WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Mordor

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◈ Unbound Magic Swordsman ◈

Chapter 5: Struggle

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A wolfman at the front opened its jaws and charged like mad.

Lucian's longsword cut through the air.

Its path was clearly different from before.

No wasted motion, only lethal sword strokes meant to cut the enemy's throat by the shortest route.

He had never formally learned swordsmanship from anyone.

But the life force pouring from the seed that had sprouted in his dantian, along with the character's killing instincts forcibly etched into his mind, were forcibly optimizing his body.

Slice.

The silver blade smoothly followed the beast's scimitar and severed the tendons in its wrist.

Before the scimitar even hit the muddy ground, a second movement followed as smoothly as flowing water and pierced its throat.

Hot blood burst from the sword tip after it tore through the carotid artery.

What would have taken the old Lucian three or four bloody exchanges, he finished in only two breaths.

Nine.

A dense surge of experience poured in with the death.

This time, the seed did not pulse.

Its shell had already shattered, and the sprout had emerged.

Instead, roots of pure mana extending from it dug one strand deeper and more persistently through his veins.

There was no time to rest.

Wolfmen attacked again from both sides at once. A pincer attack.

Instead of retreating, Lucian took half a step toward the one on his left.

Just before its scimitar split his skull, he slipped like a snake into the blind spot within its arc.

The haft of the scimitar struck Lucian's shoulder with a thud, but his sword had already plunged into the creature's abdomen and twisted.

He roughly pulled out the sword and spun.

The one on his right was already in front of him.

Claws filled his vision as they flew for his face.

There was no angle to evade.

Instinctively, Lucian twisted his head and offered his left shoulder instead of his face.

Crunch!

The claws dug into his shoulder flesh, carving the pain of scraping bone into him.

But Lucian's longsword never stopped, drawing a fierce upward arc from below.

The blade pierced the softest flesh beneath its jaw, shattered the wolfman's lower jaw, and drove straight through its skull.

The sword tip rose above its crown, blood dripping from it.

Foaming blood sprayed across Lucian's eyes, but he did not even blink.

Ten. Then eleven.

Two bodies collapsed onto the mud at once.

Another wave of experience roughly swept through his body.

Hot blood poured from the deep wound in his shoulder, but its flow soon slowed noticeably.

As if an invisible hand had sealed the wound, the bleeding dropped to less than half its former rate.

The pure mana now circulating through his body had gathered around the injury and begun forcefully stopping the bleeding.

It was not conscious control, but an automatic defensive mechanism activated by an evolved body trying to survive.

But more than ten wolfmen still waited beyond the defensive line, drooling.

And the leader.

A massive body in a completely different class from the ordinary ones. The monster with gleaming crimson eyes stood in the rear without moving.

It was using its subordinates as meat shields.

A cunning hunting method meant to wear away his strength, accumulate wounds, and cut his throat at his weakest moment.

Time was entirely on the monsters' side.

Even if the bleeding had stopped, mana could not perfectly erase the pain in his lungs, which felt ready to tear apart, or the lactic acid building in his muscles.

The hand gripping the sword began to tremble faintly.

Then.

The leader moved.

The ground caved in, and its huge body launched into the air, leaping onto the roof of the carriage in a single bound.

Unable to bear that grotesque weight, the carriage's wooden frame shrieked and shattered.

A three-meter giant beast stood with the moon behind it.

That incarnation of overwhelming violence kicked off the roof and came crashing down over Lucian's head.

A massive greatsword plunged straight down.

Lucian instinctively threw himself aside and rolled across the mud.

Kraash!

The greatsword cleaved the earth like tofu and exploded.

Fragments flew in every direction and struck his cheeks.

A direct hit would have split him from shoulder to hip with that brutish destructive force.

Using the momentum of his roll, Lucian rose and drove his longsword sideways into its unguarded flank.

A hit.

But he felt no blade cutting flesh.

Clang!

With a sharp metallic ring, a faint film of light rippled a hand's breadth above the creature's hide and stopped Lucian's blade.

A mana barrier.

This was not merely a large beast.

It was an aberrant monster capable of releasing mana outside its body to form a physical shield.

Lucian's eyes narrowed coldly.

It had not blocked with its scimitar.

Ordinary metal could never pierce that mana barrier.

Its mana was somehow different from his own, but that did not matter now.

His survival instincts, honed to their limit, sent an immediate warning.

A frontal strike was suicide.

The leader's greatsword tore through the air sideways once more.

The difference in reach was too great.

Lucian urgently pulled back, but the tip of the greatsword ripped across his chest.

Blood sprayed through the air.

Then came the third attack. A thrust.

A blow far faster and sharper than a slash grazed his right side.

A horrific pain, as though his flesh were burning.

This was not a wound cut by mere metal.

The leader's murky, alien mana carried by the greatsword tried to enter his veins through the wound.

It was a foul, lethal sensation, as though deadly poison were seeping in.

But in that instant, the pure mana circulating in Lucian's body reacted savagely.

Like white blood cells devouring a pathogen, the energy extending from his dantian rushed to the wound and drove out the creature's murky mana without a trace.

The wound was cleansed.

For the first time, confusion crossed the leader's crimson eyes.

An opponent its aura could not affect.

Enraged, it frantically raised the intensity of its attacks.

One strike, two strikes, three.

Overwhelming power and speed, with a reach he could not close.

Lucian rolled across the ground and knocked attacks away as he desperately retreated.

An opponent his current body could never defeat.

But Lucian was not the Lucian of one minute ago.

Even during those brief moments of fierce exchange, remnants of experience leaving the wolfman corpses scattered around him kept soaking into his body.

The circulation of pure mana through his veins accelerated explosively.

What had been like a tiny stream became a rushing creek.

Regardless of Lucian's will, the mana surging through his veins passed beyond his wrist and flowed into the sword's hilt.

Hummm.

A faint vibration only Lucian could feel.

There was no visible light or flamboyant aura.

But raw, unprocessed pure mana, faint as a candle flame shaking in the wind, began to gather over the blade.

The moment something was created from nothing.

The leader's greatsword struck down like lightning once more.

This time, Lucian did not evade.

He raised the longsword infused with mana and met it head-on.

Bang!

A thunderous roar as if the air had been torn apart.

Before, the impact would have crushed his arm bones and snapped his sword in two.

But the faint pure mana coating the longsword withstood the creature's brutish physical force.

His arms shook, but did not bend. The blade screamed, but did not break.

The leader's crimson eyes widened as if they might split apart.

The insect that could not even scratch its barrier had blocked its full-powered blow.

Silently, Lucian slid along their locked blades and pushed upward.

At the same time as he knocked aside the greatsword, he slashed at its forearm.

Slice!

This time, it was not blocked.

The unprocessed pure mana dwelling in Lucian's blade brutally pierced the creature's aura barrier, made from the same mana, or more precisely, mana that had been processed.

The leader's blood sprayed through the air.

It was a shallow wound, but its meaning was clear.

'It works.'

For the first time, not emotion but cold killing intent and resolve flashed in Lucian's dark eyes.

The leader let out a roar filled with humiliation.

At that howl, the remaining underlings cowered and tucked their tails.

It adjusted its grip on the greatsword's hilt with both hands.

Proof that it intended to put forth its full strength.

The enormous mass of metal swept sideways as if to cut through Lucian's waist.

Destructive power entirely different from before.

Blocking it was impossible.

If he took the full force of that blow, he would be cut apart with his sword.

Lucian lowered his upper body until it nearly touched the muddy ground.

With a chilling whistle, the greatsword passed so close that it seemed ready to tear out his hair.

In that instant, within the blind spot left by the massive weapon's sweep.

Lucian kicked off the ground and shot into its exposed embrace.

From below to above.

Beneath the jaw.

He thrust the mana-infused sword upward at the beast's most vulnerable weak point.

Its barrier pushed against the sword tip in one final struggle.

If it forced him back, it was over.

Gritting his teeth, Lucian forced every bit of energy from his dantian into the sword tip.

Flash!

Pure mana tore apart the creature's murky barrier.

The sword tip pierced the soft hide beneath its jaw, passed through its mouth, and buried itself deep in the base of its skull.

Time seemed to stop.

The madness in the leader's crimson eyes clouded and faded.

The greatsword slipped from its weakening hand, and the three-meter giant body collapsed at Lucian's feet like a puppet with cut strings.

Thoom!

The ground shrieked and trembled.

Silence.

The roars of the remaining wolfmen, who had been holding their breath, stopped completely.

In their yellow eyes was the sight of their invincible leader buried in the mud and a single human standing drenched in blood and filth.

His legs trembled, and he gasped rough breaths, looking ready to collapse at any moment.

But his eyes alone were as deep and still as an abyss as they swept over the surviving wolfmen one by one.

He spoke no threat, but his heavy killing intent said it all.

Come if you dare. I'll slaughter every last one of you.

The wolfmen began to back away inch by inch.

Soon, without a single howl, the entire pack with their tails tucked vanished into the dark forest.

It was over.

Only then did Lucian's knees buckle, and he collapsed onto the muddy ground.

His trembling hand still gripped the sword hilt tightly and would not loosen.

At that very moment.

From the leader's enormous corpse, whose breath had ceased, rose a vast energy utterly beyond that of the previous underlings.

A tidal wave of experience.

A formless storm, neither mist nor light, erupted from the corpse and struck Lucian's body with the inevitability of a natural law.

It was not merely soaking into him.

It was ruthless erosion.

"Ghk..."

Every bone in his body rang, and his muscle fibers screamed.

The mana flowing through his veins surged and expanded like a raging torrent.

His heart stopped once, then twice.

And when the third beat burst forth.

Thump!

A physical shockwave spread in concentric circles from Lucian's body.

No wind rose, nor did the ground shake, but it was a wave in which the very rank of his existence evolved by one stage.

The roots extending from the seed beneath his heart expanded explosively.

The tiny stream became a creek, then a river that swept through his entire body.

His body was being reconstructed.

It was not that his muscles grew larger. The density and quality of the muscle fibers within the same space compressed like steel.

His lungs, which had thrashed as though they would tear apart, released quiet, deep breaths as if they had broken through some limit.

Then came the recovery of his body.

The bleeding that had poured like a waterfall from the deep claw marks across his back stopped abruptly.

It was not merely that the blood had clotted.

The edges of his torn flesh drew together at a grotesque speed, as if being stitched by invisible thread.

The gash in his chest, the puncture in his shoulder, and the cut in his side all rapidly stopped bleeding and grew new flesh.

It was not a miracle of perfect healing.

Scars would remain, and torn muscles would need several days of rest.

But wounds that should have confined him to bed for days were being forcibly healed in only minutes.

It was a phenomenon beyond medical explanation, with pure mana accelerating cellular regeneration to its limit.

Yet he understood it instinctively.

His body was forcibly repairing itself.

Like the brutal system in which a game character recovers HP while leveling up.

It was being reproduced here, in this blood-soaked mud.

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