WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ Reformation of the Deadbeat Noble

Chapter 17

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Mid-Term Evaluation (2)

An upset hit Krono Fencing Hall's Mid-Term Evaluation, one that no one had expected.

The one causing it was Airen Farreira.

He'd been the overwhelming last place when he first enrolled, looked down on by everyone.

Not that things were exactly the same now. Four months wasn't a short stretch of time.

He'd pushed through a staggering volume of training while ignoring the way everyone treated him, and he'd climbed high enough to look right past the people who once mocked him.

Even so...

This is way, way too good a performance for that. Something's wrong.

Brett Lloyd, legitimate heir of a noble bloodline, felt his expression harden.

His body kept moving through the set motions, but his mind was somewhere else entirely. Somewhere very different.

All because of Airen Farreira.

He struggled to make sense of a situation he couldn't understand.

And right then, something else happened that made even less sense.

"Wait for me, you bastards!"

That arrogant girl, lowborn compared to him, who nonetheless kept clinging to second place and grinding his pride down every single time.

Even Judith finished the repetition course far earlier than expected.

Brett watched her red hair grow smaller in the distance and ground his teeth.

Idiots. All of them.

That's right. They were all making the wrong call right now.

None of them were thinking about the whole course. None of them were coolly assessing their own limits, they were just getting swept up by the mood around them.

It was stupid.

Anyone could see how an overeager early pace would wreck a person by the end.

I'm different.

He'd spent the ten days since the Mid-Term Evaluation course was announced building a meticulous plan.

How to budget his stamina to hit the best possible record. What he lacked, what he had going for him.

What he needed to shore up because of it.

Beyond the internal stuff, he'd handled the external details too, keeping the same diet in the days leading up to the evaluation to hold his condition steady, managing every small, trivial detail down to the last one.

That was why he'd been confident.

This time, he would beat Judith.

Beating a genius on Illia Lindsay's level was out of reach, but second place would be his.

And yet...

Calm down. Don't panic.

Slap!

Brett Lloyd finished the box jump and smacked his own cheek.

Right. He needed to settle down.

It didn't matter how everyone else moved. He would follow the path he'd laid out for himself.

If he trusted that path and kept running it, he would get the result he wanted.

He repeated that to himself, then pulled his focus back up.

Because of it, Brett managed to finish the first course safely, right on the time he'd projected.

There was a gap between him and first, second, and third place, but it was a gap he could close. He still had room. He wasn't pushing himself too hard.

...Even so, he couldn't shake the unease creeping through him.

Gritting his teeth again, the boy pushed his pace up, just slightly, just barely, and ran into the second course.

* * *

Brett Lloyd's worry turned real.

Unfortunately for him, Airen Farreira's condition running the second course was excellent.

There was no strain on his stamina at all.

If anything, he was growing more familiar with corners of his own body he hadn't even known existed, and he was fully ready to put on an even better performance.

Forget how I was doing yesterday. Forget my old times.

Airen thought this through a steady, controlled breath.

At what speed, budgeting stamina how, could he pull the best possible record out of this new body?

It was an abstract, difficult calculation.

But somehow, he managed to work it out with almost no error.

Part of it came from his sharpened field of vision and insight. Part of it came from a little luck.

It was, without question, good fortune.

Airen ran the sand track at the most efficient pace for himself, and soon spotted a silver haired girl close ahead.

Illia Lindsay.

The one who sat alone on a lofty perch, untouched, in the merciless arena of endless competition that was Krono Fencing Hall.

The genius Judith had never reached her. The nobly born Brett Lloyd had never reached her either. The moment Airen saw her right in front of him, he felt something in his chest slowly begin to warm.

"..."

It was the tiniest spark.

Smaller, even, than the ordinary sparks that flared up several times a day in any normal person.

But for Airen, that spark wasn't small at all.

What is this feeling?

He didn't know.

Of course he didn't.

Airen had spent his entire life locked inside himself, and only through the strange fortune of that dream had he stepped into society for the first time, competed against another person for the first time.

His experience was far too thin to understand something like a competitive spirit.

So he wrestled with it.

Should he keep to the ideal pace, the one he judged to be best?

Or should he stop thinking about the future entirely and push harder, just to work through this unfamiliar feeling?

He stood at that fork in the road when it happened.

Between the two beautiful lines, silver and gold, a third line suddenly cut in, red and hot as molten lava.

"Huff, hack, hoo, hraaaaaaaah!"

A ragged, wrecked breath. Then, right behind it, a fierce battle cry.

It was Judith's voice. Startled out of his thoughts, Airen turned around.

Red hair tore past at a terrifying speed.

"Yaaaaaaaaah!"

Another hot shout rang out. Right after, Judith's speed climbed even higher.

She passed Airen Farreira, who was running with a steady, controlled form, and then overtook Illia Lindsay ahead of him too.

Then she kept pulling farther and farther ahead.

Airen thought, She's pushing way too hard. Is she going to be okay?

Worry crossed his face. The spark tickling his chest went quiet, dimming down to something like a smoldering coal.

Illia Lindsay didn't change at all.

Same as always, she just kept doing her own thing, expressionless.

* * *

Damn it! Damn it! Shit! Damn it!

The curses came without end. Even so, the anger inside her wouldn't settle.

Her chest burned like she'd swallowed fire. Her lungs felt scorched, and the blood coursing through her felt like molten metal fresh from a furnace.

Judith knew it too. She knew her body had hit its limit.

She knew that if she didn't rest right now and cool this heat down, something was going to go seriously wrong.

But she couldn't stop. There was no way she could.

A fury hotter than her own body kept the red haired girl running, without pause.

I will not lose! Never! I'm winning this, no matter what!

She didn't want to lose.

Brett Lloyd, who'd been born with a silver spoon in his mouth and strutted around because of it, annoyed her. Illia Lindsay, who'd spent her whole life being praised as the genius of the continent, annoyed her just as much.

The rest of them were no different. She had zero interest in bowing to people who'd had it easy their whole lives.

And she sure as hell wasn't losing to some lazy lord bastard who'd wasted fifteen years doing nothing!

"Hah, hack, s... hff, gah! Hah!"

Of course, she knew.

She knew exactly how much grit Airen Farreira had shown over the past four months.

She'd run and moved and clawed just as hard as he had, not falling behind him for a second, but in the end, he was the hardest worker in the whole fencing hall. She knew that.

But so what?

What about everything she'd already done before she ever walked through the gates of the fencing hall? Did all of that just disappear?

Was that time worth so little that she should just quietly give up on it now? All those past years?

Damn it, whatever!

Judith shook her head.

She already knew, honestly. That's just how the world worked.

The same way she looked at Illia and Airen and felt the unfairness of it, someone else out there was probably looking at her and thinking the exact same thing.

She, too, was overflowing with enough talent to make other people feel robbed just by watching her. She knew that too.

So none of that mattered.

Get angry.

Whatever the reason, rage all she wanted, seethe, curse, lose it completely.

Fighting spirit, competitive drive, inferiority complex, whatever it was, she didn't care, she'd use every bit of it.

She'd burn that fire as fuel and break through her limit.

Just like that lazy bastard had!

"Aaaaaaagh!"

A third roar tore out of Judith's mouth. And her legs, which shouldn't have been able to move any faster, found another gear.

She, too, was clearly breaking past her own limit.

"Huff, huff."

For a while, the standings held.

Judith, Illia Lindsay, Airen Farreira, Brett Lloyd.

Red, silver, and gold lines were drawn out, with a blue line chasing a short distance behind.

Well behind that, a jumbled mess of colors fought over fifth place.

And finally, the last course of the Mid-Term Evaluation began.

Facing the lake, Judith threw herself in without hesitation. If she stopped, even for a second, she felt certain she wouldn't be able to move again.

"Puha, hff. Puha! Hff!"

A different environment. Different motions.

But Judith stayed the same.

The girl was still furious, still burning hot. That was exactly why she could keep moving, why she could keep holding first place.

It was remarkable. If she could cross the finish line at this pace, she'd be shattering her own personal best by a massive margin.

Calling it a miracle wouldn't be an exaggeration.

But miracles don't come easy. That's exactly why they're called miracles.

Once she entered the lake, Judith's body began to slow.

Little by little. Then all at once.

By the time she noticed something was wrong, it was already too late. She couldn't move a single finger, and she began sinking slowly into the deep water.

In the quiet, she thought, Damn it.

Was it because she'd given up on everything? Or was it just the cold of the lake?

Judith felt her mind settle, calm, as if the fury had never been there at all.

Sinking, she looked up and saw Illia Lindsay pass right over her.

The same expressionless face as always.

Still looked like she had plenty left in the tank. Judith laughed, hollow.

Real monster. What the hell did she eat growing up to turn out like that?

It stung.

But she couldn't deny it.

That girl was a different breed from the start. A kind of person Judith could never catch up to.

For the first time in her life, the red haired girl was wrapped in a complete, crushing sense of defeat, and something in her gave up.

And strangely, that made her feel calm.

She couldn't breathe, and yet she felt strangely clear, and even knowing that people worse than her would pass her by, she didn't feel much anger about it.

Airen Farreira's probably going to show up soon and pass me too. And Brett Lloyd, that smug bastard, will probably come in third after that. And then... damn it, that part actually pisses me off.

Judith took that thought back.

Airen Farreira... fine, and Brett Lloyd, she could live with those two. But the rest of them passing her, that honestly ticked her off.

Not that it mattered. There was nothing she could do about it now. She was still sinking, and she'd lose consciousness soon.

She could already feel her vision blurring at the edges.

She smiled, bitter, and slowly let her eyes close.

Or tried to.

A grip.

What?

An arm wrapped around her neck.

Attached to it, moving with sudden, powerful force, a boy a little bigger than the other trainees his age.

Judith looked over through blurred eyes, and felt her temper spike all the way to her scalp.

Airen Farreira! This crazy bastard...

This was the evaluation that decided whether they got to stay at the fencing hall or not. On top of that, it was the evaluation that came with a prize from Hall Master Ian, one of the greatest swordsmen on the continent.

And at a moment like that, he'd dropped out of the race to come save her?

This idiot... seriously... doesn't he know what matters and what doesn't...

If she hadn't been underwater, she'd have cursed him out with everything she had.

But she couldn't.

Judith lost consciousness, and Airen finally managed to drag her out of the lake.

An instructor arrived late and administered emergency treatment. The lazy lord watched for a moment, then threw himself back toward the finish line.

Of course, the same was true for every other trainee. Everyone gave everything they had for the same single goal.

Even the ones who'd blown past the time limit did the same. Not a single one of them was willing to quit this evaluation, their last one, partway through.

They kept moving even as tears streamed down their faces.

And so, everyone except Judith crossed the finish line.

At last, Krono Fencing Hall's Mid-Term Evaluation, an evaluation full of upsets no one had seen coming, came to a close.

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