WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Reincarnation of the Sword Demon

Chapter 48

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I Want to Return the Favor

“You’re here.”

Fragment’s eyes narrowed as they watched Kyle enter the room.

“It hasn’t even been two full months. Your cloak and boots aren’t worn out yet.”
“Killing and eating more won’t do anything now.”

Kyle strode in, threw off his cloak, and kicked off his shoes. Then he raised both hands like this was routine and said,

“Meat, bathtub, new clothes.”

He got exactly what he asked for. Kyle pulled off his shirt too and dropped to the floor. As he stared at the dozen or so plates piled with huge chunks of meat, drool ran from his mouth.

Fragment let out a dry laugh at the sight and shook their head.

“Are you really Alastor’s young master?”
“If you shut yourself in here for four years, noble or not, everyone ends up like me.”

Without a hint of embarrassment, Kyle reached for a bone with his bare hand. Fragment sighed and pressed a hand to their forehead.

“At least wash your hands first.”
“Hmm. True. I’m heading back outside now, so I should fix the habits I picked up in here.”

Kyle nodded, stood up, and washed his hands clean at the tub faucet.

“Four years...”

For a being like Fragment, less than ten years was usually too short to feel like much.

But these four years were an exception.

It had already been close to five hundred years since they had settled in the Sword Tower. Most of that long time had been spent simply existing, but these recent four years had been busy, exhausting, and one surprise after another.

“You’ve grown a lot.”

Fragment stared at Kyle and muttered.

The one tearing into massive chunks of meat with his bare hands had shot up over the last four years and now stood on the edge between boy and young man.

His face still looked young, but his body was already fully grown. He was over 180 centimeters tall, broad-shouldered, and packed with dense muscle from head to toe without an ounce of fat. Those springy yet solid muscles looked like even a blade would fail to cut in.

In truth, unless it was an exceptional famed sword, it likely couldn’t leave a scratch on Kyle’s body. He had built that body by eating Dregs and Byproducts for four years.

...

His body alone carried the danger of a beast no one should provoke, yet his eyes were calm and still. Fragment quietly studied the golden eyes under his messy red hair.

‘Hm...!’

Calm, silent, and so deep there seemed to be no end. Four years in the Mudflat had left the abyss of the deep sea in Kyle’s gaze. One moment they looked brilliant like gold, the next like chaos with everything mixed together. Fragment could only swallow dryly as they looked at those eyes.

‘He’s already moving beyond human...’

After stuffing himself with Dregs and Byproducts, some change was expected, but this much in only four years sent a chill through Fragment. Even among Alastor’s adults who had reached higher layers, very few had gone this far beyond human standards.

At only fifteen, he had crossed that human line by choice.

Fragment could no longer call Kyle a little kid.

“What are you staring at? Don’t tell me you fell for me.”

Kyle grinned and threw out the joke between bites. His voice had changed over four years, but his shameless tone had not.

“Don’t say disgusting things.”

Fragment clicked their tongue and shook their head.

Kyle wasn’t the only one who had changed.

Now fully materialized, Jormungandr, Kyle’s unique spirit, had been born a lightning spirit but was no longer merely that. Wrapped in murky violet, it swallowed chunks of meat in one bite.

Spirits ate mana, not food. They took shape based on their attribute, but they could not materialize like living creatures.

That was the natural order, yet this spirit materialized as if it were nothing and chewed meat. To Fragment, that spirit was as astonishing as Kyle himself.

“If killing and eating more means nothing, then your physical development is done. Are you leaving now?”
“Is the cultivation method complete?”
“It was completed long ago. I just didn’t give it to you because you weren’t ready.”
“No wonder your desk’s been empty since my last visit. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You didn’t ask.”

Fragment smirked and raised a finger. A fist-sized crystal sphere dropped out of thin air.

“What’s that?”
“Your cultivation method.”
“It doesn’t look like a book.”
“It’s too difficult to record in text, so I stored only the principles.”

Fragment pushed the crystal sphere on their palm toward Kyle. It floated over and stopped in front of him.

“A cultivation method that has never existed in this world and never will again, made for you alone.”
“What’s it called?”
“I didn’t name it. You do.”
“Hmm. The name I originally had was Primordial Chaos Art. But using the same name sounds boring... I’ll take a look first and decide. How do I learn it?”
“Inject your mana into the crystal sphere,” Fragment said.

“Then it will resonate naturally and guide your mana back into your body. Do that, and the principles engraved inside will imprint onto you. You’ll gradually understand the method.”
“So I can’t hit grand mastery right away?”
“I completed this cultivation method, but whether you reach grand mastery depends on you. If your standard for ‘grand mastery’ is very low, you might understand it and master it the moment it’s imprinted.”
“Then I definitely won’t master it right away.”

Kyle smiled and held the crystal sphere with both hands.

“I don’t even know how high I’ve set my own line right now. It might keep rising as I live.”

Fwaaaaash!

The instant he poured mana into the sphere, brilliant light burst from within.

That light carried information stabbing into his eyes. The nature of mana, the laws of circulation, fusion and separation of attributes. The principles for controlling the world’s many kinds of mana flooded into Kyle’s mind.

It was a truth that did not separate mage from martial artist, and far too vast and difficult for a human to receive and embody. A wingless human cannot understand moving wings to fly, nor even grasp the sensation, and the information from the crystal sphere was that kind of thing.

But Kyle understood. All kinds of mana already dwelled in his Spirit Root, and he had already become certain that harmonizing those manas inside his body to form a universe was possible through his tightly linked, complex Circuits.

Without blinking once, Kyle stared into the light.

Mana flowing from the crystal sphere burrowed into Kyle’s hands. It raced through the misshapen Circuits he had forcibly widened and linked over four years.

No blockages. No breaks. Kyle’s Circuits were countless, but all were connected, now a single path. As mana flowed and circulated through that path, each full cycle took a different route and direction.

‘This is...’

Kyle’s eyes trembled.

‘A sword path.’

He closed his shaking eyes. In the darkness, hundreds of lines were drawn. Thrusting, cutting, blocking, deflecting, countering. Every trajectory of flowing mana felt like a sword path.

The force that gathered in the dantian then burst outward was a draw strike. It curved along the Circuits, rose to the middle dantian and cut, dropped and cut downward, bent sideways into a thrust, then returned to the lower dantian where mana condensed and sheathed.

“Ahh...”

An exclamation slipped from Kyle’s lips.

He was thrilled. This method was not just a way to accumulate mana. The operation of mana itself was synchronized with swinging a sword.

Move mana like breathing, swing the sword like breathing.

Dark violet aura rose from Kyle’s body.

All attributes were mixed together, yet it was bound by none of them. Because it contained everything, it could become anything, and through its own harmony it formed a world, a universe.

That chaos circulated through Kyle’s body.

Crack!

The crystal sphere crumbled into powder.

Kyle slowly opened his eyes. Deep in his golden gaze, the thousands of freshly imprinted sword paths shone like stars.

“How is it?” Fragment asked, voice full of anticipation.

“Do you like it?”
“...”

Kyle didn’t answer right away. He looked down at his hand.

It felt as if Sword Qi had settled into every fingertip. A tremor ran through him, as if his whole existence had been reborn as a single sword.

“This is both a cultivation method and a sword art.”

At that answer, Fragment’s eyes shook. They had designed it with him in mind, but never expected him to grasp that the moment he began.

“I thought you were something like a mage. But you’re deeply versed in the sword too.”
“What a ridiculous bastard...”

Fragment let out a dry laugh and shook their head.

“To think you’d pierce straight through its mystery right at entry...”
“Yeah, Primordial Chaos Art won’t work as the name.”

Kyle chuckled and brushed the powder from his hand.

“Everything mixes into one sword, so I’ll call it Primordial Chaos Sword Canon.”

Kyle said that and stood.

“How about a spar?”
“I am not a swordsman. Nor do I want to be one.”

Fragment’s face twisted.

“I am well-versed in sword arts not because I am a swordsman. My True Body had no small interest in swords... and the Sword Tower where I stayed for five hundred years was full of lunatics obsessed with swords. I have never swung one myself as a swordsman.”
“So your theory is airtight. Then maybe you’d still be pretty good with a sword?”
“Say what you like, I have no intention of holding a sword. Swords are sickening and cursed.”
“You made a cultivation method for me.”
“That was for the deal we made.”

After hearing that much, pressing further felt pointless. Kyle swallowed his disappointment and picked up his wooden sword.

The wooden sword Lucia had given him four years ago.

It had held up and served him well, but it was finally at its limit. Kyle quietly stared at the sword that looked ready to break at any moment.

‘This is probably the last time.’

He slowly circulated Primordial Chaos Sword Canon and swung.

Sword Qi formed in an instant and drew sword paths through the air. Fragment’s eyes narrowed as they watched the improvised sword dance.

It was shocking enough that he had pierced the method’s core principles, and what he was showing now was just as shocking. Even if it had been imprinted through the crystal sphere, this was still a method he had just learned, yet he unfolded cultivation and sword art together as if he had known them since birth.

The flowing sword dance stopped.

Crack!

The wooden sword, already at its limit, reached the end of its life with that final dance. Kyle briefly mourned the broken blade.

“You said that in return for completing the cultivation method, you wanted me to grant a request. What request?”
“I told you then as well. I’d tell you when I judged you were ready.”
“So I’m still not ready?”
“Yes.”
“What kind of huge request are you planning to make?”

Kyle smirked and walked to the bathtub. He had eaten and received the cultivation method, so now it was time to bathe. He soaked in hot water and stretched out, and Jor, now shrunk to about the size of a forearm, wriggled in and dipped into the tub too.

“Why not go out and bathe?”
“I still have one thing left to check out there, so I’ll check that before I leave.”

[Eek?!]

Jor, swishing its tail in the warm water, spun around in shock toward Kyle.

[M-Master, weren’t we leaving right away?!]
“I said I was going back to the room, not leaving.”
[Why? Why?! What else are you doing out there?!]
“There’s something I’m curious about.”

At that answer, Jor trembled, and Fragment, seated on the sofa, stared at Kyle with a puzzled expression.

“What are you curious about?”
“The end of the Mudflat.”
“The end...? I told you before. For you right now, even if you go to the end of the Mudflat, it has no meaning. You’re not ready to move to the next layer.”

The end of the Mudflat connected to the seventh floor of the Cultivation Floors, but Kyle had never gone there. He had felt no need to enter the next layer, and he wasn’t prepared to keep Aura Shield up all day.

“What I’m curious about is the opposite side.”

Fragment’s expression hardened at Kyle’s answer.

“At the outer end of the Mudflat, a giant hand scoops up the sea and creates the Flood Tide, right? So what’s at the inner end?”
“...”
“I want to know how far the sea pushed in from outside keeps flowing. And what’s at that end. So...”
“So you want to see it with your own eyes?”
“Yes.”
“Stop.”

Fragment sighed and pressed a hand to their head.

“If you truly go out and force your way to see that inner end, then I, too, will truly forcefully stop you.”
“Even if I’m just going to look?”
“There is nothing there. No... there is something, but you can never reach it.”
“Why?”
“Because artificial infinity is at work on the inner side. Even if you run at full power, you will never reach it. If you truly want to reach that place, you would have to climb against infinity itself. But right now, you cannot defy infinity.”

It was a baffling answer. Kyle tilted his head, and Fragment sighed again and added,

“It means this: just as the incoming sea cannot reach the inner end, neither can you. If you force it... you could end up drifting forever in the middle of infinity.”
“Then what happens?”
“You would live forever in infinity, never aging, never dying. Even if the inside of infinity were observed from outside, wherever one looks is only infinity, so you would have to escape by your own power.”
“Then I could swing a sword forever too, never aging and never dying.”

Kyle scooped water with both hands and fired a stream at Jor.

Fragment’s mouth fell open at that insane response.

“You... crazy bastard. What’s the point of swinging a sword forever with no opponent?”
“Alone, no opponent, purely immersed in the sword, that might still be pretty fun, no? If I swing long enough, maybe I can escape by my own strength.”
“Crazy bastard...!”
“First time I’ve heard you say bastard instead of guy.”
“If you force your way inward...! I will truly stop you. If you drift into infinity, you won’t be able to keep your promise to me!”
“When you say stop me, you mean subdue me, right? With a sword?”

At that bright question, Fragment finally snapped, leaped to their feet, strode over, and smacked Kyle hard on the head.

“Okay, okay. I won’t go, so don’t get mad.”
“Huff... huff...”
“I only wanted to go because I was curious about the inside, but after what you said, I can’t go right now. I’m more curious about the outside anyway.”

Rubbing his aching head, Kyle clicked his tongue.

After finishing his bath and putting on new clothes, Kyle didn’t go out right away. He sat in the room for a while, thinking.

“What are you doing? Why aren’t you leaving?”
“I’m going out after four years, so it feels weird to go empty-handed. I’m taking gifts.”
“Hmm. I do not understand human emotions well... but your family will probably see it as a gift already that you returned with all your limbs intact.”
“Sure, but if a gift-like son and grandson comes back carrying actual gifts, won’t they like it even more?”

He especially needed to make up a lot of the affection he’d left unpaid with Julius over the last four years. From now on, he needed to focus on filling the internal force in his dantians.

“And I made good use of this in here too, so I want to return the favor.”

Kyle said that while looking at the fragments of the broken wooden sword.

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