WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Reincarnation of the Sword Demon

Chapter 64

──────

Thank You for Your Effort

"Kyle-nim."

Before they reached the Fourth Training Ground, Lucia spoke carefully.

"There will probably be a lot of applicants. Your duel with Jenafelt-nim was too impactful."
"The more, the better. That gives me a wider pool to choose from."
"You said you would pick only one person. What exactly is your standard?"

Kyle kept walking and thought for a moment. A standard. He had said it would be enough if he liked their sword, but explaining exactly what kind of sword he liked was not easy.

'It was the same back then too.'

Just like when he tried to explain the sword to Helenas and realized things he himself had never been conscious of. The more he understood the sword, the harder it became to put into words.

"I'll know when I see it."
"Well, you would."

Bruno grumbled.

"You're saying you'll judge all those people by yourself?"
"Yeah."
"How many days are you planning to spend on this?"

Bruno asked with a baffled look. By then, they were close to the Fourth Training Ground, and just as Lucia had said, nearly a hundred people had gathered there. It was not just young martial artists from the Exchange Tournament, but also Apprentice Knights who still had not chosen an order.

"Days? It'll be done in half a day."
"Half a day...? How are you even planning to judge them?"
"I'll make them swing their swords."

At that answer, Lucia nodded with quiet admiration, but Bruno and Jade still looked like they did not understand at all. Kyle did not feel frustrated by those expressions. Remembering Helenas had helped. Compared to her, Bruno and Jade were understandable enough.

"I don't need to see it many times. Once is enough."
"Commander, can you really tell anything from one swing?"
"I can tell a lot."

Kyle's eyes briefly drifted into the distance. The moment Helenas had first brought her sword down from above flashed in his mind.

"If you watch one swing, you can roughly see the person too."

Jade and Bruno frowned. They were trying to understand what he meant.

"Then when you saw my sword back then, did you see something too? Did you figure anything out?"
"Back then, I saw nothing in your sword."
"What...?"
"I saw nothing, and nothing was decided yet. In the sword you swung then, there was no you. There was only the kind of sword you learn by being told what to do."
"..."
"You've been filling it in since then, so now your sword has you in it."

Bruno looked like he half understood and half didn't. Jade giggled at that expression.

"The way you're saying it, it sounds like you saw me very clearly in my sword."
"That's why you're here."

When Kyle and his group returned to the Fourth Training Ground, everyone's eyes locked onto him. He strode through the path that opened before him and stopped in front of the applicants.

"Let's form a line first."

At those words, Lucia moved quickly. As the applicants lined up in single file at her signal, Kyle lightly tapped Fenris.

Black mist rippled, and a wolf appeared. Kyle looked at Fenris with curious eyes and whispered,

"You take a look too."

There was a chance someone among them had a connection with a Dokkaebi. It did not absolutely have to be there, but like Gallen, if a tool had a Dokkaebi dwelling in it, that meant they had used and cherished it that much. If there were several good candidates, choosing the one with a Dokkaebi would not be a bad option.

The applicants finished lining up. Lucia, now standing naturally beside them, spoke.

"First applicant, please step forward to Kyle-nim."

The first young man walked out with stiff, nervous steps. He was one of the young martial artists from the Exchange Tournament. From his clothes, he looked like he came from a noble family.

"Your name?"
"Reiss Wolfgen."
"Good. Swing your sword once."
"O-once?"
"Yes. Once is enough."

Confusion flickered in Reiss's eyes. Once? What could anyone possibly tell from just one swing? He thought it inwardly, but he could not ask.

Kyle's image from the duel with Jenafelt was still vivid in his mind. Everything he had seen then had become Kyle's authority here. Reiss steadied his breathing and drew his sword.

"Can I swing it any way I want?"
"Swing it the way you're most confident. No need to infuse Aura."

Reiss nodded, then swung from right to left.

'Not bad.'

Kyle gave a short evaluation in his mind. The posture was neat, and the sword path was clean, without waste. A sword faithfully trained from what he had learned under someone else. He had likely learned as a good student from a good teacher.

That was all. It was a textbook sword, and it did not go beyond that.

Kyle did not know who Reiss Wolfgen was. Of course this was the first time he had seen his sword.

Did he want to know more because he knew nothing? Did he want to see more of that sword?

He did not. What Reiss had just shown gave Kyle no curiosity and no interest.

"Thank you. Next."
"Second applicant, please step forward to Kyle-nim."

The moment Kyle spoke, Lucia immediately called the next person. Reiss hesitated for a moment, then moved aside. He wanted to ask how it had gone, but he could not. Reiss was not that clueless. He had clearly seen Kyle's eyes change between before and after the swing.

"Eric Schrieter."

The second was a large man carrying a greatsword. His swing was full of power, too full, to the point of excess.

The overhead slash left a scar in the training ground floor. He had not even infused Aura, yet it did that much. The applicants gasped at the destructive force.

'If the floor breaks, do I have to fix it?'

Thinking that, Kyle judged the sword he had just seen. The force in it was impressive, but he saw nothing beyond force. It had the roughness of hammering a nail. In Eric's sword, he saw more blunt weapon than blade.

"Next."
"Third applicant, please step forward to Kyle-nim."

Third, fourth, fifth.

The line shrank fast. Naturally. He was deciding after one look. The screening moved quickly, but Kyle's eyes took in every sword that passed.

The thirteenth person's sword was too timid. It was natural that it lacked killing intent because this was not a real fight, but even so, it was so dull he could not feel any sharpness at all. If someone had not even the slightest will to cut another person, why had they come to join a knight order?

The twenty-second person's sword was fairly good. It clearly contained himself, and it had direction. But it did not go as far as sparking Kyle's curiosity.

From the thirty-seventh person's sword, Kyle could feel that he liked swords. That was welcome, but that liking was not for the sword itself, it was for himself when he swung it well. That kind of narcissism collapsed too easily the moment he could no longer swing well.

Fifty-ninth.

'This one is good enough for the shortlist.'

Kyle nodded inwardly. The way the sword path bent in a single swing was interesting. It was like wielding a sword as if it were a whip, and if linked continuously, it would create a unique rhythm.

"Seventieth applicant, please step forward to Kyle-nim."

The person who strode out looked different from everyone before her. Dark brown skin, long black hair braided down her back. Black tattoos were carved across her bare arms and shoulders.

Kyle remembered those tattoos. Tribespeople who lived on the Avara Plateau at the southern tip of the continent.

Five hundred years ago, one southern kingdom had tried to use the chaos of war to expand its territory. Even in that kind of conquest war, rulers usually needed a pretext to shout at neighboring kingdoms, but five hundred years ago was already total war. No pretext was needed.

That southern kingdom tried to swallow the Avara Plateau. The tribes there were insignificant compared to a kingdom army. They had no walls, no trained soldiers and knights, no money to hire mercenaries, and of course no mages.

Yet the tribespeople endured the invasion.

At the time, Raikal had already been called the Sword Demon. He belonged nowhere and simply wandered to battlefields that caught his interest. It had been the same then. He heard there was a large war in the south, so he headed south to swing his sword.

When Raikal arrived, the plateau was in the middle of full war.

The knights' swords were refined and fast. They formed ranks, built formations, and moved by command.

The tribespeople were the exact opposite. The tribes of the Avara Plateau were not one people to begin with. Dozens of tribes lived there, each protecting land passed down from their ancestors. So naturally, compared to the kingdom army, the tribal alliance was a complete mess.

That mess did not get pushed back by the kingdom's forces.

Kyle remembered the tribal warriors he had seen then. Sword, club, spear, axe. Every warrior held a different weapon, but the way they fought looked like a dance.

Unlike the knights, who moved like interlocking gears inside formation, the tribal warriors danced each on their own. Their dances resembled each other, but all were different.

Raikal had stood in the plateau wind and watched that battle blankly. The deep drumbeats the tribespeople pounded. The thick smell of blood carried on the wind. The shouts and screams sounded like a desperate song.

It felt wrong toward those who died there, but Raikal had found the battle before him beautiful.

Raikal joined the war on the tribespeople's side. In the end, the kingdom failed to swallow the plateau, and the troops it had lost in that war became poison, leading to its destruction by neighboring kingdoms.

On the day he watched the retreating invaders' backs, Raikal became a friend of the tribes. He was invited to their feast, drank heavily, and heard many stories.

Avara tribal warriors learned combat as dance. They watched warriors dance before the bonfire, copied those movements, and engraved that dance into their bodies until it became battle technique.

To the tribespeople of the Avara Plateau, fighting was dancing, and stopping the dance was death. They only danced until the moment they died. They did not break.

Raikal had wandered many battlefields, so he knew the laws of war. Victory and defeat were not decided by the number of soldiers and knights alone. A battlefield was a place where dozens with wavering hearts got slaughtered by one person whose heart did not break.

Even if Raikal had not stepped in, that southern kingdom would never have swallowed the Avara Plateau.

'It would've taken longer, but they would've failed in the end.'

Crossing five hundred years of memory, Kyle looked at the woman before him. Why was a tribesperson from that land, who usually spent her life shut away on the plateau, here? That alone stirred strong curiosity in him.

From the southern Avara Plateau to northern Gladiheim. The continent's far south to far north. Kyle glanced at her waist. Two swords hung from her leather belt.

"Name?"
"Narua."
"You came from the south."
"Yeah."

Narua stared straight at Kyle and asked,

"You said swing sword once. Narua has two swords. What do?"
"If they move in one action, it's fine."
"Okay."

Narua nodded and drew both swords. Twin blades. Short crescent-curved blades. The edges were sharp, but the surface of each blade was full of scars. Countless collisions, chips, regrinding, and collisions again.

Kyle smiled faintly. Beyond where she came from, now he was curious how those swords would move.

"Swinging now."

Narua said it aloud. She placed one foot half a step forward and spread both arms wide, like opening wings.

Her left foot slid forward. As her upper body lowered, the right-hand sword flowed to the side. Then the left-hand sword rose from below to above. At the same time, Narua's body spun, the sword that had flowed to the side drew a full circle, and the sword that had risen cut down on a diagonal.

The two swords carved trajectories that split the wind. Fenris, who had crouched beside Kyle through seventy applicants, perked up his ears and sniffed. As he stared at Narua's twin blades, his tail began to sway.

'You see it too, right?'

Something flickered over Narua's swords. It was not a clear shape like the dwarf in Gallen's hammer. It was a crimson-black afterimage flowing over the surface of both blades. It stretched long, even along the paths the swords had just drawn.

'Flame...'

A flame that swayed in the wind but did not go out. The Avara bonfires came to mind, and the tribal dances before them.

The Dokkaebi dwelling in Narua's swords was flame. It flickered as if about to die, but never died. If anything, the harder the wind blew, the more fiercely it burned.

The flame afterimages hanging in the air slowly faded. Gallen's Dokkaebi had chattered endlessly, but Narua's did not speak to Kyle. Maybe that Dokkaebi could not speak either, like Fenris.

Narua sheathed the swords and stared at Kyle. Kyle stared back the same way.

To be honest, Narua's swordsmanship was not the best among all the swords he had screened so far. By pure skill alone, maybe sixth or seventh at best.

But those twin swords held Narua whole. She was not just reproducing what she had learned. She moved like a person whose life itself had become sword. If so, whatever she experienced from here on would change her swords even more.

"Next."

The screening was not over yet. Kyle remembered Narua's name.

"Seventy-first applicant, please step forward to Kyle-nim."

After the screening of all hundred-plus applicants ended, Kyle called the people he had marked.

Four in total. Narua was among them. Those who were not called did not leave right away. They stepped back and watched the remaining test from a distance. They wanted to see which one of the four would be chosen.

"This test is the same as before. Swing your sword."

Not exactly the same. Kyle drew Fenris.

"The difference is, this time you swing at me directly. With full sincerity."

Kyle let Fenris hang at his side. His red hair swayed in the wind, and the smile at his lips looked relaxed as ever.

He had only drawn his sword, but nothing else seemed different. One of the candidates, tilting his head at that sight, stepped forward.

Fifty-ninth. The young man who had swung his sword like a whip.

At that instant, Kyle's atmosphere completely changed. The young man swallowed a gasp without realizing it. Pure killing intent slammed over him, utterly different from the pressure created by releasing mana.

When Kyle fought Jenafelt earlier, he had not shown killing intent. Then, he had been relaxed and merciful. He had even tried to find things worth praising in Jenafelt.

Now he was different. Kyle had truly decided to kill his opponent, Fenris in hand. Even Lucia, standing at his side, could feel how intense that killing intent was.

Lucia swallowed hard and clenched her fists. Her spine turned cold and her heart pounded. It was not even aimed at her, yet it felt like this.

"Ugh..."

The young man somehow drew his sword and formed a stance, but the stance he barely managed began to collapse almost immediately. Kyle stepped toward him. Fenris still hung loosely downward, but the young man imagined that black sword slicing him into hundreds of chunks of meat. The terrible fear that that image would become real any second shredded his mind.

One step.

The young man stepped back. Realizing that fact, his face turned white. He tried to plant his foot forward again, but when Kyle took one more step, his own foot got pushed back again.

"Ugh...!"

He gritted his teeth and forced strength into his legs. But his body did not follow his will. No, it followed his will too well. His will did not want to approach Kyle.

"Thank you for your effort."

Kyle spoke flatly. The young man lowered his pale face.

"Next."

The second candidate came forward. Thirty-seventh. The man who had shown a sword full of narcissism in the first round.

He could not even draw his sword. The moment Kyle poured out killing intent, the man's hand froze on the hilt. His fingers trembled slightly. He tried to draw, but his fingers only shook and failed to grip.

One second, two seconds, three seconds.

As time dragged, sweat formed on his forehead and his face flushed red. His narcissism collapsed and shame seized him.

"That's enough."

When Kyle withdrew his killing intent, the man lost strength in his legs and dropped to the ground. Then he flinched, scrambled up unsteadily, and retreated from Kyle as if fleeing.

"Next."

Eighty-ninth. The man who had impressed Kyle most after Narua. The one who had shown unique and irregular swordsmanship honed in real combat.

He was definitely different from the first two. He faced Kyle's killing intent head-on and drew his sword. The hand on his hilt trembled, but he clenched his molars and even stepped forward.

The man swung.

He did swing, but... the sword path shook terribly. The start point and end point were headed in completely different directions. His body, crushed by killing intent, had thrown the blade off.

Swinging at all was impressive, but the impression from earlier was gone. A sword forced out by fear. If a child had done that, it would be worth praise, like with Bruno before, but this man was no child.

"Thank you for your effort."

The third candidate stepped back with a bitter smile. He knew well that his last swing had been a mess.

"Next."

Narua stepped out. She strode forward and drew both swords with both hands in front of Kyle.

As the killing intent covered Narua, her eyes trembled slightly. But her feet did not slide back, and her hands did not shake. The stance holding her swords did not move an inch.

Kyle released even stronger killing intent. He poured out as much as this body could emit of the killing intent he had built up on battlefields five hundred years ago.

The air in the training ground sank heavy. Even among the spectators watching from afar, several could not endure it and dropped to their knees. Even Bruno, watching from the back, gritted his teeth, and Jade unconsciously groped at his waist for his sword. Lucia's breathing quickened with the pounding in her chest.

Narua stood still.

She did not grit her teeth or strain to endure. Goosebumps rose across her brown skin under the focused killing intent. The muscles in both arms began twitching on their own.

Even so, Narua did not step back. Her body was clearly reacting, and she clearly recognized fear. But Kyle's killing intent did not register as fear to Narua.

Narua placed one foot half a step forward and spread both arms to either side. It was the same stance as in the first round.

The denser the killing intent grew, the clearer the flame flickering above her twin swords became. Flame grows fiercer the harder the wind blows. Kyle's killing intent was wind to Narua, and the flame did not go out in that wind, it burned hotter.

Narua moved.

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried