Free Web NovelChapter 10: Turns Out Becoming a Magic Swordsman Is Even Better Than Writing One
Five magics. One choice. And no take-backs.
The window had been hanging in front of my eyes for a full minute now, patient, while I tried very hard not to pick wrong.
[ THRESHOLD REACHED — Select a skill ]
[Fire Magic - Lv. 1] (active)
[Water Magic - Lv. 1] (active)
[Wind Magic - Lv. 1] (active)
[Earth Magic - Lv. 1] (active)
[Lightning Magic - Lv. 1] (active)
No numbers. No little asterisk pointing me at the right answer. In four years of writing this exact scene, I’d never once made one of my heroes sweat over it — they always just knew. Turned out, on the other side of the page, you didn’t know a thing.
So I did the only thing I could: I thought it through.
Fire first — raw damage, the crowd favorite. But fire wants you to plant your feet and trade hits, and planting my feet had never once kept me alive against Elsa for more than a heartbeat. Earth, then: walls, terrain, a fortress you carry with you. Solid. Also slow, heavy, rooted — everything I’d spent a week beating out of myself. Wind and Lightning were the real temptations, both of them practically shouting speed at me, and speed was the one thing I’d been starving for since day one.
And then there was Water, sitting quiet at the bottom of the list, promising nothing flashy at all. No fireball. No thunderclap. And it was the one my eye kept sliding back to.
So I stopped hunting for the strongest and started hunting for the one that fought the way I did. My Eye never braced against a strike — it read it. My Dance never met a blow head-on — it slipped around it and bit on the way past. Even my Dash just picked a line and took it. Everything about me ran from brute force and went looking for the gap instead. Water did exactly that. It never argues with a wall. It finds the crack, and it goes through.
I selected Water.
[ Skill acquired ]
[ Water Magic - Lv. 1 ] (active)
I got to my feet, and the world pitched sideways.
The floor tilted, a thin whine rose in my ears, and a spike of pain drove itself in behind my eyes. I caught the wall before my knees could fold, swallowing hard against the lurch in my gut.
Mana. I’d learned this, and I knew it the moment it hit: the body demanding back everything you’ve poured out of it. I’d burned more of it today than in all my time here put together — the Eye held open for hours, and that Dash above all, which had ripped a huge piece out of a reserve that was never large to begin with.
"Kuro!" Alice’s hand closed around my arm. "And don’t tell me you’re fine, I’ve watched you shaking since earlier."
"It’s nothing serious, just the mana. I spent more than I had, and now my body’s handing me the bill all at once. It’ll pass."
"It’ll pass sitting down, then. We’re stopping, and we’re stopping now."
I tried to stay useful anyway. "I can at least take the watch while you—"
"No." She cut me off, with something very close to irritation. "You sit, you keep quiet, and you let me take care of you for once. Do you honestly think I’m going to watch you sway on your feet and act like I never saw it?"
I raised my hands, and even that much made the room turn. "All right, you win. I wouldn’t stay upright long enough to win the argument anyway."
She steered me down against the wall and dug through the pack Elsa had made us carry. Out came a small rune-carved stone stove — it caught with a calm blue flame the instant she ran her thumb over it — and something to cook.
"I’m making us something hot, and you are not lifting a single finger. The second it comes to looking after yourself, you’re completely useless, so just this once, let me."
"I can boil water, you know."
"On Earth you’d rather eat half your meals cold than be bothered to heat them up." She didn’t even turn around. "Forgive me if I have my doubts."
I had nothing to say to that — which was, as always, the problem with her. The smell of garlic and butter started to rise, absurd at the bottom of a dungeon, and warm for exactly that reason.
Since all I could do was wait, I used the time to take stock.
Status.
[ STATUS ]
Name: Kuro Shiragi
Race: Human
Class: Hero of the Infinite
Level: 10
[ Stats ]
Strength: 30 | Vitality: 32 | Agility: 33 | Mana: 26 | Intelligence: 35 | Perception: 27
Free points: 9
[ Skills ]
[Divine Blessing - Lv.1] (passive) | [Infinite Evolution - Lv. MAX] (passive) | [Eye of Infinity - Lv. 1] (active) | [Dance of the Widow - Lv. 2] (active)
[Override - Lv. 1] (active) - For an instant, the body obeys beyond its limits, wringing one last move out of muscles that are already giving out.
[Resolve - Lv. 1] (passive) - Steadies the mind against fear and despair; harder to shake, harder to break.
[Dash - Lv. 1] (active) - In a flash, closes the distance to a target in a single burst. Heavy mana cost.
[Water Magic - Lv. 1] (active) - Rudimentary control of water: creates, moves, and shapes small amounts of nearby water.
Plus nine across the board. I could feel it in the way I sat, in the new solidity in my back and my hands. The guy who’d collapsed after twelve push-ups that first morning already felt like somebody else entirely.
Then there were the nine free points.
A week ago I wouldn’t have hesitated for a second — every last one into Agility. Speed had been my wall from the very first day: my Eye saw everything, read every angle, every opening, and my body could never, ever keep up. The whole of my problem lived in that one gap.
But Dash had just handed me that missing burst of speed on demand. The catch was the price — the spike still throbbing behind my eyes — and water magic would drink from the same well. And both of them, I already knew, I’d be reaching for again and again. What use was speed I could only afford three times before I dropped?
I dropped seven points into Mana, and two into Agility.
Mana: 26 -> 33
Agility: 33 -> 35
The numbers moved, and my body moved with them — a warm weight settling through my arms and legs, the quiet click of something locking into place that hadn’t been there a breath before. God, that feeling. Alice was right. It was almost frightening how badly it made you want to do it again.
Then my eyes went back to the bottom line. Water Magic. And I started turning over what I was actually going to do with it.
I was no mage. I’d never be one, not like Alice. My thing was the blade. So — why not a magic swordsman?
The thought landed somewhere just under my ribs. Four years. Four years writing guys exactly like that, handing them everything I didn’t have — the strength, the talent, a girl who looked at them like the sun came up behind their backs — and then closing the laptop and sitting alone in a cluttered studio at two in the morning. And now it was me. For real. The magic swordsman straight out of one of my own novels, except this time nobody was turning the page without me.
I called up both skills and pushed them into each other.
Fusion. Dance of the Widow. Water Magic. Please work, please, please—
[ Skill Fusion ]
[Dance of the Widow - Lv. 2] + [Water Magic - Lv. 1]
-> [Drowned Widow’s Dance - Lv. 2] (active) - A fluid blade art where water clings to the steel: it lengthens the reach, snakes, and cuts under pressure, riding the Widow’s spiraling evasion.
YES.
I almost shouted. I clenched my fist until my nails bit my palm and chewed the inside of my cheek to keep from blowing up on the spot. Of course it worked. Infinite Evolution. There was no line in this world I couldn’t cross.
"What’s wrong?" Alice was watching me over her shoulder, one brow up. "You just made a very strange face."
"Nothing. Just looking at my status."
"You’re going to wear it out." She laughed, and then her voice went soft. "I’ve changed too, you know. More than I ever thought I could. If Vesperine could see me now, I think she’d swallow her spellbook."
"That, I’d believe."
And that was the whole problem.
I had a mad urge to tell her all of it — my level, my fusions, what Infinite Evolution actually meant. I’d been carrying that one alone since the first day, and the only person in the world I trusted was sitting right there, close enough to touch. But Elsa was on watch a few steps off, half-dozing with her sword across her knees, and I still didn’t know how far I could trust her — or the people who’d set her on our road. So I kept my mouth shut. Alice had surely worked out there was more under the surface; she wasn’t slow. But guessing it and hearing me say it out loud weren’t the same thing, and I’d rather hold that card. Rather pleased with myself about it, even. As if, of the two of us, I were the one with something to hide.
"Here. Eat while it’s hot — you need it more than I do."
We ate there, shoulder to shoulder against the cold stone, in the blue light of the stove. It was good. And for a few minutes the dungeon, the acid, the palace, the war — none of it existed at all.
We decided to rest before pushing on.
"I won’t lift a finger unless something genuinely serious comes down this corridor," Elsa said, eyes still shut. "The rest — your sleep, your watches — that’s on you. Out on the roads I won’t always be around to tuck two heroes in for a nap."
Alice insisted on first watch, and I didn’t have the strength to fight her on it.
"Lie down and close your eyes." She settled me with a gentleness that had nothing left of the firmness from a minute ago. "I’ll watch, and I’ll wake you in two hours. Not a minute early, so don’t even think about cheating."
I slept two hours straight, no dreams. Then I took over and watched her sleep against my side, her face finally smooth and unguarded. Two hours of nothing but standing watch and listening to her breathe.
When we set out again, it was a different thing entirely.
I stayed sharp — the acid had seen to that — but it wasn’t fear now, it was precision. And I wasn’t the only one who’d taken the lesson to heart. Before every chamber, Alice would stop for a second and sweep the walls, the corners, the ceiling most of all. She was careful now too. Except she never once seemed to be watching out for herself in those moments. It was me she was watching over, and she wouldn’t take a step forward until she was sure nothing in the room could reach me.
The first group came boiling out of a widening in the passage, and my Eye opened on its own.
"Drowned Widow’s Dance."
The water rose up out of somewhere inside me as much as out of the damp air — a cold that woke in the center of my chest, slid down my arm, and gathered along the edge of the blade, and I felt it tug at me with every drop that answered. My mana, going. I could feel exactly how much.
Then I was in among them.
It wasn’t a dance now. It was a flood. Every arc of the sword dragged a whip of water a full pace past the steel, and the slimes burst where I never even touched them — split, sprayed, dropped into twitching puddles. I spun low through the middle of the pack, and the water chased my hands in long silver ribbons, lashing out at whatever the blade couldn’t reach. One coiled to leap; a snap of my wrist put a thread of water clean through it before its feet left the floor.
Six of them. Maybe four seconds. And when I straightened, breathing hard, the only sound left was the soft drip of them off the walls.
And I laughed — one short, startled bark of it, out before I could stop it. Because it had been easy. Too easy. Too good.
[ Level Up ]
> Level 11 — +1 to all stats, +1 free point
"Kuro, that was incredible!" Alice had her hands clasped, eyes bright. "Did you see yourself? The water dancing around your blade like that — it looked like a cutscene, I swear, one of those characters you’d stay up all night trying to unlock. My stepbrother, the magic swordsman. Who would have guessed?"
She was gushing like a kid in front of her favorite hero. Which was almost funny when you stopped to think about it: her magic left mine light-years behind. One of her flowers would have emptied this whole corridor in the time it takes to blink. And here she was, clapping over my little thread of water like I’d just done the most impressive thing in the world.
"You haven’t seen anything yet. Stay behind me and watch."
On the second floor, a slime reared back to spit — the exact motion from the day before, the one that had eaten my hand down to the bone. This time I saw it coming from a mile off. My Eye traced the jet before it left the body, my feet slid one step left, and the acid hissed through empty air where I’d been a half-second earlier. A flick of the wrist, water ran up the length of the sword in a blade, and I split the thing top to bottom before it could load another. Yesterday it had made me scream. Today it never came close to touching me.
And there was, more than anything, the way Alice watched me fight — not a flicker of worry in it, just that smile and those shining eyes, like watching me get stronger was the best thing anyone could ever have put in front of her.
The rest of the floor I went through like weather. A Dash, a line of water, an acid slime down before its spit. A backhand, a liquid lash that cut three in one stroke. Two with an arc, three with a spiral, and the blue windows came down like rain.
[ Level Up ]
> Level 12 — +1 to all stats, +1 free point
> Level 13 — +1 to all stats, +1 free point
> Level 14 — +1 to all stats, +1 free point
It was a high, and more than a high. On Earth I was nobody — a forgotten guy bolted to a keyboard, writing heroes he couldn’t have followed up a flight of stairs. Down here I was a blade and a torrent, and the world itself was bowing, one level at a time, just to tell me I was becoming something.
The first time a whole group went down faster than I’d have liked, something rose in me that had no business being there — not relief, but a thin curl of disappointment, the stupid wish that there’d been a few more of them to cut. I decided not to look too hard at that, and cut down the next one instead.
[ Level Up ]
> Level 15 — +1 to all stats, +1 free point
> Level 16 — +1 to all stats, +1 free point
> Level 17 — +1 to all stats, +1 free point
Once, glancing up after I’d mowed down a whole cluster, I caught Elsa’s eyes. She wasn’t asleep. Not even close. She was watching me, and I knew that look — the same one from the very first day, when I’d handed her own Dance back to her after seeing it once. She didn’t say a word. She just watched. And it was enough to cool the laugh in my chest.
Then the passage opened.
At the far end of a huge chamber stood a door. Not a hole worn through the rock like all the others — a real door, three men tall, forged out of some dark metal threaded with faintly pulsing lines and covered in symbols I couldn’t read. And under it, the current of mana I’d been tracking since the start poured through in a dense golden river, near enough solid.
My laughter died in my throat.
Cold rolled off that door, thick and wrong against the dungeon’s clammy heat. And the sound — under everything else, a low, endless rush, the mana pouring beneath it like a river that never finds the sea. For one second my Eye snagged on something through that golden flood, on the far side. A mass. Huge. Shifting just slightly, slow, in and out. Breathing.
In every dungeon I ever invented, the hero threw himself behind the last door without a second thought, because it made for a better Chapter. I was starting to understand why, in real life, you stop and catch your breath first.
"We’re not going through that door tonight." I sheathed the sword. "Whatever’s in there, it’s not going down in three sword strokes, and my legs are still full of slime. We rest, and we go in at full strength."
"Well, look at that — you’re being reasonable." Alice gave me a sideways smile. "Rest it is."
"Wise call," Elsa said, easing back against the wall. "The heart won’t run off. It’s been waiting far longer than the two of you have been alive."
Alice lay down where the stone was driest and stretched, slow and catlike. Then she lifted both arms toward me, an open invitation.
"And since it’s your turn to keep watch... you could always keep it from right here. Against me." Her voice had gone soft and warm. "You’d see the door just as well, and you’d be a great deal more comfortable than sitting on cold rock all by yourself."
I knew that move. I’d known it for years. "Someone has to actually keep watch, Alice. Bit hard to do that wrapped around you with my eyes shut." ƒгeewёbnovel.com
"And who said anything about shutting your eyes?" She propped herself on one elbow, the very picture of innocence, that smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "I only want you close. Is that really so much, after you almost let a slime eat you alive for my sake?"
For half a second I genuinely thought about it. Then I made the mistake of meeting her eyes, decided that was precisely why I shouldn’t, and turned back to the door.
"Sleep, Alice. I’ll wake you in two hours."
She let out a small sigh — half amused, half honestly put out — and curled onto her side, facing me.
"Your loss," she murmured. And then, eyes already half-shut: "...You’ll watch over me anyway. I know you will."
She was asleep within minutes — or doing a very convincing job of it, her breathing slow and even at my side. So I stayed where I was, sword across my knees, keeping watch in front of that great shut door: over the river of mana pouring endlessly beneath it, over whatever waited on the other side, and over her, curled up trusting and easy against me, without a care in the world.
Whatever was behind that door, I’d already promised myself it would never touch her. And I meant to keep that promise, whatever it ended up costing me.
