WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Mordor
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◈ Unbound Magic Swordsman ◈
Chapter 13: Preparations
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Lucian returned to the Iron Boar, a blacksmith in the eastern market district.
The blacksmith, whose forearms were as thick as thighs, seemed to remember Lucian.
Seeing the Light Armor hanging from Lucian's body in ragged strips, he swallowed nervously.
“You're the one who bought Light Armor last time. But how long has it even been? What happened to that armor?”
“I faced a higher magical beast.”
“With Light Armor? Huh. Lucky you made it back alive.”
The blacksmith clicked his tongue.
“What are you looking for?”
“Do you have armor made from magical-beast materials?”
The blacksmith's eyes gleamed.
“I do. Of course I do. But it won't be cheap.”
He unlocked a heavy lock and carefully removed a suit of armor from the deepest part of a display case.
Light leather armor in a deep ash gray.
Yet its texture was fundamentally different from ordinary animal hide.
Fine reptilian scales patterned its chillingly smooth surface, and it felt less like leather than tightly woven steel fibers beneath his fingertips.
“Wyvern hide.”
The blacksmith explained with pride, though respectfully.
“It may be a lesser species, but it's unquestionably the hide of a flying dragon. Any mediocre blade will simply slide off it, and even most magical-beast claws won't pierce it. Its greatest strength is its weight. For this level of protection, it weighs about the same as ordinary leather Light Armor. It won't hinder your mobility, yet it'll offer survivability comparable to a metal breastplate.”
Lucian picked up the Wyvern Light Armor.
It was astonishingly light.
He drew the dagger at his waist and forcefully scraped the hide's surface where no one could see. Nothing came of it but an unpleasant scraping sound. Not a single mark remained.
“The price?”
“Fifteen gold coins.”
It was expensive.
A third of the wealth he had scraped together while risking his life would vanish at once.
But it was cheaper than having his guts spilled by a beast's claws.
In this world, clinging to money would only make one the first piece of rotten meat.
“I'll try it on.”
Lucian threw off the old Light Armor caked with dried blood and put on the Wyvern hide.
The tailored armor perfectly covered his chest, back, shoulders, and the arteries in his forearms, while protecting the outer sides of his thighs.
Thanks to the Wyvern hide's distinctive elasticity, even twisting and bending his joints did not restrict his movements in the slightest.
“I'll buy your old Light Armor for five silver coins. You've used it roughly, but the leather itself is still serviceable.”
Lucian nodded at the blacksmith's offer.
It was a shame to sell something he had bought for three gold coins for five silver coins, but he had used it that roughly.
Next came the weapons.
The silver longsword Hector had given him was still excellent.
But after being forced through a troll's hard ribs, a faint crack ran through the middle of its blade.
“The crack is shallow, so I can mend it. But if it takes the same strain again, it could break there. Avoid any heavy clashes.”
After paying three silver coins to leave the sword for repairs, Lucian keenly felt the need for a backup weapon.
He needed to prepare for his main weapon being destroyed.
He searched through the display case and selected a sleek, straight-bladed dagger about thirty centimeters long.
A secondary weapon that could stab a monster's eye in a blind spot or close-quarters melee.
It came with a sturdy sheath that could be secured to his right thigh.
It cost two gold coins.
Lucian then stopped before the throwing-weapon stand.
“Give me a set of throwing daggers. The kind weighted toward the front.”
The blacksmith nodded and brought out six short, heavy throwing daggers meant for assassination.
One gold coin for the set of six.
In a desperate fight against magical beasts, lacking a means of long-range harassment was fatal.
If, when a Goblin Shaman condensed magic, he could plant one of these blades in its brow instead of charging at it, his chance of survival would rise exponentially.
A bow took time to master and was somewhat cumbersome, but throwing daggers could extend the killing instinct already honed within him like a beast.
Total expenses.
Fifteen gold coins for the Wyvern Light Armor, two for the backup dagger, one for the throwing daggers, and three silver coins for the longsword repair. Five silver coins gained from selling the old Light Armor.
A total of eighteen gold coins, minus two silver coins. He had roughly thirty gold coins left.
He had spent around half his entire fortune, but felt no regret.
Equipment was the price of extending one's life.
* * *
Back at the inn, Lucian stood before a mirror.
He was no longer a drifter wearing the inn's borrowed clothes and dripping blood.
Jet-black Wyvern Light Armor fit snugly around his body. A sharply honed silver longsword hung at his waist. An assassin's dagger rested on his right thigh, while six throwing daggers lined his left thigh like a predator's fangs.
Black hair and inorganic, empty eyes.
The image of a controlled killing machine reeking of blood.
In this world, one's appearance was the first threat and weapon thrown at an enemy.
If the other side hesitated for even 0.1 seconds at that intimidating sight, he could end their life in that instant.
After arranging his equipment, Lucian looked around the inn room.
A narrow room. A wooden bed, an old wardrobe, and a washbasin.
The walls were thin, and every night he could hear snoring from the room next door.
The lock on the door was just a simple latch. A skilled thief could open it in three seconds.
Life at the inn was convenient.
Meals were provided, and he did not need to worry about laundry or cleaning.
But it was not safe.
Quite a few people knew Lucian's income was increasing.
Mercenary Guild rewards were paid in public, and there was always a chance someone had watched silver and gold change hands.
More than anything, there was mana training.
Every night, he practiced making flames in his room. It would be troublesome if that was discovered.
The chance that mana's heat would leak from a thin-walled inn room was low, but it was not zero.
As long as he had no plans to leave Kaldia, he needed a space of his own.
A residence.
The question was what would be more practical.
If he lived on his own, he would have to handle his meals.
He could not even remember whether he knew how to cook.
Shopping, building a fire, and cooking might be more troublesome than battle.
The inn, on the other hand, guaranteed meals and convenience, but offered poor privacy and safety.
He considered it during the two days he rested.
The conclusion was a compromise.
He would find separate lodgings, but eat outside.
The city had plenty of taverns and restaurants, and bread and dried meat from the morning market would be enough for simple meals.
Rather than spend time and energy cooking, it was more practical to train during that time.
He walked around Kaldia's southern district in search of suitable lodgings.
In an alley not far from the city wall stood a small stone building.
It appeared to have originally been used as a warehouse.
It was a one-story detached building with one room and a small kitchen-cum-wash area.
There was only one window, while the door was thick oak with an iron lock.
The walls were stone. No sounds would leak in from a room next door.
More than anything, it stood deep inside an alley where few people passed.
The ideal environment for mana training.
He asked the old landlord about the terms.
“Five silver coins a month. Furnish it yourself.”
Without argument, Lucian handed over fifteen silver coins, three months' rent in advance, and received a heavy iron key.
Furniture was a luxury.
He bought only a straw mat, a rough blanket, and several candles to light the darkness at the market, then threw them onto the stone floor.
It was bleaker and poorer than his old inn room, but it was a sanctuary hidden from others' eyes.
That was enough.
* * *
That night.
In the pitch-black room enclosed by stone walls, a single candle precariously ate away at the darkness.
Lucian sat cross-legged on the straw mat.
Mana circulated calmly and heavily through his dantian.
The mana channels that had been pushed to the point of tearing in his desperate fight against the troll had, strangely enough, expanded over several days of rest.
Like damaged muscle fibers becoming thicker through recovery and supercompensation, his mana channels were widening each time he crossed the line of death.
Lucian raised his right hand and opened his palm.
The roots of mana stretching through his veins surged fiercely toward his fingertips.
Fwoosh!
At his fingertips, not the crude candle flame he had produced before, but a palm-sized crimson flame flickered to life.
Duration.
One, two, three, four, five, six.
Six seconds.
He had broken through his former limit of five seconds and gained one more.
At the same time, the density of heat contained within the flame had clearly changed.
The expansion of his channels through devouring.
This slight evolution of a single second might seem insignificant, but on a battlefield, it could become the variable that turned a monster's heart into charcoal.
Lucian's gaze sank coldly as he extinguished the flame.
Next, he began testing a contradiction that defied this world's absolute laws.
The truth of incompatibility the guildmaster had spoken of.
Aura, vitality, and ether, magical power.
Two energies that could never mix.
The laws of the world said that mixing them would make one's brain boil or cause their entire body to explode.
But to Lucian, those two energies were not different.
They were merely shells, forms taken by the raw, pure mana rooted beneath his heart.
Lucian clenched his right hand.
He drove mana into his bones and muscles, raising the hardness of his fist beyond steel.
The foundation of aura that warriors spoke of.
Lucian lightly struck the stone wall with that hardened fist.
Thoom!
Spiderweb fractures spread through the thick stone wall.
Physical power impossible for a human body.
Maintaining that destructive force, he condensed mana at the fingertips of his empty left hand.
Fwoosh!
A crimson flame of mana blazed fiercely from his left hand.
The manifestation of ether spoken of by mages.
In his right hand was an aura-clad fist that amplified physical force. In his left, a flame of ether that could burn the world.
The two energies met head-on in his veins, but... nothing happened.
There was no collision.
No backlash, no pain of rupturing organs.
Like water becoming solid ice in one place and boiling steam in another, power from a single source, pure mana, was being controlled in Lucian's two hands.
A miracle that would make a Magic Tower Master or a Knight Order Commander foam at the mouth and convulse if they saw it.
The manifestation of a heretical monster called a magic swordsman, who had entered the realm of impossibility without a single side effect.
Lucian put out the flame and exhaled.
It was still pitiful.
His aura was only at the lower Warden level, and his magic did not even match the fire tricks of a third-rate Novice.
But what mattered was that the two talents could coexist and grow without limit.
Every time he killed and devoured an enemy, those two contradictory powers would evolve without shackles.
The violent leap called leveling up would surely come again.
Until then, he only needed to quietly build a solid foundation.
* * *
The next morning, after finishing his preparations.
Lucian sat in a corner of a restaurant in the central square, mechanically chewing rough bread and cold meat soup.
His five senses were focused not on his meal, but on greedily absorbing the noise around him.
His hearing, evolved by consuming higher magical beasts, had become sharp enough to catch the sound of a branch breaking fifty paces away.
At the next table, the restrained whispers of three men who appeared to be merchants struck Lucian's eardrums clearly.
“Did you hear? The eastern trade route has been completely closed.”
“Those Kaizen Duchy bastards shut down the border gates. Rumors say their vanguard is already preparing to cross the river.”
“Then full-scale war is close, isn't it? They say the Arlan Kingdom military is gathering all its forces at the eastern border. Half of Kaldia's garrison has been pulled out too!”
Lucian's spoon paused slightly over the soup.
The garrison had been drawn away.
It meant that the barrier protecting the western frontier, already crawling with magical beasts and Beastfolk, was being emptied because of a territorial war.
“You think that's all?”
The third merchant whispered, veins standing out in his neck.
“The Belgard Free City Alliance in the south has been torn apart by civil war. The Alliance Council split, and three factions raised private armies to kill one another.”
“Damn it. The north is a mess too. The Dwarf Kingdom and the Orc Tribal Alliance are tearing each other apart over a huge iron mine, so the northern trading companies are completely stuck.”
“War everywhere. Is there even any safe land left?”
Listening to the merchants' self-mocking sighs, Lucian cleanly finished the rest of his soup.
A map of the world coldly reassembled itself in his mind.
To the east, an escalating border conflict with the Kaizen Duchy.
To the south, civil war in the Belgard Free City Alliance.
To the north, conflict between dwarves and orcs.
The west had always belonged to magical beasts and Beastfolk.
War in every direction.
The entire world was caught in a vortex of war.
And Kaldia stood at the center of that vortex.
A frontier city.
If the garrison was being drawn away, the city's defense would depend more heavily on the Mercenary Guild.
There would be more requests, and the danger would rise accordingly.
For money, for greed, blood and flesh would be ground away.
A coming disaster, an omen of ruin.
Lucian silently rose from his seat.
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