There may also be some inaccuracies, since English is not my native language.
Essentially, TBATE is first translated from English into my native language — and in that process, some details are already altered to make it more understandable for us. Now I'm taking that adapted (and somewhat distorted) version, revising it, rewriting it, and then translating it back into English.
I hope you'll point out any mistakes in the text that I might have missed.
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Lucius Zogratis
Mason's son, Braxton, won the forward tournament, which meant he would soon be sent to the city of Aramur to enroll in the Stormcove Academy. On any other day, Braxton would have been the center of attention and the object of envy of his peers and even their parents because of his victory. Not only Braxton, but his entire family would raise their status in Maerin, and if he succeeded at Stormcove, then in the entire city of Aramur.
However, after Cromley congratulated Braxton on his tournament victory and stated without much enthusiasm that he looked forward to seeing him at Stormcove, he practically pushed the poor boy off the stage and announced a "once-in-a-lifetime event" for the residents of the four cities gathered here today.
The crowd quickly forgot about the performance and burst into cheers when the two students and I took the stage, with Cromley standing between us. The workers moved the raised platform they had used for the student fights, leaving only the leveled ground of the arena, as we needed more space.
"Thank you for agreeing to spar with us," shouted Pallisun, standing next to Athena about ten meters away from me. "We were afraid you would refuse."
I just raised an eyebrow, completely ignoring the haughty tone in his gratitude. Both he and his partner had changed into their less formal clothes. While their armor was more for show than for battle, their weapons proved otherwise.
Pallisun pulled a coffin-like shield from his spatial ring, which was about 185 centimeters tall and twice as wide as his own body. Aphene, meanwhile, clutched a claymore with a mother-of-pearl blade in her right hand, and her entire left arm was covered in silver bracers.
"According to the standard rules of non-lethal duels, weapons are allowed, but they must be blunted," Cromley announced, standing between us, acting as referee.
All three waited silently for me to draw my weapon, but I waved my hand: "I will fight with my bare hands."
Aphene stepped forward, narrowing her eyes. "Do you wish to justify your impending defeat by the absence of weapons, Lucius?"
"That won't happen, my defeat is impossible," I replied calmly before turning to Cromley. "So, shall we begin?"
The two teenagers my age bristled with anger. The old man cleared his throat, took a few steps back, and raised his right hand high.
"Begin!" Cromley commanded and lowered his hand.
The crowd immediately applauded, and Pallisun raised his shield to cover himself and his partner, studying me intently.
After a short pause, they both rushed forward. Although they were hidden from view behind a large shield, I could sense from the ether surrounding them that Aphene was preparing to attack. Taking a dueling stance with my arms relaxed, I thought about my next move.
I knew I could completely destroy them; I had the body of an asura enhanced by the aether, and my sparring partner was the same. But still, I decided to play with them a little while applying what I had learned from Arthur's memories of the shaven-headed Asura.
Pallisun created a real dust storm behind him when his spell rushed in my direction. It was easy enough to dodge, but Aphene was waiting for it, swinging her cleaver. Aphene's dark hair fluttered in the wind as her sword described a wide arc, followed by a lunge.
Meanwhile, Pallisun made a sharp turn, accompanied by precise gusts of wind, until his shield flashed just a meter away from me, like a bull raising its horns. "You'll have to do more than just dodge!" roared the shield-wielding student.
Aphene used Pallisun as a shield and an obstacle to limit my field of vision while she launched a series of attacks. Turning on my front foot, I redirected Aphene's next lunge by pushing the flat surface of her blade with my hand. At the same time, I braced my other foot behind me as Pallisun was about to grab me.
My foot blocked Pallisun's path, and he flew over my shoulder, barely holding on to his shield. Aphene put most of her weight into this lunge, which caused her body to lean forward and her attack to miss its target. Taking advantage of her loss of balance, I struck her glove with my open palm.
Aphene fell to the ground, barely managing to roll over to get back on her feet. Pallisun was better at controlling his wind magic, which allowed him to maneuver in the air and land nimbly on his feet.
My gaze lingered on the two naive teenagers as their expressions changed to anger, neatly decorated with a blush of embarrassment.
Aphene Mandrick's POV
"What's with those faces?" The Ascendant tilted his head, his static eyes moving with mechanical precision from me to my partner. "You should have expected this from an Ascendant, right?"
I studied the man who had just completely parried all our attacks. Despite his tall but slender build and unarmed state, I couldn't help but feel afraid of this man. His eerie, unblinking eyes scanned every moment, shifting slightly between me and my partner.
Not wanting to show my weakness, I suppressed my emotions.
"We didn't mean to hurt you. I apologize for underestimating your abilities." I stood up and said through clenched teeth, "It won't happen again."
Pallisun, standing next to me, lowered his shield, as if to confirm my thoughts. Realizing that our opponent was clearly aggressive, he pulled out two gauntlets, which he had inherited as the next in line of the Blather bloodline.
The wind whistled and hissed as he clenched his fingers into a fist and lunged forward, and I quickly followed suit.
Pallisun swung his wind-clad fist, striking only air, while the Ascendant stepped back lightly and kicked him in the chest. Despite the difference between the powerfully built Palisun and the tall, thin Ascendant, my partner doubled over in pain, gasping for breath.
Not wanting to give the Ascendant the slightest chance, I leaped over Pallisun and swung Harmony, feinting a downward strike. The shimmering blade of my sword whistled through the air right in front of the ascendant, and I immediately directed a stream of mana into the hilt of my sword to change the trajectory of my blade mid-swing.
The movement of my own sword was blurred, and even I could barely follow it, but somehow his snow-white hand grabbed my blade in midair.
"Not bad." Despite how delicate and beautiful his hand looked, he held my blade with an iron grip, effortlessly dodging as I caught Harmony with my free hand and swung with my other.
"Try again," he said, as if he were my instructor rather than my opponent. The Ascendant released my blade and pushed me straight in the shoulder with a lazy movement. My whole body jerked back from the sudden force, and I was spun around by the impact.
Pallisun managed to dodge before I stumbled into him. When we both recovered, we stood side by side with our weapons raised to defend ourselves. The Ascendant, however, simply stood there with that aloof, clearly bored expression on his face.
"Arrogant asshole." My partner spat on the ground and straightened up as whirlwinds enveloped his entire body.
He gave me a questioning look, and I nodded understandingly. Just like we had practiced.
We lunged forward again at the ascendant from different angles. I dug my heels in and prepared to drive the tip of Harmony into him, standing a few steps away and not daring to get closer, while Pallisun crouched low and aimed for his legs.
However, as soon as I began to channel lightning through my hand into the blade, the ascendant disappeared and appeared right in front of me. Moving with astonishing precision, he grabbed my arm and used the force from my strike. Then the world suddenly turned upside down, and I felt my whole body go numb with dull pain as my body slammed into the ground.
"Aphene!" Pallisun's voice rang out, but even though I could hear him, I couldn't do anything. The impact with the ground was too strong, and I felt darkness begin to cloud my vision.
The last thing I saw was Pallisun flying away from me, his shield covered with hundreds of cracks.
Ah — unexpectedly, even to myself, I breathed in fresh air, which kept me from losing consciousness. Although the pain was still there, I began to get up, still thinking about the possible continuation of the fight. Until a familiar face appeared before my eyes. The Ascendant tilted his head slightly to one side, causing his long hair to fall in a mesmerizing cascade.
"I'm sorry, I'm used to sparring with Gray, so..." The Ascendant scratched his head slightly and held out his hand to me. "I guess that's it for today."
Lucius Zogratis POV
The plain black stone lingered in the air, barely touching the ceiling before falling back into my hand. I tossed it again, just as I had been doing for the past hour. I upgraded this dead artifact to rank nine, but even after the upgrade, it didn't work. It needed a GodRune.
"So, is this something important?" asked Regis. He was sitting near the chair where I had been sitting for about the same amount of time, watching the artifact with his eyes like a hungry dog watching meat.
"Yes, I told you that if Arthur gets the GodRune from this keystone, any dead religion will come to life if he wishes it," I said, tossing the artifact once more before it instantly disappeared into my inventory.
"What's so important about this artifact?" Arthur asked with interest.
"Well, the function of this relic allows it to show you what you want to see most. Like... your family, for example," I replied, scratching my chin.
Arthur's eyes widened, and a fire of determination flashed in them. With that determination, he sat down, took out the keystone, and immersed himself in it once again. I understood him; I also wanted to see my family, but I knew that my family was safe, perhaps grief-stricken and stressed, but safe, while Arthur's family was somewhere underground, like in a bunker.
Sighing, I walked over to the large window overlooking one of the main streets of Aramur. Below, I could see crowded sidewalks lining the four-lane road intended for carriages. Shop windows with colorful awnings blended in with the rich and bright clothes of the residents rushing about their business. I headed for the exit.
Regis's ears pricked up at the sound of my footsteps. "Going to the library again?"
"Yeah, " I replied without looking back. "You can guard Arthur as usual, right?"
"Sure, where would the princess be without me?" he grumbled.
Stepping out onto the crowded street, I looked around. I had gotten into the habit of choosing a new route with each walk, not only to see the sights of the bustling city, but also to observe people's behavior. Four days had passed since my duel with Aphene and Pallisun. After taking the prize from the dissatisfied Cromley and destroying the recording artifacts he had installed, we said goodbye to the small and peaceful town of Maerin.
The entire group from the Stormcove Academy had been in a bad mood ever since I completely defeated them in a duel, but they acknowledged their defeat. Fortunately, the trip to Aramur was short — almost instantaneous. At the designated landing point on the edge of the academy grounds, Cromley handed me a piece of paper and gave me directions to the hotel where we would find comfortable accommodation, then said goodbye.
I continued walking, ignoring the stares of passersby. A couple of times, someone tried to bump into me, I don't know for what purpose, but the reflexes of this body prevented it from happening.
It was strange to observe this medieval world where restaurants specializing in cuisines from different dominions were located close to each other, while well-dressed locals sipped drinks and chatted leisurely in a cafe with an open courtyard.
"And don't come back!" a hoarse voice rang out ahead.
A well-built old man with a crimson face and half-closed eyes lay on the ground as the tavern owner slammed the door in front of him.
"Bah! Your rum tasted like cold piss anyway," the drunkard shouted indistinctly, throwing the bottle he was holding at the door.
By this time, a small crowd had gathered around him, and condemnation and criticism rained down. The drunkard didn't seem to mind and just spat on the ground, scratching his long, disheveled gray hair.
Meanwhile, he singled me out from the crowd and stared at me with a glassy gaze before scurrying away with surprising agility, despite his drunken state.
Smiling slightly, I finally passed a row of restaurants and found myself in an area that turned out to be a sewing district. I didn't see much point in changing clothes, since even if they were "simple," they were sixth rank, one rank away from moving into another category.
Even without any runes, these clothes could easily block some of the damage, and as soon as they rose to the seventh rank, I suspected that I would also be able to change the shape and texture of these clothes, just like the dagger upgraded to the eighth rank. I also needed to get Alaric's attention, which also played a role in my reluctance to do this now.
Passing by the commercial district, I headed for a small building that I had visited often since arriving here—the library.
"Welcome," muttered the weary attendant, who looked like a teenager, not even bothering to look up from the book he was reading.
Unlike the rest of the city, the library was sparsely populated and sparsely furnished; there were too many wooden shelves for the number of books it contained.
I picked up more than twenty books that I hadn't read in the last few days. Thanks to my eleventh rank intellect, I could understand and memorize these books just by flipping through them. I tried to gain as much knowledge as possible, and at the same time, I analyzed more than a thousand books, comparing what was written there with what I knew and trying to extract the truth from what I didn't know.
On the first day, Arthur joined me, but after a couple of hours, it became clear that I was reading too fast and too much, so I just sent what I had read directly to his brain. Realizing that he was not needed here, Arthur simply returned to his room and tried to open the keystone.
It upset me that I already knew what kind of books they would be without even opening them.
Since this continent was ruled mainly by gods, the books available in this library were mostly propaganda describing a romanticized history where Agron and Vritra descended upon Alacrya to help its inhabitants and usher in a new era of magic and technology, as well as create a safe haven from other gods who vowed to destroy all lesser beings.
Most of them made Agrona a harsh but fair god who valued and rewarded the strong, while the Asuras of Epheotus were gods who hated Agrona for his love and favor toward us, the lower beings, and were obsessed with destroying us all.
A couple hundred books later
"Careful!" came a voice from the front of the library.
I turned and saw the bored teenager standing up, glaring at the drunkard—the same drunkard from the tavern—who had managed to spill the liquid from the bottle he was holding onto the floor.
"Oops! Sorry about that, kid," said the drunkard, hiccuping. He slowly entered the library, swaying on his feet but never losing his balance.
Only when his red, alcohol-filled eyes met mine did the expression on his face clear. "Aha! I knew you'd be here."
I remained where I was, waiting for the drunk to approach my table.
No, not a drunk, but good old Uncle Alaric.
Alaric plopped down in the seat across from me and slammed his drink on the table, spilling its contents onto the books. For a moment, we sat in silence, sizing each other up. Finally, he broke into a broad smile, revealing a row of white teeth under his unkempt beard, and spoke:
"So... what continent are you from?"
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I've slowed down because I just can't finish writing chapter 26 properly. Usually, I would write a chapter in a day or two, then spend another day translating it into English and proofreading it, and that's it, but now... I've already spent almost two weeks finishing the mediocre chapters 23 to 26.
Anyway, in a couple of days, I hope to be able to finish chapter 26, and then the pace will return to what it was originally, 2-4 chapters per week.
Sorry for the long wait