Chapter 17

Chapter : 17

Leo had an older brother who was one year his senior.

His name was Ryan.

As a commoner, he had no surname. From childhood, he and Leo had swung swords together, and together they had dreamed.

Of becoming the strongest under heaven.

To become the strongest human in this vast Empire, among its countless people. That was the goal they had devoted themselves to.

For that reason, Ryan had originally been in the Swordsmanship Department like Leo, but after long deliberation, he transferred to the commercial track.

Ryan had given up on his dream.

Quite some time ago.

The moment he realized that he lacked the talent, the background, and even the will to strive required to become the strongest under heaven, he swiftly gave up.

He changed his goal from becoming the strongest under heaven to becoming the captain of a promising knight order.

A few months later, that changed again to becoming an ordinary member of a promising knight order.

A few more months after that, he found himself thinking that it would be enough if he could merely become a knight at all.

It had been exactly one year since Ryan transferred from the Swordsmanship Department to the commercial track.

Ryan was fairly clever in his own way, and for a swordsman, he was also fairly well-read.

And there was some value in being a merchant who could handle a blade.

In many ways, he had been in a good position to change departments.

More than anything, though, Ryan hated the sword.

There were only three ways to make a living with one’s blade.

Become a knight, become someone’s instructor, or become a mercenary.

In Ryan’s view, he did not have the talent to become a knight.

He was weak. He had been born with a small frame and slow reflexes. He had thought long and hard about whether effort alone could break through all the walls piled one atop another on the road to knighthood, then shook his head.

It had already been years since even the will to try had faded from him.

The same was true of becoming a swordsmanship instructor. Unless one had exceptional connections somewhere, it was usually retired knights, men who had lived as knights until old age forced them to step down, who chose that path.

Without connections, and without even the confidence that he could become a knight, it was not a profession he could pursue.

That left only one path.

Mercenary work.

He did not want that.

Compared with knights, mercenaries were held in lower regard, earned less, and faced greater danger of death. Under those practical conditions, Ryan had put down the sword.

Leo had seen it happen.

The brother who had picked up the sword before him had set it down. Leo’s own circumstances were not very different from Ryan’s.

There was only one difference.

Leo’s dream was entirely different from Ryan’s.

It was not about having a respectable profession, earning a great deal of money, or living a safe life.

It was about becoming the strongest under heaven.

Ryan had wanted that title for the sake of honor and wealth, but for Leo, it was not a means. It was the dream itself.

He had protected that dream for a long time.

He wanted to become the strongest single warrior in this vast Empire. He had dreamed that dream under conditions not much different from his brother’s. A frame much like Ryan’s, and reflexes only a little better. That was all.

The strongest under heaven?

It was a dream too absurd to speak of.

After early childhood had passed, he had been too ashamed to say it aloud.

And lately, far from drawing closer to that goal, it had even become uncertain whether he could become a knight at all, just as Ryan had once feared.

No, if he stagnated like this, then failing even to become a knight was all but certain.

At the Academy, Leo had seen what it meant for some people to be chosen.

There was the Crown Prince, whom he had previously only heard of in rumors.

He had been astonishing. He made one believe that myths were real.

Leo had never believed that the imperial family truly carried Dragon Blood.

Not only in the Empire, but in every tribe and minority race one could find some grand myth or another. He had assumed the imperial family was the same.

He had thought they must simply have invented a fitting legend.

He had been wrong.

During the martial tournament held within the Academy the previous year, a third-year student from the Swordsmanship Department, whom many had believed unbeatable, met the Crown Prince there and was crushed.

In every match, the Crown Prince simply caught his opponent’s sword in his hand, snapped it, and won.

Leo had been there too.

And he had felt helpless.

He had thought that no matter what he did, becoming stronger than the Crown Prince would be impossible.

That was the truth.

There were people who had been chosen.

The Grand Duke of the North, who was said to have made a contract with a demon, was one of them.

And so was Jefrin, who had lost to Raphael yet displayed swordsmanship on an entirely different level.

No matter what he did, competing with them was impossible.

Immediately after losing his sparring match with Raphael, Leo had wrestled with whether he ought to follow his brother and change departments.

Unlike his brother, he was not particularly clever, so what would he even do? Perhaps he should simply drift along and at least graduate from the Academy.

That much, at least, felt possible.

And then it happened.

“Why do you think you lost?”

Raphael had said that.

Right after hearing it, Leo had only been dumbfounded.

Why did he lose?

Because he was weaker than you, obviously.

A curse had risen to his lips, but he swallowed it because of Raphael’s status.

It was fortunate that he had.

That was not what Raphael had meant.

“But why did you fight like that? You wanted to win, didn’t you?”

That was true.

Why had he fought like that?

He had known that if he fought that way, he would lose.

Yes.

He had already been preparing himself.

If swordsmanship was not enough, then he would find another road. Once he lost to Raphael, he would let go of the matter cleanly.

Then Raphael had spoken once more.

“If this annoys you, then ignore it. I’m just saying what I think. Even when the strong fight the weak, the weak still win one time out of ten. But the way you fought looked like, if you fought someone stronger than you ten times, you intended to lose all ten.”

It was true.

Leo admitted that, compared with the small number of chosen geniuses, his own talent was pitiful. And yet he had still tried to fight the way geniuses did.

Insisting on fighting head-on was something only geniuses were allowed to do. If he fought the same way they did, then no matter how many times he tried, he would lose.

Leo abandoned his dream.

In its place, he dreamed a new dream.

Not of becoming the strongest under heaven.

But of fighting the strongest under heaven, and defeating him.

---

“You missed me, didn’t you?”

That day began with Katarina kicking me in the shin before class.

The moment I finished speaking, she snapped the tip of her foot into my shin.

“Ow!”

Rubbing at my shin, I shot Katarina a look.

What, could a master really dislike seeing her own disciple?

If that were the case, then she should never have taken me as a disciple in the first place.

To begin with, the reason Katarina had applied to be an instructor at the Academy was because she wanted to take in one talented disciple.

I had asked the person who, in this Academy, ought to have wanted to see me more than anyone. So when she reacted like that, I could not help feeling a little hurt.

Katarina thrust her clenched fist toward my face and said,

“Do not get cheeky.”

“Yes, of course.”

Afraid that I might get punched if I pressed the matter, I nodded obediently.

After that, Katarina corrected my swordsmanship once more, and I demonstrated the Force Release Ian had taught me.

I performed the same sword strike once as I normally would, then repeated it using Force Release.

I had not shown it off merely to brag. I was genuinely curious how Katarina would evaluate it.

She let out a small snort and tapped my forehead.

“Hey, where did you learn something like this? Did you go and get yourself another swordsmanship teacher besides me? Is that one better than I am?”

“No, it is nothing like that. I learned it from a friend in the Magic Department. He is good at this sort of thing. What do you think?”

“Well, at least you learned it properly.”

Katarina then explained Force Release.

She said that when people first learned Force Release, they often acquired bad habits easily. For example, many would hunch their bodies before using it or expose obvious telltale signs beforehand.

According to her, even fairly skilled knights sometimes failed to get rid of those habits.

“You learned it properly. But do not rely on it too much. It is an inefficient technique.”

That was Katarina’s assessment of Force Release.

It was true that it let one produce greater force than usual in an instant, but the cost in stamina and mana was too great. If I fought while using Force Release continuously, my body would be exhausted in less than a minute.

“That’s why you have to use it properly.”

A crisis you absolutely could not get past otherwise.

A turning point where you could secure victory for certain.

A finishing blow you were completely confident would land.

“That’s the only way I use it. Outside of situations like that, it’s all waste.”

I memorized Katarina’s advice.

I intended to apply it to myself. And also, someday, I might end up having to fight Katarina herself, so it would be useful then too.

“That sounds good.”

“It doesn’t merely sound good. It’s the right answer.”

“Understood.”

Smiling, she ruffled my hair.

The sensation was awkward and unpleasant, and when I frowned at her, she shoved my forehead with her palm.

Then she said,

“Well done. To be honest, I can teach swordsmanship just fine, but something like the movement of mana is so instinctive for me that I had no idea how to explain it, so I’d been putting it off. But you learned it well.”

“Ah, yes.”

“Considering your brain, it sounds like you learned it from someone truly intelligent. I won’t pry into who. Treat him well.”

“Ah, yes.”

“Make your answers longer.”

“Understood.”

After that, Katarina taught me a few more sword strikes, and then I went to the training hall and lifted weights.

Once mana had accumulated in my body, my muscles felt fatigue less sharply, so I lowered the number of splits and did more sets instead.

After thoroughly grinding my entire body down, I returned to the dormitory.

Once I got back, I washed, changed clothes, and immediately lay down on the bed.

I felt so exhausted that it seemed as though I would fall unconscious the moment I closed my eyes.

Suppressing that fatigue by force, I rose again and sat at the desk.

For around two hours, I reviewed the spells and the manipulation of mana that Ian had taught me.

Ian had wanted to teach me many different spells.

He did not say it aloud, but he too had clearly noticed my talent for magic.

Even so, I had no intention of walking the path of a mage. Rather than learning many middling spells now, it would be far more efficient to learn a handful of extremely useful ones while focusing on swordsmanship.

One of those was Shield.

Because I was a coward, Shield was the first thing I learned from Ian.

Since it was a spell that manipulated mana alone, without requiring any elemental conversion, it was relatively simple and effective.

In particular, unlike many other spells, where proficiency in the spell itself mattered, Shield could produce a simple barrier as long as one had sufficient Mana Capacity and Magical Power.

“Haa…”

Only after seventeen attempts to cast Shield, and seventeen failures, did I finally collapse back onto the bed.

Learning magic was, in some ways, even more exhausting than swordsmanship.

Even if my body held out, my concentration scattered quickly, and my head spun.

I staggered to my feet.

Both my body and mind had been pushed right to their limits. But by tomorrow, the fatigue would recover anyway.

It was essential to wring the utmost out of myself every single day.

Reassured by the fact that I had finished everything I had planned for the day, I threw myself onto the bed.

The moment I lay down, I fell asleep.

I slept soundly, without dreaming at all.

---

The next morning, on my way back to the Academy for class,

I found a single brown envelope sitting in the mailbox, which was usually empty.

I pulled it out and checked it.

The sender was Koromang.

The moment I saw that, I felt afraid even before opening it.

What now?

What had happened?

I opened the envelope and took out the letter inside.