WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ Reincarnation of the Sword Demon

Chapter 88

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As Much as Was Given

Kyle remembered the first day he had seen Julius, ten years ago. The grand and desolate landscape of the Sword Hall. Seated on the black iron throne, cold and solid as it looked, Julius had watched his daughter return without a word after six years and his five-year-old grandson with an expression that seemed utterly indifferent.

Any ordinary five-year-old would have been frightened to be greeted that way by a grandfather seen for the first time in their life. But Kyle was a reincarnation. He had read the many emotions buried beneath Julius's sharp, raptor-keen eyes.

The man Kyle had sensed that day was one who knew how to restrain himself. Before he was a father to his daughter or a grandfather to his grandson, he was a man who had to put the authority of the Alastor Family Head first. The Sword Hall was not a space where Julius Alastor could simply be himself. It was a place where the Family Head had to carry himself as a Family Head should.

Here, the tenth floor of the Sword Tower, was Julius's private space. A place his children and grandchildren could not enter. The bedroom especially was probably where he could be most himself.

Kyle walked through the open door. The cold austerity and authority Julius usually projected did not exist here.

The wide room was full of warmth. The arrangement of the furniture and its colors held no dryness. When Kyle considered whether everything in the room reflected Julius's true tastes, he felt it did not, quite.

The reason was simple. Everything in that wide room was arranged as if cradling the bed. Too much had gathered near it. Old things, but well-kept, many of them.

Lavian Alastor. Julius's wife, mother to nine children, Kyle's grandmother. The things here looked like they belonged to her tastes. This room was not Julius's alone. The tenth floor's master was the Family Head, yes, but the master of this particular room was not Julius, it was Lavian. The family's mistress, who had slept for nineteen years, would find nothing strange or frightening about the time that had passed whenever she woke. This room had spent all those long years waiting for her, kept ready for her.

"..."

Kyle approached the bed carefully. The only things that existed incongruously around the bed, where time itself seemed to have stopped, were the magical and medical devices keeping Lavian alive. A woman lay atop soft bedding, connected to several catheters.

Lavian's hair was a warm brown, the color of straw. She had been asleep for nineteen years, but her color was not bad. Her body, though, had grown gaunt and thin, as if even the spirit fluid flowing through the catheters could do nothing about that.

"Grandmother looks young."

Kyle turned to Julius with a smile. He meant it sincerely. She had some wrinkles, but compared to Julius with his beard, Lavian did not feel like an ordinary grandmother at all.

"She's been asleep for nineteen years. No wonder she hasn't aged."

Julius said it with a faint smile.

"When Grandmother wakes up, she'll be shocked to see Grandfather's face."
"She won't be too shocked. I've looked more or less the same since nineteen years ago."
"That might be only your own opinion, Grandfather. Even compared to when I first saw you, I think you've added a few wrinkles."
"I've been slowing the aging as much as possible. The beard too, I keep it at the same length."

Come to think of it, Julius's beard had been the same length ten years ago as it was now. From what he said, it had been the same nineteen years ago as well. His clothing had also been the same ten years ago as now. The only thing that had changed was the brooch pinned to his uniform chest.

"My grandfather was more of a romantic than I thought."

Kyle chuckled and sat down in the chair beside the bed. Then he leaned close and whispered carefully to Lavian.

"Hello, Grandmother."

He had known she existed but had never seen her face. The greeting went unanswered. And yet, strangely, something stirred in his chest. Just as when he had first met Aslan, he felt a blood connection from the person before him.

"..."

Julius pressed his lips shut and watched. The sight of his wife and grandson together struck something heavy inside his chest. If he stayed standing here watching, he feared he would embarrass himself further in a way unbecoming of a Family Head.

"I'll... step outside for a moment. If there are things you want to say to your grandmother, take your time."

The attending physician had said that even in sleep, she might be dimly able to hear the voices around her. Julius had believed that and spoken to his wife every day.

"Whose child you are, what name you carry, what things you have done... I have told her often. But Lavian does not know your voice. So let her hear your name from your own lips."

Julius steadied his breathing and turned away.

Now the room held only Kyle and Lavian. Kyle first took the small bead from the pendant on his necklace. About the size of a thumbnail, the bead was a pearlescent milky white, but touching it, it held none of that texture. It sloshed faintly, like a liquid slowly hardening.

'How am I supposed to use this... oh.'

Thinking about it, there was no need to puzzle it out himself. Kyle focused his mind and became aware of his spirit sense. He directed the same feeling he used when communing with spirits and dokkaebi toward the Sword Tower.

The realm of consciousness opened shortly after. The Fragment appeared before Kyle, red-haired and gold-eyed, with features that defied any clear reading of gender, eyes wide open.

"Brat. You..."
"It's been a while."

Fewer than two months had passed since Kyle left the Sword Tower. For a being like the Fragment, that probably did not count as a long time, but for a fifteen-year-old boy it felt like long enough.

"What are you... holding in your hand?"

The Fragment was less interested in any greeting than in what Kyle held. It did not even come close, only stared hard at the bead.

"I received it from an angel."
"An... angel?"
"That's what it called itself."

Kyle explained to the Fragment how he had come to obtain the necklace and the bead. The emotions he had felt as he approached the Secret Realm. The winged eyeball he had seen on entering. And the meeting at the altar, all of it.

"..."

The Fragment stood silent for a long moment, unable to say anything, and Kyle saw no reason to hurry it. Soon the Fragment spoke in a trembling voice.

"You came face-to-face with such a being, even exchanged words with it... and your mind is intact? How is that possible?"
"It was pretty disgusting, I'll admit."
"I'm not talking about its appearance. Even the encounter itself, even its voice, is not something someone at your level can withstand. A being like that... only someone who has opened the upper dantian and carved their existence into the world is granted the right to perceive them..."
"You know I'm not ordinary."

Kyle shrugged.

"It might be because I adapted by eating all sorts of things on the Cultivation Floors."
"That... possibility does exist... but... mm...!"
"So. Is that eyeball thing actually an angel? It said it was."
"If a being like that calls itself an angel, then it is an angel. If it says demon, then demon."

The Fragment lowered its voice, as if afraid someone might overhear.

"Apostles of the sky gods... such beings call themselves angels, or demons. It is easier for mortals to understand them that way."
"A god is a god, but what's a sky god?"
"Because they are in the sky."

The Fragment's voice dropped lower still, and its trembling grew stronger.

"Such a being... an angel, face-to-face. And not only did you not go mad, you even walked away with a gift... what in the world are you..."
"You look like it's hard to talk about, so don't push yourself. Can I use this thing?"

Kyle held up the bead pinched between his fingers.

"It gave this to me and said it would let me wake Grandmother. I have no idea what it actually is, so I'm hesitant to use it."
"You can use it. If that being... had any ill will toward you, it would not have given you a gift."
"It didn't seem to have any ill will. If anything, it seemed fond of me."
"Of course it would be fond of you. To a being like that, you are... no different from a tiny bug. And that bug suddenly looked it straight in the eye, understood what it was saying, and spoke back to it."
"If a bug did that to me, I'd find it so creepy I'd just stomp on it."
"...Let's say not a bug but a puppy. A cat works too."

The Fragment let out a long sigh and shook its head.

"Truly... you are a creature I cannot figure out. It must be because your spirit root is so strange..."
"Since we're here anyway, let me ask you something. When the Sword Church Master came by last time, he said something to me, that the Sword Tower felt uncomfortable to him."
"..."
"Why would that be?"
"That monster has good reason to feel that way. Without the shackles of fate binding it, that being could have reached the very sky of the world."

The Fragment let out another sigh.

"And so even while standing on the ground, it feels the sky... the outside. This place... is close to the boundary."
"Hm. So it sounds like it was sensing whatever those things are on the Cultivation Floors. Are those the sky gods?"

The Fragment did not answer. It only averted its gaze, face pale. In the past too, when Kyle had asked about them, the Fragment had said it was careful about mentioning them.

"Ask me... nothing more. I am only a remnant. A spirit body that does not truly exist. The answers to the questions you ask contaminate me too heavily..."

The Fragment gasped and squeezed its eyes shut. It looked in such distress that Kyle decided not to push further.

"Understood. So I can use this, right? I won't trouble you anymore, go rest."
"Huu..."

With a sigh that had lost count of how many that made, the Fragment nodded. Kyle watched its form blur and fade, then rose from the chair.

The Fragment had said there was no problem. The angel had looked at him with something like fondness. But none of that amounted to certainty. In the end, the decision of whether to use the bead was Kyle's to make.

He thought of Julius's trembling, of the relatives' raw emotion. He did not deliberate long. Kyle brought the bead, pinched between his fingers, close to Lavian.

The bead moved on its own and slipped free from his fingers. It floated up, traced a few slow circles above Lavian's sleeping face, then drifted gently down and seeped between her closed lips.

Whoosh. Lavian's body was wrapped in a soft light. Her closed lips parted, and from within, something like pure white haze rose upward.

Crackle.

The rising haze tickled the air, and the space split open with a sharp sound. A small rift had appeared.

"Kyle?!"

The bedroom door flew open. Julius rushed in, startled, and looked at Kyle with wide eyes, then at the small rift hanging above Lavian. His eyes went wider still.

"Wait!"

Kyle jumped to his feet and put himself in front of the bed. If Julius intervened, things could go wrong. Not that he had any certainty they were going right even now.

"Grandfather! Trust me, just a moment... just wait a moment!"

Having acted so boldly, Kyle bore responsibility for all of it. Julius, who had been reaching for his sword to rush forward, stopped short. A superhuman like him could have reached Kyle before he moved, could have shoved past Kyle's attempt to block him.

But Julius hesitated. This was a grandson who had never once disappointed him. A grandson who had only ever brought him joy, now standing in his way asking to be trusted. Worry for his wife against trust in his grandson. In that brief moment of Julius's hesitation, white light descended from the rift.

::As it was received::

A voice came flowing from the rift.

::So it is returned::

The light that had risen from Lavian's lips and the light that had descended from the rift entwined with each other.

::As much as was given::

The rift closed. The entwined light vanished.

"..."

Julius, who had been standing there in a daze, staggered forward.

"Just now... what was that... Kyle, what in the world... did you just do...?"

Kyle did not answer. His expression serious, he leaned over to look at Lavian.

A twitch.

Lavian's closed eyelids trembled faintly. Julius saw it too. He rushed to the bedside and grabbed her hand.

"La, Lavian?"

The trembling eyelids began to open slowly. Hazy green eyes stared at the air for a moment, and then light slowly bloomed within them.

"Lavian... Lavian!"

Julius's voice shook with raw emotion. Lavian's gaze, which had been blankly fixed on nothing, shifted.

"Julius...?"

A thin voice. His wife's voice, heard for the first time in nineteen years. Tears welled in Julius's eyes. He forgot that Kyle was watching, forgot his authority and dignity as Family Head. He took Lavian's hand in both of his, bowed his head, and wept.

"Oh... oh..."

He had spent nineteen years searching for a way to wake his wife. For two of those years Julius himself had gone out wandering. Had he not carried the duty of being Alastor's Family Head, he would have wandered the world not for two years but for all nineteen.

"Lavian... Lavian, am I... dreaming right now...?"
"Julius..."

Lavian looked at him with unfocused eyes. Having slept so long and now woken, everything felt uncomfortable. Without the costly spirit fluid and magical life-sustaining treatment, she would not have been able to see anything or make a sound at all.

"You've gotten... old."

Lavian murmured.

"That beard... still doesn't... suit you..."

Finding her words one by one, Lavian smiled faintly. More tears streamed from Julius's eyes. He could say nothing more and wept.

Kyle stepped back a few paces and watched the reunion. Just as he had thought earlier, Julius was indeed weeping. The tears he shed were many and warm.

Standing there watching felt like an intrusion, so Kyle quietly turned away. He planned to leave the room while Julius's emotions settled.

"Ky... il..."

Julius's voice reached Kyle's back as he moved to leave.

"Th... thank you. Truly... truly, thank you..."

Kyle stopped and turned back. Julius, his beard soaked through with tears, was still crying as he looked at Kyle.

"I only did what needed to be done."

Kyle gave a small smile and dipped his head.

Kyle stood in the corridor and waited. He thought about opening another door and looking around, but this was the Family Head's personal floor, and doing that without permission did not seem right.

He passed the time looking at the framed pictures and ornaments hanging along the corridor. About an hour must have gone by. The bedroom door opened, and Julius's face appeared, eyes swollen and puffy.

"Pfft."

The sight of it made Kyle laugh before he could stop himself. Julius almost always held his eyes sharp and wore a stern expression. To see those same eyes, and even his nose, puffed up and red had a power to it that made laughter unavoidable.

"..."

Julius tried to glare at the grandson who had dared to look at the Family Head's face and laugh, but he could not make his eyes comply. Every time he tried to put force into his gaze, it softened on its own and only warmth came surging up.

"Come inside."

Julius said, his voice thick.

"Lavian says she wants to talk with you."
"Is she all right? She should rest rather than talk right now..."
"Nineteen years asleep and she's still as stubborn as ever. Your mother's disposition takes after Lavian."
"Does Mother resemble Grandmother much?"
"Of all the children Lavian and I have, she resembles her the most."
"Then Grandmother must be a wonderful person."

The answer made Julius go blank for a moment, and then he burst out laughing.

"You say the obvious."

Lavian was propped up against her pillows, sitting up. She turned a gentle smile toward Kyle as he came in with Julius.

"So you're... Kyle. Arian's son."
"Kyle Alastor. It's an honor to meet you, Grandmother."

Kyle greeted her properly.

"Yes. This is the first time I've seen your face. But... strangely enough, I have stories about you in my head. Faint ones, but they're there."

Lavian closed her eyes for a moment and steadied her breathing.

"Julius seems to have talked about you often. Arian too. How proud of you they were, how remarkable you were, how dear."

Lavian opened her eyes again and beckoned to Kyle.

"Come closer, child. I want to hear from your own lips... who you are, what kind of child you are."

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