WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ Reformation of the Deadbeat Noble

Chapter 79

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Spirit Mage Kubharu (1)

"Phew. Thank you. If it weren't for you, who knows how long I would've kept getting beaten. Just thinking about it gives me chills."

"Ah, yes."

"By the way, would it be all right if I ordered a beer too? My body aches all over. I feel like a drink might help a little..."

"...Go ahead."

Airen Farreira nodded at the orc fortune teller's words.

Kubharu had incredible nerve.

Not only was he mooching a meal off a customer he'd read fortunes for five years ago, he was ordering extra on top of it.

He'd even borrowed money.

Gambling debt was the reason, and it was also why he'd been getting beaten just moments ago.

His gambling opponent had realized there was no money to collect and, unable to contain his fury, had started throwing punches.

'Why gamble if you don't have money?'

By Airen's standards, it was behavior he couldn't make sense of.

Of course, he couldn't just pretend not to notice and walk away.

Part of it was his naturally kind nature, and part of it was the fact that they had some history together.

But the biggest reason was that five years ago, the note Kubharu had handed him gave Airen a profound realization.

'You don't have to stand entirely alone to stand firm.'

Someone might see it as just a vague, wise-sounding line scribbled down at random, but at least for Airen, it had genuinely helped.

In a way, even being able to open up to his fellow trainees at the fencing hall might have owed something to those words.

The old him had struggled a great deal with connecting to other people.

And besides...

'That question about his age still bothers me too.'

Airen looked at the orc fortune teller who had introduced himself as "Kubharu."

Had this orc really known about the dream Airen kept having, about the mysterious man who appeared in it, when he said those words?

He was still turning the thought over when a voice cut in.

"You! Have you got no shame at all?"

Tap, tap!

Lulu, who had been quiet until now, rapped her paw hard against the table.

Well, hard by cat standards. No matter how forcefully a cat's paw struck a table, it never made much of a threatening sound.

Still, the look she gave Kubharu was fierce enough to make up for it.

Lulu spoke again.

"You read someone's fortune once, years ago, that basically makes you strangers! And you're borrowing money from someone like that, and mooching food off him too! You're a completely rotten orc! Gambling on top of it!"

"Hmm? Gambling isn't a bad thing, little friend."

"Who's a little friend! I'm on the bigger side, for a cat!"

Lulu shot up from her seat and puffed out her chest.

She had gotten noticeably bigger than before, but a cat was still a cat. Kubharu took a lazy sip of his beer and said,

"Still pretty small, though."

"You're really something!"

"If I were blinded by money, pouring my whole body and soul into gambling like an addict, that would be a problem. But that's not the case. I'm simply buying happiness with the worldly currency called money. If a few coins can buy a good time, isn't that quite the bargain?"

'What nonsense.'

Airen swallowed his disbelief silently.

It wasn't that the logic made no sense, exactly, but it was absolutely not something an orc who'd just gotten beaten for lack of money should be saying.

Yet Lulu, surprisingly, had nothing to say back.

She just stomped her feet with an indignant look, as if she couldn't find a single hole in the logic to poke.

Just then, Kubharu smiled and reached out to place a hand on Lulu's head without warning.

"You little,"

Naturally, Lulu batted his hand away with rapid paw strikes, fast enough that even Airen, a trained swordsman, was mildly impressed.

But her reaction gradually shifted.

Lulu, who had been hissing and trying to back away, started leaning her head forward instead.

"Wait, what is this scent! It's amazing!"

She leaped.

She even climbed onto Kubharu's forearm, rubbing her face against it, sniffing, and eventually licking it.

Airen stared blankly at the black cat's behavior, and Kubharu, seeing this, smiled even wider.

"I rubbed a little powder from the fruit of a plant called Taihoi on my hand. It only grows in the continent's northwest, and cats go absolutely wild for it."

"What, there's something like that?"

"Would you like some?"

"Give it! Not a little, give me a lot!"

"I'll give you some if you promise to like me from now on."

"Can't promise that. I'll promise not to dislike you, though!"

"Then let's settle for that much."

Kubharu nodded and pulled a small pouch from inside his coat.

The black cat's eyes and nose tracked it instantly.

Once Lulu confirmed it was what she wanted, she snatched the pouch in a flash and carried it back to Airen's chest, dazed.

Lulu, dazed and drunk on the Taihoi fruit's scent, mumbled with a slack expression,

"Airen... maybe that orc isn't such a bad guy after all..."

"..."

"Ahem, well, it seems I've patched things up with my prickly Sorcerer friend, more or less. Now I suppose I ought to settle the matter of the borrowed money."

"Huh? But you don't have a single coin to your name..."

"And who am I, exactly? A fortune teller, that's who. An orc fortune teller, no less, far more accurate than any human one! If this Kubharu offers you a free reading, I think that ought to more than cover the debt."

The sheer shamelessness of him praising his own name to his face was something else.

Had Lulu been listening properly, she would have shouted, "If you're such an accurate fortune teller, how could you be broke!"

But the cat Sorcerer was currently thrashing about in a haze of Taihoi scent, and Airen Farreira, for the reasons mentioned earlier, found himself genuinely curious about Kubharu's fortune-telling.

Of course, it could have just been a lucky guess back then, so he couldn't trust it completely...

'No, wait, couldn't I just ask something that would actually tell me if he's the real deal or a fraud?'

Airen nodded.

He didn't know much about fortune tellers, but he'd heard a story or two.

Some could apparently tell what had happened to you recently just by looking at you. Others, hearing only a name, birthdate, and birth hour, could rattle off a string of major events from someone's past.

The old him wouldn't have believed such things.

But things were different now.

Having seen firsthand what wonders a Sorcerer could work, he found himself perfectly willing to accept that a skilled fortune teller could pull off feats like that too.

But then...

"You've got a persimmon tree where you live, don't you?"

"...No, I don't."

"Ah, it probably used to be there. You were likely too young to remember."

"There definitely wasn't one."

"Must have been planted a few days ago, then. It's probably there by the time you get home."

"..."

"M, me too. Try me. Guess mine."

"You? Hmm... I get a clear sense about you. You strike me as someone with a real weakness for raw salmon."

"That's just something every cat likes."

"That's information you know because you're a cat. I'm an orc, I wouldn't know that. And yet I nailed it on the first try, which just proves how accurate I am."

"..."

Even a casual listen made it clear Kubharu's fortune-telling was a mess.

He'd toss out something with decent odds of being true, and if it missed, he'd scramble to explain it away.

And if that explanation hit a wall too, he'd dig another escape hatch and slip through it.

Any trust that had been building evaporated fast.

"Airen, I think that orc's a fraud..."

Lulu, pressed close to his ear, murmured her thoughts. Except her voice wasn't quiet at all, and it carried perfectly well to the other side of the table. Kubharu scratched the back of his head.

"Hm. Not having a great day today. Well, even I have off days."

"That's certainly possible."

Airen replied noncommittally.

He was a little disappointed, sure. But he wasn't upset.

It didn't matter if Kubharu wasn't a real fortune teller.

He'd already gained so much from that note five years ago that the money he'd lent Kubharu felt like more than fair payment for it.

No, actually, considering how much Lulu loved the Taihoi fruit powder, he'd come out ahead.

But Kubharu wasn't ready to give up yet.

"Heh heh, my friend here doesn't believe I'm truly a gifted fortune teller."

"No, uh, well, that's..."

Airen's expression turned awkward.

A shameless person would have brushed it off smoothly, insisting of course he believed it. But Airen had no talent whatsoever for that kind of thing.

He tried to think of a way to smooth things over, but nothing quite fit.

The mood wasn't heavy, at least. Kubharu didn't look upset either. Airen wondered if the orc was just a little embarrassed.

Given that atmosphere, the words that followed from the orc fortune teller cut far deeper into Airen's heart than they should have.

"The weight on your heart is heavier than it was when I last saw you."

"What?"

"Before, it was hidden. Now it shows on the surface. A hard, heavy iron stake is driven straight into your chest, no wonder it's been such a struggle."

"..."

"And it's not even one you drove in yourself. Someone entirely unrelated to you has taken that place instead."

"Wait. Weren't you a fraud? Why are you suddenly..."

"Ahem, to be honest, you're right that I don't have much skill in fortune-telling. But right now, I'm not looking at Airen Farreira through fortune-telling. I'm looking through Spirit Magic. Well, my Spirit Magic isn't anything to boast about in front of the real masters either, but I'm not so hopeless that I'd miss a Metal energy this strong and this unnatural."

Kubharu gave an awkward laugh at the question he'd been asked, and Airen's expression hardened.

Lulu's did too.

She wasn't the one it concerned directly, but she could guess well enough what Kubharu's metaphor pointed to.

The man in the dream.

A life spent swinging nothing but a sword, forged and tempered over what felt like forever, called to mind a lump of metal that had gone through endless quenching.

The swordsmanship that man wielded was the same way.

Even his fellow trainees, who knew nothing at all about the man in the dream, described his swordsmanship as looking like "a steel giant" moving.

A presence so solid it felt unshakable.

A crudeness, a heaviness, that couldn't be controlled by will alone.

Kubharu's phrase, "iron stake," fit it far too well.

Airen realized he was staring at Kubharu with an intense, searching gaze, without meaning to.

There was a rustling sound.

The orc untied a pouch and poured its contents onto the table.

Not something special like the Taihoi fruit powder. Just ordinary dirt.

But what happened next was anything but ordinary.

The scattered dirt gathered itself together and transformed into solid metal.

"Orc spirit mages believe the world is made of five elements. From Earth comes solid Metal..."

A soft hiss sounded.

Kubharu waved his hand, and droplets of water began forming on the surface of the metal.

The water eventually dripped down and soaked into the pile of dirt, and from that spot, a small tree sprouted, no taller than two finger joints.

"Drawn by that, Water appears. And nourished by the energy of water, Wood grows. And that wood, in turn..."

A snap.

A crackling burst of flame.

Kubharu flicked his fingers, and fire bloomed from the tree.

The flames burned fiercely, consuming the wood like kindling, and then went out, though it didn't vanish entirely.

Kubharu pointed at the ash that remained in place of the wood and tree.

"Gives birth to Fire, and once the flame has spent all its strength, it returns once more to Earth. This cycle of five elements is what keeps the world running without end."

"..."

"And it's the same for life. Just as Earth nourishes Metal, Metal nourishes Water, Water nourishes the energy of Wood, Wood nourishes Fire, and Fire nourishes the energy of Earth, the five energies at the root of life maintain their harmony through balance and mutual support."

"...So does that mean my current condition is a broken balance and harmony of energies?"

"You catch on quickly. Like I said, that heavy, crude iron stake is keeping you from moving as freely as you should."

"Then how do I get rid of that iron stake?"

"You can't get rid of it. Didn't I just say balance matters? But its force is far too strong, so in this case, you'll need to borrow power not from what nourishes it, but from what opposes it, to press that energy down. The energy of Fire, that is. And that, actually, might work out to be quite the opportunity."

Suddenly.

Kubharu waved his hand, and another piece of metal rose up from the pile of dirt.

Smaller this time, but unmistakably another iron stake.

Dull and crude in shape, the kind that looked impossible to handle easily.

But then flame poured over it, and everything changed.

A low, drawn-out hiss.

Under the intense heat, the shape of the iron stake began to shift.

The bulky base reshaped itself into a hilt, while the upper portion took on a sleek, refined elegance.

It was a sword. The kind of beautiful blade that, if a swordsman from a children's fable stepped out of the pages and into reality, would grip and swing with pure delight.

Airen watched, dazed, as Kubharu handed him the small sword.

"That iron stake, once thought of as nothing but a burden, if it's properly forged through fire this hot... it can be reborn as a magnificent sword, one that anyone would want to wield."

"What do I need to do to build a flame hot enough to melt that iron stake into a sword?"

Airen Farreira asked.

The light, easy mood from before was nowhere to be found.

Kubharu talking about fortune-telling and Kubharu talking about Spirit Magic were two entirely different beings.

The eyes he turned toward Kubharu carried genuine desperation.

And the answer Kubharu gave him, in response, was almost absurdly simple.

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