WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ Reincarnation of the Sword Demon

Chapter 83

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Can't Do It

Shhk!

Fenris drove into Lizet's side. The sensation of cloth splitting and flesh parting traveled up Kyle's hand.

He was certain.

'It went in.'

But it didn't go all the way. Lizet's left hand shot out and clamped around Fenris's blade. Her gauntlet was layered thick with Aura.

Fenris, backed by Kyle's Sword Force, could cut through most Aura and ordinary Killing Intent without trouble. Lizet's Aura was something else entirely. In the end, Fenris stalled out and was stopped by her hand.

'Tch.'

Kyle tried to pull the blade free, but it wouldn't come. Her gauntleted fingers held the steel in a death grip.

Sword Force and Aura ground against each other, shedding sparks as they eroded. Behind that friction, Lizet's blood ran.

Not a shallow wound. The Aura shield had been cut, and beneath it, skin and muscle. A hand's span deep. It hadn't reached her organs, but it had come close.

For most fighters, that would be a killing blow. Every movement would pull the wound open wider, and the organs would start working their way out before long.

Not for Lizet. Still gripping Fenris, she changed her breathing. Deep inhale, sharp exhale. Then she shoved Fenris back with everything she had. Kyle pushed to hold it in place, but Lizet's raw strength was absurd.

'Give credit where it's due. She's far stronger than me.'

The Demon Tribe were physically superior to humans by nature. Kyle had put his body through enough Cultivation Floors to become something less than human in the conventional sense, but being weaker than Lizet Beliar, a demon born to fight who had earned the name Fist Demon, was only natural.

The blade slid free of Lizet's side. She kept breathing through it. The muscles around the open wound clenched, the flesh drew itself closed, and the blood pouring from her side stopped.

Lizet's red eyes settled on Kyle. Her wide pupils still held the shock from a moment ago, but no panic.

"You. Have you reached the Boundary Realm?"

She asked without releasing her grip on Fenris. Kyle watched her right hand. He had one sword, but Lizet was a weapon from head to foot. She could swing that right hand at him right now.

He had no intention of just standing there and taking it, of course. Just as he had caught Zenaphelt's sword with his bare hands and made her imagine a blade, he could wield his hands like a sword if he had to. He simply had Fenris, so there was no reason to bother.

"No."

He answered her question. At that, Lizet's eyebrow ticked upward slightly.

"Nothing else explains it. Your sword just did something lightning shouldn't be able to do."
"That's a bold claim. Do you really know lightning well enough to say that for certain?"
"I know those who awaken a lightning spirit root and wield a blade like that."
"Hm. My grandfather has a lightning spirit root and handles plenty of swords that are nothing like lightning."
"If you mean Julius Alastor, he is a superhuman who has gone beyond even the Boundary Realm."

While they talked, Kyle twisted Fenris. Lizet didn't bother holding it anymore. Gripping the blade and resisting had been costing her considerably.

The moment Fenris came loose, Lizet's right fist came at him. No need to draw with bare hands, no need to release the sword. Kyle stepped back and put distance between them. The fist and its Aura barely grazed the air in front of his face.

"I was born with a certain kind of freedom."

Kyle's spirit root was Chaos. He could feel mana of every attribute, shape mana of every attribute, and become anything. On the day he awakened his spirit root, he had seen the world, and in every world he saw, he felt a sword.

He was still pursuing the sword he had glimpsed that day. The reason he had been able to catch Lizet off guard earlier was that he had planted the impression of lightning strongly in her senses; shifting his swordsmanship mid-stroke was easy enough for Kyle, and Jor in the middle dantian had helped flip the nature of the mana in an instant.

"I don't know what you mean."
"You don't need to."

Kyle reset his stance. The look in Lizet's eyes shifted from surprise to interest.

'Most human spirit roots are bound to a single attribute. But this one... is different.'

Swordsmanship that was hard to believe from someone only fifteen. Cold judgment and decisive action in the middle of a fight. Mana that had been lightning, then ceased to be. Lizet nodded slowly.

"I see. So you haven't reached the Boundary Realm."

A chill.

Kyle felt it crawl across his whole body. Something was opening in Lizet. Opening, and changing as it did.

"A reward for showing me something interesting. Let me show you something in return."

Lizet smiled. Mana Addiction and Madness Erosion, the innate weaknesses of the Demon Tribe. Lizet Beliar's way of thinking did not treat those as things to fear.

Why did Mana Addiction occur? Because mana was overused. Used with extreme efficiency, never exceeding what the body could handle, neither Mana Addiction nor loss of control would follow.

Why did Madness Erosion occur? Because reason eroded under heightened emotion in extreme situations. A cold-headed fighter never lost reason no matter the circumstances. If every member of the Demon Tribe succumbed to madness in pitched combat and life-or-death duels, Erebos's colosseum would have become a mass grave long ago.

Lizet's mind right now was utterly cold. She felt the heat of emotion. Interest and possessiveness toward Lucia. Interest and the urge to fight toward the opponent in front of her. But she did not lose reason. She simply felt alive.

That feeling became will, and the will opened her mind. Beyond the Will Realm, this was the next stage, manifest will flowing through the head and the upper dantian, the stage where will is etched into the world itself.

Uuuuu...! Kyle's spirit root felt the mana shift. Mana was dense inside the Secret Realm. To Kyle's senses, the mana here wasn't purely attributeless the way it was outside. No Spirits existed within this space.

That mana was being dyed by Lizet's will. Kyle knew exactly what this was a precursor to. In his past life, the Sword Demon had reached this stage, and the powerful fighters the Sword Demon remembered had reached it too. Those who had placed a sword in their heads beyond the heart, beyond the middle dantian. They didn't merely hold mana in their swords and bodies. They kneaded the world itself through mana.

Krrrk...

The pitch-black Aura that had coated Lizet's body transformed. Aura was ultimately a flame kindled from burning mana, and wrapping it around the body like armor was what an Aura shield was.

What Lizet was wrapping around herself now looked not like an Aura shield but like a real suit of armor. From the neck down, her body was encased in jet-black armor of fused Aura.

"That's a bit cheap."

Kyle muttered. Lizet smiled at that. A moment later, the darkness rising from below her neck swallowed the smile entirely.

Lizet was now sheathed in darkness from head to toe. Inside that darkness, two red eyes burned bright. Crrrrk...! She dropped into a low stance, and from within the darkness came a sound like bones twisting.

[Grrrr...]

Fenris growled in warning. Jor pushed mana through the Circuits at full force. Kyle cast his mind back to his past life, to how those superhuman fighters had actually fought.

Lizet arrived. Not by kicking off the ground. She had simply decided to arrive, and already she was there. At this stage, common sense and physical law were meaningless. The monsters who had opened their minds shaved time into infinitely thin slices and packed multiple movements into a single motion.

'Damn it all.'

The Sword Demon of his past life had opened the upper dantian and placed a sword in his head, but Kyle had not reached that stage. He had the memories, but memories alone were not enough to open the upper dantian. To open it in this reincarnated body, he would have to surpass the Sword Demon through experiences and methods different from his past life.

Kyle moved Fenris on pure instinct. Against someone at this stage, trusting only what the eyes could see was not enough.

Inborn instinct and the intuition built over a lifetime. Senses honed by crossing more death lines than he could count.

Kwang!

The force of her attack was incomparable to before. He blocked it, and his body still went flying backward. That wasn't the end. His mana senses caught a warping in the space around him. Left side, black Aura blooming in empty air. From a place where nothing was. From a place Lizet's reach couldn't touch.

'Shit.'

The curse came out on its own. Kyle twisted his body aside. His spirit root's senses were instinct, and his intuition came from his past life's experience. Together they steered him to the gap that let him survive.

The Boundary Realm kneads the world's mana by will alone. It turns unrefined mana into Sword Force. A swordsman at that stage who wishes to cut can cleave mountains and split the sky. A fighter who wishes to strike can shatter mountains and blow the sky apart.

'Maybe Lizet isn't quite there yet.'

Turning Aura into armor. Arriving while ignoring physical law. Detonating the ambient mana as Sword Force. Three things identified so far.

'Before the space warps, the mana churns and the flow of air inverts. The skin feels it before the eyes see it. Goosebumps on the flesh.'

Lizet moved again. Same as before, she arrived the moment she decided to. That was the nature of her movement. Kyle raised Fenris and caught her fist.

'She ignores the rules to a degree, but she can't force my death with it. Right. That's about the measure of it.'

He pretended to absorb the blow and switched his line. Water into lightning. A flash of a slash aimed for Lizet's body, but the fist she had already thrown snapped downward in an instant and blocked the sword.

Kwaaaaang! Fenris's Sword Force shuddered. Kyle was pushed back a long way.

He thought as he went.

'The timing was perfect. And she still blocked it. In the moment I moved the Sword Force, Lizet read the trajectory. She's reading the mana.'

The mana in the space was responding to Lizet's will. In this space, the only mana she couldn't control was Kyle's own.

'Use mana, and she reads me.'

Right now Kyle was a moving mass of mana. Aura shield over his whole body, Sword Force wrapped around the blade. With her upper dantian open, Lizet could read his every movement with her eyes closed.

'Cheap, petty, and completely unfair.'

Kyle meant that sincerely.

So what to do. The most correct response was to endure. That stage couldn't be sustained for long. And since Lizet appeared to be only at the threshold of the Boundary Realm, holding it would last five minutes at most.

Endure against Lizet for five minutes with everything he had. But what came after that? Kyle could be certain. Even if he managed to endure all five minutes, he would be driven right to the edge of death before they were up. And after those five minutes, Lizet with her upper dantian closed would still have enough left to finish him.

Running? Not worth considering. They were inside the Secret Realm. And if he had meant to run, he wouldn't have stepped in front of Lizet in the first place.

'Then there's only one option. Fenris. Trust me.'

He didn't ask whether Fenris trusted him. He just told it to. He said the name and gave the order, but Kyle didn't wait for an answer. A sword was supposed to do what its master said.

[M-Master?]

Jor was not a sword, and unlike Fenris, Jor could speak, and being inside Kyle, Jor could read his thoughts as well. So Jor had no choice but to cry out in alarm.

[Are you sane?]

'Yeah.'

There was no time to open his mouth and say it aloud. Even now, Sword Force had appeared on both sides, hemming in his movement, and Lizet arrived again. Kyle felt the cold along his spine.

Death felt close.

He cut before the Sword Force could explode. He received Lizet's fist. He couldn't push it away, couldn't cut through it. His strength wasn't enough for that. Or rather, it wasn't only a matter of strength. Before his slash could reach the trajectory where its sharpness peaked, Lizet's fist cut in.

Because she was reading him. Because he wore Aura and Sword Force. It would keep going like that, first she would read him, then block him, and in the end he would be worn down until he was pushed right to the edge of death.

So he decided.

The violet Aura wrapped around Kyle's body went out. The Sword Force on Fenris was withdrawn too.

"...!"

The dark armor. The red eyes inside it widened slightly. The mana she had been sensing through her upper dantian was gone. To be precise, it hadn't vanished, mana still moved through Kyle's body. It was simply that no matter how sharp the upper dantian's senses were, they couldn't reach the mana inside another person's flesh.

Kyle controlled his mana absolutely. He did not let a single point of it leak outside his body. To Lizet's senses, Kyle grew faint.

Her eyes could still see him. Lizet's eyes were perfectly intact. Red hair, golden irises, gold epaulettes, a blood-stained uniform, the black sword in his hand. All of it visible.

But Lizet felt the Kyle in front of her as thin. With her upper dantian open, her five senses had shifted to lean on that other perception instead.

'He withdrew his mana?'

Everything she had been reading through the space's mana was gone. Her predictions had been built on sensing those flows.

'To escape that?'

Too extreme. Against the current Lizet, withdrawing mana was no different from baring your neck and begging to be killed. A body without an Aura shield would burst from a single punch without even needing Sword Force. A sword without Sword Force could never cut through the armor Lizet now wore.

'Kyle Alastor. What are you thinking?'

She felt the question, but couldn't dwell on it. The senses of this opened world demanded too much of Lizet as well. Too many things were being perceived at once.

The fist shot out. The same simple straight-line explosion as before. But that fist now wrapped in the Boundary Realm's armor was far heavier than it had been.

In front of it, Kyle disappeared. Lizet's fist cut through empty air. He had been there, and then he wasn't.

He hadn't done anything spectacular. Kyle simply lowered himself. Bent his knees and slipped under the fist.

A hair's breadth. The savage wind from the punch grazed the top of his head. With no Aura shield, even a graze there would have taken the top of his skull with it.

And yet Kyle's eyes were quiet. No smile, not from the start. No fear. The calm that five hundred years of experience had made.

The mana of the Primordial Chaos Sword Canon raced through Kyle's body. Through the complex, interlocking Circuits that had expanded and linked together, sword trajectories were etched over and over. That mana did not seep outside his body at all. It circulated only within.

Lower dantian to middle dantian. Middle dantian to muscle. Muscle to bone. Bone to tendon.

Blood flow accelerated. His vision blazed sharp enough to sting. His ears opened wide. The sensitivity of his skin turned razor-edged. The Primordial Chaos Sword Canon was a technique that Fragment had spent four years crafting for Kyle alone, shaped to fit his body and spirit root as precisely as possible.

The physical capability he had developed through the Cultivation Floors was already incomparable to other humans at the same level. That capability was now being pushed further still by the Primordial Chaos Sword Canon, to its very limit and beyond. No, limit was not enough. Kyle was trying to break past the limit entirely.

From that low stance, Kyle thrust Fenris. He aimed for Lizet's stomach. No Sword Force on Fenris.

Lizet's eyes saw Fenris driving in. A black blade tip with no Sword Force behind it. Sharp, but it wouldn't pierce the armor. Still, by habit, Lizet brought her left hand down to block.

In that instant, Fenris's trajectory reversed. The tip aimed at her stomach twisted upward, going for the gap left by her descending left hand. The blade tip pointed at the underside of Lizet's jaw.

The speed was extraordinary, but not beyond response. Before the upper dantian had opened, she might even have managed it.

Now her response was slow. Too much information flooding in that had to be processed. Fenris carried no mana. She couldn't feel it coming through the upper dantian's senses.

None of that mattered. Lizet was slow, and Kyle was fast. The result was Fenris reaching Lizet's jaw.

Even with Fenris being the fine sword it was, even with the body pushed past its limit, piercing the armor Lizet wore was impossible.

'Now!'

Kyle willed it, and Jor surged. The mana that had run through Jor tore through the Circuits at the speed of lightning. The moment Fenris's tip touched Lizet's jaw, Sword Force blazed to life there.

Kwang!

Lizet's head snapped back. The helmet wasn't pierced, but the impact came through.

Her vision flashed and spun. It didn't last long. Lizet's eyes snapped downward. Following her will, Sword Force appeared around Kyle, and both of her hands moved to kill him.

The Sword Force had only been released for the instant of impact. Kyle pulled it back and leaped sideways. He still had no Aura shield. Being grazed still meant death.

'Her vision has blurred.'

The red glow in her eyes was tracking slowly. Her sight had clearly fallen behind where it had been. Her mana sense was outrunning her eyes. This was proof that Lizet was not yet adept at handling the Boundary Realm.

'She's wearing a full-face helmet, so of course her vision is restricted. Obvious when you wear something like that.'

An absurd thought. It wasn't a real helmet.

Kyle grew faint in Lizet's senses again.

'He's moving much faster than before. That last attack was heavy and powerful. No Sword Force, but he detonated it at the exact moment of contact.'

His mana control was on a completely different level. But that way of fighting was reckless and arrogant. Lizet's foot struck the ground in a heavy stomp.

Kwakwakwakwa! The mana in the earth became a black wave and crashed toward Kyle. He moved through it fluidly. Sword Force wrapped around Fenris, and a massive slash split the wave. He sprinted through the gap before the halves could rejoin.

Lizet's fist met him. Kyle deliberately let mana leak. Crackle. Part of the Aura became current and drifted like an afterimage. For just a moment, Lizet hesitated over where to aim.

Not a long hesitation. Lizet's will detonated Sword Force in the surrounding space. Kyle felt the precursor. His keen senses, his skin, felt the tremor in the air.

He saw Lizet's fist with his own eyes. Between the Sword Force and the fist, Kyle drove himself in. The Sword Force skimmed past his shoulder. The fist glanced off his side. The feeling of ribs and organs being rattled was awful.

He forced his way in anyway and swung Fenris. Lizet's left arm. The wide-open armpit right after the punch extended. Fenris drove into it.

Drove in, and Sword Force detonated as he sliced upward. Kwang! In that moment, lightning was exactly right, lightning was a flash that burst and vanished. Lizet's left arm was thrown sharply upward. The armor didn't crack, but the pain was real.

Not a sound from Lizet. The arm that had been thrown up snapped back down immediately, and her right hand reached to grab Kyle. Kyle didn't stop either. He pulled back while swinging Fenris. The sword with no mana on it felt like a ghost to Lizet's senses. This time, Fenris went for the left side of her ribs.

The same place Fenris had cut before. Kwang! Sword Force blazed again. The wound that had just been forced shut blew open from the impact, and blood began to pour.

'Remarkable.'

The red eyes went wide. Before she realized it, Lizet was the one being hit. She had opened the Boundary Realm, and she was taking this kind of punishment from someone who hadn't opened it.

'Why am I taking this?'

A graze should leave a fatal wound, but her attacks weren't landing. The Aura leaking out like an afterimage was scrambling her senses. Her eyes couldn't track his movement. That sword was deceiving her sight.

'Ah. I see.'

Lizet understood it now.

She had never actually been winning. Throughout the fight before this. They had exchanged blows, but not one of Lizet's punches had put a single wound on Kyle.

Kyle's sword, on the other hand, had cut her side open. In the end, it was a simple matter.

'Your sword is ahead of my fist.'

Hard to believe, but it was true. Ten years of fighting in Erebos's colosseum. The name Fist Demon earned in that arena. Lizet Beliar was counted among the most renowned young fighters in all of Erebos.

And this fifteen-year-old boy's sword was ahead of her fist.

"I'll acknowledge it."

Lizet whispered. Her head throbbed, and her heart hammered. The left side of her vision was beginning to be swallowed by darkness.

Kyle was going for Lizet's left side again. The timing was perfect. He hadn't missed a single one of her movements. Every sense was tracking Lizet and the space around her. Sword Force began to build in Fenris. Began to.

'Can't do it.'

It should have been the right moment. But instinct and intuition both warned him off. Kyle didn't push it. In a fight, there were moments like this, rare, but real. When something that should absolutely work doesn't. When your own certainty slips just a fraction. Or when the world forces it to slip.

When that happened, there was nothing to do but stop, even if it felt terrible. Kyle raised his Aura shield immediately. Pulled the Sword Force from Fenris too. He poured all his mana into defense, withdrew the sword, and jumped back. Even in that instant, Lizet's will was being etched into the world.

::The fist::
::strikes::

Simple. Blunt. A fist was something any creature that walked upright on two legs was born with. Striking something with that fist was something even a monkey did, human or demon alike.

What Lizet willed now was that primal violence. But her actual fist did not move.

Crrrk...!

Kyle's chest began to cave inward. His ribs, his lungs, his heart, everything in his chest was being compressed. The color drained from Kyle's face and his eyes flew open. How many times had he faced death since reincarnating into this world? Setting aside the Cultivation Floors, the incomprehensible presences he had encountered there, this was the first time. At least in there he had been protected by Lifeline. Here, no such thing existed.

He was actually going to die. At that chilling certainty, Kyle worked hard not to smile.

'What do I do?'

What did he need to do to avoid this death? What could he do? Countless options rose in his mind, but every one of them was something he couldn't do right now.

The reason was simple. He hadn't placed a sword in his head. The upper dantian wasn't open. Did that mean he had no choice but to take this helplessly? At the moment that thought crossed his mind ,

Kyle looked at the sword in his hand. Fenris, the sword he had used five hundred years ago. The experience of the day he reincarnated and was acknowledged by Fenris as its master.

The lingering trace of Ruin Alastor that Fenris had shown him. Fundamentals that were nothing extraordinary on the surface, yet somehow complete. Lines and points of a sword that stood infinitely higher than the swords the Sword Demon had always swung as a matter of course. That sword was something that could be swung without opening the upper dantian.

Because it was simply a sword.

'Fenris.'

Before swinging, he whispered to the sword.

'Don't guide me this time.'

He had tried to reproduce Ruin's sword many times. Now as always, Kyle felt no shame in learning from and imitating another's swordsmanship. In the end, you imitated it perfectly and then moved past it. That was all there was to it.

But it had to be done by his own will, not with his hand and sword being dragged somewhere. Kyle led his hand and sword to reproduce the sword of Ruin that was burned clear in his memory.

He didn't choose a thrust. It wasn't right for this moment. He didn't want it either. The sensation of being dragged by that damned hound was still too fresh in his hands.

Kyle raised the sword high and brought it down. He tried to reproduce the trajectory that Fenris had shown him, the trajectory Ruin's sword had carried. What a sword had to do. The essence of a sword. The most perfect textbook of the sword in the world. The ideal toward which a sword must move, the truth a sword must assert.

He tried to put that into the blade.

Kwaaaaaang!

A tremendous crash rang out.

"Cough."

The armor that had covered Lizet's body crumbled. Blood ran from her eyes, nose, and mouth. The wound on her left side was trying to spill her organs out.

Pfuh.

She couldn't hold the wound on her side closed. Lizet staggered backward and looked down at her own body. A vivid sword mark was carved across the center of her frame.

Kyle barely lifted his head and looked forward. He had swung the sword. But it hadn't been perfect. He fell backward and hit the ground.

"Jor."

The words came out in a cracked voice.

Jor lay ahead of him, slumped and still. The moment the invisible fist had connected. When the Aura shield shattered and the force caved his chest in. The moment he swung his sword to cut through it, failed to cut it completely, and was hit by the fist after all.

Jor had burst out of the middle dantian.

"Jor, Jor!"

He tried to get up, but his body wouldn't cooperate. The backlash from pushing past his limits and swinging a sword he couldn't yet fully handle. And the force of the punch that had sent him flying still pressed thick and heavy into his body.

[I'm here...]

Had Jor died taking that attack? When that thought reached him, a faint voice came from the middle dantian.

'Wh-what? Why are you in there?'

[That was my shed skin...]

Jor answered in a weak voice.

"..."

It hit him anew that Jor was, in fact, a snake.

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