WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ Reformation of the Deadbeat Noble

Chapter 50

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Awakening (1)

Dawn broke.

Most people were still lost somewhere in dreamland at this hour.

The lazy lord wasn't among them, of course. He woke early as always, finished washing up and eating in short order.

As he always did, he was heading to the training grounds to swing his sword.

But this time was different.

Every part of the routine looked the same as before, but from here on, it wouldn't stay that way.

Sorcery.

The most mysterious, the most difficult, the most unpredictable power in the world.

Today, Airen Farreira would work to learn it.

"I'll be heading out, then."

"Go on. I'll see to it that everyone stays clear."

Learning something as secretive as Sorcery couldn't happen out in the open.

So Airen had asked his father to restrict access to the training grounds, and Harun had agreed.

He thought it far safer than having his son learn somewhere outside the castle walls.

He was watching his son's back as Airen bowed and left the room.

That was when his servant Marcus spoke carefully.

"Will he be all right?"

A great deal went unsaid in that question, but there was no mistaking its meaning.

He meant the rumors about the cat Sorcerer, Lulu. Baron Harun Farreira spoke.

"Have you ever seen it?"

"Sir?"

"My son wanting something on his own, wanting something this badly, have you ever seen that before?"

"...Never, my lord."

Marcus asked nothing further. Like the head of the house, he kept his eyes fixed on the spot where the boy had disappeared.

A new wind was blowing through House Farreira.

* * *

Late April carried the scent of spring in the air, but the early morning still held a chill.

Airen Farreira didn't feel it.

His steps were faster than usual.

Stepping into the training grounds, reaching for the sword on the rack, everything carried an urgency that hadn't been there the day before.

Yes. It was, without question, urgency.

The wish to get what he wanted, and quickly.

The wish to hold what he longed for in his hands right now.

The boy nodded.

So this was what it meant for the heart to get ahead of itself.

Only now did he understand what the Sorcerer Lulu had meant. He looked up at the sky.

A soft rustle.

"You're here? Still got a good heart on you! There's a fire in it now, different from before."

"..."

"I hope that fire keeps burning a long time. Oh, don't worry too much! I'll help you out plenty."

"Where'd you get those glasses?"

Airen asked, looking at the cat Sorcerer, who'd already landed on the ground.

Just as he'd said, Lulu had shown up wearing glasses, unlike her usual self. A red bow tie was wrapped around her neck, and a small book was tucked under her arm.

"Presentation matters."

"Huh?"

"Little things like this shape your mindset. Consider this me putting in my own best effort."

"Is that how it works?"

"That's how it works. So praise me. Go on."

"Um... thank you?"

"Ha, good!"

Delighted, Lulu spun through the air.

Once, twice, three times. On the seventh spin, she complained that the book under her arm was getting in the way and sent it off into subspace.

Finally free to move her limbs, the black cat spoke.

"Like I said before, heart matters most in Sorcery."

"Right."

"Strengthening the heart has to come first. In your case, that's the wish to protect your family. And the wish to sharpen your swordsmanship for that reason too."

"Yeah."

"So then, how do you make that wish stronger?"

"..."

Airen just stared at Lulu.

Of course he did. He'd come here to be taught. There was no way he'd know anything about Sorcery yet.

Fortunately, the cat Sorcerer didn't push for an answer. Like any ordinary teacher, she began to explain, slowly.

The boy let out a quiet sigh of relief inside.

He'd figured the lesson would be as strange and scattered as she was, but she looked surprisingly serious about it.

"Are you even listening?"

"Ah, sorry. Say that again?"

"Keep that up and you'll get a scolding! Snap out of it before you taste the master's switch!"

The cat had already pulled out a little wooden stick and was waving it around, and the human flinched at the threat.

Once the strange little scene passed, Lulu's explanation continued.

"The most common method is superstition."

"Superstition?"

"Right. Belief with no rational basis at all. But it's still belief, and in the world of Sorcery, nothing matters more than belief. It's not about how absurd the story sounds. What matters is how seriously you can believe it."

The common superstition that a wish comes true if you stack stones into a tower every day without letting it collapse.

The personal superstition that tying your left shoelace first means your day will go well.

Whether big or small, however baseless or crude the superstition, if it piles up day after day, belief takes root.

That was what the Sorcerer Lulu wanted him to understand.

"Someone who's followed a superstition for a year, ten years, they'll believe in it out of sheer stubbornness by then, if nothing else. Their conviction grows just as strong."

"Hmm..."

It wasn't a completely unreasonable idea.

Some people really did treat that kind of superstition as absolute truth about the world.

Lulu offered several other ways to strengthen the heart, besides.

"They say some ancient king slept on a bed of thorns until the day of his revenge, so he'd never forget the defeat he suffered at the hands of an enemy king."

Stimulus and pain, used to reignite a heart that was going slack.

"Primitive people worshipped things like giant rocks or the sun as gods, and tried to fulfill their wishes through offerings. Honestly, that seems like a decent method. Nothing runs as strong as faith."

A method that drew on faith, the most unshakable kind of belief there was.

"Paying a price through your own sacrifice works pretty well too."

Giving up something precious to yourself, as the cost owed in return.

The black cat grew especially careful when she brought this part up.

"But you're better off avoiding sacrifice if you can help it. Instead of drawing on the mysterious power of Sorcery, you're a lot more likely to end up... whispering straight into a demon's ear."

Airen nodded.

He'd heard stories like this before, about people trading away their lifespan or soul to make contracts with beings from the deep abyss, and how the corrupted Demon-people born of those deals often caused disasters.

Of course, the boy had no intention of anything like that. Not for a second.

What demons wanted was whatever a person held most precious.

For Airen, that would mean offering up his family as a sacrifice for power, which wasn't even worth thinking about.

So then, what should he actually do?

Lulu, gripping the little stick like a sword and swinging it, spoke.

"Sword training."

* * *

Whoosh!

Whooosh!

Airen Farreira swung a sword that an ordinary boy could barely lift, without a hint of shaking.

Nothing unusual about that, really. Once upon a time it might have been strange, but by now, seeing the young lord train with a sword had become an everyday sight.

Still, the training grounds keeper and the other servants couldn't help wondering.

It hadn't even been two hours since the young lord left the castle to go learn Sorcery.

What's different about this?

Nothing, though. It's just sword training.

What does that have to do with Sorcery?

They couldn't make sense of it at all.

Honestly, Airen had thought the same thing the first time he heard Lulu's words.

Just do sword training like I've always done?

Not quite the same. Call it a promise, or, no, let's use a heavier word. Let's call it a contract.

A contract?

Yeah, a contract.

A thousand swings a day, each one carried out with sincerity of heart.

Building up each day, pouring in a devoted heart toward the question of how to grow himself and his sword, how to move further forward.

It's a bit like the superstition I mentioned first. Doing sword training every single day doesn't guarantee you'll reach the level you're after.

But repeating an action tied to your wish will make that wish, that belief, that strength of heart, grow stronger.

And it grows stronger the more days you rack up fulfilling the contract.

What matters here is putting your whole devoted heart into it.

Just swinging the sword without that won't be any different from before. Understand?

"Whew, this is hard."

Wiping the sweat from his forehead, Airen Farreira murmured under his breath.

It wasn't the action itself that was hard.

A thousand swings?

Honestly, ten thousand would've been a joke. Even on his laziest day at Krono Fencing Hall, he'd swung more than that.

But putting in a "devoted heart," that part was brutally difficult for him.

Swing the sword with a heart set on building up and advancing my own swordsmanship? How exactly am I supposed to do that?

Whoosh!

Do I just swing hard, put everything into it?

Whooosh!

With love for my family in it? While remembering how foolish I used to be and feeling sorry for it?

Whooosh!

Or should I wish for swordsmanship skill so great that my house will never be looked down on by anyone again?

This was a problem he had to answer for himself, not something anyone could teach him.

For Airen, it was the first real puzzle of its kind he'd ever faced.

Until now, he'd only ever acted and thought according to someone else's instructions, never his own judgment.

So the boy wandered, lost, unable to find his footing for a long while. Every swing left him gasping for an answer.

The number, a thousand?

He'd cleared that ages ago. When he really thought about whether he'd put in a truly devoted heart, he struggled to manage it even once in every ten swings.

The lazy lord's whole body was soaked through with sweat, as if he'd fallen into water.

The black cat watched the sight with satisfaction.

Just starting to wrestle with the question is enough.

Until now, Airen Farreira had never put in the "effort" of thinking and struggling on his own.

Looked at from the heart rather than from action, he'd still been the "lazy lord."

But that wouldn't be true anymore, going forward.

Curled up on a tree branch in the training grounds, the Sorcerer Lulu thought to herself.

If he works hard at it, he'll definitely be able to awaken it.

Awakening Sorcery through effort.

An oddly mismatched idea.

Ordinary people, and even Sorcerers themselves, mostly treated their own powers as a nugget of gold that fell from the sky, pure luck.

And that wasn't wrong, really.

But.

For Airen as he is now, that kind of awakening actually seems to suit him.

Not some special secret nobody else knows, but stubbornly stacking up days that anyone could know about yet few could actually follow through on.

And through that, making a miracle happen.

Lulu believed that, and kept watching the boy swing his sword. On and on.

A day passed, then two, then three, and then ten days went by.

The cat appeared before Airen Farreira again and asked a question.

"Airen."

"Huff, huff... yeah?"

"You know what cools a burning heart and crumbles a heart of stone into sand?"

"..."

"Doubt. Doubt in yourself."

Lulu didn't seem to be waiting for an answer, and gave her own right away.

Hearing her words, Airen Farreira nodded.

She was right. Even the smallest doubt could crack the sturdiest heart. No one could argue with that.

Of course, knowing that wasn't the important part.

What really mattered was how to deal with that "doubt."

That was probably the very thing anyone chasing after a goal wanted to know.

Sure enough, the black cat got straight to the point.

"You can't solve it."

"...What?"

"Oh, sorry! I meant you can't solve it alone. But..."

Lulu paused for a moment, her tail swaying, before adding,

"With someone else beside you, you can overcome it."

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