Reincarnation of the Sword Master - Chapter 19

Chapter 19 – Unintended Opportunities
Translated by : betterdays
Proofread by : ch17175

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Asher twisted his arm mid-air. The sword in his hand drew an arc and stabbed at his opponent’s neck. Reika tilted her sword in trajectory, blocked Asher’s stab, and hit it away. Asher ducked and avoided her then flurry of blows that followed directly after. As Reika concentrated on trying to land a blow on him, he turned his body low and kicked out with his leg, sweeping her balance underneath her.

“Ugh.”

Reika took a step back with a dull and trembling pain in her ankle that was hit. She grit her teeth fiercely, holding back the pain and gripped her sword tightly. Then, her sword shook and split into several images in a blur as they shot out at Asher.

“Whoa.”

Asher took in a deep breath and adjusted his footwork and stance to the basics of Imperial Swordsmanship. Avoiding with minimal movement and narrowing the gap, he dug and swung the sword wide in an arc. The several images of swords vanished, and all that was left was the frightened expression of Reika panting with her sword in tow.

“And…this is the end.”

Asher swung the sword with one hand, grabbed Reika by the shoulder with the other hand, and hooked her foot. She groaned as she collapsed onto the ground.

“I lost again…”

“You’ve gotten used to it.”

Asher held her hand with a smile. It was not a smooth hand due to the numerous callouses from practicing so much swordsmanship, unlike any aristocratic daughter’s hand.

“I’d like to win at least once.”

Reika groaned. Her face was scratched up and had dirt all over her clothes, but showed zero discomfort with it. Asher picked up her sword for her while thinking to himself.

“It’s been a year since I started learning from you, right?”

“The same goes for me.”

Asher shrugged his shoulders at Reika’s grumbling words. From her point of view, yes, she had a point to be upset about. However, his experience and efforts had been decades, not just one year.

“Well, it won’t all change in a mere day or two. There’s nothing to despair about for right now. You’re right where you need to be.”

Reika had been swinging the sword with a loud and powerful sound, yet with a much firmer and compressed grip. Asher glanced at her.

It was quite different from when he had first been teaching her. Although she was still young, her beauty had been gradually becoming, more and more apparent. And it seemed that in just two years or so, Asher predicted that every man who she would walk past, would definitely turn their heads back around and stare at her.

“It’s already been a year…”

Many things had happened after he had reincarnated, and a year had passed. He had turned eighteen and Reika had turned fifteen.
(T/N : Wtf finally get an age here that’s substantial.)

“A year? Oh, you mean when you lost your memory?”

“Yes, time flies by doesn’t it?”

“You’re right, I think I’m just rather slow on the uptake”

From Reika’s point of view, too many things to keep track of had happened. To think Asher would lose his memory one day, suddenly show a monstrous talent for the sword, be asked to become the disciple of a Swordmaster… but to even reject an apprenticeship from that very Swordmaster! There were a lot of things that had happened over the course of the past year.

“The sense of time varies from person to person. Anyways, Reika….”

“Yes?”

Reika corrected her posture. Asher had been teaching her for over the course of the year, and had been correcting her shortcomings as well as growing her strengths properly.

“Your swordsmanship is about at the halfway mark to becoming completely mastered. The downside is the rest of the mastery over it will be more of a… personal problem for you, but I can’t do anything about that. You basically, tend to be too wary in general, when fighting. The opponent doesn’t know anything and everything about you as a swordsman, Reika. With Lepenia’s swordsmanship, it’s meant to be aggressive. Not to be submissive in nature is how the swordsmanship is meant to thrive as a high-tiered swordsmanship.”

“Even… if you want me to be bold, you aren’t bold yourself with your swordsmanship either.”

Reika looked at Asher with an ambiguous face. Her swordsmanship and mentality when sparring with the sword was Asher. That meant her habits stemmed from Asher’s own style of swordsmanship.

“You know almost everything it seems when it comes to the sword Asher. When to approach, when to recede, when to parry. It’s like you have the perfect answer for every scenario possible. It’s hard not to want to be like that.”

“You can’t set me as a reference point. You and I had a lot of duels and you should know the imperial swordsmanship is completely different from Lepenia’s in nature and is a reactive style of swordsmanship.”

Asher cracked a smile. Their tempo was incredible. Asher could count at least 300 different sets of variations the two of them had mastered over each other’s swordsmanship from the past year of practice.

“I can’t even think of how many variations we have developed together. I can’t wait to apply this against other people.”

“It’s because you’re still immature. But you’re still developing pretty well. To be honest, I didn’t know it would be this fast even for someone as talented as you.”

The pace of Reika’s growth for the past year had been… questionable. Even if he compared her to others of the past century, even counting his first life, he didn’t think there was anyone in the same realm of growth and talent as her.

“And I heard you beat Charon a few days ago.”

“Oh, I did.”

When Charon was defeated by Reika, his face looked quite funny. Reika said in a way that it had happened, but it was never going to be taken as well as she had pictured it in her own head. Charon was a well-known knight in the empire.

A knight of such ability who would be greatly pleased if he swore loyalty to someone, but to lose to their daughter who had only been learning under someone the knight disdained? And be defeated by that same daughter in less than a year of her picking up a sword?

If anybody had heard of this story, Charon would be ashamed and try to lie that it never happened.

‘This is real talent, no matter how you look at it.’

The absolute power that could trample on time and effort with ease.

He was amazed, and Asher was slowly coming to terms with it. Although he wasn’t losing to her now. The story would most definitely change in a couple years.

Once upon a time, he too was jealous of such a thing. But, he had given up on it. He knew even in this life he didn’t have such “talent” but, it would never change the fact that he would still swing his sword with diligence.

“Hmm.”

Asher remembered those times and smiled bitterly. It wasn’t a very interesting story really.

It was just funny to him how childish he was back then, and how childish he still was about certain things regarding talent.

“But, I don’t understand Asher.”

Reika glanced at Asher. She had been training with him for the past year but still didn’t understand Asher in one aspect.

“…why do you have so many muscles?”

“Personal reasons.”

“Yea sure….”

Asher’s body was so muscular that it could not be seen as an average 18-year-old’s body. It wasn’t overly bloated to the point of being disgusting or huge, but the muscles were developed in every area of the body down to the most minute of details and to every small and miniscule muscle being worked out an even amount as the others.

It was literally an ideal body in every sense of the word. Asher pressed his arm muscle, he felt a firm and elastic stretchiness to his body..

“It’s also just for training, you do realize that.”

“That’s still a little too much.”

Even In his previous life, he did not gain this much muscle mass. No. it was about the same, but it was not nearly as evenly distributed and was more bulky back then. However, Asher’s body had never been toned with only a year of training back then. His body had taken years of work to get to where it was back then, and yet he had reached a more ‘ideal and perfect’ state if you will.

‘Is it because of this strange power?’

It was definitely not aura. It looked similar, and had similar effects in terms of power to some degree. But… it was far more destructive and transcended human reason at the expense of mere stamina. It was a ridiculous power in reality. The only reason Asher saw it as ridiculous, was because even if he fought against swordmasters with this power, he felt like he could definitely defeat them with it in his prime.

“Oh, come to think of it, I’ll definitely get the answer out of you this time.”

Reika suddenly pressed her face closer to Asher’s with a straight face. It came close enough for them to feel each other’s warm breath. Asher slightly took a step back in embarrassment.

“What…”

“Half a year ago. What did you do to my brother?”

“Ah.”

Asher smiled awkwardly. Reika frowned.

“Don’t try to brush it off again. What the hell did you do to make him so calm all of a sudden?”

When Asher left to meet Luke, Reika couldn’t calm down that night. She knew what was going to happen. No. She thought she did. However, the next day Luke and Asher returned, Luke was quiet. No.. not just quiet.

He didn’t even go outside. He was either stuck in his castle and studied, or he was stuck in his room like a dead rat. Then, whenever he saw Asher from time to time, he ran away scared like a prey in front of it’s natural predator.

Her parents and the other employees of the estate had smiled at this development and thought Luke had finally come to his senses, but Reika knew it wasn’t like that.

Luke was afraid of Asher. To the point where Luke was frightened to be even seen by Asher.

“It’s not bad though. For both you and for all of the Halvark Territory residents”

“What about you?”

“Do I have to pay attention to that?”

Asher said with a gentle smile. The smile made Reika flinch.

“If I hadn’t talked to him, he’d definitely be more aggressive. Then one of us would be dead. Isn’t this for the best?”

“…….”

Reika bit her lips. She wanted to refute it, but there were no proper words that could come out of her mouth.

“I can’t make a world where everyone is happy.”

That was the work of heroes. And Asher was no hero. Discarding the useless thoughts he had, he turned around and spoke.

“How’s the land these days? Is everything going well for you?”

“Well.”

Reika frowned slightly.

“Something’s wrong with my parents.”

***

“Is Luke still here today?”

“Yes.”

Charon nodded at Lord Halvark’s question. Lord Halvark sighed.

“I can’t believe he hasn’t been outside for over half a year.”

Luke changed about half a year ago. After the incident with Asher, he had locked himself in a room and didn’t come out. He even had all his meals in his room.

But Lord Halvark didn’t give a shit about Luke.

“I never would have thought it was Motorola.”

The Lord was also the village administrator. He already knew that something had entered his estate without permission. He had just been leaving them alone because he didn’t know who they were or what their intentions were at first.

But it was terrible. It was the Motorola Guild of Assassins. They were every Lord’s worst nightmare to have entered into a territory. Lord Halvark rubbed his temples lightly

“Luke, that fucking idiot.”

“If he did something wrong, the whole estate would have been in danger.”

“Thinking about it, I’m sure it’s okay since it looks like he’s found a sense of self-reflection. He’s going to be the Lord one day, anyways. He will have to go through things like this or even worse someday, right? “

Lord Halvark glanced at Charon.

“Have you ever fought with Motorola?”, Lord Halvark asked Charon with an inquisitive look.

“I did a long time ago when I was journeying the continent.”

“How was it?”

“…they were anomalous, dangerous and radical people. The villages and areas where they settled collapsed because of their influence dirtying the overall population and atmosphere.”

Lord Halvark smiled bitterly at Charon’s words. If it had not been solved and nipped in the bud quickly, the Halvark Estate could have ended up the same way.

“I must thank Asher.”

“…what the hell is he really?”

“Even I don’t know sometimes, Charon.”

Asher had changed too suddenly. His personality, his moral values, his sword skills. Except for his appearance, it was safe to call him someone entirely different.

Besides, not any normal person could kill over 10 Motorola assassins on their own. Both Lord Halvark and Charon both knew how difficult of a task that would be. It was… too peculiar.

“Hm… I don’t know either.”

Charon murmured.

“No matter how much the Swordmaster had taught him…. It’s just not something I can fathom.”

“I feel the same way too.”

Lord Halvark didn’t trust Asher just yet either.

“…It’s too radical. Hm…It’s definitely as if… he’s someone else.”

Charon lifted his head slightly at Lord Halvark’s strange murmur.

“Do you think he’s a demon spawn?”

“No, it doesn’t make sense… but I suppose I can’t exactly still rule it out completely.”

“The Swordmaster denied it himself though.”

Charon was a top-notch knight and a very devoted swordsman. To him, Van Ester was a legendary hero. It was impossible for Van Ester to be wrong in his eyes.

But Lord Halvark was an aristocrat, an administrator and fought on political battlefields, not real ones.

“Swordmasters are human beings as well. It’s not like they would know everything, no matter how great their glory is, there are definitely some things that even they will acknowledge, they don’t know.”

Lord Halvark laughed out loud.

“Could you believe that Asher was reincarnated?”

“…….”

Charon was silent. They both knew the kind of person Asher was from the past. Therefore, he couldn’t possibly trust the current Asher.

“I mean it’s just a light joke. But.. I still don’t understand just what his goals are.”

Lord Halvark stroked his chin. Charon opened her mouth after much deliberation.

“I don’t think he’s hostile to us at the very least.”

“Yes, there have been many opportunities to strike at us in the back, but he didn’t move to harm us at all, and rather…they helped us. So we’ll need some kind of… opportunity persay, to be sure. And it just so happens that I have that very opportunity.”

“What do you mean… ? Oh!”

Charon burst into exclamation. Lord Halvark spoke with a pensive expression, furrowing his brows.

“It’s an unintended opportunity for certain.”, Charon added.

‘…I mean it’s a strategy if anything.’