WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ Reformation of the Deadbeat Noble

Chapter 195

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Sensing (1)

Nothing was visible.

Not just sight. Hearing, smell, every other sense had gone dark too.

The impact must have been far worse than expected.

Made sense, really. That unpleasant thing had been every bit as horrific as the great demons recorded in the Holy Kingdom's history books.

'If not for that breastplate I was given, I might actually be dead.'

That was true. Even in a state serious enough that she couldn't even taste pain, Ignet Crescentia never once entertained the thought that she'd died.

She couldn't afford to. Not until she'd built her kingdom. Death was not an option before then.

'Of course not. I'm far too valuable a person to end here.'

Might as well take this as a stroke of luck.

Nearly thirty years of life, and she'd never once stopped to rest, always looking straight ahead, always running.

She decided to savor this rare moment of rest to the fullest and emptied her mind of everything.

She let go of the effort to close her eyes, let go of any thought of smiling. She emptied all of it.

In that void where nothing could be felt, Ignet simply existed, quietly, every worry and anxiety blown away.

But that peace didn't last long.

A familiar scene arrived without warning, and Ignet's expression turned strange.

'A revolving lantern of memory?'

She checked herself, floating there like a ghost, then looked ahead.

She saw her own face as a child. She saw friends who no longer stood beside her.

In the crumbling ruin of a slum shack, a ten-year-old Ignet was declaring something with total confidence.

"Good! I lined up work with old man Jack, and I already talked things over with Uncle Luke's smithy too. Things'll be a lot better for us from here on."

"So does that mean we get to eat twice a day now?"

"Of course. I'll get us to three meals, even."

"Whoa! Ignet's the best!"

"I love you, noona! Once I'm a little bigger I'll help out too!"

Five children, their faces lighting up at her bold promise.

A quiet nostalgia stirred for that long-forgotten sliver of the past, but Ignet didn't smile.

She only watched the past unfold, her face blank.

A moment later, the scene changed.

Now there were more than ten children in view. She saw the tears welling in their eyes too.

But the thirteen-year-old Ignet didn't cry.

Her past self spoke, her expression resolute.

"Wait one year. I'll come back strong before you know it. If you're careful with it, this should be enough to get you through."

"Can't you just not go?"

"No. I'll be back soon."

"........."

She turned and left with her goodbye.

Tucked carefully against the chest of that determined young Ignet was a letter of recommendation to Krono Fencing Hall, given to her by a nameless swordsman.

She hadn't wanted to leave. She'd wanted to stay with her friends, with the younger ones.

But the situation had gotten too dire.

With the civil war dragging on and on, the work available to children kept drying up.

Sending them out to beg wasn't an option either. In that hardened, desperate climate, all that waited for beggars was a boot to the ribs, not even a few coppers.

She still had a head for work and could still bring in money on her own, but looking after everyone by herself had become impossible.

That was why Ignet was heading to Krono Fencing Hall.

'I don't need to become a formal trainee. I just need to get strong and come back within a year.'

Amid the chaos gripping Makan Kingdom, there was nothing left for children to do.

But if she became a capable swordsman, everything would change. She could earn enough to feed all of them.

Ignet looked back at the ruined shack one last time. The children's faces, still on the verge of tears, filled her vision.

'It'll be fine. I've got enough saved to get them through a year.'

She was leaving behind every coin she'd saved, but she felt no regret over it.

And so the thirteen-year-old Ignet forced her reluctant feet to move.

* * *

More time passed.

By now, Ignet could no longer tell her present self apart from her past self.

Fully become the fourteen-year-old Ignet, she hurried back toward her hometown.

Unlike before, her face was brimming with confidence.

Talent striking enough to surprise even herself had carried Ignet all the way to the rank of Sword Expert.

With strength like this, she thought she could take care of not just ten children, but twenty, even thirty.

But when she returned to the ruined shack after a year, no one was there.

"........."

Her mind went blank for a moment. Bad thoughts, and worse ones after that, kept surfacing, one after another, tormenting her.

She didn't stay lost in them for long, of course.

Steadying herself almost immediately, she went asking around, and eventually, belatedly, got word of the children.

And once again, her expression hardened into something grim.

"........."

Some had died. Some were still alive.

But even the living ones weren't the children she remembered.

Someone who used to beg rather than steal had become the newest member of a thief's guild.

Someone who used to take a beating rather than ever strike another had taken to shaking down their own former little siblings for whatever coins they had.

Even those younger ones had lost every trace of the innocence they once had.

After a long stretch of agonizing over it, Ignet finally gave up on reconnecting with her old ties and headed west. West, and further west still.

And there, she reached out with a new hand to old classmates from Krono Fencing Hall, commoners like her who'd washed out for lack of talent.

"I'm putting together a mercenary company."

She didn't think her old friends were simply bad people.

If they'd started out somewhere better, if they'd lived in a slightly more ordinary world, they wouldn't have twisted the way they had.

That was it. An unbearable, punishing life had driven them into ruin. That was how she saw it.

So she'd build a better world instead.

Punish the greedy. Sweep away the trash.

Build a world worth living in, and things like this would never happen again.

The mercenary company she meant to build was for exactly that purpose.

"Sounds good."

"Ignet, with your skill, of course we're joining you."

"Ha, I'm already looking forward to this. We're gonna get famous, aren't we?"

Most of her old cohort signed on. Others, decent sorts, gathered around them too.

Sorry to say it, but they were far more capable than her old friends had been. Expectation swelled in fourteen-year-old Ignet's chest.

With people like this, she could build a better world.

It took ten years for her to learn that had been nothing but an illusion.

* * *

"Not going."

"........."

"Why would I go somewhere that's all obligation and no rights? Honor? Don't need it. I like things fine the way they are."

"Same here."

"Me too."

"Congrats, boss. But we're staying with the company. Being in a knight order, and a Holy Kingdom one at that, feels like too much of a reach for the likes of us."

"Well, income won't be as good with the boss gone, but we already make enough to live on."

At twenty-four, having become one of only a hundred Sword Masters on the entire continent, Ignet had made the request. What came back was a calm, matter-of-fact refusal.

But she wasn't disappointed. Maybe she hadn't even expected otherwise.

Nodding just as calmly, Ignet answered.

"Live well, then."

She'd known for a while that things had drifted in a different direction.

The size of the payment had come to matter more than the nature of the job. They'd grown far more sensitive to profit and safety than to the company's original purpose.

For people who'd lived their whole lives as mercenaries, practically born into it, Ignet's convictions and ambitions might as well have belonged to some distant country.

But that was fine.

Having stepped away from the mercenary company she'd built herself, Ignet thought quietly to herself.

'Figured this would happen.'

She held no resentment toward the childhood ties that had twisted crooked.

She held no resentment toward the companions who'd spent ten years at her side, only to settle for an ordinary life.

Young as she was, too young even to be called merely young, she'd already understood something.

People who carried great ideals, and people with the ability to match them, were both far rarer in this world than anyone assumed.

Even so, it didn't matter.

Watching the searing red light of her Aura Sword stretch out before her, she made herself a promise.

'I just need to be good enough on my own.'

She didn't need to lean on anyone else.

She alone had enough power to change the world.

She didn't need to convince anyone else either.

It was enough that she alone kept a clear head.

What she needed wasn't the trust and persuasion owed between comrades. It was the command and direction owed by a king.

"We're coming with you, boss."

"Me too, and Anya!"

"Hm?"

"What, is something wrong with us coming along?"

"Suit yourselves. Do as you like."

"Wow, we go through the trouble of thinking of you, boss, and this is the ice you give us..."

"I like an icy boss too! Yahoo!"

That was why Georgu's words hadn't filled her with much joy.

That was why she hadn't smiled back at Anya's laughter.

They were with her now, sure, but who could say about later.

Nothing was more exhausting than pouring effort into someone who might collapse from exhaustion and drop out at any moment.

That was the reason twenty-four-year-old Ignet, no, Ignet Crescentia, had been able to charge forward without hesitation.

That was when a vile darkness spread, and an unpleasant voice echoed through her mind.

'What's left over after you run so hard for all that?'

"........."

'Isn't that right? Fine, I'll admit it, you're impressive. Building a nation where everyone's respected, no pointless civil wars, no greedy tyranny, no senseless persecution! And you've even got the skill to actually pull it off. Even I, dead as I am, can't help but marvel at it.'

Ignet looked at the Jester Demon, her face utterly blank.

Eyes that felt nothing at all.

Which made them all the colder, but the corpse that had once been a jester paid it no mind and kept talking.

'But what do you actually get out of going that far? Loneliness? Isolation? Ha! My friend, I promise you this. Nobody will stay by your side for the rest of your life. Not a single one. There are dozens of carriages' worth of people who tore themselves apart trying to keep up with you, and of course there are, it couldn't have gone any other way. Am I wrong?'

Ignet Crescentia didn't deny it.

Not the friends from her childhood. Not her comrades from the mercenary company either.

They'd only nodded on the surface. Not one of them had ever truly understood her ideals.

Calling it madness, saying it was beyond them to even try to keep up, falling further and further behind, that had simply become the way of things.

The Black Knight Order would probably be no different.

Maybe even Georgu, even Anya, would end up the same way.

The thought crossed her mind naturally: that she might come to her senses one day only to find herself walking a brutal, unforgiving road again, either beside strangers, or alone.

But Ignet felt no anguish over it.

Letting out a short laugh, she called up her aura. The sword now in her hand cut through the Jester Demon before she'd even registered moving.

"Gurgle........."

Watching the demon's corpse burn, Ignet thought.

'No time to take it easy.'

She herself was fine.

However powerful the demon's death curse might be, she wasn't weak enough to be brought down by it.

But the others were different.

Remembering the jester's final malice, urgency rose in her chest.

'More than half of them might already be tainted by the darkness.'

She had to get up. Fast.

She had to come to her senses and recover her body as quickly as possible.

Then clear away the darkness that had surely grown thicker by now, and get everyone out of the dungeon.

Without her strength, as the Holy Kingdom's knight commander, none of it was possible. Ignet forced her focus inward, trying to wake herself.

At the same time, another thought surfaced.

Even knowing she was the only one who could save the expedition team...

'Why did I step forward in their place?'

She shouldn't have.

She should have done the opposite. Used the two of them as a shield if she had to, and kept her own strength in reserve. That was what she should have done...

"........!"

Her vision returned.

Ignet Crescentia scanned left and right and tried to sit up. She couldn't.

Frowning hard, she strained her upper body again.

Anya Marta and Georgu Poive stopped her.

"No, boss! Rest more!"

"You can't move right now. Commander, please lie down a little longer."

"Can't do that........."

"What do you mean, can't! Just stay still, boss!"

"I have to get up... if it's not me, the demon's curse will get to the others..."

"I know what you're thinking. But it's fine. It's fine, so just calm down for a second... and take a look around first."

"What..."

"Things aren't as bad as you're worried they are."

"........?"

Ignet frowned.

Or wait, had she already been frowning?

Her condition was bad enough that she couldn't even be sure of that. Taking stock of her own state, she let out a sigh.

'Nothing I can do in this state anyway.'

Then Georgu was right. Focusing on rest was the smart move.

Not that she planned to just lie there, of course. Understanding the expedition's condition mattered just as much as understanding her own.

A sense of responsibility, the weight of being a king, stirred Ignet's senses awake.

Her sharpened ears and eyes swept quickly over the dungeon, over everyone scattered here and there.

"........."

Surprisingly, things were far better than she'd expected.

Someone was calming their mind through meditation.

Someone was swinging a sword, trying to work their way free of anxious thoughts.

The others were the same.

Small clusters of expedition members, each absorbed in something, and their faces weren't as dark as Ignet had feared.

No, it wasn't just their faces.

The dungeon itself wasn't dark. Because of the light.

Fierce, but not harsh. A golden glow that warmed everything around it.

Feeling the faint aura flowing from Airen Farreira's body, Ignet Crescentia thought.

'...I think I understand now.'

The reason she'd thrown herself into harm's way.

Having grasped it, belatedly, she closed her eyes again.

Watching their commander drift off to sleep, wrapped in that warmth, Georgu and Anya nodded.

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