WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Mordor
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◈ Unbound Magic Swordsman ◈
Chapter 7: Letter of Recommendation
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Second day.
Lucian washed away the smell of blood and wandered the streets of Kaldia.
His purpose was to grasp the layout of this unfamiliar killing ground.
True to its name as a border fortress, Kaldia was a place where military function and commercial greed coexisted in a tangled mess.
Gray barracks lined the inner side of the massive walls, while a chaotic market and shopping district sprawled like a web around the central fountain square.
In the eastern alleys, the hammering of smithies rang out amid weapon shops radiating heat. To the west clustered cheap taverns and brothels teeming with mercenaries and criminals.
Near the northern wall stood an imposing stone building that appeared to be the lord's residence. Beside it stood one particularly conspicuous, rough-looking structure.
A rusted iron-chain sign hung before it.
Two crossed swords and a bloodstained shield were crudely embossed in relief.
Beneath them were scrawled rough letters.
[Kaldia Mercenary Guild]
Lucian regarded the building impassively for a moment before turning away.
Not yet.
First, he needed to gather information thoroughly.
At the inn's dining hall, in the corners of market stalls, among drunks at taverns.
Keeping his mouth firmly shut, Lucian listened to the murmurs around him.
The language of this world now entered his ears with horrifying ease.
Even subtle intonations between words and vulgar slang were translated in his mind.
The information he gathered over three days, as though rummaging through heaps of trash, was roughly as follows.
The Arlan Kingdom. A medium-sized human nation in the western part of the continent.
Its territorial conflict with the neighboring Kaizen Duchy had intensified, bleeding its regular army dry. Taking advantage of that gap, beastfolk bandits and warped monsters had begun running wild beyond control.
Kaldia was an outpost city guarding the Arlan Kingdom's western lifeline.
The lord's rotten personal garrison, regular troops dispatched by the kingdom, and mercenaries drawn by the scent of money were all tangled together in a dogfight.
Outside the city, especially in the western primeval forest and the harsh southern lands, magical beasts that preyed on humans swarmed.
There were the orcs and beastfolk Lucian had slaughtered, of course, but occasional reports also spoke of powerful creatures such as goblins, ogres, and wyverns.
The Mercenary Guild was a huge slaughterhouse that brokered requests to exterminate such magical beasts, escort merchant caravans, and undertake other bloody jobs.
Joining required a certain degree of screening, but its essence was simple.
If one could prove the killing ability needed to complete commissions, the Guild would clean up one's identity without asking about background or a history of contract killings.
For Lucian, it was an ideal arrangement.
It was the quickest and most practical way for an outsider with no connections, identification, or memories to operate in this hell through legal killing.
Hunting magical beasts would earn money and, above all, experience.
It was a path to accumulate both the resources and force needed for survival.
Third day.
As the promised hour neared sunset, Lucian opened the door to the Black Eagle tavern on the eastern side of the central square.
Its exterior was considerably cleaner and more private than the trashy taverns in the west.
Lighting that was neither too bright nor too dim, noise that was neither too loud nor too soft.
About half of the roughly fifteen sturdy oak tables were occupied. The customers were not alleyway vagrants, but mercenaries and merchants wearing quality gear, along with regular army officers on leave.
At a table in one corner sat Hector.
Hector was no longer dressed as the shabby merchant from three days ago.
A luxurious dark navy robe, white hair neatly combed back, and a cool silver brooch on his chest.
A silver eagle on a red field.
It was the same emblem as that of the Arlan Kingdom's regular army, which had fluttered above the city walls.
Hector spotted Lucian and lightly raised a hand.
Lucian approached in silence and sat opposite him.
“Your wounds... They're so clean it's chilling.”
Hector murmured as he looked over Lucian's neck and forearms.
The mortal wounds that had nearly exposed Lucian's insides three days ago now remained only as faint traces. Even for a mage, the sight was bound to be shocking.
Lucian did not answer.
Hector did not press further, either.
He was not foolish enough to ignore the taboo of forcibly exposing another person's secrets when doing so could cost him his head at any moment.
He took a sip of strong rum and got to the point.
“First, let us settle the payment for your escort.”
Hector drew a heavy leather pouch from within his robe and set it on the table.
Thud.
It carried a dull weight entirely unlike the money he had tossed over for lodging three days ago.
“Twenty gold coins. The full contracted amount, calculated as the price of ten guards' lives. It was originally money for ten people to divide, but as you know, nine of them died. I have taken care of the surviving guard separately, so I will give you the blood price of the remaining nine in full.”
Twenty gold coins.
Lucian had yet to fully grasp the prices of this world, but considering that one silver coin had covered food and lodging for three days, it was enough money to avoid hunger for quite a while.
“Take it. If you hadn't taken that beast's head, mine would have rolled instead.”
Lucian silently took the pouch and tied it securely at his waist.
“And.”
Hector took out a second item from within his robe.
It was a sealed envelope.
Crimson wax covered the seal, stamped with the same silver eagle emblem pinned to Hector's chest.
“This is...?”
“A letter of recommendation. I am an advisor to the Western Border Defense Command of the Arlan Kingdom.”
An advisor.
Lucian's gaze sharpened like a razor.
Hector was neither a merchant nor a wandering mage.
He was an advisor who served as the brains of the kingdom's regular army.
The reason the gate guards had bowed and scraped before a mere metal plate now made sense.
“The letter is addressed to a Special Operations Unit under the Defense Command. Not conscripted rabble, but a small elite force the kingdom funds heavily and operates separately.”
Hector calmly laid out the bait.
“The pay cannot be compared to that of an ordinary mercenary, and they even provide magical equipment. Above all, once you become an official soldier of the kingdom, your identity will be legally guaranteed at once. For someone like you, with neither memories nor bloodline, there could be no more suitable lifeline.”
Objectively, it was an excellent offer.
It was a path into the mainstream of this world as quickly and safely as possible.
For Lucian, who had nothing, it was an exceedingly sweet temptation.
But.
“I'm grateful for the offer, but I refuse.”
Lucian cut him off coldly.
For the first time, a crack appeared in Hector's composed expression.
“May I hear the reason?”
Lucian explained the conclusion he had reached rationally over the last three days.
“If I enter the army, I won't be able to choose whom I fight.”
“Is that not the natural fate of one who takes up a sword and accepts payment?”
“That's right. Which is why I don't want it.”
Lucian tapped a finger against the table and continued.
“Besides, the Defense Command's primary enemy is the Kaizen Duchy's army across the border. If I join the military, I'll naturally have to kill them. I'd rather not fight humans.”
There was no rise or fall of emotion in Lucian's voice.
Hector's silver eyebrows rose slightly.
“Humans form webs of relationships too intricate to count one by one. If I take someone's head on the battlefield, their family, comrades, and relatives will follow after them in a chain. Becoming involved in that kind of bloody chain of killing would be terribly inefficient for someone in my position, and close to suicide.”
Hector narrowed his eyes.
“If not humans?”
“Magical beasts.”
A short, firm answer.
“No human sharpens a blade for revenge because I killed a monster. And if one does, that person is the strange one, so it doesn't concern me. Instead, the city benefits, and my purse grows heavier. Legal slaughter and compensation. Joining the military, on the other hand, comes with too many restrictions.”
Hector fell into deep silence.
The old man stared intently at Lucian's cold face. At last, a smile like a hollow laugh spread across his lips.
“You said your memories vanished?”
“Yes.”
“You may have lost your past, but it seems your instincts and calculating ability, the parts that see through this mad world, remain completely intact.”
Hector drained the rum remaining in his glass in one swallow.
“I have no intention of forcing you. Your judgment is reasonable. In truth, I proposed the Special Operations Unit because of your combat ability, but...”
Hector trailed off and looked around as if wary of being overheard.
“The beastfolk ambush three days ago. I don't know whether you realized it, but their true purpose was not transporting supplies.”
Lucian's eyes sharpened.
It was something Lucian had suspected to some extent.
Hector carefully drew something from deep within his robe.
A palm-sized black wooden box.
Strange, intricate magic circles drawn in blood-red covered its surface without a gap.
A seal.
“You need not know what is inside. Just know that it is an object a beastfolk chieftain was willing to risk his life to seize personally.”
Chieftain-class.
That meant the three-meter, red-eyed monster whose brain Lucian had blown out by piercing it beneath the jaw was chieftain-class.
“My top-secret mission was to transport this item discreetly to the Kaldia command headquarters. I tried to travel concealed among a merchant caravan's guards, but... the result was dreadful.”
Hector's voice sank.
It was not an excuse, but a heavy sense of responsibility for the dead.
“My attempt to place you in the command headquarters was both compensation and a way to ensure your silence after you were caught up in this secret mission. But if you refuse the army, I will pay the blood price another way.”
Hector put the black box away and picked up the wax-sealed letter.
“I will change its destination. Not the command headquarters, but the Kaldia Mercenary Guild. Even a rotten military has its uses. If the Guild receives a written guarantee from an advisor there, you should pass its entry screening without much trouble.”
Hector drew out a smaller leather pouch than before and set it down with a clack.
“I'll add another ten gold coins. If you go hunt magical beasts dressed in those rags, your guts will be spilling out within a day. A monster's durability is on an entirely different level from human flesh.”
Thirty gold coins in total.
Lucian silently looked into Hector's wrinkled eyes.
“In truth, the beastfolk chieftain you killed had a bounty posted by the Defense Command. The head alone was worth more than fifty gold coins. I am actually skimming some of it off. Still, don't feel slighted. You'll learn this yourself, but the military is more rotten than you think. Just understand that much.”
There was no reason to refuse.
In this world, one silver coin was an extension of life itself.
Lucian silently took the pouch.
Hector broke the wax seal on the letter and removed the document.
He took out a fresh sheet of parchment, scribbled new words across it with a pen, then melted fresh wax and firmly pressed the silver eagle emblem into it.
“Take this to the guildmaster at the Guild. My name alone will make the troublesome questions disappear.”
Lucian accepted the envelope and pushed it into the deepest part of his clothes.
“May I ask one thing?”
Lucian called to Hector.
“Go ahead.”
“Three days ago, in the carriage, you said, as though coughing up blood, that you were no longer at your peak. What does it mean for a mage to have passed their prime?”
A deep self-mocking, bitter smile spread over Hector's face.
“More than a decade ago, the mana furnace in my body suffered fatal damage. Like a reservoir after its dam has burst, it can no longer hold the ether within me. The power of the magic I force out now is not even thirty percent of what it was at my peak.”
A mana furnace.
It was likely a concept similar to the seed of mana coiled beneath Lucian's heart.
“Is there no treatment?”
“On this continent, it is close to impossible. In my memory, those who possess divine power or high-level healing magic capable of mending a shattered mana furnace can be counted on one hand across the entire continent.”
Hector set down his glass with a tired expression.
“It has been a long time since I spoke of this past.”
Lucian did not probe further.
There was no reason to dig deeply into the old mage's story.
But Lucian remembered the information.
Mana furnace. Damage. And the very few healers.
It should never come to that, but it might be knowledge needed if Lucian's mana ever ran wild or the seed was damaged.
“I should be going.”
Hector pushed back his chair and stood.
“I must return to the command headquarters. If we survive, we may meet again.”
As he turned to leave, he hesitated and looked back at Lucian.
“Lucian. Let me leave you with one presumptuous piece of advice.”
“I'll hear it.”
“This mad world is not some romantic place where one can survive alone to the end. Your way of refusing to fight humans to avoid revenge is not bad. But do not come to despise forming relationships with humans themselves. Having companions to trust with your back can increase your chances of survival dozens of times more than holding a fine longsword.”
Lucian watched the old man expressionlessly, then gave the faintest nod.
Hector vanished through the tavern's dark doorway.
Even after the door had closed, Lucian sat blankly for a long time at the table where the blood-red glass rested.
Inside his clothes were heavy gold coins and a letter of recommendation guaranteed by power.
The Kaldia Mercenary Guild.
No need to rush. This was not a battlefield where beasts' guts spilled out.
Lucian rose from his seat.
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