WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Mordor
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Unbound Magic Swordsman ◈
Chapter 3: Survival
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Whoosh!
The wolfman’s heavy scimitar tore through the air as it came down diagonally.
Lucian twisted his upper body and slipped out of its path by a hair.
Crack!
The scimitar, aimed at his skull, split the thick wood of the carriage behind him like an axe.
Sharp splinters flew everywhere and scratched his cheek, but Lucian turned the momentum of his dodge into a spin and swept his longsword across.
Slice.
Blood sprayed from the wolfman’s forearm. But that was all.
A shallow cut. Its thick hide and rock-hard muscles caught the crude, chipped blade and knocked it away.
With his current worn weapon, he could not break through their absurd durability head-on.
He needed to gouge out a carotid artery or an eye in a single blow. But accurately striking a moving weak point against the beast’s mad speed was the domain of masters. At least, it was beyond Lucian as he was now.
In that instant of deadlock, a spear flew in from his blind spot.
A guard who had fallen to the ground vomiting blood had thrown it in one final struggle with an arm bent at a grotesque angle.
Thunk!
The spearhead sank shallowly into the wolfman’s back.
It was not a fatal wound, but it was enough to stall the beast’s explosive movement for a beat.
Lucian did not miss the opening.
He kicked off the ground, pouring his full weight and spinning force into the sword point as he drove it upward.
His target was beneath the jaw. The weakest point, where the lower jaw met the skull, unprotected by armor or hide.
Squish!
The blade pierced the beast’s resistance and drove into its head.
“Grrrk...!”
Bloody foam poured from its torn maw like a waterfall. The huge body convulsed violently before collapsing at Lucian’s feet.
His second kill.
At the same time, the murky, immense “experience” rising from the dead beast struck Lucian’s body again and seeped into him.
The seed of mana curled beneath his dantian throbbed violently.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The third pulse was fundamentally different from the previous ones.
A crack split its hard shell, a sign that something explosive within was preparing to burst forth.
But he had no time to savor it. The battle continued.
* * *
Lucian and the remaining guards continued their desperate struggle, using the narrow passage between the carriages as a shield.
When the guard in front fell with his entrails spilling out, the one behind stepped over the corpse and filled the gap.
Lucian slipped into the guards’ blood-soaked line like a beast following instinct. No words were needed. In the silence, only blades and blood spoke.
A hellish stretch of time that felt eternal.
A mad repetition of stabbing, cutting, and rolling across the ground, with all sense of time gone.
While Lucian cut the throats of three more wolfmen, the heads of two guards holding out beside him were sent flying.
Just as the defensive line reached its limit and the battle was about to collapse, the wolfmen’ assault stopped as if by some lie.
The pack that had numbered more than fifteen had somehow been reduced to around seven.
Lucian’s side was also in ruins, but the terrain advantage of the narrow passage and their formation, built on desperate sacrifice, had caused the attackers’ losses to snowball.
The wolfmen were savage, but they were not mindless beasts.
They had made the cunning judgment that further losses would outweigh the gains of the hunt.
A long, chilling howl rang out once from the darkness. Then the surviving pack disappeared into the blood-red forest like a receding tide.
* * *
An unnaturally deep silence settled over the area. At some point, the rain had stopped.
Lucian leaned against a carriage wheel and slid down onto the muddy ground.
His entire body was a wreck. A deep claw wound across his chest, a gash in his right thigh, and a bruise in his left shoulder that seemed to rattle the bone.
As the adrenaline faded, the suppressed pain screamed to life and struck his entire body at once.
Yet behind that tearing pain, something was stirring fiercely.
The experience of the beasts he had devoured throughout the battle was now settling into Lucian’s body and soul all at once.
It felt as though memories of slaughter were being forcibly engraved into every muscle fiber.
As though another layer had peeled away from his gray vision, making everything unnaturally clear.
Above all, the seed beneath his heart finally split open.
It was not the beautiful process of a flower blooming. It was violent germination.
The hard shell shattered, and roots of pure mana, thinner than hair, pushed through his blood vessels.
A tiny, cool root that began beneath his heart forced its way along his veins toward his right arm, stretching roughly a handspan.
A mana channel.
He still possessed nowhere near enough mana to fill that path. But the floodgate had opened.
It was the first step by which formless power, once blocked in the realm of impossibility, began physically affecting his body in reality.
A Magic Swordsman.
He had broken the first shell on the path to becoming a monster worthy of that bloodstained name.
“You.”
A hoarse voice tore through his thoughts. Lucian raised his bloodshot eyes.
The figure before him was not one of the bloodied guards.
It was the old man in robes who had cowered behind the carriage throughout the battle.
Up close, he looked to be in his early fifties. His white hair was cut short, and deep wrinkles lined his face.
But the eyes glinting between them were sharp as razor blades.
He did not carry the air of a frightened merchant or a frail scholar.
He had the heavy bearing of someone accustomed to weighing human lives.
“What is your name?”
Lucian remained silent for a moment, gripping his bloodstained sword.
“Lucian.”
It was a dry, metallic reply.
He had no trouble understanding or speaking this world’s language, but like a beast that had gone too long without speaking, his pronunciation was faintly awkward.
“Your surname?”
“I have none.”
The white-haired man narrowed his eyes.
No surname meant he was a commoner or lower. Yet someone with no noble blood was wandering this hellish plain, skillfully taking the heads of magic beasts.
“Where did you come from?”
“I don’t know.”
The man’s white brows twitched slightly.
“You mean you have no memory?”
Lucian neither confirmed nor denied it.
In this world, silence was the finest form of agreement.
“...Hm.”
The man turned to survey the horrific battlefield.
The corpses of wolfmen with torn limbs. The bodies of guards with their entrails scattered around them. And the survivors.
Of the ten guards, only three still had breath in them.
The man’s gaze returned to Lucian, covered in mud.
In a situation like this, what did the past matter? Anyone who had helped was an ally. That was the surest proof of the past.
“If you hadn’t opened a path for an ambush from their blind side, we would have been wiped out.”
“...”
“From the way you hold a sword, it doesn’t appear that you received formal training in knightly combat or swordsmanship. Your movements are crude and unrefined. Yet your timing for lethal ambushes and your control over murderous intent are chillingly seasoned. It’s a strange combination.”
His powers of observation were keen.
Even amid the chaos of blood and screams, he had been analyzing Lucian’s combat efficiency and nature by the second from behind the carriage.
“My name is Hector. I am not the true owner of this carriage. I am merely traveling with it.”
Lucian only gave a slight nod.
Hector touched his sleeve for a moment, as if finishing a calculation, then spoke gravely.
“This blood-red plain is the border region between the Arlan Kingdom and the Kaizen Duchy. With the regular armies pulled away by border disputes on both sides, beastfolk bandits and monsters have been running wild beyond control. The ones who attacked us just now must be part of one such group.”
Lucian’s expression remained as blank as a dead man’s, but this was the first concrete information he had heard about this world in five days.
He listened carefully.
“We are headed to Kaldia, the Arlan Kingdom’s western frontier wall. With the escort destroyed like this, I can no longer guarantee that we will survive another nighttime attack before reaching it.”
Hector’s eyes pierced straight into Lucian’s.
“So I propose this. How about accompanying us to Kaldia? I will pay you fairly for your protection. You seem to have nowhere to go, and if you enter Kaldia’s walls, you may find a better livelihood than on this muddy plain.”
There was no particular reason to refuse.
“Fine.”
At Lucian’s brief acceptance, Hector nodded with apparent satisfaction and turned away.
He immediately issued ruthless orders to the three surviving guards.
They were to search the corpses for useful supplies, discard cargo that would hinder their defense, and prepare to leave at once. He paid no attention to the wounded men’s ragged breathing.
It proved that the real command, and the power of life and death, rested entirely with Hector.
Lucian staggered to his feet and leaned against the recessed cargo compartment of the carriage.
His unstaunched wounds burned with pain.
Yet beyond that veil of agony, the faint but tenacious vitality released by the sprouted mana seed was gradually dulling the pain.
The trail of pure power that had stretched a handspan through his veins.
The carriage jolted and began rolling across the blood-red road once more.
Lucian closed his eyes in the darkness of the swaying carriage. He was not asleep.
He was synchronizing his awareness with the tiny vibrations at the tip of the root that had sprouted deep within him.
Like the roots of a grotesque plant digging through soil in search of an underground stream, Lucian’s mana writhed as it craved more slaughter and devouring.
What Kaldia would bring him, what trap Hector was hiding, why he had been cast into this hell.
Such philosophical concerns were luxuries.
He would survive. Then he would accumulate strength and grow stronger, somehow.
That was the one absolute direction allowed to Lucian.
Beneath the gray sky, the carriage rolled sluggishly toward a world where another death awaited.
And beneath Lucian’s heart, the mana seed continued its third pulse like a predator’s breath.
* * *
As the carriage passed a rugged fork in the road, the strange world’s sun began to set.
It was unlike Earth’s sky. There was not one sun.
Two enormous stars of different sizes sank beneath the blood-red horizon at different intervals.
The celestial display painted the sky in gradients of crimson, violet, and deep indigo.
It was a chilling beauty, as though a god had scattered blood across the earth.
Lucian sat in the cargo compartment and watched that alien sky, but he did not utter a word of admiration.
The stench of blood wafting from the forest was too strong to lose himself in beauty.
“The beastfolk are thoroughly nocturnal.”
Hector, who sat across from him organizing cargo, warned him in a low voice.
Lucian’s gaze moved from the sky to Hector.
“Once darkness falls, they’ll smell the blood and surely gather again. Even if we must drive the horses to their limits, we can’t stop until Kaldia’s gates are in sight.”
Lucian dipped his chin slightly in agreement.
“That sword.”
Hector’s eyes moved to the crude, chipped longsword lying beside Lucian’s thigh, caked in blood.
“Half the edge is gone. You pierced wolfman hide and cut their throats with that piece of scrap metal?”
“I did.”
“I can’t tell whether that’s impressive or madly reckless.”
Lucian had merely picked up a piece of iron lying around and used it to survive. He did not bother explaining.
Hector turned and unlocked a heavy wooden chest stored deep inside the carriage.
Click.
The chest was packed with weapons carefully wrapped in coarse cloth and leather.
Longswords, heavy swords, sharp scimitars, and daggers meant for assassination.
They were not simple military supplies. They were high-grade goods meant to be sold for a high price to merchant companies in Kaldia.
“Choose one. Think of it as an advance on your escort contract, with your life as collateral.”
Lucian’s cool gaze rapidly swept over the weapons in the chest. He did not hesitate.
His bloodied hand grasped a hilt tightly wrapped in black leather and drew it free.
It was a cold, sleek silver longsword with no gaudy jewel decorations, forged solely for cutting and piercing in real combat.
The moment he gripped it, a balance utterly unlike that of the previous scrap blade settled into his hand.
That was when it happened.
The instant he held the hilt of the new sword, the seed beneath his heart reacted like lightning.
Hummm.
The mana that had stretched a handspan through his veins rushed through his wrist to the end of the sword’s grip in a dizzying instant, then returned.
Without changing his expression, Lucian fastened the new longsword securely at his waist, quietly satisfied.
He kicked the chipped old sword into the corner of the cargo compartment.
“You have a good eye for weapons.”
Hector gave a small, impressed exclamation.
The sword Lucian had chosen without hesitation was likely the most expensive weapon in the chest.
But Lucian had not weighed its monetary value.
It was simply the weapon that pure mana had instinctively chosen, one that could most completely hold blood.
* * *
The mouth of night swallowed the forest whole.
Without lighting a single torch, the carriage raced down the pitch-black road, guided only by the harsh breathing of horses driven mercilessly onward.
The moment they lit even a small flame, it would become a target calling the forest’s beasts to them.
The three guards, none of them uninjured, took turns standing watch with their dying bodies. Lucian did not sleep either.
He placed the newly acquired silver longsword across his knees and focused on the tiny vibrations within the darkness.
A beast’s roar sounded in the distance.
Awooo...
Once. Twice. Blood-hungry cries echoed ominously through the trees of the rotten forest.
* * *
The pitch-black night deepened, drawing close to dawn.
Two moons showed their strange faces through the storm clouds.
One was a corpse-pale silver moon. The other was a copper-red moon, like pooled blood.
The two lights crossed and cast double shadows upon the muddy ground. Those shadows made the forest’s shifting outlines resemble the jaws of magic beasts.
Lucian leaned against the railing of the carriage’s cargo compartment and cut through the darkness with cold eyes.
The feel of the longsword on his lap sent a faint tingle through his palm.
A sword of this quality could fetch a substantial sum. The answer to why the inscrutable Hector had so readily offered such an expensive item as an advance payment took less than a second to reach.
The collapse of their fighting strength.
Seven of the ten guards were corpses, and the remaining three were useless wounded men who barely had the strength to hold a spear. Anyone could see that this force would be wiped out before reaching Kaldia’s gates.
Hector had thrown out a sword cheaply to reinforce his fighting strength somehow.
The situation was clearly dangerous. The person he had asked for help was a complete stranger. Wouldn’t he need to offer at least a down payment, so the stranger would not abandon them all and flee out of even a shred of responsibility?
That must have been his calculation.
‘If it were me, I would abandon this cumbersome carriage immediately.’
Lucian thought without emotion.
If he discarded every bit of expensive cargo, mounted an uninjured horse, and rode at full speed, his chances of survival would rise exponentially.
But Hector had not abandoned the carriage.
Either the weapons loaded inside were worth that many lives, or another scheme was hidden in the carriage itself.
Lucian did not pry.
His own head could be cut off at any moment. This was no time to dig into another person’s secrets.
Then again, unless he intended to abandon all the wounded...
At that moment, another spine-scraping howl burst from the depths of the distant forest.
This time, it came from a different direction.
If the first roar had come from the west, this one came from the east.
Lucian’s black eyes stared into empty space as though piercing through it.
Perhaps because he had devoured beasts one after another and accumulated experience, his night vision had developed grotesquely.
Even in complete darkness, objects within reach of the moonlight appeared unpleasantly clear.
Another howl.
This one was chillingly close.
And it was not the sound of a single creature.
Two. Three. Four.
From the darkness in every direction, beasts answered one another as they cunningly tightened their encirclement.
Lucian silently gripped his longsword and rose.
The blade caught the copper-red moonlight and took on a cold murderous gleam.
“They’re coming.”
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