The Sword Genius of the Magic Empire - Chapter 60



Only Noblemtl

Episode 60. The Flame That Opens the Future (1)

‘This is….’

Messages quickly disappearing before our eyes.

This was the explanation of the ‘Hidden Ability’ that had been unlocked this time. Enoch froze for a moment after seeing it.

_

? Archive of Memories

: Activates when accessing ‘unrecorded history’ by inheriting the memories of a person who experienced a specific event.

It is possible to inherit those memories by responding to specific keywords recognized by users of the free world.

–

‘It inherits target memory in response to a specific keyword….’

The keyword that responded earlier was the Suin tribe’s demonization experiment.

‘Then, does that mean I can inherit the memories of the sword related to it?’

Looking back, the feeling I had now was definitely different from the experience I had been inheriting up until now.

It was quick to figure out what the cause was.

? Increased target memory and synchronization rate: Point synchronization

? WARNING: Maintaining the current level of synchronization for a long time risks serious side effects to the ego.

Enoch quickly understood what it meant.

‘… This is not me.’

Before he knew it, Enoch was looking at the world with a perspective that was noticeably different from before.

Small stature and the resulting low gaze.

Before he knew it, he had become a young swordsman.

And the childhood that Geomseong must have experienced in the past was unfolding before his eyes.

? Source of Memory: Reproduction Begins!

Swish…

In the world of nothingness, the past memories of Geomseong from his childhood were being reproduced very clearly.

Blacksmithing in childhood.

The first memory imprinted on him from his childhood was─

─The sight of parents dying horribly.

The mother, who tried to hide her child from the warlock until the end, vomits blood and dies.

My father’s body had long since cooled down, dismembered and missing limbs.

The house they lived in was burned down, and the two corpses were eaten by the people who were left behind.

The breath of the child who lost his parents right in front of his nose was filled with the sharp smell of blood and the acrid smell of coal.

Hururuk.

The child closed his eyes to the heat of the fire.

A fire flickered above his eyes.

Beyond that, the voice of the black sword reminiscing about the past quietly echoed.

[…What determines good and evil in the world?]

On top of the pool of my parents’ blood.

The child slowly raises his head.

In those eyes, a huge flame is reflected, completely engulfing the house and the bodies of my parents.

[The Empire defined black magic as evil. But in reality, the greater sin in the Empire was incompetence.]

The young boy runs, covered in blood, having slipped and fallen several times.

Enoch was speechless as he watched the horrific scenes passing by as he ran.

[Not long after the empire founded by wizards unified the continent, more than half of the empire’s citizens became wizards.]

At the entrance to the burning, devastated village, there are already countless corpses strewn about.

[The few who could not use magic were persecuted, and soon they flocked to the outskirts of the empire, forming small villages.]

The black magicians, holding the horse’s pole, draw a magic circle over the corpses of the parents and the villagers.

[Meanwhile, the black magicians who were considered evil and ostracized by the empire settled down near those villages.]

[And then, for their research, they used these people, who had no power to resist, as subjects for biological experiments.]

The child, who was running desperately, trips on a rock and falls. The breath escapes from his lungs.

[As if it were a given. As if it were a right that talented wizards should have.]

The child who fell into the mud keeps exhaling the breath that has risen to his chin and looks up at the sky full of dark clouds.

Rain fell on the cheek of the child who looked up at the sky.

Under the gray sky of that era, the child collapsed.

Talent and incompetence.

It was a time when the world began to be clearly divided between wizards and non-wizards.

An era in which those who are incompetent and unable to manifest magic are completely ignored and abandoned.

The cloudy, leaden sky of that world was reflected coldly and colorlessly in the child’s eyes.

[What distinguishes good from evil is none other than power.]

The child clenches his fist.

[Everyone turns a blind eye to it, but it is the very foundation of the right to define what is truly good and what is evil. The black magicians taught me that.]

Soon, in the dark magicians’ magic circle, the corpses begin to swell and transform into strange shapes.

The warlocks smile with satisfaction as if it were a success and record the results of their experiment.

[So I, too, decided to have the right to do what they want.]

With all that sight engraved in his eyes, the child desperately gets up and runs away, unable to even breathe.

One of the warlocks spots the child running away and stretches out his sword in annoyance, but another fellow warlock stops him, telling him to focus on his experiments.

So the child runs endlessly.

In the child’s eyes, the flames that burn down the village are reflected.

-That day.

In my heart, a small spark bloomed.

The spark within him whispered.

[I will survive and take revenge.]

His cheeks and legs were already scraped and bruised by the grass. His neck was hoarse, and his eyes were red with burst blood vessels.

[The warlocks killed my family and neighbors.]

But the child did not cry anymore.

[They took everything from me. Then I will definitely return the pain I received to them.]

Under the cold winter night sky.

On the outskirts of a village where everyone was dead and burning, the surviving boy turned around, pulling his tattered hood down.

The wandering child is placed in an orphanage established by the Imperial Cult.

He learns to kneel and pray before a giant statue of a goddess whom people believe has given mana to the world. He learns to ‘forgive’ the past.

But the eyes of the child wearing the robe’s hood look with contempt upon the healers who preach their teachings.

[Forgiveness is nothing but hypocrisy forced upon incompetent people like us.]

The flame of that day that was reflected in the child’s eyes had now spread to his heart.

[Forgiveness is the last option given to those who are powerless to even take revenge on their abuser.]

[It is nothing more than a rationalization that the weak have no choice but to do for their own safety, as they have barely managed to survive.]

In an instant, time passed around him.

[I chose belief over rationalization.]

The boy sneaks out of class.

As if in a panorama, time and scenery pass quickly around him as he slowly walks away.

[With my own hands, I will definitely return the favor to them for what they have done to me.]

The seasons repeat themselves on the ground the child walks on.

A fully grown child soon becomes a boy.

[I must kill all the warlocks who killed my family, and their families, with my own hands.]

The day he lost his entire family, the fierce flames that the child had seen spread even further throughout his body.

[That would be the only way for me, an incompetent person, to atone for my unjustly killed family.]

Before he knew it, the boy was holding a sword.

[I took up the sword to find a way. I had no choice since I couldn’t use magic.]

Memories of harsh training flash through his mind. The boy swings his sword so hard that his wrists almost tear.

[But it was in that unexpected field that I discovered my own unique talent for dealing with wizards.]

Blood flows from the hands where the bones are exposed due to overwork.

[I heard it vaguely.]

Still, he never stopped swinging his sword.

[About those who reached the level of ‘Sword Master’ before the appearance of the past empire.]

The flame that had been in his eyes on the day his parents died had now spread deep into the heart of the boy wearing his hood, burning fiercely.

[Unlike magic that draws in external mana, superhuman monsters that project their own inner mana onto their swords. I could become them. No, I had to become them.]

His eyes, shining on the cool sword, glowed darkly under the shadow of his robe’s hood.

[Otherwise, I will be the first to be consumed by the flames of revenge burning deep in my heart.]

Geomseong, who had become a young man before he knew it, calmly raised his sword in front of his eyes.

In an instant, a dazzling flame exploded and enveloped the blade of the one-handed sword he was holding.

[Therefore, flames were lit on my sword for revenge.]

-Whoooosh!

The sword was burning in the form of a fire with red mana overflowing.

The flames formed by Mana showed that he had reached the level of swordsmanship he had been aiming for, and at the same time, it became a beacon signaling the time to take revenge.

[All that remains is to return to the ruined village and find the warlocks who are the targets of revenge.]

But when Geomseong finally went to find the black magicians who murdered his parents.

A completely unexpected and shocking sight unfolded before his eyes.

[But I didn’t know anything.]

The black magicians who killed his family. They were all already killed when Geomseong visited them.

[The fact that the target of my flames of revenge has already disappeared.]

The hand holding the sword trembles slightly.

The opponents he had been desperately trying to get revenge on were all already dead.

And over their mangled corpses, grotesque shadows appeared.

[That day, the hometown I returned to for revenge…]

The black dragon raises its head.

Over the torn apart targets of revenge, strange monsters drooling sticky saliva look at the swordsman with shining eyes.

[It was the day when the beings called “Demon Beasts” first appeared in large numbers across the vast lands of the Empire.]

-Karrararak!

The demons who intercepted and killed all the targets of revenge roared terribly in front of him.

[…like that.]

Geomseong aims his sword at the men. In an instant, flames from Geomseong’s sword cover his vision.

[My sword, I lost what I had to bear.]

Whoosh! Whoosh!

Covered in a blazing flame that seemed to burn the very memory itself, the memories of the Black Sword’s past disappeared.

And above the flames that filled the field of vision, white sentences began to appear.

–

? “Archive of Memory”: Save new information!

? Chapter.1: The Unrecorded War

A time of transformation when the empire unified the continent through magic and wizards began to surpass the majority.

In this chaotic era, a new threat emerges: the “Demons”.

The place where the countless demons began to pour down appeared was coincidentally the land of his hometown where the “Last Swordsman of the Empire” had returned for revenge.

It was a remote area where marginalized non-magicians lived together.

–

Enoch tilted his head.

‘War in the past? And with the devil?’

This was the first time I had heard of this information.

I know enough about the original demons.

In fact, the “Demons” were an enemy group that had a lot of settings and information revealed in the original work.

‘But the fact that there was a major incident that could be called war between the empires in the past has never been revealed while playing the game.’

That’s exactly what stuck.

Even after becoming Enoch, when he asked Lien to research materials, he did not forget to study the history of the empire while looking for information on the Sword Saint.

However, just like the ‘information about the Sword’, the fact that there was a ‘war with demons’ in the past was not confirmed anywhere in any historical records.

‘As if both of them had been erased from the record.’

Enoch frowned, feeling a little uneasy.

Anyway, in this inner world called the world of nothingness, I gained a new function: the archive of memories.

It was clear that there were unexpected gains.

Once I had this, I had to learn more about the backstory of the swordsman, if only to continue my swordsmanship.

‘… And at this point, I’m just curious about the life that Geomseong has lived.’

He slowly raised his head.

‘Anyway, I need to quickly see the next memory of the swordsman….’

But the moment I thought about it that far.

A phrase suddenly popped into my mind that I had never really thought of before.

? The world of free: Avoid over-immersion!

? To prevent side effects from excessive immersion, experience reproduction is temporarily suspended.

‘Wait, what?’

Enoch’s expression instantly turned sour. I’ve seen something like this somewhere.

‘…Shutdown system?’

If it’s a game, I broke the monitor.

‘You’re saying we’re going to cut this off here?’

There’s still a lot we don’t know about the free world, but this is just a rumor that it’s really all over the place.

But no matter what you think, Enoch’s inner world was already gradually being released and fading away.

And just as the senses of returning to reality as usual began to slowly return to my body.

For a moment, Enoch’s thoughts suddenly came to a halt.

“Huh!”

Air was sucked into my lungs in a rush.

He was drenched in cold sweat.

Before my eyes, the figure and voice of the swordsman I had seen earlier were slowly fading away like an afterimage.

–[I will survive and take revenge.]

–[I will survive and take revenge.]

–[I will survive and take revenge.]

An obvious anomaly.

Enoch calmly focused his mind and took a deep breath. Fortunately, the tinnitus and hallucinations quickly disappeared.

But the heavy feeling of fatigue that still remained was terribly tormenting all my senses.

Enoch suddenly realized.

‘Is this supposed to prevent over-immersion…?’

Judging by this fatigue, the memory inheritance from just now was clearly affecting my real body.

For a moment, the warning message from earlier came to mind.

? WARNING: Maintaining the current level of synchronization for too long can result in serious side effects!

Enoch smiled bitterly.

So, is that why the memory inheritance was cut off?

‘I’m sure there’s a safety device in place.’

Blurred vision is recovering.

He took a quick look around.

Already, huge rocks had fallen from the collapsed ceiling of the fortress and were piled high all around.

‘Fortunately, it didn’t turn into a bean pancake because it was lying there.’

It seems that Leontos had installed some sort of self-destruct artifact in the fortress in order to escape in case of emergency.

Enoch muttered as he looked in the direction where the bastard had disappeared.

“…I knew there would be an escape route.”

Beyond the debris of the ceiling that the bastard had collapsed, a secret passageway was visible next to the top floor of the fortress.

Perhaps, in case of emergency, there is a secret escape route from the top floor to the outside of the fortress.

Enoch, who had been thinking about chasing after her for a moment, shook his head.

Even if we chase after him from now on, it will be too late to trace his tracks and catch him.

‘Anyway, it’s not a bad result for now.’

Enoch took a deep breath and collected his thoughts.

Since the leader has run away alone, the most important goal of destroying the commanding force within the fortress has been achieved.

If you are an excellent wizard of Elseid, it will be easy to wipe out the scattered remnants who have lost their command structure.

‘And if my prediction is correct, I’ll be meeting Leontos again soon.’

And then.

Dalgrak!

Beyond the massive stone fragments of the ceiling that filled the surrounding area, a large stone rolled down.

Quickly

And through the gap in the rolled stone, Sirocco suddenly poked his face out.

“iced coffee!”

As if she had been desperately looking for this, her eyes widened as soon as they met Enoch’s.

Then, Shiroko said, seeming relieved.

“Thank goodness it didn’t go flat!”

The wolf ears on Sirocco’s head, which was poking out from the pile of rocks, hung down as if relieved.

Enoch opened his mouth briefly.

“Let’s go back first.”

Before I knew it, the sporadic sounds of magicians fighting outside had stopped and it was quiet.

It was a sign that Elseid’s wizards had subdued them and secured the fortress as planned.

“You said earlier that you were curious as to why they do such things?”

“huh.”

At Sirocco’s small reply, Enoch turned his gaze to the front yard outside the fortress window.

There were secured exile prisoners being held there.

Enoch opened his mouth as he looked at them.

“Let’s ask the parties involved.”