Unbound Magic Swordsman - Chapter 25

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Mordor

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◈ Unbound Magic Swordsman ◈

Chapter 25: Third Leap

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Kairon was the deputy commander of the Silver Lion Knights, one of the kingdom's three knight orders.

A man who had survived countless battles would not have failed to understand the traits of the Beastfolk.

Their sense of smell was extremely sensitive.

The main force was not attacking immediately, but half a day later. There was a cold, calculated reason Kairon had ordered Lucian, the scout, to cut down the sentries.

First, killing the sentries denied the enemy information about the main force's exact size and direction.

At the same time, the sentries' deaths themselves became a tactic.

The thick scent of their kin's blood spreading in every direction would, in turn, numb the Beastfolk's sensitive sense of smell like a natural smokescreen.

At least until the main force attacked, it would drastically reduce the precision of their noses.

Second, it scattered the enemy's forces outward and wore them down.

If sentries died, the stronghold would inevitably have to send pursuit parties to the outskirts of the forest.

They would be lowering the density of their own defenses.

At the same time, those remaining in the stronghold would spend half the day on edge, afraid of an unseen assassin. Before the battle even began, their stamina and reason would already be exhausted.

Whether the scouting mission succeeded or failed, it was a thoroughly calculated deception tactic. It sacrificed a small alarm to shake the enemy's entire formation.

Kairon had already confirmed that Lucian possessed enough skill to unsettle their camp.

Even if the scout failed, it would bring a tactical advantage.

It had also been a punishment for the arrogant mercenary who had proposed the scouting mission himself.

The reason Kairon had limited the mission to Lucian alone was because he believed failure was far more likely than success.

Yet Lucian had completed that dangerous mission perfectly. He had even exceeded Kairon's expectations by cutting down an enemy chieftain-class fighter as a bonus.

Thanks to that, the battle was becoming a completely one-sided slaughter.

The knights' savage aura ground through the magical beasts' formation like a blender, while the barracks beyond the broken log fence were swallowed by raging red flames.

As the knights' sword strikes mercilessly severed the Beastfolk's throats, the three High Wardens controlled the battlefield's key points.

And Kairon.

He plunged without hesitation into the deepest part of the stronghold, toward the final High Warden-class chieftain.

Before long, a tremendous crash that seemed to overturn the earth erupted from the heart of the forest.

An earthquake created by Kairon's golden aura colliding head-on with the beast's savage power.

Lucian paid no mind to the tremor climbing through the ground beneath his feet and focused on the magical beasts rushing toward him.

Five Beastfolk charged at once, claws raised.

The Silvermoon Grass longsword drew a cold silver line through the air.

Slaaash!

A trajectory without even an inch of waste.

The silver flash flickered five times with mechanical precision, and five bodies collapsed onto the muddy ground as if by prior agreement.

The Lucian of the past would have lost his rhythm while blocking and counterattacking five assaults closing in from every direction.

Now, it was different.

The Experience Points he had torn from his life-and-death battle against the upper-tier Warden chieftain only hours ago were settling into his body in real time.

Unnecessary inertia and preparatory movements vanished from the paths of his sword.

A chilling efficiency that pierced two beasts' vital points at once with a single cut, then withdrew.

Minimum movement, maximum killing.

The regular knights cutting down magical beasts nearby glanced toward Lucian.

Those were not the movements of a man wearing a Silver-rank mercenary badge.

That was the combat skill of a Gold-rank veteran. No, it was skill that would leave even most Warden-class knights in awe.

The deeper the battle went, the more sharply refined Lucian's movements became.

The experience seeping in from each low-tier beast was as insignificant as raindrops. Yet as dozens of them were cut down one after another, the total became something that could not be ignored.

Like grains of sand piling up into a great hill.

The seed coiled beneath his heart began to pulse wildly.

Thump. Thump.

A more intense and violent beating than ever before.

The threshold of growth had risen to his chin.

The moment this slaughter ended, he would evolve another step.

No. He instinctively knew that what was coming would not be a mere step, but a leap that tore through dimensions.

* * *

Only one hour.

That was how long it took to subdue the beasts' nest.

The fence had become ash, and the entire stronghold had turned into a swamp of Beastfolk corpses and blood.

Of the more than two hundred Beastfolk, over one hundred and fifty had become lumps of meat. Only the remnants who had lost their will to fight fled into the darkness of the forest.

Their side had suffered two knights lightly wounded, four garrison soldiers killed, five mercenaries killed, and seven wounded.

Considering they had faced an enemy force three times their number, it was an overwhelming victory.

The quality of aura released by the knight order had thoroughly crushed the beasts' superior numbers.

Of course, the greatest contribution to that victory had been the elimination of the two chieftain-class beasts.

Lucian had cut down the upper-tier Warden chieftain alone while scouting, and Kairon had personally slain the High Warden-class chieftain.

Immediately after the battle ended, Lucian stopped when he saw the sight beneath the cliff at the very back of the stronghold.

The place where Kairon and the High Warden-class chieftain had clashed.

The ground within a radius of twenty meters had been horribly caved in, as if struck by a meteor.

Three massive old trees had been torn up by their roots and flung away, while heavy boulders had been ground into powder and scattered through the air.

At the exact center of that crater lay the chieftain's corpse.

The enormous beast stood well over three meters tall. A ruinous wound had split its entire body diagonally in two, from chest to back.

It had not even taken two sword strikes.

One slash, with aura condensed into it.

It was a bloodstained display that showed exactly what a High Warden was.

Still wearing unscarred armor, Kairon casually shook the blood from his greatsword as he issued orders to his lieutenants.

Lucian dryly reviewed the desperate battle he had fought against the upper-tier Warden chieftain.

It had been a muddy struggle. Only after paying the price of cracked ribs, a shattered shoulder bone, and paralysis in his left arm had he barely managed to cut off its breath.

Yet Kairon had erased a monster one stage above that without a scratch, in a single stroke.

The gap was truly overwhelming. It proved he still had a long way to go before reaching the peak.

But the existence of a higher realm he could reach only sharpened Lucian's hunger further.

Sitting beside the stronghold's burning ruins, Lucian tried to control the grotesque expansion inside his body as he caught his breath.

He had personally slaughtered twenty Beastfolk in the main battle alone.

Added to that were eight sentries assassinated while scouting, five pursuers in the forest, one commander-class fighter, and the upper-tier Warden chieftain.

The mass of Experience Points he had devoured in a single day was overwhelmingly the greatest since he had fallen into this world.

Above all, the upper-tier Warden's savage vitality had been converted into pure mana and seeped through him as if it would tear his veins apart.

The combat experience accumulated from cutting down twenty beasts in succession joined with the experience gained from killing the chieftain. It formed a great wave, then became a tsunami.

The wave came to break the threshold.

Thump. Thump. Thump!

The seed beneath his heart convulsed as if ready to burst.

It was a violent sign of devouring, on an entirely different level from what he had experienced during his previous two evolutions.

The third leap was about to consume his body.

* * *

Once the battle was over, the knights and mercenaries busied themselves clearing corpses and gathering loot.

Lucian pretended to be a mercenary collapsed from exhaustion, but he was like a time bomb hidden in a pile of straw.

It was an unstoppable tsunami.

Only the time and place posed a problem. There were too many eyes around him.

His first two level-ups had come without warning, so even Lucian himself did not know exactly what effects they had caused outside his body.

Then again, even if someone had been nearby, it had not been a situation where they could have focused on Lucian in the first place.

But this time was different.

This massive transformation was approaching while he remained conscious.

What if waves of mana burst out during the expansion, or strange visible changes occurred in his body?

With Warden-class knights, and even High Warden-class knights, nearby, that could be dangerous.

If it became known that he could use mana itself directly...

It might not be a problem, but there was no harm in being careful.

He needed to move somewhere without people.

Lucian quietly rose.

Using the crowd's blind spots while they were preoccupied with searching through the spoils, he slipped like a ghost beyond the broken fence and into the dark forest.

Three hundred meters. Five hundred meters. One kilometer.

A silent dead zone where the stronghold's noise had faded away.

He sat with his back against a giant tree beneath its shadow, where not even corpses lay scattered.

At last, he opened the dam he had been holding shut.

Thump.

His heart stopped completely.

The third reprieve from death he had experienced since falling into this world.

But this time, his consciousness remained horrifyingly clear within the pitch-black darkness.

Time stood still.

Within the sensation of eternity, where one second stretched as long as ten, the transformation inside his body unfolded with the detail of a precise painting.

The seed in his dantian.

That strange mass expanded madly.

A sprout grew into a thick stem, and geometric branches extended from that stem.

Leaves bloomed at the ends of those branches, and at last, something small and strange began to form at their tips.

Fruit.

It was still an unripe, small, cloudy condensation, but it was unmistakably fruit.

Sprouting, blooming, fruition.

That was the form of evolution the third leap had reached.

Thump!

His heart began beating violently again.

The second and third beats followed, shattering the limits of his body.

The first thing to burst open was his mana channels.

A stream overflowed into a great river.

It was no metaphor.

Mana roots that had been as thin as hairs grew as thick as thread. Vessels that had been like thread became as thick as rope, forcibly expanding the neural network throughout his body.

The total amount of mana pouring through those widened channels was at least three times what it had been before.

The vessel that had once produced flames no larger than a candle had evolved into an engine capable of continuously launching fireballs the size of fists.

The level of control was different as well.

In the past, he had needed to hold his breath and forcefully squeeze out his strength to draw up mana. Now, the commands of his brain and the flow of mana synchronized like breathing.

It was no longer like forcibly twisting a faucet. It was like making a river bend through will alone.

The nature of his muscles had been completely remodeled.

It was not simply that their density had increased, giving him brute strength.

The muscle fibers themselves had gained grotesque elasticity.

The speed of their compression and relaxation sprang beyond that of a beast.

Where he had once needed to burn one hundred units of stamina to produce one hundred units of destructive power, he could now draw out that same power with only seventy.

That difference in efficiency would create the decisive instant needed to take an enemy's head in close combat.

His cardiopulmonary function expanded. His breaths became deep and cold. Even if he raced through the forest at full speed, his heartbeat would not become disordered. Overwhelming endurance.

The density of his five senses had entered the realm of monsters.

Even in pitch-black darkness, he could clearly make out the outlines of blood droplets gathered on leaves. Even the friction of an insect crawling five hundred meters away caught in his hearing.

And then, the restoration of his body.

Mana seeped into the cracked section of his ribs, where the chieftain had struck him, like biological cement.

The chilling sensation of gaps in bone being forcibly fused and hardened.

The bruising in his shoulder and the tears in his muscles vanished in real time.

The paralysis in his partially stiffened left arm had long since disappeared, and a far more savage grip strength filled his hand.

An incomprehensible process where destruction and regeneration occurred at once.

Finally, the foundation of new skills imprinted itself in his mind.

Killing techniques he had never consciously learned, yet which his body had awakened to instinctively.

First. Mana Edge.

A technique that compressed the mana he had wastefully spread over the entire blade into the final third near the sword's tip.

It increased the pressure on the point of contact dozens of times, creating cutting power capable of tearing through steel in an instant.

Second. Flash Step.

A technique that exploded the physical enhancement once spread throughout both legs at a narrow point on the soles of his feet, allowing him to leap while instantly erasing his trajectory.

The evasive movement he had unconsciously used in his desperate battle against the chieftain had settled into his mind in the form of a skill.

And magic.

As his total mana tripled, something stirred deep within the mana furnace. It was the possibility of manifesting other attributes beyond simply casting flames.

He coldly assessed his own level.

As a warrior, he had shattered the shell of a middle Warden and stepped onto the threshold of upper-tier Warden.

As a mage, he had escaped the level of scraps and firmly established himself in the realm of a 1-Class Novice, able to convert mana into physical destructive power.

He opened his eyes.

Dark red sunset light pierced through the canopy and shone over Lucian's body.

He clenched and opened both hands.

The fatigue that had made his joints feel ready to break had vanished without a trace. Only killing intent, honed like a razor blade, filled his body.

The third leap.

The next leap would naturally require even more time and battle.

* * *

He returned to the stronghold.

The knights and mercenaries, busy sorting the spoils, did not even notice Lucian's absence.

He had not been gone very long, and with money scattered all over the ground, it would have been stranger not to pick it up.

But Lucian had cleanly given up such petty gains to obtain something far more valuable.

Before long, the darkness of the forest fully descended, and bonfires were lit throughout the ruined stronghold.

Lucian leaned in a corner untouched by firelight, chewing dried meat.

Two moons, one silver and one reddish bronze, rose in the sky and shone upon the blood-soaked earth.

The Silvermoon Grass longsword resting across his knees vibrated faintly in the moonlight.

The sound of mana metal resonating with its owner's expanded mana.