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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: FusionX
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Something felt strange.
That was the thought that crossed the mind of Lauxia, the 4th Vice Knight Commander of the Golden Twilight Knights, as she swung her sword.
At first, she had been too anxious, then too enraged to think straight.
But as those emotions subsided, all she could feel was a sense of strangeness.
She had attacked dozens, hundreds of times, but not a single attack had landed.
Not just failing to land a decisive blow, but literally failing to even graze the man’s body.
She swung her sword again, trying to shake off the unease.
A textbook diagonal slash, from lower right to upper left.
But the trajectory of her sword, which was made of far superior metal and meticulously maintained compared to the opponent’s dilapidated, chipped blade, was drastically altered upon contact, deflecting in a strange direction.
It made no sense.
Her sword was better in every way – better maintained, made of better metal, and dozens of times more expensive than that flimsy, broken sword.
‘But why?’
Lauxia gritted her teeth and swung again.
Clang!
A sharp metallic sound rang out, and once again, the trajectory of her sword was altered.
Her body stumbled.
She retreated, preparing for her next attack.
She pulled her arm back, then lunged forward, using her legs as a springboard.
Her body soared through the air, and just before reaching the peak of her jump, she thrust her sword forward.
She watched the direction her opponent was dodging, preparing to twist her body mid-air to adjust her trajectory.
It was impossible to completely change the angle, but she could at least alter the path slightly.
Adjusting her trajectory mid-air was an incredibly difficult maneuver, a testament to her swordsmanship skills worthy of the title of 4th Vice Knight Commander of the Golden Twilight Knights.
Her posture, angle, position – everything was perfect.
—Crash!
Except for the fact that it failed.
The man in front of her seemed to be dodging to the left, but the moment Lauxia adjusted her trajectory, he didn’t try to create distance.
Instead, he rolled directly towards her.
As a result, the tip of Lauxia’s sword missed him completely, plunging into the ground instead.
—Smack!
“Ah!”
“Oops, my bad. Didn’t mean to hit you there.”
While she was recovering her balance, the Broken Straight Sword smacked her left buttock with a loud crack.
The flesh of her buttocks jiggled, and a sharp pain shot through her body.
Lauxia let out an involuntary moan.
She was lucky it was just a moan.
If it had been a real sword, her buttock would have been sliced open.
The thought ‘If only I had worn my armor’ crossed her mind.
She felt like it would have been much better to wear her armor and fight with a real sword.
At least she wouldn’t have let out such an embarrassing moan.
At first, Lauxia hadn’t considered fighting without her armor.
She had only been thinking about securing at least one victory, no matter what it took, fearing a complete defeat.
But as she had said herself, her opponent was just a new recruit, and he was even wielding that weapon.
It was deemed excessive to wear armor against such an opponent.
‘Did he choose the Broken Straight Sword on purpose, knowing I would react like this?’
Lauxia thought as she let out another involuntary moan, this time struck near her armpit.
The fact that the man himself had said it was okay for her to wear armor, and that she was the one who had taken it off out of pride, had already faded from her memory.
And so had the fact that it was already too late to worry about pride.
“Hey! Delta! You’re doing that on purpose, aren’t you?! You hit my butt last time, and now my armpit!”
“I told you, it was an accident! What else am I supposed to hit in that situation?”
“If it’s your butt, you can let me hit mine later all you want— Mmm?!”
“Are you crazy, sister?! We’re in the training ground! There are other people here! Please stop saying such obscene things!”
What made things even more infuriating was that while Lauxia was fighting desperately, with no room for error, the Silver Dawn Knights were relaxed enough to chat with each other in the spectator seats.
She could even hear the murmurs of the knights watching the spar.
Lauxia gritted her teeth.
If she lost this, it would be beyond humiliating.
She had to win, no matter what.
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‘…Was it too much for her?’
I scratched my head awkwardly as I watched the Vice Knight Commander being dragged away, limbs bound, with a dazed expression on her face.
‘I told you to wear your armor.’
True to its name, the Broken Straight Sword was more like a whip than a sword.
It barely caused any wounds, but it was incredibly painful, judging by the constant screams.
And those screams were… strange.
Every time she was hit, she let out moans that sounded more like cries of pleasure than screams of pain, which made me, the one doing the hitting, feel even more awkward.
It even led to some misunderstandings with Lize.
If she had worn her armor, she wouldn’t have let out those strange moans, and she wouldn’t have been dragged away in such a pitiful state.
I didn’t understand why she insisted on maintaining her pointless pride, making things difficult for both of us.
“…….”
The faces of the Golden Twilight Knights were filled with shock.
Especially the other Vice Knight Commander, who had come in to see what was going on.
It was understandable.
How could they not be shocked to see the man who was called a new recruit practically toying with their Vice Knight Commander and winning effortlessly?
They must have been quite shaken, but I had other things on my mind.
‘Their outfits are… quite something.’
While the Silver Dawn Knights’ uniform consisted of a tight white tank top and dolphin shorts, the Golden Twilight Knights’ uniform seemed to be a form-fitting sports bra and leggings that accentuated their curves.
And for some reason, their breasts jiggled a lot, even though they were wearing sports bras.
As far as I knew, sports bras were designed to minimize breast movement during exercise.
They seemed to be going commando, judging by the lack of panty lines despite their skintight leggings.
“Good job, Delta. See their faces? They look completely demoralized.”
As I returned to the spectator seats after placing the Broken Straight Sword back in its original spot, Claudia greeted me with a chuckle.
She looked ecstatic, like she had been holding in a lot of frustration.
“Are you that happy?”
“Of course I am. That woman won’t be able to show her face around here anymore. Oh, wait. They’ve already been humiliated by you before, so it doesn’t matter, does it?”
Claudia’s loud voice echoed through the training ground, causing every member of the Golden Twilight Knights to freeze, as if struck by lightning.
It seemed that guy really hadn’t told them that he had been defeated by me.
Claudia looked incredibly smug.
Iris chuckled and nodded, and Erica’s reaction was no different.
“Did you enjoy yourself, playing around with another woman’s butt and hitting her however you pleased?”
Only Lize pouted, her cheeks puffed out.
It was absurd that she was upset because I had hit another woman’s butt instead of hers.
“It was an accident, I told you. And don’t say things that could be misinterpreted.”
“It didn’t look like an accident to me. You seemed to be enjoying yourself quite a bit. Do you want me to stick my butt out so you can hit it and feel even better?”
“……That’s a real misunderstanding.”
The reason I had finished the spar with a smile was simply because I had been able to enjoy a relaxed fight for the first time in a while.
After facing Lucia, the second-to-last boss, and the Creature Abandoned by God, the final boss of the DLC, both of which were ridiculously difficult, encountering something like this felt refreshing and therapeutic.
Of course, compared to the vanilla game, the spar I had just finished was also much more difficult, but that comparison was meaningless now.
Difficulty was relative.
Well, for me, whether it was the final DLC boss or the mid-boss I had just fought, a single graze from their attacks meant instant death anyway.
‘…Is this also because of the Dark Magic on me?’
Once I started suspecting it, every time I felt less afraid than I thought I should be, I started attributing it to the Dark Magic.
I felt like I needed to find the witch who had cursed me and hear the truth as soon as possible.
“So? Anyone else want to try?”
“…….”
At Iris’s question, every member of the Golden Twilight Knights avoided my gaze.
They flinched, lowered their eyes, or awkwardly turned their heads away whenever our eyes met.
They had completely lost their fighting spirit.
It was understandable, considering they had just witnessed their Vice Knight Commander suffer a crushing defeat, and they had heard that their Knight Commander had also been defeated by me.
I looked at them, then suddenly turned my head, a question popping into my mind.
“Erica.”
“Yes, Mr. Delta? What is it?”
Erica, her face beaming with a bright smile, answered in an unusually cheerful voice.
“You said they started it. What did they say exactly?”
“The Vice Knight Commander who lost to you, Delta, said something along the lines of, ‘Why are you lowly exiles even allowed in this noble space?’ The other knights were also acting similarly.”
Ah, so it was her.
No wonder the Knight Commanders had been pushing me to accept the spar.
They wanted to make her pay for starting this whole mess.
Her anxious reaction was probably because she had been the one who initiated the spar, but after losing every single match, she had no way of salvaging the situation.
‘But where did she get the confidence to challenge the Knight Commanders with that lineup?’
The only real fighting power on her side was her, a Vice Knight Commander, and the rest were just ordinary members.
I couldn’t understand how she even thought of picking a fight.
It was a mystery where she had found such confidence.
“If no one else wants to fight, we’ll be leaving. We’re done here.”
Iris stood up.
She was right, we were done here.
The Knight Commanders left the training ground and walked off purposefully.
Everyone except me seemed to know where we were headed next, including Lize.
Lize, who had initially been as bewildered as I was, seemed to have figured out our destination after seeing the other three’s expressions.
“Where are we going now, Iris? Is there another place we need to visit?”
“Yes. To be more precise, it’s a place we should have gone to first. We stopped by the training ground just in case they were there, and got caught up in that situation.”
“A place we should have gone to first?”
Iris paused for a moment, then continued walking as she spoke.
“It’s the place where our… No, it’s the place where the knights who were under our command are located.”
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