Chapter 7

Chapter 7.

Several days passed.

All that remained in the place swept through by Wolfgang of the Iron Fist were scattered defeated soldiers. The Kaien Kingdom Army gathered the survivors and moved them to a temporary camp in the rear. It was said to be for the purpose of reorganizing the collapsed units, but in truth, it was closer to a gathering place for a rabble.

The camp was larger than their previous station, but the air filling it was far heavier and gloomier. Soldiers with hopeless eyes like dying campfires wandered through the camp like ghosts. The stench of defeat had settled thickly over everything like fog.

Rian stood like a shadow in the farthest corner of his newly assigned squad.

He was a perfect outsider.

Every gaze around him turned toward him. Some stared openly and brazenly, while others glanced at him from the corners of their eyes, only to startle and turn their heads when their eyes met. In their eyes mingled wariness, distrust, and superstitious fear.

Whispers circled stubbornly around his ears.

“That’s him, right? The one who came back alive alone when his whole platoon got wiped out…….”

“Shh, he’ll hear you. Keep your voice down. He’s bad luck, so don’t get close.”

“Doesn’t it give you chills? I heard a rumor that he survived by using his comrades’ corpses as shields.”

“The sole survivor.”

That had now become the dreadful label attached before Rian’s name. What was given to someone who had returned from death’s doorstep was not encouragement or comfort. It was jealousy toward the one who alone had slipped past his comrades’ deaths, and an ominous brand that he might carry death with him.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

Rian did not face their gazes or whispers head-on. He merely stared with numb eyes into the distance, where the ash-gray sky met bare tree branches. What occupied his mind now was not the contempt of those around him. It was a problem far more fundamental and important.

A booming shout tore through the stagnant air.

“Everyone, assemble! Stop moving like maggots and get over here now! Training begins!”

It was Sergeant Kairon’s thunderous order. The soldiers reluctantly began shuffling toward the drill ground, like prisoners being dragged along.

Rian silently blended into the crowd and found his place. In his hand was a wooden training spear with its tip blunted. Compared to a real spear, cold and solid, it was nothing more than a light, crude wooden stick.

The feel of the wooden spear in his hand was horribly awkward and unfamiliar.

It was completely different from the sensation of the spear from that night, when it had fit perfectly in his hand like a living creature and become part of him. This was only a foreign lump of wood that sat awkwardly in his palm.

‘I can’t feel it.’

Rian groaned inwardly. As if the memory of that night had been a lie, his body had returned to its old slow, clumsy state.

The [Basic Spearmanship] talent, which had explosively manifested in a combat situation, showed no reaction at all in the peaceful training ground where there was not a shred of killing intent, as if it had fallen into a deep sleep. Gareth’s memories and senses only remained like a faint aftertone; they did not control his body.

“We start again from the basics! Prepare to thrust! Take your stance!”

Kairon’s voice rang across the drill ground.

The soldiers all took their stances at once. Though they had not yet shed their greenhorn air, they still looked fairly decent.

Rian also searched through his memory. Recalling Gareth’s perfect posture remaining in his mind, he extended the spear forward.

But the commands of his head and the movements of his body were separate things.

His shoulders were stiff with tension, and his waist awkwardly pulled back. His legs, unable to find their center of gravity, trembled thinly and tangled in an ungainly stance. He looked less like a warrior and more like a scarecrow holding a stick and performing a ridiculous dance.

Den, standing right beside him, snorted when he saw the sight.

Pfft.

It was not a loud sound, but to Rian’s ears, it rang as loudly as thunder.

“Look at him. Is that a person, or a scarecrow?”

At Den’s blatant mockery, several nearby recruits could not hold back and burst into snickers. Their laughter cut through the air of the drill ground more sharply than Rian’s clumsy movement.

Kairon’s next order fell.

“Thrust! Begin!”

With a shout of “Hup!” the other soldiers thrust into the air with fairly sharp movements. Though there was no real power behind them, at least their trajectories were straight.

But Rian’s spear was different.

The spear tip, staggering weakly, stretched out as it wavered in the wrong direction. His body, having completely lost its center of gravity, could not withstand the spear’s movement and pitched forward.

Thud!

“Ugh!”

With a short cry, Rian tumbled forward and planted himself beautifully into the dirt.

Wahahaha!

In an instant, the laughter that had been held back burst out from all over the drill ground like a flood. The tension of training vanished entirely, and Rian became everyone’s laughingstock in an instant.

“Serves him right! How the hell did a bastard like that survive?”

Den’s voice, carrying clear contempt beyond mere mockery, stabbed into Rian’s back like a dagger.

“It’s obvious. He must have used his comrades as shields and run away by himself! That’s why he’s still so intact!”

Rian did not reply at all. He merely brushed the dust off himself and silently stood back up.

His cheeks burned. But it was not because of anger or shame.

‘My body…… doesn’t remember it at all.’

It was despair at this body, endlessly helpless and slow regardless of his will. And at the same time, a strange coldness from realizing how trivial all this mockery was compared to the weight of the life he was carrying.

Rian gripped the spear again. No emotion appeared in his eyes.

‘No.’

He repeated inwardly.

‘The sensation is still there. Very faintly, deep down.’

That perfect sensation from the night he had pierced the enemy’s heart. That afterimage was engraved into his soul like a tattoo.

‘I have to pull it out. I have to make it mine.’

Rian took the thrusting stance again. It was still clumsy and ridiculous, but he tried to lower his center of gravity a little more than before. He put strength into his heels and struggled to straighten his waist.

His strange appearance did not escape the eyes of one man, eyes that seemed to see through everything else.

***

Kairon stood at one end of the training ground with his arms crossed, his brow deeply furrowed.

His gaze was fixed on one place. On Rian, who stood in the middle of the soldiers’ ridicule and mockery.

‘I can’t understand it at all.’

The old sergeant’s head was full of confusion.

He remembered Rian clearly. During training camp, the greenhorn who could not even roll properly and received punishments every day. The scene unfolding before his eyes now was not the slightest bit different from back then. A maggot who could not even handle a single spear properly. Rather than training, it was closer to desperate flailing.

‘And a bastard like that survived Wolfgang’s unit?’

From the moment Kairon had first heard the report of Rian’s return, he had been certain it was not simple luck. The battlefield was not a place where lucky men survived. It was a place where men capable of enduring until luck followed them survived. For a coward like Rian, even a single stroke of luck was a luxury.

‘Is he hiding something? If so, why is he showing such a pathetic sight now?’

His sharp eyes examined every one of Rian’s movements. He watched without blinking as Rian fell, was mocked, and stood up again.

‘Or did something awaken in him that day, in that moment of death?’

Kairon’s long experience and intuition noisily sounded alarms before a phenomenon that common sense could not explain. There was something in that boy. Something strange and dangerous, clearly different from an ordinary conscript.

Then Kairon noticed Rian’s eyes.

A dust-covered face, hair soaked with sweat. But the boy’s eyes alone were different.

‘Those eyes…….’

An ordinary recruit, in such a humiliating situation, would either grow angry or lower his head in shame. But none of those emotions showed in Rian’s eyes. No anger, no shame, no resentment.

His eyes seemed empty, yet at the same time, they burned with a terrible obsession toward something. Like an artisan focused solely on his own task, with all the noise in the world shut out.

That sight pushed Kairon’s confusion into an even deeper maze.

***

Training continued.

In every movement—blocking, dodging, and cutting—Rian was an undeniable straggler. His entire body was drenched in sweat, white salt blooming across it, and the muscles he normally did not use seemed to scream and twist.

The palm gripping the wooden spear had already peeled, exposing red raw flesh, and a stinging pain stabbed his nerves every time he held the spear.

‘Gareth…… must have spent his whole life like this.’

Amid the pain, a faint fragment of memory passed through Rian’s mind.

The back of a man silently wiping his spear with hands where calluses had hardened like black stone. A man who rose before dawn, gripped his spear, and repeated thrusting, blocking, and swinging until the sun set, for decades. His sweat and lonely obsession.

Compared to the weight of his life, this level of pain and humiliation that Rian felt now was nothing.

‘This is…… my burden to carry.’

At some point, the mockery around him no longer entered his ears.

Rian’s world narrowed to only himself, the spear in his hand, and the one goal of reviving the sensation sleeping deep inside his body.

Kairon’s thunderous scolding turned toward Rian once more.

“You there! You scrawny bastard! I’m talking to you!”

Rian stopped moving for a moment and looked at Kairon.

“Do you think training is a joke? What kind of stance is that? Do it properly!”

Rian silently lowered his head at the rebuke. He made no excuse. No, he could not.

‘Even if I want to do it properly, my body won’t follow.’

He corrected his posture again. Rebuke and ridicule were only background noise. He focused only on what was inside himself.

‘Little by little. Very little by little. I think the sensation is returning.’

How to put strength into his heels. The feeling of receiving the spear’s center of gravity with his waist instead of his arms. The sensation of relaxing his shoulders and moving the spear tip with a snap of his wrist.

This was not the manifestation of talent. It was the process of his body, not his brain, recovering the memory through desperate repetition.

Den passed beside Rian and muttered in a small voice.

“That bastard doesn’t change expression even when he gets cursed at. Tough bastard.”

Another soldier agreed.

“He probably got so scared he turned stupid. He has the face of a man who’ll die soon.”

At last, the sound announcing the end of the hellish training rang out.

As if they had been waiting for it, the soldiers put down their weapons and scattered, dragging their exhausted bodies away. On his way back to the tent, Den deliberately struck Rian’s shoulder hard as if it were an accident and passed by.

Rian’s body staggered, but he did not fall. He merely stood firmly in place as if nailed there.

Before long, only Rian remained alone on the slowly emptying drill ground.

He slowly steadied his ragged breathing. The red sunset cast his long, lonely shadow across the ground.

Once more, he took a thrusting stance.

‘This isn’t punishment.’

He looked down at his palm, where blood was seeping out, and thought.

‘This is the responsibility I have to carry.’

The nameless spearman Gareth. Rian had intercepted the talent containing his entire life and his final will. He had survived through that strength. Then it was only natural that he pay the price that came with it.

‘To make sure his life is not wasted, I have to become stronger.’

Rian’s eyes shone coldly and quietly.

Shame and humiliation were as light as dust compared to the weight of responsibility he carried.

Rian closed his eyes. In his mind, he drew Gareth’s perfect thrust. The sound of cutting through the wind, the sensation of striking the target, even the heavy impact transmitted through the spear shaft.

Then slowly, with all his focus gathered, he extended the spear along that trajectory.

Swoosh.

It was still a clumsy and unimpressive movement. But Rian did not stop.

‘One more time.’

He drew back the spear and thrust again.

‘Once more.’

Until the sunset had completely faded and darkness fell over the camp, Rian stood alone on the drill ground.

Leaving everyone’s ridicule behind him, he silently thrust the spear again and again.

It was solitary training, and at the same time, a sacred punishment imposed upon himself by one who carried the life of the dead.