Reincarnation of the Sword Demon - Chapter 126

WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Chapter 126: Who Raised You

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"I don't know how much 'a little' is to you."

Kyle raised Fenris with a snort. The embarrassment from his strange misunderstanding faded, replaced by a thrilling excitement.

He had seen Helenas's sword when she fought Julius before, but honestly, he had not been able to properly see it then.

Their duel had unfolded at a realm far too high for Kyle of that time to understand.

'Even now...'

Opening his Upper Dantian had broadened his perception and allowed him to sense far more. Kyle stared at Helenas.

She no longer looked like a beautiful elf. She looked like an endless sea. She was not even letting her intent flow outward, yet simply looking at her made him feel as if he would be pulled into an abyss.

Intent was different from sword talent.

She had been right.

Helenas's sword might have seemed poor compared to the five hundred years she had devoted to cultivation, but she had never once doubted her destiny. Rather, held captive by that destiny, she had given that long stretch of time, and every moment she would live from now on, to the sword.

It was different from yearning or effort. It could not even be called conviction. To Helenas, wielding a sword for five hundred years, or a thousand, was simply the most natural thing in the world. Something she had to do.

Even if she never found an answer herself through that long, long time, and never brought her destiny to an end.

For Helenas, wielding a sword was natural.

That natural will filled her completely.

"From now on, we will trade swords."

Helenas spoke. At that moment, her intent, which had seemed boundlessly deep without even overflowing, gradually faded. It twisted into a single thread and coiled around the branch in her hand.

"I will wield my sword, and you will wield yours."

Crunch.

Helenas stepped on the undergrowth. Her hair fluttered in the wind passing between the trees.

"Not Raikal's sword as I remember it. Your sword."

"That sword is mine too."

Kyle grinned and tightened his grip on Fenris.

"It is simply the sword of my past."

The past was only the past, but he had no intention of denying it. If he had simply died, that would have been the end. But he had been reincarnated, and all he wanted was to reach a sword greater than the one he had wielded in his past life.

He had not reached it yet, but he wanted to show her that yearning.

A pleasant killing intent gripped Kyle. It was the feeling he had carried as naturally as breathing on the battlefields of his previous life, when the mana circulating through the Circuits of his entire body rushed up into his head.

Kyle's sword reached Helenas.

The distance between them vanished.

Just as he wished, Kyle swung for her neck.

Once, he had asked Julius a question.

Had he ever traded swords with Helenas, the Sword Church Master?

Julius had answered that it had been a strange fight. A sword difficult to understand. Her movements themselves had been simple and obvious, yet he had not been able to respond to those simple and obvious movements.

Now Kyle understood exactly what that meant.

Fenris, which had been about to bite into Helenas's neck, was effortlessly stopped by her branch. There was no incredible technique to it. Helenas had simply raised the branch she held and blocked Fenris.

'Strange. And absurd.'

It was an attack that could not have been blocked. They had been that close.

Helenas had not twisted her upper body or moved her legs. She had made no movement at all to create distance.

To Kyle, it felt as if the branch had suddenly appeared.

'Our time is different.'

He did not mean the time they had lived, nor the time they had spent wielding swords. Time flowed the same way in this space, yet the time flowing through Kyle, the time he sensed and used, was different from Helenas's.

'She is splitting time into absurdly small units, and using them as if that is only natural.'

The branch pushed Fenris away. It looked like something he could snap with his bare hands, but being held by Helenas made it feel as though an enormous mountain were bearing down on him.

Kakakak!

Kyle spun through the air and swung Fenris again.

It was blocked again. Before the force added by his rotation could explode, the branch slipped in and perfectly neutralized the strength Kyle had poured into his sword.

Kyle curled his lips and swung Fenris again.

Several slashes with completely different trajectories were mixed into that single swing.

All three were blocked.

Helenas's branch was there each time, as if welcoming Fenris. It was already where Kyle would swing, where the slash would pass, where it would arrive.

'This isn't prediction.'

If someone predicted him, he could aim beyond that prediction. Ever since his previous life, there had been more than one or two fights where his opponent had read his intentions. He had learned long ago how to mock his enemy's expectations.

But none of that worked on Helenas.

Her sword twisted away moments that should have been fatal.

'There is no before and after for Helenas.'

A sword had to move before it could reach its target. That was the ordinary chain of cause and effect, but Helenas ignored that chain. Even if Kyle swung first, Helenas's branch always arrived first and waited for his sword.

At the Boundary Realm, once the Upper Dantian was opened, the result occurred at the same time as the decision. Unlike before, there was no gap between decision and result.

Someone who had opened their Upper Dantian was a creature living in an entirely different world from one who had not.

Kyle understood that. He had opened it in his previous life.

Based on that experience, Helenas's decisions and results were far ahead of Kyle's.

'No, that is not it. All of this is simply natural to her. My certainty that my sword will reach her cannot deny what is natural to Helenas.'

He pushed aside the analysis crowding his head.

Instead, he swung by instinct.

The sword scattering a succession of slashes grew faster, its paths more complicated. Against countless blades stabbing in from every direction, Helenas brought down her branch only once.

It was an utterly simple sword.

Every sword Kyle had swung was cut apart at once by that single swing.

At that hollow result, Kyle could not help laughing.

He had definitely opened his Upper Dantian, but before Helenas, his realm looked pitiful.

It should have wounded his pride. Instead, he was enjoying himself.

Whenever Kyle, whenever Raikal, encountered someone stronger than himself, someone standing higher than him, he had always felt joy.

That was a nature that had not changed since his previous life.

'This is fun.'

An ordinary sword like the one from his previous life would not be enough. Since Raikal's death, five hundred years had passed. In the fifteen years he had lived in this body, had he not learned and experienced just how bizarrely the world had changed?

From now on, he would wield the sword of a mage who carried a blade.

The Primordial Chaos Sword Canon circulated at full power. Jor responded to Kyle's will. Lightning breathed out by the dragon, no, the snake in his Middle Dantian mixed with his mana.

Crackle!

Kyle's body became violet lightning.

Spiritual energy, the embodiment of intent. It was a concept of power that had not existed in his previous life, and one Kyle had never learned after being reincarnated.

Yet through Jor, Kyle wielded spiritual energy naturally.

Helenas narrowed her eyes.

She too knew that the sword Kyle would wield from now on was different from Raikal's sword.

The moment she understood it, the moment she felt it, Helenas felt something nostalgic.

Her heart beat in a rhythm unlike normal.

Several months ago, when she had first learned that the boy was Raikal reincarnated. When the boy had wielded that immature sword.

When she had felt the destiny that had seized her five hundred years ago within that immature blade.

Helenas's memories looked back to that distant past. A sword that led the way while tightly holding a small hand pulled from a cage, mercilessly cutting down anything that blocked its path.

That sword and this sword were different.

Even so, Helenas felt her heart race.

Her heart was shaken because they were not the same, because they were different.

It was not an unpleasant tremor.

Perhaps it was because the one wielding that sword was still him.

But...

'It is immature.'

Had she first seen that sword when she was still a little elf, she might have felt destiny from it.

She could not now.

Helenas's destiny had already been decided five hundred years ago, and she had lived for that destiny throughout all those long years.

She had swung her sword too many times to count. She had long since surpassed the sword that had made her feel destiny. She found no enjoyment in the sword itself anymore.

Yet Helenas had not let go of her sword, nor had she escaped her destiny.

'Your sword is not enough to change my destiny.'

It was only enough to make her feel the faintest flutter.

Still, it was a different flutter from the one she had felt the last time she saw him.

That time, it had only been the flutter of reuniting with a distant memory.

Now, her heart raced because of a sword.

'That too must be because it is a sword you wield. You are cowardly and unpleasant.'

The way she held the branch changed.

Until now, Helenas had stood in place and simply made the branch arrive where it needed to. For the first time, she stepped forward.

'How can such a sword shake my heart only because it is your sword?'

He would die.

A chilling instinct swept through him. The shape of the hand holding the branch changed, and her foot moved one step forward.

That alone changed Helenas's bearing completely.

She was not giving off killing intent. Kyle simply felt death on his own.

Like an ant being crushed beneath a thoughtless step, Helenas was that kind of being. Her movements could kill Kyle at any moment, and that too was natural to her.

'This is good too.'

His lips twisted into a smile.

Kyle felt ecstasy in this chill.

Rumble!

Violet lightning surged toward Helenas. Kyle hid his body and sword within the afterimages of lightning splitting apart without end.

Which one was the real blade?

That did not matter to Helenas.

She only imposed a simple certainty.

Every bolt of lightning was cut apart.

Kyle's body flew backward. The fingers gripping Fenris came loose on their own.

They had not broken. Kyle immediately clenched the hilt again.

Crunch. Crunch.

Helenas slowly approached, filling his vision.

Thud.

Kyle's feet struck the ground.

He mainly used lightning, but Kyle had not been born with a Lightning Spirit Root. His Spirit Root was Chaos, something that could become anything in the world, chaos that held the entire world within itself.

'Freely.'

The earth was solid, hard, and heavy.

His Spirit Root thrummed. The nature of earth joined the mana flowing through his Circuits. Weight settled into the fingers gripping the hilt and into Fenris's blade.

Boom!

His descending sword was blocked by the branch.

Fenris did not bounce back. It pressed down on the branch with greater force, with greater weight.

Helenas narrowed her eyes.

The branch denied the earth.

The instant it was denied, Kyle changed the nature of his mana. The wind passing through the forest mixed with his breath. His heavy sword became light.

Wind could not be blocked. It could not be grasped, and no one could know where it would flow.

Kyle's sword followed that flow and scattered in every direction.

Swish!

Fenris traced the currents of the wind and went around Helenas's branch. Not from the front, but from the side.

The ungraspable sword aimed for Helenas's flank.

It was denied again.

The certainty that wind could not be cut was not a certainty to Helenas. Wind was free, but it was light. To cut through it required something different.

Kyle let out a breath and guided his feet forward.

Water changed shape according to its vessel. It was free and gentle, yet it held overwhelming weight within it. Water carved mountains and shattered rocks.

Fenris's path flowed like water.

The direction of each swing changed midway through, and the sword path curved without end.

Clang!

The branch received the flowing sword.

Once again, it was denied as if that were only natural.

'How much can I change?'

Kyle felt possibility in his sword, in himself as he was now.

Helenas stepped back once.

As if inviting him to come closer.

Kyle smiled and did exactly that.

A hot flame that burned everything was contained in his sword. A persistent flame that, once it swallowed something, would not go out until it burned it all into ash traced the path of his blade.

It went out futilely the instant he swung, but he did not care.

Again and again, Kyle's sword changed.

It pressed down like earth and mountains, vanished as wind, curved like a wave, blazed and swallowed like flame, then rushed forward as lightning.

Just a little.

Helenas's lips curved.

That was where Kyle's memory ended.

"Huh?"

When he came to, Helenas's face was in front of him. She was looking down at him from directly above.

The sensation against the back of his head was unfamiliar. It was not a pillow, nor was it dirt. It felt soft, yet firm.

Only when his hazy mind cleared did Kyle realize that his head was resting on Helenas's thigh.

"What happened?"

"I told you."