WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Reincarnation of the Sword Demon

Chapter 37

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Stay and Eat

The next day. Kyle woke at his usual early hour, changed his clothes, and before leaving his room, glanced out the window.

More out of habit than any real expectation. And yet there Bruno was, standing in front of the Rose Mansion's main gate. The sight pulled a grin out of Kyle before he could stop it.

He hadn't thought Bruno would settle things with his father and be back in a single day.

"When he puts his mind to it, he delivers."

Something had been pressing against Bruno from the inside for a long time. Yesterday it had finally caught fire.

From his past life onward, Kyle had always liked the word ardor. To burn for something, to pour yourself into it with your whole chest, was in some ways a kind of blessing, whether the thing you were burning for was something you were good at or not. Chasing that fire was, at the very least, something you could enjoy.

Luckily, today he managed to kiss Arian on the forehead and slip out before she opened her eyes. He hurried out of the mansion and walked up to Bruno, who stood before the closed gate with a set expression.

"Hey, Pig."

Kyle waved with a grin.

"What did your father say? Did he tell you not to spend time with me?"
"I got his permission."

Bruno answered flatly.

"Father said I could do as I wished."
"And what is it you wish?"
"...?"

Bruno blinked at the question. It felt like Kyle was pretending to have no memory of all the nudging he'd done the day before, and it took Bruno a moment to follow.

"What I told you yesterday was my will. Not yours."

Exasperating creature. Kyle clicked his tongue and shook his head.

"You've been doing whatever your father said all this time. Now you're just going to do whatever I say instead?"
"Th... that's not it."

Bruno shook his head, flustered.

"I thought you were right, so I decided to try it. What you said made more sense to me than the way Father's been teaching me..."
"See, that's exactly it. You're still just following my lead."

Kyle cut him off.

"You do it because I said so. If I said I was wrong, would you stop? If I told you smearing dung on yourself would make you stronger, would you actually do it?"
"Th, there's no way I'd do that...!"

The example was absurd enough to draw a protest, but not an actual rebuttal. A pointed jab, and Bruno felt it. When he'd raised his voice in front of Barkas the day before, he'd believed he was speaking from his own conviction. Looking back now, though, the argument he'd used to persuade his father had been nothing more than Kyle's words parroted back.

'No.'

Not entirely. Bruno pressed a hand to his chest, where something uneasy stirred, and breathed slowly. Yes, he'd wavered without a backbone of his own. But accepting those words as true had been his choice. That choice had kept him from buckling under his father's pressure, kept him from yielding even when disinheritance was put on the table.

"Honestly... I'm not sure either."

Bruno exhaled.

"I can't say you're wrong. I've been swinging my sword however Father told me to, and that's true. And it's true that yesterday your words got to me, and I wanted to try swinging my sword your way. But..."
"But what?"
"Father's sword... the way he taught me... it felt right at first, but gradually it stopped fitting. It was stifling. Swinging a sword stopped feeling good. But if I tried it the way you described... I thought it might actually be fun."

Bruno hesitated, then lowered his head.

"That's why I went and got his permission. I know it looks like I'm just following your lead again. But still... I want to try."
"Fine."

Not a convincing defense, more a stumbling attempt at one, and Bruno had half-expected dismissal. Instead, Kyle gave a clean nod.

"If you decided you wanted to do something different, and that decision was yours, I'm fine with it. But Pig, what I say isn't always the right answer."

Kyle opened the mansion gate himself.

"It's your sword. What's right is for you to choose. And having made that choice, the failures are yours to own."
"..."
"So think for yourself. Often. And when you don't know, ask someone. Doesn't have to be me. You've got your father."
"Ask Father?"

Bruno looked like he'd heard something absurd.

"He wouldn't bother answering me..."
"Did you think yesterday that you could actually get his permission?"
"..."
"If you go to him and genuinely say you don't know, do you really think he'd tell you to get lost?"

Kyle said that and started toward the Cultivation Chamber. Bruno stared blankly at his back for a moment, then scrambled after him.

"Is Lucia not coming today?"
"Lucia's at the training hall. Starting tomorrow, you go too."
"What? Why?"
"There are things you can learn there. You can't become an Apprentice Knight without getting through the training program."
"That's true, but..."
"I can't correct every petty habit and every flaw in your sword from scratch. All I can do is give the occasional pointer."
"..."
"I've got my own work too. So starting tomorrow, come here in the evenings after your training sessions."

Knight candidates came to Gladiheim from all over the continent. Only those who passed the vetting of their aptitude and ability were accepted as trainees. Those who fell short became regular soldiers of Gladiheim or went back home.

Kyle had heard about the trainees' daily routine from Lucia and Erika. They lived in the Hilt training hall in the lower district and ran their schedules from there, heading out for field exercises beyond Gladiheim's walls roughly once a month.

Field exercises varied by schedule. The standard was joint training with the empire's reserve knights, though occasionally there were exchanges with foreign knight orders, and every few years, exchanges with the Demon Tribe of Erebos as well.

What trainees looked forward to most, though, was Secret Realm expeditions. Secret Realms were unpredictable environments, which made them dangerous, but they also yielded rare resources, spirit herbs and the like, that simply couldn't be found elsewhere.

Five hundred years ago, Secret Realms had been extraordinarily rare. Now they appeared far more often.

'Five hundred years is a long time, but...'

The spirit root had appeared as a new organ within the human body. Secret Realms had grown common. To someone who had actually lived through that distant past, the present age felt genuinely strange.

"I'm running the cultivation technique."

Kyle dropped down in the center of the Cultivation Chamber.

"Do whatever you like. Swing your sword if you want."

He closed his eyes. The moment his focus turned to the unfinished Primordial Chaos Art, Jor, coiled in the middle dantian, raised its head.

[Master. Hungry.]

There's a saying that when someone is always hungry, a beggar must have taken up residence in their belly. In Kyle's case, what lived inside him wasn't in his belly but in his chest, and it wasn't a beggar. It was a spirit.

'Work first. Eat after.'
[Mrr...]

Jor made a sulky sound but didn't resist.

The Primordial Chaos Art stirred into motion. Kyle breathed deep and slow, drawing the mana dense in the Cultivation Chamber into his body. It traveled through his Circuits, reached the middle dantian, and Jor refined it first.

Crack...!

A sharp sting flared in his chest. Every time Jor and the mana intertwined, the core in his middle dantian was stimulated and his lower dantian cried with hunger, but Kyle held that hunger down and waited for Jor to finish.

The efficiency gain was overwhelming. All the while, Jor was being stimulated by Kyle's spirit root as well. When the refinement was done, Kyle guided the mana down from the middle dantian into the lower dantian.

'Hm...'

For the past week, he'd been working to circulate mana through his Circuits unconsciously, and it still wasn't coming naturally. Only the weight of a past life's experience was carrying him through.

That was fine. There was a certain pleasure in doing something you hadn't yet mastered. Kyle kept his focus on the Primordial Chaos Art.

'What is that...?'

From the moment Kyle began running the technique, Bruno had been watching in blank silence.

'Wasn't he running the Revolving Heaven Strike?'

That's what he'd heard a week ago. But the mana shimmering around Kyle right now wasn't the Thunder Energy that came with a lightning spirit root. To be precise, it wasn't only Thunder Energy flowing through him.

'The mana... it's all mixed together...?'

Bruno had heard from Barkas that Kyle's spirit root wasn't a simple lightning root, but the part about the Chaos Spirit Root hadn't been passed along.

He hesitated, then dropped heavily into a seat. He closed his eyes and began running his own technique.

Both arms still wore the bracelets from yesterday, the ones that disrupted mana flow. Whether this would actually do anything, he had no idea, but he recalled what Kyle had said.

[Be flexible, Pig.]

Ignoring the blocked Circuits, he pushed mana through others. It wasn't easy. In the five years since his spirit root and Circuits had awakened, Bruno had always moved mana according to the technique. Forcing it through Circuits that had never been used was like prying them open,dried and withered as they were,and the pain that flooded through him was enormous.

"Ugh..."

Bruno swallowed his groans and kept his focus on the mana. Kyle cracked one eye open and looked at him. Something faintly approving in the glance, that the boy was actually trying something on his own.

The whole morning passed in cultivation. Kyle rose, drenched in sweat, but Bruno was worse. He'd been grunting and writhing the entire time. Not once had he stopped.

"How is it?"
"It... it hurts like hell. Can't move..."
"Stop whining and get up."

Kyle picked up the wooden sword from the Cultivation Chamber.

"Get out your greatsword."
"W, wait, you want to spar? With that wooden sword?"

Bruno looked rattled, but Kyle didn't budge. Bruno lurched to his feet and drew the same greatsword as yesterday.

"I doubt your father sent you without conditions. What did he say?"
"H, he didn't set any conditions."
"Don't lie. Tell me straight."

Kyle pressed, and Bruno's mouth finally opened.

"Once a year... he said he'd assess how much I'd changed."
"And if he wasn't satisfied?"
"..."
"What. You worried I'll feel pressured? I won't. Just say it."
"He said he'd disown me."
"Ha."

He'd expected Barkas to put some condition on it, but disownment? A short, hollow laugh, and Kyle shook his head.

"Then you'd better work hard, unless you actually want to be disowned. Do you?"
"Don't be ridiculous...!"
"Right. Then come at me."

The words landed, and something in Kyle shifted completely. Same as a week ago. One look at him standing there with his sword, and Bruno's face went white.

Those eyes. Eyes that didn't see the person across from them as a peer or an enemy, that held no killing intent, that looked ready to cut through a human body with nothing but mechanical indifference. Bruno was already soaked through, and cold sweat broke over him now. He couldn't even properly raise the greatsword. His whole body shook.

"Pig."

Kyle spoke. Flat eyes, terrible pressure radiating from him, and yet his voice was exactly as calm as always.

"Your father isn't here to push you from behind right now. The step you take has to come from your own will."
"Ugh... ugh..."
"I won't move. I'll just stand here until you take a step and swing at me. I won't just let you hit me, though. If you swing, I'll counter."

The quiet words made Bruno tremble harder. Just the gaze and the pressure alone conjured a dozen different deaths. If he actually swung at Kyle, and Kyle countered...

Bruno's jaw knocked together. He knew what was in Kyle's hand was a plain wooden sword. It didn't look plain.

"Pig. Overcome your fear. If you want to keep holding a sword, you'll spend the rest of your life meeting people just like this. As long as you don't put that sword down, you'll be swinging at others, and others' blades will be coming back at you."
"..."
"I'm not saying go numb to it. I'm saying beat it. Even afraid, if you hold a sword, you have to move forward and swing. Be furious at yourself for shaking right now. Be furious at me for making you afraid."

He was listening. But Bruno could not take a step. Just standing across from Kyle was enough for fear to gnaw through whatever resolve he had.

In the end, he couldn't hold. He sank where he stood. He'd tried to last through it on will and grit alone, but his body and mind were already spent, and they refused him.

"Ugh...!"

Sitting on the floor, Bruno grabbed his own legs. His face was twisted with self-loathing and rage in equal measure.

"Well done."

He'd braced for a scolding. What came out of Kyle's mouth was nothing like it.

"Well... done?"
"You didn't run, and no one was there to stop you."

Kyle reached a hand down toward him.

"Did you honestly think you'd be able to charge at me on the first day?"
"..."
"Just holding your ground was enough. Every time you come here from now on, I'll do the same thing. And if you manage even one step..."

Kyle grinned.

"That alone will be enough to satisfy Uncle Barkas."

At the end of it, a person wields the sword. Bruno didn't need to learn some entirely different technique. If his spirit changed, his sword would change with it.

Bruno stared at the outstretched hand, hesitated, then grabbed it and stood.

"Th... thank you."
"Don't thank me. Pig, I'm going to wash up, eat, and head to the Great Archive."
"Oh... okay."
"You wash up and eat before you leave."
"Wh... what? Stay and eat?"
"Why. You don't want to?"
"No, I just..."

He just hadn't expected to be fed.

"I'm washing up first."

Kyle headed out of the Cultivation Chamber.

In a past life he'd lived as a mercenary, and on campaigns there were long stretches without bathing. But ten years of growing up in a wealthy household had done something to him. Now, not washing off the sweat immediately left him feeling wrong.

A year passed. Bruno had given everything he had, and in the end, Barkas disowned him.

He was no longer Bruno Alastor,just Bruno now,and he left the Sword Tower where he'd lived for sixteen years, bound for his mother's estate abroad.

"Congratulations, Bruno. It was a hard year."
"I wasn't disowned."

Bruno shot back, face twisted.

"Father said I passed."
"See. Told you he wouldn't disown you."

Kyle's gloating had Bruno's clenched fist shaking, and then he exhaled hard.

"That's because of you."
"Some of it is. But you did the work."

Not a single day in that year had Bruno skipped coming to the Rose Mansion, and he hadn't missed a session at the training hall either.

The altered sword style had been unfamiliar at first, and reshaping his mindset hadn't taken root quickly, so his training marks dipped in the early months. Somewhere in the middle of it all, the decline reversed. His name now sat on the list of Apprentice Knight appointment candidates.

That wasn't all. The boy who used to tremble so hard at Kyle's pressure that he couldn't raise his sword was now able to creep slowly forward.

'Still can't swing it, though.'

Kyle had been easing up on the pressure, but still, for someone his age to advance on Kyle with a sword in hand was a genuine achievement.

"Did my uncle not send any thanks?"
"He said to bring you by for a meal sometime."
"Eating with your uncle sounds suffocating. I'm not sure I love that idea."
"You're going to disrespect my father's goodwill...?"
"Not disrespect. Just a little uncomfortable. Better than it used to be, though."

Kyle patted Bruno on the shoulder.

"Anyway, well done. Tell your uncle I'll come for that meal soon."
"You'll really come?"
"What's hard about one meal. We're family, even."

Of course, this particular household was bleak in all kinds of ways. The family sitting down to eat together happened maybe once a year, at Julius's birthday.

Even that didn't bring everyone together. Roel and Seros had left to find a treatment that might wake the family matriarch, and only the occasional letter came from them. They still hadn't returned to the Sword Tower.

'My father, that bastard, still hasn't come out either.'

Eleven years of Closed-Door Training with no sign of emerging was too much by any measure. Kyle, as someone who had once lost himself to the sword, had initially felt something like goodwill toward a father who carried the epithet of Sword Fool and had abruptly entered Closed-Door Training, claiming some great insight into the sword. But that had been when he was five.

'I never thought he'd still be in there when I turned eleven.'

At this point, you had to wonder if something had gone wrong and the man had simply died in there. Kyle had long since found it impossible to think of him as a father, even in his own head. Every time he caught Arian sighing quietly, the anger in him burned a little hotter.

'Maybe I should just go find him myself.'

He'd suggested as much to Arian more than once, that they go together, but she had too much pride to go seeking the man out, and every time she refused flatly.

"Hah."

Quietly cursing a father he'd never laid eyes on, known only by name and by epithet, Kyle exhaled.

The year had moved in routine.

Mornings through noon: the Primordial Chaos Art, sword work, the Great Archive to read cultivation texts and refine the technique. The occasional stop at the Sword Hall to show Julius his progress and come away with some gift for his trouble.

Evenings: back to the mansion, testing the latest refinements to the Primordial Chaos Art, crossing swords with Bruno, and before sleep, feeding Jor mana.

Today Bruno had shown up at noon, but it hadn't disrupted anything. Kyle left the mansion and headed for the Great Archive.

"Kyle-nim."

Arriving at the second-floor Great Archive, Kyle's eyes went wide. Lucia stood at the entrance in her uniform, a few others beside her.

"Lucia? What are you doing here?"
"I received the top marks this period, so I've been granted access to the Great Archive."

Knight candidates were assessed once a year, their performance graded and ranked. Pure-bloods like Kyle and Bruno could visit the Great Archive freely, but trainees without pure blood had to earn high marks to gain access.

Even then, it was a single-use pass, and the books they could browse were limited by their achievement. Kyle looked at the three standing beside Lucia. They wore the same trainee uniforms.

"How do you do."

The trainees bowed to Kyle.

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