WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

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◈ Sword Master of the Fallen Kingdom

Chapter 7

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The Nameless Mercenary (7)

Kyle had exceptional instincts. Even without using mana, he was more attuned to the presence of others than most knights or mages.

By nature and by experience alike. Before the curse stripped away every last thread of mana he had, Kyle had been naturally gifted in both swordsmanship and mana. And from the moment he first fell into this world ten years ago, survival had been clawed, not earned. That he'd grown attuned to the presence of others, to their killing intent, was simply inevitable.

And right now.

"......."

He sensed countless presences surrounding the clearing. Pol, the mercenary captain, the knight guarding the merchant lord's carriage, everyone else, none of them seemed to notice a thing.

A rough count of a hundred. At least.

The way they moved, they weren't human. More like monsters.

He had already risen from his seat without realizing it. Moving unhurriedly, he slid a hand inside his coat. For just a moment, his eyes met a pair of gleaming ones staring back from beyond the brush.

"...Huh?"

Katrin followed his gaze and let out a small, dazed sound.

"Duck."

"Eek!"

The hand flew from his coat. Katrin instinctively dropped low. The dagger Kyle had thrown flashed briefly as it tore through the brush.

Thud!

Shrieeek!

The response was immediate. A grotesque shriek, impossible to imagine coming from any human throat, rang out and filled the entire clearing. As if they'd been waiting for exactly that signal, the creatures swarmed out all at once.

"Ah...."

A body soaked in exhaustion. A sudden ambush.

"Katrin! Fall back!"

Veil called out, readjusting his grip on the halberd he'd left beside him. Snapping back to her senses, Katrin rolled across the ground and drew the dagger strapped to her side.

Kyle walked in the exact opposite direction from the two of them, straight toward the enemy. Left hand on the scabbard, right hand resting on the hilt. A light squeeze, and a familiar weight settled into his palm. Every sense, eyes, ears, and everything beyond, swept the surroundings without missing a thing.

Plenty of them.

Every creature charging at him looked bizarre. Half the height of an adult man, green skin, crude clubs and blades clearly looted from humans. Goblins. Nothing else.

Kyle angled the scabbard in his left hand and drew his right hand outward.

Shing!

Fresh red blood splattered across the emerging blade. The first goblin to reach him was split in two in the blink of an eye. A second came right behind it. Kyle planted his left foot forward and cut the next one down in the same motion. The third and fourth went the same way.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven....

"Kyle!"

Around the time he cut down the eighth goblin, Veil's voice reached him. Standing in front of him was a monster on an entirely different scale from any goblin.

A massive frame, far larger than Kyle. Huge jutting tusks.

The orc stared down at him with vicious eyes and brought one enormous fist crashing down from above. Kyle stepped in without hesitation, closing inside its guard.

Boom!

The ground where Kyle had been standing a moment before exploded. A flash of silver sword light. A thick forearm was cleanly severed and fell limp. In the instant the orc's body staggered, Kyle's second strike found its neck and cut clean through in a single go.

Splatter!

Blood gushed from the cut. An entirely different volume from the goblins before.

"What the...."

Veil had just finished off the goblins that slipped past Kyle. He turned to the side, baffled. Katrin, having taken out the last goblin herself, wore the exact same face.

What did I just see? Could an orc even be killed in a single stroke?

Impossible. At least, no silver-rank mercenaries he knew of could do it.

Goblins were one thing, but orcs, especially larger specimens, could exceed three meters. A completely different weight class. Even physical reinforcement through mana had limits. Unless you used sword energy.

And Kyle hadn't seemed to use mana at all. When he'd split that first goblin in two, he had drawn his sword at a pace that was neither too fast nor too slow.

Yet Veil couldn't take his eyes off that draw. There was no flashy technique to it. No overwhelming force. It was fluid, that was all. A sword path with not a single wasted motion, worn smooth over an enormous span of time.

Just how much experience did it take to swing a sword like that?

"An ambush in the dead of night." Kyle shook the blood from his blade. "And not a small number of them."

With the orc down, the remains of nearly twenty monsters were scattered around the three of them.

"What happened? And why are goblins and orcs together in the first place?"

Katrin asked, visibly rattled. Normally, goblins lived in packs among their own kind. Their territories and ranges were naturally separate from orcs. If the two ever crossed paths, they'd fight each other, or the goblins would flee. A coordinated attack like this was simply unheard of.

"Calm down, Katrin."

"Ah...."

Veil's words steadied her breathing.

"Sorry. Got a little worked up."

"......."

She looked between Kyle and Veil and apologized. Kyle said nothing. His gaze drifted to the main group clustered a short distance away. Centered around the wagons, that area was swarming with far more monsters than the rear where Kyle had been.

Monsters appearing late in the evening. Easily over a hundred of them. Not goblins alone, but orcs mixed among them. None of it made any sense.

Something was behind this.

The decision didn't take long.

Kyle stared into the brush where the monsters had come from. "I'm moving separately. You two fall in with the group and fight with them."

"What? Where are you going alone?"

"Something I need to check. Won't take long. Don't push yourselves."

"Wait...."

Katrin reached out, but Kyle was already in motion.

He left the two of them behind and headed straight into the brush. Monsters still encircled the clearing on all sides. Kyle's silhouette slowly dissolved into the gaps between them.

***

A goblin lunged with a rusted blade. Pol, captain of the Rusty Blade Mercenary Company, raised his sword and drove it through the charging creature's chest.

Bone and flesh gave way. The goblin went limp. A clean kill. Goblins were monsters that even low-ranked mercenaries could handle without much trouble. Most silver-rank mercenaries with access to mana could take out a handful without breaking a sweat.

The problem was this.

"Aaaaaah!"

"What the hell are these things! Where did they come from?"

"They're just goblins!"

"There's a damn ocean of them, you idiot!"

Shouting erupted from every direction. Several mercenaries and merchant company members were already bleeding.

"Captain!"

One of the Rusty Blade members called out, sword still wet from a fresh kill.

"Don't panic! They're just goblins. Everyone get near a campfire."

The initial ambush had rattled them for only a moment. Following Pol's orders, the mercenaries placed the merchant company members behind them and rallied near their respective campfires.

Monsters had good night vision as a rule. A fight in the forest with only firelight, no matter how great the difference in strength, was a losing battle. They'd been eating around campfires until just recently, and if those fires went out, they'd be fighting blind. Unlike monsters, humans needed time to adjust to the dark.

"Hold formation!"

"Merchant members to the rear, mercenaries to the front!"

Fortunately, a large portion of this trade convoy's escort belonged to the Rusty Blade Mercenary Company. Unlike the individually hired mercenaries, they had been fighting alongside each other for years and held steady. They'd been through enough situations like this to stay sharp.

"Damn it... how many of them are there?"

A member near Pol muttered. Inwardly agreeing, Pol stayed calm and swept the area with his eyes. The goblins that had been charging at full force moments ago were now making unsettling sounds and slowly closing the distance.

This is strange.

A monster night raid was something mercenaries dealt with regularly. But getting hit at this scale, this coordinated, all at once, that almost never happened. Goblins were bottom-tier monsters, sure, but they still had the intelligence of a small child at minimum. To be hit at this hour, by this many, this organized, would unnerve anyone.

Come to think of it, the rear. What happened to the rear?

Kyle, the man hired additionally back in Traben. The memory of what happened at noon crossed Pol's mind, and he turned instinctively to glance at a spot not far away.

There, close to twenty goblin corpses lay strewn about. A massive orc came crashing out of the brush at that very moment. It swung its arm down hard, and Kyle, sliding in beneath the blow, cut through the orc's arm and neck in the same instant.

Killing an orc in a single stroke? Was he genuinely hiding his true ability? Had that uneasy feeling at noon not been a mistake after all?

While Pol was still working through his surprise, Kyle exchanged a few brief words with the other two hired from Traben and disappeared into the brush. From the expressions on the remaining two, it was clear no one had agreed to it beforehand. Completely unilateral.

Wait, why was an orc among the goblins in the first place?

Their habitats were different. Their territories were different....

"An orc! It's an orc!"

"I thought it was just a goblin pack! Why is it here!"

While Pol was still frowning at that thought, his mercenaries' shouting rang out again. He snapped out of it and looked ahead.

"...Damn."

Beyond the goblins slowly tightening their encirclement, new figures were emerging. Countless goblins, with orcs threaded among them. Pol tightened his grip on his sword. It didn't look like tonight was going to end easily.

***

The merchant lord's carriage, nestled in the middle of the procession. Its interior was quiet. Completely sealed off from the world outside, or so it felt.

Given the magical tools and spell formations layered densely over every surface within, that made sense. The interior was lavish, far removed from any ordinary wagon, and in it sat a young man. Head bowed low, he clutched something against his chest and kept murmuring.

"It's fine. Nothing will happen. Mikhail said so...."

His heart was hammering. He could feel his hands trembling. Mikhail's words from moments ago kept drifting back to him.

"Young master, do not come outside under any circumstances."

"What's happening? Is it an attack?"

"Yes. But it shouldn't be a serious problem. Stay inside the carriage, perfectly still, just as you always do. Do not come out. Do you understand?"

Speaking in a near-whisper, Mikhail had gone outside immediately after. He was one of the few men the young man's father truly trusted, and the strongest knight the young man had ever known. If Mikhail had declared there would be no serious problem, then there wouldn't be.

This place was safe. As it had been for the past month, staying buried inside the carriage would keep him out of harm's way.

...Was it really fine?

For some reason, he slowly lifted his head. Mikhail had told him not to come outside. But he hadn't said anything about looking.

So as long as he didn't open the door, that should be fine.

He crept toward the window and peered past the campfire to the other side. His breath caught. Where there had been nothing before, countless goblins now encircled the clearing. More than a hundred of them.

"Orcs...!"

And orcs between them. He realized the situation was far worse than he'd imagined. Goblins and orcs never coexisted. If anything they were enemies, and the thought of them coordinating an attack together was something he had never even heard of.

Countless monsters. Goblins and orcs together in a combination that defied all reason. The mercenaries holding their ground. Their faces tight with something far past simple anxiety.

"...Huh?"

He turned around sharply. And beyond the brush where the monsters were seething, a pale silver line flickered in the dark, just for a moment.

The vicious eyes that had been fixed on the clearing were disappearing. One by one. Every time that silver light flashed, a faint and terrible screaming seemed to bleed through the soundproofing magic. Something moved, and the leaves trembled.

A person?

The young man squinted. Whatever it was, it was utterly silent. The only word that seemed to fit was death.

Even glancing toward the campfire where the other mercenaries were gathered, it was clear that no one had noticed the slaughter playing out just beyond the tree line.

His eyes were slowly adjusting to the dark, shapes sharpening into focus.

Then he could finally see it more clearly. A dark silhouette moving swiftly through the monsters, swinging its sword in a smooth, effortless arc. Not simply cutting. Head, thrust, pivot, step back, slash again.

For a moment, the dark silhouette glanced this way. Their eyes met, barely an instant.

A black cloak dissolved into the darkness. Black hair. Black eyes. And amid all that black, impossibly bright, the silver blade in the right hand.

His heart dropped. But it didn't last. The dark silhouette looked away first. Whether by chance or fate,

"Ah...."

The young man, who had been staring wide-eyed at the brush, sank to the floor. He had only been watching, and yet his legs had given out entirely.

The dark silhouette was growing smaller. Seated on the carriage floor, the young man stared after that retreating figure, completely transfixed, until it vanished altogether from sight.

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