I Thought Your Friend's Sibling Wasn't a Girl? - Chapter 81

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 81
Sena asked with a dubious expression.
“……I’ve already heard that you worked them mercilessly during training. Should I praise that or criticize it?”
“Of course it’s something to praise, isn’t it?”
Aiden replied casually, his gaze fixed on the spot where the Lumen Knight Order members had gathered.
“No, no, that’s impossible! It doesn’t make sense!”
“Thomson, say something!”
The area where the Lumen Knight Order members huddled was already in chaos. No one could have imagined the scene unfolding before them.
Serves them right.
Aiden let out a short, bitter laugh before speaking.
“The captain’s going to like this.”
“Will that actually solve anything? I’m not so sure.”
“No, Sena. Watch.”
Bang, crash!
A second duel was underway on the Training Grounds. Kunta’s opponent wasn’t Peter, but all three people who had stepped forward in this bout had been ringleaders of the harassment—so to Kunta, they would loom like insurmountable walls.
Kunta had always been timid. He’d shown off in front of Aiden, but Aiden already knew that this twin couldn’t even properly assert himself before the nobility.
That hesitation had been the decisive reason they’d lost their sparring matches.
But now it was different.
“He’s still hesitating, but now he knows where to strike.”
“……It still looks like he’s losing, though.”
“You know what the chronic problem is with our brigade members? Because they’ve carried so much painful baggage, they unconsciously shrink from attacking others.”
“We catch criminals just fine.”
“That’s the exception. That’s a life-or-death duel, but this is just sparring.”
Those who have suffered before split into two kinds. Some try not to inflict that pain on others because they understand it, while others use that pain as a weapon precisely because they know it.
Most Lux Knight Brigade members fell into the first category.
“Winning a sparring match is easy. You just break the unspoken rules. Go low and cross the line first if you have to.”
“That’s genuinely underhanded talk.”
“So then, do you know how to beat someone who’s willing to cross that line?”
Aiden smiled crookedly as he spoke.
“People who’ve already crossed the line to claim victory get careless. You just find that opening and exploit it.”
Over the past few days, Aiden had watched Olivia take the lead in training with Yugin’s help.
Olivia’s eye for talent was genuinely remarkable—almost supernatural.
Even the most cunning strategist loses luster if circumstances don’t allow their strategy to flourish, and even the strongest fighter becomes useless if their power is broken before it can be wielded.
That was what a weakness was. Something that no amount of strength can overcome. Olivia was someone who could find such things with an almost chilling precision.
“You’ve already proven you can endure. You kept holding your sword even until you were black and blue.”
“……Is that a talent?”
“Whoever can endure to the end without falling is the one who wins, senior. And once you know your opponent’s weakness, endurance becomes much easier.”
Kunta’s body bore new wounds. But they appeared at a noticeably slower rate than before.
Crash, bang! Crash!
Before his opponent could even fully exert their strength, Kunta’s blade pierced the exposed weakness. Shock was written all over his opponent’s face.
“Once you win once, you’ll understand. That what you’ve been afraid of all this time was just an illusion. You’re all strong enough for that much.”
“But winning a sparring match—”
“And one more thing. People don’t die from just getting beaten up in a sparring match. Who should know that better than anyone? You lot—the Knights.”
A few beatings will teach them. Then the hesitation will fade, little by little.
Aiden turned his gaze away from Kunta.
With a deafening crash, pale dust billowed up. Beyond it, Kunta’s silhouette became faintly visible, standing alone—but Aiden’s eyes were fixed entirely on Olivia, who was cheering him on.
Her green eyes sparkled in the sunlight. The raucous voices of those shouting around them, the noise from the Training Grounds—none of it reached Aiden’s ears.
Olivia turned her head just then. Their eyes met.
A jolt ran through his entire body, as if he’d been struck by lightning.
Two eyes gleaming with confidence, and cheeks flushed a deep red with excitement.
Olivia was someone who genuinely wished for the happiness of people she’d only just met, and did whatever she could to make it happen.
Ah, she really is different from me. That’s what Aiden thought.
“Once someone enters her circle, she’ll never let them go.”
She’ll become someone everyone can’t help but love. A bitter smile crossed Aiden’s lips, then faded.
* * *
The results defied everyone’s expectations.
“The Lux Knight Brigade won? In a sparring match?”
“……It looked that way to me too.”
The Lux Knight Brigade—a brigade that had never won a single sparring match—had secured consecutive victories in the Best-of-Three Format duel.
Because no one had anticipated such a thing, everyone gathered here blinked and gawked, doubting what they’d just witnessed.
The Lux Knight Brigade members themselves felt much the same way.
“Really……. Kunta won?”
“Is this a dream? Is it real?”
“If I’m seeing something similar, it probably isn’t a dream.”
They initially doubted reality. The sight before them was simply too unbelievable.
It wasn’t until the Lux Knight Brigade members had gently smacked each other’s cheeks several times that they could accept it was real. Kunta himself, stunned by what he’d accomplished, approached the crowd with a dazed expression.
“So, I mean…….”
“You, you. Is it real?”
“……I think I won?”
Kunta declared uncertainly. Only then did reality begin to settle on the members’ faces.
“Ahhhhh! You crazy bastard! How did you do that? Did you really win? Did you really?”
“Y-yeah! I think I won! For real!”
“This isn’t a dream, right? Pinch my cheek, come on!”
It wasn’t a dream.
The person still rolling across the Training Grounds was not Kunta but a Knight of the Lumen Knight Order, and from the opposite side came cries and shocked voices insisting this couldn’t be real.
This was the moment—the first time Knights who had never won a single victory would achieve one. They had imagined this moment countless times over.
Yet even as they imagined it, they had never truly believed it would become reality.
“We really won!”
They had won.
It may have been only one man’s victory, but Kunta was among those who had suffered the most harassment. His victory was therefore a victory unlike any they had felt before.
It was an exhilaration they had never experienced in all their days.
Among those celebrating the victory were not only the existing brigade members, but also those they’d thought would only stay here briefly.
Bennett, Panya, and Olivia.
The eyes of the members, bursting with excitement, began to focus on Olivia one by one.
The starting point of all this. The one who had brought into reality what they never could have imagined.
“Um, Olivia.”
“I told you earlier that you could do it, didn’t I? Congratulations, truly!”
The one who had given them their first victory.
In fact, it seemed that Olivia’s earlier demonstration—how she herself had attacked the weakness and claimed victory—had become a kind of message for them.
“Kunta, you! How was it? How did it feel? Was it worth doing?”
“Nothing changed, but it’s really…….”
“I guess they were people we could beat.”
The experience of victory mattered.
For those who had only ever lost, their first taste of winning was so sweet that everyone here wore expressions of pure rapture, as if addicted to that very sweetness.
We could do it. We were strong enough to win.
“We were allowed to win.”
A single victory. Just one. Yet what it brought was far more than merely one win. Joy and exhilaration shone on every face.
But not everyone in the Training Grounds felt the same. Where there is light, there is shadow; where there is victory, there is defeat.
The atmosphere of the Lumen Knight Order, struck by two unexpected losses, was the complete inverse of the Lux Knight Brigade’s.
“This… this doesn’t make sense.”
“How could they beat us? Don’t say such stupid things!”
Those refusing to accept defeat burst out in ugly cries.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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