A Knight Does Not Forget a Grudge (1)
"...Um, Rose?"
"What is it, Liri?"
"Mmm. I don't know if I'm imagining things, but the boys in our faculty lately..."
"......"
"D-don't they seem a little more... hulking?"
"Mmm, do they? Isn't this pretty normal?"
"Is it... only me?"
The girl called Liri was Lirina Beauharnais, whom the instructor had designated chick No. 12. She was the daughter of a baronial house, and those who carried the Beauharnais blood were famous for producing more than their share of beautiful men and women. Lirina was no exception: her features were finely set, and she was a budding beauty whose future drew high expectations.
Her one complex had been her growth. She had come along more slowly than her peers, so that she still looked of an age with the little children who had not even held their coming-of-age. Then she finished the regimen the instructor had drawn up for her alone, and the girl who had stood only 130 centimeters reached 139. Nine centimeters in a mere eight months. He had told her the growth plates were not yet closed and that she could grow still more, and so the old complex no longer haunted her. These days she trusted her master to the last degree, and then some.
And yet no one else seemed inclined to marvel at so drastic a change. Set beside the outrageous transformations going on all around her, it was probably nothing more than a drop in the bucket.
"Huff—! Haaah—!"
"One more. Just one more!"
"That's it!"
"Pull-up! Pull-up!"
The ones hanging from the bar and hauling themselves up were not the bears. They were the young masters: sons of noble houses, torsos bared, throwing themselves into raw strength work until their upper bodies looked somehow swollen past reason. It was not that they were unpleasant to look at, and they had not grown fat. The muscle had simply gotten big. Still, there was something alien in the sight of knight-aspirants who had once insisted that overly bulky muscle was no knight's body, now carrying on like this.
The one who answered her doubt was Lady Levi, who had drawn up beside them before she noticed.
"They've been keeping company with the bears a lot lately, because of the Grand Temple restoration. Something must have rubbed off."
"Ah..."
"And Master says that a man is an animal who, once his stomach muscles come in clear, naturally wants to train the other parts as well."
"??"
It was a kind explanation, and it only made Lirina's confusion worse. Why would they want to grow them? Growing them was one thing. Why flaunt them like that?
"He says it's like a male lion showing a full mane off to a lioness. I can't say I really understand the sentiment."
"...I agree."
Lirina nodded with feeling. She was not wholly unable to grasp the impulse; she herself had bragged to everyone in reach about growing a whole nine centimeters. Even so.
The smell of sweat...
Did they truly have to be so blatant about it? They might at least have done it where no one could see.
"Understand them. Males are like that. They like a female, they court. Monkeys in Kunta's homeland did this often."
"I-if you put it that way, those gentlemen end up no better than monkeys, Sir Kunta..."
"Nature's way is all much the same."
"...Why is that so convincing?"
The barbarian had come up on them out of nowhere, and the girls found themselves persuaded. He was not finished.
"But young masters will be scolded. Master sees them, he gets very angry."
"Master? Do you mean the Instructor?"
"Mm. They ignore the schedule Master made and grow their bodies like that, so Master will probably..."
He let the words trail. Before he could find the rest of them—
"You were supposed to be track men. Why are you trying to turn into weightlifters, you ignorant fools?"
Whack!
They began catching blows across the forehead, one after another. It was meant to be a flick. It sounded like a fist.
"...I think I understand why Rose could look at them and feel so little."
Lirina glanced from their instructor to the male classmates who had fainted clutching their brows, and shook her head. Her standards had climbed too high. Who was going to marvel at raw ore that had not even begun to shine—no, at mere grains—after looking every day upon a single enormous diamond, perfectly cut?
It had been nearly a month since Lee Han and the students had seen one another. He had sent them out to the Grand Temple relief under the name of training, and the Academy itself had held a round of simple examinations besides. The grade exams, a written test and an interview required before one could advance to the next year, had bought even the sword faculty something like two weeks of rest. So this was a reunion after a long while, and with winter break beginning the very next week, common sense suggested that a few warm words were due.
"I finally beat you into something like human beings. Why are you trying to regress?"
"W-we're sorry."
"Then you shouldn't have done something to be sorry for."
"Uhm..."
"Hah. Cardio only, for a while."
"...Yes."
"I can't hear any conviction in that."
"Yes, sir!!"
It was less a happy reunion than a reunion at the limit. Ten kilometers of running commenced, and the male students tore along, gasping.
"Why us too!"
"All we did was watch their form from the side...!"
The bears howled that it was unfair to be punished along with the young masters. Lee Han snorted.
"Never heard of collective responsibility?"
"Then what about the young ladies!?"
"Unlike you, they're still frail. Sprint them flat out and they'll drop."
"!?"
They wanted, desperately, to cry discrimination. They also had a very clear picture of the looks the young ladies would be giving them from tomorrow onward, and so no rebuttal was possible.
No one had finished the course yet when Levi came over.
"Master, why are you bound up so tightly in bandages? Did you fight a legendary monster?"
"...What's a legendary beast?"
She looked at him, bandaged as he was, with sincere worry, and with a little confusion mixed in. Was there anyone in this kingdom who could hurt him that badly? He seemed to catch the look. Lee Han scratched his cheek and offered a clumsy answer.
"I did something stupid. Don't worry so much."
"??"
Yes. A very large stupidity. He had thrown himself at a Sword Duke with no regard for his own life. Not dying had been the fortunate part.
That woman doesn't give an inch.
Pain climbed as he remembered the swords that had been planted in his belly, his thighs, his forearms. By some means, neither a scar nor any great wound remained, but the pain had been left exactly as it was, and he had wound the bandages tight to hold it down. Placebo or not, it hurt less that way.
And at the same time, he had learned a new use for it.
...So Intent can be used like this, too.
Like a poison, like a virus, Felicia's Intent had driven deep into his body and was spreading, and to draw it out or erase it Lee Han had to spend an extreme force of will from moment to moment. She had said she would be sure to train his Intent. He understood now why she had put it that way. The only thing that could stand against an Intent boring through his flesh was an Intent of his own. In that sense, this was unquestionably useful training. Overcome the whole Intent of a woman called the Sword Duke, and there would come a moment of staggering growth. As fortuitous encounters went, it was an enormous one.
Only—
The method is rough. Absurdly rough.
The trouble was that it amounted to little more than being carved apart.
"Almost feels like repaying a kindness with a grudge..."
"Yes?"
"...Nonsense. Let it go. What have you got in your hand?"
"Ah, walnuts. You told me to build my grip, Master. So I looked for a way, and I've been cracking them. Lately I can finally break five at once."
"...You're the best of them."
The would-be knights were busy killing the very strengths they had, while the girl who had started latest of all was working to fill what she lacked, and growing without pause. She looked thin at a glance, but the deep muscle, the tendons and the ligaments, had grown considerably strong. Set beside the first semester, it was roughly four times the progress. Put Gyeong on top of that and she would bring out a strength that could not even be compared with the day before. She looked slight, and in truth her body would not lose a contest of grip to a gorilla.
A frightening rate of growth. And from the look of it she had piled up no small store of experience while staying in Offen; her momentum had climbed just as steeply.
Hold the ranking matches, and could she break into the middle?
A girl who had not even held a sword in earnest for a full year, eyeing the middle ranks among elites who lived in the air and on the ground with a blade? That was about as reasonable as someone who had been kicking a ball for less than a year being named to the national team.
Growing to match the name?
An extraordinariness worthy of d'Arc. Lee Han clicked his tongue to himself. This much in under a year. Then next year? By the time she graduated?
No.
Give her a single trigger and she'll shoot straight up.
He did not know what that moment would be. He simply had the feeling.
"About time I taught you a proper sword art.... What do you think, sword assistant instructor?"
"...Have I done something wrong?"
"Hmm. The crime of skipping class for a month?"
"I-I will admit the fault. Even so, assistant instructor is..."
The black-haired young noble, Roen, went stiff and took a step back, one bead of sweat sliding free.
Roen was genuinely shocked.
What? Was the instructor always this large?
Anyone else might have called that nonsense. He had always been large. Roen was utterly serious.
Krr... krrrng...
Even the Mystery of the North sleeping inside him, the Black King, was badly shaken. He had stepped back, and he was sweating, and it was not because of a joke about becoming an assistant instructor. The instructor's presence had grown fierce beyond measure.
And so little time has passed.
Had he known that Lee Han was startled by Levi's explosive growth, Roen would have said the opposite.
...Not on your level.
It was no exaggeration to say the man had become someone else in a single month. He looked injured. Even granting the injury, Roen could no longer find any confidence that he might fight that man and win. Not even if he drew out the Black King within.
He was still taut with that tension when Lee Han went on.
"We'll call the assistant talk a joke. Later, teach her one sword art worth using. Teach it properly and I expect it'll cut mean. Oh, and not just you. That Iliad fellow would do well enough, too."
"...You may be the only man who would call the Sword Saint's swordsmanship 'well enough,' Instructor."
"So. You're saying you can't teach as well as that retired gentleman?"
"......There is a sword art suited to her. A sword art for her alone."
"Should've led with that."
He knew the needling was playful. He chose to answer it anyway. No one knew the sword art of the great hero called the Mercenary Queen better than he did.
"Good thinking."
"...And is that the whole reason you called for me?"
He was in the thick of driving the Grand Temple work forward. There was no chance he had been deliberately summoned for nothing more than a single sword art. The instructor he knew would never come looking for so small a reason.
And indeed.
"There is one more thing."
"?"
"Asking on the off chance. Among your people, anyone who's a master of tracking? Or carrying a Mystery, something like that?"
"...If there is, what do you mean to do?"
"I need a little help."
Something slid into view.
"Just taking the hits is putting me in a bad mood."
"......"
Roen looked into the small reagent bottle held out to him, and at the red drop of blood writhing inside it. A drop of blood, moving as if it were alive.
"Well? Feel like going huntin' with me?"
"...That."
How very interesting—
Roen smiled like a man who had just been handed the most satisfying year-end gift he could have asked for.