WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ Reincarnation of the Sword Demon

Chapter 3

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Kyle

Five hundred years ago.

The progenitor Ruin Alastor brought the age of war to an end.

Six members of the imperial family who had ignited that war were judged by the progenitor's sword. The sole survivor, the fifth prince, ascended the throne as emperor, and the continent finally stepped out of forty years of darkness into a new era.

...And so on.

The very person who had lived through those forty years of war - now called the Dark Age - was three-year-old Kyle, who sat on Arian's lap and listened to her history lesson with a bored look on his face.

Not that he'd found it boring from the start. The Dark Age was a full five hundred years ago, which meant five hundred years had passed since the Sword Demon's death. For all that Kyle had been consumed by swords and fighting in his past life, he was still human, and of course he'd been curious about what had become of the world after he died.

So when Arian's lessons started at age three, his eyes had lit up. At least at first.

To put five hundred years of history in rough terms: the mess of the Dark Age had been patched up, and after several upheavals, the world had settled into a peaceable sort of chaos. The demon tribes, once treated as enemies of humanity during the Sword Demon's time, had become part of the world. The other races that had risen up seeking dominion had found their footing too.

Ruin Alastor was revered as the hero who ended the Dark Age, hailed as the Sword of the Empire. The house he built was granted the northern territories of the empire and charged by imperial decree with keeping watch over the demon tribes across the sea.

The Sword Demon.

In this world, Kyle had been born a descendant of Ruin Alastor.

"Our Alastor family is the foremost martial house on the continent, and the most distinguished house in the empire," Arian said softly, turning the pages of the book she'd laid open for him to follow.

"Mm..."

Kyle stared at the book in front of him. Big letters, written large enough for a baby to read. A picture of the red-haired progenitor holding a sword aloft, darkness retreating before the brilliant light it cast.

He'd seen this book more than ten times already.

The Sword Demon in him wanted to shout that he had no need for books like this anymore. But Kyle at three years old couldn't bring himself to do it. He could feel how much Arian loved these moments, how much joy she took in them. He couldn't take that happiness from her.

What had Arian ever done wrong, anyway?

The fact that the body of her beloved son, born after ten months of labor, housed a hairy-legged Sword Demon from five hundred years ago - that wasn't because Arian had committed some great and terrible sin. It was just one of those damned things that happened. So Kyle had no desire to rob her of the maternal joy she clearly cherished. And honestly, the warm, soft feeling it stirred in him wasn't entirely unwelcome.

Besides, even if he wanted to hold a sword, this body couldn't manage it.

Three years old. He wanted to hold a sword, yes, but he couldn't even swing one properly. Having been conscious since birth, he knew the limits of a child's body well. At this age, overcoming those limits through sheer will alone was simply not possible.

"There we go, all done! Kyle, what did you think?"

"It was fun..."

Not that there was any real enjoyment left in a book he'd already sat through more times than he could count. A small, well-meaning lie, to keep from spoiling her mood.

"Really?"

Arian laughed, bright and bubbling, spun him around once, and pulled him into a tight embrace. Three years of this had made him thoroughly used to it, so Kyle settled into her arms without resistance.

"How can you be this smart and this cute? You must be the smartest, most adorable three-year-old in the entire world."

Well, obviously. Wrapped in her warmth, Kyle let himself think it. His mind was growing drowsy, but credit where it was due.

"He really should have gotten to see you..."

Soft words, murmured while she patted his back and stroked his hair. They jolted him right out of his drowsiness.

"Mom."

He lifted his head and looked at her.

He'd called her "Mother" at first, formally. But every time he did, Arian's face would fall into something sad, and it pricked at him somewhere he couldn't name. So he'd given up a little of his dignity and started calling her "Mom."

"Is... Da-ddy dead?"

He knew how much Arian loved and treasured this time between them. He felt a twinge of guilt for lobbing such a question into the middle of it. But she'd been the one to open that door, so he walked through it.

Three years since his birth, and he had never once seen the man called his father. He hadn't asked about him either, not directly. His own way of being considerate. She had never brought her husband up herself, and since she didn't, neither did he.

In his past life, he'd been born to a mercenary father and a woman who sold her company - no real love between them. This life was different. His mother, Arian, was of the Alastor family.

He's probably dead. That was what Kyle had privately concluded. But he'd never heard it from Arian, and the manor's servants never spoke of his father in front of him. Better to hear it now than to wait until he was older and receive it in some stiff, formal setting.

"Kyle! This is the first time you've ever asked about your father!"

Arian blinked in surprise. From that bright reaction, Kyle gathered that his assumptions had been entirely off.

"Your daddy isn't dead. He's somewhere very far away, doing perfectly fine, I'm sure. The rotten bastard."

Kyle blinked at the words that had slipped out. Arian caught herself and pressed her fingers to her lips.

"Ahem. Forget what Mom just said, okay?"

"Mm..."

"Anyway, Kyle, your daddy is very much alive. Living too well, if anything."

Arian scrunched her brow and reached up to touch his soft cheek.

"Are you curious about what kind of person your daddy is?"

"Yeah..."

"Your daddy is... well, how do I put this. An extraordinary person. Already extraordinary enough, but he wanted to be even more so, so he went into seclusion - into, well, he shut himself away in a room. Without even knowing Mom was expecting you."

What an absolute bastard.

Kyle kept that one locked away inside him. It was Kyle, Arian's son, thinking it - not the Sword Demon Raikhal.

'He left someone this beautiful and lovely behind to go into seclusion training? What a bastard.'

And he hadn't even known his wife was pregnant.

"Mom didn't want to bother your daddy. And knowing his personality, even if I'd tried to stop him, it wouldn't have done any good. And, well... he can shove it... no, no. Let him suffer a bit? Something like that."

"Good job."

"Hm? What? You... you think I did a good job?"

"Yeah, good job. Daddy's mean."

Three years old and his tongue still wouldn't cooperate. Kyle worked his mouth and scrunched his brow.

"Daddy hurt Mom. He can shove it."

It wasn't just his tongue. The thoughts in his head refused to come out cleanly as words. That was a large part of why he hadn't been pushing to swing a sword, too. This immature body was holding him back in every sense.

"Shove it... haha! Right, he should shove it! But Kyle, you can't say things like that!"

Arian laughed and tapped his lips with her finger.

"If you use bad words, Mom will smack your hands. Understood?"

"Mmmm..."

Quite a demand to make of someone who'd been born in a mercenary camp, grown up surrounded by rough men in rougher circumstances, and become the Sword Demon. Kyle swallowed the sigh rising in his chest and nodded.

"Anyway, your daddy is perfectly fine. He can't come see you right now, shut away as he is, but you'll be able to meet him someday. Kyle, do you miss your daddy?"

"No..."

"No? Really? Why not?"

"I've got Mom..."

"Oh, come on!"

Arian cried out and pulled him in tight.

"That's right, you have Mom! All I need is you, Kyle. That no-good - no, no. That bad person. We don't need him!"

"Mo... m..."

Since things had come this far, Kyle decided to ask the things he'd been holding back.

"Why does Mom live here alone?"

Carefully phrased to match the thinking of a three-year-old.

The place Kyle and Arian called home was known as the Manor of Roses. The only people he'd ever met here were the manor's servants, all of them women. He'd been allowed into the garden, but he had never truly left the grounds. Young as he was, he hadn't insisted on going outside, and to this small body, the manor was wide enough.

Strange, though, no matter how you looked at it.

Arian was a direct descendant of the Alastor family. By the family tree she'd gone over more than once, she was the second daughter among the family head's six sons and three daughters. Whatever the exact hierarchy might be, a direct descendant of the house had given birth to a son, and three years on, Kyle had yet to see a single relative's face.

'Was she being confined here?'

He hadn't been born into a distinguished family in his past life, but he knew well enough that such families were rarely as bright and glittering on the inside as they appeared from without. The age of war itself had started with a succession dispute among the imperial family, after all.

'Arian is isolated from the family. That's why not one of them came to celebrate when she gave birth.'

The moment that thought settled in, the three-year-old body kicked up feelings of its own. Pure and uncomplicated - he wanted to cry for Arian, for his mother, just out of sorrow.

"Ah... well, the thing is..."

Arian looked up at the ceiling with a helpless expression. Of course she looked helpless. She'd have to explain the family's complicated, ugly power struggles to a three-year-old.

"Mom is, well. In hiding."

So it was as he'd expected. Kyle pressed his lips together, fighting not to cry. Poor woman. Right then, he made a decision. Once this body grew enough to hold a sword, he would turn the entire family upside down if he had to. He'd reclaim her dignity.

"If they find out I came back on my own... everyone will make a huge fuss. They'll mock me endlessly. And Fath - the family head would probably be furious too. So, well, I'm hiding."

"What?"

Wait.

That wasn't the reason he'd imagined at all. The sorrow washing over him receded in an instant. Kyle's eyes went wide and he grabbed at Arian's collar.

"Hiding like this?"

"That's right. I, well... it just sort of happened. I missed the right moment to say something, I suppose..."

Was she serious? Three years of never seeing a single relative's face, and it was simply because Arian had snuck back and given birth in secret?

His jaw dropped. And this damned little body, finding something to grieve in even this absurd situation, went and started crying on its own.

"K-Kyle?! Why, why are you crying?!"

"Ugh... mhh..."

I don't know either. Kyle wept, feeling once again the indignity of it all. Arian turned pale, pulled him into her arms, and jumped to her feet.

"It's Mom's fault! Mom only thought about herself. You must have wanted to see your relatives!"

That wasn't why he was crying. But the body, swept up in a child's emotions, wouldn't obey him.

"Come on. Let's go."

Holding her suddenly weeping son, Arian resolved to face the things she'd been quietly avoiding all this time.

"I'll show you your relatives. Let's go see them!"

And so, three years after his birth, the Sword Demon left the Manor of Roses to meet his relatives. The descendants of Ruin Alastor - the very man who had killed him five hundred years ago.

"Wai..."

Kyle twisted desperately in Arian's arms. The descendants of Ruin Alastor? Of course he wanted to meet them. By Arian's own account, the Alastors were the foremost martial house on the continent, so naturally their descendants would be renowned warriors of the age.

"N-not yet..."

Reincarnating as a baby had cost him a great deal of dignity. But he still had some. In front of Arian, his mother, he could bear it. In front of Ruin Alastor's descendants, though...

He did not want to stand before them with this lispy speech, with eyes that drooped at the slightest exertion, with arms and legs he couldn't properly control. Not as a three-year-old.

"Not yet? What do you mean, not yet?"

"Just... a little later..."

Kyle clutched at Arian, who looked ready to scoop him up and march off that very moment, and said it as desperately as he could manage.

"I wanna go when I'm fi-ive..."

At five, he'd be able to speak properly. He had to.

No other option.

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