In This Life, I Will Be The Lord - Chapter 187
—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————
This Life, I Will Become the Clan Head Episode 187
“It was terrible.”
Peres, who had slumped down beside me, said while rubbing his face with dry hands.
His voice sounded extremely exhausted.
After having lunch with Father, I met Peres again near the training ground by the annex.
“So… you had breakfast with Father and Grandfather?”
It seemed that Father, who had taken Peres from my room in the morning, had brought him straight to the main hall dining room where Grandfather was having breakfast.
Though we had only been apart for a few hours, Peres had become incredibly tired-looking in that short time.
“Was that breakfast? It felt like dozens of hours had easily passed.”
“It was only four hours ago, you know?”
“Ah…”
Peres answered vacantly with a face that seemed ready to be blown away by the autumn wind that made his hair flutter.
“Come on, pull yourself together now, Peres. Ah, here they come.”
I patted Peres on the back once and stood up from my seat.
I could see the people who had been waiting in the distance approaching.
“Tia!”
“Tia!”
The people who spotted me and came running hurriedly, kicking up dust, were Giliou and Meylon.
I hadn’t seen the twins for quite a long time while the Lombardi Knights had been doing intensive training for the past few months.
They called it intensive training, but it was actually closer to endurance training.
In those few months, the atmosphere around both of them had changed considerably.
“It’s been so long!”
“We missed you!”
Their characteristic mischievous smiles hadn’t changed at all though.
“I heard you both became squad leaders of ten? Congratulations.”
This was news I had heard in advance through Shannet.
“In the history of the Lombardi Knights, people with promotions as fast as you two can be counted on one hand.”
At my words, the twins’ shoulders swelled with pride.
“Of course, of course! Who do you think we are!”
“Just so you know, there’s absolutely no favoritism just because we’re Lombardis.”
“Right, that nasty captain. Ugh.”
The twins shuddered as they spoke about the Lombardi Knight Captain.
Then, another person approached from behind the twins.
“Hello, Lady Lombardi.”
“Training clothes suit you well too, Lady Brown.”
Ramona, with her abundant and vividly red hair tied up high, smiled a bit shyly at my compliment.
“Thank you, My Lady. But why did you call me here dressed like this today…”
Ramona looked at the twins and Peres with a somewhat confused expression as her words trailed off.
“We have business with that guy over there.”
“You haven’t forgotten, have you, Your Highness the Second Prince?”
At the twins’ confident provocation, Peres sprang up from his seat.
The person who had been sitting with a pale complexion just moments before was nowhere to be seen.
Peres, who stood up gripping the sword that had been placed beside him, looked down slightly at the twins who were a bit shorter than him and curled up one corner of his mouth.
“Alone? Or would it be better to just attack together to save time?”
“What, what?”
“We’re not who we used to be!”
This time the twins flared up at Peres’ provocation.
The three of them began growling as if they would start clashing swords at any moment.
“Wait.”
But I intervened between them and spoke.
“It can’t be a structure where you two face off against Peres.”
At my words, Giliou laughed triumphantly.
“Right, right. I alone am enough…”
“No, all three of you including Lady Brown should team up and face Peres together.”
“T-Tia…”
The twins looked at me with devastated faces, but this wasn’t the time to be swayed by such things.
There was something else I wanted to confirm right now.
* * *
“Tch.”
Meylon quietly clicked his tongue.
The presence of Peres standing before him with a sword felt like a wall.
“Damn.”
Whether his younger brother Giliou felt the same way, he could hear low muttering from a short distance away.
Meylon turned his gaze away from Giliou to look at Ramona Brown.
He already knew from Tia’s explanation that she was from the famous Brown family.
Though it’s now called ‘Imperial Swordsmanship,’ the fact that its original form was the Brown family’s ‘Brown Swordsmanship’ was something anyone who learned swordsmanship in the Empire knew.
And also that the Brown family had revealed their family’s secret swordsmanship techniques solely for the prosperity of the Empire.
For Meylon, who was both a Lombardi knight and an Imperial knight, being able to match swords with someone from the Brown family like this was an honorable thing he could boast about to anyone in the future.
“Come.”
Then Peres spoke in a low, chanting voice.
Though it was a very quiet voice, Giliou, Meylon, and Ramona leaped toward Peres without hesitation.
“Haa!”
Giliou launched the first attack.
It was an extremely sharp and fast sword that pierced toward Peres’ side.
Clang-!
However, Giliou’s sword strike was blocked all too easily by Peres.
But Meylon aimed for that opening.
Taking a large step forward, he swept his sword in a wide horizontal arc.
It was an attack aimed at Peres’ front, which had been left completely open while blocking Giliou’s sword coming from the side.
Scrape!
The sound of blade grinding against blade rang out strongly.
By the time Meylon’s eyes widened, the swords of Giliou, Meylon, and Peres were already entangled.
Just by Peres stepping back and twisting his body, he had blocked two swords flying from different directions at once.
“Ugh!”
A pained groan burst from Giliou’s mouth as his sword-holding hand was twisted in an instant.
That’s when it happened.
Whoosh-!
With a spine-chilling sound of cutting through air, a heavy sword dropped down.
“Gasp!”
Peres released the bind that had held the twins’ swords and leaned his body far back.
Red hair swayed greatly where he had narrowly avoided the sharp sword tip.
Ramona, who had retrieved the sword she had fiercely slashed down, readjusted her grip.
And she began thrusting her sword long toward Peres.
Swish, swish!
A sound like arrows flying rang out from Ramona’s sword.
‘That’s!’
Giliou and Meylon realized simultaneously.
That the swordsmanship Ramona was displaying was one of the sword forms of Imperial Swordsmanship.
The twins also readjusted their grip on their swords and joined the attack.
Whoosh! Swish!
Three swords simultaneously flew toward Peres.
Finally, the tip of Meylon’s sword lightly grazed Peres’s forearm.
Splurt!
Red blood spurted with a small sound.
Giliou’s sword also thrust toward Peres’s leg.
Just as the blade was about to cut into flesh, Peres’s body swayed greatly once.
‘This is our chance!’
The twins thought simultaneously.
And to thrust their swords in more forcefully for the final blow, they naturally shifted their body weight.
But at that moment, Peres’s body disappeared as if it had suddenly collapsed into the ground.
“Huh!”
They belatedly tried to turn their bodies to follow Peres who had suddenly vanished from sight, but it was already too late.
Peres had already escaped the encirclement of sword strikes that Giliou and Meylon had created.
“Urgh!”
The two tried to turn their bodies forcefully, squeezing out every ounce of strength to catch up with Peres, but proper force couldn’t come from bodies whose balance was already disrupted.
In the end, they barely managed to steady their staggering bodies while tasting defeat.
To deliberately drive the attackers to one side, then slip away like a ghost with no way to stop him.
They had been completely played by Peres’s strategy.
The twins raising their heads were certain that Peres would already be watching them triumphantly from far away.
But.
“Am-amazing!”
Meylon shouted without realizing it.
Peres stood there, unable to withdraw his body as much as he had wanted.
“Br-Brown Young Lady…!”
Ramona’s sword was embedded in the ground.
While firmly biting into the hem of Peres’s robe.
That much could have been resolved if Peres had just applied some force to tear it away, but in a duel situation, even that small gap created an enormous difference.
Sometimes even between life and death.
If someone had thrust a new sword through that brief gap Ramona had created, Peres would have already been rendered unable to fight.
“…I’ve lost.”
But the surrender declaration came from Ramona.
Because the tip of Peres’s sword was positioned in front of her neck.
Because Peres, having made the instantaneous judgment that he couldn’t withdraw his body, had decided to deal with Ramona who had lost her sword first.
“If this had been a real combat situation, thanks to your sacrifice Ramona, those two would have gotten a chance to land a proper strike. Well done.”
Peres spoke briefly as he withdrew his sword from in front of Ramona’s face.
When the sparring ended, the twins cheered and ran to Ramona.
“Amazing! How on earth did you do that!”
“Right! You clearly started extending your sword later than us!”
“How were you able to turn your body already? It seemed like you moved twice as fast as us in that instant!”
“You were clearly using the same Imperial Swordsmanship as us!”
“It was completely different!”
Then a new voice interrupted the twins.
“Could you both step back a little? You’re startling Brown Young Lady.”
It was Tia.
As she said, Ramona, who had been wielding her threatening sword without hesitation just moments before, was now blushing as if embarrassed.
“But! That’s because you don’t know well, Tia! She was clearly using the same Imperial Swordsmanship, but only this person was different!”
“She has less muscle than us and is weaker too! Naturally she should be slower!”
“Really? Did it feel that different to you?”
Tia asked in a subtle voice.
“Of course! We’ve never seen such movement even from experienced seniors, no, not even from our captain!”
Meylon answered with great excitement.
“For an instant, I had the illusion that she alone was using not Imperial Swordsmanship but some other sword technique!”
“Some other sword technique rather than Imperial Swordsmanship…”
Hearing the twins’ intense impressions, Tia nodded.
And looking at Ramona, she smiled very sweetly.
“So that’s how it is. If used well, this could be very useful.”
While muttering these cryptic words.
—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————