WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ Reincarnation of the Sword Demon

Chapter 34

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Brute Force

A week had passed since Kyle awakened his spirit root.

He'd spent most of it in the Great Archive, working toward a custom cultivation art designed for this body of his, this blessed and utterly unrepeatable physique.

The name was the Primordial Chaos Art. A method to draw out the chaotic talent locked inside a spirit root that held everything at once and give it shape in the world.

Not a simple undertaking. The Sword Demon in his past life had loved swinging a sword and been good at it, but studying was something he'd never really bothered with. Killing things, he was confident in. Creating something new from scratch, not so much.

But all of this was necessary if he wanted to swing his sword better.

Technically, he didn't need to create a new cultivation art at all. He could just train in one outstanding method, the same as any other martial artist in this era. Master it, move up to a higher-tier method, master that, and keep climbing.

Kyle remembered his past life clearly. Recovering the peak he'd once reached? Easy enough. Just build up mana the way everyone else did and swing his sword the way he remembered.

But that felt like such a waste. And boring, besides. He didn't know everything about this world, but he knew that reincarnation wasn't common. More than uncommon, actually. It should have been flat-out impossible.

He'd gone through that impossible reincarnation with every memory of his past life intact. Not into some ordinary family, but as a pure-blood of the foremost martial family on the continent. Strong people everywhere he turned, and if he proved himself worthy, rare cultivation texts, sword arts, Elixirs, all of it there for the taking.

To have all of that, and then just train in one cultivation method and swing his sword the same way he had before? That wasn't just wasteful. It was horrifying. And it wasn't only the environment that was exceptional. The talent buried in this body was extraordinary too.

'Come to think of it.'

Arms folded, seated before a desk scattered with cultivation texts, Kyle let his thoughts run.

'I was never the strongest swordsman on the continent in my past life.'

The name of the Sword Demon rang high, but the title of greatest had never been his. Even Ruin Alastor, the man who had ended the Sword Demon's life, hadn't been the continent's "strongest."

Thirst.

His throat was dry. He lifted the teacup from the desk and drank, but the thirst didn't leave. He knew exactly what kind it was.

The dawn he'd stepped down as captain of the Crow Mercenary Band, taken a sword in hand, and decided to throw himself back into the battlefield alone. The thirst he'd felt watching a fire burn through the night.

'A miracle followed me into reincarnation. I was born into a good family, with tremendous talent on top of it. Doing the same things I did in my past life would be a waste.'

Sip.

The kind of thirst that tea couldn't fill, and yet he drank another sip anyway. It wasn't ordinary tea. Brewed from spirit herbs, it cleared the mind and kept thoughts running sharp. Sweet in just the right measure, too.

'This life, I'll aim for the strongest on the continent.'

Not just strong. An absolute force that no one would dare raise a sword against. A height that surpassed even Ruin Alastor, the man who ended the Dark Age five hundred years ago and put an end to the Sword Demon's life.

In his past life, various limits had kept that realm out of reach. This life was different. Every condition he needed was perfectly in place. To reach only the level of a decent master despite all of that would be a crime.

'The foundation has to be different.'

You couldn't get ahead of everyone by following the same road they'd already paved. You had to walk paths others hadn't walked, paths others couldn't.

A spirit root that contained everything and could become anything. That was a blessing, but mishandled, it could just as easily become a curse. One wrong step and he'd end up unable to master even a single element, different energies colliding inside his body, either damaging it or leaving everything a muddled mess that was nothing in particular.

'Blend it carefully. Not ruining what's already there, but harmonizing it. Fitted precisely to my body. Able to transform as needed, with no ceiling.'

Spirit roots carried the attributes of nature. Wind, earth, fire, lightning, water, ice. The natural world that made up existence, and the mana that dwelled within it. That's what spirit roots specialized in.

Kyle turned back to the cultivation texts. Nature had elements that nourished each other and elements that opposed each other. What the Primordial Chaos Art required was pulling only the strengths from countless texts and blending them cleanly. Simple to say. Impossible to actually do.

Achieving that inside a human body was madness. The principles governing this vast world had a structure that lay far beyond human comprehension.

Strangely, the impossibility of the challenge filled Kyle with pleasure rather than dread.

His soul was already that of the Sword Demon, a being who had reached great heights in his past life. How to govern mana and let it flow through the body, the feel of it, he had that down.

'I've got the talent to take on the impossible, too.'

Not just the spirit root, but his talent for spirits. Spirits were living natural mana, in their very essence. Using them as elemental filters meant he could take mana into himself without having to manually purify it element by element.

The original concept for the Primordial Chaos Art had first come to him when he began the Revolving Heaven Strike. Over the past week, reading through every cultivation text he could get his hands on, that vague concept had developed into something like a blueprint.

A somewhat crude method. But a method.

Kyle drained the last of his tea and rose from the desk. He walked into the Cultivation Chamber deep in the Great Archive and settled in the center of the room.

He tapped the Thunderstone necklace at his throat. Crack! A small spark, and Jor poked his head out.

[Master? You called?]

Kyle rested his chin in his hand and studied Jor for a moment.

"Do you have to be a lightning spirit?"

[Master. I don't understand what you're saying. I was born from Thunder Energy. I'm a lightning spirit.]

"Spirits are living mana creatures."

Kyle narrowed his eyes.

"Just because you were born from Thunder Energy, does that mean you have to spend your whole life as a lightning spirit?"

[...?]

Jor blinked, utterly unable to make sense of the question. Born not long ago, his intelligence was still low.

"If a person eats too much, they get fat like a pig."

[Mm...]

"Eat too little and they go all skin and bones."

[You're not going to stop feeding me, are you?]

"Master isn't done talking yet. Keep listening. If I feed you mana other than Thunder Energy, say I feed you wind mana. What happens to you?"

[It tastes bad... I don't want to eat it...]

"Then what if I feed you plain mana, not Thunder Energy?"

[That... I can eat.]

"Then we eat a lot of that going forward."

Kyle grinned.

The mana drawn in through the spirit root, instead of converting it into thunder energy mana, he would refine it into something carrying the nature of his Chaos Spirit Root, then feed that to Jor.

That way, Jor would grow into something other than a simple lightning spirit. If Kyle's spirit root was a chaos that could become anything, then Jor, raised on that same mana, might be able to break free of the lightning spirit category entirely.

"One more thing. Starting now, let's have you live somewhere other than in there."

[Where?]

Jor tilted his head.

Kyle had learned about Spirit arts from Arian over the years, so he knew where spirits lived.

Lower-rank spirits, infant and minor ones, dwelled in the everyday natural world. But spirits of higher caliber, those whose mere existence could be called a natural disaster, made their home in the spirit realm, their own world apart from this one, or in special environments like the Southern Manroe Valley where lightning never stopped striking, or volcanic regions.

For now, Jor was young enough to curl up inside the Thunderstone. But later, as he grew larger, Jor would need to stay in the spirit realm when he wasn't summoned, like any other spirit of consequence.

"Here."

Thud.

Kyle tapped his own chest with his fist.

[Here?]

Jor's eyes went wide, staring at Kyle's chest.

"Yeah. Inside my body."

Calm as anything.

"Use my middle dantian as your home."

Jor went still for a moment, then began whipping his tail furiously. A spirit entering a contractor's body was something close to taboo in Spirit arts. A spirit's energy could damage a human body, or conversely, a human's energy could corrupt a spirit. Even Jor, a young spirit of low intelligence, knew that much by instinct.

But Jor could dimly feel it. Master was different. Inside Master's body would be incomparably more comfortable than the Thunderstone, and the mana flowing there would never corrupt him. It would be nourishment that made him bigger and stronger.

[But, but, Master, is that okay?]

Jor stumbled over the words, even as he felt the pull to go inside that very instant.

"It's fine."

Kyle wasn't entirely certain of that. This was something he'd never done in his past life either, and there was no precedent for it anywhere in the world.

But no precedent didn't mean impossible.

'My lower dantian has a wide opening, but the interior hasn't been fully expanded yet.'

The middle dantian was another matter. It was already open, with a core formed there, however small. And from his past-life experience, Kyle was practiced at governing it.

'The problem is the imbalance between the lower and middle dantian... I'm not sure how my body will respond to something like Jor.'

When he'd tried to develop the middle dantian by force while the lower was still underdeveloped, it had felt like his soul was being wrung out.

'The situation's different from that time, though. I'm not trying to grow the core with mana. I'm letting a living spirit into my body.'

The fundamental imbalance was still there, but by circulating mana through the Circuits constantly, he could force a balance over time. And the physical strain would lessen the more he developed the lower dantian going forward.

Right.

In the end, you only know if you try. Kyle steadied his breathing and tapped his chest once more.

"If it feels dangerous, come right back out. And one more thing. Stay in the chest, don't go wandering anywhere else. Understood?"

[Yes, yes, understood, Master.]

At that, Jor slid all the way out of the Thunderstone. The palm-sized violet snake of electric current drifted through the air, then pressed into Kyle's chest.

Sizzle!

Kyle clenched his teeth. Nothing like absorbing mana. This was crystallized Thunder Energy forcing its way backward through his veins, working upstream. Like thousands of needles scraping the inside of his blood vessels as they passed through.

'Hold on.'

He focused. Thump, thump, thump. His heart pounded like it was coming loose. The core in the middle dantian was reacting violently to the invasion of something foreign.

Cold sweat ran off him in sheets. The collision and rejection raged on. At this rate his heart might burst, or his mana Circuits could knot and leave him half-crippled.

Kyle didn't stop. He pulled up every last scrap of past-life experience and sensation, settled the churning core, and guided Jor through.

'Blend.'

He bore down on his awareness of the spirit root. The chaotic nature of something that contained everything and could become anything. If that was truly what it was, then Jor, who had entered his body, could be received too.

The mana in his lower dantian shifted. A week of steady cultivation was behind that mana now. He'd half-expected the backlash of imbalance, but the agony he'd felt before didn't come.

Inside Kyle's body, mana moved smoothly through the tangled web of Circuits. When it reached the middle dantian, it didn't push against the core or try to repel Jor. It settled over both of them like a warm blanket.

The circulation was complete. With the lower dantian and the middle dantian as two poles, mana flowed between them without stopping. At the same moment, the ambient mana of the Cultivation Chamber began to be drawn in with every breath.

[Warm...]

From somewhere deep inside his body, Jor's whisper reached him. Wrapped in Kyle's mana, the snake coiled up deep in the middle dantian.

Boom...!

A heavy vibration moved through his body. Two energies merging into one. Kyle steadied his breathing, which wanted to come in gasps.

"You really do have to try it to find out."

He forced a smile, cold sweat still dripping. Jor would gradually take on the nature of Kyle's spirit root now. If everything went to plan and Jor broke free of the constraints of a lightning spirit, he could be put to active use as a filter for the Primordial Chaos Art.

'If I can raise him into a chaos spirit like myself, I won't need to bother contracting other spirits at all.'

Grow big and strong. Kyle shut his eyes, dizzy. On the edge of letting his consciousness slip,

He snapped upright.

Getting caught passed out in the middle of the Cultivation Chamber, soaked in cold sweat, would be enough to make Arian roll her eyes back and faint alongside him.

His mind was exhausted, but his body was surprisingly fine. A frame that had always been light felt lighter still. With every beat of his heart, strength spread through him.

It was genuinely spreading. Unlike most martial artists and mages, who circulated mana only when they needed it, Kyle's Circuits now ran without stopping. That this was even possible came down to three things: the two-pole circulation between dantians, the vast network of Circuits threaded through his body, and a past life's worth of experience behind it all.

'This is going to kill me.'

Keeping conscious track of it made his head pound. His first goal was to make this as natural as breathing, something so unconscious that mana kept circulating even as he slept.

'I still need to go through every other cultivation text and pull out what's worth keeping...'

Busy, busy. Kyle let out a long sigh and wobbled out of the Cultivation Chamber.

"Out of every ten-year-old alive, I'm probably the busiest one."

And the strongest, he was certain of that too. He carried that certainty out of the Great Archive. The window he glanced at on his way out was dark. Night had fallen without him noticing.

The whole ordeal hadn't felt long, and yet half a day had passed in that chamber, all of it spent sweating through his clothes.

'Dinner's long past.'

Another long sigh.

Being a dutiful son wasn't easy.

The next day.

Kyle woke at his usual hour and went through the routine he'd built over the past week.

Out of bed. A light stretch to loosen the body. Clothes changed, door opened.

A quiet slip into Arian's room while she still slept, a light kiss pressed to her cheek. That one was a routine Arian had insisted on adding herself. On mornings when she snapped her eyes open in time, he'd be held captive in her arms for a good while, getting smothered with kisses in return.

After that, he washed his face and brushed his teeth, then headed to the Cultivation Chamber that had been built behind the manor.

There he would run the Revolving Heaven Strike, or rather, the still-incomplete Primordial Chaos Art. Drawing mana into his body through his breathing, cycling it through the Circuits. Feeding Jor along the way, slowly expanding the lower dantian, identifying where the Primordial Chaos Art still needed work.

A few hours of that, and then he'd pick one of the wooden swords stacked nearby and run through his sword forms.

The forms were a collection drawn from every tier-five sword technique text in the Great Archive that he'd worked through before turning ten. Once he'd gone through them to his satisfaction, noon would arrive, and he'd wash, change, and eat.

That was the fixed portion. After that, he went to the Great Archive.

He'd decided to visit the Sword Hall less often. Julius might feel a pang at that, somewhere inside, but Kyle was, to put it plainly, playing a push-and-pull with his grandfather.

He'd been showing Julius the face of a smart, endearing grandson far too often. Time to quietly put some distance between them, so that Julius would be the one to pull first.

'And to surprise him later.'

A grandson he hadn't seen in a while turning out to have grown far beyond expectations, that would floor even Julius. With that in mind, Kyle had also decided to stay away from the Sword Garden for a while.

He munched through the last of his Thunderclap Fruits as he walked out of the Rose Mansion. Rather than heading straight to the elevator, he took the long way around to get some air.

He was walking toward the elevator when he saw it.

A pig, running.

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