WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

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◈ Sword Master of the Fallen Kingdom

Chapter 23

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The Forgotten City (3)

It had already been three days since they fell into those ruins disguised as a dungeon.

Luckily, if it could be called luck, nothing major had happened since they found that hundred-year-old corpse. Kyle and Lena kept moving through the ruins whenever they were not stopping for lunch or bedding down at night. Kyle led from the front and chose the route, and Lena followed close behind.

They were not wandering at random, of course. Kyle moved by tracking an extremely faint flow of mana. Even for him, finding the one point that led to the thickest concentration among all the tangled currents around them was difficult.

Because of that, Kyle secretly used Top-grade Magicite in small amounts whenever Lena was not looking. He would crumble a little and use it to read the surrounding terrain. Like a proper dungeon, monsters kept popping out along the way.

Most were nothing special, low undead, spiders, snakes.

Like now.

"Kyle-ssi! O-over there...!"

Lena looked up at the ceiling and cried out in shock. Kyle did not even look up. He just gave a short swing of his sword.

Thud-thud-thud!

Something dropped in large numbers. When she lowered her gaze, she saw neatly bisected bodies making wet pools of blood across the floor. They were huge bats. Far bigger than normal, with black wings and brown fur.

"Uh...."

"What is it? Something you want to say?"

"N-no. It's nothing."

"Is that so?"

Kyle gave the bats he had killed a brief look. Strangely, as if he had used magic, there was not a single drop of blood on his cloak.

"Let's go."

"Y-yes!"

As if none of it had happened, Kyle turned away without emotion.

Lena stood there blankly for a moment, then hurried after him.

Under her breath, where Kyle could not hear, she muttered to herself.

Is this really okay?

She had already been thinking about it. It was not because those bats were twice the size of ordinary ones. She had thrown away that weak stomach of hers long ago, back when she saw the hundred-year-old mercenary corpse. She had seen a human body reduced to bone. Monster carcasses were not a big deal.

In fact, after the first day, Lena barely flinched anymore, even at dead mercenary bodies or grotesque monsters. This was a dungeon.

The ruins of the Kingdom of Alenos, destroyed three hundred years ago. In the ruins of that famous magical kingdom, even sudden teleportation felt oddly believable.

The problem was something else.

Aren't I useless? Even if I hired Kyle-ssi as my escort, we're still supposed to be party members. But now I'm just being carried without casting a single spell.

Even if Kyle-ssi told me not to use magic, this is just...

"Um, Kyle-ssi."

"......."

"No, never mind. I was just saying things. Please forget it."

Kyle glanced back with those black eyes, and Lena swallowed the words that almost came out.

He really is not an ordinary mercenary.

Three days to reach the dungeon, then another three inside. They had spent nearly a week together now. Her vague guess had turned into certainty.

Kyle had to be a knight-errant with circumstances.

How else could it make sense? He was not even a Gold-rank Mercenary, so what kind of Silver-rank mercenary killed every monster in one slash?

There was also that strange nobility in the way he spoke and acted. Most mages of the Lenore Magic Tower were nobles or children of the very rich, so Lena was convinced of one thing.

Skill as a mercenary could be trained, but the grace built into someone's body came from birth and upbringing. For a commoner to be accepted into noble society took enormous time and effort. And overwhelming ability.

Most of all, his tightly restrained swordsmanship resembled that of famed knights. The way he navigated the ruins by instinct without even a map felt the same. It was as if he could see hundreds of meters ahead. His detection ability was unnaturally sharp.

"How long until we reach the central area?"

Lena watched his face carefully and changed the subject.

"I don't know."

"Huh?"

"These ruins are larger than I expected. Still, it won't take as long as a month."

He was not lying. The ruins were bigger than expected, but Kyle could feel the mana flowing through the air more clearly than before. It felt similar to the mana that came from the door that had teleported them.

"We might run into people soon."

Even after moving a considerable distance for three days, Kyle had not found signs of anyone alive. He had only seen a few corpses.

Unlike the first hundred-year-old body, these had no Mercenary Badge to prove identity, so there was no way to tell when they died.

"How much have we gathered so far?"

"Money? Uh, let me see...."

Lena took out her Inventory Pouch. Kyle's pouch was already mostly full, so everything they found in the dungeon had been going into hers.

"Seven Gold Coins, thirteen silver coins, forty-one copper coins, and Magic Tools with spell formations engraved on them...."

She rummaged inside while speaking. Kyle listened and gave a short verdict.

"We are still far from two thousand Gold. No, if we split it half and half, that means we really need four thousand Gold."

"...I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize. This wasn't your fault from the start. We have time. And..."

If it came down to it, we could kill people.

The thought rose unconsciously, and Kyle frowned.

If his guess was right, they had landed near the very outer edge of the ruins. They had not made contact with other people yet, but the odds of meeting someone would only rise from here.

He had no intention of robbing first, but if the other side attacked, he would not let it go. Killing would probably be faster. Then they would naturally take spoils from the bodies. From a pure profit angle, nothing was more efficient than looting. You could easily take relics and equipment others had worked hard to collect.

No, that's an excuse.

He was only looking for a justification to kill and loot without guilt. And he did not question that even a little. He had already agonized over it enough in the past. At this point, Kyle was too worn down to repent.

"The closer we get to the center, the better the haul will be."

Kyle said it while looking at Lena.

"If we find one proper relic, we can hit the target amount. So stop worrying about useless things."

That ended their conversation. Kyle moved forward step by step, feeling around with sharpened senses. Before long, the path opened up. Beyond a door off the corridor, there were stairs going down.

Kyle and Lena exchanged silent looks and descended.

"This place...."

Lena murmured softly. Kyle looked up.

A high ceiling. Magic Stone lamps hanging along the walls. An altar rising in the middle.

This space had more than one entrance. Including the stairway they came down, there was one route going up in each direction, east, west, south, and north. On the central altar sat a large chest. Lena, tense until now, brightened at once.

"A treasure chest? That's a treasure chest, right?"

The closer she got, the clearer it was. The chest looked old at a glance and gave off an unsettling air.

"A treasure chest...."

"......."

"Unfortunately, I don't think so."

"What? Then..."

Lena turned to him. Instead of answering, Kyle drove his sword straight into the chest.

The Mimic shrieked.

Almost at the same moment, the chest lid snapped open. Not gold or jewels, but sharp teeth and a long tongue shot out from inside. Lena, who had thought she was getting used to dungeons, jumped back in fright.

"T-this is...!"

"It's a Mimic."

Kyle twisted his wrist on the sword hilt and yanked. The Mimic thrashed wildly, then soon stopped moving.

"Not a treasure chest, but this is not bad either."

From the Mimic's split mouth poured out all kinds of loot it had consumed, simple coinage like gold, silver, and copper, plus glittering valuables.

"Wow...."

Lena gasped innocently at the spread of shining gold and gems.

"It ate a lot."

Kyle thought about how many corpses this Mimic had swallowed. Dozens, maybe hundreds. Either way, it was not worth caring about now. Together, he and Lena collected the money and valuables the Mimic had spat out.

***

They wandered the ruins for a few more hours, then found a suitable room and got ready to sleep. Just like on the first day, it was an empty room on the outskirts with no one inside.

"The haul was great today. I think we made more in one day than we did over the last few days."

Lena sorted the Mimic loot with a pleased look.

Kyle glanced at her and checked the pocket watch tucked inside his clothes.

Already ten at night.

In just three days, his sense of time had gone fuzzy. The only light came from lamps fixed around the ruins, which made it worse. This deep underground, with no sunlight at all, he and Lena would probably have lost day and night completely without that watch.

He pulled out the lower-grade Magic Stone lamp he bought at a general store from his Inventory Pouch. A soft glow spread through the dark room. Setting the lamp between them, Kyle handed Lena hard biscuits and jerky.

"Eat. Don't force it down, chew slowly."

"Ah, thank you."

She narrowed her eyes at the dried rations in her hand for a moment, tore off a tiny piece of jerky, then grimaced. Same as yesterday, this heavily salted jerky was impossible to swallow comfortably.

"Ugh...."

"Too salty?"

"Yes... it's too salty. I can't get used to it."

"Swallow it anyway. You won't last long on dried fruit alone."

This was not food for flavor. It was food to stay alive. Kyle chewed jerky and biscuit with a blank face. If they were outside, he would have lit a fire and boiled stew. Here, that was impossible. They had no firewood, and the space was enclosed, so there was no ventilation.

"Still, I feel good. Hehe."

Lena packed the spoils she had laid out back into her Inventory Pouch one by one.

"I think we'll hit the target amount faster than expected. At first I thought it was totally impossible...."

"These are the ruins of the Kingdom of Alenos. Unless something abnormal happens, we should meet the target without trouble. Escaping with it is a separate issue."

He said that, but he did not look worried. While Lena chewed a biscuit instead of jerky, she asked,

"Um, I have a question."

"Ask."

"That treasure chest earlier. How did you know it was... a Mimic?"

"Because I can see mana."

"Huh?"

"Shapeshifting monsters give themselves away when you look. They're not hard to identify."

"Uh... is that even possible?"

"For a skilled knight or mage, maybe."

"But I couldn't feel anything at all. Is finding the path the same principle for you, Kyle-ssi?"

"Yeah."

"Then maybe I could..."

"No point. You won't be able to copy it anyway."

He was not boasting. Kyle's mana sensitivity was abnormally exceptional. He had met countless people by now, and while swordsmanship or spellcasting might differ, no one he had seen surpassed him in the precision of mana control.

"Even aside from that, in a dungeon or labyrinth, never open any chest carelessly. Same for ruins. It could be a Mimic-like shapeshifting monster."

It was an unwritten rule.

Lena nodded on reflex and realized again how shallow her field experience was. Most mages who spent half their lives in a tower were probably the same. Flowers raised in a greenhouse did not know how to resist harsh storms.

"You said money wasn't mandatory, that a relic related to divine power would also do."

"Ah, yes."

"And anything with mediocre divine power would be meaningless."

"......."

Lena's expression darkened sharply. Watching her fall silent, Kyle felt he roughly understood the whole story.

A young mage from the Lenore Magic Tower, out here alone. What she needed was a huge amount of money and a relic linked to divine power. The old man she called her grandfather was probably in critical condition. Bad enough that even the tower could not easily intervene.

"It'll be fine."

Instead of pressing for details, Kyle said only that.

"With enough Gold, you can buy almost anything at auction."

"...I guess that's true?"

"Yeah."

"Do you think we'll make it out safely?"

"We will. You have me as your escort."

"...Right. I do."

Lena blinked slowly, finished the remaining jerky and biscuit, and wrapped herself in a blanket.

"Sleep now. I'll take first watch."

Kyle lowered the lamp brightness. Lena gave a small nod, then soon lay curled up on the floor. He heard her sniff a few times, and not long after, her soft breathing settled in.

Kyle watched her and sorted out the thoughts drifting in his mind.

We've moved out of the far outer edge to some extent.

The center... even at worst, we should reach it within a week.

The terrain in all directions kept getting more complex. The number of dead bodies and how often monsters appeared both made it obvious they were nearing their destination.

Naturally, the danger rose with it. People were the biggest issue. These ruins were at least a hundred years old, and besides the mercenaries who died in the past, many others had recently entered after hearing the dungeon rumor. Men willing to risk their lives for sudden wealth would not hesitate to murder.

Things to watch were still the same, Twin Fangs of Silence and Marquis Filein.

There was no certainty Erik's group had been right, but they had not looked like they were lying either. The odds were high enough.

Serentia, the greatest information guild in the southern continent. Twin Fangs of Silence, the assassination guild that once served under it. If someone on the level of that guild's master appeared, even Kyle would have trouble. More precisely, he would have to burn through a lot of Magicite.

Same for Marquis Filein. Kyle had stopped him from looting House Metis's convoy, so it would not be strange if the marquis was half mad with rage by now.

And beyond that, there was the danger inside these ruins themselves. Too many variables to count one by one. Staring quietly at the lamp's flame, Kyle touched the Top-grade Magicite in his clothes. Each was worth dozens of Gold, and he had no real sense of how many he would need to use. Erik's party, who were somewhere in these same ruins, might already be dead by now.

But if I can find a relic...

Kyle shook his head inwardly.

It would be great if he found a relic that freed him from mana restrictions, or even lifted his curse entirely, but that was far too convenient.

He had cleared many dungeons and ruins already, yet found no solution related to that, not even one. Clinging to a slim chance now was foolish. If you expected nothing, you would not be betrayed.

Even so, people still threw their lives into dungeons because that empty hope gave them strength to keep living. Pretend otherwise all he wanted, he lived the same way too.

"......."

Kyle was looking down at the lamp when he lifted his head. Faint footsteps came from a nearby outer corridor.

Step, step, step.

One set echoed against the right wall, one against the left, and one thudded up through the ground in the middle. Three people in total, and their presence moved steadily this way.

Kyle glanced at the deeply sleeping Lena and slowly reached for the sword set beside him.

"Ah... I'm dead tired."

"Yeah, but your pouch is stuffed. At this rate, we could loaf around for a year."

"You see that fucking bitch earlier? Acting like we're teammates, screaming her head off...."

"Still, we had our fun, so who cares."

"True. She had a lot of money too. That's why dungeons are great. You can ambush and kill from behind in broad daylight and nothing happens."

"If that was outside, we'd have bounties on our heads for sure."

"More importantly, this is the right direction, yeah? Let's rest tonight and get to the center fast, then get out...."

Their voices carried as they chatted. The sound grew louder by the second. Kyle counted their steps and distance in his head and laid his sword across his knees.

Almost at the same time, the footsteps stopped. Kyle looked away from the lamp and turned around.

Three men stood there at the room entrance, frozen in surprise. Between the outer corridor and the room interior, under the dim lamp glow, the gazes of the four men tangled in the air.

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