WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

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◈ Sword Master of the Fallen Kingdom

Chapter 1

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The Nameless Mercenary (1)

Ten years. That's how long it had been since I fell into this fantasy world.

A lot happened in that time. Some of it nearly killed me.

I walked the line between living and dying more times than I could count. To survive, I killed more people than I could remember.

Somewhere along the way, the smell of blood soaked into my skin stopped feeling wrong. The fragile twenty-year-old I'd been before all this, gone. What remained was a blunted thing, dulled by years of killing just to stay alive.

Only then did I come to understand the four rules for surviving in this world.

First: never trust anything too easily.

Third: never love anyone, and never let yourself get attached.

The last, the fourth one was....

***

Crackle, crackle.

The campfire burned bright. I'd been staring blankly at the shifting flames when I reached over and tossed another log in.

A small twig drifting through the air got swallowed by the red flames and was gone. I chewed on a strip of jerky. Hard, naturally. And brutally salty. My brow furrowed.

Terrible.

Nothing to be done about it. Food made for long storage, not for taste. Besides, this world's civilization ran a step below Earth's across the board, so the food suffered for it too.

Today of all days, my mind kept drifting back to the soft, fatty samgyeopsal from the place near my old house. Freshly fried chicken still warm from the oil. A cold glass of cola loaded with ice.

The reason it was cola and not beer is simple. I had just started university when I fell into this world, and I hadn't had a drink yet. Not once. So I started my second life in a fantasy world without ever tasting alcohol.

There were chances to drink after that, but it was never my thing.

I just didn't like the feeling of being drunk. People say they drink when they're sad or when they're happy, but I never understood that. What's so great about a lump of bitterness? If you want flavor and aroma, there's plenty of better food out there.

"You have no joy in life, Kyle. Nothing beats a good drink as a companion, though."

A memory surfaced without warning. A time I could no longer go back to, one I ached for.

Kyle. Kyle. Kyle.

The voices of people calling my name rang through my head, off and on.

Some were warm. Some carried a hint of frustration. Others were heavy with a grief that had no bottom to it.

Right. Kyle.

That was my name now. Given by a man I once thought of as both my teacher and my older brother.

The name I used back in Korea, I had long since forgotten. More precisely, it had grown so unfamiliar it didn't feel like mine anymore. Even saying it out loud felt like a struggle.

Kyle forced down the jerky he'd been chewing and used a stick to lift the cup off the campfire by its handle. Steam curled up from inside, carrying the scent of the tea leaves he'd dropped in earlier.

One sip, and the saltiness sitting heavy in his stomach settled down.

"You might as well come out now," Kyle said, eyes fixed on the darkness beyond the undergrowth. "You've already been spotted."

"...When did you know?"

The reply came from the side. Almost at the same moment, movement broke out from every direction at once.

One, two, three, four, five, six....

"From the beginning. There sure are a lot of you."

Unhurried, Kyle straightened the sword resting against his shoulder. The moment his hand touched the scabbard, a calm settled over him, as warm and steady as the tea in his stomach.

"You knew from the beginning?"

"I just have a good sense for these things."

The man who stepped out first was close to two meters tall, built like a wall. The fire lit up a face that was ugly on a good day. A long scar running from his eye down to his cheek made an already menacing look considerably worse.

"We thought we were being quiet about it," he said.

"......."

"Impressive instincts."

"Did Baron Vylk send you?"

Kyle asked, almost as an afterthought. Armed men turning up in a forest in the dead of night, their purpose was obvious enough.

"You knew?"

The man who seemed to be their leader looked genuinely surprised. What they wanted was probably just one thing.

To kill me. And to take my head.

"More or less."

"I suppose it'd be stranger if you didn't. Still, why go and rub a noble the wrong way and cause all this trouble? A man ought to know when to bend a little."

"Rub him the wrong way?"

Kyle gave a hollow laugh.

"That's right. You refused a noble lord's offer to become his vassal, of all things."

It was already over a week ago. Back then, Kyle had been staying in a small town, not a forest like this.

That was around the time he'd taken a job and seen it through. Whatever his past, Kyle was working as a mercenary now, and confident in his abilities. Taking a fair price to deal with a lord's problem wasn't anything unusual.

The issue was.

"Does that account for the baron's daughter barging into my room in the middle of the night without so much as a knock?" Kyle asked.

It happened on the last night before he left. Baron Vylk had expressed his gratitude to Kyle for handling the commission so cleanly, and offered him a guest room in the manor.

Kyle didn't turn it down. Ordinarily, he would have stayed at one of the town's inns. But sleeping in a musty, foul-smelling inn bed versus a free night in a lord's manor, there was no reason to refuse.

He washed up and sank into the soft bed, not forgetting to lay his sword at the head of it where he could grab it at any moment. For a man who'd spent years in this world killing and nearly being killed, it was a habit he couldn't shake.

Nothing would have happened there. The trouble was what came after. Just as he was drifting off to sleep, the faint sound of a door opening reached him. The one who crept into Kyle's room in the dead of night was none other than the lord's daughter. Wearing a nightgown thin enough to see right through.

"The daughter of Baron Vylk snuck into your room in the middle of the night?"

He looked genuinely surprised. First he'd heard of it.

"Don't tell me... you knocked the Vylk girl out cold because you didn't want it, and ran? An unmarried noblewoman sneaks into your room in the middle of the night, with the baron practically winking at the whole thing, and you threw away a golden opportunity like that!"

Surprise turned to anger fast. Even as the man vented, Kyle said nothing.

It wasn't worth the effort.

Kyle was good. Very good, solving in a single day what Baron Vylk had been struggling with for months said as much.

In this world, martial strength was power. Vylk, a frontier noble, had wanted to bring Kyle on as his vassal. Kyle refused, naturally. Vylk was disappointed but didn't let it show.

Instead, he expressed his goodwill by offering Kyle a room.

If he'd known it was a trap, he would have stayed quietly at the town inn.

"A commoner getting a chance to become a noble, and you turned it down!"

"Sorry, but my standards are fairly high."

"Her looks weren't up to your standard? You should've married her and kept a mistress on the side if you had to, you absolute idiot!"

"Do you even know what the lord's daughter looks like?"

Kyle asked, left hand resting on the scabbard, right hand sipping his tea. The man flinched at how calm his voice still was.

"...What does she look like?"

"Like she got ground up in a mortar six times over."

"Oh."

The man conceded immediately.

"No, but still, you should've gone through with it, you moron!"

Kyle watched the man swing wildly between emotions and let out a long sigh. He had no interest in dragging out this pointless talk. The cup was nearly empty, too.

"Said everything you wanted to say?"

"......."

"Go on, then. I don't want to kill anyone tonight. I'd like a decent night's sleep."

Kyle drank the last sip from his cup and set it down beside him. Every man there, including the leader, was watching him with cold eyes. The almost playful mood from moments before felt like a lie.

"You seem awfully confident."

"......."

"Do you even know how many of us there are?"

"Seven. The one you've got hiding in the back, he's the crossbowman?"

No need to use mana for that. Ten years of brushing up against death had sharpened Kyle's senses to where even things he couldn't see felt almost tangible.

"Ha! That instinct alone deserves some credit."

"......."

"But it's not going to save your life tonight. Do you know who we are?"

The man smiled, cold and sharp. Kyle said nothing.

"The Dex Mercenary Corps."

A name he'd heard somewhere before. Kyle frowned. Dex Corps, a name that carried some weight for all the wrong reasons around here.

More than that, though.

"...You've got bounties on your heads."

Wanted by the guild for indiscriminate killing and robbery. Bandits in all but name. Based on the rumors Kyle had picked up in inns over the years, the number of their victims was far from small.

"Since you know, let's make this easy. Don't resist, and I'll send you off in one clean cut."

The man raised the greatsword strapped to his back. At that signal, the others tightened their grips on their weapons and began closing the distance, one by one.

"Nothing personal. This is just how we make a living."

Kyle tilted his head back and looked up at the ink-black night sky.

"How many have you killed like this?"

"Hard to say. Hard to remember. Can you remember how many pieces of bread you've eaten in your life?"

"Fair enough."

Slowly, Kyle closed his eyes.

"This is pointless."

"Exactly. That's what I'm saying. Killing someone is just routine for us. So...."

"Same for me."

His eyes snapped open and he rose in one motion. A blade was already in his hand, drawn from the scabbard.

A sword?

When did he draw it....

The smooth silver blade caught the crimson firelight and shimmered orange. Not a sound. A single pale arc traced through the air, and half a beat later, blood burst like a geyser.

Splatter.

"Huh...?"

Someone let out a dazed sound. The massive body of the man, now without a head, toppled forward in front of the campfire. Logs flew in all directions from the impact, scattering sparks and ash. The cleanly severed head rolled roughly to the side.

"B-Brother!"

A scream close to pure terror. Kyle ignored it.

He stepped forward.

Targets weren't hard to find. Right in front of him. One at a time, every swing of the sword sent another head flying.

The ones who finally grasped what was happening tried to run. Too late.

"P-please, spare...."

Thud.

Kyle drove his sword into the back of the last crossbowman's neck. Before long, the area around the campfire had gone as quiet as it was before. He shook the blood off his blade with a light flick and went through the bodies with practiced hands.

A handful of copper and silver coins. Dried rations and a little other food. Their weapons, reasonably well-maintained.

Kyle pocketed all of it. He wasn't short on money, but there was no reason to leave it behind. Done with the cleanup, he looked down at seven bodies, each cleanly decapitated. The faces of those who hadn't died instantly still wore the fear from their final moments.

"Ha...."

Kyle felt a deep disgust with himself.

That a twenty-year-old university student had become this.

And that he could never go home.

"...Damn isekai."

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