Overture (Part 3)At the time the explosion sounded in the forest.
“Hey hey hey… what kind of joke is this!?”
Towards the man standing before his eyes, Jade, Regin let out a fl.u.s.tered voice.[1]
Cornelia was also still bewildered by the turn of events.
While marching in the forest, many arrows were aimed at the knights both in the front and the back of the line. Taken by surprise, they were fell, covered in arrows.[2]
Unable to cope with the suddenness, in front of their dumbfounded selves, soldiers armed with bows and spears, and armoured knights appeared from between the trees..
Among those knights, they saw some familiar faces.
They were the knights leading the first group, which should have marched along a different route from the second group.
However, the only student was Jade.
She wasn’t sure how many of them there were, due to the trees blocking her view, but there were definitely more knights than those who had set off from the fort.
Of course, at the time the soldiers set off, there was no campaign.
They were armed with bows and spears.
They were clearly equipment meant for fighting humans.
“What are you planning, Jade van Cliffdorf? Are you starting a rebellion?”
“Rebellion, is it?…”[3]
Jade let out a scornful laugh at Regin’s question.
“The ones starting a coup d’état, are the dead insects there. Have you not received the news from the Reinhardt house?”
“What!?”
“Thanks to them, it was simple to proceed. I thank the fools who organized the coup d’état.”
“What do you mean?”
“It seems that I can push the blame all onto them.”[?1?]
Jade slowly raised his sword, and the surrounding soldiers led by Jade raised their spears.
Killing intent surged.
It was clear that they intended to kill Regin and the others.
“Instead of the colleagues of those who caused the coup d’état, I will get rid of you.”
Regin’s gaze quickly moved through his surroundings.
‘The students in the second group are still stunned by the sudden turn of events and the killing intent. They probably won’t be helpful.’
‘While they are my lackeys, it can’t be helped that they’re helpless in this situation.’
‘In the first place, even if they could fight, they wouldn’t be able to overcome the difference in power.’
‘I cannot see the whole group, so I cannot grasp the strength of the force Jade led, but there are at least one hundred people.’
They were outnumbered by at least twenty times.
‘As for running, there was only one way to escape.—’
Regin focused on Jade.
There was a distance of approximately ten steps between them.
‘If he somehow managed to take Jade hostage, then he could flee from this place.’
‘However, what should I do after I escape this place?’
His gaze fell on the bodies of the knights.
‘They were knights a.s.signed to the fort.’
‘If Jade’s words are true, the fort is most likely occupied by insurgents.’
‘Returning to the capital through the forest and reporting the information to the Knight Order’s top bra.s.s sounds like a good idea.’
Fortunately, the Reinhardt Marquis House had a large voice in the Knight Order.
‘An appropriate countermeasure would be taken.’
‘Besides—’
Regin’s gaze moved to Cornelia, who was standing near him.
‘Despite being exposed to life-threatening danger, it must take a strong will to not scream or cry.’
Unlike Regin’s followers, who had let out quivering voices, she had not even let out a gulp.
Regin once again looked at Jade.
‘Though this is a pinch, it is also a chance.’
‘If I can to move freely from here, I will have achieved a tremendous feat.’
‘Far from a full-fledged knight, I might even become one of the knight order’s top bra.s.s.’
‘Rather, even the path to becoming an emperor is…’
Regin thought out his plan.
“It can’t be helped. I wouldn’t win if I tried to fight. I surrender.”
“That was easier than I thought… even if you surrender, I will make use of you, but…”[?2?]
“I am the eldest son of the Reinhardt house. If we join forces, can you imagine the things we could do?”
He walked towards Jade with both hands in the air.
‘One step, two steps, three steps… If I could just get a little bit closer…’
Regin was confident in his hand to hand combat skills.
He didn’t become the previous year’s head of the cla.s.s by chance.
In reality, he could boast of strength equal to or surpa.s.sing a knight order captain.
‘If I can hold Jade hostage until I reach the capital, then report the circ.u.mstances, I will become an instant hero.’[4]
While gloating in his heart, he advanced. Four steps, five steps… [5]
‘Then, I will jump at this guy…’
‘All the people of the capital will hear of my name.’[6]
‘Then beside me, Cornelia will be dressed up beautifully—’
Imagining his future bliss, his sixth step was the end.
An arrow sunk into his forehead—
Piercing through his skull, the arrow head stuck out the back of his head.
Regin fell backwards, wide-eyed.
It was instant death.[7]
The students didn’t let out a sound.
They only stared at the scene, their legs soundlessly quivered.
“How splendid!”
Holding a bow, a middle-aged knight beside Jade stepped forward and called out to Jade.
The knight pounded his chest, saluting Jade.
“I am very sorry. For Jade-sama to have to act as the decoy.”
“I was prepared. I had faith in your skill.”
“Such words are too generous. However, now that I think about it, in the unlikely event that i missed, the results would not have been good.”
“You are forgetting who you are talking to, even if I somehow became a hostage, I would make a plan to escape. Besides, being captured might be entertaining.”
“That is honestly the reason we were troubled. I humbly beg for forgiveness.”
Grimacing, the frank old knight flashed a good-humoured smile at Jade.
“That being said, what was that explosion sound just now?”
“Judging by the compa.s.s, that was in the direction of the fourth group.”
“Tch…”
At that news, Jade clicked his tongue.
‘It seems those fools who started the coup d’état moved first.’
‘The fourth group is the one with the eyesore of a plebeian.’
‘I thought that I could use that plebeian who is close to the Brave to obtain her, but…’
When he received information about the plan, Jade immediately removed his underlings from the list of those partic.i.p.ating.
Furthermore, he gradually increased the amount of people at the fortress who served the Cliffdorf Marquis House.
Jade personally made it so that those knights were a.s.signed to the first group with him.
Then, Jade arranged for those who were the Cliffdorf house’s rivals to partic.i.p.ate on the mission, so he could deal with them.
Using this chance, after ma.s.sacring them, all the blame would be placed on the nincomp.o.o.ps who planned the coup.
For n.o.bles, losing the heir is a large blow to their standing.
It often leads to the extinction of the lineage.
Naturally, other than the eldest son, there were the second and third sons, but it would still deal a lot of damage to the House.
This would greatly benefit to the Cliffdorf house.
He was now unable to disregard the commoner to whom the Brave was close. [?3?]
Somebody reached Jade’s side, and tried to curry favor.
“Fumu, so things aren’t going completely as planned…” (Jade)
“It is good that we have taken care of the Reinhardt here.”
At his subordinate’s words, he nodded calmly.
Regin van Reinhardt was the eldest son of the Marquis Reinhardt’s house.
Since Jade was the eldest son of the Cliffdorf house, and he was also in the same year as Regin, they frequently competed with each other.
Certainly, he was a rival for the position of next generation’s Knight Order Captain, but Jade wouldn’t be troubled by his absence.
Though he was unable to obtain the Brave as his own, he still l.u.s.ted for this desire.
‘If that’s the case, let us modify the beginning of the plan.’
Jade moved his attention to the students, who stood still, shivering in fear.
‘You wouldn’t believe that these unsightly people are n.o.bles. I should also get rid of them.’
‘Either way, the blame will be placed on those guys.’
‘I’ll just take out the trash ahead of time.’
“What of Father and the rest?”
“They have already left the capital, and are headed towards our territory.”
“Alright then. Let us proceed with our plan!”
“”Yes sir!!””
At Jade’s order, raising their weapons into the sky, the hundred knights before him chanted.[?4?]
Then, they promptly moved to exterminate the isolated people there.
“Help us!”
“P-please don’t kill us….”
Pretending not to see the extermination of the students by his subordinates, Jade slowly walked towards Cornelia.
Motionless, she merely stared straight at Jade.
“Well then, if you don’t resist, we will not harm you. You will serve as our figurehead.”[?5?]
Originally, he would have that girl’s death blamed on the insurrectionists, but the situation changed.
After Jade’s subordinates finished ma.s.sacring the students, they gathered behind him, their leader.
Pompously, Jade slowly knelt down on one knee and bowed down towards Cornelia.
“If by chance you would like to join us, we of the Cliffdorf house will receive you in our territory. It is negotiable. Would you like to come with us? Your Highness.?
Cornelia Raul Lute Remulshil. [8]
Being the first princess of the empire, she was second in line to the throne. While superficially paying respects to her, Jade smiled coldly.
Translator notes
so Regin is the student who is jade’s rival, and Nigel is the knight, who might be dead… I get them mixed up…–backlike a hedgehog!–back反逆: the same kanji as madoka movie 3!–backTrivia (which comes from the same root as the word “trivial”): hero used here is Eiyuu. Yuusha, also commonly translated as hero, in this series is translated as Brave, due to precedent (Guro)–backslight artistic license in structure… I like countdowns (in this case, count-ups…)–backDon’t count your chickens before they hatch. Death flags will appear.–backR.I.P. i guess…–backkatakana for the curious, and for future reference to Ch 20: コーネリア・ラウ・ルート・レムルシル。–back
Translator needs help
dbl check–backikas.h.i.te…生かしておくとでも–backStill not making complete sense…–backdiction? more military, less mystic of a connotation–back貴女には我々の旗頭となっていただく–backPrevious Chapter
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Jade’s diabolical plans, as revealed in Chap 20 is really demotivating (which means I have a lot of translator snark in it…). Luckily, I got through that quarter of the chapter already, so I just have to cover Locke and Leticia’s POV. Wynn will reappear by the end of the chapter, it seems (not sure, just skimming the j.a.panese raw). In all, I have Ch 20 about 30% done out of almost 30 pages of the raw, when copy-pasted into a Google Doc…
I am feeling like translating another KuroKishi chapter to clean out Jade’s dirty plots, so expect it sometime soon…
Question of the week: I kinda feel like I should download the raws just in case weird things happen… But I don’t want to do it manually. Anybody know of a program or software that will let me do that? I did hear about wget, but I’m not sure how to use it. Tips/crash course on wget welcome, or alternative… I will be doing my own research too, but slowly…
P.S. Anybody know how to get rid of the slightly annoying pingback notification in WP whenever I link to other previous posts?