WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Mordor
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◈ Unbound Magic Swordsman ◈
Chapter 12: Silver
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The next morning, Lucian reached Kaldia's walls again just as the blood-red dawn licked across the earth.
When he passed through the south gate, the guards' spearpoints trembled like aspen leaves.
Their eyes were fixed not on Lucian's ragged appearance, but on the enormous head he dragged along with one hand.
“Th-that...”
“It is a troll. I'm delivering it to the guild, so move aside.”
The guards opened the way in a daze.
As Lucian walked through Kaldia's morning streets, the head of a higher magical beast, reeking of rotten blood, drew people's eyes like a black hole.
Murmurs of shock and fear followed behind him like a shadow.
The moment he pushed open the Mercenary Guild's doors, the noise in the hall vanished.
Thud!
The troll's head, as large as an adult's torso, was hurled heavily onto the guild hall floor.
Complete silence.
“...Is that really a troll's head?”
Someone muttered through a sharp breath.
Behind the counter, Rina shot to her feet, her eyes opening wide enough to split.
“Th-that is a troll. Don't tell me you hunted it alone?”
“I did.”
“...How?”
Lucian did not answer.
He merely placed the request form, soaked in blood and mud, on the counter.
As Rina picked up the papers with trembling hands, the mercenaries in the hall erupted into frantic whispers.
“He killed a troll alone? Without fire attacks?”
“That's insane. I heard he had some means of using fire.”
“He can't use magic, can he?”
“Are you stupid? If someone who lives by the sword tries to handle magical power, their veins burst and their organs twist apart. How could a warrior who uses aura handle ether?”
“A mage could be pretending to be a swordsman.”
“Damn it. A mage? Are you seriously saying that?”
“Then how did he kill it?”
Cutting through their commotion, the guildmaster descended in person from the second-floor corridor.
Pushing up a pair of glasses, the guildmaster sharply examined the troll's severed surface, its blackened burn marks, and Lucian's condition.
“Impressive. A Copper-rank mercenary hunting a troll alone.”
“The promotion?”
“Of course. You pass automatically. Silver rank, effective today.”
The guildmaster personally signed the papers, then looked at Lucian sharply over his glasses.
“I have one question. What was your means of fire attack?”
Lucian calculated without expression.
Burn marks were plainly visible on the troll's severed surface.
There was no reason to hide it.
“I put heat into my sword.”
The guildmaster's eyes flashed like razor blades.
“Heat in your sword? With aura, or ether?”
Aura. Ether.
Lucian had heard the terms several times since falling into this world, but he did not know the difference between them.
To him, it was simply power pouring out from his dantian.
“What exactly are they?”
The guildmaster stopped writing and stared at Lucian.
The recommendation letter's claim that Lucian had lost his memories seemed to come to mind.
“You lost your memories, and it seems you even forgot how the world works.”
The guildmaster began drawing on a blank sheet of parchment while explaining.
“In this world, there are strictly two paths for wielding power to survive. One is vital energy, and the other is magical power. Both originate from a source called mana, but once they manifest, they become forces governed by entirely different principles.”
The pen pointed to one side of the paper.
“Vital energy is power squeezed from the body itself. Through training that grinds down bone and flesh, one binds mana within the body and forces it into weapons or muscles to increase destructive power. It is the warrior's path. Vital energy released outside the body is called aura.”
The pen moved to the other side.
“Magical power, on the other hand, forcibly draws power from the world's source. Through a mana furnace, one absorbs natural mana and weaves incantations or formations to turn it into physical phenomena. Magical power released outside the body is called ether. This is the mage's path.”
The guildmaster drew a deep, decisive line between the two sides.
“They can never mix. It is not merely like water and oil. It is a contradiction like fire and ice. If a warrior who has awakened vital energy covets magical formulas, their vital energy reverses and tears their limbs apart. If a mage awakens vital energy, their mana furnace clashes at once, and their head explodes. Handling both at the same time is impossible under this world's absolute laws.”
Lucian held his breath.
Vital energy, aura, and magical power, ether.
Mutually opposed powers that would tear each other apart.
And yet, what about him?
He had forced mana into his silver longsword, raising its hardness until it rivaled stone, while also manifesting searing heat.
Then had he used aura? Or ether?
He could not tell.
Because the seed coiled beneath his heart was a single power from a single source.
Pure, raw mana itself ran through his blood vessels and ravaged his entire body.
When he forced it into a sword, it became savage like aura. When he condensed it at his fingertips, it spat flames like ether.
In other words, vital energy and magical power were no different to him.
Only then did he understand why the power used by the toothless Goblin Shaman and the blood-eyed wolfman chieftain had felt strangely alien when he slaughtered them.
He had assumed it was a racial characteristic.
It was not. The very way they processed their power was different.
“It is common for swordsmen to put aura into their blades to increase hardness or explosive force,” the guildmaster continued.
“There are three broad realms for those who wield swords. First is the stage where one forces aura into a weapon. They can manifest Aura Edge, and are called Wardens. There are four stages, from lower to peak.”
Warden.
Lucian remembered the sensation of hardening his sword.
“Second is the stage where one can release aura from the bare body and create a physical barrier without a weapon. These monsters are called High Wardens. They use Aura Edge freely, and from the upper tier onward, they can manifest Aura Thread and even Aura Blade.”
Lucian recalled the barrier the wolfman chieftain had wrapped around its body.
The feeling had been similar, but only somewhat.
Naturally, it must have been an inferior technique. If that creature had been a High Warden, Lucian would have died long ago.
It had surely been a Warden-level monster.
“Third is the ultimate martial realm. Exarchs wield Aura Blade freely. Even a lower-tier Exarch is treated as a nation's strategic weapon.”
The guildmaster then listed the ranks of mages.
“Mages who wield ether are divided by class. Classes one through three are Novices who handle the basics. Classes four through six are Mages who construct formations. Classes seven through nine are Sages who twist the terrain of a battlefield, also called Arch Mages.”
A system of nine classes.
At his peak, Hector, whose mana furnace had been destroyed, had likely been at least a Mage-level spellcaster.
The guildmaster put down the pen and looked directly into Lucian's pitch-black eyes.
“You said you put heat into your sword. If it was an aura conversion, it belongs to the realm of an extremely skilled Warden. If it was ether, it would be a mage's spell. But the two powers cannot coexist. Before losing your memories, you were most likely a Warden-level warrior who had refined a fire-aspected aura to an extreme degree.”
Lucian neither agreed nor denied it.
No, he could not even carelessly open his mouth.
He had realized the nature of the power he used.
Magic Swordsman.
It had been a common class description in a game packed full of cheats.
But in this dark fantasy world made real, it was a contradiction that transcended the laws of the world merely by existing.
Vital energy and magical power could not mix.
Yet Lucian's body ignored that absolute law as if it were nothing.
“...Perhaps.”
After a long silence, Lucian asked as casually as he could.
“What if someone used mana directly?”
The guildmaster let out a laugh as if he had heard something insane.
“Using raw, pure mana as it is? Well, that is the ultimate goal dreamed of by everyone in the world, whether they wield a sword or a staff. The closer the power produced by a method is to pure mana, the greater its value and rank, and the stronger it becomes.”
“So it is impossible?”
“Well. I do not know whether it is possible or impossible. But if it were possible, would there have been any need to process mana into forms like vital energy or magical power in the first place? Transforming processed power back into something like mana is the ultimate goal. As far as I know, even dragons cannot use the power at its source without binding and processing mana within their bodies. Of course, dragons are powerful enough to crush most aura with their physical abilities alone, but their source is ultimately magical power. There is a reason dragons are called the progenitors of magic, and why mages lose all strength before them. As proof, every dragon-slayer in legend was a warrior. There were only two of them, though. Then again, having killed dragons, 'only' is not the right word. 'A full two' would suit them better.”
Something even dragons could not do.
And yet Lucian was doing it without difficulty.
If this fact ever became known...
When Lucian remained silent, the guildmaster spoke again.
“In any case, aura is fiercer than ether, but harder to change. Still, if a Warden possessed the nature of flame from the beginning, it is not completely impossible.”
Seemingly satisfied with that explanation, the guildmaster stamped the document.
[Lucian. Promoted to Silver rank. Note: Confirmed Warden-level flame aura use. Solo troll subjugation.]
“I will issue you a Silver-rank mercenary badge.”
He handed Lucian a coolly gleaming silver metal plate.
“From Silver rank onward, exchanges between guilds become possible. This badge will be recognized by mercenary guilds in other cities as well. Your range of activity has expanded. In other words, from Silver rank onward, you are someone guaranteed by the Kaldia Mercenary Guild, so we do not issue it merely because someone is skilled. The same is true of other guilds. You are a special case.”
Of course, Hector's handwritten recommendation letter had likely driven a firm wedge behind that decision.
Lucian carelessly slipped the piece of silver into his clothes.
Then Rina offered him a clinking bag of gold coins.
“Ten gold coins for the troll subjugation. The troll's hide, heartstone, and other spoils will be appraised and paid out later.”
Ten gold coins.
Together with his existing funds, he now had more than fifty gold coins. Wealth earned over about twenty days as a mercenary.
Not bad.
* * *
Lucian left the guild with his reward.
Silver rank. His first leap forward.
Now he could legally hunt more terrible higher magical beasts and devour even greater amounts of higher-quality experience.
His growth would accelerate madly, but the chance of death would rise just as sharply.
But he could not stop. If he stopped, he would eventually die.
As Lucian walked through Kaldia's streets, the laws of the world recited by the guildmaster arranged themselves coldly in his mind.
Warden, High Warden, Exarch. Novice, Mage, Arch Mage.
Vital energy and magical power, which could never mix.
Yet the sprout rooted beneath his heart scoffed at the processing of those two powers and supplied pure mana to his veins.
An impossible contradiction. An error in the world.
Lucian clenched his callused hands.
Magic Swordsman.
For now, it was only a frail sprout. But no one knew what bizarre, savage monster its blood-fed roots would bloom into.
If the laws of the world rejected and cast him aside, then he only had to seize the world by the collar and twist it.
* * *
After being promoted to Silver rank, Lucian stopped hunting completely and secluded himself for three days.
The cost of pouring more mana than he could handle into the troll's heart had been severe.
The numbness in his fingertips faded after one day, but the channels through which he had forced mana were terribly overloaded. Whenever he tried to draw on his dantian, pain lingered as though shards of glass scraped through his veins.
He could force himself to cut down a magical beast, but if a channel ruptured, he would have to live like Hector with a crippled, broken mana furnace for the rest of his life.
Their situations were very different, of course, but there was no harm in being careful.
Three days of preparation.
Lucian focused on two things.
One was recovering his body. The other was setting up his equipment.
The most urgent matter was replacing his armor.
A mere brush from the troll's forearm had torn Lucian's leather Light Armor into rags, and its back was completely shredded.
It could stop the claws of goblins or wolfmen, but before the mindless mass of a higher magical beast, it was no better than paper.
From now on, the creatures he had to butcher would be trolls or worse.
Skimping on silver coins for armor was as foolish as putting his life on a gambling table.
It was time to spend his bloodstained gold coins freely for survival.
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