WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Haruto

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◈ The Martial Alliance Rulebook Archives ◈

Chapter 3: Soul-Severing Mountain Villa (3)

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From beyond the door, I had seen nothing but endless darkness, yet the inside of the villa was clearer than I had expected.

It could not have been dark adaptation. There had been no time for my eyes to gradually adjust to the darkness.

It was as though a veil had been lifted from the scenery. The villa's interior suddenly came into view.

The first thing I felt was a suffocating monotony.

A wooden corridor.

Barely wide enough for two people to stand side by side, it stretched on and on.

Clunk!

The moment I took in the corridor, the door closed behind me. There was no going back now.

‘Ha...’

The end of the path was not even visible. It had already stretched far beyond the villa's length as seen from outside.

I steadied myself. Now that I had entered the core of the formation array, no strange phenomenon would be surprising.

I had to regard it as a good sign. At least there were no strange visions or hallucinations...

"Is anyone there?"

...Damn it.

Did thoughts come true instead of words here? I nearly turned around on instinct.

There was only a closed door behind me. The rulebook said not to respond to that voice in any way.

Let's move forward.

Drawing up my internal energy, I used my eye technique, making sure not to miss anything red that might lead to an exit.

Creak.

My first step echoed through the corridor. Just as the lingering sound faded, something breathed into my ear.

It was an icy breath.

"There's someone here..."

I had heard voices like that before. Not on Earth, but here in this Chaotic World.

The White Sword Squad was a motley group of wandering martial artists, often called in as cannon fodder wherever they went.

The lives of grunts with neither the backing of a sect nor powerful martial arts were worth less than those of disciples from prestigious sects.

I had heard that voice when I was conscripted into the vanguard of a mountain stronghold raid.

The last words of an unnamed wandering martial artist, pierced through the chest by an arrow, wheezing as their breath gradually cooled and whispering for someone to save them.

Then, as now, there was only one path I could choose.

I kept my gaze forward, doing my best not to turn my head.

If I looked toward the dying person, I might be the one collapsing beside them next.

I could not look away from the danger before me just to confirm the shape of my fear.

The sobbing voices gradually became more varied.

There was someone calling for their mother in a hoarse, ragged voice, and someone else belatedly regretting not having one last wild fling before dying like this.

The yin energy in those voices made me feel as though cold sweat were soaking through my body.

‘It only feels that way.’

In truth, it was no more than my own sweat. Shaking off the distracting thoughts creeping in, I stopped for a moment.

The wooden corridor split into three paths. Including the road I had taken, it formed a four-way intersection.

I looked around again. Until now, the path had been one-way, so all I had needed to do was move forward.

But now I had three choices. I could continue straight, turn left, or turn right.

I sent more internal energy toward the acupoints around my eyes.

Then I saw it.

Red.

Beneath the creaking floorboards were bloodstains. Faint traces remained in the corridor to my right.

The moment I turned right, the scenery changed.

* * *

I had never considered myself a lucky person.

I thought about it often. If I were truly lucky, I would not have been thrown into this martial arts Chaotic World while playing a game. Yet what happened now shook my certainty about my own luck.

...There it was.

A red door stood right in front of me.

The moment I turned the corner, I arrived in a new room. When I glanced back, the corridor I had just walked through was gone, replaced by a smooth wall.

The spacious room was filled with every sort of craftwork, gold, silver, and treasure, all centered around the red door. It was extravagance at its most extreme.

Could even the treasury of the famously wealthy Myriad Gold Estate compare to this?

Jewels such as blue jade and amethyst lay across the ground like floor tiles, while pillars of gold stood throughout the room.

By the time I saw statues that seemed to have been carved from whole gemstones the size of people, even my instinct to leave at once had begun to fade.

Then I remembered the rulebook's warning.

Follow the red.

Nothing, from the gold to the blue jade, was red. Only the door at the center of the room, standing alone rather than set into a wall, was red.

Anything else I touched would be a trap.

I had been lucky. There had been a slight delay between entering the villa and hearing the hallucinations.

Perhaps the process of refining souls had nearly finished when I entered the villa.

The voices I had heard must have been the final whispers of souls already scattering away.

Now I could escape.

Just as I reached for the doorknob, the door moved.

Its rectangular frame twisted in every direction, transforming into a human shape with limbs.

‘A fake exit?!’

It thrust out its right arm.

I did not even have time to use my footwork. I dodged at once, but I was too late.

Crack. A fist slammed into my left shoulder.

I swung my left arm on reflex to shake it off, but a moment later, intense pain struck. A scorching heat spread through the spot where I had been hit, as though it had been branded with a hot iron.

I cannot move it now.

Staggering back, I drew my sword.

The thing that had been mimicking a door, or perhaps the door itself transformed, was something like a red-tinged shadow.

An anomalous phenomenon not mentioned in the rulebook.

Drip.

Blood ran down my left arm and fell, scattering among the gold, silver, and treasures strewn across the floor.

The room should have been level. Yet as though the floor were tilted, the drops of blood flowed toward the shadow's feet.

Then they vanished.

The shadow, now a little redder than before, developed something resembling faint facial features.

Naturally, those features resembled my own.

With its uninjured left arm, it gripped a sword sheath that had somehow appeared at its waist. The way it drew its sword with its right arm and pointed it at me was all too familiar.

It was a form from the Martial Alliance's common sword art, one I had gritted my teeth and practiced.

‘Is this really how I die?’

* * *

I dodged its attacks, again and again.

I had tried to counterattack several times, but it was beyond me.

The offense it unleashed was clearly based on martial arts I knew. I recognized the beginnings and ends of each form.

But its mastery was on another level.

The path of my sword was crooked and uneven, while the arc traced by its blade was as clean as could be.

I could have blamed my ruined left shoulder...

But I knew the truth. It used my martial arts better than I did. At least when it came to the precision of the forms, I could not keep up.

The shadow, its face now a little more like mine than before, rushed at me.

I saw every detail: the twist of its waist, the movement of its shoulder, and the force traveling from its upper arm to its fingertips.

It was thanks to my eye technique. I barely managed to raise my right arm and meet its blade.

Still, things were bad. I had moved too hastily, and the blade struck my sword at a right angle. I could not deflect the attack. The immense force concentrated at one point exceeded my sword's limit.

My sword snapped in two.

A broken blade and a shattered left shoulder. They made quite the fitting pair.

I did not even have time to feel dejected. The shadow immediately twisted its wrist, changed the direction of its blade, and slashed upward.

If I had not jerked my head aside, my skull would have been split in half. There was no longer any question of fighting.

I fled, using golden statues and piles of treasure as shields.

All the while, I desperately turned my head from side to side, searching for a way out of the room.

There was no exit anywhere.

‘Damn it, is it attached to the ceiling or something?!’

I stepped on a statue's head and leaped, about to look up at the ceiling.

The world around me suddenly blurred.

It was a familiar sensation. Without the support of internal energy, my vision could no longer focus, leaving me defenseless.

‘Have I maintained my eye technique for too long...?!’

I had been too desperate to count the internal energy I had left. A fatal mistake.

Through my blurred vision, I caught sight of the shadow leaping after me. I threw my broken sword at it as it prepared to swing.

The shadow reacted. It raised its sword diagonally in a short, efficient motion, intending to knock away the thrown blade.

The moment its sword tilted, I stomped down on its blade.

Crash!

Both of us fell. The shadow was shoved away by my kick, while I launched myself off it as a foothold. We landed before walls on opposite sides of the room.

The shadow gripped its sword again, but instead of swinging it, it stared at the blade.

It had bent badly, likely from having to bear my weight. Without hesitation, the shadow threw the sword away.

Then it took the opening stance of a fist-and-kick art. This too was a martial art I knew.

The Martial Alliance's common martial art, Crouching Tiger Fist.

This martial art was marked by an opening stance that brought the body extremely close to the ground to condense power. True to its name, it possessed tremendous force, but it focused too heavily on power, making its attack paths overly direct.

I could dodge this attack.

Its lowered upper body shifted subtly up and down as it carefully adjusted its aim.

It's coming.

Crack!

As I threw myself aside to dodge its charge, the golden statue behind me was pierced by its right fist.

The statue's upper half was torn off completely.

‘What...?’

Normally, Crouching Tiger Fist could not be used against an opponent of equal cultivation.

It took time to condense power, and its direct attack path only invited counterattacks. It was a third-rate martial art that sacrificed too much for raw force.

But the Crouching Tiger Fist it used now was beyond that level. If I extended a sword into its path, the force behind it would break my arm instead.

Its attack path was simple, so it was easy to read?

Then all it needed was an attack powerful enough that even if it was read, it could not be blocked.

‘That shadow...’

No matter what martial art it used, it never hesitated. It was as though it declared that if one could fight, one should fight by any means necessary.

A will to fight without a trace of hesitation.

“Damn it. It's far more like a martial artist than I am...”

...Like a martial artist?

As the shadow took the opening stance of Crouching Tiger Fist once more, that thought overlapped with the image before me.

A riddle-like line from the rulebook came to mind.

『Exercise the rights of a martial artist.』

Now I understood what it meant.

There was a saying: to stop the spear is martial.

The word for martial came from stopping the spear. It meant that self-defense, stopping the attacks directed at oneself, was the essence of martial arts.

Put differently, to defend oneself, one needed the nerve to stand before a spear and shout, “Stop!”

But would someone holding a spear stop attacking because of empty words?

Which meant...

To put one's will into practice, there was no choice but to beat down the one holding the spear.

The strength to remain unbroken before spear and sword, and to carry out one's own will. That was martial.

That was why a martial artist's right was struggle.

No hardship or adversity mattered.

As long as it stood before me, I could fight it. I could win and carry out my will.

I looked at the shadow again. Red energy rose from its limbs as it stared at me like a tiger.

And what about me?

My sword was broken. My meager internal energy had all been spent on my eye technique, and my left shoulder was ruined.

Still, a martial artist had a weapon they could use even in such a situation.

‘Though there's a high chance it'll kill me after I use it.’

If I lost here, I would die anyway.

I would choose the method that let me survive even one second longer.

* * *

True Origin Qi.

Ignition.

Footnotes:

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