WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Sword Master of the Fallen Kingdom

Chapter 35

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Hyenas at the Foothills (3)

A massive tree trunk crashed down. Splintered branches and leaves whipped through the air in every direction. The bushes below were torn to shreds.

The middle-aged mage held his shield with everything he had. In front of the hemispherical mana barrier covering him and the three knights, blades of wind rushed in wildly, trying to rip all four of them apart.

The invisible shield flickered unstably, and every time a stream of wind slammed into it, chunks of mana were torn away and his vision flashed white.

"A shortened incantation?"

The mage ground his teeth.

"How can this kind of power be possible...?"

His arms were being forced back. He poured in every drop of mana he could.

Not long after, the storm shredding everything around them slowly weakened. Almost at the same time, the mana wall blocking their front vanished.

The endless storm finally died down.

"Ah..."

He panted hard, then stared blankly at the scene in front of him with his mouth hanging open. The forest that had been peaceful moments ago now looked like the mouth of hell.

Thick tree trunks were snapped, bushes were overturned, and broken corpses were scattered beneath them. In the pools of blood, a few soldiers who had barely survived let out screams close to death rattles.

"Aaaagh... aagh..."

"Save me... please..."

"Mom..."

The middle-aged mage turned, eyes shaking. Three knights stood beside him with the same expression on their faces. They were all thinking the same thing.

This was impossible.

You could never produce this level of power with a single shortened-incantation spell. The more you cut down a chant, the weaker the output became. That was basic law. More than anything, even though the spell had looked indiscriminate, the girl from the Lenore Magic Tower behind that mercenary had not taken a single scratch.

That meant he had controlled the flow of mana perfectly.

Was that even possible?

"Who... what are you?"

The mage looked back at Kyle and asked between ragged breaths.

Almost fifty soldiers had died from that single strike.

They had started with sixty men controlling the area.

One spell had instantly killed eighty percent of their force. The remaining twenty percent had injuries so severe they were as good as dead.

"Does that matter?" Kyle lowered his raised left hand and answered shortly.

Kyle already knew this marquis mage was skilled. He had herded them in systematically with signal Magic Tools, moving in groups of three. He also knew the remaining three knights were each above an average Silver Rank mercenary.

"This... this makes no sense. It makes no sense."

"......"

"You're saying one spell wiped out Marquis Filein's elite troops? That cannot happen. It is absolutely imposs..."

"But it did happen. And trying to jump into dungeon clearing this late is already pointless. You people did not even have the nerve to step into the dungeon yourselves. You're just robbers, stealing the price of other people's lives from a safe distance."

Kyle's pitch-black eyes swept over the three knights and the mage.

"Rats who were never ready to die in the first place."

None of them argued. They only kept their mouths shut.

Silence settled for a while.

After a short pause, once he had regained his breathing a little, the middle-aged mage spoke again.

"You... are not some ordinary mercenary."

He asked with complete certainty.

"Which house are you from?"

"House?"

"This dungeon control operation was done with agreement from most of the noble-faction houses. We had to give up a great deal in return. That is why I never once heard of another house aiming for this dungeon. Unless it was a royalist house like Count Metis's..."

"Ah."

Right before the mage finished, Kyle let out a small sound.

"Come to think of it, House Metis was part of the royalist faction."

"What...?"

Kyle nodded like he had just remembered. The mage twisted his face, unable to understand.

Then Kyle spoke again.

"It has not been long since Marquis Filein attacked House Metis's trading convoy. He lost four knights and dozens of elite soldiers, so I thought he would be too hurt to keep controlling this dungeon. Looks like he still had plenty to spare. Men who dared to try killing the count's direct bloodline in another lord's territory are quite capable. They still failed."

"How do you...?"

"I did it."

Kyle spoke in a low but clear voice to the stunned men.

"I did that. I killed the four knights, and I gave the order to wipe out the remaining soldiers."

"W... what...?"

"And now I'll kill all of you here too."

The eyes of one mage and three knights opened so wide they looked ready to tear. At some point, Kyle had raised his left hand again.

Sunlight poured into the treeless edge of the forest. On the blood-soaked ground, the ring on the middle finger of Kyle's left hand shone in five colors. Soft sunlight rested over his black cloak.

Wind from above ruffled his hair, carrying the sharp smell of blood.

The hem of his black cloak puffed lightly, then settled.

From that point on, the scenery slowly erased itself.

As if there had been nothing there from the start.

As if he had never existed.

Kyle's figure slowly vanished through broken fragments of light. He dissolved into the air.

"Hallucination."

Just before refracted light swallowed him completely, Kyle's lips moved slightly. A moment later, his form disappeared entirely.

Lena's eyes went wide behind where he had stood.

Magic that bent light.

Alongside Spatial Magic, illusion-type magic was famous for being extremely hard to use.

And it had been cast with a single shortened chant.

Slash!

A low murmur rode the wind, and at that same instant, one of Marquis Filein's knights had his head sent flying through the air. A bright red fountain burst from the cleanly cut neck. Beyond it, a faintly wavering blade silhouette could be seen.

It shimmered under the sun like heat haze.

It looked like a thin line of death.

"Daniel!"

"Behind!"

From the moment Kyle vanished to the moment a knight twenty meters away lost his head, everything happened in an instant. The two remaining knights shouted their dead comrade's name, then snapped around as soon as they grasped the situation.

There was naturally nothing there.

Still, they felt it.

Neither of them spoke. Their hands moved to their waists on instinct.

Two swords flashed out like streaks of light. They slashed at the exact space behind the fallen knight the instant they drew.

Clang!

A sharp metallic crash rang out. The attack did not connect. Their crossed blades stopped in midair, as if something invisible had caught them.

"What..."

"How...?"

Both knights stared, eyes bulging at the bizarre sight.

Then Kyle's form began to reappear between the shimmering distortions. His black cloak and hair, fluttering in the wind, regained their original color in the sunlight. Blood from the knight he had just beheaded was still on Kyle's star iron sword, which had casually blocked both swords at once.

"It's been a while since I used illusion magic..."

Kyle muttered, his breathing perfectly steady.

Illusion magic, Hallucination.

Even simple light refraction consumed huge amounts of mana. Most illusion spells did. Before, Kyle would not even have dared attempt it, because one Hallucination used more mana than Sword Aura.

But now it was different.

He could feel the enormous storm of mana raging inside the ring. He no longer needed to refine mana first, so casting had become faster than in the days before his curse. Even if his one-shot output was much lower than before, this was enough to make up for it.

What mattered was that magic was no longer locked away.

Illusion magic left mana traces, so it did not work long on high-level knights and mages. But as a sudden opening strike, it was still effective. When the gap in skill was huge, it could become a one-sided massacre.

Just like now.

"......"

With their weapons pressed together, Kyle and the two knights locked eyes.

Three blades crossed, strength against strength. The two knights attacked together with mana reinforcement. Kyle took it head-on without even blinking.

He even pushed them back a little.

The two knights frowned hard.

"Are you trying to run off by yourself?"

Kyle looked past the locked blades.

The middle-aged mage was there, backing away one step at a time while leaving the two knights behind.

The two knights glanced back too and stared in disbelief.

"Lord Hiros?"

"Ah..."

"What are you..."

"No!"

The mage screamed at the top of his lungs, face burning red.

"What are you doing? Kill him now! Kill him!"

He shouted again between panting breaths. Blocking Kyle's first spell had drained an enormous amount of mana and mental strength. Dizziness hit him, and the worst-case scene in front of him was driving him mad.

He was terrified of what would happen after this too.

"If we can't kill him, we're all dead anyway! We have to make up the losses, even if we strip him of every relic he has!"

Both knights flinched.

They had almost certainly already lost sixty elite soldiers. One knight was dead too. If they returned empty-handed, they would lose money, status, and honor.

"Kill him! I said kill him!"

The middle-aged mage pointed at Kyle with a trembling finger.

The two knights turned their eyes forward again.

That was when Kyle broke the balance of the crossed swords.

He drove his sword to the right in one hard push. The three tangled blades came apart in a split second.

A gap opened for an instant.

That instant was all Kyle needed.

Slash!

A single silver flash flared. The head of the left knight, who had been blocking Kyle's blade a moment ago, came off cleanly just like the first one. Kyle's sword was one beat faster than the knight's attempt to raise his weapon and defend.

"You bastard!"

The right knight, teeth clenched, reset his stance and stabbed for Kyle's heart. He aimed for the timing right after the decapitation, expecting a slower response.

Kyle did not give it to him.

He twisted his wrist and pulled his sword inward.

Attack shifted into defense in one smooth motion. The knight's sword slid up at an angle along Kyle's blade. Kyle swept up and knocked it away with ease. He stepped in while the knight was still shaken and poured mana into his own edge.

Threads unraveled.

Pure white Sword Aura wrapped around the blade.

Crack-clang!

The knight cast his own Sword Aura a beat too late and barely blocked Kyle's strike. Kyle drove him back without mercy.

Watching that, the middle-aged mage felt the strength leave his legs.

Anyone could see the last knight was far below Kyle. Two knights together had not lasted even one exchange before one died. The last one would die soon too.

And then he would die.

Reality did not feel real. It felt like a sick nightmare.

He remembered what Kyle had said before.

That he had wiped out all of Marquis Filein's elites who attacked House Metis's convoy.

It was true?

He could not believe it. If it was true, fate had played a filthy joke on him.

Unlike the convoy attack, this mission had been easy. Stay outside the dungeon, control the area, extort relics. They had enough troops and agreement from the noble-faction houses. They had even received help. Other lords had silently tolerated them crossing their territories.

All they had needed to do was camp on the mountain with the dungeon and fill their pockets to satisfaction.

Simple work.

That was what he had thought when he first saw Kyle's group too. They looked skilled enough, but there were only two of them. They had probably escaped the dungeon by luck, using other mercenaries who entered first as shields. Even if they had gotten out on their own, clearing the dungeon should have drained them badly.

That was what he had believed.

Now he was going to die.

Not because he failed the mission.

Not because he fell while defending honor.

In this insignificant forest.

All of them would be killed by one nameless mercenary.

Without landing even one real hit.

This could not happen.

He denied reality and forced himself to look away from what was in front of him. This had been impossible from the start. Three knights handpicked by the house itself, and him, a mage from a famous tower even if not the Lenore Magic Tower, all getting massacred by one man.

Then how?

He could not die here.

The middle-aged mage's eyes darted around. Soldiers killed instantly by the first spell. Mangled corpses and blood across the ruined forest. Two knights beheaded by illusion magic and sword strikes.

"Ah..."

He let out a groan.

At the spot where Kyle had first faced them, twenty meters away, stood the young Lenore Magic Tower girl, clutching something tightly and watching her surroundings.

She was from the Lenore Magic Tower, but she was young. She did not look like someone who had killed people. Naturally, she would lack real experience. Compared to him, who had trained magic for years and had deep combat experience, she was no match.

If he took her hostage...

His decision was quick.

This was his only option now.

From what it looked like, she had cleared the dungeon with Kyle. Kyle had deliberately adjusted his earlier wind spell too. If he captured her, he had a real chance to get out alive.

The mage raised his hand with effort. He squeezed out his remaining refined mana and mental strength and pulled it all into his right hand.

One shot was enough.

He grinned at Lena, who had spotted him and was trying to raise mana.

He was almost out of mana, but subduing one mage like that would still be easy.

Once he got her, he could negotiate.

He was the kind of man who put his life above money and honor.

Even if he had to abandon the marquis house, staying alive came first.

If he died, nothing else mattered.

That was what he was thinking.

Slice!

Something got cut.

He felt a sudden emptiness and looked down.

The right arm he had raised to cast was gone. Blood poured down and quickly soaked his robe. A burning agony exploded from his right shoulder and spread through his whole body.

"Gaaahhhh!"

The middle-aged mage screamed.

By then, Kyle had already killed the last knight and cut off the mage's right arm. He kicked the writhing mage in pain, sending him sprawling on the ground. Kyle pointed his sword, still dripping blood, at the mage's neck.

"S-save me..."

The middle-aged mage trembled and begged at the cold blade right in front of his face.

"Please... spare me..."

He clutched his empty right shoulder with his hand. Blood gushed between his fingers.

"You want to live?"

"Yes. I'm not begging for free. What do you want? Money? Information? Something else?"

"Any reinforcements left?"

Kyle asked.

Even in pain, the mage brightened and forced a smile.

"N-no! I swear there are none. Our house took heavy losses from the failed convoy attack last time. This was the last one. This force was..."

Kyle said nothing.

In the unbearable silence, the mage raised his voice again.

"Money! I'll give you money! A huge amount of Gold Coins! I left the tower and spent twenty years serving the house, saving it all."

"......"

"Not enough? Then I'll give you all my valuable Magic Tools. Every single one, nothing held back! And I will never talk about today anywhere. I won't even go back to the marquis house. I'll run far away where you'll never see me and live like a dead mouse. Yes? So just once..."

Kyle let out a dry laugh.

All the soldiers and knights were dead, and this mage was clawing desperately to save only his own life. Kyle almost found it familiar.

He had seen this type more times than he could count.

"I don't need money."

"What? Then something else..."

"I need none of it. The only thing you could give me was the answer to whether reinforcements remained. Everything else is already mine. I see no reason to let you live. Just like you tried to kill us and bury us, we can kill you and bury you."

Kyle's voice was ice-cold.

He was right. There was no reason to leave future trouble alive.

Dead men told no tales.

Just like the men who attacked the Metis convoy before, burn the bodies and bury them. That was all.

The mage's face changed again and again.

First he stared blankly at Kyle as if he could no longer feel pain.

Then he shook in terror of death.

At the end, his face turned red with rage.

"You think you'll walk away from this alive!"

Forgetting to stop his bleeding, he raised his left hand and pointed at Kyle.

"You killed the four knights and soldiers who attacked House Metis? And now you kill sixty elite soldiers and three knights here too!"

"You think you'll keep that head on your shoulders after this? Don't overestimate your own strength! Alone, you can do nothing! It won't be only Marquis Filein's house! Other noble-faction houses will hunt you too! A mere mercenary with no known name or origin dares to..."

Stab!

He was still ranting when Kyle's sword punched through his heart.

The mage looked down at his chest with a blank expression.

"Uh... uh...?"

"So what?"

"Kghk! Cough... kgh..."

"How many nobles do you think I've killed up to now?"

"Gkh... kh..."

The middle-aged mage could not answer. Blood streamed from his mouth and from the stump of his arm instead.

"Marquis Filein will be the same. If he thinks he can kill me, he's mistaken. I already have enough grudges to be sick of them."

People had died all through the Northern War.

Many had been high-born knights and mages.

Kyle pushed the sword in deeper. A light resistance slid along the blade. The last mana left in the mage's body drained away completely.

"Tell the ones who went first."

Kyle twisted the hilt in his hand.

"None of what you want will happen."

He yanked the blade out, and a line of blood sprayed along the edge. The mage's body, eyes unfocused, tilted and collapsed to the side.

At the blood-soaked edge of the forest, only two sets of breathing remained.

Then, belatedly, a clear birdcall rang out through the silence.

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