WeTried Translations

Translator: Nemui

Editor: Nemui

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◈ Scum of the Brave

Chapter 36

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It was not that I had no anxiety at all.

For an instant, there was dizziness, the unpleasant feeling of my organs floating up on their own, and cold wind around the space between my brows. A floating sensation, or rather, the feeling of swimming through the sky. It lasted only until my heart beat once.

Just before gravity properly caught me again, Jogamine practically leapt at me as if clinging to me.

You could say she barely made it in time. What happened right after was awful.

My vision spun nauseatingly, there was pain from my knees or back scraping against the asphalt, and honestly, I was doing everything I could just to avoid biting my tongue. I might have had a mild concussion.

A terrible confusion of sensation. But when a strong impact shot from my left shoulder through my spine, that settled down for the moment.

"I did it!"

Jogamine's voice sounded right beside my ear. Noisy. Thanks to that, I realized my head hurt badly enough to make me vomit.

"Catching Master in a crisis. This is a complete established fact. Master will have no choice but to be conscious of my existence now."

"Please be quiet for a bit. I'm going to throw up."

"Yes. Understood."

She absolutely did not understand. As proof, Jogamine kept shouting arrogantly.

"How was my performance? Did you not even feel a hint of motherhood?"

"Disgusting. I'm going to puke."

"Is this the time, hey, Teacher?"

Sara Pendragon's hand reached out and grabbed my collar.

"How long are you going to keep doing that? Move away. Actually, Aki, let go already."

"Hmph. Unfortunately for you, Sara, it seems that when the time came, Master relied on me, his first disciple. That is your punishment for unfairly sitting in the passenger seat."

"Aki, don't get cocky. That's not okay. You're violating the agreement."

"Be quiet. Shut up."

Since I seriously felt like vomiting, I grabbed Jogamine's wrist and the base of her shoulder.

Then I bent her elbow and twisted it in the direction joints were not meant to bend. Doing this made it possible to cause severe pain even if someone had improved their body's durability with E3.

"Ih."

Jogamine made a sound like a strange insect and immediately released my neck.

"What do we do?"

By slowly straightening my knees, I somehow managed to stand on my own feet.

In front of us was still the giant that looked like clay kneaded together haphazardly.

However, its left leg was missing. It supported its huge body with its arms and remaining right leg. Apparently, it had worked.

The minivan we had been riding had beautifully blown away the giant's left leg, then become a wreck. I did not know exactly how it had collided, but it had flipped over and was pouring out thick black smoke.

The giant stayed in a crawling posture and tried to approach us with slow movements. Its missing left leg scraped against the asphalt, shaving away each time it moved.

"What is that? There's an Ether Perception like that too?"

Sara had already drawn her katana and held it low.

Proof that she had gone weak.

"How does anything become that, clay? Like a living thing?"

"There are a few methods."

I still swayed a little. I coughed several times and took a deep breath. My head was sluggish, but we had to do this.

"Maybe they're shoving some kind of kinetic energy into an object, or maybe they're slipping their own perception into it. Probably the former. The movements are too rough. A type of what people call a Handle."

The approaching giant, destroying its own left leg as it moved, was proof. That said, thinking about it did not look likely to improve the situation much.

Then I noticed.

From around us, small dog-like lumps of clay were approaching.

"Come!"

With bizarrely high tension, Jogamine raised the sword as if threatening the clay giant and dogs.

"Mere clay dolls are no enemies of ours."

"I hope so."

Sara groaned, then pretended to adjust the width of her stance and retreated one step. Her bad habit was showing again.

"Teacher, stay back. Until Yukine catches up, Aki and I will somehow hold them off."

"That's the most weak-willed option possible. Don't do that."

I did not know what kind of Ether Perception this was, but there was no telling how many of these strange clay dolls they could send out. While dealing with them, we would be caught immediately.

So I pointed to an alley between buildings.

"We're running. Indo will come eventually."

I deliberately made the declaration sound flippant.

"Eventually? Teacher, that's not..."

"Run."

I slapped Sara's back as she tried to argue, and kicked Jogamine in the shin.

Out of us, I was the slowest because I had not used E3.

Even so, I was able to jump into the gap between buildings first. With this narrowness, the giant probably could not follow. I did not know this area very well, but we could run toward Shibuya Ward.

If we found another illegally parked car somewhere, that would do.

But the small "dogs" chased us.

More than that, three of them had gone around to the end of the alley and were coming at us. They had no barking sounds or fine details, but their movements were exactly those of dogs. When they opened their mouths, instead of fangs, I could see something like nails packed densely inside.

I had wondered how clay bodies would obstruct me. I see. These nails were their means of attack.

"These things are disgusting."

For an instant, I saw Sara slip past beside me.

"Worst design ever."

She brought the katana down from an overhead stance in a smashing slash. Against weak opponents, she really was strong to the end. And vivid. She split not only the head but the body too, and the "dog" scattered apart and stopped moving.

As for the remaining two, Jogamine, who had leapt like a beast, finished them off.

"I do not think they are bad."

Jogamine swung the bastard sword with one hand and smashed it down.

"Their shape resembles Yukine's illustrations."

Twice, three times, then four. With that, the rest scattered too, slammed violently against the wall.

Her habits from using a one-handed sword were still there. Many of her slashes were half-finished, forcing her to increase the number of attacks.

Her left hand was almost only resting on the grip, and the slashes were compact. Maybe she was trying to imitate me.

"Don't let your left hand sit idle."

I gave a simple piece of advice, at least. Now that I was out of E3, even Jogamine was valuable fighting strength.

"When crossing blades with an opponent, always stay conscious of how you use your left hand."

"Yes. Understood, Master."

The usual answer again. Whether she really understood, I did not know.

We simply ran.

We passed through one alley, hit a river, crossed a bridge, and went straight. How far had we run? Probably not much. After we rushed into a residential area, the pursuers in the form of "dogs" disappeared completely.

I could tell my sense of time had become vague. Because of fatigue.

By the time we reached that small park, I was almost out of breath. Jogamine and Sara, who still had E3 working in them, were calm, but this was no situation to put on airs.

Feeling the limits of my muscles, I collapsed onto a bench in one corner of the park.

"It's been a while."

Leaning against the backrest, I looked up at the sky. My voice barely came out.

"Since I exercised this much without E3. The worst."

"Get a grip."

Sara looked uneasy and kept sending her gaze busily around.

There were no people in the park. The entire residential area had fallen silent as if no one lived there. In truth, most of the residents might have evacuated to other districts or the countryside.

"Hey, Teacher, is that shop pretty close? I don't know this area's geography."

"Close."

I lied. Without hope, morale could not be maintained.

"As long as it isn't weirdly blocked off, we should see it soon. Shibuya is apparently a fierce battle zone."

"This is a more serious situation than I thought. Even with this much going on, the police and Self-Defense Forces, no one comes out. Teacher, during that conflict a few years ago, was it like this too?"

"Yeah."

Just as I was about to answer something random while catching my breath, flames rose into the sky I was looking up at. Between towering buildings, something like dark red fire erupted. A thunder-like sound seemed to echo a little later.

Fairly close.

I pulled my cell phone from my pocket.

I thought I might as well take a photo.

"Pretty flashy."

"This is way beyond flashy."

Sara answered my impression with a more serious face than I expected.

"Is this really the time to mess with your phone? It's obviously bad. We have to do something."

"Do something? Us? Are you another one who misunderstands what a Brave is?"

"No, I just..."

"Killing a few Dark Lords won't stop this conflict. It isn't on the scale of ten or twenty people. Probably. Hey, are you listening, Jogamine? I'm saying this to you too."

"Yes."

Jogamine, who had been standing beside us, answered powerfully.

"But Master, a Brave must strive to contribute to society. That is what my father taught me. I believe we too should take action to break through this terrible situation."

"Your father was..."

I hesitated over what to say, and in the end, changed the second half into a click of my tongue.

"What social contribution? It's true that we kill criminals, but does that make the world even a little better? Their Followers lose their work and only turn to other crimes."

"The highest work of a Brave is to reform a Dark Lord without killing them. If we continue one by one, the world will surely become better."

"Jogamine."

My voice must have sounded incredibly displeased.

"Every single thing you say gets on my nerves."

"But I think people are being saved."

"Who is? I'll kill you."

"Let me see."

Whether she understood or not, Jogamine nodded with a serious face.

"Master has the pitiable nature of only becoming close to people he dislikes."

This bastard, I thought.

I knew that without being told.

Salt Joe and Ed Cyrus were savage, unfriendly, and did nothing but irritate me. I did not like them much.

I disliked them, if anything.

As for Ishino, I had even found him horrifying. Even so, he had been my friend. We had only shared the hobbies of card games and beer, but he had been an irreplaceable one of my few friends.

I wanted to say something back to Jogamine. I tried to find the right words to counterattack.

"Teacher."

Sara spoke in a stiff voice at that moment.

"They're approaching. Probably the ones from earlier. Pretty fast. Straight toward us."

"Huh?"

"Seriously. It's like they know where we are. From the speed, they're using a car."

"I see."

Possible. Just as Sara could sense the approach of threats, there were surely Ether Perceptions that could sense distant targets by some method.

I remembered Hokkaido.

"If someone has it, it's probably that Tomoe. The one with the spear."

In the darkness, she had accurately grasped my position. It was too early to settle on the principle, but in this situation, knowing would not make it easy to handle.

Sara turned back to me. She was clearly scared.

"We have to run."

"That sounds good."

I stood from the bench.

"Well, we're a little late."

The sound of tires scraping the ground rang out. Engine noise. At the park entrance, the white sedan appeared, leading a pack of cloudy white clay "dogs." Without barking, the dogs rushed into the park.

"Very well."

Jogamine readied the bastard sword properly with both hands. Apparently, she intended to follow my advice, at least.

"Minions of the Dark Lord. I will break through you from the front."

"Damn it."

Sara cursed foully and looked at my face again. All I could do was smile as lightly as possible and tilt my head broadly.

How much longer would their E3 last?

From inside my coat, I pulled out my last resort, in other words, the Beretta I had stolen from Salt Joe's garage.

Sara narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

"Can you shoot?"

"Sure."

Without E3, terribly badly, I added only in my heart.

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