WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Reformation of the Deadbeat Noble

Chapter 48

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Head of House Council (2)

"...Ha!"

Martin, eldest son of House Russell, let out a hollow laugh.

Caesar Lester glanced sideways as if to check he'd heard right, while Kevin Lester just shook his head.

It was what they'd wanted, in a way. They'd come to the training grounds with a clear purpose in mind.

But none of them had expected this.

Who could have guessed the "lazy lord" would say something like that.

"That's some confidence... Fine. Let's see what you've actually got."

Kevin Lester, the most baffled of the three, stepped forward first.

Crack, crack. He rolled his neck with a scowl, and the training ground's caretaker watched him with a worried look, though there was nothing to be done.

Nobody dared interfere in noble business.

While the caretaker fretted, Kevin Lester picked out a sword for himself and walked up to Airen Farreira.

Whoosh, whoosh. The way he cut the wooden sword through the air wasn't half bad.

No surprise there. He'd had a sword in his hands for over six years now.

Whoom!

"Hff."

Kevin Lester let out a menacing overhead cut, then narrowed his eyes.

He didn't have the slightest doubt he'd win. Of course he wouldn't. Sure, the kid had gone to some famous fencing hall, but only for a year.

Far too short a time to learn anything worth learning.

He, on the other hand, had been swinging a sword for years.

He'd trained under a good master, received a proper education, and had joined three separate Subjugation Campaigns. He'd even killed monsters with his own hands.

I'll humiliate him properly.

He wouldn't finish this quickly.

He'd drag it out, toy with him, mock him.

And then he'd tell him.

Krono Fencing Hall might have puffed him up with confidence, but he shouldn't get the wrong idea. He hadn't changed at all. He was still the lazy lord, through and through.

With that thought, Kevin Lester lifted his sword for a light warm-up swing...

Whip.

"Gah!"

The result came in an instant.

Airen Farreira's sword was already resting against his opponent's throat, and Kevin Lester... hadn't reacted at all.

He genuinely hadn't done a single thing.

His face looked like he'd seen a ghost.

The lazy lord watched him in silence, then lowered his sword.

Turning toward the others, he said,

"Next."

"W-wait! Void! That doesn't count!"

"Why not?"

"You never said we'd started! You coward, attacking out of nowhere like that..."

"We made eye contact."

"..."

"You nodded. That's agreement, isn't it?"

Kevin Lester ground his teeth as Airen cut him off sharply.

He had a mouthful of things he wanted to say. None of them made it out.

Rage had short-circuited his reason, and he hadn't expected that coward of a boy to talk back so smoothly.

But more than anything, it was the speed of Airen's sword that had rattled him.

His head refused to admit it, but some part of him already knew.

That attack, even braced for it, he wouldn't have been able to block.

He glared at Airen with eyes tangled up in embarrassment, irritation, and shock. He just glared.

From behind Kevin Lester came a low voice.

"I'll take this one, Kevin."

"What? No way! This little punk just..."

"I know you got careless. Just let me handle it."

"..."

"I won't feel right unless I deal with that ridiculous little punk myself."

Martin Russell's low voice made Kevin Lester shut his mouth. He obediently stepped back.

After a moment of silence, he turned to Caesar Lester beside him.

"That sly bastard, attacking before I was even ready... you saw that, right?"

"Of course I saw it. God, look at him strutting around now."

Caesar Lester smiled to comfort his brother, though his voice came out strained. It couldn't have come out any other way.

He'd been just as shaken as Kevin. The swordsmanship Airen had just shown was nowhere near the level of someone who'd trained for a single year.

Caesar's mind churned with a thousand thoughts at once.

Martin won't lose, obviously, but...

He looked over at Martin Russell, who had stepped up in Kevin's place.

A frame that tall and a build that thick were hard to believe on a sixteen-year-old.

Honestly, he was on a different level entirely. They'd all trained for about the same length of time, but Martin had a talent and a body neither of them could match.

Crush him. Absolutely wreck him!

Caesar Lester watched the lazy lord with confusion still churning in him, but far more anger on top of it.

The feeling made perfect sense.

A kid who used to be treated like less than a person, let alone a noble, standing there so full of himself. It was unbearable.

While these thoughts ran through his head, Martin Russell selected a sword and stepped up in front of Airen Farreira. He said,

"Shall we begin?"

"Sure."

A clear start, unlike the last one.

The instant after, Martin Russell's sword came crashing down toward the top of Airen's head.

Clack!

Tak, taak!

The sound of wood striking wood rang out again and again.

No gaps. No pauses. A speed almost too fast to believe from someone who hadn't even come of age yet.

But that was all it was.

Martin Russell's sword never once landed on Airen's body. Every strike was blocked, deflected clean away.

"Hmm..."

Time passed. The longer the spar dragged on, the more Martin's expression twisted.

There was no helping it. He was giving this everything he had.

He'd tossed aside his early ease and was swinging as fast and as heavy as he could manage.

And still, Airen wasn't breaking. Wasn't struggling.

He wasn't even sweating.

That fact was driving Martin mad.

This can't be happening!

He didn't want to admit it.

Martin Russell was leagues better than the Lester brothers, better than most anyone his own age.

That kind of skill came with pride to match, and he'd laughed the hardest of anyone when he'd heard the lazy lord was learning the sword. It had been open mockery.

But now, facing the very opponent he'd looked down on, he couldn't manage that same smile anymore.

"Guh..."

Martin Russell's expression kept shifting.

From a forced grin to a blank stare, from a blank stare to raw nerves.

And through it all, the lazy lord didn't change.

Same as he'd been from the start, he met every strike with a face colder than ice.

Didn't want to admit it?

That bitter defiance had drained out of him entirely by now. Fear had begun creeping into Martin Russell's eyes.

Somebody, please end this.

I can't keep going. I don't want to do this anymore.

While he screamed those thoughts inside, the Lester brothers' expressions had turned just as grim, when a voice cut through the air.

"That's enough, don't you think? Looks like it's over."

The voice came out of nowhere.

Not one of the heads of house. But someone clearly older than the boys gathered here.

Airen Farreira eased back a step.

His gaze wasn't on Martin Russell, who was still catching his breath. It was fixed on something far behind him.

The owner of the voice met Airen's eyes and spoke with a faint smile.

"You really have improved, Airen. What do you say, care to cross swords with me too?"

"..."

"With live blades, if you don't mind."

Laiyan Gairon, eldest son of House Gairon, said this with an even wider smile.

* * *

Will he be all right?

The training ground's caretaker watched Laiyan Gairon with anxious eyes.

He'd clearly come prepared. There was no other explanation for why he'd have brought a real Greatsword, similar to the one the young master used, but with a live edge.

It's not like anything terrible will happen, probably...

Still, worry was unavoidable.

Of course, just like before, there was nothing the caretaker could actually do, and neither party involved in the spar paid him any mind. Laiyan Gairon said,

"Lucky for us, one of my knights happens to carry a Greatsword. Sir Jack Steward, would you mind lending your blade to Airen?"

"Of course not, my lord."

"There you have it. Feel free to use it."

"..."

"Ah, of course, you don't have to use a live blade if you'd rather not. It'll weigh differently than what you're used to... or maybe a real blade would be too much for you to handle."

The words could easily be read as condescension, but Airen answered with only a short "Sure."

The corner of Laiyan Gairon's mouth twitched slightly. Fine, then, we'll go with that. His reply came out just as dry.

A sharp tension settled naturally over the two of them.

Airen didn't care. He genuinely didn't care at all.

He'd expected exactly this the moment the eldest son of House Gairon had shown up.

Taking a quiet breath, the boy let his mind drift back.

He didn't know much about Laiyan Gairon.

There was no way he could.

Gifted with exceptional swordsmanship, Laiyan had spent the last seven years at the Royal Knight Academy, graduating at the top of his class and returning only two months ago.

The two of them had crossed paths exactly once, when Laiyan Gairon, home on break, had visited the Farreira estate together with the viscount.

...But the look in his eyes that day was something the lazy lord could never forget for the rest of his life.

Contempt.

Not the ordinary kind he'd grown used to receiving. A contempt so overwhelming it stood in a class of its own.

That gaze, dense and revolting enough to rival even his own father's, had been more than enough to overturn every good word said about him around the kingdom.

And now.

He was looking at Airen with eyes even more revolting than before.

"I'll let you have the first move. That much is only fair, coming from someone who picked up the sword before you did."

"..."

"Not to your liking? Should we just take it easy instead? Or maybe..."

"That's fine. I accept."

Laiyan Gairon's mouth twitched again, cut off mid-sentence. Still, he didn't lose his composure. He smiled and said,

"Good. Come at me, then."

With that, Laiyan Gairon settled into a stance.

It wasn't a proper stance at all.

His sword rested carelessly against his shoulder.

A posture that made his contempt for his opponent obvious, yet nobody gathered there said a word about it.

He was, after all, a renowned prodigy of the sword, known well beyond the Six Southern Houses, all the way through the kingdom.

The pressure he gave off was on a different level entirely. Even the people of House Farreira were certain of his victory.

"..."

The boy standing across from him, meanwhile, looked utterly ordinary.

No, worse than ordinary.

The presence that had crushed Kevin Lester and pushed Martin Russell to his limit had vanished without a trace, leaving only a cowering boy who couldn't project the faintest hint of himself.

And that wasn't even the worst of it.

"...?"

He closed his eyes with an opponent standing right in front of him.

On top of that, he settled into a wretched stance.

A posture riddled with openings, the kind you'd only expect from an absolute beginner.

Seeing this, the Lester brothers and Martin Russell wore looks of pure disbelief.

"Ha ha."

Laiyan Gairon felt the same.

No, worse than the same. The expression he'd been forcing himself to hold now carried the same edge as his eyes.

Even the corner of his mouth couldn't hide the mockery creeping into it.

However hopeless the boy's chances, giving up so completely like this was something else.

However generous the gesture of yielding the first move, meeting it with such a defenseless stance was something else entirely.

It was absurd.

But it wasn't hard to understand, either.

Any other kid, maybe. But this one had always been like this.

Hopeless.

Trash.

A coward.

Any negative word you cared to slap on him, it didn't matter.

They'd all fit. Just like the name "lazy lord" fit him so well.

Having thought this far, he raised the sword resting on his shoulder and leveled it forward.

Then he began walking, step by step, toward Airen Farreira.

He wasn't planning to strike. Just to intimidate, that was all.

If he didn't do at least that much, it seemed like the cowardly boy would stand there frozen forever.

The mockery on his face deepened, and his eyes sank into something even darker.

That was when it happened.

The moment the boy's eyes opened, and the moment the boy's sword moved.

"...!"

Ttat!

Laiyan Gairon put distance between them. Only a single step, but the gap opened in an instant.

Still in that stance, he ran a hand across his own throat.

His eyes carried a fear he couldn't hide.

What was that just now?

Was it his imagination?

He couldn't tell.

Something bone-chilling had come flying at him, that much he knew, enough that he'd yanked himself back on instinct... but he couldn't say what it had been. Nothing had actually changed.

No, that wasn't quite true. One thing had changed.

He frowned deeply and stared ahead.

Across from him, Airen Farreira's sword had come back down.

Don't tell me that guy just... no, that's impossible.

Right. The timing had lined up by pure coincidence, but assuming that strange force had come from that kid's swordsmanship was too big a leap to make.

The distance between them was too great. And more than that, he couldn't imagine a greenhorn like that pulling off anything at all.

Laiyan Gairon's thoughts drifted elsewhere instead.

Away from the strange sensation that had vanished as quickly as it came, and toward the insolent look the lazy lord was giving him.

This little...

Laiyan Gairon let out a hollow laugh.

It was ridiculous.

The boy hadn't even judged the distance right, swinging his sword from way too far off, and yet here he was glaring back like he'd actually accomplished something.

Irritating.

He couldn't stand it.

He had no reason to stand it, either. Consumed by anger, he strode forward.

Just as he moved to swing his sword and vent his frustration.

Clunk.

The sword dropped limply to the ground.

He hadn't lost his grip.

It had broken.

More precisely, it had come apart as cleanly as if someone had sliced through an ice sculpture with a single sharp cut.

"..."

Laiyan Gairon stopped walking. The Lester brothers and Martin Russell stopped laughing.

Jack Steward, Aren Gairon, and everyone else in the training grounds froze where they stood, staring in shock.

And at the center of it all, the lazy lord alone stood facing Laiyan Gairon, his expression completely unmoved.

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