WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

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◈ Sword Master of the Fallen Kingdom

Chapter 2

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The Nameless Mercenary (2)

When dawn broke, Kyle packed up the campsite where he'd spent the night.

There wasn't much to do. Put out the embers still smoldering in the fire pit. Drag the bodies into a rough pile. Eat a quick breakfast.

Seven corpses lay heaped to one side. He hadn't bothered burning them. In a few days there'd be nothing left but bones, picked apart by whatever animals and monsters lived in this forest, or whatever crows happened by.

One last look around, then Kyle moved on.

Beyond the tree line, open plains stretched out ahead. The sun had risen fully, casting morning light at a slant across the land. He kept walking through the day, and by late afternoon his destination came into sight.

The free city of Traben.

Kyle joined the long queue stretching back from the city gates. It didn't take long before the murmuring started.

"What is that?"

"Is that blood? What's that smell..."

Stares came from everywhere. Not just the people in line, the merchants guiding their wagons were looking at him the same way you'd look at a madman.

"Halt!"

When Kyle's turn finally came, the soldier conducting the inspection called out sharply.

"What in the..."

The soldier muttered, thrown off. Fair enough. Kyle's appearance was anything but ordinary.

A black cloak falling to his ankles. A hood pulled low over his face. The leather armor and the sword at his hip were both clearly well-kept, and any soldier worth his salt would have read him as a seasoned veteran mercenary at a glance.

"What exactly is that?"

The problem was what he was carrying. In his right hand hung a large sack. White fabric, visibly stuffed, smeared all over with dark dried blood.

"Stop. Don't move another inch."

"......."

"Sorry, but I'm going to need to see what's inside. Procedure."

Kyle shrugged instead of answering. The senior soldier gave a nod, and two others nearby stepped forward.

And then.

"What the hell."

"Urk, bleugh!"

One scrunched his face and swore. The other's stomach turned the moment he looked inside the sack and he doubled over gagging.

"What is it?"

Unsettled by his men's reactions, the senior soldier finally checked for himself.

"This is..."

"Bounties."

"No, I mean..."

His jaw went slack. Inside were seven severed heads. Every pair of eyes stretched wide open, and after sitting long enough they'd taken on a bluish tinge. The smell that rolled out with them was its own separate problem.

"You're saying all of these have bounties on them?"

The senior soldier asked, his expression twisting despite himself. Kyle gave a small nod.

"I was attacked last night."

"And these are the ones who attacked you?"

"That's right. Exactly seven."

"What's your purpose in visiting Traben?"

"Resupply and collect my bounties. One night, then I leave. Is there a problem?"

Kyle asked in a flat voice. His sheer nerve was enough to catch the other man off guard.

Is there a problem?

Of course there's a goddamn problem, you lunatic. The senior soldier worked very hard to keep those words from leaving his throat. A long breath escaped through his lips. He chose his words carefully.

"...What's your name?"

"Kyle."

"Right, Kyle. Do you have anything to prove your identity? Anything at all. A family seal, a merchant guild mark, a mercenary badge."

"Here."

Kyle reached into his coat and produced something, as if he'd been expecting the question.

"A mercenary badge from the Kingdom of Kirian. But... silver?"

The senior soldier's eyes went wide.

It varied by region, but a silver mercenary badge meant wielding combat ability close to that of a proper knight. There were exceptions, but that was generally the rule. Silver sat just below gold, the highest rank.

"Need anything else?"

Kyle asked with the same easy manner as before. Though 'composed confidence' might not quite cover it. It was more the dark hair and eyes visible beneath that hood, the low voice and unhurried way he carried himself, that gave that impression.

The senior soldier swallowed without meaning to. There was no longer any real reason to hold the man. The severed heads were unsettling, sure, but they weren't a threat. Identity checked out. Purpose was clear. Stay was short. Anyone carrying a bounty on their head was by definition a dangerous criminal, killing them deserved a commendation, not scrutiny.

"...Go on in. Don't cause any trouble inside."

Even so, he couldn't shake the unease that lingered. Something in the man in front of him. Some quality he couldn't put a name to.

"Appreciated."

A brief word of thanks, and Kyle slipped through the gap the soldiers made for him. Traben was just a supply stop, nothing more, and he had no intention of making trouble first.

As long as no one started it with him.

***

The kingdom he was currently in was Brendel, situated in the southern region of the Velia continent.

Velia was divided into four broad regions.

East, west, south, north.

The east was home to the Grandecia Federation, a coalition of five kingdoms. Across from them, sharing a border to the west, lay the territory of the Elandor Empire, a single nation that stood as the most powerful force on the continent.

The northern Hailen Kingdom had once been strong enough to wage all-out war against the Empire, but five years ago that war had brought it to utter ruin, leaving nothing but remnants. The south was the opposite.

Kept a step removed from the flames of war, it was relatively at ease. That was why Kyle operated here.

In the ten years he had lived in this world, he'd come to see it was not, at its core, so different from Earth.

There were people, there were groups, there were nations.

Civilization sat somewhere between the medieval and the early modern. Mana put certain fields ahead of where modern Earth had been, but on the whole it lagged behind.

The endless wars were proof enough of that.

The real kicker was how enormous Velia actually was. Going by the scale of the continental map, it dwarfed Europe and fell only just short of Russia.

Because of that, crossing the continent in a straight line took a full year on foot. On horseback it would have been faster, but with the current political climate it would only get slower. Some regions and borders couldn't be crossed at all. This godforsaken world had nothing better to do than kill each other whenever boredom struck.

"......."

Out of that momentary drift, Kyle stopped outside a building. He tilted his head back. The sun was slowly going down.

The city bathed red. People hurrying through the last of the day. Kyle stood among them for a moment like a fixture in the scene, then pushed open the door in front of him. Inside was the noisy churn you'd expect from any guild hall.

He cut straight through it. A few people flinched at the sight of him, but that wasn't his concern.

"Welcome. How can I help you...?"

The clerk at the counter, who'd been filling out paperwork, looked up and froze. Her gaze traveled from the hood down to the sack in his right hand and stopped.

Blood?

"Seven from the Dex Mercenary Company. I believe they have bounties on them. Is that right?"

He set the sack on the counter. It landed with a heavy thud, and every head in the guild hall turned toward him at once.

"Did he just say...?"

"The Dex Mercenary Company?"

"Don't tell me all of that is bodies. No, it's too small for that..."

"Did he cut off their heads and just bring those?"

The hall buzzed in a different way than before. The clerk spoke with a slight tremor in her voice.

"I'm sorry. Let me start with your identification. Could I have your name?"

"Kyle."

"Could I see your mercenary badge?"

He handed it over without a word. The smooth silver badge made her eyes go wide.

"A badge from the Kingdom of Kirian."

The kingdoms of the south were interconnected, not to the same degree as the eastern federation, but meaningfully so. A badge issued in any one of them functioned as a general form of identification throughout the region.

More importantly, Kyle's badge was silver. Silver rank sat just below gold, the highest tier. Getting there required not only raw strength but a track record of completed commissions and a built-up reputation. Even in a busy city guild, silver badges were rare enough to count on one hand. Her surprise was understandable.

"Silver rank... confirmed."

She pushed through her composure and continued. Somewhere along the way the guild hall had gone so quiet that not even the smallest background noise remained besides their two voices.

"The Dex Mercenary Company you mentioned is definitely on our wanted list. The bounty was also increased recently."

"Good. I'd like to collect it now. Is that possible?"

"Yes. Before that, we'll need to confirm these are actually Dex Company members..."

She trailed off, gaze falling to the sack, expression souring. White fabric stained dark with dried blood. She didn't want to imagine what was inside, even if she already had a pretty good idea.

"Ugh!"

Just as expected, she carefully opened the sack and immediately gagged. A male clerk from the next window stepped in and cross-referenced the seven heads inside against the faces on the wanted posters.

"Seven Dex Mercenary Company members. Confirmed match with the wanted posters."

"......."

"Total bounty is 10 gold."

"That's a lot."

Ten gold was one large denomination coin. In this world, that was six months of living expenses for a family of four.

"Yes. There were far more victims than expected."

"That many?"

"Up until a month ago it wasn't this high, but recently a number of new victims came forward with kill commissions, and..."

"......."

"Apologies, I've been rambling. Could you wait a moment? The amount is fairly large, so I need to bring the money from the back."

The male clerk who had handled the confirmation went through the door. That was when the other mercenaries, who had been silent until then, started talking one by one.

"What he said just now... is that real?"

"The clerk confirmed it."

"Isn't the Dex Company captain basically knight-level? He killed all seven of them by himself?"

"Silver rank. He's a different breed from us."

"Even that varies a lot between people. Same silver rank on paper, but one person might be weaker than some country noble's knight while another is stronger than a great house's. Some people don't bother pushing to gold because they don't want to be tied down to a guild."

"More to the point, he seems to be alone. If you got on his good side somehow..."

The familiar sound of people talking behind someone's back. Kyle stood at the counter exactly as before, waiting.

"Oh!"

He glanced sideways. The female clerk who'd first greeted him flinched when their eyes met. He caught a flicker of fear in hers.

Remarkable that someone with that little nerve managed a counter job at a guild.

He didn't blame her. Guild staff needed to be literate, which made them skilled workers, practically quasi-civil servants of the state. The pay was good and the social standing respectable, so if she was capable in other ways, a little squeamishness wasn't hard to overlook.

Mercenaries, on the other hand, were a looked-down-upon profession. Any farmer from the countryside who could lift a weapon could call himself one.

Even high rank didn't change much. The more capable a mercenary, the more desperately they chased honor and status. The wall of class was just that solid. At the bottom rung, the dream was to claw your way into service as a noble household's private soldier or retainer, that was considered the pinnacle of success. The odd one managed to marry into a noble family as a son-in-law, but that was rare.

"Sorry to keep you waiting, Kyle-nim."

The clerk returned from the back before long.

"I apologize. About the bounty payment..."

His hands were empty. Surely he wasn't about to say they couldn't pay. Kyle's eyes narrowed.

"Do you have a moment right now?"

"What for?"

A note of irritation crept into his voice. The clerk spoke carefully.

"The branch director has made a request. He's asking if you'd be available for a brief meeting..."

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