THE OGRE’S MAGIC SWORDS
What have I done? What am I trying to do?
If you asked me to summarize my old life in a word or two, I wouldn’t know how to answer.
It’s probably the same for a lot of people, right?
By most standards, I was still pretty young when my life ended, but I still don’t think it was short enough to be summed up with a single word.
But if you asked me whether it was a good life, I don’t think I’d be able to nod.
“Kyouya, you’re a pretty stubborn guy, aren’t you? Keep that up and you’ll miss out on some of the best parts of life.”
The person who told me that was Shun, one of my high school friends.
One of the only friends I’d made since starting high school, he’d occasionally whip out sharp observations like this that cut right to the heart of the matter.
Our other friend, Kanata, was generally better at reading the room, but Shun had the ability to see right through your expression and catch of glimpse of the deepest parts of your heart without breaking a sweat.
I tried my best to act the part of a quiet, normal kid in high school, but I guess he saw through that…
Up until high school, I led a pretty rough-and-tumble life.
It all started when I was in kindergarten.
A bunch of older kids were trying to hog all the playground equipment, so I tried to chase them off on my own.
We’d been playing on the equipment first until these older kids suddenly showed up.
I put up such a fight that I made one of the older boys cry.
In the end, a teacher stepped in before the fight escalated any further.
But then she got mad at me, as if I was the one to blame.
Why did I get in trouble for doing the right thing?
At the time, I didn’t understand at all.
Looking back, though, I get it: Because I picked a fight, the other kids who were playing with me got caught up in it and got hurt.
Some of the kids my own age ended up crying, too.
The ones to blame for starting everything were definitely the older kids who had shown up and tried to take all the playground equipment for themselves. I have no doubt about that.
But was it right for me to pick a fight with those kids?
I’m still not sure.
But I think that was the moment when I first learned that my sense of right and wrong didn’t necessarily match everyone else’s, although I only vaguely understood that at the time.
After that, I still stuck to my own beliefs about what was right.
Even if that meant using my fists, which it often did.
In elementary school, I stopped bullies.
In middle school, I beat up boys who tried to shake down younger students for money.
I could go on and on listing these examples.
The more I acted on what I felt was right, the more others distanced themselves.
I found myself with fewer and fewer allies and more and more enemies.
By the time I graduated middle school, people in the neighborhood had given me the nickname “little ogre.”
I think it was because I was so short at the time.
All I was doing was what I thought was right, but nobody else seemed to see it that way.
In fact, they all seemed to think I was in the wrong.
So when I started high school, I picked a place that was a little farther away from my neighborhood and decided to be on my best behavior.
Just like that, my days became almost laughably peaceful.
As long as I turned a blind eye and pretended not to notice certain things, it was easy to live as a normal high schooler.
But once in a while, I found myself wondering: Am I really all right with this?
I played video games with my friends, stressed out about tests, thought about what to do after graduation.
As I lived out this normal high school life, a certain gloominess settled in the back of my mind.
Just like Shun said, I was being inflexible, missing out on life.
What does it really mean to be “right”?
Which course of action should I take if I want to do the “right” thing?
Looking back now, I can see all too clearly that worrying about such things was a luxury.
Once I’ve defeated all the adventurers, I let out a sigh of relief.
At the same time, the strength leaves my body.
I must have built up a considerable amount of fatigue without even realizing it myself.
Unlike the fights in my old life, these life-and-death struggles are incredibly stressful, as you might expect.
No wonder I find myself slumping to my knees as soon as the battle is over.
Still sitting on the ground, I heave a long sigh.
A burned smell surrounds me: not of wood but of flesh.
As well as the metallic stench of blood.
Looking around, I see the corpses of adventurers strewn everywhere.
Holes in the ground, created by the explosions, tell of the ferocity of the battle that just occurred.
I used up all the magic swords I had on hand.
Now I’ll have to make more.
Weapon Creation. That’s my unique skill.
This skill, which I’ve apparently had from birth, allows me to conjure up weapons at the cost of MP.
Depending on the amount of MP used, it can even add special effects to the weapons.
As a result, I can create what’s known as magic swords.
The first time I noticed that this skill existed was during dinner in the goblin village.
There were no forks or knives in the goblin village, so we normally ate with our hands.
It happened when the meat from the day’s hunt was on the dinner table.
It was so tough, I found myself wishing from the bottom of my heart that I had a knife.
Just like that, a flash of light filled the little room, and in the next instant, there was a knife in my hand.
It was a lot shabbier than the kind of knife I’d been picturing, but it was still unmistakably a knife.
Mysteriously, a knife had just appeared from thin air.
We didn’t know how it had happened until we used the village chief’s Appraisal Stone, the only one in the village.
The results showed that I had the Weapon Creation skill.
Once we learned that, my daily life changed ever so slightly.
I produced as many weapons as my MP would permit.
All I wanted was to be of some use to the village.
Unfortunately, since I had so little MP at the time, those shabby knives were about the best I could produce.
And making one of them used up all my MP, so I always had to wait for it to recover.
Even so, everyone in the village was grateful, since it gave them the ability to cut up the food they’d previously had to eat with their hands.
I was so happy that I kept making knives whenever I could.
Continuously making knives meant that my skill level went up, my MP pool increased, and so on, until I was able to make a proper kitchen knife.
I would’ve liked to make forks, too, but as the name implies, Weapon Creation can’t make anything but weapons.
I was probably able to CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS and kitchen knives only because they’re technically usable as weapons.
Small knives, kitchen knives, and later, large knives that could be used to butcher meat.
After that, I moved on to short swords.
Then I was finally able to make proper long swords.
Gradually, I became able to make better, stronger weapons.
Until then, the goblins never had the means or resources to craft good weapons, but that changed dramatically thanks to my Weapon Creation skill.
Soon, they were able to defeat monsters they could never best before, greatly expanding the area in which they could hunt and explore.
That meant more supplies of meat and more resources that could be gathered.
My power was helping everyone in the village.
I was so happy and proud that I devoted myself even more intently to Weapon Creation.
Thinking back, that was probably the most fulfilled I’ve ever been.
The more weapons I made, the more my skill level increased, which let me make even better weapons.
And better weapons meant a better life for everyone.
What could be more worthwhile?
I now have far more MP and higher skill levels than I did at the time, so the amount and quality of weapons I can make doesn’t even compare to my abilities back then.
I couldn’t add special effects to weapons in the past, either.
I’m growing more and more.
But that isn’t fulfilling to me at all.
How can I be happy about making weapons used to kill people?
I once made weapons to defeat monsters for the sake of our livelihood, but now I make weapons to kill humans.
Though I’m making weapons in both cases, there’s an enormous difference.
…Then again, I guess a weapon is a weapon.
That much doesn’t change.
However, the way you use it changes its nature profoundly.
I’m using these weapons to kill people now.
I guess that’s the only difference.
That’s not the purpose I honed this skill for, but here I am.
I gaze at my surroundings again.
The broken earth.
The remains of adventurers, blown away or cut down.
Some of them are still in one piece, but many more are unrecognizably mangled.
It was the magic swords I made that did this to them.
Land mine swords.
As the name implies, they’re magic swords with a similar effect to land mines.
Usually, magic swords use the wielder’s MP to produce effects, so they’re used continually until they break.
The same is true of the two swords I use as my personal weapons, the flame katana and the lightning katana.
But land mine swords are different.
I preload them with plenty of my MP when I create them.
Then all their stored energy is unleashed at once when they explode.
Magic swords are supposed to be used over a long period of time, so if you imagine all that power coming out in a single moment, you can guess how intense that would be.
Still, it’s not as if the power they have is actually all that impressive.
Since they don’t have a wielder providing MP like most magic swords, they become one use only in exchange for an extra bit of kick.
Considering the amount of MP it costs to make them, regular magic swords are probably a lot more cost-efficient.
Still, the one-use-only swords are definitely more powerful, and the fact that they can be used without spending MP is a huge point in their favor.
And since I have only two arms and can therefore wield only two magic swords, the land mine swords are a lot more useful.
Once they’ve been set, they explode on their own as soon as someone steps on them.
All I have to do is create the land mine swords and set them in the ground.
There’s only one of me, so obviously I’m at a disadvantage whenever I’m outnumbered. That’s why I developed the land mine swords.
I can set them up as traps to help level the playing field.
The best part is, the more magic swords I make with Weapon Creation, the better my skill level gets.
With a higher skill level, I can create even better magic swords.
That means it’s in my best interest to create as many swords as I can, but like I said earlier, I can wield only two swords at a time.
Even if I insist on equipping myself with more, like you might in a game or manga, it’s not like the extras will do me any good.
And since I’d prefer not to let the magic swords I make go to waste, creating one-use swords that can be used from a distance was the perfect solution.
By that same logic, I also developed exploding swords for throwing along with the land mine swords.
These aren’t that different from the land mine swords, but the most attractive feature is that I get to choose who to attack and when.
At first, I thought I’d try making guns or something, but it seems that my Weapon Creation skill can’t make modern weapons.
Blades and bludgeons are no problem, but I can’t make anything that uses gunpowder.
So I developed exploding swords as the next best thing, and they turned out to be incredibly powerful.
Since they’re swords, my Swordsmanship skill boosts their attack power, and my Throw skill increases the accuracy and impact, so being hit by one already does a lot of damage.
And since they explode on top of that, they’ve got more raw power than even the land mine swords.
In fact, they’re even more lethal than guns.
The only difficulty is that, unlike land mine swords, I have to actually throw them myself, so I can’t use them if the target is outside of my throwing range.
But I can make up for that by using them in combination with land mine swords.
I place land mind swords all around me to make it difficult for enemies to get too close, and if they manage to do so, I can just throw an exploding sword at them.
The land mines create an invisible wall of defense, and the exploding swords are my battery.
In a way, I guess that makes me a living fortress.
Still, both land mine swords and exploding swords are consumable resources.
After they’ve been used once, that’s it.
My land mine sword defenses and my exploding sword offenses both have a limit.
When all is said and done, the only thing I can always rely on is myself and my own two swords.
The flame katana and the lightning katana.
They’re real, proper magic swords, unlike the one-use-only land mine and exploding swords.
Since they’re shaped like katanas, maybe it would be more accurate to call them magic katanas.
Just as the names imply, they’re imbued with the powers of fire and lightning respectively.
If I channel my MP into them, the blades become enveloped in flame and lightning, explosively raising their attack power.
They can shoot fire and lightning as well, allowing me to keep enemies away at midrange.
On top of that, just equipping them raises the wielder’s defense, granting resistance to fire and lightning, and even increases and heals HP and MP.
It’s not as effective as skills, but since they decrease damage and help with healing, they’re incredibly useful for long battles.
And since they can even automatically repair damage to their own blades, they’re virtually indestructible, as long as they aren’t completely destroyed in a single attack.
Making swords with this many useful effects was difficult even for me.
I’m extremely proud of them.
I even used the Naming skill to give them names, enhancing their effects further.
The Naming skill gives a name to objects or living beings, which improves their effects, raises their stats, and so on.
Naming living things can also give the namer influence over the named, so if a living creature doesn’t have a name, giving them one can place them under your power.
The naming alone doesn’t have that much effect, but if used in combination with other skills, you can even control the named living thing completely.
Which is how I…
An awful memory comes to mind.
I shake it off, trying to regain my composure.
After they formed such a large-scale hunting party, I doubt the humans will give up so easily.
In fact, now that they know that such a dangerous monster exists, they’ll probably get even more desperate to defeat me.
They’re not wrong to think that I’m a danger to humans, so I can’t blame them for making that call.
Still, that doesn’t mean I don’t find it aggravating.
Anyone would be angry if they were attacked like that.
As long as they’re going to keep coming after me, I’ll make preparations and be ready for them.
I’m not going to try to reach an understanding with humans now.
Humans can’t be trusted.
In fact, I’d like to wipe them all out.
Dark emotions start to well up inside me.
The taste of blood fills my mouth.
At first, I thought I must have clenched my teeth so hard that I bit my own cheek, but then I realize that I’m biting one of the adventurer’s corpses.
The tastes of blood and flesh in my mouth trigger old memories, bringing back the rage I felt back then.
All that fury threatens to take over my mind, but I shake my head rapidly, fighting it off.
Not good.
I have to remain calm.
It’s all right. I’m fine.
I haven’t lost my composure.
I have to stay calm and prepare for the humans’ next attack.
Tearing the dead adventurer to pieces with my mouth, I start thinking up my strategy to kill the next humans who come after me.
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