WeTried Translations

Translator: Nemui

Editor: Nemui

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◈ Scum of the Brave

Chapter 18

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Someone shouted something.

In an instant, the entrance hall grew noisy. Wise guests silently began evacuating, and the even wiser guests stepped back to watch us as entertainment. The only ones trying to remove us were the security staff, which was only natural.

Nobody wanted to get injured after being dragged into this kind of terrorist uproar.

"Stop! Don't shoot! You'll hit the guests!"

In the noise, I heard an angry, panicked shout.

"Use E3. The enemy is a Brave. Leave this to the mercenaries."

Some complete amateur among the security staff must have drawn a gun. I instantly closed in on the one who had shouted that warning. Before he could turn around, I deeply sliced open his thigh and sent him flying. His angry shout became a scream, and he could no longer get up.

The ones we needed to watch were not people like that.

Near the edge of the entrance hall were the people quickly bringing injectors to the sides of their necks. E3 users. Security staff employed by a Dark Lord, broken former Braves, or mercenaries, to borrow that man's word. With compressed perception, I counted them. Four in the hall altogether. Just right.

First, the one who had shot E3 in the fastest charged at me as if shoving aside the guests in his way. A red-haired thug who looked every bit as brutal as he was. Not bad. He had identified the strongest fighter, meaning me, and targeted me first. I would use him as an example.

"This is basic technique. Watch."

I declared that to the three students, or rather, mainly so Sara Pendragon could hear. I held the bastard sword with its tip toward the floor, gripped it in both hands, and met him.

The red-haired thug had raised a two-handed sword high overhead. That stance told me everything. He had never done any decent swordsmanship. He enhanced his physical ability with E3 and simply cut.

Against someone who was not using E3, that method might have worked well enough. After all, he could attack faster than a bullet, so even if the opponent was armed, he would rarely fall behind.

But if the fight was between two E3 users, that was different.

The instant the red-haired thug's sword came down, a metallic scream rang out. A faint scatter of sparks. My bastard sword, flicked upward, stopped the blow with the side of its blade.

At the same time, while receiving it, I slid my sword and scattered the force.

"Never crash straight into it. Let it flow."

I gave a short, extremely useful piece of advice. When swords swung with our arm strength collided properly with other swords, they almost always broke.

According to the smiths who made swords for Braves,

"They use the essence of modern and traditional techniques to raise durability as much as possible,"

apparently. But things that break still break.

So when defending, you had to receive the opponent's force in a way that let it flow away. At that moment, the red-haired thug's blow was blocked by my sword and missed its mark. Then he could not quickly stop the momentum of his downswing.

That instant was where the skill showed.

The moment when the defender became overwhelmingly advantaged.

I slid my blade along the opponent's sword and twisted the tip around the guard. Here. The opponent reflexively tried to pull his sword back, but that was the mistake.

The bind came loose, and my tip became free. I hooked it into the opponent's fingers and tore them open. His face twisted with agony, and with a high-pitched scream, the sword rolled onto the ground.

The fingers that had been gripping it a moment before, and blood, scattered through the air.

"Finger Cut. It exists in old Japanese sword schools too."

It almost never worked on someone above you, but against an opponent who had barely learned swordsmanship, it was different. I drove a soccer-ball kick into the collapsed red-haired thug's face. That finished it. He fell and stopped moving.

"The trick is to match the opponent's weapon and twist around the guard properly. Then cut the fingers, and once they can't even grip a sword, they are not scary. You can try it."

I gestured to Jogamine and Sara with my chin. Two others remained. They were slowly closing distance with us. One from the front, and one circling clockwise from my right, as if probing my movement. There should have been one more, but Indo had probably dealt with him.

"Straight into practice. Nice, right? Be glad you have a good master who doesn't waste time making you do meaningless practice swings or basic drills."

I was saying something extremely sloppy.

From here on, I wanted to conserve as much stamina as possible. I knew what the real problem was. Lord Storm Coffin's direct subordinates, commonly called the Storm Guards. Five carefully selected, first-class Braves hired for a high price. These guys were preparation for them. The three Academy girls would handle the small fry as much as possible. You could call it a kind of tuition fee.

But some people went ahead and stepped in without thinking about that honest intention.

"Yes, Master!"

Jogamine accelerated at full speed from the start.

"Understood!"

She held her sword low and rushed the opponent in front. In other words, she had understood nothing. Finger Cut after a flowing defense was a technique that diverted the force of an opponent's attack and struck into the gap.

So Jogamine's idiotically honest one-handed sword thrust was violently knocked aside by the opponent. Immediately after, she somehow blocked the returning slash with her buckler, but her posture broke. She was forced entirely onto the defensive.

This opponent used a two-handed sword. A one-handed buckler and sword could not receive those cuts head-on. As she defended a second time, then a third, her posture gradually collapsed. She lost the room to attempt a flowing defense into a counterattack.

"Are you stupid?"

I decided to sit on the reception counter, heckle, and watch.

"Attack. Even if your posture is broken, you still have both hands. Attack! Make the opponent conscious of death!"

In reality, she had several chances to do that. For example, while defending with the buckler, she could thrust her sword toward the abdomen, or show a swing aimed at the carotid artery. But Jogamine did not do that. Instead, after receiving my precious advice, she tried to bash the opponent's head with her buckler.

Stupid.

The opponent barely cared about that strike. The buckler hit directly. Blood flowed from his temple, but he roared like a crazed beast and swung his two-handed sword horizontally.

That could not be fully blocked with a one-handed sword, and if she received it poorly, the sword would break.

Jogamine chose a simple evasion method. She rolled on the spot and dodged the sideways blade. That too was a bad move. It allowed the opponent to follow up, and she could not mount any decent defense or attack. She could maybe cut at his shin, but before that, she would eat an overhead blow.

Without question, Jogamine was close to being checkmated.

"Too stupid."

I clicked my tongue without thinking.

I started to lift my hips for an instant, thinking I had no choice but to help her. Just before I did, Sara's long, annoying golden hair flipped. In a way you would never imagine from her refined appearance, she violently cursed the situation.

"You damn bastard!"

Sara's katana knocked away the sword that was coming down toward Jogamine's head. Or rather, her tip moved as if to let it flow aside. Though she had attacked from the side and caught him off guard, it was an ideal way to receive.

Then, with the same motion, the blade flowed toward the opponent's hand, and in one breath, it flashed.

She cut off the opponent's middle and index fingers together.

"Oh."

I laughed.

"Not bad."

While I was at it, I looked at the mercenary Sara had been facing until a moment earlier. He was already down and unmoving. His right arm had been deeply cut open, and bone was visible. I see. If she had tried to follow my advice, it was a fairly good result.

As for Jogamine.

I peered down at her as she got up, breathing roughly.

"And you? What were you doing?"

"Practice."

Jogamine wiped the cold sweat dripping from her jaw with the back of her hand.

"I tried it."

"Where? You did not show a stance that could take the opponent's life."

"Master. A Brave is..."

"It doesn't matter. Whether you don't want to become murderous scum is your business. What matters is showing that posture."

I grabbed Jogamine by the collar. She looked very pained, but I could not worry about that.

"Are you looking down on us? Are you trying to say you alone are different from us, that you are not shitty murderers like we are? That you are a more refined existence? That you can always have your companions save you like this and get away without dirtying your hands?"

"No! I..."

"Try reading my mind."

I tightened my grip around Jogamine's neck. She looked like she might cry a little. This is not good, I thought. Because of the E3, part of me had become aggressive. I understood that. I thought I had to suppress it somehow, but I did not stop.

"I'm angry."

"Master."

"Instructor."

Indo's cold voice. But I did not stop. It was the drug's fault. I wanted to think that.

"Shut up, Indo! I am... no, that is not it. I just... this one..."

"Instructor."

Indo strongly grabbed my arm and pulled. I lightly shook my head, which was painfully irritated, and looked toward her. Behind Indo was the corpse of a man whose throat had been completely gouged out.

She had done it. There was only one drop of blood spattered on her too-white cheek.

She looked at me with something like dissatisfaction.

"Instructor. Who is that?"

"Ah."

Sara made a panicked sound.

From the passage behind reception, an extremely tall figure was approaching. White clothing fluttered. It was a party dress that was not so much luxurious as simply flashy. A pallid face, chilling blue eyes. Her hair seemed to glow gold.

I remembered that woman.

"It's been a while."

The timing was bad.

For this woman to come out this quickly.

"Lord Yashiro the Reaper. I am very honored that you came to my party."

So said the woman, Lord Storm Coffin, with a smile. It was a cold smile that brought reptiles to mind.

"It was worth sending a hundred invitations a month. Or perhaps the ten million yen transferred each month did its work? Either way, welcome, Lord Yashiro. And you unknown little girls. For the time being, I welcome you."

The way she smiled made me extremely sick of her. Indo stared at Lord Storm Coffin with a face that, as always, gave no clue what she was thinking. Sara Pendragon opened her eyes wide and looked back and forth between me and Lord Storm Coffin. Jogamine, misunderstanding something, held her sword and buckler and stood in front of me.

This was why I had not wanted to come to this party alone.

Lord Storm Coffin was a little crazy.

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