Early DAR Vol. 5 Chapter 18 Part 2

Full title: Starting a New Life for the Discarded All-Rounder

Note: If you found any typos/mistakes, pls write them in the comment. Thanks.

Translator: Airis

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“Still alive, huh.”

Even through the dust, a piercing gaze cut across them. It was the Gryphon that used dark magic. It shook off the fallen stones, and that stare drilled straight into Dietrich.

Even after being crushed by the mass of boulders from the Rock Avalanche, the Gryphon, unsurprisingly, was still alive.

The Gryphon lunged at Dietrich. Its hooked beak aimed for his head, but the motion was oddly slow for a Gryphon. Dietrich slipped aside with ease and drove his sword toward its eye.

The Gryphon dodged and raked with its claws.

Dietrich parried with his blade and redirected the blow.

Normally, attacks of that caliber would have little effect on a Gryphon. But Cornelia had broken the wing bone, and that injury had left the beast wounded. The pain from the fracture inhibited its concentration, so its magic control faltered; its magic defenses were imperfect, and several of the falling rocks had struck true.

Now, with the fracture and those wounds, the Gryphon could no longer regulate its magic and was incapable even of casting trivial deterrent spells. Its assaults were reduced to beak and talon alone.

Blade and claw traded blows, then each recoiled and put distance between them. They locked eyes and bared savage grins.

The Gryphon’s wing was broken and its body raked with wounds.

Dietrich, too, was not unscathed. Though he dodged adroitly, even slight grazes from a Gryphon cut human flesh easily. After only a few exchanges, countless cuts marred Dietrich’s skin, and blood began to flow.

“You’re a Gryphon, and you can’t even kill just me? That guy called you a chick, but it seems like you’re a pathetic kid who can’t fight properly, huh,” Dietrich taunted.

Blood from before he’d taken the healing potion drenched him; his clothes were a dark, gore-streaked mess, the original color lost. It was a wonder he hadn’t passed out from blood loss. Yet his eyes glittered with intent; he watched for the chance to take the Gryphon’s life, keeping the mithril sword pointed and ready.

The Gryphon answered Dietrich’s provocation with a cry. It glared back with eyes full of rancor at the one who had wounded it.

Both were battered to the limit, yet neither would yield. In their stare, each thought only of killing the other.

Dietrich wanted to slay the Gryphon out of fury for the twins’ familiars, for the comrades who’d been taken. The Gryphon, perhaps driven by pain and rage, fought on.

What a fool, Dietrich thought. If it had attacked in earnest from the start instead of showing off, and had denied them any time to heal, Nostalgia might already have been annihilated. It was their mistake to underestimate humans; perhaps contempt for humans was a trait of the Gryphon’s species.

And he himself was foolish too, Dietrich admitted inwardly. He had wagered his life on a losing game, letting impulse and rage turn the fight into a sport.

<…Sleepyhead. Are you still playing around there? Hurry up and come to the top floor.>

“!!?”

Suddenly, Uncle Gry’s voice echoed. Dietrich fought the urge to look around and instead kept glaring at the Gryphon; he could not afford any distraction. The Gryphon’s posture showed no change. Uncle Gry’s irritating voice seemed audible only to Dietrich. Like when he was separated from Roa inside the Adventurer's Guild building, he's probably using magic to monitor him from a distance, and only his voice could reach him here.

<I can't believe you're having so much trouble with a chick like that. Stop dozing off.>

Dozing off? What is he talking about? Dietrich wanted to retort aloud, but he couldn’t risk showing any sign of being distracted. He forced himself to ignore Uncle Gry’s voice.

<You’re a sleepyhead. That is what makes you a sleepyhead. The slumber of the past may have been pleasant, but isn’t it time to wake? Stop clinging to the past and use the best sword technique you can now, not some bandit-style old trick. You have that skill, don’t you? Hurry up and run to us!>

Uncle Gry’s cryptic words tugged at his attention. Probably the usual pompous nonsense, Dietrich thought, but the words nagged at him. Slumber of the past… clinging to the past, failing to show his true ability?

A question swelled in Dietrich’s mind, and the Gryphon seized that moment. It lunged for the slight gap.

“Tch!”

Dietrich parried the talon with his sword. A normal blade would have snapped on the strike, but the mithril sword he held remained unmarked through repeated clashes. Because the Gryphon dragged its broken wing, its movement was hampered and fully manageable. Even a missed blow only nicked the surface of Dietrich’s skin; the clumsy, magicless Gryphon’s attacks were not fatal.

But the reverse was true as well. The Gryphon’s feathers and hide were impervious even to a mithril blade, an excellent cut-resistant material. Dietrich knew this from the cut-resistant undergarments Roa had given him, woven from Uncle Gry’s shed hair. They offered better protection than poor chainmail. No matter how desperately Dietrich struck, he could not land a proper wound.

If he could sheath magic in the blade, he might cleave it. But the mithril sword with the rune channeling magic—the one he’d surrendered to save the twins’ familiars—was lost somewhere amid the scattered rocks. In the current debris-strewn chaos, it was impossible to find. The mithril sword he held now could not be imbued with magic; it contained too much mithril for Dietrich’s modest mana to suffuse.

<Sleepyhead, I’m waiting, you know?>

“Shut up!!”

While parrying the Gryphon’s blows, Dietrich shouted.

“What do you mean, wake me up? I’m not half-asleep! Don’t come nagging me in the middle of a fight! Don’t get in the way!”

He barked and slashed at the Gryphon. The strike, powered with raw force, struck the hide and sent a sharp pain through his wrist. Defeat seemed likely for a moment, and resignation crossed Dietrich’s mind. Yet he twisted his body to find an opening for another blow.

<If you keep half-asleep like that, you’ll drag down those watching over you, and everyone will be wiped out, you know?>

At those words, Dietrich’s movement changed.

His motion became optimized to cut down the enemy.

It was not born of anger or bravado. It was not strength but technique.

A training-honed motion imprinted on the body rather than the mind; a dance-like, unfaltering, beautiful stroke. The slash tore from the wing to the chest, shredding feathers and fur and spraying blood.

A shriek cut the air.

Dietrich himself was surprised by his own movement; he didn’t fully understand why he’d moved that way. The moment he’d heard Uncle Gry’s words, his body had simply obeyed.

<See? You can do it. Honestly, if we don’t remind you about the deaths of your comrades, you’ll never show your full strength, what a bother.>

“Deaths of my comrades?”

Hearing Uncle Gry made Dietrich think of his Nostalgia companions. In that instant, he remembered what had priority over his anger and his amusement.

<Finish this quickly and come on up. If you don’t come, it looks like we’ll be finished down here, too. Honestly… it’s getting rough.>

“…Getting rough? What happened?”

There was no reply. The Gryphon, blood streaming, launched itself again with reddened, bloodshot eyes. Dietrich braced with his sword.

Then, different from Uncle Gry’s gruff voice, a childlike, cheerful voice rang out.

<I’ll help!>

<Just a little, okay? Don’t spoil him!>

“Huh?”

The voices sounded oddly gleeful. Dietrich let out a stunned, almost silly sound and, almost unconsciously, swung his sword.

Something spun through the air.

After the sword sliced the wind, there was a heavy thud as something landed.

Before he knew it, one of the Gryphon’s wings and a foreleg lay rolling at his feet. The wound edges bled not a drop; they looked almost artificial.

A piercing, ear-splitting shriek cut through the air.

He saw the dark-magic Gryphon—the source of that scream—crawling away, desperately fleeing.

Stunned, Dietrich watched it go. He had not finished it, but now that the beast had fled, Dietrich counted it as his victory.

“What was that?”

The suddenness of it left Dietrich’s head lagging behind his senses. He could not make sense of what had happened or what he himself had done. What had that childish voice been? He was simply too dazed to think.

“Leader!”

“Di… no, Leader! Leader! Are you all right?”

Cornelia and Kristoff called to him. When he turned, they were rushing up. At a distance, Bernhart stood watching Eileen and the others, his gaze fixed on them.

“…I told you lot to run, didn’t I?”

“There’s no way we could!”

“We couldn’t just leave the leader behind, right?”

Dietrich, lost in the fight, had not noticed that Nostalgia’s members had been keeping watch from afar. Because he had been unable to coordinate, they had held back, ready to jump in if things went wrong. That, he realized, was what Uncle Gry had meant by “those watching over you.”

“Hey—your sword…”

Cornelia’s voice wavered. When Dietrich followed her gaze, he saw the mithril blade faintly wreathed in flame: a beautiful, crimson radiance.

“Huh? What is this?”

Dietrich stared at the sword, baffled. He could not explain how it had come to be like that, but the blade, clothed in fire magic, must have enabled him to sever the Gryphon’s wing and foreleg. The absence of blood on the severed limbs meant the wounds had been instantaneously cauterized.

“And your leg…”

“Huh?”

When he looked down where she pointed, four small lights dotted his thigh. They sat where the twins had once torn footprint-shaped holes; the patched red cloth there was glowing. Beneath that, the footprint-shaped burn scars the twins had left could still be seen.

“No… the—lackey mark… Bruno said it was only a mark… the mark of being a lackey…”

For some reason, Cornelia dropped to her knees and pressed her hands to the floor, head bowed as if the world had ended. Dietrich and Kristoff could only stare, baffled by her sudden collapse. Cornelia had not told the others what Bruno the smith had said about the lackey mark. She had planned to keep that knowledge to herself; if it was merely a mark, there was no point in telling everyone. The idea that the footprint-shaped burn on Dietrich’s thigh might be the humiliating brand of a familiar’s lackey was unbearable.

“Uh… I don’t really get what’s going on.”

Dietrich didn’t know what to make of the sword’s flame or Cornelia’s despair. Then—

“Did the twins lend us their power?”

It was the first time he’d heard that kind of voice, but the childish sound must have come from the twins. The fire on the blade could only be the power of the red magic wolf. The glowing footprints were proof that the twins had lent them aid. Dietrich reached that conclusion.

“They were safe, then!”

He breathed the words, smiling broadly. He felt a lightness he hadn’t had moments before.

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