Reincarnated as a Sword Vol. 2

by Yuu Tanaka

  Her Contract status caught my eye again. It had “(Swordmaster)” on it now. The sword probably referred to me, but I wondered what had changed. Did we happen to trigger a clause in the unwritten contract? If we did, Fran and I had no knowledge of it.

  We didn’t know how we even entered into a contract with each other. It was a real mystery. Jean said that we were glowing a blue light during the Lich fight, but we couldn’t figure out a way to reproduce it.

  And try to reproduce it we did. Fran and I tried releasing the same amount of mana at the same time, we tried focusing our minds together, nothing seemed to work.

  “Activate Contract!”

  No, not even shouting out the purported skill name. We didn’t glow blue even for an instant.

  Well, no matter. I would just have to monitor it for any changes from here on out.

  There was something about Fran’s level, too. Thanks to Heavensight, I was able to glean more information from Fran’s status screen. It read 33/45 so I guess 45 was her cap. Maybe she would evolve when she hit Level 45 which wasn’t that far off. This was great news. Our next goal would be to aim for Level 45.

  Then came Jet. He had been at Level 1 when he went in, and had gained ten extra levels in the process. His raw stats had already surpassed Fran’s. Compared to Jet, Fran was slower to level up since she only gained eight extra levels, but then, Jet was at a lower level compared to her.

  Name: Jet (Darkness Wolf)

  Race: Direwolf

  Level: 11/50

  HP: 600; Magic: 731; Strength: 301; Agility: 369

  Skills: Shadow Resistance 8; Shadow Magic 2; Heightened Senses 10; Stealth 7; Fang Arts 5; Fang Mastery 6; Shadow Lurk 10; Shadow Walk 5; Air Hike 8; Fear 4; Vigilance 6; Conceal Presence 6; Regeneration 5; Deadly Venom Magic 1; Flash Step 5; Hush 6; Necromancy 5; Life Sense 7; Mental Resistance 6; Poison Magic 10; Echolocation 7; Roar 8; Nightshade 10; Dark Magic 10; Nightvision; Toxic Fang; Health Regen; Mana Regen; Nullify Poison; Shapeshift; Mana Manipulation

  Unique Skill: Predator

  Titles: Sword Clan; Great Wolf Clan

  I could see what Sword Clan and Great Wolf Clan were now that my Identify was at a higher level.

  Sword Clan: A title bestowed unto those summoned by a special sword as a minion. Effects: Direct link with the Sword and its User.

  Great Wolf Clan: A title bestowed unto those upon whom the Great Wolf’s power rests. Effects: Intimidates lesser wolves. Direct link with the Great Wolf.

  Sword Clan was easy enough to understand, but what was the deal with Great Wolf Clan? I guess I did have a wolf crest on my guard, and I did originally hail from the Demon Wolf’s Garden. Maybe me and this Fenrir were connected somehow.

  Not that I knew how…

  I would really like to go back to the Garden at some point. We would need to get stronger since B-Rank monsters had made it their home.

  Now to look at our skills.

  Rapid Processing and Dual Mind seemed the most useful. As its name implied, Rapid Processing allowed me to speed up my thinking. It would come in handy in the heat of battle. Dual Mind amplified the effects of Rapid Processing. As the advanced form of Split Thinking it allowed me to think four, even five, thoughts at the same time. Which means I should be able to cast up to five spells at once, as if Split Thinking wasn’t powerful enough already. Pulled off right, I should be able to inflict some serious damage.

  Fran couldn’t get the hang of using it, however. Split Thinking was already giving her a hard time and its advanced form was even worse. Using it immediately gave her a migraine.

  “My head hurts.”

  I guess it’s hard for flesh and blood to use.

  I then tried Transform Shape. P.A. had shown me lots of applications for this skill, so I was frustrated when I just couldn’t get it to work. I tried transforming into a steel string, and then plate armor, but all I could come up with were inferior copies of what the P.A. had used. I needed more practice to get the shape I wanted. As it stood, I only had the Greatsword, Dagger, and Estoc forms down.

  Time to move on to Spacetime Magic. It really was as strong as we thought from our experimentation. We had already seen Dimension Shift, Quick Zone, and Dimension Jump, but there were also offense-oriented spells such as Dimension Sword, and the defense-oriented Slow Shield. There were a myriad of spells all with their own little quirks. The effects of the spells were best understood by casting and observing them. Without the requisite knowledge of Spacetime Magic, you wouldn’t be able to tell what half of these spells did by looking at their names.

  All that was left now were the skills that the P.A. had deleted. Honestly, I wouldn’t be able to know what was missing and what was left, either. I thought it best to look at the consolidated skills to start off.

  The two Battle Mastery skills created from the compounding were Sword King Mastery Earth 7 and Martial King Mastery Earth 1.

  Sword King Earth 7 was made of Curved Sword Mastery 1, Advanced Sword Mastery 5, Sword Mastery 10, Twinblade Mastery 2, Greatsword Mastery 1, Short Sword Mastery 1, and Dagger Mastery 1. Martial King Mastery Earth 1 was made of Punch Mastery 3, Kick Mastery 1, and Martial Arts 3.

  Compounding Sword Arts and Martial Arts created Sword King Arts Earth 6, Martial Master Arts Earth 1. I learned from Jean that there were many such Sword King Mastery and Sword King Arts skills. They were the cream of the crop of mastery skills, but my version was nowhere near as powerful as the one the P.A. exhibited.

  After some more digging, I discovered that Sword King Arts Earth 7 was roughly equal in ability to Advanced Sword Mastery 5. I was worried about the skill level going down but was relieved to find it intact.

  I looked into some other Compound Skills.

  Somatic Manipulation: used to boost the capabilities of the user’s body. Aside from being a straight status buff, it also allows the user to increase her flexibility and regenerative capacity. Created by combining Brute Strength and Regeneration.

  Omnidirectional Radar 3: created from combining various Detection skills. It works in all directions as well as being much more accurate.

  Being Sense 3: created from combining various Sense skills. Allows the user to detect even invisible objects such as heat and infrared beams.

  Covert Stealth 3: created from combining Stealth and Conceal Presence. Eliminates your mana and heat signatures aside from your presence.

  This was going to come in handy.

  Lordship 3: created from combining Pressure 1, Intimidate 2, Command 1, Raise Morale 1, Ambition 1, Panic 1, Roar 1, and Cooperation 5 to unlock it. A complex form of intimidating the enemy while giving a boost to allies.

  Abnormal Status Resistance 6, Mental Abnormal Status Resistance 4, Magic Resistance 4. These were clear-cut. The three skills were an amalgam of skills such as Poison Resistance, Fear Resistance, and Flame Resistance. The other Resistance skills were Shadow Immunity, Control Immunity, and Physical Resistance 1. These were the ones which couldn’t be amalgamated with the previous three skills.

  Water Manipulation 4: a skill which allowed you to manipulate surrounding bodies of water. Had the ability to shoot water bullets and water current manipulation. Included Swimming and Underwater Breathing.

  Wind Manipulation 2: The wind version of Water Manipulation. Has the ability to fire air bullets and compressed air. It allows for ultrasonic attacks and the manipulation of soundwaves. Also includes Air Hike and Weather Forecast.

  Poison Manipulation 2: a combination of Breathe Poison, Drain Poison, and Generate Poison.

  Water, Wind, and Poison Manipulation were all incredibly versatile but difficult to control. They also came with a high mana cost. You were better off using straight magic to cure a deadly poison than Poison Manipulation. It was going to be difficult to use the component skills of the Manipulate tree. To take Air Hike as an example, it cost more mana per cast and the number of steps we could jump had been reduced by half. We were going to have to get used to this, fast.

  Kill
Master: created from Orc Killer and Goblin Killer. Increases damage output to all monsters.

  However, the damage points doled out overall were lower compared to its more specific cousins.

  Strengthen Body: created from skills such as Night Vision and Enhanced Digestion, it significantly increases the user’s stats.

  I was incredulous at how Fran’s stats had plummeted after taking this off.

  That was about the gist of the Compound Skills. The skills were stronger, but became much more difficult to control. I didn’t know what was going to happen if I got a copy of one of my old skills. If I got Sword Mastery, would it create a new Sword Mastery or be absorbed into Sword King Mastery Earth?

  As for the missing skills… I honestly couldn’t tell. The skills the P.A. had deleted were skills I found useless in the first place. The Battle skills were the easiest to notice. Bow Mastery, Spear Mastery, and my then newly acquired Advanced Spear Mastery and Advanced Spear Arts were all gone.

  I was a sword, after all, so I had no intention of ever using them. We couldn’t know at the time if we were ever going to use it at all, as much as it pained my collector’s soul to say it! Still, I understood the necessity of deleting those skills on that day to convert them into EP. It was an unavoidable sacrifice, and I took comfort in saying that to myself.

  There were also absolutely useless skills like Eggshell Mimicry, which allowed eggs you laid to mimic the color of their surroundings, and Enhanced Scales, which increased the toughness of one’s scales. Joining the cast of useless skills were Choir and Painting which had been promptly deleted. They were all quite worthless so I didn’t feel bad about losing them. We got to escape with our lives at least.

  I might have even forgotten that some of the deleted skills were even in my repertoire, not that I could confirm it.

  Now, all that were left were the Superior Skills.

  Skill Taker SP: Choose any skill from a target and steal it. Has a one hundred percent chance of success. Cooldown determined by a skill’s rarity multiplied by skill level in days. Extra Skills count as rarity 20. Effective range is ten meters.

  It could steal Extra Skills now! The world was now my oyster! On the flip side, the cooldown time had been increased by several magnitudes. Stealing a maxed out Extra Skill would have me wait two hundred days before I could use Skill Taker SP again. I would have to be more careful with its usage. It looks like I could use it against the same target over and over again, too, not that I could imagine the chance to do so would arise.

  Finally, we came to Complex Doppelganger SP.

  Complex Doppelganger SP: Use mana to create multiple copies of oneself. The shorter the duration time, the stronger the copies will be. The more copies you create, the weaker each copy will be. Cooldown is determined by duration time multiplied by twenty four hours multiplied by number of copies.

  So I sacrificed firepower in exchange for quantity of clones. Creating one clone of myself with a timer of five minutes gave it 200 in each stat and 3 to all skills. If it were an adventurer, it would be a D-Rank. Creating more would reduce the stats even more…? I suppose the clones the P.A created were much stronger thanks to Unleash Power.

  And that’s about it. We would need time to practice all of our new skills. Their strength would be determined by our finesse.

  I went back to the house and found Bernard looking for me.

  Jean wanted to see me.

  We went to his bedroom and found him sitting up on his bed, Stefan’s diary lying on his lap.

  “You’re here, young Teacher.”

  Have you finished reading it?

  “Yes. Now it’s your turn.”

  Jean was strangely quiet as he handed me the diary.

  Hm. This is pretty long.

  The massive tome was filled until the last page. There must have been several years’ worth of entries in it. I used Telekinesis to flip through it.

  Powerful—if messy—handwriting filled its pages.

  “Read it if you have the chance. No, you should read it.”

  It was going to take some time to go through all its pages, but Jean’s serious expression made me curious as to its contents.

  Four hours went by.

  I finished reading the diary cover to cover without stopping. While not strictly a page turner, it did contain the emotions of its writer. Those emotions helped me power through those pages.

  By the end, I was dumbstruck. If what was written in this diary were true—

  “Have you finished it?”

  Yeah.

  “You must tell Fran, as well. Please.”

  Of course.

  I needed to read this diary. Everyone did.

  ***

  It’s been three years since I inhabited this body.

  I’ve decided to write a diary, starting today. I don’t have any particular reason to, I just felt like it was the right thing to do. Daily entries would be impossible, but I think I can do weekly reports.

  Someone might find these pages, and to that someone, I would like to tell them a little bit about myself.

  Let’s start with where I am. Not that I know where I am. But I know what kind of place this used to be.

  I am on a drifting floating island which used to host a research facility for the kingdom of Raydoss. I was a prisoner of this facility. I didn’t know what the aim of their research was. All I knew was that it would be used for war.

  I was the subject of experiments linked to necromancy. I don’t know all the details, but there were countless times that I wanted to die. The researchers did not see as human beings; they saw us as mere guinea pigs to experiment on. It was as if the researchers themselves had lost their humanity.

  One day—by force of tragedy or miracle, I could never tell—I stopped being human.

  I was about to be killed that day. The previous experiments had robbed me of my arms and legs, and so they were ready to dispose of me. I was to be one of their guinea pigs in a large-scale experiment.

  They wanted to know what would happen to a living necromancer—that was me (although I could only use Level 1 spells)—if they injected him with malice to turn him into an undead. Pointless, isn’t it?

  They bound me in chains and laid me on the floor in the center of a giant pentagram. An impossible amount of malice emanated from it. I would be unable to reject this concentrated malice because of the barriers and rituals they had set up. Malice rushed through my body, having found a living thing to fester in.

  I thought to myself, Finally, I’m going to die, as the rush of malice exceeded my bodily limitations. Light from the magic circle shone into my eyes as it prepared to turn me into an undead.

  That was when it happened.

  I could never tell whether it was the mercy or a joke of the gods.

  A Dungeon Core suddenly came into being in the very room I was in.

  You must be wondering what rubbish I’m writing about. To be honest, I don’t quite know, either.

  The Dungeon Core. The thing which spawned wherever the gods pleased, ignoring every rule of nature if it came to it.

  Why did it show up there and then? Was it coincidence? An ironic trick played by the God of Chaos? Was there a god up there who felt sorry for us and decided to grant us mercy?

  I don’t know.

  What I do know is the Dungeon Core chose me as its master, and I became a Dungeon Master. It increased my strength and I was able to take in all the malice that was rushing through me. The ritual which would make an undead of me as I remained alive had worked, and I became an undead.

  I was originally going to be a Zombie Mage, one of the weaker undead. Even that low rank monster was stronger than I had ever been while alive.

  But the torrent of malice, combined with my becoming a Dungeon Master, created an anomaly.

  I had become a Lich. A Lich. I thought I was an ordinary Skeleton but then I noticed I had over twenty skills at my disposal.

  I woke up as a Lich three days after the Co
re came into existence. I have no memory of what happened in those three days. When I came to, there wasn’t a single living human being on the floating island. They had all become undead. And I was a Lich. I was dumbstruck by this fact. Some would say that I had evolved. A Lich made for a most powerful necromancer.

  I didn’t think so.

  My heart dried out when I ceased to be human. In order to quench this thirst I sought out the researchers, who were now shambling undead themselves, and destroyed them. But that did not satisfy me. Hatred kept pouring out of me.

  It hurt. I couldn’t help hating humanity. I wanted to destroy everything. I wanted slaughter everyone.

  Vengeance had become my sole purpose.

  I didn’t want to, though. Becoming a Lich had miraculously saved me from that horrible experiment. I only wanted to live like this in peace.

  But the malice inside of me wouldn’t have it. Kill, destroy, take vengeance upon the world. It moved me, and I was helpless to resist.

  I don’t know who will end up reading this diary. You might be an ally or an enemy. You might be good or bad. All I want is for you to know the story of this island. Furthermore, I want you to expose the kingdom of Raydoss for all the evil that it’s committed.

  That is my only request.

  April 7, 3619

  I’ve decided to write my diary starting today—this diary I started on a whim. Nothing in particular happened today so I’m just going to give a rundown of what happened.

  I expanded the dungeon again, and made some more undead. Corpses of the researchers and my former friends were still lying around. I would spawn some lower undead, generate some mana, and secure some GP.