Chapter 13

Chapter 13.

The next morning’s training ground was sunk in damp fog.

The dirt floor, still wet with the dew that had fallen overnight, was muddy, and the white breaths bursting from the soldiers’ mouths scattered heavily into the cold air. It was as if the heavy silence that had pressed down on the camp last night had flowed into the training ground along with the fog.

The soldiers stood awkwardly in formation, some with faces not yet fully awake, others with the fatigue from the day before still clinging to them. No one opened his mouth first. Only the occasional clatter of armor and the sound of dry coughing broke the silence awkwardly.

Den stood in formation with his body stiff. Because he had swung a wooden spear all night, the muscles in his shoulders and back were screaming. The palms that had gripped the spear shaft were skinned and blistered, and even clenching his fists sent a stinging pain through him.

But the pain of his body was nothing. What gnawed at his heart was the sense of powerlessness and terrible inferiority lodged somewhere far deeper.

Glance.

Before he knew it, his gaze turned toward Rian, who stood several rows away.

Rian stood there without any presence, as he always did. He did not hunch his shoulders or look around anxiously. He merely stared with empty eyes at a single point in the foggy air. None of the loneliness or resolve of someone who had decided last night to shoulder everything alone could be read anywhere on his face. He was simply empty.

That expressionless face scraped at Den’s nerves even more sharply.

That was when Sergeant Kairon slowly walked out from one end of the training ground with his arms crossed. The sound of his boots stepping on the muddy earth rang out especially loudly.

“......”

Kairon’s gaze was colder than usual. Like a beast sweeping its eyes over prey, he sharply pierced through each soldier’s face and posture. His gaze lingered for a moment on Den’s face, where exhaustion was plain. It was a gaze that seemed to see even the blisters on his hands.

Soon, Kairon’s gaze finally went to Rian and nailed itself there.

“Today will be sparring.”

His voice was low, but it rang across the entire training ground.

“Pair up.”

No sooner had the words fallen than a low murmur spread among the soldiers. They let out sighs of relief and hurriedly began meeting the eyes of comrades nearby and forming pairs. As if they wanted to shake off the heavy mood somehow, their movements were busier than usual.

But even amid that bustle, one person alone remained isolated like an island.

Rian.

As always, no one approached him. Before, it had been because he was a dropout, but now the reason was completely different. The soldiers deftly moved around him, as if there were an invisible wall surrounding him. It was an instinctive avoidance of an incomprehensible being.

In the end, Rian was naturally left alone.

As if he had been waiting for that, Kairon jerked his chin toward Rian.

“You.”

Rian’s heart dropped with a thud.

“In front of me.”

In an instant, every gaze on the training ground turned toward Rian at once. Within those gazes, pity, curiosity, and relief that it was not them were strangely mixed together.

Rian silently walked out of formation. Leaving footprints in the muddy earth, he stood before Kairon in the center of the training ground.

Kairon picked up two wooden practice spears leaning against the armory. Then he carelessly tossed one of them to Rian.

“......!”

Flustered, Rian barely caught the wooden spear. The rough, knotted feel of the wood was vivid in his palm.

Kairon opened his mouth with a sardonic smile.

“You said yesterday that it happened because you lost your mind.”

It was an unmistakable provocation. The ears of the soldiers around them pricked up.

“Today, you must be in your right mind, so let’s take a look. At what you bastard call your real skill.”

Every sound on the training ground stopped as if it had been a lie. In the thick fog, Kairon and Rian. Every soldier’s gaze focused on the two of them.

***

Kairon took his stance first.

His feet were shoulder-width apart, and his center of gravity was lowered slightly. The tip of his spear aimed at Rian’s solar plexus without the slightest tremor. It was a perfect, gapless stance, as if taken straight from a textbook, steeped in decades of battlefield experience.

Rian faced him and awkwardly adjusted his grip on the spear. His shoulders were stiff with tension, and his feet wandered unsteadily over the ground. The sight of him coldly analyzing Den’s openings last night was nowhere to be found.

‘There’s no threat.’

Rian repeated inwardly.

‘I can’t...... feel any killing intent.’

Kairon’s eyes were fierce, but they did not hold the will to kill him. There was only the intent to test and evaluate him.

And then his body, as if it had been a lie, returned to being ordinary conscript Rian. Neither Borik’s experience nor Gareth’s clumsy longing, nothing at all, stirred in the depths of his body.

In times of peace, he was still nothing more than the training camp’s dropout.

Whoosh!

Kairon lightly thrust his spear as if testing him. It was a simple thrust, not fast.

“Ugh!”

Rian stumbled back and barely avoided the spear tip. He looked precarious as he lost his balance and staggered.

A small burst of ridicule broke out among the soldiers who saw it. Den, mixed in with the formation, twisted his lips.

“Hmph. What the hell is that?”

In his voice, along with contempt, there was the faintest hint of relief. Maybe what had happened yesterday really had been a coincidence.

“Guess yesterday really was luck.”

“Of course. It makes no sense that a slow worm like that beat an imperial noncommissioned officer.”

Whispers filled the training ground again.

Kairon pretended not to hear and continued attacking in succession. He was not fast, but the tip of his spear precisely targeted Rian’s openings. There was not the slightest wasted movement in his thrusts, slashes, and strikes.

Rian could not block or counter those attacks. He was busy simply pulling his body back or twisting aside on instinct to dodge. His movements were clumsy, precarious, and pathetic.

Like an experienced cat toying with a frightened mouse, the one-sided sparring continued.

Rian’s breath soon rose all the way to his throat. Along with a burning pain in his lungs, the gazes filled with contempt and ridicule pierced his entire body.

At that moment, Kairon’s eyebrow twitched faintly. An expression mixed with disappointment and suspicion flashed across his face.

‘Is this all? Then what the hell was that overwhelming movement? Was it really...... luck?’

Then Kairon stopped attacking and withdrew his spear.

“Boring.”

His voice was cold as ice.

“Is that all you are? Are you telling me you survived with nothing but this level of skill?”

“Hah, hah......”

Rian breathed roughly and could not answer. He did not even have the strength to reply.

Kairon stared hard at Rian for a moment. His eyes narrowed.

‘No...... There is something more. Something I am missing. I have to drag it out of him.’

Having made up his mind, Kairon murmured in a low voice. It was quiet enough that only Rian could hear.

“Starting now, I will find out whether that ‘mad state’ of yours was a coincidence or not.”

The moment he spat out those words, Kairon’s gaze changed.

The testing atmosphere from before vanished without a trace. From deep within his eyes, a sharp, blue killing intent began to rise. It was a pure will of death, the kind that only a man who had taken the lives of enemies on countless battlefields could possess.

The air of the training ground froze.

***

Kairon’s stance lowered in an instant.

The end of the wooden spear in his hand pointed straight at Rian’s neck, without a single tremor. It even created the illusion that the thick fog over the training ground was swirling and being drawn in from around him.

The murmuring nearby stopped completely. The soldiers instinctively sensed danger and held their breath. This was no longer sparring.

Swish!

In that instant, Kairon’s body shot forward.

It was a speed that could not even be compared to before. Along with the sharp sound of air being split, his body charged toward Rian like a black leopard.

‘I’m going to die!’

Rian’s brain turned white with fear.

All thought stopped. Every muscle in his body froze. As he watched the spear tip expanding to fill his pupils, he sensed his own death. In the sensation of time slowing horribly, despair ruled his entire body, telling him that he could neither dodge nor block.

......But that was only Rian’s consciousness.

At the very instant his brain was swallowed by fear.

Rian’s right foot stepped half a pace back, completely unrelated to his will, and stamped hard into the ground. A solid axis formed.

Then his waist twisted like a powerful spring. The movement began from his thighs, traveled up his spine, passed through his shoulders, and flowed into his arms.

The stiff muscles in his arms relaxed, and the wooden spear in his hand rose from below to above, drawing a smooth, graceful arc.

It was the essence of the most efficient and perfect spearmanship that Borik had carved into his body over decades of rolling through battlefields, repeating it thousands, tens of thousands of times. A parry that diverted an oncoming enemy attack with the smallest possible movement.

Tap!

A clear, crisp sound rang through the foggy training ground.

Just before Kairon’s spear tip touched Rian’s neck, it struck Rian’s surging spear shaft and narrowly veered off course. The blow carrying all of Kairon’s strength sliced through empty air beside Rian’s neck.

Kairon’s eyes widened in shock.

But Rian’s body did not stop there.

Using the opponent’s deflected force as it was, his twisted waist unwound in the opposite direction. The spear shaft, inheriting all of that rotational force, burrowed like a snake toward Kairon’s exposed side.

It was a flawless motion that flowed from defense into counterattack like water.

“Kh!”

Kairon instinctively pulled his body back and barely avoided the counterattack. But the tip of the wooden spear grazed the armor at his side with a dull sound. If it had been real combat, it would have been a blow that broke several of his ribs.

Distance opened between them again.

Complete silence descended on the training ground. Even the fog seemed to hold its breath. The soldiers only blinked, as if they could not believe the sight they had just witnessed.

The wooden spear dropped from Den’s hand and fell to the ground with a thud. Muddy water splashed, but he did not notice. His mouth hung open and would not close. In his eyes, it did not look like Rian was standing there, but some incomprehensible monster.

Rian himself was the same.

He looked down at his own hand and the wooden spear in it in turn.

‘Did I...... just do that?’

No. This is not me.

His body had moved like a puppet, regardless of his will. The sensation became a chilling fear and ran down his spine. His fingertips grew cold.

***

Kairon slowly relaxed his stance.

The fierce killing intent had vanished from his face without a trace. Instead, a deep and confused gaze, the gaze of one who had witnessed an incomprehensible phenomenon, pierced through Rian. He seemed to be trying to see not Rian’s body, but something dwelling inside it.

After a long silence, Kairon opened his mouth quietly.

“As I thought...... it was no coincidence.”

That was all.

Leaving only those words behind, Kairon turned his back on Rian. He did not ask any more questions or interrogate him further. He simply shouted toward the soldiers who stood there blankly.

“Training is over. Dismissed.”

He did not look at Rian again. Like someone who had glimpsed a secret too great to handle, he left the training ground as he was and headed for his own barracks.

The remaining soldiers did not know what to do for a moment, then soon began scattering while avoiding Rian as if they had all agreed to it. Their movements were mixed with unmistakable fear, of a level different from their previous avoidance. They glanced at Rian as if looking at a monster and hurriedly moved away from him.

In an instant, only Rian was left standing alone in the middle of the training ground.

He was still blankly looking down at his hand, the hand that had moved on its own.

Over there, Den staggered to his feet. He looked back and forth between his own wooden spear lying on the ground and Rian standing like a monster.

‘Effort......?’

He remembered himself swinging a spear all night until his palms had been skinned raw. That desperate struggle, his vow to grow stronger through blood and sweat, felt so wretched and meaningless before the single movement Rian had just shown.

‘Against something like that...... what use is effort?’

Crash.

He heard the sound of the venom and willpower with which he had whipped himself all night shattering into pieces. A bottomless despair covered his entire body like a black wave.

Den lowered his head and staggered out of the training ground like a man whose soul had left him.

Left alone, Rian clenched his cold hand tightly. But strangely, the sensation was faint. As if he were gripping someone else’s hand.

‘Am I supposed to be happy......?’

His limbs had betrayed his will and moved on their own. Unfamiliar muscles held decades of experience within them.

‘But it didn’t move according to my will.’

There was no joy or relief at having gained new power.

Only the chilling realization that he had lost control over his own body tightened around his heart, becoming a fear colder and deeper than the fog.