WeTried Translations
Translator: Coughing Baby
Editor: Coughing Baby
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◈ The Reluctant Imperialist
Chapter 47
──────
A Knight Descending from the Sky (2)
Pssssssss──
The sound of the sea rolled faintly along the steel walls.
Emulen, a mid-level officer of the armed group Gentra, carefully turned his head to the side.
“Are you ready?”
A giant of a man stood there, so huge you had to crane your neck just to see his face. A fighter of Ironheart Style with an abnormally massive build and muscles, Dune Kan.
He was one of Gentra’s core combat agents.
“......”
He looked down at Emulen without a word. The silence itself was pressure. Emulen swallowed dryly.
“Please rest a little longer. We’ll arrive soon.”
This dark, cramped space was the inside of a shipping container bound for the port. Gentra’s agents were being “delivered” to the target disguised as cargo.
There was not much time left before the operation began.
Dune Kan would crush the Empire’s hunting dogs.
* * *
At the third southern port on Kallen Island, salty afternoon wind whipped between cranes and containers.
Tiana, Yulian, and Leon gathered in the control room first.
“I’ll explain the escort routes.”
A company representative in a suit laid out the movement plan. The escort force totaled seven mercenary teams, including Akarius, plus company security personnel, well over a hundred people.
“This shipping escort will continue for three weeks......”
After the briefing, everyone moved to their assigned spots. Standing on top of stacked containers, Tiana looked down at the chaotic port and smirked.
“......Same here too.”
That was her impression of the Kanillan Independent State. There was no formal rank system, sure, but the invisible hierarchy was even clearer. The only yardstick was money. Have enough of it, and you held more power than nobles.
You could see it right away in how the escort mercenaries carried themselves. The Akarius members, famous even in the Empire, held their heads high like a knightly order, while everyone else watched their mood. They even asked each other about salary, then treated anyone earning less like an underling.
“Tiren. You hear me?”
Leon’s voice came through the comm device in her ear.
“Yeah. Why?”
“Just checking if comms were clear.”
According to intel, Gentra’s raid would come tonight or tomorrow night.
“Ulator-ssi. What do you think? Maksan should be up there right now.”
Using his alias Ulator, Yulian answered shortly.
“What happens in the sky is Maksan’s call. What matters to us is the ground.”
Yulian walked off again almost immediately. He was on constant patrol. Like a neighborhood guard, he would be back around this side in about thirty minutes.
“Tiren, I am curious. How exactly are they planning to hit us?”
“I don’t think we’ll get to see much ourselves.”
Gentra was definitely a strong armed group. Still, the one they had to deal with here was only mid-level command. Even considering variables like Max had said, Yulian was here. That should have been enough.
“Talkative bunch, huh. Out for a stroll?”
A grating voice cut in out of nowhere. A mercenary in Akarius uniform looked at her and waggled his eyebrows.
“This line of work is small, you know. What if you do sloppy work and can’t land your next job?”
Was this typical mercenary posturing?
“Don’t worry. I can handle myself.”
Tiana shot back with a bright smile.
“Haha. Sure, sure. If you’re up for it, want to exchange numbers?”
......So it was not posturing, it was flirting?
“After I see how good you are at your job.”
“Hahahaha. You’re funny.”
He laughed, slicked his hair back, and Tiana went back to scanning the area.
The waiting dragged on.
“Huaaam.”
A yawn slipped out on its own. Even Yulian, way off in the distance, was reading a book while patrolling.
I should’ve bought one too.
Tick. Tick.
As night deepened and dawn started to creep closer, Tiana suddenly felt the air change. She tightened her grip on her sword, and Yulian’s twenty-sixth patrol had just begun.
Wiiiiiiing──
A cargo ship reached the port in the distance. A crane lifted a container off it and set it down on the dock.
Thud. Thud.
She watched the scene like a claw machine game.
Scrrrratch──
A faint scraping, tearing vibration echoed through the air.
Then, Kwaaang!
One container exploded. Right after that, other containers ripped open left and right, and armed men poured out.
Gentra’s armed assault. All security personnel rushed that way.
“Enemy!”
Tiana jumped across container tops and observed the battle first. The mercenaries engaged before anyone else. What the security captain shouted to drive them on sounded oddly specific.
“Triple pay for initial suppression, including life-risk allowance, and escort pay goes up to ten times depending on enemy strength!”
Maybe it was the bonus money, but the mercenaries fought hard. Gentra’s agents moved in organized formation, but the mercenaries’ individual skill was no joke either. The Akarius members stood out, especially the black-haired swordsman who had flirted with Tiana. He moved quickly through the containers, killing as he passed.
Slash! Rip! Clang──!
Taaang──!
Metal clashing, gunfire tearing through the air, flesh splitting open, the port filled with it all in an instant.
Tiana quietly identified targets. Even in the middle of battle, her objective was still the mid-level officer, Emulen.
“Tiana. Eyes left.”
She turned as Yulian said.
There was Emulen, a bald man with a large prayer-bead necklace around his neck.
“Confirmed.”
“Confirmed.”
All three locked the target.
“Advance.”
At Yulian’s signal, Tiana kicked off the container.
She leaped high and rushed straight for Emulen, and right then.
Kwaaaaaa───!
A container crumpled, and a huge silhouette forced its presence into view. Tiana looked over. The Akarius mercenary she had spoken to was there, and in front of him stood a dark red giant, exhaling steam.
The mercenary swung his sword. The giant batted it aside barehanded, then grabbed the mercenary’s face. The massive hand held his head like fruit.
Crunch!
His face burst. The man who had said, “Want to exchange numbers?” turned into a corpse in an instant. The blood-soaked giant’s eyes found Tiana.
She rolled. She detonated mana under her soles and forced a course correction. The enemy appeared exactly where she had just been about to step and drove his fist down. The ground cracked like a spiderweb and surged upward.
Kraaaack!
He moved to charge her immediately, but Yulian had already dropped down beside her. Yulian thrust his sword and stopped the giant’s fist.
Clang──!
Fist and blade collided with a tearing shockwave. Yulian’s feet scraped across the pavement.
The enemy fired another straight punch, and Yulian swung again.
Clang! Clangclangclang!
Sword and fist crashed repeatedly, kicking out sparks. Exchanges too fast to track with the eye. This was a fight between masters.
A faint smile curled at the giant’s mouth.
“You’re strong.”
His stride was beyond imagination. In an instant he adapted to Yulian’s swordsmanship, closed the gap, and buried a fist in Yulian’s solar plexus. Yulian used that same opening to jab the giant’s jaw.
“Kh!”
Yulian was knocked back. This time Tiana stepped in and blocked the monster.
She tried to target his jaw where Yulian had wounded him.
Pshhhhhsssst──
The wound healed almost at once.
A fist flew at Tiana before she could process it.
One exchange, two exchanges, three.
Three strikes hit her blade in the same instant. The vibration carried through steel and shook her whole body. He slipped into her broken stance and threw a fourth punch, this one at her jaw.
Tiana barely twisted her whole body away.
“Ghk──!”
Her shoulder was shattered instead of her jaw, but she barely avoided a fatal hit.
She panted hard, trying to steady her breathing. No, the strange part was that she had been given time to breathe at all. When she looked back at the battlefield, Yulian and Leon were there. Yulian had returned, and Leon had crossed in from the opposite side, both engaging the monster.
Clang! Kaaang!
Clutching her shoulder, Tiana judged the field. Gentra’s mid-level officer Emulen was nearly overwhelming the escort mercenaries, and this suddenly appearing monster was too much even for Yulian.
The situation was bad. That dark red monster bastard showing up out of nowhere was the problem.
She put a hand to her earpiece.
“Max!”
Their own variable, the one who had gone to the sky to account for enemy variables.
“Do something, anything!”
The moment Tiana shouted that.
───.
A pure white meteor appeared in the sky.
* * *
“A martial artist always has to be at least half a step faster than a swordsman. If not, fists mean nothing.”
Freya’s voice flickered in my ear.
“They have an advantage because they use their entire body as a weapon.”
Martial artists used fists. So the speed of carrying out the brain’s command was vastly better than a swordsman’s. They always had to be half a step faster. If they were not, the whole advantage of fists disappeared.
“Put another way, against that guy, you......”
“I only have to be faster for one instant.”
Near dawn. At that exact time from memory, I launched the transport aircraft. I wore a Drog suit fitted perfectly to my body. Far more suitable for a knight than an unstable parachute.
Kwaaaaaa───!
At that moment, explosions rose between the stacked containers in the port. Fire lit the night air.
Battle start.
I took a deep breath and rose from my seat.
“We’re opening the ramp.”
Creeeak──
With a metallic grind, the transport’s rear ramp opened all the way.
Pitch-black darkness and violent wind flooded into the cabin.
I quietly closed my eyes.
“Max. Answer me now. What did I step on when I moved through empty air?”
I replayed Freya’s question, her lesson.
“......Mana.”
She had not stepped on the ground. She had stepped on mana spread thin across it, more precisely a layer formed beneath her feet. So the answer had been mana.
“Right. A knight steps on what cannot be stepped on.”
Step on mana. Use mana as a foothold to gain propulsion once more in midair. In that process, no unnecessary breakage or rupture of mana occurred. Ebenholtz mana was calm and refined by nature.
“To do that, you need perfect control of your body in any situation. If you can fully command your body, if both legs can stand right, it doesn’t matter where your body gets thrown.”
I had to control my body in any condition.
That meant this altitude too.
“Max!”
Tiana’s voice rang in my earpiece.
I opened my eyes.
“Do something, anything!”
Cold wind pushed deep into my lungs. I lightly shifted my footing.
Then I threw myself into open air without hesitation.
Tok.
First came a strange sense of release, as if my consciousness had been freed. Then the suffocating drag of air resistance slammed into me.
It felt like my existence was being pulled away from the world.
No need to fear.
I released mana. Silver particles spread beside my falling body like a trail. I shone coldly like a meteor.
Whiiiiiiiiii──!
Time in the sky was long. Terminal speed was oddly comfortable. Comfortable enough to think this much.
I tilted my body and measured angle and distance.
From this vast height, everything on the ground looked like tiny dots.
My body kept falling, the distance shrank fast, and now I saw him clearly.
A body stained black. Eyes with no whites, just darkness.
One of my countless nightmares......
─Tick.
Time slowed.
At the moment my fall seemed to stall, I set my body upright and fixed my eyes on the target.
I leaned my upper body forward, stretched my lower body straight, and gripped my sword.
Quick-draw stance.
In that state, I stepped on my own mana spread through the air.
Tak──.
It felt like stepping on transparent glass. Space under my feet shattered, mana particles exploded in sequence, and shoved me forward.
My body fired toward the ground one more time.
Kwaaaaaaaaaa──!
All the force I had built from freefall starting thousands of meters above,
I used it to strike.
────!
A sword path was carved into the night sky. Silver fractured into shards.
The rupture cut across the whole area, and I reached the ground. Dune Kan’s eyes were right in front of mine.
......I looked into those eyes and recalled my memory.
Before regression, the endlessly pathetic me had looked down on the mercenaries here.
I had raised only my own Sentinel pride and arrogance and thought they were pitiable.
But when Dune Kan appeared, I had been nothing but dead weight. The one swing I forced myself to make had been blocked pointlessly by his fist, and his returning straight punch had crushed my ribs.
That impact had left me half crippled. Terror locked me in place, and Yulian bet his life to save me.
After that day, even while recovering in bed, I had nightmares every night. Dune Kan of the desert. Just hearing that name made me shudder.
In the end, I became afraid of combat. I made every excuse and backed away from every battlefield.
That was how broken I had been. Calling me weak had not even been enough.
Not anymore.
I had learned a greater fear.
To stop destruction, for my survival and humanity’s survival, I no longer had room to let my eyes drift to a mere obstacle.
Krrrkkkkk──.
My sword bit into Dune Kan’s neck.
“──!”
His eyes snapped wide.
Eyes with no whites. Those demonic retinas that had terrified me beyond words glared at me. This time I did not avoid them. I met that stare directly, and I smiled.
I should enjoy this. Chances to cut down your own nightmare with your own hands are rare.
Dune Kan thrust out his palm and grabbed my head.
Krrk!
Pressure like my skull would burst crushed in.
Scrrrrch───
My sword had already passed through his neck.
A silver airflow spiraled out as mana erupted. The wind that had followed me down from thousands of meters sank into the ground.
Kwaaaaaaaaaaa───!
A small typhoon rose where the knight had descended.
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