WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Haruto

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◈ The Pushover Young Lord in a Romance Fantasy Won't Take It Anymore ◈

Chapter 30: Knight of the Embers

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The room reeked of cigar smoke and alcohol.

It was lavish enough to feel out of place in a sewer-like back alley.

'That scarred bastard has to be Jenkinson.'

The scarred middle-aged man was Jenkinson. The bastard who'd called me a male prostitute.

The fat slob beside him was probably Baron Kelton, who sucked the lifeblood out of the back alleys.

"Y-Young Lord! Please spare me! I don't know anything! That bastard forced me to make illegal drugs! Please, just spare my life!"

Kelton lay prostrate on the floor, his face pale.

The moment he learned who I was, he immediately tucked his tail between his legs. Jenkinson was the opposite.

'B-Boss! This is the eldest young lord of House Cardenos!'

'I know.'

Either he had no attachment to life, or he'd already resigned himself to it. He showed no reaction despite knowing.

The upper class quietly turned a blind eye to the drugs being distributed here for enormous profits.

They had clearly been taking bribes.

But someone in my position could break that custom and hold them accountable. No, I could go beyond that and execute them on the spot.

The grand ducal House Cardenos, sword of the Empire.

Dealing with parasites who dared suck the Empire dry was both Cardenos's duty and right.

The truth was, I'd come here over Kyle's promissory note, not the drugs...

Still, there was no reason to say that. I could squeeze money out of that drug dealer.

"You came alone?"

Jenkinson crossed his arms and looked me up and down arrogantly.

So he knew about Cardenos and was still acting like this.

Anyone without an absurd amount of nerve couldn't act this way.

"You've got no sense of fear, do you?"

"So you did come alone. Gather everyone! We'll deal with this little brat here!"

This lunatic actually intended to kill the legitimate son of a grand ducal house.

How did he think he was going to deal with the consequences?

"B-Boss! This is the eldest young lord of House Cardenos!"

"Ah, fuck. I said I know. What are you, a parrot?"

"N-No. You know, and you're still doing this?"

"Does being a grand duke's son mean blades bounce off him?"

Jenkinson's thick lips twisted into a grotesque grin. Far from frightened, there was even a strange delight in his smile.

I raised both hands in surrender.

Sometimes, there were lunatics beyond the reach of class oppression.

"Now that he crawled all the way in here, he won't let us off nicely anyway!"

Their drug business in the slums had been exposed.

Since they'd been caught by a Cardenos, they probably thought they had nowhere left to run.

They said a cornered rat would bite a cat.

"That's a fair suspicion, but I had no intention of doing that. It would've been different if you were selling drugs in Cardenos's front yard."

"Listen to me, you bastards! Killing this little brat is the best way! Beat him down now!"

"B-But..."

"We'll slit his throat where no one sees, burn down the workshop, and erase the evidence! We'll take all the money we've saved and flee to another country! Attack him now!"

Madness gleamed in his murky eyes.

This was turning into more of a hassle than it needed to be. I sighed.

"Is your thinking so one-dimensional because you never learned a damn thing?"

The fact that he thought running would save him revealed his entire worldview.

Did he think a grand ducal house's pursuit network was a neighborhood game of hide-and-seek?

"Kill him! If you don't, you'll die by my hand!"

"B-Boss... this is really right...?"

"You want to lie down and die for that bastard without a fight? Struggle before you die! If you're lucky, you might live!"

The eyes of the fifteen or so men who had been hesitating changed.

Birds of a feather flocked together. Stupid bastards only had stupid bastards around them.

They drew their weapons. Iron pipes and crude daggers closed in on me from every side.

Even with weapons in hand, they only hesitated. Their eyes all said the same thing: You go first.

Growing impatient, I moved first.

Tap!

Holding the dagger in a reverse grip, I lightly kicked off the marble floor.

There was no need to draw on Solar. My physical ability alone was enough.

Whoosh!

The iron pipe wielded by the man charging in front cut through the air.

I pulled my upper body half a step back, avoiding its path. At the same time, I drove the pommel into his jaw.

"Urk!"

His jawbone cracked. His eyes rolled back.

I stepped on his shoulder as he collapsed and leaped into the air. My flying knee strikes landed squarely between the brows of the two men following behind him.

Crunch!

They didn't even have time to scream.

"Aaargh!"

One of them panicked and wildly swung his dagger.

The instant I landed, I twisted my body. I slammed down my elbow and snapped the wrist coming at my side.

"Aaagh!"

Minimal movement. Minimal trajectory.

Without even blinking, I took them down one by one.

It took less than ten seconds for over a dozen grown men to end up sprawled across the floor.

I surveyed them before glancing at Jenkinson.

"Are you just going to watch?"

"......."

"If you listen peacefully even now, I'll let you live. What'll it be?"

His face twisted hideously.

Would that beast really listen to me? Since he'd come this far, he would keep putting on a brave front.

"Y-Young Lord! I'm truly innocent!"

Kelton crawled across the floor toward my feet.

"I swear, I knew nothing! This son of a bitch Jenkinson planned everything on his own! He threatened me, and I was forced to..."

"Hey, employer. Shut up. You're being loud. I'll clean this up."

Step. Step.

Jenkinson watched me and slowly walked to the side.

Shing!

He drew a longsword displayed upright in a cabinet.

It was a bastard sword with perfect balance at a glance.

It didn't suit a slum boss at all.

"That's a decent sword. It might be worth more than you are."

"Cardenos brat. You've received your knighthood, right?"

"Not yet."

"What a shame."

Without a tremor, he pointed the sword's tip at me.

"It would've been much better if you were a knight. I've always wanted the title of knight slayer."

"Killing me would be harder than killing a knight commander."

"You're a cocky little brat."

As we spoke, I studied his grip.

For someone who seemed to have learned swordsmanship informally, it was fairly decent.

Given his desire for the knight-slayer title, he probably wasn't a knight.

He looked like a seasoned mercenary.

Tap!

Jenkinson suddenly sprang forward like a beast. A vertical slash came down through the air.

Clang!!

I held my dagger at an angle and redirected its path. The recoil tingled through my palm.

"Oh."

This wasn't swordsmanship that relied on brute strength alone.

His footing as he put weight behind his strikes, his lower-body balance as he recovered afterward. I'd expected it from his grip, but he had learned somewhere.

"You didn't learn your swordsmanship by winging it in the slums."

His bravado wasn't empty.

He was skilled enough to try to kill the legitimate son of Cardenos.

"That's a knight's sword. No, more precisely, it's a sword imitating knights. You can't be a knight, so did you happen to find the sword manual of some fallen house?"

Grit!

Jenkinson ground his teeth. Instead of replying, his blade came at me again.

Swish!

I avoided the successive horizontal slashes with nothing but a turn of my body.

Without counterattacking, I watched for his next strike.

I retreated while carefully observing the path of his sword. There was a certain stubborn obsession in his movements.

Whoosh!

Heat suddenly erupted from deep within Jenkinson's chest.

The chilly air in the office turned hot in an instant.

A haze-like aura of fire began wavering along the blade in his hand.

I couldn't help but be impressed.

"This bastard has a Ring too?"

That was unmistakably Solar. A Sun Ring.

A Sun Ring was rare in an era ruled by Luna.

I never expected to see one here.

He only had one Ring, and even that wasn't bright. A faint light flickered like a dying ember before the wind.

Even that faint ember was hope that no back-alley thug should have possessed.

"I made it a long time ago. A brat like you wouldn't understand. If you're going to make a living with a sword, this much is the bare minimum."

He looked to be in his late thirties or early forties. He belonged to the generation that had lived through the final days of the Sun Ring's golden age.

I could roughly piece it together.

He'd forged a Ring while working as a mercenary in his youth, then taught himself swordsmanship from a proper sword manual.

'No wonder he seemed familiar.'

An ember on the verge of going out. Swordsmanship imitating a knight's sword.

A slum boss was nowhere near a knight's equal.

Normally, they couldn't even awaken Solar or Luna.

Yet despite such a barren environment, he had barely kept his spark alive.

I remembered him.

"You're an interesting one."

Whoosh!

A sword strike came at me. A blade holding the embers of a dying flame filled my vision.

"But your fighting spirit is ahead of your skill. You're far too sloppy."

Clang!!

My reverse-gripped dagger struck the exact center of Jenkinson's blade, the point where its balance was weakest.

"Urgh...!"

His powerful grip split open, and the sword spun through the air. I drove a front kick into Jenkinson's solar plexus through the opening.

"Urk!"

His huge body crashed gracelessly onto the floor.

I lightly caught the falling sword in midair. That should have been the end of it.

Bloodshot veins spread through Jenkinson's eyes like spiderwebs.

Even while vomiting blood, he charged at me again.

Crack!

I struck his collarbone with the flat of the blade. Jenkinson's knees buckled, and he dropped down.

Even then, he refused to lower his gaze, his face twisted in rage.

"How can I lose to a brat who isn't even a knight?!"

I held the sword, yet his spirit still hadn't broken.

"Stop acting tough. You'll really die like this."

"Kill me! Kill me, you little brat! Don't strut around when you aren't even a knight!"

Ptui!

My vision was obscured for an instant. Bloody phlegm clung thickly to my face.

Of course, I could see his attack clearly even with both eyes covered.

"Urk!"

The moment I raised my knee, it drove straight into his jaw. He fell face-first to the floor again.

"I told you, I'll spare you if you back down now."

"Khh... Spare me? Go fuck yourself. I have to die today."

"You don't seem scared. You really will die."

"If I was afraid of dying, I couldn't have done this shit. Heh... What's so precious about a life that rolls around in a sewer until it dies? Kill me. Hurry!"

Crunch!

I stomped on his chest.

Once I put my weight down, he could no longer resist. He could only gasp for breath.

I extended the sword toward his neck.

"Before I kill you, let me ask one thing. How and why did you forge a Sun Ring?"

"I made it so I could stick my dick in a fucking hole. Happy?"

Even on the verge of death, he laughed like a lunatic.

I quietly stared into his eyes.

"You wanted to become a knight, didn't you?"

"......!"

Jenkinson's gasping body went rigid.

His obsession with the title of knight slayer.

It was because he could convince himself that if he beat a knight, he was as good as one.

His insistence on authentic knightly swordsmanship, utterly unlike the swordsmanship of a back-alley boss.

It was inefficient swordsmanship for someone like him, only half-formed. Yet he had persisted with it despite knowing that.

His stubborn fixation on maintaining a Sun Ring that consumed his lifespan.

He had admired the knights he'd seen as a child.

'Jenkinson, the Ember Knight.'

At last, I remembered who he was in my first life.

It was when the black things first swept through the south.

While nobles and regular knights were tripping over themselves to tuck their tails and flee, this bastard had defended his home alone.

He hid orphans and prostitutes behind his back and swung his sword to the very end, burning the ember that had already gone out.

He wasn't strong, nor was he a knight. He was just a man from the back alleys.

Still, the epithet Ember Knight was given to him after his death, because he met the most knightly end of all.

For now, he was trash who sold drugs to scrape by another day.

But in the bigger picture, he had the potential to become a hero.

The resolve to use his own life as firewood. The stubborn will that refused to break, even as he burned himself away.

He had already shown enough of that potential.

For the Ashen Forest Expedition.

And to prevent the apocalypse, I needed men like him.

"I like you. I was looking for people just like you."

I lowered the sword I had aimed at Jenkinson's neck.

There was a crumpled paper tucked away in my pocket. I rummaged through it and pulled it out.

It was the expedition recruitment notice I'd scribbled down whenever ideas came to me.

Plop.

I tossed it onto his bloodied face.

The paper fluttered in the air before settling over Jenkinson's face.

He peeled it off and furrowed his brow.

"What the fuck is this? I can't read."

I'd forgotten his background for a moment.

I took the notice back and tucked it into my pocket.

Picking up the sword again, I lowered it toward Jenkinson.

Not the blade, but the flat. I lightly tapped it against his shoulder.

As if imitating a knighting ceremony.

"I'll give you a chance to become a knight of Cardenos."

".......What?"

"If you come back alive from the Ashen Forest Expedition with me, I'll guarantee your knighthood. What do you say? Interested?"

Ember Knight. It was a very good name.

Jenkinson looked back and forth between my face and the sword on his shoulder.

His stunned lips trembled. A small voice slipped from his slightly parted mouth.

"I can become... a knight...?"

The bloodshot in his eyes slowly faded.

In that bearded middle-aged man, I saw the eyes of a child.

Footnotes:

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