WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Sword Master of the Fallen Kingdom

Chapter 55

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Two Exiles (2)

Once Kyle made his decision, he moved at once. Elysia followed one step behind him.

They passed through an alley on the city’s outermost edge, a place almost empty of people. Moonlight was the only light there, and Kyle cut across it quickly. Before long, faint streetlights came into view. The voices that had only been a blur even to Kyle’s keen hearing became clear enough that an ordinary person could make out the conversation if they listened closely.

“Fuck... how long are we supposed to keep doing this?”

“They said there’s extra pay. Just think of it as one hard day’s work.”

“I was planning to leave first thing tomorrow, but now I’ll have to rest another day.”

“Ha... what kind of disaster is this? And they said a Silver-rank Mercenary sided with the traitor? The other Silver-rank Mercenary who discovered it died too. Aren’t we in danger?”

The voices belonged to complaining mercenaries.

“Did you check everything?”

“Yes. Nothing unusual. What should we do now?”

“Keep patrolling. There’s no need to push yourselves trying to catch them. As long as they can’t leave through the gate, that’s enough.”

“Understood.”

Soldiers who had received their orders moved through their assigned zones.

Yet none of them crossed paths with Kyle and Elysia. Kyle led the way through the alleys without hesitation, avoiding the mercenaries and soldiers as if he knew the entire city by heart. When a clash was unavoidable, he struck them in the neck and knocked them out before they could even react.

There was not a shred of hesitation in any of it.

Elysia did not find it strange as she followed Kyle. Not his bizarre strength, nor his abnormal mana sensitivity. The chase had already shown her that Kyle was far stronger than she was. The same went for how he had found her by following the flow of mana.

That was why she had entrusted him with the commission in the first place. She was curious, but the situation was too urgent to question every detail.

“We’re climbing over the wall from here.”

Kyle glanced back at Elysia as he spoke. The two of them were getting closer and closer to the eastern wall they had chosen as their target.

“What magic can you use?”

Kyle asked. After a short pause, Elysia answered.

“Fire, water, wind, earth. I can use most of their derivative applications too, including Ice Magic and Lightning Magic. Arven Mage Tower never forced us to specialize in a specific element. I’m most confident in wind and lightning, but...”

“Illusion Magic?”

“Impossible.”

Elysia answered at once.

“You mean the Hallucination you used earlier, yes? If so, I’ve never used it even once. The same goes for other illusion-type spells. To begin with, along with Spatial Magic, it is among the most difficult magic.”

Not every mage could handle every attribute. Each had magic they specialized in.

Just as Kyle preferred using Wind Magic, Elysia mainly used wind and lightning. But Spatial Magic and Illusion Magic were different. Without innate mana sensitivity and advanced control, one could not even attempt them. A vast amount of knowledge and exceptional understanding were essential. Even Kyle had needed years to learn Illusion Magic.

“Then sneaking over with Hallucination is out.”

More than anything, Illusion Magic consumed an enormous amount of mana and lasted only a short time. Since Elysia could not use it at all, there was no need to consider it.

“Do you have any other Magic Tools that might help? For example... that Dragon Heart you showed me earlier.”

Kyle, who had been walking ahead, stopped and turned around. Black eyes and golden eyes stared at each other.

“...Do you mean this?”

A moment passed, and she took a white gemstone necklace from inside her clothes.

“Yes. If it’s a treasure passed down through the Imperial family for nearly a thousand years, it must have some function.”

A stone that granted wishes. Kyle did not take those words at face value, but he knew there was something special about it. He could see it even now. The mana swirling inside was completely different from ordinary refined mana. It was something more fundamental than the mana inside Kyle’s ring.

“See for yourself.”

Instead of explaining, Elysia handed Kyle the Dragon Heart.

“This is...”

“The power of the Progenitor Dragon, usable only by the chosen.”

In Kyle’s grasp, the heart of the last dragon glowed white beneath the moonlight.

“It is a legend passed down through the Empire. The moment the chosen one holds it, they gain omnipotent power. Because of that, the Imperial House of Archandia researched the Dragon Heart for hundreds of years. Until recently, even.”

“And?”

“They all failed.”

Elysia lowered her eyes. A bitter smile touched her lips.

“No, rather than failed, it would be more accurate to say they could not withstand it. The moment they stirred the mana inside, they caused a single miracle that should have been impossible, then died vomiting blood from their entire body. It was the same for novice mages who had just awakened to mana and elderly high-ranking mages alike. There were no exceptions.”

Kyle rolled the fragment of the Dragon Heart around in his hand. Each time the moonlight refracted through it, its white radiance shone with a vivid presence.

So did the invisible power inside, swirling close to infinity.

“It was never a power permitted to humans in the first place. It is mana used by a dragon. There is no way a human body could endure it.”

“So in the end, it can’t be used.”

Kyle clenched the Dragon Heart tightly. He unconsciously tried to examine the mana inside, then froze.

If he pushed away the curse with this dragon’s mana.

The thought was brief. His judgment came just as quickly.

No.

It was probably not completely impossible. But the chance was terribly slim. Kyle could not accurately grasp what kind of source lay sleeping inside this gemstone. That would have been true even before he was cursed.

Even Rowen, the previous Commander of the Knights of Ash, would not have been able to withstand this mana.

The current Kyle was no different. The chance of death was extremely high. This was an object that could grant power close to a miracle only once, in exchange for one’s life.

If he were trying to take an enemy down with him right before death, perhaps. But using it now carried far too much risk. There was no reason to use it either. Crossing the gate came first.

“No helping it.”

Kyle threw the Dragon Heart back to Elysia.

She caught the fragment of the dragon’s heart in confusion and asked with a puzzled look.

“You’re not going to keep it?”

“What?”

“...The Dragon Heart.”

“I don’t need it. It’s useless to me right now. You keep it.”

He would set it aside until he found another solution. More important was the escort commission. Once Kyle accepted a commission, he completed it. In his three years as a mercenary, he had never broken that rule.

“Then we have no choice but to incapacitate all of them.”

Kyle started moving again. Elysia, who had been watching him, followed a step behind. When the eastern wall loomed larger and drew right up before them, the two climbed onto the rooftop of a nearby building.

“...It seems they have no intention of letting us go quietly.”

Elysia muttered in a low voice. Darkness had fully settled by then. Countless flames rose in rows atop the wall, where the cold night wind blew. Between them, soldiers stood guard or patrolled at regular intervals.

“Still, it’s less than I expected.”

The security was far tighter than usual. But perhaps because they had scattered their forces to catch Kyle and Elysia, there were fewer than Kyle had expected.

He looked at the massive steel gate in the middle of the wall. The gate, which looked like it would never be breached, was firmly shut.

The soldiers standing guard on either side were no different. Without the mechanism inside, it would not budge.

“What will you do?”

Elysia turned only her head to look at Kyle.

“Climb.”

“Where? The wall?”

Elysia looked up at the wall stretching high above them. It had to be at least thirty meters tall, and climbing it by normal means looked impossible.

“We’ll enter the watchtower. We’ll go up to the lookout and subdue the soldiers on top of the wall.”

“A frontal breakthrough, then.”

Kyle did not answer. He silently descended from the building.

Tap.

A light sound touched the ground. They had not been noticed. Unlike the top of the wall, the security at the base was relatively loose. The wall blocking the canyon was also extremely long. No matter how many fires they lit in a row, shaded blind spots were bound to form.

“Let’s go.”

After hearing an equally light landing behind him, Kyle spoke in a whisper. No answer came back. He did not care. The presence following him was very faint, but it was certainly there.

That was when they reached the base of the watchtower. Figures stepped out of the shadows beyond the burning torches. The eyes of the two soldiers guarding the base of the tower widened. Just as they opened their mouths by reflex.

Thwack! Crack!

Kyle closed the distance in the blink of an eye and struck the soldiers on the sides of their heads. A faint mana shockwave spread. The soldiers gave short groans and collapsed as if from concussions. They had not even reacted. The soldiers atop the wall were the same.

“You have a surprisingly soft side.”

“The gate garrison is part of the Kingdom of Brendel’s regular army. They’re different from mercenaries. If I kill them, the aftermath will be severe.”

Kyle did not enjoy slaughter. He killed without hesitation when necessary, but he did not want to shed blood in situations where he did not have to.

As someone who had experienced war firsthand, he knew far too well how people who became used to killing fell apart.

“Are you trying to ease that flimsy guilt? It means little when you already took a traitor’s side.”

Elysia snickered and hit the mark. From the moment he accepted the commission, Kyle had already become a fugitive.

“Are you any different?”

Kyle looked back at her and asked. Elysia muttered as if mocking herself.

“I was prepared to fall into hell from the moment I escaped Archandia. It was the same when I killed someone for the first time.”

“...”

“It won’t be too late to atone after I kill the Emperor and destroy the Empire. After that, I don’t care if this body burns to ash.”

Elysia’s hollow voice rode the wind and vanished. Kyle turned without a word.

He stepped through the entrance to the watchtower that the fallen soldiers had been guarding.

The inside was as wide as the wall itself. A circular space over five meters across. Along the wall, stairs coiled upward in a spiral all the way to the top. From the ceiling, moonlight from outside trickled faintly down into the interior.

“Follow without making a sound.”

“You don’t need to tell me.”

They climbed those stairs one step at a time. Right behind him, Elysia followed while holding her breath. How long had they walked? Around the time the drop below the stairway without railings looked dizzyingly distant, he could clearly feel the presence of soldiers atop the wall. Kyle lowered his body just beneath the lookout that served as the watchtower’s guard post.

“There are many.”

Elysia, who had also crouched on the stairs, said. Past the open entrance, they could see the long stretch of wall. Near the torches placed at regular intervals, soldiers were frowning and yawning.

“Ha... I’m so damn sleepy.”

“We’re on duty until dawn today, right?”

“Yeah. Half are patrolling the city, and the rest got forced into extended duty.”

“Damn it. Why are we suffering this much because of one traitor?”

Their muttered words were clear even without strengthening the senses with mana. Elysia looked out over the wall.

The wall was high. And long. It did not seem possible to cross the gate in secret.

“There are too many to take down all at once without being noticed...”

As Elysia groaned after grasping the number of soldiers, Kyle spoke in a low voice.

“Quiet.”

Elysia closed her mouth.

“I’ll put out the fires all at once. Two strikes will be enough to suppress them.”

Kyle slowly raised his left hand, the one with the ring. His raised hand swept across the long wall beyond the open entrance. The ring on his middle finger gave off a brilliant burst of prismatic light for an instant. Kyle slowly closed his eyes and focused on the mana surging through his entire body.

What he needed was wind to extinguish every torch.

And impact to bring down the soldiers.

Whoosh.

All at once, the torches on the wall lost their light. Elysia’s eyes widened. The soldiers’ panicked murmurs rang out over the wall. Kyle murmured softly.

Shockwave.

Paaang!

At the same time, a formless shockwave shot in a straight line across the center of the wall. Under the dim moonlight, the scenery atop the wall shook violently for an instant. With a roar of bursting air, the soldiers’ eyes went unfocused, and they staggered before collapsing. Thuds rang out one after another.

“You... were you a mage, not a knight?”

Elysia muttered in disbelief. She had known he was skilled in magic, but this was far beyond simply being skilled. Kyle did not answer. He left the stairs, passed through the entrance, and stepped out onto the wall.

On the opposite side of the wall from where Kyle stood, a few torches that had died in the wind were beginning to flare back up. The soldiers were the same.

Unlike those directly struck by Shockwave, the soldiers farther away clutched their heads and retched while trying to stagger back to their feet.

The power had dropped with distance. In a few minutes, they would probably regain their senses to some degree. But that much time was enough for Kyle. By then, everything would already be over.

“...”

Standing in the night wind, Kyle looked beyond the eastern wall. A canyon carved between massive peaks. Beyond it, several mountains rose high.

Ligrid Gate was only the entrance. The true mountain range began the moment they passed through this canyon. After they spent several days crossing those mountains, the wyvern knights would chase them again. He had erased the wyvern mana remaining on Elysia’s robe, but there was no way they would give up over that alone. They would try to settle things somehow before she crossed the border.

“You look like you have a lot on your mind.”

“...”

“Are you frightened now? Enough to want to cancel the commission this late?”

Elysia asked in a playful voice. Kyle, who had been leaning against the wall’s parapet, looked to the side.

There stood a mage with blond hair and golden eyes.

The smile on her lips was faint. At a glance, it looked gentle. But Kyle could tell. The sadness hidden inside it. The loneliness.

The fear. The guilt.

“...No.”

Kyle turned his head and looked inside the city. The city, where the lights still had not gone out, was noisy.

Mercenaries and soldiers moved through the streets. A waning moon hung over their heads. The starlight spreading around it was too faint to see clearly. For some reason, Kyle saw an illusion of wyverns flying across the black sky.

The shapes of enemies he had faced countless times in the past. Flickering wyvern wings and fierce breath spewing out. The final moments of his dying comrades.

Where are you now?

“...Let’s go.”

Kyle turned toward the canyon one last time. Beneath the wall, where the light did not reach, darkness waited, as deep as the height they had climbed.

Kyle set a foot on the parapet. When he stepped up, Elysia was right beside him, also standing on the parapet. Their gazes met beneath the moonlight.

Kyle kicked off the parapet at once and dropped down the wall, dozens of meters high. Into the darkness of the canyon, a black cloak and the hem of a white robe fluttered violently and disappeared.

***

“The eastern gate has been breached.”

“...”

“To be precise, the traitor crossed the eastern wall. Most of the soldiers on guard were injured. The soldiers who were far from the watchtower the traitor climbed are fine, but most of the nearby soldiers had their eardrums ruptured and cannot move for the time being...”

“Do you call that a report!”

Viscount Leonard’s face flushed red as he swept an arm violently across the desk.

Crash!

The sound of breaking glass rang out amid the scattering documents. Papers sprawled across the floor, and brown liquid soaked into them. Fragments of a shattered wineglass flew everywhere. Yet no one in the room could open their mouth.

“A traitor! An Imperial first-class traitor! And you let them slip away here, of all places! At Ligrid Gate!”

His furious voice boomed through the room. The Ligrid Branch Director and the guard captain standing right in front of him could not bring themselves to raise their heads.

Viscount Leonard watched them and clenched his fist before he realized it. All kinds of thoughts stormed through his mind, appearing and vanishing again and again.

An Imperial first-class traitor.

It was a request from none other than wyvern knights. The Celestial Knights belonged to the Imperial family, and their authority exceeded that of most high nobles.

The members were the same. Most were knights from high noble families, so lofty that even the famously proud Imperial Knights deferred to them. To begin with, the Imperial Knights themselves were practically a stepping stone for replenishing the Celestial Knights.

There were only about twenty Celestial Knights alive today. Even that number existed only because they had rushed to fill the losses from the Northern War.

With just three of them, they could overturn the state of a battlefield. They were a force worthy of being called the Empire’s ultimate weapon. And now not one but two wyvern knights had joined the pursuit. There was no need to say how important that first-class traitor was.

And yet.

“Do you think your heads will stay attached!”

Viscount Leonard shouted again. The Branch Director and the guard captain flinched, but that did nothing to calm the viscount’s nerves.

They had to catch her no matter what.

The peace treaty signed fifty years ago between the Empire and the southern kingdoms. On the surface, it was a treaty, but in truth, it was closer to surrender. If it became all-out war, the Empire would win, but both sides would take terrible damage, so they had compromised and backed down.

Even so, several clauses favored the Empire. On top of that, the Elandor Empire’s national strength had grown even greater than it had been fifty years ago. That was true despite the heavy damage it suffered in the Northern War. If the Imperial family used this incident as an excuse to pressure the Brendel royal family, Leonard would be forced to take the blame. It was unreasonable, but there was that much difference between the Empire and the kingdom.

“...How many troops remain?”

Viscount Leonard staggered to the window and rubbed his face with his hand as he asked. The guard captain, watching his mood, answered.

“Excluding the soldiers guarding the gate, we have about twenty cavalry who can move separately.”

“What about the mercenaries?”

Leonard flung the window open. From this gate fortress attached to the wall, one could see the opposite eastern wall and the Ligrid Mountains beyond it.

“The Silver-rank Mercenaries are still here.”

After Leonard stared blankly at the scenery for a moment, the Branch Director answered in place of the guard captain.

“Didn’t one of them die?”

“Yes. Another Silver-rank Mercenary refused orders and acted alone, then sided with the traitor for some reason, so...”

“Pursue them.”

Leonard, chewing hard on his lip in the blowing wind, added.

“Gather every last cavalryman, and if there are any knights staying in the city, request their cooperation and send them all toward the canyon. Silver-rank Mercenaries, of course, and every bastard who knows how to ride a horse too!”

No matter how absolute Leonard’s influence was in this gate, it was ultimately a non-hereditary post appointed by the king. Without a direct territory of his own, his life was as fragile as a fly’s.

“Er... Viscount. Forgive my impertinence, but pursuit will be difficult in the middle of a night like this.”

The person before him was not much different. The guard captain, watching Leonard’s mood, carefully opened his mouth.

“Do we not have hunting hounds?”

Leonard dismissed his concern with a single sentence. Criminals who committed crimes and tried to flee over the gate. To capture such criminals, Ligrid Gate City had specially trained hunting hounds for pursuit.

“There must be traces left where the battle with the traitor took place. Hair, or a torn piece of clothing.”

Leonard, who had been standing by the window, slowly turned around.

“Bring out every Mana Compass in the warehouse. And release the hunting hounds. Send every cavalryman, including knights, and every mercenary who knows how to ride a horse. Capture the traitor alive, and kill the mercenary bastard attached to her.”

His viciously spat words came from a face stained with fear.

“Do it before the wyvern knights arrive. If you fail, we...”

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