WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ Reformation of the Deadbeat Noble

Chapter 27

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New Change (3)

It wasn't just his eyes that had changed.

The boy walked back to his spot with heavy, deliberate steps, and an unusual air hung around him as he moved. The trainees, each absorbed in their own drills, found their attention drawn to him once again.

It was strange.

Airen occasionally caused ridiculous incidents, but as a rule, he wasn't the type who stood out.

Being a little older meant he was a little taller, and he had a decent enough face, but beyond that there wasn't much about him that grabbed attention.

So when he suddenly gave off this strange presence that pulled every eye toward him, curiosity was inevitable.

Swish.

Airen paid it no mind.

He raised his sword and quietly closed his eyes.

He breathed in, slow enough that no one nearby could hear it. Breathed in again.

Focused in that stillness, he suddenly snapped his eyes open and moved the sword.

Whoosh!

"..."

"..."

And nothing happened.

Whoosh!

Whooosh!

Airen Farreira kept swinging the sword.

The swordsmanship he ran through was an application of the basic Krono technique he'd learned in class that day. From light, springing footwork came a counterattack, the blade flashing sharp and fierce.

But that was all it was. The boy's current form looked no different from what he'd shown before lying down on the bench.

"Nothing special."

"Yeah. I thought he had some big moment of enlightenment or something, the way he was acting all serious."

"You think that kind of thing happens easy, at our level? Even swordsmen who've trained for decades barely get a shot at that."

"Fair point. Though I heard you need at least one moment like that if you ever want to reach Master rank."

Losing interest in the unremarkable sight of the lazy lord, the trainee candidates turned their eyes away one by one.

After trading a bit of chatter, they went back to their own training.

Airen paid them no mind, same as before.

He simply kept cutting, swinging, thrusting, the same as always.

An hour passed like that.

The boy sheathed his sword and walked back to the corner bench.

Then lay down neatly and quietly closed his eyes.

It went without saying that every eye in the place turned toward him again.

"You think he's sick or something?"

"What kind of nonsense is that."

"No, come on, even you have to admit it's weird."

Brett Lloyd's face twisted at Judith's growling remark.

"A guy tough enough to swing a sword for twenty four hours straight without eating or sleeping, and no worse for it, lies down on a bench twice in under two hours. You're telling me that looks normal to you?"

"I don't know, shut up."

"You dare speak to Lord Lloyd like that..."

"Erybluh burrbleh ruhbluh."

The honor guard glared, and Judith clapped her hands over her ears like she couldn't stand to listen.

Not that she thought Brett was wrong. Some part of her felt uneasy about Airen's strange behavior too.

In the end, the red haired girl couldn't hold back and walked over to the bench. She meant to at least ask if he was sick, suggest he go to the recovery room if something was wrong. And that was exactly what she did.

But Airen's answer was baffling beyond words.

"Ah, I'm fine. Just training."

"What? Training?"

"Yeah. It's not going well, though. I didn't expect it to work right away, but..."

What wasn't going well.

What part of this could possibly be called training.

The words rose all the way to her throat, but she couldn't get them out.

Airen had already lain back down on the bench and closed his eyes.

In the end, Judith had no choice but to trudge back, more confused than before.

"Unbelievable."

"What'd he say?"

"Says he's training, so don't worry about it."

"What?"

Brett Lloyd looked just as baffled.

Not just him. Every trainee candidate who overheard Judith's words stared at Airen Farreira with confused eyes.

The lazy lord paid none of it any mind.

He simply focused, quietly, on what was happening inside himself.

* * *

Recreating the man's senses was truly difficult work.

The worlds themselves were different, after all. No matter how similar an environment he built, there were countless obstacles standing between him and dragging what he'd felt in the dream into reality.

Clear away the fog in his mind, sharpen the image until it stood clean and bright.

Carve that image into his own heart, exactly as it was.

No, carve wasn't the right word. The instant his focus wavered, even for a moment, the image warped and broke apart.

It was like trying to paint a perfect picture on the surface of water. Airen's expression kept twisting with the effort.

And that wasn't even the end of it.

"Mmh..."

He honed the focus he'd built up through the dream, refined it, sharpened it to an edge.

Forgetting the people around him. Forgetting the wind brushing past his hair. Forgetting the faint scents drifting past his nose.

Gathering every sense, all five of them, into one point, until at last the image formed on the water's surface.

But the picture, once completed, wavered and scattered the instant Airen rose from the bench and took his first step.

If it ended there, it would have been fine. But by the time he made it back to his spot and swung the sword, the original shape had already broken apart, gone from memory entirely.

'Failed again.'

Holding the picture painted on water while moving, without letting it break apart.

Maintaining, even in ordinary daily life, the sense of the man he'd barely managed to drag into reality.

This was the hardest part Airen faced right now.

'Let's try again.'

Of course, Airen Farreira didn't give up. He didn't even feel disappointed.

He'd racked up too many failures at the fencing hall to be shaken by just one or two setbacks now.

He also understood, if only vaguely, that a tower of success was built from a long history of exactly this kind of failure.

The boy who used to be too crushed by fear to even attempt things was gone now.

The lazy lord slapped his own cheek with a sharp crack and walked back to the bench.

The trainee candidates around him watched with looks of pity.

'There he goes again.'

'Is something wrong with his head?'

'What is he even thinking...'

None of it made it past their lips, though. There was precedent, after all, for the mockery at the start of his time at the fencing hall being paid back tenfold by his miracle at the Mid-Term Evaluation.

And none of them wanted to deal with Judith's foul temper when she took his side.

But wrong was wrong.

To their eyes, what he was doing couldn't be called training at all. It was just running away.

Yes, that had to be it.

The kids figured the lazy lord had hit a wall against the top ranked trainees and simply slipped back into his old lazy habits.

Airen Farreira paid none of it any mind.

He knew that even the instructors, not just the trainees, were giving him dirty looks. But he had no energy to spare worrying about that.

The sword of the man in the dream.

The senses of the man in the dream.

And something beyond even that.

For the sake of all of it, Airen lay down on the bench and closed his eyes.

No, he was just about to close them.

"Hmm..."

"..."

A blue haired boy was watching him closely.

Brett Lloyd.

Airen's focus scattered under the weight of that open stare from so close by.

He sat up and asked.

"Something you wanted to say...?"

"That."

"Huh?"

"That thing you keep calling training."

Brett pointed a finger at Airen.

He wasn't picking a fight. His expression was far too bright for that, this arrogant young lord's face lit up like he'd just realized something.

Like he'd had some kind of revelation.

After a brief silence, he spoke in a firm, energetic voice.

"You're not just lying down to sleep, you're doing meditation training!"

"...Meditation training?"

"Yeah! What priests do to steady their minds and reflect on themselves. Right?"

It wasn't.

Airen had simply wanted to drag his dream into reality, and lying down with his eyes closed was just the posture that turned out to work best for that.

But he couldn't exactly explain it that plainly.

He mumbled something vague instead.

"Uh, well... something like that, I guess."

"Right. I've heard about this before. Word is some swordsmen have taken to a training method from the priesthood lately. It's coming back to me now."

Brett kept talking, on and on.

He went on about how it was supposed to be great for sharpening focus, since it came from the discipline-minded religious types, and about some famous swordsman who reached Master rank through enlightenment gained from meditation, and about how he should have realized sooner, the moment Airen called it training.

His voice stayed quiet but carried real excitement, and it only made Airen's heart heavier.

But he didn't have it in him to correct the misunderstanding, so the boy just stayed silent.

"Alright. I'll give it a shot too, then."

"..."

"Though it is a bit unusual. Was the meditation posture always like this?"

"...I just used whatever posture felt comfortable to me."

"Is that how it works? Fine, I'll try it your way, then."

"You don't really have to..."

"Shh. I'm focusing. You go do your own thing too."

With that, Brett walked over to the next bench and flopped down onto it. Then, folding his hands over his stomach just like Airen, he shut his eyes.

He was certain of it. That this was the source of Airen's recent leap in progress.

That the focus that had always been the guy's greatest strength must have come from this very meditation.

Which meant he could get something meaningful out of it too!

'Alright. First, let's calm down.'

He didn't know much about meditation.

But he knew enough to understand that a calm, clear mind mattered.

Brett steadied his breathing. His heartbeat, still racing from training, slowly began to settle.

'This isn't bad.'

The feeling wasn't unpleasant at all.

He'd let his manners slide a bit after spending so much time around that wild boar Judith, but this felt like the first calm he'd found in a while.

Brett Lloyd worked to clear away every stray thought clouding his mind.

A little calmer.

A little quieter.

A little more...

"Lord Lloyd!"

Startled!

Brett's eyes snapped open at the voice cutting through his ears.

He looked over to find Lance Patterson crouched beside him, staring.

"What?"

"Um... it looked like you were sleeping..."

"..."

After a moment of silence, Brett turned to look at the clock tower.

Two full hours had already passed.

Brett decided to play it off.

"Hmph. I wasn't sleeping. I was just following the training method Airen came up with."

"..."

"Th, that. Meditation. Started with priests, and now even high ranking knights enjoy it..."

"Oh yeah? And does this meditation, or whatever it is, usually come with snoring?"

Judith tossed the remark out as she passed by.

Lance Patterson stood there, mortified, not knowing what to do with himself.

The other two members of the honor guard stood beside him, equally at a loss.

"..."

Brett left the training ground without another word.

Airen saw his flushed face but decided to pretend he hadn't noticed.

* * *

Airen Farreira kept up his training.

No results came of it. Holding onto the picture painted on water remained a grueling task.

The mockery from the trainee candidates grew a little louder. He paid it no mind, as always.

What came as a surprise was that Brett Lloyd kept up his meditation practice as well.

"The posture was the problem. Turns out the lotus position is the proper way to do it."

"You idiot, I told you it's useless for you. He's just some kind of freak."

"No harm in judging that after I've actually tried it."

Judith cursed him out for it, but Brett didn't let it bother him.

Back when his mind had been more closed off, maybe he would have. But after hearing the Hall Master's advice, he'd changed.

He'd come to accept that he'd been arrogant. He'd realized that other people had strengths worth learning from too, just as much as he did.

He still felt some resistance to acknowledging others, but that was exactly what made this attempt worth something.

'If I keep following the Hall Master's teachings like this, the narrowness inside me should fade away bit by bit too.'

Once he'd settled that thought, Brett headed for the corner of the training ground. Then, folding his legs into a lotus position the way the priests did, he sank into his own world.

The trainee candidates ignored even that.

To their eyes, the two of them were just wasting their time.

But a month later, the situation had changed.

"Trainee Airen Farreira. You're in B-Class starting today."

"Yes, sir."

Airen answered Instructor Branden Phillips.

No one voiced complaints. No one voiced surprise, either.

Everyone already knew. That from some point on, Airen Farreira's skill had been climbing at a steep, unmistakable pace.

And that this "some point" lined up almost exactly with when he'd started his meditation.

And that wasn't even the end of it.

Whoosh!

"I win."

"Damn it, that doesn't count! One more round!"

"It counts fine, but sure, I'm always happy to go again."

Judith and Brett Lloyd, fighting over the fencing hall's second seat.

Between the two of them, once too evenly matched to call, a gap had slowly begun to open.

There was no need to ask who was pulling ahead.

Brett Lloyd's face, as he raised his sword, was full of confidence.

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