The Knight Doesn't Want to Be Reinstated (1)
Early afternoon.
The summer sun beat down on the earth until the heat was nearly more than a person could bear—a miserable, stifling day. And yet, for all that unpleasant swelter—
Whoosh. Whoom—!
"……."
The girl—no. The young woman swung her sword without a word. Sweat streamed down her without pause and soaked her from head to toe in a clammy sheen, but she did not give up.
One hundred downward cuts. Not the mere motion of cutting down, but a stroke so close to perfect that only then would it count as one. By that measure Levi had already swung comfortably past seven hundred times, and still she had not filled out a true hundred. Cuts she could be satisfied with numbered barely thirty.
A sword... really is a difficult thing.
Her mouth was dry as bone. She felt as though she might collapse from exhaustion at any moment, and yet, instead of falling, Levi found herself turning the sword's depth over in her mind once more. The more she swung, the more extraordinary that depth became. Even when she believed she was swinging the same way, every stroke traced a different path, and the intent dwelling in the blade changed with it.
And so, for Levi—
...This is fun!
Yes. It was fun. The simple fact that she could pour herself into a single pursuit, and the fact that the harder she worked, the more she could feel herself improving. It was not only swordsmanship that delighted her. She was already looking forward to the archery she would learn next, and to new etiquette, to languages, and to the rest of it. More than that, she wanted to start learning to cook for her master at once.
A life in which she was free to learn so many things...!
She could not have been more content.
...Except.
"My lady."
Levi flinched.
"You seem to be tiring. Would it not be better to pause your training for a little while?"
"……."
"The knight said so himself. You must replace what you sweat away, and you must rest properly, or it turns to poison in the body. So please, my lady—stop now."
"Mmm..."
Everything else satisfied her. Only the sudden change in the circumstances of her life still refused to settle, and Levi addressed the maid with a timid air.
"Um... I understand, so... could you please stop calling me 'my lady'?"
"Oh my. And why is that?"
"...It feels like I'm wearing clothes that don't suit me. Like I'm reaching above my station."
That was Levi's honest heart. Being addressed as my lady was not, in itself, so rare a thing. However much that life had been a false one, she had lived as a noble's daughter.
...But this was the first time anyone had treated her in a tone of respect this sincere.
How to put it. It was as though she had spent her life as an actress in a play, and the actress's life had suddenly become real. Something of that sort, she thought—and Levi began to sweat for an entirely different reason. Being waited upon this lavishly was a burden she could hardly stand.
"Oh my, sweating again. This is precisely why the sword ought to be practiced indoors. You'll spoil that lovely skin."
"...I-I'm fine. Skin is just... well."
"Skin matters as well. You must not forget that you are His Lordship's daughter. The station of a marquis's daughter is never a light one, and you must not forget the dignity it requires, the conduct, and a bearing that remains noble at all times."
"……."
"You now hold a position that must always set an example for others. The sword alone will not do. Your very appearance must inspire reverence in those who look upon you. So I ask you to understand, even when I speak sternly."
"...Ah, I-I see what you mean, but even if I'm a daughter, I'm only an adopted one, so this is too—"
"Oh? Has some insolent wretch within the house dared to slight you merely because you are adopted?"
"……."
"If there has, tell me at once. I will deal with them immediately."
"...N-no. There wasn't anyone like that."
"Then that is a relief."
"……."
...Frightening. No—difficult. Harder to face than a sword.
When this woman said she would deal with someone, it sounded very much as if she meant to bury them.
And so Levi made a resolution.
From now on, I watch my mouth.
One careless word and any number of people might end up dead. She would never let her tongue run loose again.
Levi, nineteen.
It was a day on which she felt, with painful clarity, that life as a young lady of Tristan was far more than she deserved.
"Yes. I will."
"……."
"Ah... was that a joke?"
"Ah, no. I was only surprised you accepted so readily. Heh heh..."
Not long after the closing ceremony, Levi received an offer of adoption from Marquis Tristan, and she accepted it without a single second of hesitation.
It was only natural. She could not go on imposing on her master's house forever, and to cling any longer would have been shameless. She wanted to become someone of use to her master, not a leech.
And so the proposal Marquis Tristan extended was nothing short of heaven-sent luck. Becoming the daughter of a man she had very nearly married was its own strange thing, but she could not fail to see that an offer like this was a miracle no sum of money could measure.
Above all else—
"Thank you, Master."
This, too, was an undeserved chance wrought in blood and sweat by her master, the first precious person ever to appear in her life. Accepting it was the only proper course.
There was, however, one thing.
If something still weighed on her...
"H-however, there is one thing I have to say. I..."
"Ah. If that is what you mean, I already know. You need not reveal it."
"Pardon?"
"Heh heh. This is a gift. See that you put it to good use."
"……."
What Levi had kept hidden was her birth, and her station.
She had meant to confess it with her own mouth, but the marquis stopped her and simply held out a ring and a single sheet of parchment. At the sight of them, Levi's eyes flew wide.
"H-how... how do you have this..."
"The mother and daughter of House Folt were each keeping one. Received, I imagine, from a husband or a father."
"……."
"We collected them on our side, of course. But it seemed to me their true owner lay elsewhere."
"...My lord. Even knowing this, you would still take me in?"
"I am not taking you in. If anything, the request is mine. It is closer to my asking whether you might grant me the chance to make a child of such talent as yours my own. Heh heh."
"……."
A great many feelings crossed in Levi then. A bewildered wonder at whether she had truly been a person of such worth, and a blank astonishment at the luck that kept arriving in such excess.
And before she knew it—
"Master..."
She called out to her own bluebird of happiness, the one who had brought this fortune to her, and where tears might have risen, a smile took shape instead.
For the first time in her life, she understood that a person, when too happy, sometimes laughs instead of crying.
And the present.
What am I supposed to do with this?
Enduring the unfamiliar hands of a maid as they wiped the sweat from her, Levi worried at the ring.
The parchment the marquis had given her—no. The slave contract she had been forced to write when she was abducted, not a thing she had ever wished to sign. A week had already passed since she burned that contract.
...The ring was another matter. This, she could not dispose of lightly.
Her station as a slave was gone, and yet the Brand of Obedience still remained upon her back. The ring was akin to a catalyst for that brand. Destroying it would have been best, but—
That would be the worst of plans.
Why else was the Brand of Obedience called a curse? The moment it was carved, it did not vanish easily even if the catalyst was destroyed, and that was why it was called a curse. Get rid of the ring, and the instant something of an Illegal Mage's sort laid eyes on her brand, fashioning a new catalyst would be simple.
So the answer was not to destroy the catalyst she already possessed, but to draw the Brand of Obedience itself out of her body. Until she found a way to extract it safely...
I must not destroy the ring. Not now.
On the contrary, she had to keep it under the strictest watch. This ring, quite literally, held the power of life and death over her.
And so, at the end of long deliberation, Levi decided to entrust it to someone else.
Keep it herself? Nothing could be more unsettling than that. She was still too weak to do anything but be protected. How was such a girl to guard this ring?
She would entrust it, then. To a man she could believe in—the most reliable man she knew.
None other than—
"...Where is Master?"
"With the knight order, I believe. Allow me to guide you—"
"Ah, n-no. I-I can find him myself."
Afraid the maids waiting at a distance might follow, Levi quickened her steps at once. She wanted no part of a life in which five maids or more trailed her every move, so she drove herself off the ground and ran.
"My lady!"
A voice called after her, but Levi offered only an apology in her heart and did not stop. She was not yet accustomed to life as the young lady of a marquis's house.
......Perhaps in five years?
Far past anything an ordinary commoner was meant to endure, the wounded blue cat—betrayed by people again and again—still had a long adjustment to Tristan ahead of her.
Shaaaa—
So this was what they meant by the training ground of a great noble house?
Speak of a training facility, and most people meant an ordinary drill field—or, failing that, something on the order of a gym. The ground where they trained, the Crimson Eagle Knight Order, was another matter entirely.
How does a training ground even have a waterfall?
The standard of the place—no, the environment itself—belonged to a different world. These were no falls where a brook went murmuring down. They were a waterfall in the literal sense, a tremendous weight of water plunging without cease. The sight alone threw the chest wide open. A spectacle, nothing less. And that spectacle stood inside a training ground. An artificial waterfall, they said, raised by mobilizing mages in force. Once a house was great enough, even the class of what it invested in a training yard was something else entirely.
Now this is a waterfall.
The waterfall was not the whole of it, of course. There was no such sport as climbing in this world, and still they had raised an artificial cliff for something very like it, along with thirty-meter rope climbs and training grounds of swamp and sand besides. Honestly.
The Silver Lion Knight Order didn't have anything like this.
Well, they prized individual training over there, so the lack of such facilities was not so strange. Even so, they were a royal knight order of a sort, and yet...
I don't want to compare them. And here I am, comparing them anyway.
It felt like being lifted out of the minor leagues and set down, without warning, in a training complex of the highest class, built for Olympic athletes.
Hah. I ought to schedule home visits more often.
The other facilities were impressive in their own right, but the waterfall had seized both his eyes and his heart.
"...For murim-style training, nothing beats this."
Training beneath a waterfall. Lee Han wore a look of deep contentment at last being able to try a thing he had always wanted to do at least once.
And toward that man—
"I asked before, but what exactly is this murim of yours?"
"A place full of people who train the way I do."
"...A frightening town, that. It must be."
Vale, vice-captain of the Crimson Eagle Knight Order, wore an expression of pure exasperation as he watched the man laugh with pleasure, working through squats beneath a waterfall that dumped hundreds of kilograms of water on him in real time.
And as he watched, he thought—
Murim. I couldn't say what sort of place it is, but is it populated by nothing but perverts who enjoy this kind of torment?
...Truly, it could not be a more wretched neighborhood.
An irreversible misunderstanding of murim was taking root in Vale.