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Translator/Editor: Mordor

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◈ Unbound Magic Swordsman ◈

Chapter 2: Experience Points

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Five days.

It had been five days since he opened his eyes in this hell.

Even what he had witnessed in that short time was enough to make him realize, deep in his bones, just how insane this world was.

On the first day.

He woke in an ash-gray wasteland and wandered like a zombie, with no idea where he was headed.

Black smoke and screams rose beyond the horizon, while the shadow of a reptile large enough to blot out the sun glided through the sky. Whether it was a dragon or a wyvern did not matter. All that was etched into him was the terror that, the moment their eyes met, he would be reduced to chunks of flesh.

On the second night.

He crushed a deformed wild dog that lunged at him in the darkness with a rock, and for the first time in his life experienced the sensation of devouring another being's life to accumulate “experience.”

On the third day.

He held his breath and watched an army numbering in the tens of thousands march beyond a ridge. It was a human army. But he did not approach. If someone with no affiliation or ties appeared before an army at war, they would face either a spy trial or become arrow fodder.

On the fourth day.

He searched through a blood-red mire left behind by slaughter and took a chipped longsword and rotting food.

And today, the fifth day.

He stabbed a defeated orc straggler in the back after it had fallen behind its main force, completing his second devouring.

Chunks of flesh lay everywhere he went, and whoever he encountered was killing or being killed.

A world where humans, orcs, and monstrous aberrations were desperate to tear out one another’s entrails. Colossal beasts flew through the sky, and blood never had a chance to dry upon the earth. A dark fantasy world.

Leaning against a tree root, Lucian forced his heavy eyelids open and jabbed the tip of his knife into his thigh.

If he fell asleep now, he would close his eyes forever.

The rain still fell, though it had thinned somewhat.

He stepped into the mud again and pushed through the forest. He needed shelter.

Had it been about two hours?

The trees thinned, revealing a sloping hill. Below it lay a road, crudely paved with stone.

A trace of civilization.

If he followed the road, he would find a village or military outpost. But walking openly down the road would be foolish.

Lucian kept his distance from the road and moved stealthily along the ridge.

Then it happened.

A sharp scream tore through the rain and struck his eardrums.

On the road. From beyond the hill.

It was a human’s dying cry, followed by the dull crash of metal.

A massacre was underway.

Lucian stopped as though his feet had sunk into the mud.

There was no reason to get involved. If he intervened, both sides would likely regard him as an enemy, and he would end up as a lump of meat. The wise way to survive was to erase his presence and turn back.

But the quality of the screams changed.

They were not battle cries. They were the desperate shrieks of those whose flesh was being torn apart without resistance.

Lucian’s dark eyes fixed on the source of the sound.

Twenty seconds.

After a brief silence, he turned and approached the hill.

It was not some pathetic sense of justice. Much less sympathy.

It was instinct, forged from a desperate need to survive.

To live in this world, he needed information. And to get information, he needed rational “humans.”

He lay flat on the ridge and looked down.

Three wagons had stopped on the road.

Around ten armed humans, apparently guards, had formed a shield wall, but half of them were already rolling on the ground with their guts spilling out. The remaining five fought desperately with their backs to the wagons.

But those surrounding them were not human.

Beastmen who looked as though wolf heads had been grotesquely stretched over human skeletons.

Savage muscles bulged beneath their ash-gray fur, and crude scimitars soaked in blood rested in their hands.

Fifteen. No, including the ones prowling beyond the curtain of rain, there were close to twenty.

Their annihilation was only a matter of time.

He weighed the gains and losses.

The chance of turning the battle around was close to zero. Yet his gaze remained fixed on the wagon beds.

Supply wagons. There would be food, intact weapons, and medicine inside.

More importantly, he could see a robed figure crouching deep within one of the wagons. Not a mere porter, but someone valuable enough to protect.

Information, supplies, and a friendly connection to this world.

A chance to escape the bottom-feeding existence of scavenging corpses, make contact with the living, and gain the shield called “ally.”

And, above all.

“Experience.”

If he could take the heads of those savage wolfmen, he could devour an amount of experience incomparable to what he had gained from the orc.

Veins stood out on Lucian’s hand as he gripped the longsword’s hilt hard enough to break it.

A frontal assault was suicide. The only answer was stealthy assassination amid the chaos.

The rain concealed his footsteps and scent.

Using the hill’s blind spots, he slithered down like a snake, as though becoming one with the mud.

He spotted a wolfman standing apart from the formation, watching the battle.

Twenty paces. Fifteen. Ten.

Lucian moved only when the rain poured heavily enough to blur sight and hearing.

Five paces.

His heart pounded as though it would smash through his ribs.

Cold sweat pooled in his palms, making the hilt slippery.

If he turned back now, he would be safe. But at the end of running away lay only a future of starving to death or being torn apart by another monster’s teeth.

The nearest future he could foresee was being chased down and killed by the monsters attacking these people.

There was no need to overthink it.

Kill, or be killed. That was the law of this slaughterhouse.

Three paces.

Lucian exploded forward. He made no sound.

He closed the three paces in an instant and drove his old longsword into the back of its neck, the thinnest, unarmored fatal point.

But a beast’s instincts were sharp. In the final instant, the wolfman’s ears twitched, and its huge body twisted reflexively.

Thunk!

The sword tip sank into the side of its neck, but missed the carotid artery.

“Graaaah!”

The wolfman let out an ear-splitting roar and swung its scimitar.

Lucian roughly tore his sword free and bent his upper body toward the ground. The scimitar, carrying a brutal gust of wind, skimmed over his skull.

At the same time, the beast’s left hand flew at him. Hook-like claws savagely raked across Lucian’s chest.

Riiip!

His soaked clothes tore, flesh was gouged out, and terrible pain cut across his chest. But Lucian did not even scream. He swallowed the pain and did not stop the sword’s path.

A second thrust.

Right beside the bloody hole made by the first. The one point the beast neglected in its rage.

The longsword slipped into its blind spot and pierced deeply through the beast’s throat. In the instant its movements stiffened, Lucian twisted the hilt like a demon.

Splurt!

Dark red blood erupted from the beast’s neck like a fountain.

The wolfman, its carotid artery torn apart, staggered back while vomiting bloody foam. It clutched its throat with both hands, but death poured between its fingers.

At that desperate death cry, the wolfmen ahead all turned their heads.

Three, no, four pairs of blazing eyes locked onto Lucian.

Lucian pulled his sword from the dying wolfman without hesitation and ran.

A full sprint toward the wagons.

The sound of the creatures kicking up mud on all fours clung to his back like grim reapers.

But the wagons were only a dozen or so paces away.

One guard holding a shield spotted Lucian and began to level his spear, then saw the wolfmen rushing after him and made a split-second decision.

“Through here!”

Lucian threw himself toward that rough shout, squeezing into the narrow gap between the wagons.

The pursuing wolfman could not slow down in time. It thrust its head into the narrow passage and was knocked back by a shield. Taking advantage of the opening, the guards drove their spearpoints into the beast’s face.

A slaughterhouse of screams and scraping iron.

Lucian sank down against a wagon wheel and exhaled harshly.

Blood poured from the gouged wound in his chest, but it had not reached the bone.

Then, at that very moment.

“That thing” rose from the corpse of the first wolfman, its carotid artery torn open beyond the wagon.

The formless essence separating from a dying being pierced through the downpour and poured directly into Lucian’s body.

The pleasure of devouring as it entered his flesh without resistance.

But this time was different.

It was on an entirely different level from the murky sensation he had absorbed from a wild dog or some insignificant orc.

This was not a matter of quantity. Something fundamentally different flowed through his veins and mingled with his blood.

The moment it seeped into him, something curled deep beneath his heart responded.

The heavy knot Lucian had called the “mana seed” in his lower abdomen pulsed faintly for the first time in rhythm with his heartbeat.

Thump. Thump.

Its hard shell cracked, and from within, “pure mana,” the primal force of the world, extended the faintest thread.

It was far too little to call blooming, yet it was unmistakably a sign of life.

Lucian looked down at his trembling, bloodied palm.

Nothing glowed visibly. There were no flames, no commonplace magic circles.

But at a layer deeper than his veins, a heavy, cool heat that had never existed before flowed through him. Like a spark from flint striking a massive powder keg, it was the dizzying birth of possibility.

“Mana was flowing through the wolfman’s body.”

His deduction continued with cold precision.

If the experience gained from the orc had improved the quality of his raw body, his strength and reflexes, then the experience gained from this deformed beastman had pulled the trigger on the “mana” sleeping within him.

If he slaughtered a being that possessed mana, its magical essence would be absorbed and his mana would grow.

A logical, artificial devouring system, as though it had implanted the laws of a game directly into reality.

Before he could finish organizing his thoughts, the battle changed.

Using the narrow passage, the guards were desperately negating the creatures’ overwhelming numerical advantage.

Lucian gripped his sword hilt again and unsteadily rose.

He had no time to hide behind the wagons and rest. If that shield wall collapsed, his head would follow.

At the entrance to the passage, a shield-bearing guard knelt with one arm bent grotesquely, vomiting blood. A wolfman raised its scimitar over the man’s head and roared.

Lucian sprang forward.

His body’s instinct moved before rational judgment could.

The experience from the wolfman he had devoured moments ago was shaving needless movement from Lucian’s sword strike.

Only slightly, but with chilling speed and lethality.

Thrust!

Lucian’s longsword silently stabbed into the wolfman’s side as it raised its scimitar.

It was not fatal, but it was enough to draw its attention.

The wolfman turned sharply, murderous intent pouring from it.

Blazing yellow eyes abandoned the dying guard and charged explosively toward Lucian.

It was fast.

Far faster than the first one he had assassinated. If he had faced this one first, his guts would have spilled out by now.

Yet that rational fear only sharpened Lucian’s nerves to their limit.

Over the dark mud, nothing but pure killing intent flashed.

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