A Knight Works Hard at His Side Job (3)

"I told you to hit ten thousand, but I never set a deadline for when you had to hit it. What I want isn't the number. I want you to have the stamina and the endurance to turn that iron rope ten thousand times and still be steady. And don't just grind it out blindly! How many times do I have to tell you to stop obsessing over the count, you idiots? Feel it working. Learn how the muscle moves. Learn how your own arms and legs move!"

Lee Han spared no scolding for the students marked in red—the so-called young masters.

"Is it because you're young masters? Do I have to wait on you hand and foot, one by one, before you'll listen? Why can't you understand a simple order?"

"...I am not a young master."

"Like hell you aren't. You reek of a boy raised on yes, yes, whatever you want. What, did you grow up without even noticing you were a young master?"

"Y-you—!"

"Angry? If you're angry, try being good at this. Why are you so damn frail that a demoted knight gets to dress you down like this? Tsk, tsk."

"Just you wait! One day I'll drive a blade through that face!"

"Oh, I do hope you manage it."

"!!?"

His gift for provocation had all but attained mastery. He ground them down with his tongue, and sneered that they were welcome to curse him in their hearts as much as they liked.

Curse me all you want. You'll live longer for it.

His mind was far too fierce to be shaken by insults alone. Lee Han did not spare the lash, and he hounded them without pause. Even so, he did not pour every scrap of attention onto the young-master students. He ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠made an effort to look after all of them.

First, those with the yellow marks—the chicks, as he called them. Most were women. They had not learned even basic swordsmanship, let alone the Fighting Art. And so:

"For now, you chicks aren't ready to hold a wooden sword, never mind a real blade. What matters for you this instant is basic strength and stamina. Oh, and for the record, don't start fretting that you'll grow muscles if you exercise. Muscle doesn't show up that quickly, and this pittance of training will absolutely not give you any."

He was kind. Not because they were women, but simply because they were newbies for whom even the rank of sprout would have been too generous. How was he supposed to browbeat a kid who didn't even know how to start the treadmill? Gentle, if anything.

"I-Instructor. If we do this thing called jump rope, does it actually build stamina?"

"Good question, Chick No. 1."

"C-could you just call me Levi?"

A diligent question from Levi Fault, who had left a fairly good impression the day before. Excellent. Now that he stood on the teaching side, he understood how precious it was to have a sincere student who actually asked. Swallowing the urge to hand her a prize on the spot, Lee Han went on in an even softer voice.

"Jump rope doesn't only build stamina. It strengthens muscular endurance and the heart and lungs, and it improves your balance and your athletic ability besides. You won't see the effect all at once, but if you keep at it every single day, there'll come a moment when you feel your body has changed."

"Ah..."

"It's also the finest exercise there is for dieting, for the record."

"!!!"

At that, every female student shot her head up at once, a field of meerkats catching a scent, and fixed on him with sudden interest. Motivation. Lee Han had given the chicks a reason to work hard.

"And that isn't all. Follow your instructor's training properly, and you'll start enjoying getting dressed. Students who care about fashion already know. Even when you wear clothes cut exactly to your figure, the way they hang can still look wrong. Sometimes that's because you're too thin, or because there's no firmness in you. But once the body gains elasticity overall, even clothes that never suited you can turn lovely."

"R-really?"

"This instructor does not lie. And I'll let you in on something even more tempting. Maid!"

"Yes!"

Layla Winter appeared the instant his call fell, as if she had been waiting for it. A strange face none of them had seen. But when the women took in the uniform of a royal maid, their eyes went round. For most noblewomen, a post among the royal maids was one of the dream workplaces they longed to enter.

Before such an audience, he said:

"Maid, if you would demonstrate."

"Okaaay."

The drowsy tone and the drowsy face inspired not a shred of trust—until, in the next instant, she performed a curtsey, and the women's eyes changed utterly. Astonishment gathered in them.

"Wow. Perfect."

It was an honest word from a noble young lady of an old house, and everyone granted it. It truly was a perfect, beautiful curtsey.

"As you saw, the maid's posture is beautiful, because her balance and her carriage are upright. And for a posture that upright and that beautiful, the strength of the back and the seat is what matters. Well? Beginning to feel like working hard?"

"...Yes."

"Answer heard. I give you my word. If you chicks follow the training schedule this instructor has set, I will see to it that any one of you can build a posture so fine that whoever looks at you will find you beautiful."

"Y-yes! Yes!"

With that, the female students—no, the chicks—promised to follow him as if they were believers swearing themselves to a god. As expected, what moved people was fundamental desire. Lee Han privately found it ridiculous that he was going this far, but newbies were supposed to be treated kindly. That was the rule.

The other side of it was different.

"Green sprouts."

"...A-are you speaking to us?"

"Yes. I'm talking to you."

"...It doesn't exactly sound like a curse, but I still feel awful."

Toward the ones who held the green-marked ropes, he was uniquely severe. They were not newbies, and they were an awkward lot, so he had to be stricter still.

"You are people who have learned some swordsmanship. You never learned the Fighting Art, but I imagine you've trained the sword diligently since you were children. That's why, paradoxically, your basic stamina is good. Better than those red young masters over there."

"...Then I suppose being a sprout is the better of it."

"Work hard enough that they call you weeds."

"Th-that one's a bit much too."

"Enough. Your instructor is about to give you one piece of serious counsel. If what you want is to become knights, then I would advise you not to be attending the Academy at all. Quit. Right now."

"...W-why?"

A brief silence, and then they asked. They had watched him long enough to know he did not spit venom without a reason. And just as they expected:

"Because you never learned the Fighting Art."

"...Ugh."

The moment the Fighting Art was named, their faces darkened, as if they were being forced to look straight at a reality they had tried to turn away from.

"Anyone who would know, already knows. Yes. There is a vast gap between a person who has ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠learned the Fighting Art and a person who has not. A gap as unreasonable as a child fighting a grown man."

Even a big, sturdy adult, famous in his village for his strength, was bound to be overwhelmed by a child who had learned the Fighting Art. A knight was that art tempered to its limit, which was why knights were longed for and feared in the same breath.

"Of course, since you enrolled, you will be able to learn the basic Fighting Art the Academy provides. But what the Academy offers is fundamentally low-grade. Call it a sandwich, and it's bread and greens alone—no ham, no cheese, no sauce. Well. If one of you is an outrageous genius, even an art that poor might carry you all the way to the extreme."

"...Haha."

It was only a sweet story, a dream of spring that would vanish in a moment. A genius of that caliber would already have been taken as a knight-order trainee by some noble who recognized the talent. Not sent to the Academy.

"Yes. Nothing in this world is fixed beyond all question. Even so, this instructor does not consider remaining in the sword faculty, as you are now, a particularly good choice. Had you joined a top mercenary company, or a warrior's guild or a swordsman's guild, you could have learned a proper Fighting Art instead of a low-grade one. ...Even if that life would have been lived with your neck on the line."

"We came here because we didn't want that."

An answer from one of the sprouts. Lee Han nodded. Among mercenaries, people dying was an everyday thing. Guilds were closed, and if a job made money they would do anything—sly, and cruel. Not a place one ought to go, if one could help it.

But Lee Han knew.

By the second or third year, most of the commoner students in the sword faculty drop out and leave for a mercenary company or a guild. The gap between them and the noble young masters is just that wide.

Which was why every sword-faculty student still here in the second and third years was a noble. In a sense, it was the Academy's reality with the world's unreason laid bare. A funny business. They spoke of selecting talent, and yet the ones growing fat were not the kingdom, but the mercenary companies and the guilds. Let it go on like this, and in twenty years—no, in less than ten—there was a fair chance the order of things between the knight orders and the mercenaries and guilds would turn upside down. Against numbers, nothing availed, and the strength beneath the mercenaries and the guilds would only grow richer as time went on.

Well. Not really mine to worry about, is it?

By then he would either have beaten Baltar, or that gentleman would have grown old and retired, and there would be no stopping him.

...Surely he won't still be around ten years from now.

That gentleman would get old too. Surely.

"Instructor?"

"Ah. Sorry. Your instructor's thoughts got a little tangled."

"...Thank you. For thinking of us that way."

"Erm. I-it's an instructor's duty."

A misunderstanding seemed to have taken root, but he let it pass. A good misunderstanding was profit.

"Ahem. At any rate, this instructor does not consider it a good thing that you sprout students are at the Academy."

"......"

"However, an instructor's duty is to teach you well, and so long as I am an instructor of the sword faculty, I need to make you strong. In that spirit, I mean to teach you sprouts this."

"?"

"Watch closely."

Lee Han brought over a branch that had been lying on the ground. It was broken, but it looked reasonably sturdy. He set his fist lightly against it and held still.

"You saw it yesterday, didn't you? The technique called Gyeong."

"—!!?"

In an instant the branch was pulverized, and they were stunned. A branch breaking was not, in itself, so astonishing. What was truly astonishing was that he had taken no movement at all. Zero distance. He had not struck. He had only set his fist to it, and he had made no motion whatever, and still the branch was crushed. If one did not marvel at that, what was left in the world to marvel at?

"I named it the Method of Making Firm. Some of you heard as much yesterday. This is not the Fighting Art. It uses only the sum of the strength in bone, muscle, tendon, and the rest. In other words, it is a technique learned through effort, and if you once catch the sense of it, there is no end to its uses."

"Y-you mean you'll teach us a technique that precious!?"

They went pale with shock. He was their instructor, yes, but they still could not help being stunned that he would teach something so precious. Had they not seen it? His skill, overwhelming with a wooden sword alone a genius they could never have faced even if they died and lived again twice over. And knowing that the technique called Gyeong was the reason it had been possible, the students could not believe it. That he would teach a thing that precious.

But of course, the world had no free gifts.

"It should go without saying, but I have no mind to teach it for nothing."

Of course. As if Lee Han were such a pushover that he would hand everything out. His technique was, in a sense, an idea he had realized in his own body through battlefields and training—his intellectual property. To teach it for free would be a loss.

Except.

A fighter retires, and then he makes his living teaching what he knows. That's how it goes.

He, too, had to prepare for his old age, didn't he? Something sturdy, at that. Something like a pension and a lottery ticket both. Hiding that private motive, Lee Han launched into a rather long explanation.

"First: if you receive this technique from your instructor, every one of you must honor your instructor as Grandmaster, and from the time you take employment and begin to earn, you will pay dues to your instructor, the Grandmaster, for fifteen years. Nor may you teach this instructor's technique to others as you please. To teach it, this instructor's permission must be given, without exception."

A fifteen-year pension was not something he could pass up.

"And if you learn the technique from your instructor, a bond of master and disciple is formed. That does not mean you get to play at being friends. It means you watch one another, and you keep the technique under strict guard so it does not leak. Should someone abuse it, you yourselves must put that person down. Should someone steal it, you yourselves must punish them as well."

An extra pension was precious. And if children ever came along, he would have to leave them a little property. Letting some stranger skim that fortune was not a thing he could forgive.

"Of course, I am not telling you to decide this instant. Think it through, and then speak. In a sense, it may be one of the great crossroads of your life. Even so, your instructor will say this much. If you want to become strong, don't you need at least the resolve to stake your life on it?"

And that was all.

"......"

Silence hung over them. It had been that much of a feast of astonishing terms.

Strict, they thought. But... every bit of it is doable!

The conditions that had come down were fairly severe, and yet they were only severe. Nothing they could not accept. Even the masters who had taught them the sword had held out terms much like these. What the instructor demanded was a little stricter, and the term a little longer. But if it meant learning a precious technique they could learn nowhere else, this was not merely enough. It was a profit overflowing the measure.

Still, they had to think. As the instructor said, they needed the resolve to stake their lives. Only a decision made after due deliberation would leave no regret lat—

"Kunta! Kunta wants to learn that! Instructor, Kunta will honor Instructor as Grand Master!"

"If a quarrel or some trouble arises among fellow disciples, what are we to do? Are there established rules?"

"So not Instructor, sir—from now on we call you Grand Master, that the way of it?"

"How fortunate. I wanted to learn it anyway."

"And they say the ones who already have plenty are the worst of them..."

Who knew from when the four of them had been listening. They had swarmed in all at once, and Lee Han clicked his tongue, dumbfounded. Already blessed with so much, and still this greedy. For heaven's sake. But when the sprouts saw talented people who lacked for nothing step forward of their own will, they made their decision.

"...We've only got one life. We ought to at least try."

It was enough to cast their hesitation to the wind.

"But, Sir Knight."

"What is it, Maid?"

"Then you've formed ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a faction, haven't you? What is that faction's name?"

"Its name?"

"Yes! Whatever the faction, they all have names!"

"A name..."

Not a matter he had given much thought. A sharp point. He had settled it on the spot, but if he wanted them to feel they belonged, a name mattered too. And after a little pondering:

"One Hundred and Eight Arhats ought to do, I suppose."

"That's an unusual name."

"It means that someday I'd like to gather one hundred and eight excellent warriors. Haha."

"What a lovely meaning!"

The pure maid, who understood nothing, praised him with a sunny face, and Lee Han flinched. Sometimes a purity like that stabbed the heart more fatally than anything else in the world.