WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Mordor

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◈ Unbound Magic Swordsman ◈

Chapter 6: Kaldia

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Lucian opened his palm, caked with blood and mud, and looked down at it.

Under the reddish-bronze moonlight, there was no visible flame on his blood-soaked hand, nor any of the familiar patterns of a magic circle.

Yet he could feel it clearly.

A strange, heavy power flowing beneath his skin, through his pulsing veins.

Until now, it had seeped out drop by drop through a tightly blocked sluice gate. Now, it had become a narrow stream, humming within him.

When he focused his mind on his fingertips, a cool yet faint warmth gathered at the bloodless tips of his fingers.

He still could not chant a spell or manifest magic.

But this thin current that had forced its way through the impossible was enough to assure him that it would soon tear through his veins and become a great river.

A magic swordsman. The second step toward that path.

If the first had been a sprout, this was clearly a leap.

“...Are you alive?”

Hector's hoarse voice came from behind him. Lucian turned.

Hector stood three or four paces away, watching him carefully.

Complex emotions swirled in the old man's eyes.

Wariness toward the warrior who had cut off the magical beast's last breath, and faint awe for the one who had carved out a path through despair.

“I'm alive.”

Lucian answered dryly.

Hector's gaze swept over Lucian's body.

Only minutes had passed since the battle ended. The old man's eyebrows twitched slightly, as though he had noticed that blood was no longer flowing from wounds that should have been fatal.

But he did not ask.

In this mad world, prying into someone else's grotesque secrets was the foolish act of someone willing to wager their life. Hector knew that well.

Instead, he spoke of the bloody reality before them.

“The guard with the shield just died.”

Lucian merely nodded.

Nine out of ten were corpses. The only survivor lay sprawled on the floor of a wagon, their side torn open deeply enough for their innards to show.

“One wagon has been destroyed as well. We need to move the cargo.”

“Do it.”

“And.”

Hector bit his lip as he looked toward the overturned wagon.

“The two people hiding inside the wagon are dead. When the defensive line was breached, those things crawled inside and tore them apart.”

Only then did Lucian look directly at Hector.

The wagons had not carried supplies alone. There had been people inside who needed protection.

“Who were they?”

“The merchant who truly owned this cargo, and the merchant's servant. I... failed to protect them.”

Self-reproach colored Hector's voice, though he did not give into it emotionally.

“What will happen to this cargo?”

“The owner is dead, so we'll hand it over to the designated recipient in Kaldia and be done with it. I don't belong to the merchant company. I was merely traveling with them because I had business in Kaldia.”

Lucian did not bother asking what circumstances lay behind it.

There was nothing they could do for the dead.

The living needed to focus solely on surviving.

Lucian rose to his feet.

His legs felt solid beneath him.

His body no longer trembled as if his muscles were about to tear apart, as it had only minutes ago.

Pain battered his entire body, but not enough to paralyze his mind.

“Did you say Kaldia was an hour away?”

“Yes. We'll see the shadow of the walls soon.”

Without delay, the living pulled supplies from the ruined wagon and loaded them onto the two remaining ones.

There was no room for the bodies of the nine torn-apart guards.

Only the merchant and servant were shoved into a corner of the cargo bed. The remains of the guards who had fought and bled were left on the road as breakfast for crows.

Hector offered a brief prayer into the empty air, while Lucian indifferently took hold of the reins of the second wagon.

He had no memory of ever driving a wagon. Yet his grip instinctively understood how tightly to hold the reins.

His evolved body was forcibly optimizing every sense necessary for survival.

The wagons began to roll again, grinding through sticky pools of blood.

Dawn was breaking.

Of the two suns, the smaller one first raised its grotesque head above the horizon.

Pale violet dawn soaked the earth, exposing the horrific truth of the magical beast and human entrails spilled through the night.

It was devastatingly grim, but morning came all the same.

* * *

An hour later, a massive wall emerged in overwhelming splendor at the edge of the barren land.

A heavy stone wall that looked easily twenty meters high.

From watchtowers rising at regular intervals, military banners bearing silver eagles on red fields fluttered in the wind.

A symbol of organized violence that restrained the violence of the wild.

When they reached the gate, grim-faced sentries leveled their spears and blocked the wagons.

“Identify yourselves.”

Hector climbed down from the wagon and took a small metal plate engraved with a silver crest from his coat.

The sentry's eyes wavered upon seeing it. Then the rigid spearpoint lowered, and the sentry bowed respectfully.

“You are cleared to enter. But the state of your escort...”

“We were ambushed by beastfolk bandits. Nine out of ten guards are dead, and the merchant traveling with us died after his insides ruptured.”

The sentry's face hardened.

“The beastfolk have been growing far too bold lately. I believe we should report this to our superiors immediately.”

“The report can wait. Treating the wounded comes first. And.”

Hector pointed to Lucian, who held the reins.

“This is a wandering swordsman who joined us on the road. Without his sword, we'd all be fertilizer in the forest. Allow him through.”

The sentry's gaze fixed on Lucian.

Clothes soaked from head to toe in blood and filth, pale skin torn by beasts, and a longsword at his waist that radiated killing intent.

It was a look caught between caution and instinctive fear.

“Your name?”

“Lucian.”

“Your family name?”

“I have none.”

The sentry's eyes narrowed, but the authority of Hector's token silenced any further questions.

“Pass through.”

The heavy oak gates opened with a dreadful metallic groan.

Beyond them lay the first glimpse of civilization Lucian had seen since falling into this hell.

Solidly paved stone roads.

Wooden and stone buildings lined along both sides.

Merchants busily setting out stalls for the morning market, the sound of armored soldiers' boots, and the laughter of a child somewhere in the distance.

Not the jaws of monsters or rotting corpses, but the daily lives of breathing human beings.

The rattling vibration of the wagons rolling over stone traveled up Lucian's spine.

The city was not large, but it held both the tension of a drawn bowstring and vibrant energy.

Perhaps because it was a frontier bulwark, nine out of every ten passersby carried a sword or crude blunt weapon at their waist.

In front of taverns, mercenaries who had drunk all night vomited into the streets. From blacksmiths' chimneys came the sharp smell of iron and the sound of hammers.

A city at war. A place where the scent of death clung to daily life.

But to Lucian, it was closer to heaven than hell.

There were walls to lean against, doors to lock, and humans who would not eat his entrails.

Above all, information, something directly tied to survival, lay everywhere.

The wagons stopped near a great fountain plaza in the center of the city.

Hector approached with a tired expression.

“Of course, I must pay you for your help. But I can't settle it right away when I still need to dispose of this cargo and handle the aftermath. Do you have a place to stay in Kaldia?”

“No.”

“I thought not.”

Hector took a heavy leather pouch from his coat and tossed it to Lucian.

Clink.

“Use this to wash up and find an inn for now. I'll pay the rest in three days, at the Black Eagle Tavern east of the plaza.”

Lucian weighed the pouch in his hand. It was fairly heavy.

He did not know the prices in this world, so he could not tell whether it was too little or an outrageous sum. Still, it was better than being penniless and drenched in blood.

“One more thing.”

Hector hesitated as he turned away.

“Lucian. Would you have any interest in joining an organization?”

“An organization.”

“I'll tell you the details in three days. But a warrior like you may find a far more appealing livelihood than wandering this frontier alone.”

Lucian stared at Hector with bloodshot eyes.

An old mage with a broken mana furnace.

A man who had disguised himself as a merchant, yet carried identification that made regular army sentries bow their heads.

Even a tiger with broken teeth would not be the sort to serve as an ordinary porter.

And in this brutal world, connections to the powerful meant a greater chance of survival.

“See you in three days.”

Lucian answered shortly.

Hector gave a faint smile and nodded before disappearing into the crowd with the blood-scented wagons.

Lucian fastened the coin pouch tightly at his waist and crossed the plaza.

He needed to find an inn.

He needed to wash.

He needed to fill his starving stomach.

And he needed to understand the laws of this world.

Mana circulated through his veins with a chilling stillness.

The beast awakened from the seed in his dantian was gradually consuming his body.

The Lucian of last night and the Lucian of this morning were entirely different species.

A small but distinct evolution.

Lucian walked through Kaldia's morning in blood-soaked clothes.

Passersby saw his appearance and his eyes, then moved aside.

* * *

Three days passed in the blink of an eye.

But for Lucian, those three days were the first time since falling into this hell that he had been able to tend fully to his body without fear of death.

On the first day, he entered the shabbiest, most inconspicuous inn in an alley behind the plaza.

The money in his pouch consisted of copper and silver coins.

When he casually tossed one silver coin to the fat innkeeper at the counter, greed flashed in the owner's murky eyes. The coin seemed to be worth a considerable amount, and the owner promptly supplied three days of lodging and the finest meals without complaint.

For an inn like this, anyway.

Sure enough, the room he was shown was cramped and smelled of mold.

It held only a creaking wooden bed, an old wardrobe, and a wooden washbasin in the corner.

But it had a roof, a door, and a bolt. That was enough.

Lucian locked the bolt twice, propped his silver longsword beside the bed, then roughly tore off and threw aside the clothes stiff with dried blood.

Then he looked down at his naked body.

“...”

The wounds left by the beast had healed so cleanly that it was absurd.

The claw marks that had shredded his back had become faint red lines. The stab wounds in his chest and side had hardened into thin scars.

Only the deep wound in his shoulder still oozed fluid, but even that looked ready to scab over within days.

Injuries that would have killed an ordinary human with tetanus or left them bedridden for half a year.

They had healed in a single day.

His body was no longer that of an ordinary human.

The circulating mana was forcibly tearing apart and dividing his cells, remaking them.

Just as his heart beat of its own accord, his mana too was setting his body into the optimal state for survival regardless of Lucian's will.

He filled the washbasin with cold water and scrubbed away the blood and mud. The water quickly turned blackish red.

After washing away the stink of battle that had clung to him for five days, he stood before a cracked mirror in the corner of the inn room.

Reflected there was an unfamiliar young man in his early twenties.

Black hair, sharp features like those of a beast, and pitch-black eyes.

It was not the face of the terrified modern man he had seen reflected in a puddle on his first day in this world.

Every trace of confusion and fear had vanished.

Instead, a cold and tranquil predator's wildness gleamed within those empty eyes, feeling nothing at the thought of chewing up another life.

The eyes of a survivor.

No, the eyes of someone who had decided to kill.

He discarded his blood-scented rags and changed into the coarse linen clothes brought by the innkeeper.

Then he faced the rough rye bread, unidentified meat stew, and roasted beast meat sent up from the downstairs dining room.

Real food passing through his throat for the first time in five days.

When he hurriedly spooned in the stew, his stomach cramped violently as if shocked.

It seemed that the stomach sustained by the foul emergency rations of orcs was rejecting normal food.

He put down the spoon and, with all emotion wiped from his face, tore off bread and soaked it in the soup.

He chewed slowly like a machine, shredded the meat into small pieces, and forced it into his stomach.

Once he finished eating, insane fatigue and drowsiness struck his entire body.

Lucian dragged himself back to his room, placed his longsword where his hand could reach it fastest, and collapsed onto the bed.

The instant he closed his eyes, his consciousness plunged into a bottomless abyss.

A corpse-like sleep without even nightmares.

* * *

When he opened his eyes again, it was pitch-black outside the window.

He had collapsed in broad daylight and slept deeply into the night without shifting even once.

The moment he rose, his body felt light as a feather.

It was not merely that his fatigue had faded.

During that corpse-like sleep, the experience points he had consumed and the circulating mana had fused into his muscles and bones.

The claw marks on his shoulder had already scabbed over as red scars.

Forced recovery complete.

Lucian lightly loosened up in the center of the cramped room.

He threw a punch, twisted his waist, and snapped out a leg.

The response speed of his joints and muscle fibers was chillingly different.

He exerted the same strength, yet the destructive power had changed, and the returning trajectory had become sharper.

It felt as though the muscle fibers themselves had evolved to another level.

Lucian slowly raised his right hand and opened his palm. Then he focused his mind.

Hummm.

The mana flowing through his veins responded at once, gathering into a subtle but clear warmth at his fingertips.

It was far denser than before.

He still could not manifest a visible flame.

But he was certain it would soon become something ferocious enough to burn his enemies.

He slowly clenched his fist and prepared for the hunt to come.

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