Reincarnation of the Sword Demon - Chapter 38

WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

◈ Reincarnation of the Sword Demon

Chapter 38

──────

Who Are You?

During his time holed up in the Great Archive, Kyle had seen the knight trainees of Gladiheim on plenty of occasions, but never exchanged more than a greeting with any of them.

The reason was simple. Kyle was always planted at a desk with a book in front of him, and the trainees who'd been granted archive access were always scrambling through the shelves against the clock.

This time was a little different. The three who had come with Lucia were staring at Kyle, eyes bright with undisguised curiosity.

"Did you have something to say to me?"

As pure-blood Alastor, he was well within his standing to speak casually to trainees, but Kyle chose honorifics for now. Dropping formalities on a first meeting felt rude.

"Please, speak however you like."

One of the trainees bowed sharply, startled. Only after hearing that did Kyle nod.

"So. Something to say?"

"We've, we've heard a lot about you from Lucia."

The girl with the short hair said it haltingly. Heard what? Kyle tilted his head and glanced at Lucia, who puffed out her chest like she was proud of something.

"I've told them many times how remarkable Kyle-nim is."

"Me? What did I do?"

"Bruno-nim, who received your correction, not only improved his training results, but his standing among the trainees changed dramatically as well. And hasn't Kyle-nim's help also played a large part in sharpening my sword?"

"I don't know about Bruno, but what exactly did I do for your sword? Your sword is sharp because of the Elders' teaching and because you're talented."

"The repeated sparring with Kyle-nim was also a great help."

Lucia said it stubbornly. She wasn't wrong. After losing to Kyle six years ago, she had thrown herself into swordsmanship with even greater intensity. In those early days when she had almost no sparring partners, the repeated bouts against Kyle had meant a great deal.

She felt it sharply: Kyle's sword was extraordinary in a way that strained belief. As he had said, she was learning from the Elders of the Sword Tower.

Of course the Elders were formidable. Over fifty years they had poured into the sword. But Kyle's sword was no lesser. Lucia couldn't yet put that greatness into words, but her talent recognized in him the same suffocating wall she felt when she crossed blades with the Elders themselves.

"If you're not busy, could you recommend some sword arts to my classmates?"

"Hmm."

Kyle thought for a moment. Nelia was the archivist, but she only helped locate books, not match them to a person. She had no way of knowing which sword arts or cultivation methods the trainees had already studied, so that was unavoidable.

"Alright. Let's head to the Cultivation Chamber first."

He'd have to become a knight of Gladiheim someday, so building ties with the trainees early on did no harm. These were the elites ranked second through fourth after Lucia, on top of that, and he was curious about their level.

Following Kyle's lead, Lucia and the trainees made their way to the Great Archive's Cultivation Chamber. There, Kyle drew the wooden sword he'd brought and faced each of them in turn.

He didn't flood the air with pressure the way he had against Bruno. That would have left them unable to even see the blade. The trainees hesitated at first to swing at him, but Lucia prodded them hard enough, and they did.

"This, this can't be..."

They had heard about the pure-blood youngest's genius until their ears ached. Crossing swords made the stories feel like an understatement. Every direction looked like an opening, but when they struck, the openings weren't openings. And no matter how firmly they defended, the defense didn't hold.

The three ranked second through fourth among the fourteen-year-old trainees put their swords down in utter deflation. They could only concede. Would Aura have changed things? Even that, they couldn't say for certain. Their eyes wavered at the thought.

"Hmm."

Kyle rubbed his chin and thought for a moment. Their skill was excellent, all three of them. To be blunt, setting aside pure swordsmanship, they were roughly on par with last year's Bruno, maybe a touch better.

"What tier sword arts have you been cleared for?"

"Tier four."

Over the past year, Kyle had been working through the tier-three cultivation texts, weaving them into the Primordial Chaos Art, while using spare time to read through the tier-four sword art texts. The Great Archive had more books than he'd fully gotten through yet, but picking the right sword arts for these three was well within reach.

He stepped out of the Cultivation Chamber at once, searched the tier-four shelves, pulled three texts, and handed them over. The trainees took them with bright expressions, no skepticism to speak of.

Their time in the archive was limited. They'd never been in before, so there was no text they'd had in mind, and roaming the vast shelves pulling out and reading sword art texts one by one would have burned through that time badly. Getting a recommendation right when they needed it, they all bowed their heads in thanks.

"How much have you been praising me?"

Even so, it was odd. Elites with no small amount of pride, accepting sword art texts from someone they'd met today for the first time, without even flinching. Kyle glanced back at Lucia, who was trailing along behind him rather than staying with the trainees.

"I only said what I've seen and experienced."

"It's not me they trust. It's you."

"That's also true. I'm stronger than those three."

Lucia answered plainly. She had no interest in the shelves and only followed at Kyle's heels, then sat across from him at the desk where he'd settled with his cultivation texts.

"Don't you need to pick something?"

"I have a sword art I'm working on separately."

"Then why are you here?"

"I was curious what Kyle-nim does in the archive."

Those red eyes fixed on him, clear and intent. Kyle smiled faintly and turned the covers of his books toward her. All cultivation texts. Lucia blinked.

"You weren't only reading sword arts."

"I do read those. Cultivation texts more, though."

"Aren't sword arts more useful as reference?"

"They're useful, and they make me hungry for more. But I have to do this first."

Lucia tilted her head at that. Being a Demon Tribe Half-blood, she didn't awaken something called a spirit root the way humans did. She had known how to work with mana by instinct from the moment she was born.

Cultivation texts weren't useless to her. They were techniques for handling mana more efficiently. She simply wasn't constrained by a spirit root.

That was precisely why she found it hard to understand Kyle's obsession with cultivation texts. The humans she had watched weren't like this.

"I naturally assumed Kyle-nim had been reading the sword art texts and deepening his understanding of the sword through them."

"Insight doesn't always come from reading."

"Then where does it come from?"

"From swinging the sword."

Kyle turned a page and added one more thing.

"From loving the sword."

Love. The word made Lucia blink several times. She found it hard to grasp.

She had no memories before the age of five. The earliest one she held was walking barefoot along the northern shoreline below the Blade Mountain Range, wrapped in a length of bright red cloth.

After walking the white sands for a long while, she'd been found by the Aurora Knights and brought into Gladiheim. She had an audience with Katarina, the Aurora Knights' captain, and later met Julius himself, who had come when word reached him that a Demon Tribe Half-blood had been found. She was given temporary permission to live in Gladiheim's lower district.

Her interest in the sword began because most of Gladiheim's lower district carried one. Here, you were treated according to your skill with a blade. At five, she understood that by instinct, and walked straight up to the soldiers mid-training and asked for a sword.

A Demon Tribe Half-blood of unusual birth, walking up on her own and asking. Out of curiosity, the soldiers lent her a wooden sword.

From that day, Lucia was given permission to live in the Sword Tower. The Elders themselves came forward to teach her. The reason she had first picked up a sword wasn't anything like love. It was simply to be treated well inside these walls, to escape the discrimination and hostility that came with being a Demon Tribe Half-blood, and to be loved.

"..."

That she was born with a gift for the sword, Lucia didn't deny. That was one of the reasons she still swung it. Just, she was born for it. Had that turned into love by now? She couldn't give a clean answer.

She still didn't love the sword. To her, it was a means to be loved and recognized. The dream of becoming a knight was an extension of the same thing. If she became a member of the Funeral Knights, the elite among elites in Gladiheim, no one would look down on her for being Half-blood anymore.

"Seems like loving the sword is a hard idea for you."

Kyle smiled.

"Well, you don't have to. The sword already loves you. But it works both ways, so try to love the sword as much as it loves you."

"I don't really know what love is."

Lucia thought for a moment, then answered. Arms crossed, expression serious, she looked every bit the girl caught in that tender, unsettled age where life starts throwing too many questions at once.

"If you don't know love, you'll learn it as you go. Is it that hard? From now on, before you swing your sword, tell it you love it. Say it before you sleep. Say it when you wake up."

"Does Kyle-nim do that too?"

"Me? I don't need to. The sword already loves me, and I already love it."

"At the end of the day, a sword is just a blade. It's the person holding it that swings it."

"Right. So loving the sword is, in the end, loving the self that swings it."

That only made things hazier for Lucia.

"If 'love the sword' is too much to wrap your head around, stand in front of a mirror with your sword and say it there."

He had nothing more to offer her. Her swordsmanship? Nothing to criticize. The Elders' instruction was excellent, and Lucia herself had the drive to grow. The moment he tried to point something out, she would already be asking for a sparring match and filling in the gap herself before he even opened his mouth. That was Lucia.

Left to grow as she was, she would become a strong swordswoman. Self-love had to be born on its own, when she chose to love the sword and herself. That wasn't something Kyle could draw out of her. She might feel a restless itch for a while, but loved by the sword the way she already was, someday she would grow thirsty enough to love it in return.

"..."

Lucia said nothing more, arms still crossed, lost in thought. Kyle turned back to his cultivation text.

In truth, he was in no position to be giving anyone answers.

For the past year, he had poured himself into various cultivation texts, chasing the completion of the Primordial Chaos Art, and still no end was in sight.

'There's no one I can ask about this, either.'

When it came to the sword, he felt he knew what he knew. But spirit roots, Circuits, the mana management that came with cultivation texts, so much of that remained dark to him. All of it rested on the particular qualities he'd been born with, which made even consulting Julius or Nelia difficult.

'I've been pushing through and correcting as I go, but it's starting to hit a wall.'

Still, it wasn't pure stagnation. Building from the Revolving Heaven Strike, he had been mixing in management principles from various cultivation texts. Jor, coiled in the middle dantian core, had started out finger-sized. Now far larger. The mana in the lower dantian had grown dramatically as well.

Kyle was certain: among the tier-three cultivation texts in the Great Archive, none surpassed this incomplete Primordial Chaos Art in mana accumulation efficiency. Drawing on the Chaos Spirit Root's potential rather than a single element's spirit root, it had to be that way.

Satisfaction wouldn't come, though. He had been reincarnated, born into this grand family with a capable body and exceptional gifts, and he wanted to reach the peak he'd never touched in his past life.

After a long stretch of focused reading, Kyle lifted his head. Time had slipped away, and the seat across from him was empty, Lucia gone.

In her place, four slips of paper lay on the table. One from Lucia, saying she'd gone on ahead, and three from the trainees, thanking him for the recommendations. Kyle smiled and tucked the notes into his pocket.

By the routine he'd kept for a year, it was time to return to the mansion. But today left him with something still unfinished, so he lingered a while longer, wandering the shelves, then stepped into the Cultivation Chamber.

He wanted to run the Primordial Chaos Art with everything today had added. Not at ordinary operation. Pushed further. If he collapsed in the mansion's cultivation room, Arian's eyes would roll back in her head, so this was the better place for it.

"Jor."

At the call, Jor responded. Emerging from the middle dantian into the real world, Jor was now the size of a forearm, its color nothing like the original violet. Wrapped in light of every hue, those eyes gleamed as they looked up at Kyle.

[Yes, Master.]

Not just the body that had grown. Mental maturity had followed. Jor no longer stumbled over words, and the childish speech was gone.

[Is it feeding time?]

The manner of speaking was just a little more composed. That was all. Kyle stroked Jor's head while it blinked up at him.

"I'll feed you later. If I collapse here, go outside and call Nelia-nim. Understood?"

[Understood.]

Jor nodded. With that confirmed, Kyle sat on the Chamber floor and focused on the Primordial Chaos Art. Without being told, Jor slipped back into the middle dantian and readied itself to refine mana.

Whoom...!

The Chamber's mana began flowing into Kyle's body. Pushing harder than usual meant a heavier flood, and the flow through the Circuits was fierce. He held his concentration through the pain flaring across his body.

His body started shaking on its own. The raging torrent inside felt like it was going to tear him apart. Kyle's mind guided the Primordial Chaos Art to keep that from happening. The spirit root, roused by the technique's violent operation, sent hunger down to the lower dantian, and mana that passed through the middle dantian cascaded into the lower dantian like a waterfall.

The already vast hollow swallowed it. The lower dantian, expanded over a year, kept drinking. Insatiable. On and on. As mana poured in, his body shook harder.

This much was within what he'd anticipated. He intended to go further. More reckless than anything in his past life.

[Master, is this right?]

Jor's voice from the middle dantian was nearly a scream. The mana was coming in faster and heavier than anything before. Jor was refining with everything it had, but unease surged at whether this was allowed at all. Instinct said this would break a human body.

'No idea.'

The pain spread through every inch of him. The torrent battered his Circuits. His thoughts stayed perfectly calm.

His body held an almost unbelievable number of Circuits. He wanted far more than even that.

Mana management through cultivation was constrained by the Circuits. Kyle's were vast, that was true. But each remained separate, distinct from the others. Rather than finding the optimal and shortest path through a vast network of separate channels, he wanted to fuse them directly together, so the optimal and shortest route would come by instinct.

If it worked, the Primordial Chaos Art would leap forward.

Holding that thought, he pushed the technique harder. Drove it further.

"What an idiot."

A voice came out of nowhere, clicking its tongue. Before he could even open his eyes, someone placed a hand on his back.

'Who is that?'

A voice he had never heard before. And placing a hand on someone mid-cultivation.

Dangerous beyond description. But his instincts didn't read danger. Whoosh...! The pain softened, and an energy almost cool to the touch seeped in.

The torrent settled. The flow didn't slow. This unknown energy guided Kyle's mana with startling ease, as if it had always known the way.

One full circuit of mana completed. Kyle opened his eyes and turned around.

Someone he had never seen before stood behind him.

Or, well. Was this even a person?

"Who are you?"