WeTried Translations
Translator: Hydrogen B
Editor: Hydrogen B
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 174: The Red Banquet (13)
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Renavik, the Federation's largest city.
As the sun set and dusk settled over the city, the streets filled with bright lights.
Renavik was already densely populated, but now it was even more crowded than usual, with people arriving from every region. Lively conversations rose from all directions. For this moment, it almost seemed as if the aftermath of war had vanished.
Still, not everywhere was filled with cheer.
Beyond the reach of the streetlights.
Unlike the noisy main roads, the dark alleys lay silent. There were no Magic Stone streetlamps, nor any light spilling from the tightly packed buildings. The only light came from the soft moonlight overhead.
And black figures swiftly moved through it.
“Who goes there?! Identify yourselves!”
“Don't come any closer! If you take another step...!”
Armed assailants shouted as black figures rushed at them from the far end of the alley.
The figures paid them no heed.
They silently closed the distance, then casually swung the weapons in their hands.
Slash!
Under the pale moonlight, bright red blood sprayed whenever Sword Light flashed.
The dying assailants could not even let out a final scream. Unable to resist, they clutched their half-severed necks and collapsed with choking gasps.
The difference in skill was overwhelming.
One with every strike.
Without even giving them a chance to scream.
The black figures quickly dealt with the armed forces heading toward the royal palace. Corpses lay scattered throughout the quiet alleys. There was not a trace of mercy in any of it.
As the situation took an unexpected turn, some of the assailants widened their eyes at the black figures who looked like mercenaries.
“Could they be... Chevaliers?”
“They disguised themselves as mercenaries?”
“Why are Council Knights here...?!”
Those who recognized them urgently tried to flee.
Naturally, it was pointless.
The Council Knights instantly closed the distance, covered their mouths, and cut their throats one by one, just as they had done before.
“Gurgle.”
“Urgh...”
The assailants, frothing blood at the mouth, rolled back their eyes and collapsed to the ground one after another.
Raul, a senior Chevalier, looked down at the corpses for a moment before flicking the blood from his sword. Drops of blood spattered across the alley.
Other knights approached from the opposite end.
“How did it go?”
Raul asked as the knights stopped before him.
“We've mostly cleared this sector.”
“Any survivors?”
“None.”
“Then we move. Clear the other sectors as quickly as possible. Don't leave a single person heading toward the royal palace alive. Those are the Commander's orders.”
There was no reply.
The Council Knights disguised as mercenaries moved throughout Renavik under Raul's command. As expected, the locations they had identified in advance were occupied by private soldiers stationed by Philip and Sebastian, the kings of Russel and Selaine, along with moderate nobles.
Raul and the knights with him dealt with them all.
There was not a moment of hesitation.
It had already been agreed that the Grand Duke's knights would seize the royal palace. With Godfrey, the Federation's greatest knight, there as well, nothing unexpected would happen no matter what the moderates tried.
Raul continued clearing sector after sector before suddenly coming to a stop.
“Stop.”
He raised a hand.
The knights behind him stopped and looked ahead. In Renavik's alleys, where moonlight was still the only source of illumination, three men stood in their way.
The man at the front took a step forward and pushed back his hood.
At once, the Council Knights let out involuntary gasps.
For the first time, Raul's eyes, which had remained steady as he carried out his mission, trembled.
“Emile...”
“Raul.”
Amid the stunned standoff, the other two men slowly removed their hoods as well.
The Council Knights' agitation grew even greater.
All three were familiar faces.
“What are you doing?”
“I'm sorry. It's an order from our families. We didn't want this either.”
Emile looked away, avoiding Raul's eyes.
All three men blocking the path were Chevaliers, just like Raul. Emile was even a senior knight with a high rank within the order, much like Raul himself.
“You...”
Raul trembled with fury at their betrayal.
He and Emile had been close personally as well. Twenty Council Knights had been assigned to this operation, and neither Emile nor the other two knights had been on the list.
That meant they had acted on their own.
“This is insubordination. Are you going to defy the Commander's orders?”
Raul spat the words through clenched teeth, glaring at each of the three knights before him.
Emile and the others lowered their heads.
“I'm truly sorry.”
“Apologizing to me won't settle this. This is an outright betrayal of the order. Didn't you swear an oath when you were knighted? That you would live as members of the order, not as the children of noble houses.”
“But you know it too. Reality isn't that simple.”
“You...”
“Try to understand. I couldn't turn my back on my family. Our houses are too deeply involved in this.”
“So you'll break your oath and betray the order?”
Raul's voice rose.
Still, despite his words, Raul knew that this development was not entirely unexpected.
Every Chevalier came from an influential family somewhere in the Federation. Naturally, their backgrounds were mixed. Among them were not only the children of high-ranking hardliner nobles, but also many from high-ranking moderate families.
That was why Godfrey had kept most knights from moderate families at the Valone headquarters or stationed them on the front lines of the Kingdom of Russel.
But it had come to this in the end.
They were willing to desert just to board a sinking ship.
For an instant, the days he had spent with Emile flashed through Raul's mind. He forcibly pushed those needless thoughts to the back of his mind and ground his teeth with murderous intent.
“Forgive me, Raul.”
“...”
“If I die, I'll apologize in hell.”
As Emile finished speaking, troops lying in ambush behind them emerged.
The front and rear of the alley were not the only paths blocked. Moderate knights and mages also appeared one by one on the rooftops of the dilapidated buildings.
If they were surrounded here, they would die.
Raul assessed the situation in an instant and tightened his grip on his sword.
Then he kicked off the ground and shouted.
“We break through! Two hold the front, the other two hold the rear!”
* * *
The grand banquet hall of the royal palace, which had been heated with the excitement of the duel until moments ago, turned cold in an instant.
When Hermann, Walter, and the other Ash Knights appeared, not only the moderate nobles but even the Church's paladins disguised as priests could not hide their shock and confusion.
“The Knights of Ash?”
“But the Knights of Ash... During the Northern War four years ago...”
“What were the royal palace knights doing?! Did they really lose to only the eight of them?”
“Where are Calorf's knights?! Kill the intruders already!”
Those who had been trembling as they watched the situation muttered in confusion.
At the same time, the moderate nobles pointed at Kyle and began shouting furiously.
In contrast, the hardliner kings and nobles calmly glared at their opponents amid the chaotic banquet hall. Some glanced at Kyle and the Ash Knights while whispering among themselves. The quick-witted neutral nobles cast sidelong looks through the open doors.
Though hundreds had gathered for the banquet, every person had different thoughts.
“You sons of bitches...!”
Just as one moderate noble finally lost patience and tried to step forward, the chandelier lights above suddenly flickered.
A chandelier whose chain had snapped plunged into the dimmed banquet hall.
Crash!
Shattered glass and fragments of Magic Stone scattered in every direction.
That was not the end of it.
The lights throughout the banquet hall flickered unsteadily, and chandeliers began falling from the ceiling one after another. The corpse of the knight Kyle had killed was crushed beneath a chandelier in the middle of the hall, mangled beyond recognition.
“Ah...”
By then, those watching lost control and began to run.
“Run! Get out of here!”
“Ahhhhh!”
“Save me! I don't want to die!”
Horrible screams and groans from the injured filled every corner.
The moderate noble who had tried to step forward had long since been crushed beneath a chandelier, their head burst open. The quick-witted neutral nobles who had been slowly backing away were already out on the open terrace, climbing over the railing.
“Kill them all!”
“You fucking Imperial collaborators!”
“Stop them! Protect His Majesty Philip and His Majesty Sebastian!”
“Don't use attack magic! We can't tell friend from foe! You'll hit our own side!”
The banquet hall turned into a battlefield in an instant.
Knights pointing swords at one another moved their mana-reinforced bodies.
The bright lights had vanished, leaving only dim moonlight in the hall. Silver blades flashed everywhere. Sharp clashes of metal rang out without pause.
There were many renowned knights among them.
The royal knight commanders protecting each king kept watch over their surroundings amid the chaos.
Godfrey, the only Council Knight present and the Commander, knocked out the Calorf knights who could not keep up with the situation before silently cutting down the moderate knights.
Hermann, Walter, and the other Ash Knights had already entered the heart of the battlefield.
Kyle swiftly scanned it all and thought to himself.
What a mess. A chaotic fight where no one can use their full strength.
The royal palace's grand banquet hall was large enough to hold hundreds, but it was far too small to serve as a battlefield for more than a hundred knights. On top of that, there were too many important figures present, including the kings of the Federation's five nations and high-ranking nobles, which further limited their movements.
One wrong use of Sword Aura or magic could injure an ally.
If things went badly, they could suffer fatal injuries and die.
Godfrey was actually fighting the enemy with only minimal Body Reinforcement. Even so, the knights who faced him could not last more than a few exchanges before falling.
That was how exceptional the Federation's greatest knight's swordsmanship was.
All that remained was...
Kyle looked toward Adrian in the corner of the banquet hall.
He stood near the kings of Valone and Rustin, guarded by the two royal knight commanders.
Just as they had planned beforehand.
Go.
Adrian, who had also looked toward him, gave a small signal.
Kyle looked away from him and faced forward.
At that moment, a knight charged at him.
It was one of the moderate knights who had been glaring at Kyle with hate-filled eyes since he entered the banquet hall.
“Die!”
The blade came rushing down.
Instead of dodging, Kyle lowered his body and slipped inside the knight's range.
Faster.
Quicker.
Prisia's mana raced through his entire body, sharpening his senses once more. Everything in the ruined banquet hall became clear in Kyle's mind.
By then, the knight's sword was right before his eyes.
Kyle deflected the attack diagonally with Yurian's sword, twisted his wrist, and flicked it upward.
Clang!
The knight's sword arced high into the air.
Before the knight could regain his stance, Kyle slashed upward across his side.
Bright red blood poured down like a waterfall. Yurian's star iron sword smoothly cut into the unarmored knight's flesh.
The vicious light in the knight's eyes faded.
Kyle drew out even more of Prisia's mana, which wrapped around his entire body.
In a chaotic melee like this, where it was difficult to tell friend from foe, he could not cast a wide-area attack spell like Blade Storm.
That left only one option.
Hallucination.
As the knight with his upper body cut open collapsed helplessly, Kyle's figure gradually melted into the air.
A moment later, something shimmering like heat haze slipped through the tangled mass of knights like a net.
“Arrgh!”
“Who is it?!”
“Beside me! No, behind us!”
The knights who had suddenly been ambushed looked around with twisted expressions.
Moderate knights who had been standing unharmed fell one after another, bleeding.
Yet no matter how hard they looked, they could see nothing.
There was only the faint flow of mana.
“It's a mage! Illusion Magic!”
Someone shouted.
Kyle ignored it and cut down everything blocking his path.
His target was one of the two moderate kings at the very rear.
Screams and blood erupted along his route.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
When Kyle cut down the eighth knight, he kicked off the ground and flew into the air.
The blood-soaked banquet hall spread out beneath him.
Finding his target among it was not difficult.
Kyle fell through the air and lightly twisted the hilt of his sword.
That was when his instincts sounded the alarm.
Clang!
A sharp metallic crash rang out in the empty air, scattering vivid orange sparks.
Kyle's figure slowly became visible, just as it had when he first cast Illusion Magic.
The one who had sensed Kyle's presence and swung a sword was none other than Russel's royal knight commander.
The man, who appeared to be around Hermann's age, stared at Kyle with unwavering eyes. The force in his sword was so great that Kyle's body, which had been falling under gravity, rose slightly instead.
Their eyes met through the crossed blades.
Even Russel's royal knight commander was an Imperial knight.
That was clearly Imperial swordsmanship, not Federation swordsmanship.
He had expected it since they had been colluding with the Empire for so long, but had they truly become this corrupt?
As Kyle's ambush failed and he hesitated, blades came pouring in from every direction.
They belonged to the knights of the royal knight orders who had been protecting the two kings at the rear.
In that instant, Kyle's perception of time stretched out.
Prisia's mana raced through his veins more fiercely than ever.
When he came to his senses, he could clearly see the paths of every blade flying toward him.
It was not simply the Sword Paths he could see.
Every possible future entered his sight.
Where they would go. Which direction they would turn. Whether they were feints or not. Even the attacks that would follow if they were blocked.
There were limits to dodging in midair.
If he knocked them all aside...
Kyle entrusted his body to the flow unfolding before his eyes.
Yurian's sword in his right hand moved on instinct before thought could catch up.
Sword Light like starlight swept through every direction in an instant.
Clangclangclang!
The blades that had surrounded Kyle were all knocked off course and sent flying far away.
Silent shock spread through the hall.
Even Russel's royal knight commander was no exception.
Ignoring everyone’s stunned gazes, Kyle seized Philip, the King of Russel, by the throat in midair.
Footnotes:
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