WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

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◈ Sword Master of the Fallen Kingdom

Chapter 40

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Shadow of a Tainted Past (2)

Gerard did not beat around the bush. Based on his own suspicions, he asked Kyle point-blank if he had once belonged to the Knights of Ash, and if the curse he had just mentioned was tied to the kingdom's fall.

"......."

Kyle did not answer. He only looked down at the teacup he had been about to lift. On the still surface of the tea, his expressionless face looked back at him. Not a pure twenty-year-old student, but a thirty-year-old man tempered by countless battles.

So this is where my past gets exposed.

Kyle thought life was a chain of accidents. The world felt vast, yet strangely small at times.

The war Gerard mentioned was probably from more than fifty years ago. More precisely, it would have been the war between the Empire and the South. At the time, the Elandor Empire, just like now, was the strongest single nation on the continent and deep in its wars of conquest. If the South had been swallowed, the eastern Federation and the rest would have been next.

That was why it was no surprise that reinforcements from other nations were mixed into the southern forces. On the surface, it was a war between the Empire and the South, but in truth, it was closer to a war between the Empire and everyone else. What surprised Kyle a little was that knights from the Knights of Ash had gone all the way south as reinforcements. The distance alone should have made support difficult.

"Was that friend of yours from the Knights of Ash?"

After a short silence, Kyle asked as he raised his cup. He had intentionally changed the subject, and after a moment of thought, Gerard answered.

"Yes. Publicly, he was a southern knight, but in truth, he was not. The southern army had quite a few knights and mages from the Grandecia Federation. Some knights were from the famous Chevaliers. There were also a few Knights of Ash from the north. My friend was a northern noble and a knight."

"I see."

For a moment, deep regret passed through Gerard's turquoise eyes. As he searched his memories, Kyle could tell what he was feeling. He understood it. He had felt the same.

"War is horrific. No one can endure it with a sane mind."

Gerard moved his lips, then lowered his gaze.

"A few people did take pleasure in killing itself, but most people lost pieces of themselves every time they killed someone. Even people born kind were eventually broken. Most died on the battlefield, but some writhed in guilt and took their own lives."

"So their hearts were already dead."

"It stayed that way even after the war. Aside from the Northern War five years ago, the southern war was the biggest one in nearly fifty years."

Gerard paused, then took a sip of tea.

"Anyway, my friend and I kept pushing through the battlefield. I handled bombardment and support with magic, and he protected me."

"Then you must have fought at close range pretty often too."

"Pretty often? No, countless times. If all you want is to learn how to kill, one year on a battlefield is more effective than a hundred years of study in a back room. I learned an enormous amount there."

Incantationless Magic. Shortened Incantation. Dual chanting. Applications of established chant systems, fusion between different attributes, and personal magic completely outside existing frameworks.

"And then..."

Gerard had gone on about the past for quite a while before suddenly swallowing hard.

"My friend died."

"......."

"It was in the final battle. The day before, we promised each other we'd return home in one piece. I never thought he'd go like that, so pointlessly. Stupid bastard. He stepped forward to protect someone like me..."

"Was it the Celestial Knights?"

At Kyle's words, Gerard, who had been staring at the table, looked up in shock.

"Have you seen the Celestial Knights?"

Kyle did not answer. But for Gerard, that silence was answer enough.

The Imperial Household's Celestial Knights.

Even among the elite imperial order, they had been handpicked again to form the Celestial Knights. Out of a little over a hundred imperial knights, fewer than thirty could ride wyverns.

They were the Empire's strongest order, the final weapon that could overturn a battlefield.

"I have. Quite a lot, no, very many times."

"...Then you really were a Knight of Ash. Otherwise, there is no way you could have seen wyvern riders that many times. Most people die after seeing them once or twice."

Kyle did not deny it. He had already been found out, so hiding it now had no meaning.

"Wyvern riders roaming freely across the open sky... they were terrifying. Calling them living disasters would not be an exaggeration. In pure individual combat ability, the Knights of Ash were one step above, but they all rode wyverns."

In a world without airplanes or fighter jets, being able to fly freely in the sky was a massive advantage. It was not impossible with magic, but the mana cost and control difficulty were so extreme that it was terribly inefficient in actual combat.

"Even so, they were not invincible. Wyverns and dragons are fundamentally different."

They could fly through the sky at will and unleash ferocious breath from their jaws. But unlike dragons, wyverns could not speak human language or wield authority.

It had already been nearly a thousand years since the last dragon died. The story of the Progenitor Dragon Prisia, who protected Archandia from the time when the Elandor Empire was still a kingdom five hundred years ago, was well known.

It appeared often in storybooks, so anyone on the Velia continent had likely heard it at least once as a child.

Even after Prisia died and dragons became completely extinct, the Empire, unlike other nations, kept developing its own methods for breeding and deploying wyverns through the generations. The Celestial Knights were part of that effort. It was the very source of power that made the Empire the continent's strongest state. The claim that just three wyvern riders could overturn most battlefields was no exaggeration.

"Now it is all old history. At least for me. For you, maybe it was only a few years ago."

As Gerard brought up the Northern War, Kyle's eyes darkened.

"The fall of Hailen was... truly tragic. For me as well, hearing that my friend's country had been crushed by the Empire was horrifying. Put another way, it meant the balance of the continent was broken."

"......."

"No one could have known. No one expected Hailen to collapse that easily. As I heard it, the tide really turned after the commander of the Knights of Ash at the time died. I also heard the next commander was not the former vice commander, but a very young knight, the previous commander's only squire. And that did not last long either..."

Gerard's expression clouded as he studied Kyle's reaction. The curse Kyle had just described, mana becoming visible. Gerard guessed that curse had to be directly connected to the previous commander's death.

Otherwise, there was no way the Hailen Kingdom, with a history older than the Empire's, could have fallen in only two years.

"This may be rude, but... may I ask what your rank was within the order?"

After a brief pause, Gerard asked once he had sorted out his thoughts.

"I was a rank-and-file knight."

"I see... I heard Knights of Ash were usually sworn in between twenty and thirty. You must have been very skilled."

"Not really. I barely met the minimum standard."

Kyle looked down at the sword resting on his knees. A star iron blade forged from stellarium, awarded to every Knight of Ash at investiture. The sword that had stayed with him like part of his own body for so long seemed steeped in the thick smell of blood, like the unwashable sin embedded in him.

"You are too humble, as always. The Knights of Ash were the strongest order on the continent by the standards of that era. Even if you barely passed their line, you would still be on par with the elites of other orders."

Gerard gave a faintly sorrowful smile and muttered bitterly.

"If I remember right, the Knights of Ash were disbanded right after Hailen fell..."

"......."

"This is just personal curiosity, but did you fight until Hailen's very end?"

"I did."

"What kind of person was the next commander who led the Knights of Ash after the previous commander died?"

Kyle's shoulders flinched, just like when his identity had been exposed earlier.

"...A coward."

"A coward? That cannot be right. I heard the next commander was an exceptional swordsman, no less than the previous commander. Was he not better known as the Blue Wolf of Hailen? I remember hearing that the vice commander of the Celestial Knights died by his hand. Even in the South, people talked about it for a long time."

The Northern War was the largest war in nearly a hundred years. Until then, even with large regional conflicts and full-scale invasions, no nation had been completely wiped out. At least not in a century.

That was why detailed war reports reached even the South and East. Among those stories, the one about the Blue Wolf, the next commander, was especially famous. The final commander of the Knights of Ash, always wearing a vivid blue cloak fastened with a clip carved with the Hailen royal wolf crest.

"He was not a good commander. He was young, immature, inexperienced, and above all emotional."

"Hm... but to become commander of the Knights of Ash, one had to be recognized by the order itself..."

"It was a mistake. The war must have clouded their judgment."

Kyle cut him off flatly. Gerard looked at him as if he could not understand.

"If I follow what you're saying, it sounds like that next commander was an unqualified coward."

"That's right. In the end, he failed to protect anything."

Kyle added with certainty.

"All of us were cowards. At some point, we stopped fighting for victory and fought with defeat already in mind."

What did it feel like to walk into certain death, knowing you would die? Knowing that death would mean nothing. Knowing defeat had been decided from the very beginning. Even so, what were people throwing their lives away for?

Kyle slowly closed his eyes. Whenever sleep would not come, he could still picture the countless members who had died in his place. Every last word they left behind was branded into his chest, like marks that would never fade, like scars he could not remove even in death.

"......."

Silence stretched on. Gerard stared quietly at the table in the heavy mood. Kyle kept his eyes closed, as if reliving the past.

Clink.

A teacup touched the table. Kyle slowly opened his eyes. Gerard, perhaps thirsty, had just finished the remaining tea and set the cup down.

"...It'll be faster if I show you."

"Show me what, all of a sudden...?"

Gerard tilted his head. Then, without warning, Kyle rolled up his right sleeve to the elbow. Gerard's eyes narrowed at the sudden move.

Kyle ignored him. Without borrowing the ring's power, he drew up mana. Mana from the air lingered in his body for a moment, failed to refine, and then burst out through his skin as purple thorns.

The curse that made mana visible. Kyle's sin, which had been eating away at this body for three years.

"This is..."

"That curse."

Kyle spoke. Familiar pain spread from where the thorns protruded. Thin drops of blood trickled down his forearm. Gerard stared at Kyle's right arm with a grim face, then his eyes suddenly widened as if they might split.

"Izra's Thorn...?"

After staring at the thorns for a long time, he muttered in disbelief.

"You know it?"

"Knowing it is not the problem!"

"Izra's Thorn was banned centuries ago under the Holy Concord!"

His voice trembled as the words came out.

"What in the world happened? No, how are you still alive?"

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