Unbound Magic Swordsman - Chapter 10

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Mordor

◈ Unbound Magic Swordsman ◈

Chapter 10: Promotion

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When Lucian opened the guild doors to accept his sixth request, the area before the request board was as crowded as a marketplace.

Murmurs thick with greed and fear filled the air.

Lucian approached without a sound and looked over the crowd's shoulders.

At the very center of the board, a sheet of parchment edged in blood red was nailed up.

It was an emergency extermination request.

[Southern Mountains Troll appearance. Large magical beast. Estimated rank: Silver. Civilian casualties reported, evacuation underway. A three-person party of Silver rank or above is recommended. Reward: ten gold coins.]

A troll.

Fragments of knowledge rose in Lucian's mind.

It possessed the brutish mass of an ogre, but its most horrifying trait was its grotesque regenerative ability. Even when its flesh was torn, new flesh grew back in an instant.

To stop that disaster, whose severed limbs would reattach themselves, the wounds had to be cauterized with fire or acid.

A difficulty of Silver rank or higher.

Lucian was still Copper rank.

A killing ground more than a step beyond his rank.

Lucian stared dryly at the parchment.

The words Civilian casualties reported strangely snagged his attention.

“Anyone taking that request?”

A deep, metallic voice came from behind him.

Lucian turned to find a huge man in a scar-covered leather breastplate standing with his arms crossed, glaring at the board.

Beside him stood a sharp-looking woman with a bow slung over her shoulder and a skinny young man in a robe with worn sleeves.

A three-person party, as recommended by the guild.

The huge man's gaze fell on Lucian.

“You planning to take it?”

Lucian silently shook his head.

“Good. We were about to grab it. Three Silvers should be enough to handle it.”

The huge man reached for the request sheet, then hesitated.

“But can the three of us really manage it? They say that troll bastard's regeneration is awful. Unless you burn it, its head will reattach even after you cut it off.”

The young man in robes snapped irritably.

“I've got fire magic!”

“That tiny palm-sized fireball? Think it'll do more than toss sparks onto a troll's hide?”

“Then I'll make it work! Do you have another plan?”

While the three argued fiercely, Lucian sank into silence.

Fire magic.

The roots of mana sprouting beneath his heart trembled.

Unseen, Lucian forced his will into his palm.

Fwoosh.

A heat far denser and heavier than before gathered at his fingertips.

It had not yet taken the visible form of flame, but it was clearly hot enough to scorch flesh.

If he drew that heat up over his blade and pushed it to its limit...

Lucian withdrew his gaze from the board, his eyes cold.

Not yet.

Facing a troll while unable to properly control even a single flame was not courage. It was reckless bravado and suicide.

He tore down a target suited to his rank instead.

[Northern Plains Deformed Beast Extermination: mutant hound pack. Ten or more. Reward: fifteen silver coins.]

Mutant hounds.

The beasts with three rows of teeth that had tried to tear apart his calves on the first day he woke in this horrific world.

That night, he had lost his senses and crushed their heads with rocks.

Now, things were different.

* * *

The sixth request ended in half a day.

Twelve mutant hounds nesting in a ruin.

Their attack patterns were so beastlike they made him want to yawn.

An instinctive charge, rushing in together to bite and tear while drooling.

Lucian held the ruin's narrow doorway and split the beasts' heads and hearts one by one.

Twelve arcs, then twelve corpses.

The amount of experience was minuscule, but it accumulated.

Still, during this hunt, Lucian sensed another evolution in his body.

As he split open the final hound's head, the path of his sword moved ahead of his will.

Before his brain could issue the order, his muscle fibers drew the optimal diagonal line to slice through the beast's skull with the least amount of force.

It was not a calculated slash, but a reflexive slaughter completed by his body itself.

Mastery.

The unconscious precision carved out through bloody killing.

Lucian had reached, in just over ten days of real combat, a level that ordinary knights needed years of blood and sweat on training grounds to attain.

His fraudulent devouring ability, Experience Absorption, was madly accelerating his evolution into a killing machine.

* * *

On the fifteenth night.

Lucian sat in his mold-reeking inn room, staring at the wavering candle flame like a beast.

A flickering orange flame.

Slowly, he extended his right hand and brought his palm close to it.

Then he forcibly drew up the mana in his dantian and crammed it madly into his fingertips.

It was his first attempt at consciously converting pure mana into a physical phenomenon.

The roots of mana extending through his veins surged as they began to compress explosively at his fingertips.

Hot.

An agonizing burn, as though the blood vessels beneath his skin would burst.

More. Just a little more.

Grinding his teeth, Lucian pushed the uncontrollable mana to its limit.

Flash.

At that moment.

A grotesque flame bloomed from the tip of Lucian's index finger.

It was pathetic.

A weak spark less than half the size of a candle flame, as though it would go out with one breath.

But it was undeniably fire.

The first miracle of unrefined pure mana within his body being forcibly converted into a physical phenomenon in the real world.

The moment something was torn from nothing.

Lucian's expression remained as stiff as a corpse, but deep within his pitch-black eyes, delight gleamed.

'I can do it.'

Exactly three seconds later, the flame vanished without a trace.

The mana channels needed to sustain it were far too narrow.

Once the fire went out, terrible numbness and pain raced through his fingertips and struck his bones.

His mana furnace, the seed in his dantian, had been overloaded.

It was like forcing enormous water pressure through cramped veins. If he was careless, the channels could tear.

Hector's warning crossed his mind.

'Damage to the mana furnace. There is no one on this continent who can mend it.'

He could not overdo it.

He had to slowly widen the path within the limits his veins could endure.

His first flame.

The night Lucian took his first step into the domain of magic in the name Magic Swordsman.

Lucian pinched out the candle, held his sword close, and collapsed onto the bed.

There was another request tomorrow.

* * *

On the twentieth day.

Lucian had completed ten requests through the Kaldia Mercenary Guild.

All alone, all completed perfectly within the deadline. Zero failures.

Goblins, Beastfolk, orcs, mutant beasts, venomous snakes, swarms of poisonous insects.

By the time Lucian completed his seventh hunt, his record of cutting down monsters without discrimination had become drinking talk among the mercenaries.

“They say he killed five Beastfolk by himself?”

“Twenty-one Goblins in one day?”

“I hear he takes a request every day and succeeds every time.”

“What's his name?”

“Lucian. They say he's like a ghost with no family name and no past.”

“Lost his memories? Sounds suspicious.”

“Why should a mercenary care where someone came from? As long as he's skilled and kills monsters well.”

“True enough.”

Most were curious.

Some were suspicious.

A very small number were hostile.

A Copper-rank mercenary was producing results comparable to Silver rank. It was only natural for the other mercenaries to become wary.

Lucian did not care about their murmuring in the slightest.

Whether the rumors were favorable or unfavorable, they did not affect his ability to complete requests and collect rewards.

There was, however, one troublesome change.

“Won't you come with us?”

“We have an open spot in the party.”

“Are you planning to keep going solo?”

Lucian refused them all.

The reason was simple.

Joining a party would raise his odds of survival, but the Experience Points he absorbed through slaughter would be divided or lost.

Only prey whose breath he had personally cut short was absorbed as nourishment by Lucian's body.

No energy flowed from prey killed by another's hand.

To maximize the efficiency of his growth, he had to monopolize the danger.

At his current level of difficulty, hunting and devouring beasts alone was overwhelmingly more profitable.

* * *

After completing his eleventh hunt, Lucian returned soaked in blood. Rina pushed over some documents and spoke.

“You've been put forward for a promotion assessment.”

“Promotion?”

“From Copper to Silver. Eleven consecutive solo successes. The guildmaster personally sent down the assessment form.”

Silver rank.

The quality of requests would change, and the gold paid out would carry more weight.

Above all, he would be able to legally slaughter higher magical beasts and devour far better mana.

“What are the conditions?”

“As before, it is a field assessment. Kill the monster designated by the guild, and you pass.”

Rina pushed over a parchment stamped in red.

“Designated request. Southern Mountains Troll extermination. If you complete it alone, you'll be promoted immediately. Don't misunderstand. It doesn't mean you have to kill it alone. You can still be promoted if you form a party.”

A troll.

The monster that had been posted a few days earlier, with a three-person party recommended.

Apparently, the Silver-rank party that had taken the request while snickering that day had either been chopped into minced meat by the troll's axe or fled with their tails tucked.

Proof of just how powerful the creature was.

Even so, the condition of completing it alone had been added because Lucian had continued to hunt solo despite repeated recommendations to form a party.

The reason was simple. He could monopolize Experience Points, and he was a Magic Swordsman.

If a monster was strong enough to require a party, it was better in every way to hunt monsters he could kill alone.

Rina tapped the bottom of the document.

“This is the warning the guildmaster added. ‘A troll's abnormal regenerative ability cannot be contained without fire attacks. If you attempt another solo extermination, you must bring a means of fire attack.’”

A means of fire attack.

Lucian unconsciously opened and closed his right hand.

The crude flame he had squeezed from his fingertips for three seconds.

Could that scorch the flesh of a gigantic troll?

Not a chance.

But there had been results from enduring bone-grinding pain every night and widening his veins.

The flame's duration had grown from three seconds to five, and its size had increased from a match flame to a torch flame.

Most importantly, there was a possibility he had confirmed when he burned a swarm of poisonous insects during his tenth hunt.

He did not need a massive firestorm to kill a troll.

He only had to tear deeply into its vital point with his silver longsword, then force mana flame into the open wound and burn away the regenerating cells themselves.

It was, of course, an untested hypothesis.

But he was confident.

Now, all that remained was to prove it in battle.

“I'll take it.”

Lucian snatched up the parchment as he spoke.

Rina's eyes wavered.

“And your means of fire attack?”

“I have one.”

Lucian offered no further explanation.

Rina sighed and roughly stamped the document.

“A troll's mass is on a completely different level from Goblins. Be careful.”

After returning to the inn, Lucian checked his equipment through the night, pushing it to its limits.