WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ Reincarnation of the Sword Demon

Chapter 63

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Why Should It Be That Way?

She asked him to teach her the sword.

He had just woken up, but those words snapped Raikal fully awake.

Raikal had loved swords since he was young. Even before his mercenary father taught him, just watching his father and the others swing their blades had given him a vague understanding of how a sword was used.

From the childhood days when he first grabbed a toy sword and played mock duels with kids his age, all the way to now, when people called him the Sword Demon, Raikal had loved that thing called the sword more than anything in the world, and he had loved swinging it more than anything in the world.

"A sword... a sword?"

Raikal sat up in bed and stared at the little elf.

It was the kid he had picked up at the slave market about a month ago.

He had not gone to that slave market because he needed slaves.

In this age of war, slave markets were common enough, but the one Raikal had visited a month ago ranked among the top three on the continent. It supposedly had everything: ordinary humans as a baseline, young ladies and sons from ruined noble houses, Demon Tribe people from across the sea, beastfolk and orcs from freedom movements, even rare elves.

Running a market like that took money, sure, but it also took power. The owner had been a former boss of a famous bandit gang, and there were plenty of hired guard knights around him.

Raikal had not gone there to buy slaves, nor because he pitied them and wanted to free them. He had simply heard the man was strong, so he went to fight him once.

In the end, he killed the market owner, killed the guard knights around him, killed plenty of others too, and brought the whole market down. He got a mountain of money out of it, too much to carry, so he ended up roughly splitting it among the freed slaves and sending them off.

"Helenas."

Raikal scratched his head hard and called the little elf's name. The market's only elf child.

He did not know her age. For long-lived elves, age was not a very meaningful number, and Raikal had no desire to confirm whether that kid, who looked around ten, might actually be older than him.

"You want to learn the sword? Are you serious?"
"Yes. I am serious."

Helenas raised the sword in her hand as she answered. It was a real blade, not a wooden one. He did not ask where she got it. There were always swords scattered around Raikal.

"Why the sword? I've never seen an elf swordsman in my life."

It was rare, but he had met elves on battlefields before. Those elves were mages or Spirit Artists, never swordsmen, not one of them.

"Raikal. Just because you have never seen one does not mean elf swordsmen do not exist in this world."
"Hm... maybe that's true."

Raikal nodded and got off the bed. Teach me the sword. He had been hearing that a lot lately, and he did not dislike it. He had learned the sword from his father as a child, and learned plenty on battlefields too. Of course, the people he took as teachers on those fields had never thought of him as a student.

"Follow me."

He picked up Fenris from beside the bed and stepped out of the cabin.

It had been almost twenty years since he started wandering the world with this single jet-black sword. For most of that time, Raikal had lived without a fixed home, going wherever his feet took him, following rumors of battlefields, heading toward places thick with the metallic stench of iron and blood.

Lately, though, he had done something close to settling down. Too many people had started following him around. No matter how much he shook them off, they kept clinging to him.

He had wandered for decades, so part of him felt like resting for a few years. And the age of war had dragged on so long that major wars rarely broke out anymore. The world was in a phase of getting used to war.

"Raikal-nim, you're up?"
"Hyung-nim! Spar to celebrate waking up?"

After tossing rough replies to the voices around him, Raikal led Helenas to a suitable empty patch and stopped.

"Never thought I'd live to see the day I teach swordsmanship to an elf."

With a grin, Raikal lifted Fenris. Teaching an elf, a race that lived for centuries as a matter of course, gave him a strange kind of amusement.

To state the result first.

Helenas had absolutely no Sword Talent.

How bad was it? She could not properly slash from top to bottom, slash from bottom to top, thrust forward, or cut sideways.

Because she could not understand why she should.

"Why should I do that?"

Holding a real sword, Helenas asked.

"I cannot understand. Even if I do not go through all that trouble, if that person is fated to die, they will die on their own anyway. Why must I cut them down with a sword?"
"Because a sword is for killing now someone who'll die on their own someday anyway. You said you want to learn the sword, right? Then you need to know how to end the fate of the one standing in front of you. By cutting off that bastard's head with your sword."
"Why must they die now? Death comes in the end as a natural law. Why should I swing this lump of iron, this sword, to bring that law forward?"

Helenas tilted her head with a look that truly said she did not understand.

"You said! You wanted! To learn! The sword!"

Raikal pounded his chest in frustration, but Helenas's expression did not change at all.

"I want to learn the sword, not killing."
"Killing someone is what a sword is!"
"Ah, I see. A sword is for killing someone. So learning the sword means learning how to kill someone. I understand a little."
"A little...? A little? Is my explanation that hard? Is there really a divide between understanding a little and understanding a lot in what I just said?"
"If I understood a little, it means I still do not understand the rest."
"What's the rest?"
"If a sword is for killing someone, is killing all a sword is? Do you swing your sword only to kill someone?"

Raikal could not answer right away and fell into thought.

The essence of a sword was a weapon for killing people.

'Then... was what I liked killing people?'

No. It wasn't.

When he first swung a sword, there was no one in front of him he needed to kill.

He just liked swords. He liked swinging them. That was all.

"Raikal. Why are you not answering?"
"Quiet. Let me think."

Raikal set his sword down and dropped onto the ground with a thud. Helenas tilted her head and sat neatly on her knees in front of him.

"Raikal. Please teach me the sword. You said you would."
"I did."
"I want to learn the sword."
"I know."
"As far as I know, you are the greatest swordsman. Yet you cannot explain to me what the sword is."
"It's not that I couldn't explain it. I did explain it. You just couldn't take it in."
"Is my head bad?"
"More like it's too good. In a weird direction. You're not on the same wavelength as me."

Raikal scratched his head.

"Why do you want to learn the sword?"
"Because I want to."
"That... what was it? Destiny? Is that why?"
"Yes."

Helenas looked straight up at Raikal with clear eyes.

"The first time I saw your sword, destiny seized me. I told you before. For elves, destiny is not something chosen, it is something that seizes you. I was seized when I saw you swing your sword."
"..."
"At that time, you cut down the jailers beyond the bars. But I was not seized by their deaths. I was seized by your sword itself."

Helenas tilted her head and asked.

"Raikal. You do not swing your sword only to kill someone, do you?"

For a long time, Raikal looked down at Helenas. No, he did not swing only to kill. He swung because he liked swords, because swords were fun.

The problem was that swinging alone was less fun. A sword was most fun when used for what it was meant for. Swing it to kill someone, and that person swings back to avoid dying.

"I don't like murder itself. I actually hate killing weaklings who aren't even holding weapons. But I do like killing strong people. No, that's not exact either. It's not killing the strong that I like, it's crossing swords with them. Killing happens during that process."
"Then is it fine even if the opponent does not die?"
"Depends on the opponent."
"What do you mean?"
"Some bastards get humiliated by defeat, get pissed that they didn't die, and grow stronger. I'm that type too."
"Get pissed? What does that mean?"
"It means you're damn furious."
"If they survived, shouldn't they be grateful? Why are they so furious?"
"Some people see it as humiliation. Me included. I like people like that."
"Hm..."

Helenas tilted her head again, and frustration filled Raikal's chest all over again. A human would have understood this in seconds. Elves could not.

"Are all elves like you?"
"I don't know. I have never met any elf besides my mother."
"Ah, uh... sorry."

Helenas's mother had died fighting a slave merchant group. At Raikal's apology, Helenas gave a faint smile.

"I like that side of you."

Elves were dull in emotion.

Not empty. Elves still had likes and dislikes. They knew joy and knew sorrow. For young Helenas, her mother being murdered before her eyes was clear sorrow.

But emotions like hatred for her mother's killer were faint. Maybe because of that, when Raikal slaughtered the slave merchant group, Helenas had not shown much joy either.

"You don't need to force yourself to understand this topic. Anyway, I like crossing swords with strong people. I don't have to kill them."
"I understand."
"This time, not just a little, but all of it?"
"No, a little."
"Hey... hey!"
"It is a larger little than before."

What kind of answer was that? Raikal calmed his boiling insides and scratched his head hard. It was his first time ever talking to an elf, but he was already thinking this race should never become numerous.

If elves were as many as humans in this world, every human would have died of frustration.

"Raikal. You said you like clashing swords. You said if the opponent survives, it's good because you can fight again later."
"I did."
"Then to you, is the sword a form of bond you make with others?"

A bond.

He had never attached that word to the sword before. But when he looked back, it did seem to fit. Losing to his father with wooden swords. Forming the Crow Mercenary Band and wandering the world with those guys. Losing on the battlefield, running, then charging back in. Letting opponents live, then having them come back for another fight.

All of them were bonds formed through the sword.

"You really have no sword talent."
"Pardon?"
"People with sword talent don't think this hard. They grab it like idiots and just swing first. That's what I did."
"Must everyone with sword talent be like you?"
"No idea. I still haven't seen anyone in this world with more sword talent than me."

Raikal quietly looked into Helenas's eyes. Her clear green eyes reflected him exactly. There was no bloodlust in them, no fighting spirit, no hunger for victory. Only a quiet thirst to understand something.

"But you know."

Raikal lightly tapped her forehead with his finger.

"What you said, that bond thing, even I didn't know that. I've swung a sword for decades and never once thought of it that way."
"Is that so?"
"Yeah. So you don't have sword talent, but you do have a different kind of eye, one that tries to understand the sword. It's weird, though."
"Is weird a compliment?"
"Yeah."

Raikal sprang to his feet and drew his sword. Then, with no technique mixed in at all, he simply swung from top to bottom, so that frustrating little elf could see properly.

Whoosh.

The wind his blade split was unimpressive. It was just a sword, carrying no aura.

"Cut from top to bottom."
"May I ask why?"
"Ask."
"Why do we cut from top to bottom?"
"Because it feels good."

Raikal grinned.

"Raise the sword and bring it down, and the wind splits, right? That sensation is fun and good. That's the whole reason."
"Even if no one dies, it still feels good?"
"Yeah. What I like is... bringing the sword down from above. If there's wind in between, good. If there's a person there, that has its own fun too. Best of all is when it clashes with another sword."

For a long time, Helenas stared at Raikal's sword. Nothing remained on the path the blade had drawn. No one died, no killing intent lingered.

Even so, Raikal was smiling, happy. Helenas rose and lifted her sword. Then, as Raikal had done, she swung from top to bottom.

It was clumsy. Her arm shook, the line was crooked, and the sound of splitting wind did not ring clean.

"It does not feel good. It is not fun."
"Of course not. It was damn awful."
"Were you like this at first too?"
"No. I was good from the start."
"Then was it fun from the beginning?"
"Yeah."

Raikal grinned and stepped behind Helenas. He directly held her arm and corrected her stance, just as his father had done for him when he was young.

"One more time."

Helenas brought it down again. Even with correction, it was barely different from the first time. This damn elf really did not have even a speck of talent for the sword.

"One more time."

She brought it down again. Still clumsy.

"A thousand... no, do it ten thousand times."
"Ten thousand times?"
"Elves live long, right? You've got time to spare, so do it ten thousand times. If that's not enough, do a hundred thousand. If that still isn't enough, do a million."
"What if a million is still not enough?"
"Ten million...? What's after that?"
"I don't know."
"Neither do I. Anyway, do it a lot. Until it's fun for you."

Helenas nodded.

From the memory that surfaced, Kyle smiled before he realized it.

'Helenas really did do it ten thousand times in the end.'

Of course ten thousand was not enough. She did a hundred thousand too.

After that, he did not know. Raikal gave up counting, and Helenas gave up counting too. Still, she never stopped. If he asked whether it was fun, she said it was not. Yet every morning she came to him holding a sword.

[If it isn't fun, you can quit.]
[Fun and destiny are different.]
[Can't you change that destiny?]
[If I meet a destiny greater than the one that has seized me now, then it will change.]

Not long after, the empire's succession war ended, and Raikal died at Ruin Alastor's hand.

'Even after five hundred years, you're still holding a sword. You even built a group called the Sword Church.'

Kyle strode toward the Fourth Training Ground.

'You're not obsessed with Fenris itself. Fenris isn't your destiny. You're probably... seeing my dead sword in Fenris.'

If he was being honest,

he still had no idea how Helenas would react when she heard Fenris had a new owner. Would she get angry? Would she come looking for him in anger? Or would she ignore it and think only about her own destiny?

"What a shame, what a shame."

Kyle muttered sincerely.

'Before being reincarnated like this, I wish I'd turned into a ghost right after dying. Then I could've seen how Helenas reacted to my death.'

Kyle knew a little about what Helenas did five hundred years ago. Before the Sword Church was formed, before she became the Sword Church Master, she challenged Ruin Alastor to reclaim Fenris and lost, then withdrew.

That was not what Kyle was curious about.

What Kyle wanted to know was Helenas's expression.

'I can't picture you angry or crying at all.'

If he had become a ghost, he could have watched her face in real time.

Kyle smacked his lips in regret.

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