WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Mordor
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◈ Unbound Magic Swordsman ◈
Chapter 31: Gold
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The enormous body toppled onto the muddy ground like a collapsing city wall, unable even to convulse.
Thooom!
Lucian pulled his sword from the Ogre's skull, scattering blood across the ground.
Then, in an instant, something far beyond what he had felt after devouring the first Ogre struck him. The essences of the two creatures created a grotesque synergy, becoming an explosive tidal wave of experience that crashed over him.
“Ghk...!”
Lucian bit his lip and bent his knees.
The pain of his bones being forcibly stretched and rebuilt.
The feeling of his muscle fibers twisting like steel cables, their density exploding.
If the first hunt had expanded his vessel, the second was like filling that vessel to the brim with extreme density.
His skin had grown dense enough to easily repel an ordinary sword strike, and his tendons tightened with the elasticity of springs.
Warrior rank, upper-tier Warden.
He was no longer at the threshold. He was unmistakably upper-tier.
And he possessed a body transformed into something like that of a monster rather than a human.
Lucian slowly rose, steadying his rough breath.
When he clenched and opened his hands, cold, heavy strength stirred in his joints.
Even without coating himself in mana, his pure physical strength felt overwhelming enough to crush an ordinary boulder.
The surroundings were utter chaos, littered with the bodies of two four-meter giants and the wreckage of the shattered forest.
Lucian expressionlessly drew his dagger.
Once the hunt was over, he needed to bring back proof.
If he could sell the byproducts, he would naturally earn more money.
The problem was that byproducts did not drop cleanly on their own as they did in a game. He had to butcher everything himself, and he also needed a way to carry the heavy materials.
He could hardly bring a wagon into a rugged forest.
If he had formed a party, he would have hired people to handle the byproducts alongside him, but he had not.
Of course, once he had more room to spare, he intended to arrange a way to collect such things. For now, though, he lacked that kind of leeway.
A home and monster byproducts both had to fall far down his list of priorities compared to growing stronger.
This world was extremely dangerous.
Moreover, resources and time were both limited.
He needed to choose what mattered and focus on it.
Choosing survival over convenience was only natural.
Convenience could wait until he had room to spare.
Even if the choice was somewhat extreme, that extreme choice might be what kept him alive.
It was a waste, but carrying the Ogre skins whole would be foolish. They were tough and heavy.
There was no guarantee he would not encounter magical beasts on the way back, so avoiding unnecessary exhaustion was the wise choice.
In any case, the Mercenary Guild only required certain proof: the creatures' huge molars and right ears.
He pried open the Ogres' jaws and pulled out their palm-sized molars by the roots, then roughly cut away their right ears, covered in thick hide.
Once he had gathered trophies from both creatures, his leather pouch became heavy enough to burst.
It was the bloody weight of eighty gold coins.
Not exactly, but roughly.
One gold coin was worth three to five million won.
A silver coin was worth three hundred to five hundred thousand won. Gold to silver was 1:10.
One copper coin was worth around three to five thousand won. Silver to copper was 1:100.
At first glance, eighty coins might not seem like much, but it was by no means a small sum.
It meant 240 to 400 million won.
That was also one practical reason he did not bother collecting every byproduct.
Unlike mercenaries who took a big payout and then protected their bodies, killing magical beasts mattered far more to Lucian, so his hunting pace was entirely different.
Rather than spend time and stamina gathering byproducts, he judged that it was better to earn request rewards through nonstop hunting.
* * *
On the road back to Kaldia, leaving the abandoned mine behind, the red sunset stained the sky as if it would set the forest ablaze.
With every step he took, he could sense Goblins and low-tier magical beasts living in the forest hiding like insects and erasing their presence.
The thick scent of blood and killing intent pouring from Lucian's body, the scent of an apex predator that had torn apart and killed two Ogres.
The magical beasts instinctively understood that a new monster had risen to the top of their ecosystem.
The forest was eerily silent.
By the time he reached Kaldia's western gate, two moons had already risen above the city walls.
The streets were quiet with curfew approaching.
Lucian headed straight for the Mercenary Guild.
Jingle.
When he opened the Guild's old door and entered, the eyes of Rina, on night duty, and several mercenaries turned toward him.
Lucian's Wyvern Light Armor was a mess of blood and mud, and savage killing intent he had not washed away rose from his body like heat haze.
The air inside the Guild froze in an instant.
Lucian walked indifferently to the counter and dropped the blood-soaked leather pouch from his shoulder onto it.
Thud!
Rina's shoulders flinched at the heavy sound.
Lucian untied the pouch with blood-caked hands.
Four enormous molars, each as large as an adult man's palm, rolled out. So did two thick Ogre ears, grotesquely severed, one black-brown and one gray-brown.
“...Hk!”
One of the mercenaries drinking cheap beer in the corner sucked in a breath.
Rina could not close her mouth, her face drained of color.
“Y-you killed Ogres by yourself too... Really. You killed both of them alone...? Y-you said you were going to take them one at a time.”
Lucian's indifferent eyes met Rina's.
“I did take them one at a time. It just worked out that way.”
At that moment, hearing the commotion, Guildmaster Graham came stomping down the stairs from his second-floor office.
After checking the size and condition of the trophies sprawled across the counter, he looked over Lucian from head to toe as if he could not believe it.
“Huh... Silver rank won't be enough for someone who killed two Ogres.”
Surprise and delight flashed through Graham's eyes at once.
Having someone in the city, and in the Kaldia Mercenary Guild, capable of killing two Ogres was good news.
Clink, clink.
Soon, two pouches containing eighty heavy gold coins were pushed across the counter.
“Your share. And soon, we'll have to reopen your rank evaluation at the Guild. Leaving a mercenary like you to languish at Silver rank would be a failure of the Guild's duty.”
“Do as you wish. As long as I'm paid properly, I don't care about the color of my rank.”
Lucian took the pouches of gold and left the Guild without looking back.
* * *
An old stone residence in the southern alley.
After locking the heavy stone door, Lucian dropped onto the straw bedding.
Eighty gold coins.
Together with the fifty coins he had received from the knights the day before and his existing assets, Lucian now possessed the immense wealth of 150 gold coins.
Enough capital to commission another quality weapon or acquire an artifact.
But more than material wealth, what fulfilled him was the overwhelming completeness of the strength enveloping his body.
He threw off his bloodstained shirt and poured a mouthful of the high-grade healing potion Elena had given him into his mouth.
What if he saved it until things became more dangerous later?
It was better to use it when he needed it than save it for after he was dead.
Since he could not guarantee what might happen, it was wise to make every preparation while he could.
The pale green liquid slid down his throat, restoring the faint fatigue in his bones and muscles and the damaged tissues from his desperate battle with the first Ogre.
The contradictory pleasure of a body becoming as light as a feather while retaining the resilience of steel.
Lucian quietly closed his eyes in the darkness.
The seed beneath his heart had borne its first fruit.
Beside it, in payment for devouring immense physical limits twice, the bud of a second fruit was slowly beginning to swell.
* * *
When the cool morning air seeped through the gaps in the stone room, Lucian quietly opened his eyes.
The fatigue weighing on his consciousness and the tearing in his muscle fibers had been erased without a trace by the synergy of the high-grade healing potion's ether and the mana constantly circulating within him.
He rose.
His body felt impossibly light for one that had exchanged life and death with two four-meter giants the day before.
He clenched and opened his fist.
The density of mana flowing through his veins had settled steadily into the upper-tier Warden range.
Lucian fastened the buckles of his Wyvern Light Armor and strapped the Silvermoon Grass longsword to his waist.
For some reason, Kaldia's streets had sunk into heavy murmuring from early morning.
The merchants in the marketplace and the residents walking through the alleys all wore ashen faces as they exchanged uneasy looks.
The relief brought by the report of victory over the Beastfolk stronghold had not even lasted a few days.
That was because a far greater and more despairing rumor had ridden the winds across the continent and settled over the city.
Lucian indifferently passed through the anxious crowd and opened the door of the Mercenary Guild.
The moment he entered, Rina came toward him as if she had been waiting.
Her expression held a cautious reverence beyond yesterday's shock.
“Sir Lucian. The Guildmaster is waiting for you in his second-floor office. He told me to bring you to him as soon as you arrived.”
Lucian gave a dry nod and climbed the wooden stairs.
When he opened the old oak door on the second floor, Guildmaster Graham was inside, studying a huge map.
He looked more serious and burdened than before.
“You're here?”
Graham closed the map and leaned deeply into his chair.
“Sit. We must skip the usual formalities and get straight to the point today.”
Lucian sat silently in the chair across from him.
Graham opened a drawer and pushed a small box lined with black velvet across the table.
Inside was a hexagonal metal badge with a heavy gleam.
Gold.
A symbol of a higher rank entirely different from Silver, granted to only a few people in all of Kaldia.
“No evaluation?”
Lucian asked indifferently as he picked up the gold badge.
Graham slowly shook his head.
“There is no point in asking a warrior who has conquered two Ogres alone about skill or magical beast ecology.”
Graham rested his chin on his clasped hands.
“The criteria for Gold rank are fundamentally these: can you subjugate upper-tier magical beasts alone, or do you possess strategic value comparable to a knight? Yesterday, you proved both conditions beyond dispute. I approved its immediate issue under my authority. From today onward, you are a Gold-rank mercenary.”
Lucian coldly ran his fingers over the gold badge.
The authority granted by this badge was not mere honor.
The right to view high-level requests, tax exemptions at shops and forges, and proof of status allowing entry into the lord's manor.
The infrastructure for his survival and growth had expanded dramatically.
“I take it you wouldn't give me a gold badge for no reason.”
As Lucian put the badge away and spoke, Graham's face darkened further.
“Exactly. We are in desperate need of someone with your strength right now.”
Graham unfolded the map he had covered again.
The border region of the Eastern Front, where the Arlan Kingdom met the Kaizen Duchy.
“Last night, a messenger from the royal capital arrived at Kaldia's lord's manor. The Kingdom's Second Corps, which had been establishing a defensive line on the Eastern Front... was annihilated as of dawn yesterday.”
Annihilated.
It meant not merely defeat, but that the army itself had been erased.
Lucian's eyes narrowed slightly.
“Was the Kaizen Duchy truly that strong?”
“It would be impossible for the Duchy alone. The intervention of the power rumored to be behind them... the Valtheim Empire, has now been officially confirmed. They say combat mages affiliated with the Empire's Mage Tower took the field. The Second Corps' barriers collapsed helplessly beneath magical bombardment.”
Deep concern colored Graham's voice.
The turmoil in the royal capital and the Empire's intervention that Loren had warned about.
The gears of a massive war were turning.
“As a result, the King has issued an emergency mobilization order. All regular knight orders in the Kingdom are under absolute orders to gather at the easternmost front within forty-eight hours.”
Graham's finger pointed to Kaldia on the map.
“The Silver Lion Knights. Even they, led by Deputy Commander Kairon, will leave Kaldia at noon today and march east. The royal command cannot be defied.”
Lucian fully understood why Kairon had urged him to become a knight.
Kairon had anticipated that the royal command would come down and had tried somehow to fill the gap in Kaldia's defenses after he departed.
“The city will be empty once the knights leave.”
“That is right. The remaining garrison troops and the Guild's mercenaries will be our entire defensive force. The problem is that the magical beasts have grown more active amid this chaos.”
Graham pulled a parchment request bearing a red seal from beneath his desk.
It was a special request issued only to Gold-rank mercenaries.
“The main supply route to the east, 〈Kallias Gorge〉, has been blocked. Orc remnants driven out of the north by the war, along with wolfman mutants that fled into the forest during the subjugation of the Beastfolk stronghold, have occupied the gorge. They have made camp there, indiscriminately slaughtering merchant caravans and refugees.”
Graham's hand tightened over the map.
“If the supply route is cut off while the knights are leaving, this city will be completely isolated. The garrison is already strained simply defending the city walls, and if we send an ordinary mercenary party, they will face certain annihilation.”
He looked straight into Lucian's eyes.
“This is your first Gold-rank request. Exterminate the magical beast pack in Kallias Gorge and bring back proof of the leader directing them. We need a deterrent in this city, where there will be no knights, to keep the magical beasts in check. It is a dangerous request, so you may form a party if you wish, but I suppose you'll want to go alone again. In any case, do whatever is most convenient for you.”
Lucian checked the reward section of the request.
[Reward: 150 gold coins and full ownership rights to the spoils within the gorge.]
It was nearly double the reward for subjugating two Ogres.
That meant the request was that much more dangerous.
But to Lucian, this was not merely a way to earn money.
A group of orc remnants and Beastfolk mutants. Numerous enemies and a superior leader.
It was the ideal environment to test the body that had completed its third leap and explosively accumulate new experience.
Lucian folded the parchment and put it inside his clothes.
“I accept the request.”
At that short, dry answer, Graham's stiff shoulders relaxed slightly.
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