The Son-In-Law of the Magician Is a Transcendent Sword Master - Chapter 38

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 38

Before the regression.

In other words, my previous life.

Even before I reached Sword Master.

From those days, I was already famous as a mercenary who was good at hunting mages. Not only 6th-tier, but I had even taken the head of a 7th-tier Black Mage.

What determines the outcome of a battle between equals of the same tier is experience. This difference in experience cannot be easily narrowed. Nine times out of ten, the one who has accumulated more experience and has better skills will claim victory.

Then, what should you do when facing an opponent of a higher tier than yourself?

“What else? A trump card.”

I shook my numb hand and looked at the gloves I received from Valen.

“The performance is pretty good.”

A combination of the elemental word Kenaz and the conceptual word Isaz.

Condensed flames.

Composite rune magic used at point-blank range.

But it didn’t stop there – I deliberately made the two rune characters go berserk. I made them collide, reverse flow, and invert to maximize their power.

The first time I thought of this technique was when I was training toward the 4th tier in the underground workshop, thanks to something Sheril said.

– …Lord Reagan, are you in your right mind? If you forcibly fuse rune characters like that, an explosion will occur. Not just this workshop, but the entire underground will become a wasteland. Do you want to die?

That’s where I conceived it.

Deliberately making rune magic with already outstanding destructive power go berserk. If it happened by mistake, it would be an accident, but if it’s intentional, it’s a technique.

Its power was at a terrifying level. Under normal circumstances, my hand that caused the explosion wouldn’t have been unharmed either.

What was useful in that process was precisely these gloves.

Leather gloves made from the hide of a phantom beast that could almost perfectly block attack magic below the 5th tier.

“…It’s stronger than… I thought.”

As a result, there was a huge crater dug out in front of me.

I was pushed back several steps due to the recoil of the massive explosion, but thanks to the gloves, aside from my wrist aching, there was no major strain on my body. If I hadn’t had the gloves…

“I would have ended up like that.”

Barg, who took the direct hit, was embedded in the cave wall at the far end. His whole body was covered in blood, and his left arm holding the long sword was grotesquely twisted.

If caught directly in such a massive explosion, it wouldn’t be strange to be turned to mush. Rather, Barg was in relatively good condition.

“Re, Reagan… you’re alive, right?”

“Of course I’m alive, but don’t come out yet.”

Answering Brock who was cautiously calling out from behind the pile of rocks, I walked toward the unconscious Barg.

‘Barg, you die here today.’

I had no intention whatsoever of letting him live. Barg was clearly a villain both in my previous life and this life.

I had to cut off his breath for certain with this opportunity.

I approached Barg and raised my sword for a definitive finish. Suddenly, my spine tingled. I hastily jerked my head back. The sword wind echoed by my ear, and some of my hair was cut off.

“You, bastard!”

“You’re really persistent too. How are you still alive?”

Barg had opened his eyes at some point and was gripping his long sword.

No, he must have regained consciousness long ago. He was definitely waiting for the moment I approached. When his surprise attack failed, Barg grimaced.

“You protected your body in that short time?”

Just as aura is the basic cultivation of swordsmen, skilled swordsmen are also capable of wrapping themselves in a barrier of mana to protect their bodies using the same principle as aura.

Barg had wrapped himself in mana to protect his body at the instant the magic was cast. To be honest, I was surprised. This was a technique that Barg at this point shouldn’t have been able to pull off. He too was undeniably in the category of genius.

“You, you bastard… I will definitely… chew you up piece by piece…”

Barg got up while spewing curses, but his posture was unsteady and the hand holding his long sword was trembling. I let out a small sigh.

“That’s more like it.”

Even though he barely managed to prevent fatal injuries, it seemed he didn’t have the strength to recover from internal injuries.

So the fight that would unfold from now on was closer to a one-sided relationship between a hunter and a wild beast rather than a duel between swordsmen.

“Die!”

Barg swung his sword imbued with aura. I didn’t bother to dodge. I deflected the sword with Benheim’s treasured sword in my right hand and inscribed Kenaz on my left hand to scatter it.

Whoosh!

“Ugh!”

Flames scattered and obscured his vision. Not missing that moment, I rushed in for close combat. I pulled my sword to ride up along the blade of his long sword.

Barg tried to grip harder to not let go of his sword, but that was a mistake. His posture collapsed because of it, and I rammed my shoulder into his defenseless chest.

Barg fell on his backside. He mustered all his strength to raise his left arm gripping the long sword, but with his arm broken, there was nothing more he could do.

“Aaaaah!”

Barg tried to use his long sword as a cane to get up in his fury, but he seemed to lack even the strength to stand anymore and slumped down.

“Cough, cough… huff…”

Barg, who had been breathing heavily, raised his head to look at me.

For the first time, fear was reflected in those eyes.

It was deeply moving. Barg, whom I had regretted not being able to kill in my previous life, was now kneeling before me. Even with an expression of facing the fear of death that he had never shown even once before.

“Wa, wait…”

Before Barg could finish speaking, my sword pierced through his heart.

I don’t know what he was trying to say at the end.

It could have been a plea for his life, or words of curse. Or perhaps it might have been repentance for the evil deeds he had committed.

Whatever it was, my answer was already decided.

“Let’s not see each other even in the next life.”

* * *

“…You guys can come out now.”

Barg was dead. The branch family members who had been hiding among the pile of rocks and the captured children began to poke their heads out one by one.

For some reason, the way they looked at me was clearly different from before.

“What’s wrong?”

“Ah, no… it’s just…”

Brock fidgeted while looking at Barg’s corpse behind me. Was he thinking the corpse might get up and swing a sword?

“Don’t worry. He’s definitely dead.”

“Ah, I know… I saw everything from behind. You stabbing the sword in.”

Only then did I realize that Brock wasn’t looking at the corpse but was being cautious around me. The other branch family mages were the same.

As if looking at an incomprehensible being, their eyes held fear that went beyond awe. Well, these guys had also seen my fight with Barg.

“If you guys have time to be cautious, get ready instead.”

“Wha, what preparation?”

“What do you think will happen when the barrier breaks? All the Black Mages in this den will come rushing at us.”

Instead of listening to Brock’s response, I turned around and approached the crimson rock that Barg had been guarding.

A massive chunk of magic stone that vibrated while emitting a crimson light.

‘Barrier stone.’

An object made by melting dozens of conventional magic stones, condensing them to a high degree, then inscribing special techniques.

It was a treasure that perfectly fit the saying “name your price.”

During my wandering mercenary days, the first spoils of war I would secure after clearing out a Black Mage’s den was precisely this barrier stone.

Just securing one of these meant I could live without worrying about drinking money for half a year.

‘Brings back old memories.’

I narrowed my eyes and peered inside the barrier stone.

Originally, to extract or destroy a barrier stone, you need a special mana detector. If you don’t have a detector, you have to smash this massive rock entirely and recover its fragments.

However, currently no detector was needed. There was no need to break the magic stone chunk. I could see the flow of mana. The vast mana swirling inside the barrier stone and the core where that flow converged to a single point. That was precisely the weak point.

I injected aura into Benheim’s treasured sword. After raising the blade that glowed with blue light, I thrust it down without hesitation. There was no chance of being wrong. I had done this many times before.

Crack.

The sword sank in deeply. The moment it touched the core, a sharp vibration was transmitted to my grip.

The next moment, the rock disappeared as if melting like ice, and at the tip of my sword hung a small gem with a groove carved in it.

“Reagan… is that… the barrier stone?”

“Yeah. With this, the barrier has collapsed.”

The air surrounding us had also changed considerably.

Well, since the location was an abandoned mine, the sensation wasn’t that dramatic.

I fondled the barrier stone while feeling the corrupted mana emanating from within it.

Then suddenly, an idea occurred to me.

‘Could I possibly absorb this?’

Ordinary mages would never attempt to take contaminated mana from barrier stones into their bodies. At best, they’d become crippled; at worst, their entire mana circuits would reverse flow and kill them.

However, that only applies to those with conventional mana cores.

I’m different. I have two mana cores completely separated by a barrier wall, an idea conceived by Renia in my previous life.

If I use one core to purify contamination while continuously circulating my body’s mana circuits with the other, it wouldn’t be impossible to convert contaminated mana into pure mana and absorb it without my body being destroyed.

‘Worth trying later.’

It would be too much right now, but it was definitely worth researching.

I tucked the red core into my chest.

Rumble rumble rumble.

Immediately after, a thunderous roar came from the direction of the passageway we had collapsed when entering.

Crash!

Rocks flew out along with clouds of dust.

What burst through the passageway were black mages wearing black robes. They seemed to have sensed the barrier’s collapse and rushed over in haste.

“How quick of them, the idiots.”

It was utterly ridiculous how they only realized the situation and came running after the barrier had already been destroyed.

“You, you little rats! What intruders are you and where did you come from!”

The Black Mage Leader shouted furiously.

Their numbers totaled twenty.

The black mage who appeared to be their leader was at most 5th Rank. Just as Calus had told me. All the black mages here were nothing but novices.

“So, are you planning to have a go at it?”

I rested my sword on my shoulder and gestured with my hand.

It was a clear sign of provocation, but the black mages couldn’t easily charge at me. I quickly realized why. The black mages’ gazes were fixed on something behind me—Barg’s corpse lying there in a wretched state.

The powerful guard they had trusted implicitly, the self-proclaimed ‘Mercenary King’ Barg, lay dead in a miserable condition. The fear planted in the black mages from this shock was even greater than what the branch family members had felt.

“…B-Barg is dead?”

“Impossible! To such a brat!”

“No. To call him a brat… his level is…”

The Black Mage Leader frowned, seemingly realizing that I had crossed the threshold into 4th Rank.

Fear tends to be contagious. The black mages hesitated and stepped backward.

Finally, unable to bear it any longer, the 5th Rank Black Mage waved his staff and shouted.

“What are you doing! Those guys are just novices! Barg must have been caught off guard! Capture them immediately!”

At his rallying cry like a, the black mages flinched and reorganized their formation.

One of the black mages extended his hand and cast magic. A black sphere-shaped mana bullet silently rushed toward me.

I could have dodged it, but I decided not to.

I stepped forward and swung my sword. The mana bullet was sliced like tofu by the sword strike that cut through the air and vanished.

“…Huh?”

Someone made a stupid sound.

They seemed unable to accept the fact that black magic—a strike containing at least 3rd Rank power—had been futilely blocked by a single sword without even an aura coating.

I slowly walked forward and stood alone before the black mages. Then I raised my sword and drew a line on the ground.

“From now on, if anyone takes even one step beyond this line, whoever it is will end up like that mercenary behind me.”

Of course, it was a bluff.

I didn’t have the luxury of facing that many at once.

However, I wasn’t alone. There were the branch family mages.

And most importantly…

——Crash!

The ceiling collapsed and massive rocks poured down onto the black mages’ heads.

“Aaaaah!”

Their formation crumbled amid screams.

Light poured in through the gaps in the collapsed ceiling.

Silhouetted against that light, dozens of people jumped down. There was no falling. Magic-slowed gravity caught their shoulders.

The man who finally landed on the common floor, Valen Wirth von Benheim, smiled so widely his eyes crinkled and asked.

“Am I late?”

“Your timing is perfect.”

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