A Knight Works Hard at His Side Job, Too (2)
When the students first heard they were to jump rope, they could hardly believe their ears. What is this? It sounded like a children's game. Why in the world were they being made to do it? The knight candidates, in particular, bristled with open rebellion.
Then they saw the ropes marked in red.
"Wh-what is this!?"
This was supposed to be a jump rope? Not a length of rebar? It was a steel cord, iron braided into iron, and they were meant to pick it up. Half convinced it only looked the part, the students took hold of the things—and a joint-popping weight nearly tore their wrists out of their sockets. From handle to rope, the things were brutally heavy.
They were supposed to jump with this?
It was absurd. And yet—
Whoosh, whoosh!
"This is fun!"
Kunta started jumping as if he had found a delightful new toy. Watching him, the others gave their ropes a hopeful turn. Better to try than to flinch before they had even begun.
Of course, it went exactly as they feared.
"I-I can't even lift it!"
"How are we supposed to swing this!?"
If merely holding the thing was a struggle, how were they meant to turn it?
"Grrrgh—!"
It was only because they had learned the Fighting Art that the ropes moved at all. They drove every last current in their bodies into the effort, and only then did the steel begin to turn. The jump rope they had dismissed as a joke was now something they swung as if their lives depended on it. One slip, and a wrist or an elbow would pop clean out of joint.
Whoosh! Whish!
Little by little, though, confidence crept in. If it was the Fighting Art—no, if it was them—they were certain they could turn it. They might even make the count—
WHAM!
A body hit the ground.
Filling the count, it seemed, was going to end in disaster. One student swinging his jump rope—his steel rope—took a blow from it and dropped unconscious where he stood. Thud. Thud. Once the first went down, the rest followed like a chain reaction, struck by their own ropes and fainting one after another. A chill ran through those still standing. Without quite meaning to, they stopped. Take one of those to the head, and it would be a genuine catastrophe.
"Weaklings. You take one little hit and keel over? Tsk. Soft. Pathetic."
This was not a question of being soft. It was a question of living or dying. The students thought so, and still none of them dared argue with him. They had reason.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!
"Why are you making something this easy look so hard, hm?"
The instructor spun the steel ropes they found dizzying not merely with ease, but as if they weighed nothing. Then, mid-swing—
CRACK!
The rope slammed into his head. It had definitely slammed into him.
"Ah. Slipped."
There was not a scratch on him. He was perfectly fine, embarrassed only at having fumbled while showing off.
Is that thing even human?
"D-doesn't that hurt, sir?"
"It hurts. I endure it. A knight ought to manage at least this much."
"I don't think that's quite..."
Wouldn't you be the only one who can? Every student in the yard swallowed that last part with everything they had.
Lee Han had not simply measured the ropes against himself and handed out stupidly heavy steel out of ignorance. He had common sense, and he knew his own body was not ordinary. Precisely because of that, he also knew the rest of them could manage this much. More than well enough.
"Some of you may already have noticed, but the ropes weigh differently by color. Yellow is an ordinary light jump rope. Green is three kilograms. The red ones are ten kilograms. All of them."
T-ten kilos!?
A ripple of murmurs ran through the yard. Those holding yellow and green ropes went pale and stared at the students with the red cords—steel the color of blood. They had been swinging those this whole time? Lee Han paid the noise no mind and went on.
"This instructor remembers the sparring on the first day. Aside from a few of you, most of you were put down by me in an instant. Oh, and if anyone's forgotten, say so. I'll be happy to remind you."
It stung their pride, but no one objected. It was the truth. Still, he was not dragging yesterday back up to insult them or to shame them.
"What I felt yesterday is that the sword faculty's fundamentals are rotten. Especially you knight candidates. You say you want to be knights, and you don't have a single basic down. So I'll ask. Do you actually, seriously want to become knights—with skill like that?"
It was insult enough. They had lost miserably, yes, but they were sons of knightly houses, and he was questioning their sincerity. A grave affront. Lee Han snorted at the insolent stares turned on him.
"Anyone who takes that as an insult, open your ears and listen. You're idiots. You don't even know what you're lacking. You've lived on nothing but words that were pleasant to hear. Nothing but flatterers at your side, and that's why your fundamentals are garbage. Send you lot to a battlefield and you'd either die first or live a very long time. Why the long life? Because you'd get hurt before you ever reached the front and spend your days wheezing at some villa with good water and clean air. The army isn't stupid enough to march out a pathetic fool who can't even keep his own body in one piece. You miserable half-wits."
An uncomfortable silence settled over them. Was being bad at jump rope—no, getting hurt by that barbaric rope—really such a crime? And their fundamentals were lacking? Some of them could not bring themselves to admit it. Lee Han had expected as much, and blew air through his nose. Say a word, and none of them understood. Talking himself hoarse a hundred times would do nothing.
"Even if the instructor puts it like this, some of you still won't accept it. Idiots for a reason. I never expected anything from you anyway. So I'll show you a textbook, nice and simple. Students Kunta, Arno, and Garand—step forward."
Thump.
"Kunta came out!"
"I can more or less guess what we'll be doing."
"Hmm. This is exactly what our old man makes us do. You're not some son he hid, are you?"
The three came forward as if they had been waiting, and Lee Han was satisfied. Yes. That was the right way to learn.
"You ought to be ashamed. The best among you are training without a single complaint, while the ones below average do nothing but gripe."
He gave a look. There was no explanation with it, but the three understood well enough and set to the work in silence.
Whoom. Whooom—!
The steel ropes moved with a heavy sound of parting air. Kunta handled his as freely as a child with a favorite toy. Arno jumped with a form so steady and correct it could have been printed in a manual. Garand looked casual, yet his form was no less stable than Arno's. The steel passed over them without a hitch. Their speeds differed, and sweat poured off them like rain, but none of them showed a trace of fatigue as they turned the ropes again and again. Past ten. Past twenty. On to thirty. Slow, but filling the count one by one. Watching them, a person could almost doubt whether the exercise had ever been something that could be done so steadily. They were a different breed entirely from the ones who could not manage three jumps and only got themselves hurt.
About the time a few of the complainers lost their words and flushed red, Lee Han moved.
Tap!
He flicked Kunta's rope without warning. The rhythm broke, and the steel cracked across the barbarian's back. The smack was followed by a bursting crack so fierce it sounded like whip and hammer striking at once. Past pain—this was the sort of blow that made a man worry about his bones, three months of recovery at the least.
And yet.
"Mmm. In-Instructor is mean. Kunta hurts..."
"Don't exaggerate. You can take that just fine."
"Hurt is hurt."
"Quit grumbling. ...Tch. I'll buy you something good later."
"Instructor is a good person!"
He looked fine. Not entirely fine, of course. The reddened skin said the impact had landed. Even so, enduring a blow like that was hard to believe. Could it be—
"If any student is having a pathetic thought like maybe it's a barbarian ability, pluck your own eyes out right now. Especially those of you who've learned the Fighting Art. What use are eyes that can't see?"
A shame different from the one before rose under the venom that followed. Quite a few of them had wondered exactly that. Lee Han snorted at them and went on.
"I've never studied the Fighting Art in any detail, but I know the basics. The Fighting Art opens the body's potential in an instant, and that potential can be developed through effort and training. Am I right?"
"That is correct."
"Thanks for the honest answer. Unlike the rest of them, you've got promise. Any interest in being an assistant instructor?"
"...I'll decline."
"Shame."
That was Arno, and even as he kept the steel rope turning, he did not look tired. He had already passed a hundred jumps.
"Student Arno is using the Fighting Art right now on his knees, ankles, wrists, elbows, and shoulders. He's protecting only the parts likely to get hurt in hard exercise, and he isn't leaking strength where it isn't needed. He's clearing the rope with light movements alone. Everywhere else, he isn't using the Fighting Art at all. Do you understand what that means?"
"Ah..."
Only then did the first flickers of understanding appear. Slow enough that he might as well have been teaching a nursery rather than the Academy. With a look that called them pathetic, Lee Han put into words the answer they ought already to have reached.
"It means that aside from the parts that fundamentally need it, Student Arno isn't using the Fighting Art at all. He's turning that rope on nothing but his own strength and stamina."
"...I-Instructor, you said you don't know the Fighting Art. How can you see through all of that?"
"I look, and I know."
"I-is that so?"
"Anyway, here's what matters. Arno, Garand, and Kunta—all three of them have built real foundational strength and stamina. They aren't slackers like you, leaning on the Fighting Art for every little thing so training stays comfortable."
People spoke of the Fighting Art as if it were an all-purpose power, but what mattered more than the art was the person using it. No matter how fine the sword, if the one holding it was third-rate, he could not even cut down a tree. That was reality. In that sense, this lot were wrong. In martial terms, it's like training nothing but internal energy and never once touching the body. They aren't even a vessel fit to hold water. No—even that's generous. Not a glass. A paper cup. That's more like it. Heaven only knew when those things would ever turn into proper people.
"So what you need right now isn't sword training, and it isn't Fighting Art training. The order of things is that you build stamina, strength, endurance, and durability first. You half-baked lot."
"...You do take the long way around to say we have to train everything over from the start."
One line, and Garand cut the whole speech down to the bone. He hit two hundred jumps right as Lee Han finished, and the students' faces went dark and ashen. Basic training? At this point...?
"For reference, the part of a knight order's entrance exam where the most people fail is the stamina test. Funny, how they drop out on the easiest section. Ah, right. You'll just join your family orders anyway, so the stamina test doesn't matter to you, does it? Automatic admission. No exam. Heh. Blood really is a fine thing, isn't it? Haha!"
Being told to enter the family knight order was no different from being called a nepotism hire to one's face. To nobles who held honor as dear as life, it was as good as being told to bite off their tongues and die. Their resistance died with it, and Lee Han was satisfied at last that the noise was gone. He liked faces that knew their place.
"Well, don't worry. I don't intend to do this boring thing forever either."
Maybe if I spend the whole first semester on it.
"This instructor guarantees it. Follow along properly through this semester, and every student standing here will see their physical ability rise beyond comparison with what it is now. Of course..."
He drew the rest out, and his eyes swept every face in the yard. The look seemed to say it plainly.
A scornful gaze, asking whether any of them could keep up at all. The students felt that mockery on their skin, and they thought the same thing. They did not know about the rest of it. If they could just hit him once, they would have no other wish.
A story, of course, for a day still very, very far off.