Chapter 39

Chapter : 39

“You said you were going to brag, not publish a newspaper article, didn’t you? Now everyone at the Academy keeps glancing over whenever I walk past. What exactly am I supposed to do about this?”

“Hey, are they staring because it’s ugly? Are they giving you dirty looks? No, right? They’re all looking at you like, Wow, that’s incredible, wow, he’s a Sword Expert. So what’s the problem?”

“Isn’t it embarrassing?”

After Katarina had the fact that I could use Sword Aura printed in the paper, life changed a little.

The first thing was my dawn training.

Before, there had occasionally been students from other departments training as well, but the look in their eyes had changed.

Where once it had been no more than, Ah, he works hard, now it had become, So this is how hard you have to train to become an Expert at that age.

I understood that it was meant positively, but that didn’t make it any less uncomfortable.

They stared so much.

The looks lingered far too long.

Katarina tapped my forehead with her finger and said,

“That’s only because you’re spoiled. What? Other people’s attention makes you uncomfortable? Hey, I love it. I was on my way to work today, and tsk, everyone was going on about how amazing I am. Not just a genius with the sword, but a genius at teaching others too.”

Katarina tried to suppress a smile, but the corners of her mouth twitched.

Then, as though she could no longer hold it back, she burst into laughter and clutched her stomach.

“Hey, did you know this? In education theory, they say what matters more than the teacher’s knowledge is how skilled they are at teaching.”

“I see.”

“Which means, by that standard, I really do have talent for teaching. Ahem.”

“I understand you’re pleased by the praise, but I’m the one who’s embarrassed.”

The moment I said it, I realized once more that I was an outsider here.

In this world, reputation was something more precious than almost anything else.

Knights spent their whole lives dreaming of making a name for themselves, and nobles were much the same.

There were countless people who hurled themselves into danger with the goal of leaving their names behind before they died.

Katarina had probably assumed that, since I would one day become a knight, and since I was already a noble, I must be the same.

“Ah... then I really have done you a disservice. I didn’t realize you felt that way. I thought you were only acting modest.”

“No, it’s all right. Yes, thinking about it now, it may not necessarily be a disadvantage to me.”

I only meant to soothe Katarina, but she brightened at once, completely without tact, and grinned.

“Right?”

“Yes. So you really don’t have to feel that guilty.”

“Then you should try enjoying it too. They’re not looking at you the way they’d stare at some monkey in a cage. It’s all goodwill. Got it?”

“All right.”

It wasn’t as though being looked at would hurt me. If it was only stares, I could ignore them.

At least, that would have been true if it were only stares.

To attend class, I had to enter the building and meet people.

The class I had today was Introduction to Giant Beast Hunting. The moment I opened the lecture hall door and stepped inside, the students’ gazes all swung toward me at once.

He’s here.

Since it was an elective, students from all sorts of departments took it, but a large number of them came from combat-related divisions.

It was only natural that they would be astonished to hear that someone their own age could use Sword Aura. Most of them were simply marveling inwardly, but there was one who said it aloud.

“You’re here!”

Leo sprang up from his seat and hurried toward me. In a rapid voice, he said,

“It’s incredible that you’ve already become a Sword Expert! I knew you were a genius even when you beat Jefrin, but I never imagined it would be to this extent. To think you can already use Sword Aura!”

“Ah. Right. Thank you.”

“To be honest, I knew it all along. I saw you training at dawn every day on the practice ground, and I expected you to distinguish yourself soon. Though even so, it happened much faster than I expected.”

“Right.”

“I used to watch the edge wear down on the training sword you used and admire it, but I’ll work even harder myself.”

“Mm.”

“But... will you continue attending the Academy?”

At the question of whether I was planning to drop out, I shook my head.

It wasn’t only in swordsmanship. If someone distinguished themselves or built up enough notable achievements while still enrolled in the Academy, it wasn’t unusual for them to leave early.

At the level of a Sword Expert, one could enter any knight order.

Especially in my case, since I was still young, it would even have been possible to enter the White Lion Knights, the greatest knight order in the Empire. There was no real need to spend several more years at the Academy.

The reasons people attended the Academy were obvious enough: to improve their skill, build connections, and obtain a diploma.

And all that effort was usually directed toward joining a prestigious knight order in the end.

I had already met those conditions, and in many ways entering early would have been more efficient. Knight orders were better suited to further improving one’s skill, and the people there were more impressive too.

Even so, I couldn’t leave the Academy.

The reason I had entered wasn’t something productive like learning swordsmanship or meeting people.

It was Bishot Puremoon.

I had entered in order to influence the path of the heroine of this world.

I had to remain at the Academy until the very end.

That was not, however, a reason I could tell anyone.

So I gave Leo an excuse instead.

“Because Lady Katarina is here.”

“Ah! I heard about that too. It’s incredible that she’s been putting effort into training the next generation for so long. To achieve success at such a young age, to belong nowhere in particular, and already to be raising juniors—it’s fascinating.”

“Yes. Right. Fascinating.”

I responded vaguely to Leo, who was in a state of excitement.

I had already prepared myself for this sort of thing when I read the newspaper, so it didn’t drain me as much as it could have.

That was how I endured until class began.

Then the professor entered the lecture hall.

At last, was it over?

Relieved, I sat down.

The professor called attendance as he always did, but then paused for a moment.

“Raphael Isaac?”

He called my name, then sniffed the air lightly.

After hearing my answer, he stared blankly at my face and said,

“Are you the Raphael who became a Sword Expert this time?”

“Yes. That’s right.”

“Oh! Stand up for a moment.”

There was no atmosphere here in which I could hesitate out of embarrassment and expect the matter to pass.

So I obediently rose from my chair.

The professor stopped me from sitting back down and then forced the other students to applaud.

I wanted to throw everything away and crawl into a hole.

Unaware of my wish, the professor kept me standing there and praised me over and over again.

Today was an exhausting day.

---

“Well, well, if it isn’t the genius knight who’s become a Sword Expert?”

Navier made an enormous fuss as she teased me.

Apparently she had come prepared, because in her hand she was holding the very newspaper page that featured me. She fluttered it back and forth with a mischievous smile.

“Enough. Is that really so amusing?”

“Enough of what, exactly?”

“Stop waving the newspaper.”

“Yes, of course.”

Still, out of everyone I met today, Navier was the quickest to read the room.

As though she had never been mocking me in the first place, she smoothed out her expression and said in a simple tone,

“Congratulations on becoming a Sword Expert.”

“Thank you.”

That was enough for the greetings.

Whether it was stamina, raw strength, or fencing technique, none of them seemed likely to improve dramatically in a short period.

The time we had been given was only about two months.

Over the past few days, while training Navier, I had realized that there was no real answer.

I had hoped she might at least make it to the semifinals, but I had come to feel that it was impossible.

If her luck was bad, I had to admit that she might even be crushed in the first round.

So if that was the case, what method remained?

How, exactly, was she supposed to appeal to the Crown Prince?

I held out the four-inch bandage I had prepared to Navier.

“What is that?”

“I’ve been thinking about it, and it makes no sense that someone who’s supposedly enjoyed fencing steadily for years would be at your current level. So let’s add one more concept.”

“What concept?”

“That under ordinary circumstances, your skill would be more than enough to win a little Academy tournament like this with ease, but you can’t show your real ability because of an injury.”

Navier clutched her stomach and laughed.

She opened her mouth wide enough to show her gums and laughed so hard it seemed she might topple backward.

She laughed until she was almost out of breath, then finally managed to steady herself.

“You truly are something else. How do you even come up with ideas like that?”

“Quiet. Are you doing it or not?”

“I am. Of course I am. I like that. I think it’s a good idea.”

When fencing, Navier’s weaknesses were clear: the speed of her advance and retreat, her stamina, and the lack of techniques for taking points.

I intended to conceal all of that by wrapping a bandage around her ankle and making it appear she was injured.

If her ankle was inconvenient, then naturally her footwork would be slower. If her stability suffered, then of course her thrusts would be slower too.

And the issue of stamina could be explained by the fact that she was pushing herself through a match in poor physical condition.

A single injury covered a great many flaws.

“This really is a clever plan.”

“Yes. So now all you have to do is train as though your life depends on it, and then compete.”

“Didn’t the bandage mean I wouldn’t have to?”

“You don’t have to be brilliant, but you still have to do your best. I’d like you to win at least a few matches. So we train.”

“Yes. Understood.”

Contrary to appearances, Navier had a rather accommodating side to her.

She understood that I was the one helping her, and when I told her to do something, she obeyed without much complaint. Even if she disliked my suggestion, she didn’t show it. Even if she hated it, she acted as though she liked it.

In short, she was easy to put through her paces.

“Run a little more.”

It would be difficult for her to show some dramatic transformation before the tournament.

But I could at least make her take one more step whenever she thought she had reached her limit.

Even now Navier looked as though she might die, and yet she still did not stop her legs.

It wasn’t as though her muscular endurance or lung capacity had improved enormously since the first day. And yet she was covering more distance and continuing onward.

She had simply grown used to the pain.

“Good. Let’s rest for a moment.”

Even though she looked ready to collapse, Navier still didn’t sit on the ground or sprawl out on it.

There was no one here watching except me, and yet she protected her dignity to the end. She really was something.

After we stopped running, we spent the time until sunrise repeating advances and retreats.

At this point, she should have asked for a break, or said that she was tired, or that it hurt, but Navier endured to the end.

“You’re tough.”

“What?”

“Nothing. I was just saying you’re impressive.”

“Thank you for saying so. But I don’t really think this is all that much. Things were harder when I was young.”

“Why? Did they make you run twenty laps of the parade ground every day?”

Navier let out a hollow laugh and forced herself to smile before replying,

“My body was comfortable. They didn’t even let me change my clothes with my own hands, so there was never any need to exert myself. But every day it felt as though my head would split. My mother was strict. If I made even a tiny mistake, for example if I mishandled tableware ever so slightly, I was punished.”

“She punished you? How?”

“She beat people.”

I didn’t remember there being any setting like that, but I couldn’t very well ask whether she really had been beaten. Navier was the one who brought it up first, true, but wouldn’t that have been intruding into someone else’s family affairs?

When I kept my mouth shut and said nothing, Navier smiled bitterly.

“It wasn’t me she hit. It was the maid who attended me in my place. She was a cheerful, bright girl, but on the days she was beaten in my stead, she wouldn’t say a single word.”

“Ah.”

“But you don’t scold me for falling short of your expectations, Lord Raphael. You don’t drive me into a corner. So compared to childhood, this is easy. Anyone can do this much.”

“So it’s bearable.”

We ran for a long while after that, and then parted.