WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Mordor
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◈ Unbound Magic Swordsman ◈
Chapter 14: Knight
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As Lucian left the dining hall and crossed the central square, his sharp hearing caught a conversation between two armed soldiers on patrol.
“They say a messenger came from headquarters. The entire Second Guard Company is being sent to the eastern front.”
“The Second Company too? Have they gone mad? How many troops will that leave in Kaldia?”
“Only the Third Company. And half of them are recruits barely dry behind the ears.”
“This is insane. We can barely manage the Beastfolk suppression in the western forest. Who's going to defend the walls?”
“Looks like the Kaizen Duchy bastards matter more to the brass. They want mercenaries drawn by the scent of money to handle the Beastfolk and magical beast packs.”
Lucian's stride did not falter by even an inch. Not a flicker crossed his expression.
But the information was precisely etched into his mind.
The departure of Kaldia's main guard force.
A sharp increase in the city's reliance on the Mercenary Guild for defense.
The accelerating threat posed by the Beastfolk and higher-ranking magical beasts.
All of it meant that both the difficulty and rewards of the hunting grounds where Lucian would operate would rise sharply.
Lucian stopped by the blacksmith's shop to collect the longsword he had left for repairs, then returned to his cold lodgings deep in an alley.
He drew the sword and inspected the blade.
The color around the hairline crack in the middle had darkened slightly, but its strength appeared sufficient for actual combat.
He went out to a narrow clearing, gripped his sword, and lowered his stance.
Cutting through the air, thrusting, deflecting, twisting the trajectory, and spinning again in endless repetition.
Yet his senses were distinctly different from before.
He no longer needed to calculate the next movement in his head or concentrate his awareness.
His body drew the deadliest trajectory on its own.
The Experience Points he had devoured through more than a dozen killings in less than a month.
That combat data had fused with his muscle fibers and nervous system, stripping needless excess from his sword paths.
As though he had swung a sword tens of thousands of times.
Shortest distance. Fewest movements. Maximum efficiency.
It was as if a basic Swordsmanship passive from an immense skill tree had been permanently engraved into his body.
More chilling than anything was the synchronization of energy.
Whenever he swung his sword, mana from his dantian gathered on the blade without conscious thought and increased its hardness. Whenever he kicked off the mud and leaped, mana flowed into his leg muscles, producing an instant burst of force.
Physical enhancement and the basic use of aura were becoming as natural to his body as breathing.
By the guildmaster's classification, he was a mid-level Warden.
Lucian calmly recognized that his present combat ability had reached that vicinity.
Wiping the sweat from his brow, he drew six throwing knives from his left thigh.
He measured the distance to an old board propped against the stone wall opposite him. Five steps.
The first knife cut through the air.
It struck the board, but missed the center by a handspan.
The second. The third. The fourth.
With every throw, the deviation narrowed mechanically.
Then, when he threw the sixth knife, a heavy cracking sound rang out along with a surge of satisfaction.
The snap of his wrist, the timing of the blade leaving his fingers, the number of rotations during its flight.
The physical sense of gripping a blade and cutting was smoothly extending into the ranged technique of throwing.
This was the strange talent brought by accumulated experience.
It did not merely increase strength and mana. It drastically shortened his mastery of every form of killing technique.
The accuracy an ordinary person would need months of throwing until their fingers blistered to attain, Lucian would break through in only days.
As night deepened, Lucian lit a single candle and sat cross-legged on a bundle of straw.
His nightly ritual, mana-control training.
He gathered heat at the tip of his right index finger, lit a flame, held it at its limit, and extinguished it. Again and again.
Today, he tried a new variation.
Instead of forming a sphere of flame at his fingertips, he extended it forward like a wedge.
As he compressed the mana in his dantian and forced it outward, a red stream of fire about thirty centimeters long burst from his fingertip and pierced the air.
It lasted two seconds.
The range was short, and its firepower was weak.
It was inferior even to the weakest version of the fireballs mages used. Mere fireplay.
But its meaning was clear.
It proved that the mana within his body could be converted into flame and projected.
Every night. Unseen, yet brutally certain.
He was becoming a monster.
After training, Lucian covered himself with a blanket and lay down on the cold stone floor.
Beyond the barred window, the howls of beasts mingled with the sound of patrolmen's boots.
A world burning with war on every side.
Yet Lucian's mind grew calmer and calmer.
* * *
The next morning.
When Lucian left his lodgings and entered the central square, an unfamiliar vibration shook the ground.
On the marble road leading to the lord's residence north of the square, dozens of heavily armed cavalrymen charged forward in formation.
They did not wear the shabby equipment of the Kaldia guard.
Even their warhorses possessed vicious builds, while the knights' armor bore a heavy embossed crest of a silver lion against deep blue.
The armor's joints were chillingly precise. Gentle waves rippled between the fine engraved patterns etched across the breastplates.
Lucian could clearly see the nature of those waves.
Magical power. Ether.
They were artifacts, magical armaments that amplified defense to its limit by engraving mages' formations into armor.
An army backed by such enormous capital was not a force a frontier guard could possess.
At the head of the cavalry.
The middle-aged man leading the formation casually removed his helmet.
Short-cropped blond hair. Sharp eyes steeped in the bloody stench of battle.
A rough scar running from his jawline down his neck testified to the depths of the killing fields he had crossed.
And the overwhelming pressure pouring from his entire body.
For the first time, cold tension raced down Lucian's spine.
Vitality, denser and more savage than the energy he could force into his sword, rippled around that knight's body and weighed down the air.
‘High Warden.’
The realm of monsters capable of releasing aura even without a sword, wielding physical barriers and destructive power.
If he fought that man to the death right now, Lucian could not even calculate how many seconds it would take before his head rolled away.
Once the cavalry crossed the square and disappeared into the lord's residence, the crowd that had held its breath began murmuring all at once.
“That's the Silver Lion Knights, directly under the Crown, isn't it? Why have those monsters come all the way to the frontier?”
“The Silver Lion Knights?”
“One of the Arlan Kingdom's three knight orders. They answer directly to the Crown, not a lord, and move only on royal command. I don't know who that lead knight was, but he didn't seem to be the order's commander. More like a deputy commander.”
“The guards have all been called to the eastern front, so they must have come on royal orders to fill the gap.”
“They aren't just reinforcements. If the Silver Lion Knights have moved, it means a large-scale extermination or bloodshed is coming to this area.”
Lucian stood in one corner of the square, chewing coarse bread as he assembled their words into information.
In this world, a knight was not simply someone who rode a horse and wore armor.
Among warriors capable of using aura, those formally commissioned by a kingdom or lord were called knights.
The key was aura.
Even in this world filled with all manner of things, not everyone could wield vitality.
It required talent. It required training.
Some trained their entire lives without ever awakening vitality.
Warriors unable to use vitality were called Wielders.
Those who could wield weapons. Warriors with strength and skill, but no vitality.
Soldiers, mercenaries, hunters, and the like. Most belonged to this category.
Among Wielders, those who began sensing the energy of vitality were called Seekers.
They could feel vitality, but had not yet reached the stage of channeling it into a weapon.
Those who trained past that stage and became able to channel vitality into a weapon were Wardens.
Strictly speaking, vitality channeled into a weapon was called aura.
Only upon becoming a Warden did one become eligible for knighthood.
However, a low-level Warden's combat power was questionable as a standard for a knight.
A low-level Warden could channel aura into a sword, but it was unstable and short-lived.
They often could not maintain their aura consistently in combat.
More importantly, this was a world where powerful tools also existed.
Of course, a Wielder or Seeker could not handle a tool far beyond their level, but through tools, low-level Wardens were not an absolute wall that could never be surpassed.
That was why most knight orders and kingdoms considered mid-level Warden or above the standard for a formal knight.
Mid-level Warden.
The stage where one could stably channel aura into a weapon and maintain it consistently even in battle.
From mid-level Warden onward, they were beyond not only Wielders, but even Seekers using tools.
Unless those tools or rituals were desperate things that abandoned all humanity and morality.
Only at that level would one undergo the knighting ceremony and receive a knight's title and crest.
Lucian reassessed his current level.
Channeling mana into his sword to increase its hardness came naturally.
He maintained it unconsciously even during battle.
Mid-level Warden.
By this world's standards, Lucian had reached the level required to qualify for knighthood.
Only a month ago, he had not even been a Wielder.
Once again, he felt just how abnormal his growth rate was.
And the knight at the head of the cavalry he had just seen.
That High Warden had been only the tip of the iceberg, showing how deep and distant the layers of power in this world truly were.
Even as Lucian grew, the peak of this world remained unimaginably far away.
He had to remain humble.
But he could not stop.
* * *
When Lucian opened the doors of the Mercenary Guild, the hall was buzzing like a disturbed beehive over the arrival of the Silver Lion Knights.
“I heard thirty knights came down. Are they planning to wipe out the entire Beastfolk main force?”
“So that's why all the large military requests vanished from the board.”
Ignoring the noise, Lucian headed for the reception counter.
Rina was sorting documents with a tired expression.
“Give me a request.”
“You saw the knights arrive, didn't you? A large number of military requests have been transferred to them, so the quality of the requests falling to us has become considerably harsher.”
Lucian scanned the request board.
Sure enough, in place of minor escort and reconnaissance requests, subjugation requests of Silver rank and above were posted like red blood.
Lucian's gaze stopped on one sheet of parchment.
[Two ogres sighted in the western forest. Higher-ranking magical beasts. Minimum recommended party: Silver rank. Reward: eighty gold coins.]
Two ogres.
They did not possess the sickening regeneration of trolls, but in sheer bone density and destructive power, they were slaughterers who surpassed trolls.
Against one, he could enter its blind spot and stab it in the head. But entering alone into a battlefield where two of them swung logs at once was not worth the cost.
He could kill them, but the stamina he would lose and the risk of injury were too great.
Lucian calmly shifted his attention and tore down another parchment.
[Extermination of a large venomous insect colony in the southern forest. Includes a Queen specimen. Reward: four gold coins.]
A venomous insect colony. A superior version of the creatures whose nest he had burned before to absorb experience.
The Queen specimen was said to contain magical power, Ether, and spit poison.
When he killed an enemy containing mana, the seed in his dantian stirred and his mana expanded.
The most suitable target for Lucian's devouring at present.
Lucian held the request form out to Rina.
She frowned.
“Alone again? A large insect colony with a Queen has a different concentration of poison. Even Silver-rank mercenaries form teams and take flamethrowers for requests like this.”
“I understand.”
At Lucian's short, indifferent reply, Rina stamped the form as if resigned.
By now, she knew she could not change this man's decision.
As he gathered the documents and turned to leave, a voice descended from the second-floor corridor.
“Lucian. Come up to my office before you go.”
The guildmaster.
Guildmaster Graham leaned against the railing and looked down at him.
Behind round magnifying glasses, Graham's eyes glinted dully.
Graham's office.
When Lucian silently took a seat, Graham casually tossed a red-sealed parchment from among a stack of documents.
“You saw the Silver Lion Knights arrive in Kaldia, didn't you?”
“I did.”
“Do you know the real reason those noble lords came all the way down to this blood-reeking frontier?”
“I don't.”
At Lucian's dry answer, the guildmaster twisted the corner of their mouth.
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