Reincarnated as a Sword Vol. 2

by Yuu Tanaka

  Fran’s stomach was the most accurate timepiece we had.

  Let’s set up camp here. Do you want me to make a table?

  I could easily fashion some basic chairs and tables using Earth Magic.

  Fran shook her head, however, and pointed straight ahead.

  “I wanna eat there.”

  She was pointing at a large boulder, on top of which we would be able to look at some nice scenery.

  “Mm! It’s so good.”

  Fran stuffed her cheeks with curry as she sat on top of the three-meter-high rock. She gazed at the surrounding scenery as she dangled her feet playfully.

  She never had the chance to enjoy the sights around her when she was a slave. The scenery was a new and enjoyable novelty to her.

  I would show her even more sights from here on out.

  After her meal, Fran laid on the rock and relaxed. She set me beside her, and we watched the sky together. Clouds rolled slowly past us overhead, and we took pleasure in this quiet moment together. After a good thirty minutes, we were on the road again, riding Jet since he was already at full mana.

  Our surroundings began to change after two days of travel.

  The forests thinned out and eventually disappeared, replaced with wide open grasslands. Unlike the Direwolf Plains, however, there were more rocks and boulders in addition to the savannah-like brush. It actually looked quite barren.

  The change in scenery underlined how far we were from Alessa. Jet sure could travel fast.

  I considered summoning another Direwolf to switch places with Jet when he got tired but… I couldn’t. That is, I couldn’t summon any more Direwolves. When I looked at my summon list, they were all greyed out. I guessed that I was out of vessels.

  I didn’t look into it too much at the Guild’s Reference Room but you needed something called a ‘vessel’ to form contracts with summoned monsters. A monster’s ‘capacity’ determined its strength. A ‘vessel’ was just that: a vessel. ‘Capacity’ could be thought of as water that would fill a vessel. Stronger monsters needed bigger vessels to accommodate their capacity. When a vessel was full, you wouldn’t be able to form contracts with additional monsters.

  Jet was a Unique C-Rank Threat. It made sense that summoning him was enough to fill up my vessel to the max.

  I guess we’ll just have to rely on you for now, Jet.

  “Woof!”

  I didn’t need Telepathy to understand Jet’s bark. He was saying that we could count on him. I was so blessed to have such a motivated pet!

  I would have to fluff him up later (with Telekinesis, of course).

  I looked up at the sky and saw something which made me gasp with surprise.

  Whoa! Wh-what the hell is that?!

  “Hm?”

  That thing over there!

  It was difficult to point without fingers. I had to telekinetically tilt Fran’s head towards the sky so she could see what I saw.

  “Which one?”

  The thing next to that cloud!

  “That’s a Sky Isle.”

  Sky Isle? That’s straight out of a fantasy novel!

  It was an island suspended in the open sky. A Studio Ghibli fan would freak out at the mere sight of it. Then again, so would any fan of fantasy fiction.

  So why was Fran so calm about this island in the sky?

  Just looking at the floating isle filled me with great excitement! How did anybody get there? Did inhabitants use a stone imbued with flying powers? Maybe a bit of Wind Magic would do the trick. Perhaps some other fantastical method was necessary. I wanted to see what was on there!

  Saaaay… are those commonplace here?

  Fran wasn’t the least bit surprised, so I thought they were as common as regular islands in this world.

  “Hm. You see them from time to time.”

  Really!

  I had no idea! In the two months of inhabiting this world I didn’t even think there was such a wonderful place!

  Wait a second, if these floating islands were commonplace here, there might be an easy way to get there.

  I wanna go there!

  “Not happening.”

  Huh, why not?

  “Too high up.”

  We needed some special magical gear to even get to that altitude, the price of which was appropriately sky-high. Fran didn’t know the details, but going there was too expensive for regular tourism. It reminded me of space tourism in my previous life.

  But I still wanted to go!

  Is there no other way?

  “I heard stories of mages flying there on their own.”

  I see.

  Well, what if we used Jet’s Air Hike? It would take all his effort, but maybe…

  How about it, Jet?

  Jet whined sadly and flopped his ears. I guess that wouldn’t work. The island was way up in the sky and he wouldn’t have enough mana.

  What if we just used Float to get there? No. I just remembered that Float had an altitude limit; you stopped ascending after a certain point. Even if I were to break through it with Telekinesis, I still wouldn’t be able to maintain my altitude. At best, it would soften my eventual crash to the earth.

  Do you think I can reach it with Telekinesis?

  It would be possible if I were the only one flying up there.

  “No fair, Teacher.”

  What?

  “I wanna go, too.”

  You do?

  “Of course.”

  “Bark!”

  “No leaving us behind.”

  And then I understood: Fran was used to seeing the floating isles from the ground, but she wanted to see what it was like up there. All of us would have to go.

  Wait a second. I got it!

  All right, let’s try something out.

  I flew out of my sheath and hovered in front of Fran, the flat side of my blade facing the ground.

  Hop on!

  “You want me to what?”

  It’s called surfing—not that you’d know, I guess. Anyway, try standing on me.

  “Okay…”

  Fran carefully stepped on to my blade and distributed her weight.

  “You all right?”

  Yep. It’d make things easier for me if you activated Float, too, and use Air Current Manipulation so the wind wouldn’t knock you off balance.

  “Got it.”

  Jet, you lurk in Fran’s shadow.

  “Woof!”

  I used Float and Telekinesis and levitated upwards. Fran rode me like some kind of metal surfboard.

  “Ooh, we’re flying.”

  It worked! I called it the Telekinetic Air Ride!

  I moved horizontally to start. I had telekinetically reinforced Fran’s feet to my blade so she was doing alright. I slowly accelerated, moving up, down, left, and right.

  No problems so far.

  Fran was getting used to balancing herself on top of me. There was no danger of her falling off me now if she leaned in any direction.

  Buckle in.

  “Yeah!”

  “Let’s go!”

  I ascended through the sky, drawing an imaginary spiral staircase as my path. No amount of Telekinesis could help Fran if I went fully vertical; it would knock her straight off.

  “Wow. Teacher, this is great.”

  Fran looked to be enjoying herself as she surfed through the air currents. I looked down to see that we were gaining more and more distance from the earth. I can’t help but cry out.

  Woohoo!

  It worked! We were closing in on the floating island. What was once a black dot from the ground grew to the size of a fist as we flew closer. It looked like we were going to break through the high clouds soon, but the Sky Island was located even farther up.

  The foundation of the island was plain old rock. Although seeing the bottom peek out of the clouds like that was enough to intimidate the wariest traveler. I couldn’t wait to see what was up there!

  Wait, what? Where did the wind go?

  A strange feeling ov
ertook me as we got close to the island. It felt like we had pierced through a thin membrane of magic. The raging winds had come to a halt; proof that I wasn’t just imagining things.

  I looked around, anxious to see if I could find the cause of this phenomenon.

  “Teacher.”

  What is it?

  “There.”

  Hm? Whoa! What is that?!

  Fran pointed towards the anomaly.

  A Skeleton Knight was flying through the air.

  I couldn’t believe my eyes either, at first. But the sight of the armor-clad skeleton, riding through the sky on his skeleton horse, wouldn’t go away.

  “It looks like it’s leaving the island.”

  Was the Skeleton Knight the island’s guardian?

  It charged downwards towards us from the floating isle.

  He’s coming for us, isn’t he?

  The skeleton let out a rattling cackle as if in response.

  Seriously?!

  He drew his sword and started slashing.

  Urgh!

  I managed to dodge his attack, but the bone knight wasn’t stopping. He turned around on his skeletal steed and continued his assault.

  I could only dodge while in surfblade mode!

  Fran, fire off some spells at him!

  “Fire Arrow!”

  “Kaaah!” the Skeleton Knight shrieked.

  What the hell?! He deflected Fire Arrow with a bat of his hand! I had suspected this was no ordinary skeleton, but he was far stronger than I thought. He had an excellent sword arm as well. It’d be dangerous for us to keep fighting here!

  Come out, Jet!

  “Bark!”

  Fran, get on him!

  Fran hopped off my blade and onto Jet’s back. Now we could fight back! Still, Jet couldn’t use Air Hike forever. We would have to settle this while Jet had mana to spare.

  We took to offense, and slashed away at the Skeleton Knight, but his guard proved too tough to penetrate. True to his name, he was an expert horseback fighter.

  “Teacher, I have an idea. Distract him for me.”

  All right. Flare Blast!

  “Grrr!”

  “Kah!”

  Fran slashed at the skeleton knight as he was distracted by Jet and my spells.

  “Kah?”

  Fran had fought awkwardly while riding Jet so she jumped off him and took the fight to the bone rider. Every time they clashed swords she would use Air Hike to regain her footing and try again. She fought like she was on solid ground. Even the Skeleton Knight found Fran’s barrage difficult to keep up with. She finally landed a hit on him.

  Yes!

  Unfortunately, her long awaited direct hit connected with the Skeleton Knight’s yellow plate mail. Her deep slash which would’ve left a deep gash in a fight with a human opponent was only rewarded with a hole in the skeleton’s armor.

  “Kukakaka!”

  Dammit! Keep going!

  “Yeah!”

  They clashed swords again. The skeleton steed proved to be more dangerous than I thought. One wrong move could lead to a devastating counterattack. The undead felt no pain, either. No matter how many times we cut them open, they wouldn’t care about it the way ordinary organics would.

  To make matters worse, the bone rider and his steed wasn’t our only problem.

  “Aroo…”

  Shit! Fran, get on me!

  I cried out frantically, noticing that something was wrong with Jet.

  “Hm?”

  Come on!

  Jet’s mana was nearly depleted. Letting Fran ride him while fighting in the air by constantly using Air Hike had proven too much for him. The drain on his mana was far greater than we thought.

  Jet had shrunk to the point that Fran was able to hold him. She caught him, and sat him on top of me.

  Jet, you can go back to Fran’s shadow now.

  Jet retreated to Fran’s shadow with an exhausted whine. I hoped he would be alright.

  “Kukakaka!”

  God, you’re persistent!

  I looked for a path to get past the bone knight and his steed but it was impossible. Even if I could, it wouldn’t take long for them to catch up. As we carried out our deadly game of aerial tag, I eventually ran out of mana, too.

  It was difficult for me to fly with Fran on top of me. The load was different compared to overcharging myself with mana and exploding into Telekinetic Catapult, but it was a load all the same.

  We had only been flying for a total of fifteen minutes, and that included training time. Even if we forced ourselves to fight the Skeleton Knight our time in the air was nonexistent.

  If we got out of this in one piece, we’d at least get a new mode of transportation out of it. We could go pretty fast, and we could bypass dangerous obstacles. It was a perfect getaway car.

  Sorry about this, Fran!

  The Skeleton Knight pursued us as we began our descent and slashed at us with his sword.

  “Kuh!”

  We were able to deflect his sword in time but as a result it blew Fran away. She sped to the ground in a nosedive.

  The Skeleton Knight ceased his pursuit once we had gained enough distance from the floating island. He really was a guardian appointed to annihilate all who entered the island’s vicinity.

  He watched us quietly as we fell to the earth.

  It was a good thing he didn’t gave chase, but the floating island was currently off-limits to us.

  “Too bad.”

  Dammit! We’ll get there someday, I’ll show you! That’s right, I’m talking to you, bonehead! I screamed at the undead knight as we fell through the sky.

  “We’ll win someday.”

  Soon, the floating island and its guardian were nowhere in sight.

  We weren’t out of the woods, though. We lost the Skeleton Knight, but now the ground was growing closer and closer. Jet and I were both out of mana, and Fran was our only ticket out of this mess.

  Fran, I’m counting on you!

  “Got it.”

  We should be all right if she used Float to slow us down and Air Hike just before she hit the ground to soften our landing.

  If only it were that easy.

  Why is there a house in the middle of nowhere?!

  There was a cottage erected in the middle of this wilderness. It looked as ordinary as the houses in Alessa.

  I still had a bad feeling about it. Why would that be?

  “We’re gonna crash.”

  Now was not the time to think about that!

  F-F-Fran, can you move around it somehow?

  Our current trajectory would make us land us squarely through the middle of the house’s rooftop. Fran shook her head during our descent.

  “There’s too much momentum. I can’t stop.”

  We fell from too high an altitude for Float to be of any use to us.

  Seriously?!

  “Haa!”

  Fran perfectly timed Air Hike just inches away from the rooftop. She couldn’t nullify the momentum though, and we crashed through it, anyway.

  You all right, Fran?

  “Yeah… I’m good.”

  Heal.

  “Thanks.”

  Thank god she was okay. We really made a mess this time, though!

  I looked up at the hole our crash had left behind. I looked around the interior of the house and finally realized the reason behind my earlier feeling of unease.

  There are no windows in this place.

  That’s right. There wasn’t a single source of external light in this house; the hole in the rooftop was now our only light source. It didn’t look like a good place for someone to live in…

  The interior was strange as well. There was no flooring in this house; the floor instead being exposed earth. The ground was tended to, as well. Grass grew at regular intervals to the height of a man’s hips. This place was some sort of grow house, not abandoned property.

  Was this grass really able to grow in complete darkness, though? Remembering how s
ome plants could be cultivated with similar methods back on Earth, I supposed it wasn’t completely out of the question… The leaves of the plants were green with red splotches; the mere look of it spelled poisonous. Very suspicious, indeed. I wonder if they were used in some kind of drug.

  Fran, do you feel funny or anything?

  “I’m fine.”

  She fell right in the thick of the grass, after all. Her face had blotches of purple sap, and it was easy to imagine the stuff getting into her system through the scratches all over her body.

  I identified the plant to discover that it was called Necroweed. It wasn’t poisonous, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

  We made quite a mess of the indoor garden, though, and we weren’t sure what to make of it. We had stumbled upon an indoor plantation after crashing through the roof of this shack. I didn’t know if anyone lived here at the moment but—

  No, I feel it… Someone’s here.

  “Hm? Where?”

  There was a faint presence coming from a corner of the room. We turned to it, and saw a man standing there in tattered gray robes.

  We instinctively took to our battle positions the moment we saw his silhouette.

  Fran!

  “Hm!”

  Fran readied me in her heads, while Jet leapt out of her shadow to follow suit.

  “Awooo!” Jet crouched, ready to pounce. We were ready to settle this in one strike. No quarter.

  Aim for the torso. That’s where a Skeleton’s crystal is!

  “I’ll finish this in one strike.”

  Our opponent was no human. A bleached white skull peeked out of the hood. It was a Skeleton. What a monster was doing in someone’s house, I had no idea, but it was better to end him before he could get the jump on us.

  What was with all the undead today?!

  Don’t let your guard down! Remember what happened with the Skeleton Knight!

  “Hm!”

  Fran made a great leap forward and swung me. Jet followed suit, a trail of darkness following him as he pounced.

  The Skeleton tried to move out of the way but it was too late. Struggle all you want, undead scum, it’s no use!

  But none of us could predict what the creature would do next.

  The skeleton didn’t draw his sword, or start casting spells, or even make any attempt to dodge. Instead, it curled up into a ball and covered its head.

  “Hyaaa! P-please, spare me!”

  Wait, what?

  Wait! Fran, Jet, stop!