Reincarnation of the Sword Demon - Chapter 90

WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

◈ Reincarnation of the Sword Demon

Chapter 90

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Sealed

Five hundred years ago, the Demon King visited Ruin Alastor on the eve of his ascension and drove his beloved sword, Baal, into that very spot.

No one in later generations could know the reason, and many theories remain, but Ruin Alastor described Baal as "a sword worth remembering." That phrase became a tradition. The Family Heads of Alastor began planting beside Baal the weapons of challengers and retainers,those enemies whose blades were deemed worth remembering. Those whose blades were not went into the Discard Path at Gladiheim's entrance.

That was how the Sword Garden began.

Baal, a living witness to that history, stared at Kyle. The Dokkaebi lodged in that blade fixed its single eye on him, wide and furious.

[How dare you,how dare you! You ignored me and had the gall to take another sword?!]

Baal's rage was genuine. It had watched that upstart since he was five. For five years after that, it had let him come and go through this mental realm as though it were his own living room, swinging a sword to his heart's content.

After all that generosity, the hand the boy had raised held not the wooden practice sword Baal always saw. It held a real blade. Worse, it was a blade Baal knew all too well.

[And of all things,you chose Fenris?!]

Baal roared.

"..."

Kyle stared at Baal for a moment, then slid his gaze toward Fenris. The sword had already burst out in its wolf form, tail raised stiff as a blade's edge, teeth bared at Baal.

"Why are you angry?"

He glanced between Fenris and Baal before asking. The question only made Baal angrier. Kwaarrr! The blood-red mist that formed the mental realm churned violently.

[Why,why am I angry?! You little brat! Did you not make a promise to me?!]
"A promise?"
[Yes! A promise! You said you would take me, this Baal, in your hand!]

Listening to Baal bellow, Kyle turned the memory over in his head. The first time he had met Baal. The times after that, when he borrowed this mental realm and swung a sword in here...

"When did I ever promise you that?"

No matter how hard he thought, he could not recall making any such promise. Baal had always been the one pressing him, entirely one-sided.

At their first meeting, Baal had announced that it would permit him to wield it when the time was right. He had found those words grating, and he also had to mind Julius and Katarina's opinions, so he had refused. After that, on the days he borrowed the mental realm to practice, Baal had kept pestering him to try picking it up, mixing in the arrogant claim that this was a command, not a request.

"The only thing I ever said about you was this: later, when I feel like it. That was all I said. Where's the promise in that?"
[That was the promise!]

Baal wailed.

[You said it to me! That someday, when you felt like it, you would take me in your hand! So I waited and longed for you to come! And then you show up after years of leaving me here, holding another sword,and of all swords, Fenris!]
"Hm..."
[You,you bastard! You miserable wretch! How dare you toy with my feelings and deceive me!]

Is this my fault? Baal's wailing was so pitiful that Kyle had to stop and think about it for a moment.

"..."

He thought about it, and no, this was absolutely not his fault. Baal had invented an expectation out of nothing and worked itself into a misunderstanding all on its own.

"You're right. I was wrong."

Still, Kyle slowly nodded and offered an apology, because he had given Baal's situation some genuine thought.

Fenris had spent five hundred years in the Sword Hall, positioned above the Family Head's black iron throne beneath Ruin Alastor's portrait, treasured by every Family Head and pureblood who followed. Out in the world right now, Helenas asked after Fenris regularly. The Crows had even come around saying they would pay handsomely to buy it.

But Baal? As far as Kyle knew, no one outside had ever asked after Baal or coveted it. Not even Lizet Beliar, the Demon King's own daughter, had said a single word about Baal.

On top of that, Baal was sealed inside the Sword Garden. Kyle had found it only because of his Dokkaebi affinity, which had drawn him to it. Everyone else had no idea it was even there.

A sword that had spent five hundred years like that,what kind of hope must it have pinned on Kyle, the one person it could actually talk to? Looking back honestly, it was true that Kyle had never given Baal a clear refusal. He had always left a small opening.

'Besides, I came today because I need something from it.'

Can a sword cry? He did not know, but after hearing the apology, Baal's eye trembled. A short silence followed. Then Baal turned to glare at Fenris.

[You left me here,left me,and had the gall to take that scrap of steel...!]
"What did it ever do to you?"
[Looking at that sword makes me think of Ruin Alastor's face!]
"From what I heard, the Demon King from five hundred years ago gave you to the Founding Ancestor as a gift."

He had heard that from Katarina ten years ago. The Demon King who visited Gladiheim had driven Baal into the Sword Garden saying he wanted to remember Ruin Alastor. Or perhaps it was the reverse,wanting Ruin Alastor to remember him. All of that was later speculation. No one knew exactly what the two of them said to each other that day.

[A gift, yes, but not that kind of gift.]

Baal said flatly.

[My master gave me to Ruin Alastor as a tool for suicide. Any being I cut down is annihilated, gone from the cycle of reincarnation entirely, erased from existence. So my master gave me to him and said to use me if he ever wanted to end himself. But that bastard Ruin ignored the gesture.]
"Wait. He gave you as a means of suicide? And that was the Demon King's goodwill?"
[I don't know the full circumstances. The conversation between my master and Ruin was private.]
"Well."

Kyle tilted his head, genuinely puzzled. The Demon King had given Baal as a gift for self-destruction, and Ruin had never used it. Not long after the Demon King's visit, Ruin ascended, leaving Fenris behind.

"Fenris. Do you know anything about Ruin? Something beyond the swordsmanship he practiced?"
[Woof!]

Fenris barked once and shook its head. Probably meant no, but Baal's eye narrowed.

[Why isn't it saying anything?]
"Not won't. Can't."
[A Dokkaebi born from a sword that a giant left his mark on the age with, then cherished and revered for five hundred years,and it lacks even the intellect to speak? Even I can hold a conversation with you.]
"Hm."

Hearing that, Kyle did find it odd that Fenris had never learned to speak. Even the Dokkaebi in the hammer Galen kept in the workshop could talk.

'I've never heard a voice from Narua's flame either, but I never really tried talking to it.'

Kyle looked down at Fenris quietly. Under that gaze, Fenris whined and pawed at the ground, then flopped onto its back and showed its belly.

[A shameless scrap of steel!]

Baal snapped, but Fenris just panted and wagged its tail. Kyle decided to stop pressing Fenris and turned back to Baal.

"One question."
[Shameless wretch! You made me wait years, and now you come crawling over because you need something?!]
"That's right. But if you cooperate, I can help you get the freedom you want."

Baal's eye shifted fast at that.

[...Fine. I'll hear it. You inferior-race brat. What do you want from this Baal?]
"Do you know about the Demon King's brand?"
[Obviously. It's a royal rite that makes the Demon King greater.]

Kyle thought back to the first time he had met Baal.

[Could it be that my master has finally sent an emissary to reclaim me?]

That was what Baal had said then. Even after five hundred years, Baal still pined for its master, for the Demon King of that era. The reason was clear now. Baal knew about the brand.

[My master was the unrivaled greatest among all Demon Kings. I served three Demon Kings in total as one of the castle's treasured blades, but I can say with certainty that my last master, Astaroth Erebos, was the finest of them all.]

Hearing that, Kyle could not help but wonder. The Demon King's throne and brand are inherited down through generations. That inheritance carries centuries of accumulated memory, so it should be natural for each successor to surpass the last. Baal's last master was Astaroth from five hundred years ago, and the master before him would have been Astaroth's predecessor, so of course Astaroth was the strongest of the three. Was there anything remarkable in that?

"How impressive."

Saying that out loud would earn him a furious outburst from Baal. Kyle schooled his expression into something admiring and played along.

[Yes, Astaroth was extraordinary. But brat, why are you asking about the Demon King's brand?]
"Because Lucia has one now."
[What?]

Baal's single eye went so wide it looked ready to split.

[Lucia... are you talking about that Half-blood, that mongrel with inferior-race blood mixed in? Don't be absurd. How could a mongrel possibly have the Demon King's brand?!]
"The current succession is apparently unlike anything that came before."

Kyle walked Baal through what had happened on Beltua Island, step by step. As Baal listened with that eye staring wide, the pupil began to shake.

[That's outrageous... why would anyone pit multiple successors against each other in some contest?]
"I have no idea. Regardless, Lucia has the brand now, and it's become a problem. She doesn't want to be the Demon King."
[Despicable... she should count it as an honor. A Half-blood daring to refuse?!]
"Don't call her that."

He was playing along with Baal to get what he needed, but listening to it call Lucia that was something he could not let pass. Kyle's brow furrowed as he said it, and Baal's eye flinched.

[Brat. So what you want to hear from me is... how to remove the brand from the... hmhm, from the Half-blood?]
"Yes."
[You promised to give me freedom, but I cannot lie. I don't know how to remove the brand. I truly don't.]

What about all that shouting earlier, claiming Kyle had promised to pick it up? That had not been a lie? Kyle stared at Baal in disbelief, but the eye in the center of the blade was utterly serious.

[That said, I served three Demon Kings as their beloved sword. I may not know how to erase the brand, but I know a great deal about how the brand works.]
"I don't need anything like that."
[Hmph. How ignorant, brat. That Half-blood's brand may not be the only one in existence, but it is certainly connected to the Throne of the Demon King, isn't it? She will absolutely be feeling its influence.]

Something clicked. Lucia had said as much herself. Her sword talent had always been recognized in the Sword Tower, and Kyle had seen it too, but since the brand appeared, her gifts had grown sharper still.

[All of that is the brand's power. To prepare the body to receive the vast inherited memories, the Half-blood's body and innate abilities will keep expanding.]

The brand was a royal rite to make the Demon King greater. Memory alone was not enough. A long span of time, accumulated. The distilled essence of memory, refined across generations and worthy of inheritance. The brand prepared the body to receive that essence.

"The masters you served. Were they all the same person?"

Kyle had been quiet, and then he asked that. Baal understood what the question meant. The single eye rested on Kyle for a moment. The pupil did not shake. It did not smile. It held only a kind of hollow light.

[Not entirely the same. Each was a little different.]
"..."
[The Throne of the Demon King holds the souls of countless past Demon Kings. Each soul carries its own memories. But what is inherited is only the memory that the next generation is meant to receive.]

Baal slowly closed its eye.

[The name of the first Demon King who held me was Sariel. The second was Belzebub. Belzebub was different from Sariel. And Astaroth was different from Belzebub. But when they wielded me as a sword, I could feel it, just a little... something like longing.]
"Hearing that makes me want even less to turn Lucia into the Demon King."

Kyle stepped toward Baal.

"Lucia would want the same. She already said no."

The more he heard, the more certain he became. If the brand eventually made her the Demon King, she would no longer be entirely herself. The memories of those who came before would seep in and blur her sense of who she was. What remained in the end would not be Lucia. It would be the Demon King wearing her face.

[Truly insufferable...]

Baal muttered. But the eye that opened again was full of anticipation as Kyle drew near. He reached his hand out toward Baal slowly.

There is a saying: forgiveness is easier than permission. Right now, Kyle stood in a position where he could be forgiven for just about anything.

He had driven off the Demon Tribe that invaded Beltua Island, defeated the rising Fist Demon Lizet Beliar, and seized and handed over the royal family's submersible that had been used to breach the island's defensive magic. And he had woken Lavian Alastor from nineteen years of sleep. Julius had even spoken of handing Kyle the Family Head's seat. His relatives had undoubtedly been crying their eyes out, which meant Kyle had become a benefactor to every pureblood of his generation.

He had already gotten Fenris at five. With accomplishments like these, Baal should be within reach too. But there was always an if. Julius seemed unlikely to object, but what if the Elders decided to nitpick over procedure?

That was why Kyle moved boldly. Better to pull it out first and apologize later.

Grabbing Baal drives you mad.

Walking toward it, he thought back ten years, to Katarina's words when he first saw Baal. That actually happened, she had said. More than ten people had taken Baal in hand and gone insane,some of them Alastor purebloods and collateral members. That was the reason Baal, the very sword that had started the Sword Garden, was sealed away where no one could see it.

Baal had said it never lured anyone to it. Every person who had ever gone mad gripping it was a fool who expected something special from the Demon King's sword, someone trying to fill their own inadequacy with Baal.

'Come to think of it, I'm not so different. I'm reaching for Baal because I want to know something it knows.'

Not quite the same as grasping for power, but not entirely different either. Kyle smiled faintly and extended his hand.

Crack! A vivid red current snapped between Kyle and Baal. At the same instant, a ferocious killing intent crashed over his mind. The red-misted mental realm lurched.

In a single flash, Kyle saw countless corpses. A mountain of them,literally,an ocean made of blood. The Dark Age five hundred years ago. The corpses piled up by Demon King Astaroth as he led the invasion of the continent. The armies that stood against the Demon King's march had been turned into mountains of the dead and seas of blood, and the blade that did it was Baal.

The horror of that sight. An absolute murderous will that cut down everything in its path. The screams of those Baal had killed. His head throbbed. Kyle slowly curled his fingers.

The scene shifted. Before Astaroth, another landscape surfaced,from when Baal had been used as a weapon and a tool of slaughter. The Demon King is made only through succession. In all of Erebos's history as Baal remembered it, no Demon King had ever sat the throne without going through the rite.

That did not mean there had been no attempts at usurpation. Countless demons who dreamed of tasting power they had never known came for the throne, as did aging demons who refused to accept death. The Demon Tribe knows the exact moment their lifespan ends, and until that final moment, their bodies remain in their prime.

Waiting quietly for a fixed end is no easy thing. So most demons who sense their time running out go mad, and those among the mad who have reached great heights of power come for the throne, refusing to accept death and seeking to lodge their souls in the Throne of the Demon King.

But in the thousand years since the throne and the succession brand were established, the throne had never once changed hands through force. Every demon and every army that tried to seize it had been cut down by Baal.

Kyle curled his lip into a smile. His hand was already on Baal's hilt, fingers bending to grip the handle.

'Of course it drives people mad.'

Just reaching for it brought this. Humans and demons piled in heaps. The blood pouring out of them. Rotting flesh and innards. Even without living through it yourself, witnessing scenes like these was more than enough to shatter someone's mind. It was no wonder that fools who thought grabbing one sword would grant them great power could not hold on.

Kyle reached back into his own past. It was nothing to boast about, but he had killed quite a few people in his previous life. He had charged alone into battlefields and cut down everyone in sight to stop the fighting, more than once. Especially in those early days right after earning the name Sword Demon, he had been running fairly wild, the smell of blood a constant presence at the tip of his nose.

'I don't miss it.'

No, that was a lie. He did miss those days. He had wanted more fights with Ruin. He had wanted to fight the Demon King too. Inside a killing intent fierce enough to break a person just by touching it, Kyle felt instead something like longing, something like regret.

And so at last, Kyle's fingers closed around Baal's hilt.

...

The killing intent stopped dead. The churning red mist settled into stillness, and the screaming went silent.

Kyle looked at Baal without moving. He put some force into it and tried to pull the blade free.

It did not come up.

[Heh... heheh, heheheh...]

Baal's eye trembled.

[Freedom! I'm free! I have finally gained my freedom!]

Baal cried out with a laugh that sounded almost like sobbing. Kyle ignored all of that and kept straining at the blade.

"What? Why won't it come out?"
[What? It won't come out? Brat! Put more strength into it! Hurry and let me taste freedom!]
"I'm already putting strength into it and it still won't..."
"Because it's sealed."

Someone grabbed Kyle's shoulder.

"It's surprising you were able to hold it at all, but holding it and pulling it free are two different things."

He had not felt anyone approach.

This was Baal's mental realm. It overlapped with reality but was a different world from it. The Kyle in reality was simply standing motionless in front of Baal, and the conversations inside this space did not leak out.

That was why he had been swinging a sword in here since he was five. This place was outside the Sword Tower, so even Fragment could not interfere. Among his relatives, only Arian had Spirit Affinity, and even she could not communicate with a Dokkaebi.

And yet someone had just entered this world. Kyle turned his head and looked back.

"...?"

A man with blue hair and a striking face,but his ears were long and pointed.

"An elf?"

Kyle asked on instinct. The man smiled. Was it a man? He was not entirely sure. The face and voice were both androgynous, enough to remind him a little of Fragment.

"Ah, my true appearance comes out in a place like this. You're the first being besides me I've ever seen who could do this, so I was a little careless."

The man chuckled and released Kyle's shoulder.

"Long ears don't automatically make someone an elf. Here, look."

The man's fingers pinched his upper lip and lifted it back. A pair of elongated fangs appeared.

"The teeth are long too, aren't they? I'm not an elf. I'm a vampire."

A vampire.

Kyle's mouth fell open.

"The name is Akarion Lastea."

The man smiled, fangs on display.

Lastea.

The Ten Strongest on the Continent.

A label the Empire had coined for propaganda purposes, but the most straightforward way to name the ten greatest powers on the current continent.

The man standing in front of Kyle right now was one of those ten. He was the Lastea Tower Master.