Reincarnated as a Sword Vol. 2

by Yuu Tanaka

  “But Uncle, I just can’t believe that Raydoss would go so far as to make enemies with an adventuring guild.”

  “They don’t have adventuring guilds over in Raydoss. I’m sure they detest the very concept of one.”

  Although Adventurer Guilds were spread all over the world, they were not bound to any particular government or nation. If Raydoss and Granzell were ever to go to war, the guild was under no obligation to side with either of them. If the government attempted to force adventurers to go to war for them, said adventurers would sooner leave the country they are in; an adventurer’s duty was to protect the people from the ever-looming threat of dungeons and monsters, after all. This was the unspoken agreement between all adventuring guilds and their host nations.

  But once upon a time, Raydoss betrayed that contract, and forced its adventurers to go into war against Granzell. All who objected were punished and labeled as traitors. The guilds moved out of Raydoss, then, its members becoming stateless. A little over ten years after the incident, Raydoss became overrun with monsters. Its soldiers and knights were barely enough to contain them and they were no longer able to wage war with their neighboring countries. In the end, they suffered a loss at the hands of Granzell.

  “Do they have no need of adventurers? Perhaps they think a guild is far too restricting?”

  “Not exactly. They’ve simply gotten used to dealing with everything without adventurers.”

  To Raydoss, adventuring guilds simply got in the way of their daily business.

  “The possibility of our nobles conspiring with their royals… Troubling.”

  I wouldn’t have sent out our weaker members to the dungeon if I had known there was a conspiracy lying in wait. I should compensate them for that.

  “You’ll find a bonus waiting for you. For all the close shaves with death you’ve had today.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “All right, let’s hear your report.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I had given Furion a special side mission: The observation of D-Rank Adventurer, Fran.

  “So what do you think of her?”

  Furion was an adventurer and a full-time employee of the Guild. He wasn’t so much a spy as he was a plainclothes observer.

  “A moment, sir. Tahlua, come.”

  Aah, it’s been a while, Klimt.

  “You look brilliant as ever.”

  Furion extended his arm and summoned an owl, which perched on it. This was his Guardian Spirit, Tahlua.

  We elves were a race beloved by the spirits. There were some among us whom the spirits take an immediate liking to as soon as they left the womb (I believe the statistic was one in every ten).

  An elf’s guardian spirit would usually be affiliated with a Wood, Water, or Earth element. Furion’s spirit was special in that regard. Tahlua possessed the Mind Element, a rare affinity even among the spirits. I had formed a contract with a Mind Elemental, myself, but it was nowhere near as strong as Tahlua. I had once told Fran that the spirits could sense the presence of evil in a man. That was only half true. The ability was limited only to Mind Elementals.

  Tahlua was far more powerful in that capacity compared to the elementals I had under my aid. It was able to detect a man’s motives, see the true meaning behind his words, and so on. That was why I gave him this special assignment.

  I couldn’t feel the heart of evil in the girl called Fran. In fact, I had never seen less malice towards others as in her.

  “How does she feel about the adventurer who went with her, this Krad?”

  Mild curiosity, at best.

  “Curiosity?”

  The creature called Krad would rouse anger and frustration from those around him every time he spoke. But it wasn’t so for that girl. She looked upon his tantrums with deepening interest.

  We had high hopes for Krad and his party, Dragon Roar. They were already scratching at D-Rank at such a young age. They were far and away the fastest growing party we had at the guild.

  Well, aside from Fran, that is.

  Their personalities were a problem, however. They caused trouble not only with fellow adventurers, but with clients as well. If not for this fault, I would’ve been happy to promote them to D-Rank.

  Dragon’s Roar must’ve seen Fran’s capabilities firsthand on this mission. I had hoped that going on a raid with people who were clearly were their superiors would make them realize their conceit, but my plan might have worked better than I’d hoped…

  Realizing their lack of strength, they had refused their promotion before they could be told they had failed; afterwards, they had looked down, then nodded solemnly. On the road back to Alessa, Furion asked them if they agreed with the result; they did.

  Their inflated egos had completely burst into pieces over the course of a single day.

  “Thank you, Tahlua.”

  Indeed.

  “Unsummon.”

  “So, what did you think of Fran, Furion?”

  “She’s… an amazing girl.”

  “Is that all you have to say?”

  “Yes. But it’s not just her physical strength. How can I say this… She always seems to consider every move she makes before she makes them. It’s almost as if she was having a discussion with herself. Not to say she’s the conspiratorial type, but she does take her actions into consideration. So analytical at such a young age. I can learn a thing or two from her.”

  “Thank you. I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “You’re very welcome, sir. If you don’t mind me asking, why do you take such a great interest in that girl?”

  “Does it seem that way to you?”

  “Yes. There have been rumors going on about how you prefer them on the younger of the age spectrum.”

  “Quiet, you.”

  And here I thought you were the picture of politeness, Furion. How you’ve disappointed me. To make it clear, I was not a lolicon.

  The reason why I took such great interest in Fran was because there wasn’t much information regarding her to begin with. As a Guildmaster, I had to keep my eyes on this girl whom constant trouble seemed to follow. Yet there was surprisingly little talk circulating about her beyond the recent praise. As the head of the guild she registered to, this was part of my responsibilities.

  “All I know about her is that she has a magic sword and Identify.”

  “The magic sword was obvious enough, but Identify?”

  “Yes. I’m quite certain of this.”

  I had deduced it when I was giving her down payment in crystals. Out of twenty, she had managed to select the only two C-Rank crystals mixed in on the table. The rest were rare sea-dwelling monsters. It was far too convenient to be considered coincidence.

  Having Identify would allow her to have Identify Protection, as well. This skill was surprisingly useful in combat. Having it was enough to raise a red flag, but on a warrior of her strength, her opponent might as well give up the fight while he still had the chance.

  “By the looks of it, she also has the Advanced Weapon Skills. Blade Mastery, judging by the looks of her fighting style. She also has Fire and Flame Magic, Wind, Shadow, Thunder, and Healing Magic. Her Magic stat was also above 100 for sure.”

  Before heading home, Fran had changed her class to the advanced form of the Spellsword: Blademage. It had better stat growth compared to Spellsword, and it also came with the Class Skill, Focus Mana. To be a Blademage, one needed to have the advanced skill of Sword, Axe, or Spear Mastery. Moreover, they needed to be able to use more than two advanced elements, and have over 100 Magic.

  Alternatively, she could have chosen to be a Shadow Mage, Storm Mage, Thunder Mage, or Healing Mage. All classes you couldn’t pick unless you had advanced magic skills.

  She couldn’t choose them when she first came to the guild. She had grown so much in such a short period of time. Such strength and she was barely in her teens. “Prodigy” would be an understatement. “Divine providence” would be more like it. Honestly, she
scared me a bit.

  There were two more reasons why I took such an interest in her.

  She was a nobody who came out of nowhere who was growing at an impossibly fast rate. Of course I needed to monitor her.

  “I expected her shrewdness from the way she picked her crystals, but for her to let her guard down…”

  I didn’t think she would take up my offer to change classes at the guild. She could easily have gone to the local temple, where no one would be able to look at her personal information. Was she all right with us knowing her stats and skills, or did she simply not know the mechanics of changing her Class? My guess was the latter.

  “Amanda seemed to like her a lot, as well.”

  I hadn’t expected Amanda to go along on the mission, to be honest. She probably only did it because Fran was there, but I didn’t expect her to be so taken with the girl… Although there was the possibility that Amanda had caught on to my plans.

  “Is Amanda a good judge of character?”

  “When it comes to children, yes. If she were faced with a long-lived race who looked like a child, then she would talk to them as an adult. I suppose it’s one of the functions of her title.”

  Which meant that Fran was really a twelve-year-old. I had suspected her claim to be a Beastman and thought of her as one of the long-lived races.

  “Uncle, I don’t understand. What is she exactly?”

  “I don’t know, either. Perhaps she is nothing at all.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We have been suspecting her of hiding something. But what if she isn’t hiding anything at all?”

  She must have her reasons for being an adventurer at such a young age, just like everyone else. But it didn’t seem like she was part of any conspiracy that we needed to be wary of. That was my conclusion.

  She was a little twelve-year-old girl who liked to fight and get in trouble, who owned a Unique Darkness Wolf, who was probably brought up in an exceptional way, who belonged to the least of the Beastmen tribes.

  Nothing more, nothing less. Her looks were all we had to go by, but did it tell her whole story? No, stop that. I’d only become more suspicious of her.

  “I’ve relied on Identify and the spirits for so long that I’ve lost my eye for judging people.”

  Nell, who befriended her on the day she came to us, knew more about her than I did.

  Chapter 4:

  Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover

  A few days had gone by since our dungeon raid.

  Fran and I were on the outskirts of the city to see what Elemental Sword could do. For a skill I used out of desperation to save Fran, it seemed far more versatile than we initially thought, and we were in the middle of exploring its functions.

  Let’s start with Flame Element.

  “Okay.”

  This was the one I had used in the spider’s nest. It covered my blade in flames; it was able to not only leave burn wounds on the outside, but also burn an enemy from the inside.

  Is it too hot?

  “I’m all right.”

  “Awoo.”

  Fran looked cool despite swinging around a red-hot blade. She wasn’t merely putting up with it, either. Jet looked like he was sweating, though. I guess the heat didn’t affect its main User.

  Now, what would happen if I used the Mage skill to overload it with mana? I charged a small amount of mana into Elemental Blade.

  How about now?

  “Hot.”

  Jet whined in agreement while taking a step back. Fran grimaced from the superheated blade. Beads of sweat were forming on her forehead.

  She wouldn’t be able to properly wield me in this state. I guess I could only use this form with the Catapult. Too bad.

  Let’s try the other basic elements.

  Water and Earth were so-so. Both increased attack power, but it was more in terms of impact damage. They were more suited for bludgeoning weapons.

  Wind proved excellent, however. It vastly increased the sharpness of my blade. It wasn’t as flashy or destructive as fire, but it was a straightforward attack buff.

  What about Dark? How would that even work?

  “I’ll give it a shot.”

  Darkness enveloped my blade. It looked so cool! I could feel my sharpness increase, but I couldn’t tell if it had any other particular effects…

  Jet, do you know anything about this?

  “Woof.”

  Jet was more versed in Dark Magic than we were, so we hoped he might be able to give us a clue, but it seemed that he didn’t know, either.

  Jet sniffed me, then let out a whimper. What are you doing, buddy?

  Jet!

  In my panic, I looked at his status to make sure he was okay. His Mana Pool count had gone down. It wasn’t much but it was enough to be significant after multiple hits.

  “Aroo…”

  You okay?

  “Arf…”

  We wouldn’t have been able to figure out Dark Blade’s effect without Jet’s blind sacrifice.

  Moving on.

  “Let’s try Thunder.”

  Here we go.

  Electricity crackled down my blade. Fran slashed a nearby tree to see what it would do.

  With a spark, currents of electricity ran through the tree trunk and cooked its insides. A thin wisp of smoke rose up from the gash. This was definitely going to prove useful.

  A light dose of electricity would act like a taser. A strong dose would be able to fry the enemy from the inside out. Electricity was difficult to counter, too. This would come in handy against any organic monsters.

  “Thunder Blade’s the coolest.”

  You like it, Fran?

  “Yeah. It’s all sparky and cool.”

  “Woof!”

  Fran pointed my galvanized blade towards the sky. The static electricity I gave off caused Jet’s fur to stand on end. He looked like a canine hedgehog, and they both looked like they were having fun with this element.

  I moved on to the Special Elements: Healing and Support. Neither of them seemed to activate Elemental Blade, however. The skill seemed limited only to the basic elements, Light and Dark, and the Compound elements.

  Okay. Let’s try out your new Class Skill.

  “Right. Focus Mana.”

  Focus Mana was the new skill Fran acquired when she got promoted to Blademage. It wasn’t included in our Skill Sharing list. She was on her own with this one.

  Focus Mana: Increases the strength of Magic and Weapon Arts at the cost of increasing mana costs.

  It was similar to Mage skill, Overload, judging by the description.

  Be careful, now.

  “I will.”

  Fran fired off an ordinary Fire Arrow to start, letting loose a volley of five flaming bolts. This was the spell she was the most used to, so it would make a great basis for comparison.

  And now, the Focus Mana version.

  “Fire Arrow.”

  Foom!

  Whoa! That was great.

  The bolts were much larger and more numerous. She fired them at a nearby tree, and they burned through its thick trunk, leaving a sizable hole. Each bolt was far stronger than the usual Fire Arrow, too.

  Can you be more precise with it?

  “I’ll try.”

  We experimented and figured out we were going to get a lot of mileage from Focus Mana. Fran could manipulate her mana input so as to fire off a single bolt of greatly increased strength, or fire off twenty bolts without a drop in attack power.

  However, it did consume three times her regular Mana Pool, which wasn’t going to be a problem since Fran could pull from my Mana Pool. To my great relief, Focus Mana didn’t seem to take a great toll on Fran. It wasn’t like when I overloaded myself with mana using the Mage skill. My attack power was raised to the point where I was beginning to damage myself.

  Fran’s Focus Mana wasn’t as strong as a Mage’s, but it did allow far greater precision with her mana output. I expected nothing less from the Class Ski
ll of an Advanced Class.

  Which reminds me, there’s something I want to talk to you about.

  “What about?”

  I’ve been thinking about our last dungeon run.

  Our raid made me understand that we needed more than raw attack power to finish a dungeon. We needed exploration skills, detection skills, and a whole cavalcade of versatile spells. There were some skills I wanted to level up now.

  “Same here.”

  We’ve been increasing the combat-related skills like the magic skills and Sword Mastery, but what do you think of leveling a different skill?

  “Go on.”

  Unlike fighting in an open field, there wasn’t much space to maneuver in a dungeon. We would need a myriad of different skills to survive. With that in mind, I decided to spend my Evolution Points into these skills:

  Speedcast 1; Sense Danger 1; Sense Presence 2; Blink 1; Abnormal Status Resistance 3; Mana Barrier 1; Sense Trap 1

  I chose Sense Danger, Sense Presence, and Sense Trap to avoid any unnecessary encounters with monsters and traps. Speedcast would allow us to cast our spells faster. Blink, Abnormal Status Resistance, and Mana Barrier were great for survivability and getting out of a sticky situation.

  I had 41 Evolution Points left. I could either max out one of my new skills, or evenly spread the points across three of them. I was leaning towards one of the detection skills. Since we would be doing more dungeon runs from here on out, Sense Trap made the most sense.

  What do you think, Fran?

  “Hmm.”

  After a discussion with Fran, we decided to put Sense Presence, Sense Trap, Speedcast, and Blink all up to Level 5. We bumped Abnormal Status Resistance to Level 6.

  We weren’t going into a dungeon right away, so I thought of leaving some points over in case of emergency, but we ended up spending it all. We tended to be stingy with our Evolution Points expenditure; we would save EP just in case a shiny new skill came along. This time, we decided to spend all of our EP on necessities.

  Now we would be able to traverse dungeons more safely. Although, it did knock our EP count all the way down to 5.

  Now we won’t have to worry so much when we go on raids.