WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ Reformation of the Deadbeat Noble

Chapter 167

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Judith's Way (2)

The first trial had ended.

Gunt, the proud warrior of Durkali, had lost in an instant without so much as a proper counterattack, and got carried off on a stretcher.

Considering how full of himself he'd been walking in, it was a shamefully quick exit.

Caught off guard by the unexpected result, the orcs stared down at the stage with hardened expressions.

Not all of them, of course.

"Good, Judith! Nice work! Smash the next ones too!"

"Brett, your voice is a little loud..."

Brett Lloyd, cheering with an excitement completely unlike his usual composed self.

Watching him, Airen wore a startled expression. Illia's eyes went round too, seeing this unfamiliar side of Brett.

Nobody tried to stop him, though. It was too entertaining to interrupt.

'Whatever we do, we're already hated here anyway.'

No one had been looking their way to begin with.

Judith, fist raised high overhead, made for a far more striking sight.

To put it bluntly, an unlikeable one. The orcs' eyes on her were downright scalding.

But that mood shifted the instant the second challenger stepped up.

"Garam's out!"

"Wait, wasn't Pahun supposed to go first?"

"Guess he's decided to end it this round."

"Quiet! Looks like it's starting."

The crowd stirred.

Brett could feel it. No small amount of anticipation building in them.

He felt it too.

Looking at the orc warrior, who stood a good head taller than Gunt had, he muttered.

"Not an easy one."

"Yeah."

Airen agreed.

Not simply because he knew the opponent was Master Halifa's eldest son.

With his Sorcery awakened, he could see the aura in the man's body. More than Judith's.

The total volume of aura wasn't the sole measure of a warrior's strength, of course, but still.

'This isn't going to be as easy as the last fight.'

Judith seemed to sense the same thing.

The smug tilt of her mouth had dropped away, replaced by a tense expression as she watched Garam.

Her stance carried a wariness that hadn't been there before.

Garam matched it.

Unlike his youngest brother Gunt, his mood was almost eerily calm.

Seeing that, Judith's face hardened further.

"Tlwkr!"

A moment later, the orc referee's shout rang out, and the second trial began.

Garam moved forward immediately.

Unlike Gunt, he fought from a fairly high stance, and his tremendous reach pressed down on her like an oppressive weight.

Judith circled left, step by step, trying to keep distance between them.

Slip.

Slip.

It didn't work.

Garam had clearly faced runners before. A few steps was all it took for him to cut off her retreat.

Then he pushed forward again, closing in. A heavy, dreadful advance, like a colorless stone wall bearing down on her.

That was when Judith's movement changed.

Fwit!

A flashy burst, like a will o' the wisp igniting, meant to dazzle the eye!

Most of the orcs missed the moment Judith shot forward.

Even Brett, watching closely, let out a gasp at how dazzling the movement was.

But Garam's response was simple.

He extended one long, thick leg.

Thud!

"Ugh!"

Crackle-!

A front kick, the sole of his foot driving into her torso like a shove.

Usually a technique used to keep distance, but with the difference in height, it landed more like a stomp straight down into the ground.

The sudden, gravity-loaded attack left Judith with a look of dismay.

Even blocking with both arms, the impact was severe.

Step, step.

Through all of it, Garam kept advancing.

Feeling the pressure bear down on her again, Judith gritted her teeth and moved to break free from her disadvantageous position.

But.

Thud!

Thump!

Thud-!

"Ngh..."

Every time she tried, another front kick came crashing in, and she got nowhere near achieving what she wanted.

Garam's indiscriminate long-range assault kept exploding forward!

A huge roar burst from the orcs.

"Waaaaah!"

"Stomp her!"

"Smash her!"

The thick, low rumble of their voices rising from deep throats stoked the mood of the fight.

Just hearing it was enough to set blood boiling, and even the spectators felt their own blood heat up.

But Garam felt none of that.

His cool eyes tracked every move his opponent made, calm and unhurried.

'Never underestimate an opponent.'

That was the thought he'd carried onto the stage.

Never, not for a second. He'd seen exactly what happened to Gunt the moment he let his guard down.

This human clearly had real skill.

'But that doesn't mean I need to overestimate her either.'

Thud!

Breathing out shallowly, Garam launched another kick. Watching his opponent twist in pain, he nodded.

She was strong, no question. The aura built up inside her body was impressive, and she clearly understood how to move.

Unbelievably skilled at hand-to-hand combat, for a human.

But she wasn't stronger than him.

That was the plain truth.

'The gap is more than enough.'

The gap in skill was more than enough, and the gap in physical build was overwhelming.

Accept that fact as it was, and steer the flow with a cool head so the gap never closed.

Thump!

Like this.

Thud!

Like this.

Thud-!

Like this!

No need to take any risks.

This simple, effective work alone would be enough to drain the fight out of her.

Despair at having nothing she could do would break her heart long before her body gave out.

The finale could wait until then.

Having settled his thoughts, Garam licked his lower lip.

'Going to end sooner than I expected.'

He'd figured victory would take a while.

If the stage had been small, maybe not, but it was fairly wide, so he'd braced for her to try openly running and dragging things out.

Needless worry, as it turned out. After eating one kick, this human had gone at him head on, stubbornly and honestly, over and over.

No, not even breaking through. Just closing the gap by any means, desperate to land one clean hit.

'Idiot.'

A thin sneer curled at the corner of Garam's mouth.

A warrior who lost his composure wasn't a warrior at all, just a wild boar.

So his job was simple. Hunt this prey fast, efficiently.

He fired off another front kick, straight into her solar plexus as she came charging in.

Thud!

"Hup!"

"Hah!"

That was when everything changed.

Judith took the kick and held her ground.

Like a heavy boulder, she skidded back barely a single step, shoving Garam's leg aside.

He watched her charge right back at him, and his expression cracked with surprise.

For the first time since the fight began, Judith's fist connected with Garam.

* * *

'Fuck.'

Judith swore inwardly.

She was furious. Not because the fight was going against her.

Ever since she'd faced Gunt, no, long before that even, she'd been simmering with an anger she couldn't quite keep down.

'Warriors, my ass. Every one of them acts like a two bit thug.'

The trouble had really only been with the goons who kept passing through the training grounds, and their boss Gunt.

She had no idea who this Garam guy actually was.

But she didn't need a real reason. Since when had she ever needed a reason to get angry.

Thud!

"Ngh..."

Just one lousy kick was enough for Judith to spend three days and nights holding a grudge against someone.

Not that she was any kind of warrior herself.

What even was a warrior?

She didn't really know.

But she had a rough sense that it was something molded out of qualities that were positive, admirable, impressive.

Loyalty, conviction, pride, that sort of thing.

She herself was about as far from all of that as a person could get.

Even looking at Brett and Airen, the two people she was closest to in the world, she felt inferiority, jealousy, anger, and then self loathing for feeling that way in the first place.

There wasn't a single decent thing about her, really. That was Judith.

Thud!

Thump!

Thud-!

'Fuck, that really hurts.'

In the middle of the throbbing pain, she thought. Thought and kept thinking.

She thought about Brett's dignified, easygoing composure, about the strength that came from Airen's fundamental goodness, about the talent Illia had been born with from the start, and about every other admirable, enviable thing she'd wanted but could never have. She thought about all of it, over and over.

But the conclusion she finally arrived at, no matter how she turned it over, was that she could never become like them.

Thud!

Greedy, petty, rotten to the core.

Someone who couldn't stand it when someone else had even one thing more than her, who couldn't bear the unfairness of it, whose self loathing and inferiority burned so hot it felt like her whole body was on fire.

And yet someone who never stopped envying, never stopped being jealous, no matter how much she hated herself for it.

That was who she was.

That was Judith.

No matter how much she raged or struggled against it, that was her bare, unchanging face, the foundation underneath everything.

She decided, finally, to accept that truth.

Thud!

Crackle-!

"Hup!"

Judith raised both arms and blocked Garam's kick.

At the same moment, aura surged up inside her, hot as lava in an active volcano.

The instant the power concentrated in her core absorbed the impact, she launched her second charge. She caught the surprise flashing across Garam's face.

He wasn't an easy opponent, of course.

A palm shot toward her, blocking her vision in an instant. Slightly curved fingers aimed for her eyes, but Judith knocked even that aside.

Slipping safely into his guard, she swung her right fist hard.

Crack!

Craaack-!

"Ngh!"

"Guh...!"

At the same moment, Garam's knee strike slammed into Judith's face.

She managed to wedge her left hand in to soften the blow, but she still came out worse for it.

Fist against knee, stomach against face. An obvious outcome.

But Judith didn't flinch. She threw herself forward again.

The kick flying toward her didn't scare her one bit.

Thud!

Thud-!

Crack!

She deflected the front kick again and pushed in close. Traded a hit to the face for a hit to the stomach.

Just like before, Judith came out worse and got knocked back.

It hurt. It hurt like hell. Rubbing her aching jaw, she spat out a mouthful of blood.

She was jealous. So envious of his overwhelming build that her head burned with it.

A fire made of desire and envy scorched through her whole body.

For an ordinary person, that would have been enough to lose themselves entirely.

But Judith wasn't ordinary.

She'd lived her whole life inside that kind of pain, and no one knew better than her how to endure the flames.

Fed by inferiority.

Fueled by jealousy, desire, self loathing.

Wrapped in fire, she grinned.

And charged at Garam again.

"....."

Karakum, warrior and spirit mage, watched the scene in silence.

Without realizing it, he crushed the armrest of his chair to splinters, thinking.

'Using the Five Elements Divine Technique before she's even learned it.'

Karakum remembered the fight on that plain.

This made the second time. First Airen Farreira, and now this.

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