WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

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◈ Sword Master of the Fallen Kingdom

Chapter 68

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Crossing Blades (3)

Was this a trick of fate? Or an inescapable destiny that could never be washed away?

Kyle remembered himself at twenty. Himself on the day he had just become a university student.

Back then, Kyle had been full of anticipation. He had finally left studenthood behind and become an adult. There had been so many things he wanted to do. Those were painfully innocent days.

In this world, it had been different.

He killed a person for the first time. To survive, he took someone's life. He crawled along the bottom like a dog, then finally found a new home. Then everything was taken from him. Overnight, or in the blink of an eye.

Through it all, Kyle could do nothing. He could change nothing.

That was when he learned he could truly hate someone. He learned what it meant to want to kill a person, not to survive, but out of personal emotion alone.

Even now, at this very moment.

Claaaaang!

A metallic crash burst out in the middle of the cathedral, loud enough to split eardrums. At the same time, a fierce gust spread from the point where metal met metal.

The blades aimed at each other's throats touched with perfect precision. The silver sword and the blue sword extending from their right hands formed a single straight line. A beat later, their whipping hair slowly settled. The metallic sound that had struck the cathedral's outer walls and echoed back faded, leaving only a low resonance behind.

Heavy.

Kyle tightened his grip on the hilt. With his senses reinforced by mana, every breath came to him with painful clarity. When he lifted his gaze slightly, the red-haired knight was looking at him with a smile close to delight. The corners of his mouth curved up in a long, tearing arc.

Kyle did not smile. The faster his heart beat, the colder his mind became. With his thoughts frozen into icy clarity, Kyle calculated his next moves. Remembering Rowen's words from the past, he searched for the best way to cut the man's neck.

Clear Sword Aura rose over both blades.

Cling!

The blade wrapped in dark red Sword Aura knocked the pure-white blade upward, as if forcing it away. The deadlock between the blades, joined in a straight line, collapsed in an instant.

Before he knew it, the red blade was rushing for Kyle's throat.

It was a strike from a body reinforced by mana, backed by purely condensed Sword Aura. Kyle immediately knocked Damian's attack aside. The repelled red blade paused in midair for only a moment, then used the rebound to pour straight back down. Every sword strike was so fast it looked blurred.

Kakakakakang!

Red Sword Aura and white Sword Aura tangled wildly. Shards of severed Sword Aura shed small lights as they melted into the air.

Several feints were woven into a single attack. Their mana-reinforced reaction speeds were pushed to the limit. The two swords collided in quick, repeated bursts, then drew wide semicircles, scattering fierce winds and every kind of aftershock in all directions. Inside that net of Sword Aura, where one mistake would lead to a fatal wound, Kyle twisted his hilt and thought.

As expected, the sword of Archandia's Imperial family allowed no openings.

In Damian's sword, attack and defense were linked as one. In that, it resembled Asherad Royal Swordsmanship, refined to respond to any situation. It was the result of countless geniuses taking a sturdy foundation and reshaping it through real battle.

People often mocked wyvern knights as little more than mounted cavalry who depended on their wyverns, but that was nonsense from people who knew nothing. Just as riding was a basic skill for a knight, a wyvern knight simply learned one more foundation on top of existing swordsmanship: how to control a wyvern. The red-haired knight before him was no different. Kyle could feel the foundation of swordsmanship built from the ground up through countless hours of training since childhood.

It was terribly fast, terribly sharp, and terribly persistent. The blood-colored Sword Aura cutting through the pale darkness was flexible enough to send a chill down his spine. Countless streaks of dark red Sword Light were still aiming for Kyle's life even now.

This was not a fight he could drag out.

Whoosh!

His judgment was quick. After dozens of exchanges, Kyle deflected the sword strike coming for his heart with a diagonally raised blade, lowered his upper body, and stepped out with his right foot. A familiar wind coiled beneath his feet.

In the stretched-out flow of perceived time, Damian was rotating his sword to deliver another strike. Kyle gripped the hilt of the sword inside his own guard with both hands. What he needed was a chain of strikes to pressure his opponent. Kyle took in every one of Damian's movements without missing a thing.

Asherad Royal Swordsmanship, Second Form.

Dance of Embers.

Fwoooosh!

Sword Aura swelled. The pure-white Sword Aura condensed along the blade changed in an instant into blazing white flame. With each advancing step, the white flames cut down everything blocking their path. Every collision carved away a chunk of the deep-red Sword Aura that had looked as though it would never go out.

As the blood-colored Sword Aura grew almost faint, Damian's front opened for the first time. Kyle drew the sword he had been unleashing in a barrage deep toward his chest. He released his left hand from the hilt and extended it toward Damian.

Like an archer drawing a bowstring, he angled the sword in his right hand.

Asherad Royal Swordsmanship, Third Form.

Piercing Frost.

Flash!

Light flickered. The pure-white blade fired at maximum speed, aiming for the red-haired knight's heart. The ring on Kyle's left hand sprayed a brilliant rainbow glow. Nothing stood in the way of Kyle's sword anymore.

He just had to pierce through.

That was when Damian's lips curled upward in a mocking smile. Even when the white blade reached the area near his heart in the blink of an eye, he was still smiling as he glared at Kyle. Dark red flames suddenly bloomed and wrapped around Damian's whole body. The swaying fire drew a long afterimage and slipped in reverse, driving into Kyle's inner range.

Celestial Sword, Sixth Form.

Flashfire Mirage.

Whoosh!

The fired single stroke did not reach. The ripples Kyle had thrust out scattered, leaving only flames spreading in concentric circles.

There was no sensation of contact. Only the sound of air being cut through violently made Kyle's eyes widen.

Below it.

Damian had avoided the pure-white blade and slid to within a hair's breadth of Kyle. The sword in the red-haired knight's hand grew even brighter. The Sword Aura that had nearly gone out now shed a fiercer light than before. Kyle reflexively twisted his body and recovered his extended sword.

He drew the retrieved sword as close to his chest as possible.

Spurt!

Blood-colored Sword Aura approached like a ghost and grazed past Kyle. A beat later, blood burst from near Kyle's right shoulder.

"Surprised?"

Damian's mocking voice dug into his ear. With trembling eyes, Kyle checked his shoulder.

How?

No, when?

"You've grown weak. Pitifully so, compared to the past."

After letting out one heated breath, Kyle looked back. The red-haired knight who had passed by him was there. A deep sword mark remained on Damian's golden breastplate, but it had not reached the skin beneath. It was completely different from Kyle's right shoulder, where his leather armor had been cut through and blood was still flowing out.

His reaction had been slow.

Kyle clutched his right shoulder with his empty left hand as sharp agony stabbed through his arm. The wound must have cut fairly deep, because the bleeding was heavy. Blood streamed down. Staunching it was impossible. The dark red Sword Aura digging into his flesh was seeping under his skin in real time.

A paper-thin difference.

That was all. If Kyle's attack had been just a little faster, he would have pierced that armor. If the enemy's attack had been just a little slower, Kyle would have blocked it by the smallest margin.

In the end, neither happened. It had been an extremely narrow difference, but Kyle knew it was no accident. In a fight between high-ranking knights, a paper-thin gap decided life and death. The level of the sword form, the handling of mana, the fierce exchange of calculations, even the body's condition.

It had not been like this before. Was this the price of complacency after wasting those years? Or was it the result of retreating alone while his enemies moved forward?

"Your Sword Aura is shallow. Looks like the curse's influence still lingers strongly."

As Kyle steadied his heated breathing, Damian slowly turned around. Unlike Kyle, the red-haired knight's breathing had already almost settled. A calm smile still rested on his lips.

"The density of your Sword Aura has fallen, and your swordsmanship has rusted. The only thing that seems to have improved is the speed of your mana handling. But even that barely makes any difference..."

His red eyes stopped on Kyle's left hand, which was clutching his shoulder.

"How shabby. The great Blue Wolf, reduced to relying on a single ring."

The Brightest Star of Dawn. A gift from the last monarch of Alenos. Kyle's mana restriction had disappeared, but the output he could use at once had been sharply reduced. Naturally, the density of both his body reinforcement and his Sword Aura was far below what it had been in the past.

Since he could use refined mana immediately, his mana handling speed had risen, but it was nowhere near enough to make up for what he had lost. Kyle knew that too. This problem could not be solved unless the curse was rooted out. The Dragon Heart could not be used right away. Even now, the curse remained inside Kyle's body like a brand.

"What exactly have you been doing for the last three years?"

Drip, drip.

Blood that had filled his hand soaked the front of his clothes and fell to the floor. Damian's voice carried undisguised disappointment.

"Did you point your sword at the Empire with only that pathetic strength?"

Kyle had grown weaker. Three years had passed since he was cursed and escaped the north. Soaked in despair and inertia, he had kept taking step after step backward. Even if he left the Magic Tower and swore not to hesitate, the years he had lost would not return.

"Or are you hiding your strength?"

Damian, on the other hand, had grown stronger. For more than three years, he had gone through countless real battles. Though already past thirty, there was no one in the order who could match him except the Commander and Vice Commander. He already had enough skill to take the position of Vice Commander without it seeming strange, and after House Lucent fell, he had effectively been treated as the next Commander after the current successor.

"If you have a hidden move, you should use it now."

"...A hidden move?"

The chapel chairs lay shattered and scattered, ruined by the aftershocks of battle. Damian stared for a moment at the collapsed goddess statue, then turned his gaze back to Kyle.

"Are you playing dumb?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"I'm telling you to show everything you have before you die."

"...How fitting for bastards who know neither honor nor shame. You broke even the forbidden Sacred Treaty for the sake of war, and now you're talking about showing one's hand?"

"Do I look like I'm joking right now?"

It did not take long for disappointment to turn into anger. A faint rage settled into Damian's tone.

The faded blood-colored Sword Aura flared bright again. The surrounding scenery distorted along the extremely condensed Sword Aura.

"If you don't want to answer, that's fine. If that was everything you had just now, the result has already been decided."

He took one step forward.

"I'll kill you and carry your head back with this hand. By now, the Princess..."

His sword rose again.

"Just like your death, which was always meant to happen."

As soon as he finished speaking, red light surged in a straight line. In the time it took to blink, red hair had arrived right before Kyle's nose.

Fast.

At the same time, a blade rushed for his neck. Before he could perceive it and think, his body reacted. Deep-red fire grazed over his lowering upper body. Pure-white Sword Aura swelled over the star iron sword resonating with the ring's mana.

As he evaded and advanced at once, he aimed for Damian's waist as the knight passed beside him. By then, the red-haired knight was rotating his body along the inertia of his swung sword. The blood-colored Sword Aura, now carrying added acceleration, curved as if to block the pure-white Sword Aura.

Their positions and directions switched as their bodies moved.

Kaaang!

Red light and white light collided. It did not end with a single impact. With every blink, the intertwined lights of Sword Aura flickered dozens of times in a single second, confusing the eye. Every time several sword strikes clashed, sharp metallic rings overlapped.

Damian was even faster than before. As if the earlier fight had only been a prelude to feel each other out, he pushed Kyle back like mad. With movement that had grown even quicker. With a sword that had grown even sharper. With a Sword Path that had grown even more unpredictable, he aimed for Kyle's life. Kyle heightened his five senses as much as he could and received those attacks.

"Is this all you have, Blue Wolf!"

Dark red Sword Aura poured down as sword forms. Gritting his teeth, Kyle unleashed every attack he could use without pause.

Rising Flame. Dance of Embers. Piercing Frost. Flowing Moonlight. Ashen Storm. Repose of the North Wind. The seven sword forms of Asherad Royal Swordsmanship except the final form, and the nine forms of the Celestial Sword, crossed. For the first time, Kyle felt the ring's mana, which had seemed as though it would never decrease, slowly begin to run low.

Right after the sixth sword form came crashing down.

Thud!

Kyle stomped hard on the floor. Splinters from the broken wooden chairs scattered everywhere. Fragments of the crumbled stone floor could not withstand the shock and sprang up.

The sword form had already been blocked. It did not matter. He had expected that. Right now, both of them were madly throwing out sword forms just to land a single strike on the other. That was why Kyle drove into the gap in perception. In the way he trusted most.

Blade Storm.

Kwaaaaaa!

He did not condense the mana. He cast it immediately. Centered on the foot he had slammed down, fierce cutting winds shot out in every direction. The dark red flames surging in as if to cover his entire field of vision tore apart for an instant.

Jjajajajang!

The stained glass windows along the walls all burst under the sweeping blade winds. Sharp shards of glass poured into the cathedral. Amid the drifting fragments of Sword Aura and the wave of glass shining as it reflected the moonlight, Kyle opened his eyes wide and stared beyond the torn flames.

"Since when did the Commander of the Knights of Ash rely on mere magic?"

The flames that had shrunk were growing again. In that brief moment, Damian's voice came through the wavering fire.

"What the hell do you think you can do with a sword like that!"

The flames, swollen once more, rushed in to carve Kyle's body apart.

Several blades descended. Kyle did not react. He did not even raise his sword.

Illusion Magic, Hallucination.

Whoosh!

Dark red Sword Aura shredded Kyle's body wildly.

It was an illusion.

No blood came from Kyle's severed limbs. They only turned into particles of light and melted into the air.

Seeing Kyle's form collapse, Damian's eyes quickly turned to the side. Empty air with nothing left in it. His red eyes chased through it swiftly. Then, when Kyle's illusion vanished completely, Damian thrust his sword straight behind him. The single stroke fired into empty space stopped as if caught in midair.

Claaaaang!

A sharp metallic sound burst out. Beyond Damian's halted sword, Kyle's form slowly revealed itself.

He was being blown away by the impact. Illusion Magic, Hallucination only hid his appearance by refracting light. It did not conceal the faint trace of mana left behind. Damian had seen through it the moment he saw the melting illusion. The thrust he had fired also contained incredibly heavy Sword Aura.

Damian stepped forward with his left foot. He lowered his sword. Right after, he bent his upper body, pushed off with his mana-reinforced left foot, and stepped forward with his right.

Kwaang!

Fragments of the floor jumped up. Red hair whipped roughly.

He was still charging in a straight line toward Kyle, who remained suspended in the air. Along the moving Sword Path, the Sword Aura of the blade carving a pale afterimage through the air suddenly swelled dramatically.

Celestial Sword, Ninth Form.

Falling Dragon of the End.

Kwaaaaaaaa!

The cry of a creature Kyle had never heard before rang out. The thunderous roar of a dragon echoed loudly through the entire collapsed, ruined cathedral.

Before he knew it, the distance between them had shrunk to three meters. The writhing dragon's tail reached the blade before Kyle's eyes and became a single head. Its density and size were nothing like the duel at the Magic Tower. Back then, Cedric, the proxy from House Krabel, had sent nine small dragon heads charging in one after another.

This was different.

One time. One dragon opened its jaws wide to swallow Kyle whole. The burning blood-colored dragon eyes stared straight at Kyle as if they would pierce through him. They were the eyes of an overwhelming predator.

The pressure carried by the absolute being called a dragon.

Ah.

In the endlessly stretched-out time, Kyle's eyes opened wide. From the dragon's head right before him came a heat so intense it felt as if his skin would cook at any moment. It was hard to breathe, as if his lungs were roasting. His entire vision was filled with the enormous head of a dragon.

Was he going to die?

For an instant, that thought flashed through his mind. But only for an instant.

Kyle corrected the posture of his blown-back body. The moment his feet touched the ground, he gripped the hilt in his hand hard.

No. Not yet.

Kyle stepped forward. He did not hesitate. He moved his body as instinct led him.

Only forward. Beyond the jaws of the dragon opening its mouth.

The back of his hand following the sword burned hot. His flesh cooked and his skin peeled away. It did not matter. Kyle looked endlessly past the dragon, at the red-haired knight beyond it. The pure-white Sword Aura that had shrunk now emitted a light stronger than ever for one brief instant.

Asherad Royal Swordsmanship, Seventh Form.

Brand of Ash.

White light moved forward as if cutting through the dragon. Two sword strikes rode along one Sword Path.

Light spread everywhere. In the world dyed white, Kyle swung the final seventh sword form. Just as he had seen countless times. Following the illusion of Rowen that suddenly bloomed like a dream, the two overlapping sword strikes dug into the dragon's head.

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