WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

Editor: Hydrogen B

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◈ Sword Master of the Fallen Kingdom

Chapter 70

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Crossing Blades (5)

The scenery in every direction melted away. The fluttering petals, the world dyed pure white. Little by little, everything regained its original color, like a brief midday dream passing without warning.

Personal illusion magic?

Inside that stretched-out flow of time, Damian stared at the blade digging into his breastplate. The sword, wrapped in pure white Sword Aura, was still cutting across his chest. So slowly. So clearly. Even among the scattering ice flowers, it stood out.

From the moment the petals touched him, his mana had frozen and refused to move. No matter how he tried to dodge, he could not. His body would not obey. It had gone sluggish. Like a natural disaster he could not resist. He saw it coming, yet he could not block it. All he could do was stare blankly at his own death.

Like this? I’m going to...

I’m...

Fwoosh!

The final petal vanished completely. Damian’s vision, still chasing the melting afterimage of mana, slowly tilted upward.

Before he knew it, the scenery around him had returned to the dark interior of the ruined chapel. The high ceiling of the great chapel rose some twenty meters above him. Damian’s body lay sprawled over the altar right beneath the goddess statue. From the shoulder beneath his shattered pauldron to the opposite side of his waist, a deep wound had been carved across him, and the white Sword Aura buried in it was burning through his skin.

Cough!

Damian vomited a basinful of blood. A beat later, burning agony flooded his entire body.

Kyle stood before him, breathing roughly. He staggered closer and stopped in front of Damian. His leather armor was half burned and torn, and the backs of his hands were red and peeled from burns. He was badly wounded too, though not as badly as Damian, who had suffered a fatal wound beyond recovery.

That was close.

Kyle looked down at the fallen Damian and thought that if even one thing had gone wrong, he would have been the one lying there.

The ring’s mana, which had been full when he first arrived at the chapel, had been drained by nearly eighty percent. That single illusion spell had used more than half of it. An absurd cost. Considering how much mana the ring held, it had consumed enough for over a hundred ordinary sword forms in a single strike.

His first use of personal magic.

Everything had been a gamble. Even Hallucination, which normally required a terrifying amount of mana, could not compare to this personal illusion magic. Only with death right in front of him had he reached that realization, and he had swung his sword once by instinct. Just as Cecilia had once said. He had wished for an impossible miracle.

Perhaps that was why Kyle’s personal magic had taken the form of illusion magic. An impossible midday dream was the only way he could make his ideal real.

So I didn’t spend those three years only regressing.

Kyle felt his head spin. He could not tell whether it was from blood loss or the backlash from his personal magic. Maybe both. He brought his sword, now stripped of Sword Aura, near Damian’s neck.

“Ha, haha, hahahaha...”

That was when Damian, who had been staring blankly up at Kyle, burst into laughter as if he had lost his mind.

“I never thought... my end would come like this...”

“...”

“That personal magic at the end... what is its name?”

Damian asked, his face twisting in pain. The red-haired knight leaned his upper body against the collapsed goddess statue while pressing down on his wound.

“...Frostflower of Daydreams.”

“An ice flower born from vain fantasies dreamed at midday...”

Damian snickered with a twisted expression.

“Are you still chained to the memories from three years ago?”

“...”

“How absurd. It isn’t even funny. A knight’s final move... isn’t a personal sword form, but magic.”

Damian mocked him. Kyle showed no real reaction. He did not deny it either.

Damian was right.

Even among the Knights of Ash, the number of people who could use a personal sword form on top of Asherad Royal Swordsmanship could be counted on one hand. The Commander, the Vice Commander, and a very small number of knights. That was all. Even when Rowen, the previous Commander, died and Kyle was chosen as the new Commander, he could not use a personal sword form. He could not even find a direction for one. Back then, he had vaguely assumed that was the limit of his talent.

Now he knew it was not.

The reason Kyle had never been able to create a personal sword form was simple. A sword form alone could not fully embody what lay inside him. Perhaps it was also because he had been learning magic from Cecilia from the beginning. Even while learning the sword as his foundation, he had often practiced magic in between, and there had been many times when the latter felt easier and more natural to him.

“What will you do now? Kill me... kill the other wyvern knight chasing the princess too. Then keep running? All the way to the Federation where Grand Duke Rivelius is?”

After Kyle stayed silent for a while, Damian spoke between ragged breaths.

His golden breastplate had long since been split halfway apart by the diagonal slash.

“Just because I die... doesn’t mean the Empire will let you go.”

“I know.”

“No... two, then. Two wyvern knights. Once it reaches that point, the Imperial House will take direct action. The war might even be moved forward.”

Just as they had invaded Hailen. Now that the north had been half destroyed, it was obvious the Empire would target the Federation next.

With bad luck, they might declare war before Elysia and Kyle even reached the Federation. Nothing was certain now. Everything depended on the Emperor’s will.

“I, Lorentz, even the Commander of the Celestial Knights... in the end, we are all part of the enormous giant called the Empire. The same goes for House Lucent, the maternal family of the fallen princess.”

“...”

“My family, House Carvello, can be replaced at any time too.”

“What are you trying to say?”

Kyle asked. Damian was still laughing weakly.

“I mean all your struggling is meaningless.”

“...”

“You can’t change the flow of the age, Blue Wolf. Do you still dream of something that can never come true?”

“I do.”

Even if ruin waited ahead. It was better than sitting still and waiting for death. Even if the result held only regret, he wanted to move forward now. Settling for reality would also make the sacrifices of those who had gone before him meaningless.

“Foolish.”

“...”

“But... not bad. Watching you break apart in the raging waves should be decent entertainment. Just like the already-ruined Hailen and the dead Knights of Ash.”

Damian chuckled one last time and looked up. Above the collapsed goddess statue, dim moonlight poured through the stained glass half shattered by Kyle’s Wind Magic. The cold wind scraping over his skin felt refreshing instead.

“I’ll go ahead and watch... to see how far you can take the princess. Hell can’t be all that bad.”

Damian’s eyelids slowly blinked over his eyes. His scarlet gaze stared endlessly past Kyle’s shoulder at the arched ceiling stretching above.

Ah.

Was this how the Vice Commander who died three years ago felt too...?

After staring at the ceiling for a long while, Damian’s gaze slowly clouded over.

His clouded eyes soon lost their light. The blood-soaked red-haired knight’s head sagged to the side. His hand, which had been gripping the dark red sword hilt, slowly opened.

The knight before him had stopped breathing. Kyle watched his death for a short moment, then raised his left hand, the one not holding his sword. The skin on the back of that hand, half cooked by Damian’s flames, had peeled away completely, leaving no sensation at all. On top of that, there was the severe blood loss and the dark red Sword Aura still lingering in his wounds.

He was badly wounded enough to suffer lifelong aftereffects if he did not treat himself at once.

I was careless. With everything.

Kyle repeatedly clenched and opened his numbed left hand to check whether it was still alive. Since this fight had been a life-or-death battle, he had gained a great deal.

His first personal magic, created by his own hand. Information about the continent’s political situation too.

The Empire is recovering faster than expected.

Kyle had regressed more than he had thought, and the Empire had advanced more than he had thought.

He had not known while wandering the southern continent without purpose for three years. What grand plan the Emperor was preparing. How strong the wyvern knights who survived the Northern War had become. That revenge alone could not bring down the Empire.

Now he knew. Objectively speaking, Damian Carvello’s level was nearly no different from that of the Vice Commander of the Celestial Knights he had killed more than three years ago. Compared to the brief clash they had shared during the Northern War, Damian had changed beyond recognition. His personal sword form, in particular, had been far more dangerous.

Even the Kyle of the past would have suffered a grave wound from that sword form. If things had gone as they should, then, the one lying dead would have been Kyle, not that red-haired knight. The man’s claim that he had moved forward every moment had been true. He was different from Kyle, who had all but thrown that time away.

Not anymore.

The world was unfair by nature. Only one thing was equal to all people. Time. Since he had spent three years steeped in despair and inertia, regressing all the while, it was time to take a step forward. He did not expect a second lucky break.

He could not allow himself to expect one.

Elysia must have encountered the wyvern knight by now.

If this had been the Ligrid Mountains, that would be one thing, but this border region was a hilly area of gentle slopes and low mountains. It would be hard to shake off a wyvern’s pursuit here.

Elysia was also badly exhausted. The wyvern would be nearing its limit too, but even so, escaping pursuit would be hard. The one saving grace was that their goal was to capture her alive, so they would not harm her directly. The wyvern knight chasing Elysia would also come this way afterward to regroup.

Still, that doesn’t mean I need to wait here.

After catching his breath for a short while, Kyle took a glass bottle from inside his clothes. A top-grade holy potion. It was the one remaining bottle after he had given one of the only two to Elysia.

It was an incredibly precious item that could heal most external and internal wounds if used right before death. Just as Kyle opened the sealed stopper, he suddenly sensed a huge presence not far away. The thing flying through the sky was far too large to be an ordinary human.

Boom!

The ceiling of the great ruined chapel exploded open in an instant. Kyle raised his head.

The ceiling had half collapsed, leaving a gaping hole into the night sky. Amid the fragments raining down, a wyvern revealed itself. A single wyvern covered entirely in bright red scales. It had driven both legs into the roof and was peering down into the chapel with eyes dyed white.

Then.

Kyaaaaaaaaa!

The wyvern saw Damian’s corpse behind Kyle and roared. At that anguished scream ringing through the chapel, Kyle’s lips twisted on their own.

“Prisia’s mana... so that was their tracking method.”

The wyvern tore its gaze from the red-haired knight and turned its head to glare at Kyle. Murderous intent poured from its eyes, which had turned completely white.

Kyle swallowed the contents of the opened glass bottle in one gulp. He dropped the empty bottle. The giant wyvern opened its mouth wide toward him. Kyle stared for a moment at the flames wavering deep in its throat, then raised his lightless sword again.

***

The border region between the Kingdom of Brendel and the Duchy of Tervan. After parting from Kyle, Elysia ran without stopping in the opposite direction.

She hid her tracks as much as possible, just as Kyle had advised. She did not use Wind Magic, and she kept Body Reinforcement to a minimum as she moved. She only took short rests whenever her breath rose to her throat. Even when exhaustion soaked through her body and the thought of resting filled her mind, she did not stop.

Is this really right?

In the worst case, even if I get caught, I’ll live, but Kyle...

All kinds of anxious thoughts rose and vanished between her hot, ragged breaths. Elysia gritted her teeth as she brushed past the trees on either side.

I remember the list of wyvern knights without missing a single name.

After suffering losses close to half their number in the Northern War, the Emperor had selected new wyvern knights from among the Imperial Knights. Because of that, only a few of the remaining wyvern knights were seasoned elites with real experience.

If they had carefully chosen two of them for her pursuit, one was very likely Damian Carvello, who had probably been selected as the next Vice Commander.

The eldest son of House Carvello and a young knight known as the greatest genius in the knightly order.

He was the heir of a prestigious house that had newly become one of the Empire’s most important pillars, replacing House Lucent, her fallen maternal family.

Could Kyle defeat him? She was not doubting him, yet anxiety kept creeping in. Rumors had already quietly spread that Damian Carvello had completed his own personal sword form a year ago. So had the fact that he was skilled enough to be nearly equal to the current Vice Commander of the Celestial Knights.

I don’t even know who Kyle really is in the first place.

Maybe he should have run instead. Better that than him dying because of me...

After running for a long time, Elysia came to a stop. Standing halfway up a low hill, she turned back at the chill she felt by instinct.

No way.

She saw something flying through the sky not far away. She could not clearly see the person riding on top, but the two flapping wings were unmistakable.

A wyvern knight.

Elysia’s eyes widened. The flying wyvern tilted its head slightly. Right toward the exact spot where Elysia stood. The green wyvern opened its mouth wide as it came. In an instant, green flames flared and burst out in a long fan shape.

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