WeTried Translations

Translator: Nemui

Editor: Nemui

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◈ Scum of the Brave

Chapter 32

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In the end, I could not think of anything to say to Jogamine.

I felt like I might be able to say something meaningful, but that was truly just my imagination. In other words, I had gathered various elements, but I had not managed to organize them. Or maybe I was missing a fragment of some element.

I wanted E3, I thought.

I probably needed to take some time and sort it out. My head was not working well. Maybe I was tired, or maybe there was another reason. It was also possible that I simply did not want to think about it. Either way, it was not a good sign.

"Master."

Thanks to that, even after they got out of the bath, Jogamine kept clinging to me persistently. She followed behind me as I walked down the corridor.

"Please give me advice as well. It would be unfair if only Yukine and Sara received it. Or, you know, you could say I did well in the fight against Lord Morning Star Veil."

Jogamine pointed at herself.

"I held out splendidly, if I do say so myself. You may praise me."

"Is that right?"

I turned back once. Behind Jogamine, Sara looked away awkwardly. Indo formed a thin wrinkle between her brows.

All three were wearing the school's designated tracksuits. Priest had given them yukata he had apparently prepared, but needles coated in a poison I did not recognize had been hidden in the collars, so I had them throw the clothes away immediately. It was probably some kind of anesthetic poison with muscle relaxant effects.

"A Brave's business only counts when they kill a Dark Lord. Does talk about fighting well earn even one yen? There isn't a single thing to praise about such a reckless method."

"Then I would very much appreciate your instruction."

"Quit being a Brave."

I returned only the quickest and, in any situation, probably the only correct piece of instruction. I was in a hurry.

I needed to get quickly to the great hall, where Maruta and Priest were probably holding a banquet.

"Because it's a shitty business."

"But my father..."

"Your father was a murdering piece of shit. So am I. Every last Brave is, without exception."

Leaving only that behind, I sped up further. The great hall was already right in front of me. The voices of noisy people echoed. The suspicion that I might already be too late raised its head. Even so, with courage, I flung the door open.

Of course, I was too late.

"Damn it!"

Stunned, I cursed.

"Hey, Yashiro."

Maruta raised a hand to me. His face was already red. In one hand, he gripped a bundle of cards, and in the other, a beer bottle. I could tell he was quite drunk before he even spoke.

"Sorry!"

There was not a hint of apology in Maruta's voice.

"We started ahead of you. You were late."

The banquet was almost over.

On the long tables lined up in the room, empty beer and shochu bottles lay here and there, along with the remains of dishes. Crab shells, grated daikon, some kind of meat fat and soy sauce. Every plate looked dirty. The assorted mercenaries were lying around all over the hall or leaning against the walls.

Maruta bowed his head as if he truly felt sorry from the bottom of his heart.

"I tried hard to leave some for you too, Yashiro. It just didn't work out."

"Don't screw with me."

I was furious. Maruta's will was too weak. This guy was, as far as I knew, the highest-level master swordsman in humanity, so why was his willpower this pathetic?

"You didn't just start first. You're almost done."

"Sorry. I'm no good, really. I got hungry before I knew it."

"Can't be helped, can't be helped."

The shitty bald bastard chimed in. I meant that mercenary, Tetsu. He was facing Maruta, in the middle of a duel of Medallion. The board was already in the late game, and Tetsu was probably ahead.

Maruta had deployed many forces, but all of the cards were weak, and he did not look capable of breaking through the opponent's defensive block. Maybe that had put him in a good mood, because Tetsu cheerfully raised the beer bottle in one hand.

"Don't be too hard on Maruta, Yashiro. Life has all kinds of things in it. Heh heh."

That flippant attitude poured fuel on my anger.

"Hey, bald guy. Fight me right now. Medallion."

"Awful."

Behind me, Indo Yukine was looking at the remains of the food. Judging from the unprecedented droop of her eyebrows, she seemed extremely sad.

"I heard that at a hot spring inn, you can eat all kinds of food."

"How much did these people eat?"

Sara Pendragon looked around at the mercenaries with an exasperated face.

"There's seriously nothing left."

"Sorry, really. Once we ate it, it disappeared."

Maruta already seemed to be getting bored with this exchange. He yawned, then gave a reply that sounded blatantly troublesome.

"Since you had bad luck today, good things will happen eventually, miss. Cheer up. I guarantee it."

"This is too awful."

Oddly enough, Sara's opinion matched Indo's from earlier. Guarantee. What meaning could there be in the guarantee of a man with no fixed address, no job, and murder on top of that?

Then Sara turned back to me with resentful eyes.

"What are we doing for dinner, Teacher? I'm starving."

"How should I know? I'm going to play games now. Drink water."

"Yes, Master!"

I heard Jogamine's refreshing voice. A voice so refreshing it was excessive.

"This water was recommended to me by that person over there, but it has a very distinctive taste."

"Ah."

I panicked.

Jogamine was holding a cup filled with clear liquid. Beside her, a vulgar red-faced mercenary was watching us with a sloppy grin. Without question, the mercenaries here knew who these three were. And without question, they were playing around anyway.

If something happened to them, especially Sara Pendragon, I would be held responsible for supervision.

"Hey, Sara! Restrain Jogamine. If alcohol gets into this one, she will become more troublesome than imagination can handle."

"Don't be so stiff. There isn't any law that says minors can't drink beer, right?"

Maruta, who understood nothing, raised his cup as if making a toast.

He truly understood nothing. If alcohol was put into Jogamine, it would absolutely become troublesome, and there was very much a law saying minors could not drink beer.

"Master, let us drink water together. It will absolutely be fun. In fact, I am already starting to have fun. Sara, what is wrong? Let go. What are you doing? I have absolutely no such tastes."

"Neither do I. Sit still."

"Ha ha ha. Of course I know. I need not even read your mind. But give up, for you have dared lay hands upon my master."

"Shut up."

Growling in a low voice, Sara began tightening a choke sleeper around Jogamine's neck. From Jogamine's throat came a sound like the cry of a strange bird deep in the jungle. The mercenaries were rolling with laughter. Since they were drunk, maybe anything they saw was funny.

I watched that with an extremely dry feeling.

I did not know why, but watching these people mess around made my nerves feel strangely raw. I wanted to blow them all away with a large vehicle like a dump truck. To put it simply, I was extremely irritated.

While shuffling my card deck, I shouted.

"You lot, hurry up and go back to your room! You're distracting me!"

"Well, well, Yashiro-san."

The man who had been silently standing in the corner of the room until now was suddenly beside me. That shitty Priest. If he wanted to erase his presence, he could keep it erased forever without anyone noticing him. He was a skilled Brave, or rather, a murderer, but the fact that he used that skill for truly worthless things was exactly what made Priest the man he was.

"It appears you are having quite a difficult time. Seeing you like this pains my heart deeply."

Priest spread his hands with a bright smile.

"Shall I safely guide the young ladies to their room? Yes, safely."

"Shut up."

"But everyone seems tired."

"Fine. Go get it."

Silently, I pulled a thousand-yen bill from my pocket, crumpled it, and threw it. Priest reacted instantly, slid over the tatami at frightening speed, and went to secure it.

There was one thing I understood when it came to handling Priest.

Deal with him as little as possible.

My cell phone vibrated in my pocket at exactly that moment. I immediately checked the caller. Salt Joe.

I snorted lightly and looked around the great hall. Sara and Jogamine had started wrestling in earnest, while Indo was moving quickly and barely scraping together the remaining food to prey on it. The mercenaries were completely drunk, and Maruta had just been finished off by a Quick Card Tetsu played, Blind Assassin, losing the game.

"Hey."

I exchanged a glance with Maruta as he lamented his defeat.

"Watch those three. Especially don't take your eyes off that shitty Priest."

"Hm?"

Maruta looked at me with still-drunken eyes.

"What's up?"

"It's Joe. Something might have happened. I'm counting on you."

"Mm."

Maruta nodded, and a little of the drunkenness faded from his eyes.

Then I quietly left the great hall and went out into the corridor. I called Salt Joe back. Four rings. Salt Joe's voice sounded faintly drunk and displeased.

"Yashiro. You're still alive? This isn't some ghost phenomenon, is it?"

"Who do you think I am?"

I also became rapidly displeased. I was not in the mood to hear jokes right now.

"Enough screwing around. Get to the point."

"I looked into various things, but you first. Yashiro. Did you locate the monsters' nest?"

"Yeah. Unlike some useless guy, I'm not scared of planes."

"You don't screw around either."

"The monsters were failures."

Maruta had pulled as much information as he could from Lord Morning Star Veil's database.

In conclusion, Lord Morning Star Veil was only a low-level piece. In exchange for receiving financial support from Half Dragon and reigning as a Dark Lord, he had been made to assist in a certain research project. There seemed to be no mistake.

That research was the development of E4.

The next generation of E3. A drug that could repair not only missing limbs, but even bodies on the verge of death. It was a new drug that had recently started circulating in the Dark Lord industry.

The experimental material was nearly dead patients with high freshness. Hokkaido might have been an ideal environment. As a result, the experiments had succeeded to a certain degree. This really was an innovative drug, if you wanted to call it that.

The only flaw was that E4 selected its compatible users.

That was how it was recorded.

If someone could not adapt, their regenerated limbs would run wild like Lord Amber Thorn's. Or they would fall into becoming monsters without selves, like the Nephilim. The Compatibility Conditions were still unknown. Was a certain factor needed in genetic information or something like that? At that point, the experiment status was "still ongoing."

But those fine details did not matter.

What mattered was who Half Dragon was.

"And so, in other words, my master."

"What? What did you say?"

"My master was one of them. Half Dragon. We found the list."

"Figures."

Joe's reaction was what caught me off guard. His voice was far too gloomy and flat.

"You knew?"

"Like hell I did. I looked into it. That girl, Aki Jogamine, right? The story about her eye healing."

"Yeah."

"You said it was strange too."

"I did."

I had known. There had been that possibility. But I had not thought that an idiot whose brain seemed packed with sugar candy could be holding a major factor connected to our goal. No. I simply had not wanted to know. That was what it meant.

"On the family registry, Aki Jogamine died once seven years ago."

I listened to that in silence. Seven years ago. There was only one thing I remembered. It was around the time when I, still an amateur, had half-forced my way into becoming Takamiya Kiyoto's disciple.

"She got caught up in a conflict between Dark Lords. Killed by some worthless thug. Shot with a machine gun, her organs and everything shredded. By the time she was taken to the hospital, it was already too late. That's how the records put it."

"What do you mean, died? I heard that when my master divorced, her mother took her."

"They did divorce. That seven-year-old incident was the reason, apparently. I wanted to talk to the mother too, but she died last year. That's when the registry came back. When the girl entered the Academy."

"I heard she met my master once a month."

"Yeah. Hearing that part, I understood most of it. So do you, right?"

"Yeah."

I felt a faint headache.

In the end, nothing changed. My master had been a good-for-nothing, the worst kind of bastard. Once a month, Takamiya Kiyoto had probably been desperately building his castle of hope. Or maybe a grotesque ideal image.

Maybe he had convinced himself it would become some form of salvation. Salvation for himself and for his daughter, who was already beyond help.

"Aki Jogamine is compatible with E4."

I concluded it that way.

"Seven years ago, my master used his own daughter as experimental material. And, well, it mostly worked. Aki Jogamine was repaired."

"His relationship with his wife was beyond saving, though."

"And so is Jogamine herself. Whether she was really repaired is questionable."

"Who knows? We don't know whether her brain was damaged."

"If not, it's E4's influence. People who can't adapt become monsters without selves. Or maybe dying reset her, and her mental level is that of a seven-year-old. Actually, that's the only way I can see it."

"What about the possibility that her brain is completely normal?"

Salt Joe laughed. He really was a piece of shit too. He was enjoying this. I did not answer. Besides, I could not laugh.

The truth was, either way was fine. Either way.

I had something to do.

"Anyway, after one night, I'm going back. Staying here uses too many nerves."

"Yeah. The sooner the better."

Then Salt Joe's voice returned to its rough, displeased tone.

"Ed Cyrus got shot. He's unconscious, so the shop is basically closed for a while."

It took me about three seconds to understand what those words meant.

"What happened?"

"War. Lord Storm Coffin disappeared, and now there are more people getting the wrong idea. Every last one of them. Western Tokyo is a mess. Forced robberies, random terrorism, you name it. But."

Salt Joe's voice became openly bright.

"It's time to make money. Let's go loud."

Settle it.

When Salt Joe used a bright voice that did not suit him, that was what it meant.

I see. We did need to settle it. Ishino. Ed Cyrus. The good world, to me, had been wounded. Compensation was necessary.

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