The Tale of A Man Who Believed That His Reincarnation Had Granted Him A Japanese Sword And The Greatest Battle Sense, Only To Have The God Finally Inform Him "Huh, I Didn't Give You Any Combat Sense… That's Scary…" - Episode 3

He lowered the katana he had been carrying on his back and cut the rope made of leaves that was wrapped around the sheath. Holding the sheathed katana in his left hand, he slowly crawled out from between the trees that had been hiding his figure, heading towards the path where the bandits were.

Before having a delightful exchange of life with the thieves, what I want to confirm first is whether the words I speak will be properly understood by the people of this world. If we can’t communicate normally, everything will fall apart, whether it’s repaying the merchant or learning about the world.

“Hello everyone! Good afternoon! It’s nice weather, isn’t it?”

Crawling out from between the trees, I cheerfully spoke to the rough-looking men who were stopping the carriage under the bright afternoon sun. All at once, the men’s gazes turned towards me. There were nine of them in total.

“What the hell, you brat… with that filthy appearance… you must have escaped from some refugee camp or slave camp, huh?”

“Oh! Amazing, amazing, we can actually understand each other! Wow, reincarnation perks are really something!”

“Huh!? Tensei Tokuten? Wh-What is this brat talking about? Is he out of his mind?”

The rough-looking men who had been loitering around the carriage came over with equally rough expressions and surrounded me.

“Oh, this kid has a rare weapon… Hey, what should we do with him?”

“Just take their weapons, beat them up a bit, and toss them into the forest. If they were slaves of another band of thieves, killing them would just cause more trouble later.”

“Alright, then, kid, hurry up and hand over that rare sword.”

A man approaches me, a sadistic smile on his face, as if he were a restaurant patron choosing a dessert after a meal, contemplating how he will torment me next.

“That’s not good, you guys. It’s dangerous to get close to someone you don’t understand.”

In an instant, he firmly gripped the hilt of the katana in his left hand and drew it with his whole body. The blade, released from its sheath, sliced straight across the approaching man’s abdomen. The sensations transmitted to his hand were the softness of cutting through skin and the hardness of slicing through flesh. And it was just after that that the man’s scream was heard.

“Aaaahhh!!?? He, he cut me! He cut me! That little brat!!?”

“I told you, didn’t I? It’s dangerous to get close to someone you don’t understand.”

“!! Gile! Heal Frezzo’s slashed abdomen with a recovery spell! Ulin, Lark, Pazzo! Surround and kill this brat!”

The man who seems to be the leader of the thieves present here gives precise instructions. Oh, in this world, magic and such are common technologies, huh? As expected, when it comes to reincarnation in another world, swords and magic are the main themes. Yeah, yeah.

“Die, brat!!”

The giant thief, with beads of sweat on his forehead, swings his mace straight down. Death, taking the clear form of the mace, approaches, but my body doesn’t flinch or move at all. I’m not even tense. It’s all thanks to the reincarnation bonus.

Catch the swung mace with the blade of the katana. Use your knees to absorb the impact into the ground, then leap up and strike the mace upwards with the katana.

When I slice up the side of the now wide-open giant bandit, a sound like cutting through cartilage resonates from my hand to my eardrum. The giant bandit’s arm flies off, and he collapses to the ground.

Moving seamlessly between the men, he cut down one after another like a well-rehearsed assembly line. In just about twenty seconds, all the bandits except for the one who had been cut down in the abdomen and the one tending to him had perished.

“Yikes!? What the heck, what the heck, who is this kid!? They were elite members of the Grotto Bandits, you know!!”

“Pl-please! You! I-I give up! I won’t do anything, so at least let me and this guy go!”

Just as two heads were aligned at the same height, I swung my katana horizontally. As I stopped the katana and shook off the bl00d clinging to the blade, the surroundings were enveloped in silence.

I had predicted that it would come to this ever since I first held the katana. I took a life. For the first time, I took another person’s life with my own will and ego. Until today, I thought that if I killed someone with my own hands, feelings of regret or the faces of the people I killed would be deeply etched into my soul, but there is no sign of such feelings at all.

Could this also be the effect of the reincarnation bonus, like stabilizing the mind or not feeling guilty?

However, there are a few other points that concern me besides the fact that I don’t feel any guilt. When using a Japanese sword, it feels strangely smooth or natural. It’s as if it’s second nature, and I instinctively know how to hold the sword, apply force, and angle the blade.

“Well, there’s no point in thinking about it.”

After wiping off the bl00d and sheathing the sword, I turned my gaze to the carriage. Perhaps due to the commotion from the recent battle, the horse pulling the carriage had broken free from its reins and was running away. There’s no helping it; I guess I’ll have to give up on the plan of leisurely progressing down the road in the carriage.

I direct my gaze towards the wagon’s cargo area. The wagon is of the type with a roof, and a white cloth is attached from the roof to the sides, making it impossible to see inside. Peeking through the entrance of the wagon, I see several empty iron cages stacked inside, and only one of them has a person inside.

“Mm-mm-mm!! Mm-mm, mm-mm-mm-mm!!”

As I approached the iron cage in the cart, I could see a woman gagged and only able to make muffled groans, desperately struggling to remove her restraints.

The woman appears to be in her early twenties and is wearing a visibly expensive frilly dress. Her hair is brown and reaches down to her waist, but it is messy and tangled, likely from moving around in the cage.

“Ah, hello there, miss. What are you doing in a cage like that?”

“Mmm! Mmm! Mmm! Mmm!”

“Understood, understood. I don’t quite get it, but for now, I’ll take you out of the cage, so please don’t move. You might lose your leg.”

I draw my sword and swing it down vertically towards the cage. The iron cage that had imprisoned the woman was sliced in half as if cutting through butter, fulfilling its purpose. The woman inside the cage looks at me and the now-split cage with a puzzled expression, as if questioning my sanity.

Thus, my first act of killing came to an end, and I succeeded in rescuing the seemingly wealthy woman.