Reformation of the Deadbeat Noble - Chapter 98

WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

◈ Reformation of the Deadbeat Noble

Chapter 98

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Unexpected Proposal (3)

On a plain where nothing could be seen but a few trees, some rocks, and clouds drifting overhead, four humans, an orc, and a cat had gathered.

That alone would have made for a strange sight, but what they were all doing made it stranger still.

Thud thud thud thud

"Boss! Boss! I collected all the bodies! Praise me!"

"Well done. You're a hundred, a thousand times better than that dazed idiot Georgu."

".........."

A girl casually hauling in two grotesquely mangled corpses, a beautiful woman watching her with obvious pride, and a man looking on as though this were all perfectly ordinary.

Whoosh!

Whooosh!

Whoooosh!

Paying the three of them no mind at all, a blond young man kept swinging his greatsword to loosen up his body.

The remaining two hardly needed mentioning.

An orc with tattoos covering both arms and a cat floating serenely through the air were, by themselves, strange enough to stand out anywhere.

Kubharu, the orc spirit mage and one of those two strange beings, spoke.

"I wonder if there's a way through this..."

His voice carried no strength, and his face was heavy with worry.

He had seen it. Airen's aura, exposed to the near-corrupted killing intent Charlot and Victor had unleashed.

The mood radiating from Ignet now was on a completely different level of coldness compared to what she'd shown at the Alhad Den.

'If she's the Black Knight Commander of the Holy Kingdom, she must have cut down countless demonoids. If she wanted to, she could probably project a presence that rivals an actual demonoid.'

Could Airen possibly withstand that kind of overwhelming force?

He wasn't sure.

Lulu spoke to him.

"Kubharu. Have some faith."

".........."

"Airen overthinks things and he can be frustrating sometimes, but he's not the type to go back on his word. If he brought it up, it's because he's confident he can do it."

"...You're right. I suppose you are."

Kubharu nodded and turned his gaze back toward Airen.

There was a firmer trust in his eyes now than before.

But there was something neither of them had anticipated.

'Can I actually do this?'

The truth was, Airen Farreira himself had no particular confidence either.

Which, honestly, made sense. If he'd had some ready method for this, he would never have set out on his journey across the continent in the first place.

So why, then, had he challenged Ignet Crescentia to a sparring match?

Surprisingly, it was anger.

'This is strange. Why am I so angry?'

At first, he thought it was because of Illia Lindsay.

He still remembered.

The conversation he'd had with her after the Final Evaluation ended.

Illia, who had finally found her own path, had still named this very person as the goal she needed to surpass.

That figure now stood right in front of him, and on top of that, was trying to force him into submission.

If he backed down here, he thought, he wouldn't be able to face Illia Lindsay again.

But that wasn't it either.

The more he loosened his body for the sparring match, the more he swung his sword, the more he realized that wasn't his true feeling.

It wasn't his real emotion, and only now, several minutes later, could he finally admit to himself that he was angry at Ignet.

'But why?'

Airen asked himself that.

He wasn't the type to get angry easily, to begin with.

Even hearing cruel words, even being openly mocked, he usually just let it go.

He'd proven that much already, quietly training through all the contempt and ridicule during his early days at Krono Fencing Hall.

There had been exactly one time he'd ever gotten truly angry at someone.

And that had been directed solely at the people of House Gairon.

But this situation was nothing like that one.

That incident, where over ten years of accumulated hatred, guilt toward his father, and self-loathing had all exploded at once, wasn't remotely comparable to this.

In the end, even after five minutes had passed, Airen still couldn't properly untangle his own feelings.

The realization, when it finally came, arrived from an entirely different direction.

This anger, right now, was the only way to master the man's will.

Fwooosh!

The ember inside Airen Farreira flared brighter.

Nothing showed on the outside, of course. It was only an ember within his heart.

But everyone gathered on that plain, every single one of them, sensed it.

Kubharu, Lulu, Anya, Georgu, even Ignet Crescentia herself turned a curious gaze toward the blond young man.

Airen paid none of it any mind.

He drove his greatsword straight down into the ground in front of him and quietly closed his eyes.

Then he began the mental training he'd honed in Vulcanus's forge.

Fwaaash!

Five years, no, six years ago. The tiny ember that had first taken shape as he chased after Illia Lindsay, always a step ahead of him.

That ember had been reignited by the advice Kubharu offered him in Derinku, and had grown into something worth calling a flame.

Grown large enough that even standing before Charlot and Victor, both of them clearly beyond him, he could still hold onto the thought, 'I will win.'

Of course, that alone wasn't enough.

Nowhere near enough.

The will of the man in the dream was steel, not some ordinary lump of iron.

To shape that iron stake, hardened through thousands upon thousands of hammer strikes and temperings, into the form of a sword, he needed heat far fiercer than anything he'd managed before.

And now, an ember unlike anything he'd felt before rose up inside Airen Farreira's heart.

Fwaaaaash!

An ember.

A flame.

Heat fierce enough to be called, beyond even that, a blaze.

Airen pressed it against the iron stake.

Then he focused his mind and struck, hard.

Clang!

Claaang!

It still wasn't enough.

The iron stake was so massive, so unyielding, that this brief attempt alone seemed nowhere near enough to reforge it into a sword.

But he didn't give up.

Airen kept striking the glowing red iron stake, over and over.

And little by little, something began to change.

Clang!

Claang!

Clang!

Instead of striking the whole thing, he focused entirely on one spot, just the tip.

He struck without tiring, without growing bored, again and again.

After a long stretch of this relentless work, the shape finally changed.

The thick base, once impossible even to grip, took on the rough but usable form of a handle he could hold and swing.

"Haaah."

Airen let out a deep breath.

Sweat poured down his forehead like rain, running along his eyebrows, down his cheeks and jaw, dripping away.

He didn't notice any of it.

Right now, he was gripping the handle he'd finally completed with both hands, lifting the massive iron stake.

Grrrrnnn...!

He felt an astonishing strength.

He'd thought he had some sense of the man's power already. He'd been completely wrong.

This sensation now... it felt like lifting an entire mountain made of solid steel.

'Of course, it's still difficult to control...'

The Airen within his mind swung the iron stake a couple of times.

It wasn't easy. It was so heavy that his body swayed unsteadily in whatever direction the stake moved.

But that was fine.

Airen Farreira finally opened his eyes.

Waiting there, as though she'd been standing ready for some time already, was Ignet Crescentia, her blade resting on her shoulder.

"Looks like you're finished preparing."

"...I am."

Airen nodded.

It was enough. A confidence utterly unlike anything he'd felt before had awakened through his entire body.

He fixed his gaze on Ignet, a look hot enough to leave a burn.

She spoke.

"As a courtesy to a junior, I'll yield the first move. Until our blades have clashed three times, do whatever little trick you'd like."

"Yes."

"The moment I release my aura, the match begins. Understood?"

"Yes."

"Then..."

Ignet Crescentia let her blade hang low at her side.

It was far too relaxed a stance for someone about to face down an Expert-class swordsman, but no one pointed that out.

She was, after all, one of fewer than a hundred Sword Masters across the entire continent.

But Airen Farreira, standing across from her, showed no sign of being cowed either.

His whole body wrapped in flame, he stood like an iron giant.

Watching him, Ignet's body suddenly released a terrible pressure.

Fwoooosh!

Fear, darkness, dread.

A revolting presence surged forward, as if an actual demonoid had appeared before them.

A force impossible to believe could come from a knight commander of the Holy Kingdom.

Airen's eyes twitched.

His body reflexively tried to summon the aura of the man in the dream.

The iron stake in his mind, no, the actual greatsword in his hands, wavered back and forth.

He gripped down hard.

Airen held on.

The searing flame and a fierce wind poured strength into his grip.

A crushing force strong enough to grind stone to powder tightened around the handle, and the trembling gradually eased, then finally stopped completely.

He'd won. He'd finally overcome it.

Just as he was breaking into a smile of triumph over what he'd achieved.

Ignet, already braced into position, closed the distance at a terrifying speed.

Tap!

With a single step, she reached point blank range and swung her blade.

A diagonal strike flying up from below, and Airen, startled, swung his sword to meet it.

Kwaaang!

"Guh!"

Despite it being a one handed blow against his two handed grip, Airen was knocked backward. He staggered back five full steps, trying to say something.

There was no time for that.

Ignet's second strike came flying in immediately, and Airen clenched his teeth and answered it.

Kwaang!

Kwaaang!

Three more exchanges came in an instant.

Each time, Airen was pushed back further, losing his balance more and more.

Not just his body but his mind too grew ragged, and he couldn't seem to gather himself at all.

In the middle of that chaos, a left hook came flying in, and there was nothing he could do to block it.

Thud!

"Guhh..."

A body blow powerful enough to lift him clean off his feet.

Airen Farreira, drooling as he sank to his knees, finally lost consciousness, unable to hold on any longer.

And with that, the match ended.

Whooooosh...

A breeze swept across the wide early autumn plain.

The silence was deep enough to make that lone sound seem unusually loud.

The one who broke it first was Georgu, who had followed Ignet since her mercenary days.

"Are you taking him?"

"Would you make a liar of me? Airen Farreira proved his own words. The recruitment's off the table."

"I see. Though, didn't you already lie once?"

"What do you mean?"

"You said you'd yield the first move."

"That was a lesson for a junior. How is anyone supposed to survive this brutal world with a simple, naive heart that takes another's words at face value?"

".........."

"...There was another reason too, honestly. That kid wasn't just trying to prove his own words."

"Then...?"

"He was trying to actually beat me. Genuinely."

"What?"

Even Georgu, unflappable as he usually was, couldn't help but be startled by that.

Trying, in earnest, to defeat a swordsman ranked third in combat power across the entire Holy Kingdom, someone who'd been a Sword Master for seven years already.

Recklessness didn't even begin to describe it.

"He's completely out of his mind."

"He is. Completely out of his mind."

Ignet turned her gaze toward the fallen Airen Farreira.

The orc and the cat, having come to their senses a little late, were hurrying over to fuss over him with obvious worry.

She watched that for a good while, then added one more line.

"Still. I happen to like that kind of guy, quite a bit."

* * *

"Mmm..."

Airen Farreira, groaning softly, opened his eyes.

For the first time in a while, he'd dreamed of something other than the man. He'd dreamed of Ignet instead.

In the dream, she hadn't listened to a word he said and had simply beaten him without pause, the whole time.

She hit him when he blocked. She hit him when he ran. She hit him even when he stood perfectly still.

Just as the fury of it was about to make him fight back for real, he'd woken up.

He let out a sigh and looked around.

Kubharu was dozing in a chair to the left of the bed, nodding off, and Lulu was snoring away on his lap.

'So they carried me back here after I passed out. Are we back in Derinku?'

Thinking that, he turned his gaze to the right, and found Ignet Crescentia sitting there.

Airen yelped in shock.

"Gyaaah!"

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