your life."

"Understood. What I want, I'll tell you after I've won."

Grayson's voice alone was enough to raise the hair on anyone's neck, but Airen didn't so much as flinch.

If anything, he advanced step by step with his chin up, calm and unbothered.

Watching him come, Grayson drew his foot back as if to open distance, then shot forward at blinding speed instead.

Whoosh!

An attack aimed straight at his throat.

Even against a killing blow coming in that openly, Airen didn't react. He held his opening stance, heavy and immovable, with his massive greatsword.

It was Grayson who changed things up instead.

As if he'd been aiming elsewhere from the start, his blade dropped toward Airen's instep like a bird of prey diving.

Airen pulled his right foot back and swung his sword in a horizontal arc.

The man with blood-filled eyes sank low, seeming to melt into the ground, and struck at the lower body again, then thrust his blade skyward like a dragon ascending.

A dizzying, ever-shifting swordsmanship unfolded.

Whip, whip-

Whip!

A blade tip as unpredictable as a snake weaving its head!

Airen still didn't panic.

He brought his sword down heavy, the way a snake charmer pins a viper's head to the ground, and Grayson, grimacing, leaped back.

Then came a dazzling display of swordsmanship.

Feinting right before thrusting left, feinting low before striking high.

Pressing forward as if to attack, then retreating, then charging back in on a broken rhythm.

If this had been the Airen of a few days ago, he'd have been helpless against it despite everything John Drew had taught him.

But the Airen of right now was different.

I can see it.

Feints and real strikes.

The true and the false.

They were crafted so precisely that telling them apart should have been impossible, and yet he could tell.

Airen, able to see straight through the flow of the Aura, met the man's blade with far greater ease than he should have, while Grayson felt real stress mounting from having his own swordsmanship blocked again and again.

And that wasn't even the end of it.

Kwaaang!

"Guh."

Airen, who'd been defending with the steady weight of a boulder, took one big step forward and swung twice.

The upward strike felt like a mountain rising out of the earth, and the downward strike came crashing down like a tidal wave.

Through it all, the entire blade radiated heat, as though the steel had been forged red hot, and Grayson could only just barely block it by throwing every technique he had into the effort.

Why!

Grayson gritted his teeth, his blood-soaked eyes blazing.

He couldn't understand it. The world was full of impossible young geniuses he couldn't understand.

Ignet, Illia, and now this kid standing right in front of him, all of them carried Aura that made no sense.

It felt unfair.

It felt bitter.

Decades of his life had gone into trying to break those absurd talents, and yet he was still the one losing ground. He was still the one stepping back.

That fact dropped him into despair all over again.

And that despair curdled quickly into rage. The burning anger scorched his heart black and stained it with darkness.

At that moment, he realized the voice he'd heard the day before was still waiting for an answer.

Accept it.

A will that seemed to have flowed up from some deep darkness, wishing for his ruin.

But knowing that, he still found the scent sweet enough to crave a taste.

An impossible sensation, his nose itching, his mouth watering, just from listening to it. It left his mind hazy.

In a space thick with fog, Grayson thought it over.

Should he accept.

Should he refuse.

In the middle of that vicious exchange of blades, the conclusion he landed on was to plant one foot halfheartedly on the line.

Tap!

Grayson opened distance, putting real space between them.

His opponent had just swung and missed, leaving an opening for a counterattack, but he didn't take it.

Stained through with jealousy, envy, despair, and self-loathing, he couldn't trust himself.

Eyes shut tight, he dipped his chin, awkward and half-formed.

Whether it should be called a nod or not was impossible to say, the motion was that ambiguous.

But the generous voice's owner smiled and lent him strength regardless.

And then, an Aura far larger than anything he'd shown until now poured out from Grayson's body.

Hummmmm!

Watching the fight, a shadow fell over Kubharu's face.

Even someone who knew little about swordsmanship could see it. This Grayson was different from before.

The black Aura rising off his shoulders like heat shimmer called to mind the fires of hell itself.

Even the blood pooled in his eyes was deepening further.

If they gave him any more time, there was no telling what might happen.

Kubharu was shifting his weight anxiously when it happened.

"Don't worry."

One line from Airen Farreira.

That single line settled Kubharu's frayed nerves in an instant.

He looked at Airen with wide, startled eyes.

And strangely enough, he felt warmth.

Like a campfire appearing before a traveler weakened by darkness and cold, Airen's Aura lit the room, tainted with demonic aura, warm and bright.

"Brett once said something."

In the middle of all that, Airen kept talking.

As relaxed as someone out on a spring picnic.

A swordsman on the verge of becoming a Demonoid stood right in front of him, gathering ominous Aura, and none of it seemed to bother him at all.

But now, Kubharu thought he understood.

Smiling belatedly, Kubharu let Airen go on speaking to him in a calm but convincing voice.

"If you give someone enough time to prepare an attack... then probably nobody but a Sword Master could beat you."

Hummmmmmm!

Fwaat!

At that moment, the greatsword rang out with a sword cry even louder than Grayson's had been.

Airen didn't unleash it as a blast. His goal, after all, was only to win.

Cutting Grayson clean in half was never what he wanted.

Closing the distance like a beam of light, Airen's eyes took in the man's startled face, the dark blade flying at him in desperation.

None of it was a problem.

Grayson's black blade caught against the arc of the greatsword coming down, Airen's face set hard.

Kchaang!

A clear ringing sound followed, and the blade split cleanly in two.

Kubharu could hear it. Something terrible had let out a scream.

He swallowed hard and asked.

"That sound just now, was that Grayson?"

"No."

Airen answered right away, then added with an uneasy look.

"But... something's definitely happened here. Something not good."

* * *

Where am I...

Grayson, who'd lost consciousness when the black blade shattered, forced his eyes open with great effort.

His hazy memories were coming back to him.

The shape he'd changed into.

The way his heart had changed too.

He stared up at the dark ceiling for a long while, then closed his eyes again.

I've made a mistake I can't take back.

The power he'd borrowed from the demon was gone completely now.

Probably thanks to that young man from Krono.

He couldn't be sure, but the moment that fire hot Aura had touched him, he'd felt his body grow lighter.

What a relief, truly.

But that didn't erase what he'd done.

He clenched his jaw and thought.

What I was about to pay the demon in exchange for its power... was my pride.

That was it exactly.

He'd never had the talent for building Aura, and so the swordsmanship he'd built, his pride, his one point of self respect, all of it forged to break the ones who coasted on nothing but raw Aura...

A treasure worth guarding with his whole life, and he'd nearly handed it over.

I've lost my reason to keep living.

Tears spilled from Grayson's eyes.

Not red, stained by demonic aura, but clear tears.

He felt them drip to the floor one by one, and that was when he sensed a presence nearby.

Airen Farreira.

Grayson didn't even think to wipe his tears away before sitting down cross-legged again.

And so the two of them faced each other again, in nearly the same posture as when they'd first met.

After a moment, Grayson spoke.

"What do you want."

His voice sounded hollow, like ash burned all the way through.

It wasn't only his voice. His face, drained of any will to live, showed no trace of vitality either.

Even his insides were a wreck.

Kubharu, a spirit mage, could see it plainly.

The most vital of the five elements that formed the root of life, the flame, was going out.

If the flame dies, the cycle of earth, metal, water, and wood breaks too, and life ends with it. It's a shame... but this is as far as Grayson goes.

A deep shadow fell over the orc spirit mage's face.

He looked like someone who'd already given up on a great many things.

"Hm."

But Airen Farreira hadn't.

Closer. Closer still.

He moved right up beside Grayson and sat down facing him.

Then he looked at the man with eyes flickering with flame.

What is this?

Confusion flickered across the hollow swordsman's face.

He tried to lean his upper body back, as if to pull away. Airen's fierce presence weighed on him too heavily.

But he couldn't.

Airen's hand shot out faster and closed firmly around Grayson's.

"What I want."

"....."

"Is for you to keep fighting your duels, just as sharp and impressive as you've always been."

The moment Airen Farreira finished speaking.

Kubharu could feel the energy blooming from the young man's body flow straight into Grayson.

A hot current that swept away the vicious darkness and pushed back the bone deep chill.

Watching the flame rekindling that life, the orc spirit mage couldn't help but widen his eyes.

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