The God-Possessed Swordsmanship Genius - Chapter 2

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 2: The Swordsman Blessed by a Spirit

What in the world is going on?
Allen looked back on what came before. His last memory was swallowing the orb, then his body being hacked apart by the demons.
If he wasn’t dead, then what is this?
Why on earth is the memory of the day of the mission spread out right before my eyes?

“Look at this idiot, completely dazed.”
“Hey, are you gonna snap out of it or what?”
“Kid!”

Smack!

The bandit’s palm struck his cheek once more.
It stung. Hard enough that his cheek burned.
Rather than angering him, the slap jolted him awake.

“It’s not a dream… So why am I here?”

At Allen’s mumbling, the bandits snickered again.

“Why? Your face is pretty decent, so we figured you might be good for something.”
“Hey, what family are you from? If it’s a wealthy one, we might still find a way to get a ransom. Or we could just sell you off to a brothel.”
“Hahaha!”

On the day Allen came of age at eighteen, his family handed him his very first mission.
A request had come to the family to suppress the bandits who were disrupting merchant caravans from a neighboring kingdom.
It was nothing special, a light and simple job.
Yet Allen had failed that first mission in plain sight of everyone.

‘Is this a dream?’

The fact that his cheek still stung said it wasn’t.
Could this be some nightmare illusion the demons had conjured?
No. If it were, there would have to be at least some trace of it, and the thing standing before him would have been no mere bandit but a far more vicious monster.
After turning it over in his mind, he reached a conclusion.

“It’s real!”
“Gah, you scared me! Why are you suddenly yelling like a lunatic…?”

The bandit, who had raised his hand in alarm, faltered.
It was because Allen was grinning so broadly at the situation.

‘A real person.’

How many years had it been since he’d seen anyone other than demons or the Death Squad?
They were filthy, foul-smelling bandits, but he was glad to see even men like these as human beings.
After seeing nothing but demons and ma-in, these fellows looked almost cute and pretty to him.
And above all, what made him happiest was this.

‘I’ve come back. To the past.’

I had returned to the time before everything began.

‘I really came back!’

Hahaha—
Allen laughed out loud. His joy simply would not be contained.
The bandits, watching him like he’d lost his mind, came to a conclusion.

“……Did we scare him too much?”
“Looks like he’s lost his mind from the shock.”

Judging by how terrified he looked, it was almost pitiful to watch. Still, they couldn’t just let this slide.

Whoosh— whoosh—!

The youngest-looking bandit came stomping over, a thick club hefted in one hand.

“What are you grinning about, you crazy bastard? Stop smirking and answer me. I said, where are you from!”

Allen, whose spirits were soaring to the sky, answered.

“Bishuken.”
“…?”

Silence fell over the storehouse all at once.
The bandits doubted their own ears.
The youngest, who had heard Allen’s answer from right up close, even broke into a sweat on his forehead.

“W-where did you say?”
“Bi… shuken……?”
“Bi, Bishuken, did he say?”

Bishuken.
The house that always came up whenever people talked about the foremost power on the Continent.
A single household rivaled an empire in strength, and its swordsmen were known, every last one of them, as formidable masters.
It was said that sending just one Sword Corps Headquarters could wipe a small kingdom off the map—a great and venerable house of swordsmanship.
That was Bishuken.
Which was why—

“Hahahaha!”
“He’s a certified lunatic.”
“You? A Bishuken swordsman?”
“Must be scared out of his wits, so he’s grabbing any name he can sell. Brave little thing, isn’t he?”
“Do you really think there’s a weakling like you among the Bishuken ghosts?”

None of the bandits believed him.
That this drifter they’d caught was a Bishuken swordsman was the kind of joke that would make even a passing dog laugh.
Yet even as they didn’t believe him, they trembled the moment the name Bishuken left Allen’s lips.
Because the name carried a primal dread all its own.

‘I knew it would go like this.’

Truthfully, Allen was ashamed as well. That was why he had failed to answer honestly even back then.
Worse, he wasn’t even an ordinary swordsman of Bishuken.
He was a member of the Direct Line—the youngest son.

‘If I told them Axion Bishuken was my father, they’d laugh themselves sick.’

The son of the Continent’s foremost swordsman, kidnapped by bandits!
It was truly an unthinkable thing. And the reason this impossible thing had happened was Allen’s innate constitution.

Bima’s Curse.

Anyone born human carried at least a trace of Mana.
Swordsmen and mages accumulated that Mana and grew by wielding its power.
But those cursed with Bima’s Curse were born without a single speck of Mana. Unable to sense Mana from birth, they had no way to build it up at all.
It was, quite literally, the worst constitution imaginable for becoming a swordsman or a mage.

‘Of all people, I had to be the one with that rare constitution that’s born once every few hundred years.’

Allen had been crushed by that truth, and unable to face reality, he had fled his family household.
And this mission had been the event that set it all in motion.

“Strange, isn’t it? I find it strange too. Why someone like me had to be born in Bishuken, of all places.”
“This bastard is still—”
“Speaking of which, you lot.”

Swish.

Allen raised both hands above his head.
Somewhere along the way, the rope that had bound his hands had come loose.

“Did you tie this too loosely or something?”
“……!”

Thwack!

In an instant, one man’s jaw was smashed, and he collapsed to the floor.
Brushing the dust off his clothes, Allen snatched up the club that had dropped to the ground and gripped it in his hand.

“Who tied this? I’d better relearn my knots. Or was it, what, you didn’t mind if I got loose, so you just tied me up carelessly?”
“This son of a—”
“Just kill him!”
“No, don’t kill him! Sell him to the brothels!”

Dozens of bandits swarmed toward him in a pack.
Watching them come, Allen gripped the club the way one would hold a sword.
Instead of a sword, he had a club, and he dove straight into the middle of them.

Thud, thwack!
Crack!

The sound of bones snapping and flesh tearing echoed through the warehouse. Allen felt his weakened body and his young heart.

‘My body has gotten weaker… but being young again is nice.’

Eighteen years old.
His training was thinner, but physically, this was likely the peak of his life.
Had he gone back to an even younger age, his arms would have been too short and his sense of distance would have been off, but thankfully, the difference wasn’t so great.
The trained body was gone, but the razor-sharp instincts he had honed while fighting countless demons up until just before remained fully intact.
One blow, one man.
With movements as fluid as flowing water and precise strikes, Allen subdued the bandits.

Crack!

Just then, at the sound of another bandit’s skull cracking, the ones still charging faltered.
Each time one of them fell, another lost his nerve.

“H-he was this strong?”
“Then why was he captured so easily?”
“Could he have really let himself be—”

Then a thought suddenly flashed through the bandits’ minds.

“W-wait, could he really be from Bishuken?”
“Eeeek!”

The name Bishuken was something they had dismissed as hot air, since Allen’s skills were so pitiful. But now that name had begun to carry some weight.
Having felled half the bandits in an instant, Allen flicked the blood off his club and spoke.

“That’s a funny thing to say, but I’m actually so glad to see you lot. It almost pains me to kill you.”

Allen looked over the bandits’ faces.

You’re too ugly to sell to a brothel, so I’ll be generous and sell you to the guard station instead.

* * *

Inside the storehouse, where the bandits lay sprawled on the floor.
Allen flexed and rolled his body this way and that.

‘I need to train harder.’

The younger body was a relief, but it didn’t move the way he wanted it to.
Without any Mana in his body, training—and more training—was the only way to survive.
Now that the noisy brats were gone, the thought came back to him all at once.

‘But why on earth did I come back to the past?’

There was only one reason that came to mind.

‘Could it be that orb?’

The mysterious orb the demons had been searching for across the Human Realm.
He had a feeling that swallowing it and returning to the past might be connected.
If so, what exactly was that orb? What sort of thing could make the impossible happen and turn back time?
Just as the thought began to deepen.

-Kill them.

A faint voice drifted in from somewhere.
Allen turned his head, searching around.
Then he looked down at the bandits sprawled on the floor and asked.

“Was it one of you just now?”

But the answer came from somewhere else entirely.

Bang!

Someone kicked the storehouse door open from outside and charged in.
The moment he saw the face, Allen’s expression broke wide open.

“Brother!”
“-Allen?”

A man with uncommon silver hair, clutching a sword as white as his hair.
He was none other than Allen’s older brother, Lucas Bishuken.
In his previous life, it had been thanks to Lucas that Allen was able to make it out of this place alive.
Lucas had received an order from the family and had come through that very door to rescue Allen.

Lucas, stepping into the storehouse, wore a puzzled expression.
The scene inside was nothing like what he had feared.
Dozens of bandits lying on the floor, and Allen with a club dripping blood.
Anyone could see that Allen had knocked down every last bandit and was about to make his escape.

“So it wasn’t the worst after all. I thought you’d be stuck there, looking pitiful.”

He didn’t praise Allen.
Well, that was only natural, since this situation shouldn’t have happened in the first place.
The Lucas Allen remembered from those days was a truly difficult man to deal with. Strangely, whenever he made a mistake, Lucas would suddenly appear before him, and each time, Lucas would scold him.
Sure enough, Lucas’s nagging was only getting started.

“Your mission was judged a failure, so it was passed on to me. A rescue mission for you.”
“Was it so difficult that you had to come yourself?”
“Because I was the closest.”

It was his way of making clear that this was the only reason.

“Because of you, two spots in the Bishuken swordsmen ranks are now empty. And as a son of our father, you’ve tarnished the family’s standing. Regardless of whether the mission succeeded, you won’t be spared a reprimand.”
“I see.”

Allen nodded and said.

“Thanks.”
“…?”
“You came just in time. I owe you my life.”

There was a time when I would have screamed at the top of my lungs. That I could have escaped on my own even if you hadn’t come. That I hadn’t failed yet.
Pride.
What was it, really, that kept me from even saying thanks to my brother, who had come running from so far away?
Now, though, I could have escaped on my own even without him.
So this was a word I had put off back then, unable to say it.

“Thank you for saving me.”
“…Are you all right?”

The fact that he asked like this proved that my brother still didn’t hate me.
Why couldn’t I see this side of him back then? No, why hadn’t I even tried to look?

“Other than being hungry, I’m fine. Why? Do I look hurt somewhere?”
“No. You just look better than I expected.”
“Nearly dying has a way of waking you up, I suppose.”

Allen looked up at the sky beyond the door Lucas had burst through.
As he gazed at that sky, a certain resolve settled into his eyes.

“…And now I think I know how I need to live.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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