Isekai sword - chapters 181-190

「Oh, right, that reminds me. Did you guys happen to have some sort of run in with the Beast Lord?」

『How’d you know?』

I had Perfect Thought Isolation up and running, so there was no way for him to have read our minds.

「Heh. Just wanted to remind you that I am technically a professional. Did you really think I wouldn’t be able to read you just because I’m not actually reading your mind anymore? I’m not actually totally reliant on the skill, you know?」

『Seriously?』

「Seriously. It’s mostly because Fran happened to react the moment I mentioned the Beast Lord is all.」

Honestly, I should’ve seen this coming. Dias was not only a Guildmaster, but also someone whose skills focused around the concept of taking advantage of other people’s’ weaknesses.
[EVIDENCE FOR SWORDBRO'S IMMUNITY TO MIND READING (SAME DUDE READ HIS MIND IN THE PAST)]
- Chapter 181
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《Divine Sword Arts has reached its maximum level. You have obtained the Enhanced Sword Arts skill.》

Well, that wasn’t what I was expecting, but hey, that works too I guess.

《You have unlocked a unique skill by the name of Sword Lord Arts, as all necessary requirements have been fulfilled. All Sword Art related skills have been merged into the Sword Lord arts skill. Acquisition of the Sword Lord Arts skill has caused your wielder, Fran, to obtain the Sword Lord title.》

Woah, that was a lot all at once! It looked like I actually did manage to get the Sword Lord Arts skill that I’d been hoping for. The merged part confused me, so I quickly appraised myself. Every single last one of my Sword Art related skills had ended up disappearing. Naturally, I wasn’t just referring to the Divine Sword Arts skill, but also stuff like Short Sword Arts and Katana Arts.

For a moment, I was tempted to immediately begin screaming in frustration, but stopped almost immediately as I realized what the word “merged” meant. I decided to give the skill a quick once over just to be sure.

Sword Lord Arts: Allows use of all swords.
[SWORDBRO HAS SWORD LORD ARTS WHICH ALLOWS THE USE OF ANY AND ALL SWORDS PERFECTLY]
- Chapter 182
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『Hey Fran.』

「Nn?」

『I’m going to shapeshift a bit. Do me a favour and try swinging me around when I do.』

「Got it.」

The first form I took was that of a dagger, otherwise known as a short sword. Fran readily grabbed ahold of me and began swinging me around. She cycled between a series of relaxed and more intense actions so easily that one could probably mistake her as a sword dancer.

『Alright, how about this?』

The next form I took was that of a foil, a fencer’s sword. Again, Fran managed to wield me with ease. They way she moved around and used the sword’s flexibility made it seem like she’d trained with a foil for years and in doing so, completely mastered the blade’s use.

「Interesting to use. Boingy.」

『Does it feel even the slightest bit unnatural?』

「Nope. No issues.」

『Sweet.』

The skill did exactly what I thought it did. It basically allowed the person that had it to use any type of sword they wished. Better yet, they’d be able to use it just as well as if they had they maxed out the divine arts for whatever sword subcategory they happened to be working with. To us, that was nothing but good news, as it meant that there wouldn’t be any issues even if I was to warp myself into an actual katana and not just something that happened to resemble one.
[FRAN CAN USE ANY SWORD WITH EASE AT A SUPER HIGH LEVEL]
- Chapter 182
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Long Jump was nice and all, but it was too limited in its use.

The number of things that bothered us about it numbered two, with the first being its carrying capacity and the second being its ease of use, or rather, its lack thereof. It’s carrying capacity was limited by mass, and was actually so lacking that it couldn’t even allow us to warp Urushi unless he shrank himself down. Even then, the distance that could be teleported was inversely proportional with the mass, so we weren’t really able to go all that far. The furthest we could go, even without Urushi, was like five or six floors worth of distance at best; we weren’t able to instantly warp ourselves over to Rumina’s place of residence. The ease of use part pertained to the fact the only objects that could get warped were ones the caster was in direct contact with.
[LONG JUMPS LIMITATIONS - CAN TELEPORT ROUGHLY SIX FLOORS IN DISTANCE WITH ONE JUMP]
- Chapter 183
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「That’s level 2… Looks like I learned how to do two new things?」

Pointing the skill once had allowed me to obtain a skill by the name of Turn Shield. It allowed one to block long ranged attacks and disrupt enemies by twisting space itself. The amount of magical energy the skill consumed scaled with the size of the spatial distortion created. Unleashing something on a scale large enough to completely engulf my surroundings seemed like it would end up eating somewhere in the neighborhood of 2k mana. The skill seemed pretty decent, and appeared to have a whole slew of different use cases.
[SWORDBRO CAN BLOCK LONG RANGE ATTACKS VIA TWISTING THE SPACE AROUND HIM]
- Chapter 183
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The other spell I learned was named Beacon. It allowed me to sense the areas in which an objects on when I cast it, even from a fair distance away. It was pretty convenient, but I didn’t immediately see why it was something I got from leveling up Dimension Magic of all things. I only came to realize why it was classified as it was after giving its parent skill another level.

Getting Dimension Magic to level 3 unlocked a skill by the name of Apport. Apport allowed me to pull anything within sight towards me. It didn’t seem all that special at first glance, but thinking about it made me realize that moving an object towards oneself was actually a step up on moving oneself over to an object.

Combining it with Beacon only made it even more impressive; Apport was made capable of grabbing anything I wanted so long as it happened to have a beacon placed on it ahead of time. This immediately caused me to realize that Beacon was capable of working with more than just Apport. It also enhanced Long Jump, and allowed me to teleport even greater distances with it. Beacon had seemed rather plain at first, but it turned out to be something hella useful.
[SWORBDRO CAN NOW PULL ANYTHING WITHIN HIS LINE OF SIGHT TOWARDS HIM, OR ANYTHING AT AN INSANE DISTANT IF HE SETS UP BEACON BEFORE HAND]
- Chapter 183
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Only after pointing Dimension Magic all the way to level 4 did we finally get the skill we’d been gunning for.

『Sweet, looks like I finally learned how to use Dimension Gate.』

Dimension Gate’s ability was to create a pair of doors. The first would always appear at the caster’s present location. The second, on the other hand, was up to the caster’s discretion, but could only be placed in an area that lay within the caster’s memory. Anything could pass through the gate, so long as it fit, which was just perfect seeing as how the gate’s size would grow based on the amount of magical energy used. I was capable of creating one big enough to fit Urushi at his largest if I didn’t mind throwing in all my mana.

Our skill, Dimension Gate, was actually slightly different from the Dimensional Gate skill that we’d seen on Royce. Though their names were similar, the two actually functioned completely differently, as ours basically just ripped a hole in space, whereas Royce’s seemed to operate based on a different sort of mechanism altogether.

Dimension Gate was like every other spell derived from the Dimension Magic family; its performance could be improved upon through the use of Beacon.

Specifically, Dimension Gate was capable of opening doors to places I’d never been before so long as there happened to be a beacon present — we’d confirmed this functionality by casting Beacon on a random rock and having Urushi carry it off somewhere.

The spell seemed like it could be really handy so long as we were careful and placed a few beacons at a few critical junctions ahead of time.
[CAN CREATE A GIANT ASS DOOR TO ANYWHERE 'IN THE CASTERS MEMORY' BY FLIPPING SPACE THE BIRD AND JUST DOING WHATEVER. CAN ALSO GO TO PLACES THE CASTER HAS NEVER BEEN BEFORE IF A BEACON IS SET UP IN THE RIGHT PLACE BEFOREHAND]
- Chapter 183
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Under normal circumstances, Beacons would expire after a few days. The caster could extend this preset duration by increasing the amount of mana used in the spell’s initial casting. It seemed like I’d be able to leave a beacon somewhere for about a year so long as I put every last drop of mana I had into crafting it.
[BEACONS USUALLY ONLY LAST A FEW DAYS ON THEIR OWN. CAN BE EXTENDED TO UP TO A YEAR WITH CONSTANT UPKEEP]
- Chapter 183
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I spent 5 points on Vigour Manipulation, which in turn unlocked Vigour Mastery as expected.

『So? How do you feel?』

「…?」

It turned out that Vigour Mastery didn’t have anything to do with evolution. However, it had a clear, immediate effect nonetheless. The manner in which my mana flowed through my body seemed to change. It became much smoother, and I could feel my detection-based skills growing much more sensitive as a result.

But that wasn’t all.

『I feel like my body just got easier to control.』

I activated Shape Shift and transformed a part of my body into a series of threads. The threads seemed quite easy to manipulate; I’d managed to use them to form a number of different geometrical patterns with ease. I then split my blade into ten smaller pieces, and moved them all around simultaneously. I was able to do what the System Announcer did to the Legendary Skeletons back when we fought a whole bunch of them at once. That is, I was able to form each into a thin but solid thread and thrust them in different directions.

My blade deformed and moved exactly how I wanted it to; I became capable of manipulating it to much finer a degree, and at a much lower mana cost to boot.

Vigour Mastery hadn’t seemed like anything too fancy, but it turned out to be useful as hell.
[VIGOUR MASTERY ALLOWS SWORDBRO TO SHAPESHIFT WITH A HUGE AMOUNT OF PRECISION]
- Chapter 183
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We’d spent some time experimenting with the Beacon spell in order to figure out its limitations. It turned out that we could only actually have 8 active beacons at any given point in time. The skill followed a first in first out methodology, as creating a 9th beacon would immediately cause the 1st we made to disappear. Moreover, its range wasn’t actually unlimited. Beacons would only remain active so long as they were within a radius of about 10 kilometers.
[8 BEACONS CAN BE ACTIVE AT ONCE, BUT THEIR RANGE IS ONLY WITHIN A RADIUS OF 10 KILOMETERS]
- Chapter 184
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Did he end up turning out the way he did because the tiny ass village he came from thought him to be a genius or something? Is that how all this happened?

「So yo—」

「Shut up.」

Fran interrupted the weaker adventurer by kicking him in the stomach and sending him flying so far he almost fell out of bounds.

「Urgh!!」

He held his stomach and looked up at Fran with eyes filled with disbelief as he vomited all sorts of different things. It seemed he was incapable of comprehending the fact that she’d just sent him flying about 10 meters back.
[FRAN BOOTS SOMEONE 10 METRES BACK]
- Chapter 186
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The man in question, a dude with a vulgar look on his face, went out of his way to rise to his feet and approach Fran. The fact that combat was against the rules put me at a loss. I wasn’t really sure how to handle the situation given that we weren’t allowed to do the usual thing and just smack him to shut him up.

It turned out that Fran didn’t share my sentiments. She knew exactly what to do, as evidenced by the fact that she activated all her intimidation-type skills without a moment’s hesitation. That is, she immediately filled the entire room with an incredible amount of pressure.

『Hey Fran, you’re going a bit overboard there.』

「Nn?」

Fran’s aura had caused many of the other participants to rise to their feet with the faces paled and their weapons drawn out of sheer habit — and they’d only been been hit with collateral damage.

The man Fran had been aiming her bloodlust at had lost control of his legs and fallen flat on his ass. He was trembling in fear and almost on the verge of passing out.

「Nn.」

「Hii….」

He even went as far as immediately scuttling backwards the moment Fran laid eyes on him.

Welp. It getting all quiet was good and all, but I kinda felt bad for what we did to all the other contestants.
[FRAN BLOODLUSTING SOME OTHER DUDE]
- Chapter 187
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The Blue Catkin immediately locked his eyes to Fran’s position and lunged straight at her. His skill with the sword wasn’t too shabby, and he came at her with nothing held back; it was clear that he planned to kill her. His actions caused me to want to scoff at how childish he was. He ended up completely losing all sense of rationality just because of the slightest bit of mockery.

Though, that much, I’d honestly expected.

What I didn’t expect, however, was for the three other contestants to join him. They all immediately decided to cooperate in order to eliminate Fran, as, the Blue Catkin aside, they were aware that she was the strongest in the group. Judith happened to stand out from her peers, as she purposefully placed herself at the rear so she could use the other three contestants as meat shields.

Both Fran and I were rather impressed by her actions. She hadn’t given up on winning despite the fact that she knew we’d be able to overwhelm her.

The unexpected four versus one situation put Fran in what could be thought of as a numerical disadvantage, but she didn’t mind. Fran simply didn’t care that all four other contestants had ganged up her. She didn’t complain, nor did she bother calling any of the four out for unfairness.

Instead, she simply retalited.

「Fmph.」

「Guahhh!」

She swung me without bothering to draw my blade from its sheath and hit the Blue Catkin right in the jaw. The impact caused him to fly into the air before spiraling back down towards the ground.

Fran then struck again; she used the rising momentum that accompanied her first strike in order to deliver a powerful horizontal blow.

「Heavy Slash.」

「Kyaah!」

「What!?」

「Gyaaahhh!」

Heavy Slash was considered a relatively low tier skill, but it’d proven to be more than effective enough given just how powerful Fran had become. The attack sent the swordsman and spearman that followed the Blue Catkin tumbling back into Judith. Neither of the three were capable of recovering from the attack and so, they were all forced out of bounds.

Only a few seconds had passed, but Fran had already eliminated three of her four opponents. She could’ve easily done the same to the last of the bunch, but instead, intentionally chose to draw out her assault.
[FRAN FODDERISES MULTIPLE VAGUELY SUPERHUMAN ATTACKERS WITH CASUAL HITS]
- Chapter 188
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She swung me downwards. In doing so, she caught the Blue Catkin in midair, smashed him into the ground, and caused a dull crack to reverberate through it.

「Gahiii… fuaarghh…!」

The blood in the Blue Catkin’s mouth rendered him incapable of anything but a few groans. He’d barely managed to hang onto his consciousness, not because he was sturdy, but because Fran had made sure to hold back just enough for him to do so.
[FRAN HITS SOMEONE INTO THE GROUND HARD ENOUGH TO CRACK IT WHILST HOLDING BACK]
- Chapter 188
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