Reformation of the Deadbeat Noble - Chapter 169

WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Reformation of the Deadbeat Noble

Chapter 169

──────

Five Elements Divine Technique (1)

A quiet room.

In a space with nothing in it, not even light, Master Halifa sat with his eyes closed.

Both soles and both palms turned toward the sky, seated cross legged. It was a meditation posture.

Many humans believed this stance had originated with the Holy Kingdom's priests. That was wrong.

Orcs had come first.

Spirit mages used to sit in meditation with their limbs exposed upward, serving as channels to draw the five energies scattered through the air into their bodies.

Of course, Halifa had no such purpose right now.

He'd simply settled into this familiar posture because he wanted to sort out his thoughts.

In his mind, the image of the red haired human, Judith, surfaced again.

'That was a warrior's fight.'

A kind of fight rarely seen in the world these days.

Long ago, or rather, until only a few decades back, that hadn't been true.

The demons had vanished after the great war a hundred and fifty years ago, but plenty of demonoids still remained scattered across the world.

To protect their tribes from them, orcs had constantly staked their lives, and those who survived naturally became warriors.

There'd been no need for a separate trial to become a high ranking warrior, the way there was now. Every single moment had been a trial in itself.

But once the demons disappeared, and the seeds they'd sown vanished with them.

Now that the only dangers left roaming the continent were bandit gangs and a handful of monsters wandering the plains.

Orcs had gone far too long without laying eyes on a "true warrior."

'No, that's just an excuse.'

No one left to learn from, watch, and grow?

Not true. The continent was at peace, but it was still vast.

Swordsmen, warriors, still wandered every corner of that broad land on journeys of training.

A young Ian had been one of them. So had Ignet, not so many years ago.

Judith and the other three humans with her had surely grown fast too, shaped by countless experiences out in the world.

Knowing all that and still staying cooped up within the tribe like stagnant water, playing the frog at the bottom of a well, drunk on nothing but their ancestors' glory... that wasn't anyone else's fault.

It was their own.

'I need to put my sons through training again.'

Halifa's eyes snapped open, and he rose to his feet.

Garam, Pahun, Gunt. And himself, too.

They needed to go back to the beginning.

Set the tribe's affairs aside for a while and remember what it meant to be a warrior. Training should have started already.

But not today.

Thinking once more of the red haired human, he made his way toward the sacred mountain behind the fortress.

A slope far steeper than the hill where Gurgar lay buried.

But a place where the gathered spirit energy ran far denser too.

Sorting through his thoughts had taken a long while, but moving took no time at all.

For someone ranked among the upper tier of Masters, rough terrain hardly mattered.

Halifa reached his destination in an instant, and his expression shifted to surprise.

Far more orcs than he'd expected had already claimed spots there.

"Well, look who's here."

"Been a while."

"Saw your boys get humiliated. Bet that stings a little, doesn't it?"

"....."

The elder warriors of Durkali.

Looking at these old orcs, gray with age even beyond his own years, he let out a short laugh.

'Well, I suppose they'd be curious.'

* * *

A week after the Trial of the Warrior.

Airen's group finally climbed the sacred mountain of the Durkali tribe to learn the Five Elements Divine Technique.

The original plan had allowed more time before the lesson, but Judith threw such a fit about not being able to wait any longer that the schedule got moved up.

As a result, her body still hadn't fully healed.

"Whew, this is rough!"

Even so, Judith pushed her way up the harsh mountain slope without anyone's support.

Some might call it stubborn to the point of foolishness, but that kind of grit was exactly what she was built on.

The others, who understood this better than anyone, only spoke to her once they reached the destination.

"Good work."

"Well done."

"Good work, my ass. More importantly..."

Judith's eyes darted around.

Far more orcs had gathered than she'd expected.

Of course Karakum, Tarakhan, and Kubharu were there. They'd supported the group from the start.

But why on earth was Master Halifa here?

And he wasn't even alone.

Orcs she'd never once laid eyes on, faces creased deep with wrinkles.

Despite being a different race, more than ten of them, all clearly advanced in age, had gathered and were watching her.

Not the whole group.

Not anyone else. Just her.

"Don't let it fluster you. Judith, it's because your fight left an impression."

"My fight?"

"That's right. Stirred by a fiery battle they haven't seen in a long while, they insisted on watching the 'Five Elements Rite' performed. As you can see, they're the tribe's elders. Since they're also masters of the Five Elements Divine Technique, there was no grounds to refuse them as observers."

"....."

"Why, does it weigh on you?"

Kubharu, who'd come up beside her, asked in a low voice.

Judith went quiet for a moment, studying the eyes of the orcs fixed on her.

"....."

Old, worn down bodies, some so sick they could barely stand upright.

But she felt it.

How solid, how weathered the years and experience behind their gazes were.

And it wasn't just them.

Karakum, the great warrior every orc looked up to as an idol.

His son, Tarakhan, who'd reached the rank of Master at the young age of thirty.

The great spirit mage Gorha, who'd shown little interest despite crossing paths with her several times, and even Master Halifa, who hadn't exactly held her in high regard.

Every one of the towering figures who held up this tribe was looking at her with eyes full of expectation.

In that instant, Judith felt a fierce flame roar to life inside her chest.

'They're looking at me.'

Yes.

Everyone was looking at her.

Figures who, by human standards, would rank among the knights of the Five Great Sword Houses.

Not Brett Lloyd. Not Illia Lindsay. Not Airen Farreira. They were looking at her.

That fact sent a wave of pure excitement through Judith.

A different kind of flame from what she'd felt fighting Gunt and Garam.

Letting out a hot breath, she walked, step by step, toward the jar in front of Gorha.

Then, with a bold expression, she thrust her hand inside.

Whoosh.

The Five Elements Rite of the Durkali tribe.

A procedure meant to determine which spirit suited a person best. All she had to do was pull out the formless energy the spirit mages had shaped and gathered inside, and throw it down.

She'd heard the explanation countless times over the past week, too. Nothing about it should have flustered her.

Sure, an ordinary person might have crumbled under the weight of so many giants' expectations, but Judith wasn't like that.

With an even hotter heart.

With an even hotter chest, she gripped the energy inside the jar tight and hurled it straight down at the ground.

Then.

FWOOOOOSSSHHH!

"....!"

"Ohhh...!"

"Hmm..."

The elders let out gasps at the fierce blaze that erupted.

Some couldn't even manage that much, just standing there with their mouths hanging open in a daze.

Understandable, really. The flame Judith had produced rose high enough to touch the roof of a modest two story building.

And it didn't stop there, either, spreading upward and outward as if it meant to keep going.

Seeing this, Gorha flicked his hand and a barrier of water formed, containing the blaze.

His expression looked no different from the elders'.

Watching all this, Judith turned to Kubharu, the most approachable orc around, and asked.

"Is that... okay?"

"I'm honestly not sure 'okay' is the word. Size wise, at least, it's nowhere near lacking. If anything, the problem is that it's too big."

"So that means I'm not unsuited for the Five Elements Divine Technique, right?"

"Of course not. If you had no talent for it, the energy wouldn't even have manifested at all. But... I never expected the flame to be this big. Honestly, I have no idea what kind of training would even be needed to properly handle something like this."

"Hmm, is that so?"

Judith answered with a carefully composed expression.

Of course, she wasn't composed at all. She kept fighting to hold down the corners of her mouth, which kept trying to creep upward, and the result didn't look very convincing.

'Cute.'

Only Brett Lloyd thought something a little different from everyone else.

He didn't bother showing it, though, so no one paid him any attention.

Most of the orcs still couldn't tear their eyes off the red haired human, Judith, murmuring among themselves.

"dlrj gotjrgoqhkdi qufrj djqtsmsep gkdtkd gktlejfkrhdy?"

"rmfoeh akrtkd dkaneh dksgownaus tjdnsgkrlsgkqslek."

"dlqjsdpeh wkf qnxkremflqslek......!"

"....."

Master Halifa was much the same.

He didn't chatter on shamelessly like the elders, but he too was thoroughly startled by the flame Judith carried inside her.

His thoughts ran along the same lines as Kubharu's.

He, too, had no clear idea how to manage a blaze of that size.

'At this rate, it's not just a matter of leaving her training to a warrior versed in the Five Elements Divine Technique. She might need the support of a genuinely skilled spirit mage alongside it...'

"Hm?"

Halifa was still turning over his thoughts on how to guide Judith when it happened.

Something odd flickered in Gorha's eyes.

Unlike the other orcs, his gaze wasn't on Judith. It had drifted elsewhere.

Karakum's, too.

Curious, Halifa quickly scanned the others.

"....."

It wasn't just those two.

Not many, but a handful of orcs were looking in the same direction as Gorha and Karakum.

Realizing what they had in common, he murmured a single word to himself.

'Spirit mages.'

Those who didn't just use spirits as a supplement to their martial skill, but made the five energies themselves the very foundation of who they were.

Watching their gazes, capable of catching even the faintest details that he, a warrior, could never sense, Halifa turned his head in the same direction.

Airen Farreira.

A monster who'd reached the rank of Master in his early twenties.

But a human he'd paid little real attention to until now, never once imagining he might carry talent for spirit magic on top of everything else.

"Airen Farreira."

"Yes."

"You're next. Ready?"

"Ready."

Gorha, the spirit mage, spoke those words to him.

Halifa could tell.

Though he was clearly trying to hide it, no small amount of emotion colored his voice.

And that it bore a striking resemblance to the way he'd looked at Judith.

No, maybe...