The Knight Wore a Black Beret (3)
Vulcan, the Spirit Mountain.
Since its fires had gone quiet, it was the most rugged peak in the kingdom, and famous all the same for its beauty. Climbers were rare. The ascent was brutal, there was no proper path, and savage wild boars turned up as a matter of course. Among the herb-gatherers there was even a rumor that someone had seen a bear.
That alone would have made the climb a punishment, but the truly unsettling fact was that Vulcan's weather did as it pleased, season be damned. By day a scorching heat of 40°C held the slopes; by night a cold of –30°C came down and laid frost over everything. It was a mysterious phenomenon, and every plant and animal that survived it carried a medicinal virtue out of the ordinary, so the demand never slackened. A spirit mountain in every sense of the word.
Climb it, though, and you might die on the way. Get stranded, and you could just as easily perish of thirst or freeze where you stood. The wise course, if one could manage it, was not to go up at all. Should anyone try, it would only be some mayfly of a life gambling on a prize herb and a fortune made in a single day.
And so.
"Haaah—! Insane, this is insane...!"
To climb it for the sake of training was already a fool's errand. Which meant they were fools, and madmen besides.
"Nnngh...!"
"I—I'm dying..."
"W-water...! Water, please, ghk..."
The dead—no, the unconscious—multiplied. The slope was past steep and well into the likeness of a sheer cliff, never made for climbing. It was only a precipice. Not one student walked on two feet. They crawled on hands and knees like beasts, turtles inching their way up. A single step backward and you would tumble off and take your leave of the living, so retreat was not to be imagined. If a turtle cannot walk backward as a matter of biology, they could not walk backward because they intended to survive.
And in the middle of all that:
"Haa. Look at this air. A spirit mountain really is a spirit mountain. Nice and cool."
"The air really does seem wonderful, Instructor."
"Well, come afternoon it'll be hot enough to drive you mad. The heat holds until six, didn't they say?"
"...I think this place is insane."
"Haha. Just figuring that out?"
Lee Han alone, hauling nearly twenty times what anyone else carried, might have been strolling a garden path. He was walking the same cliff as the rest of them, and yet he alone seemed to live under a different gravity. He was not on all fours. That he stayed upright on two feet was marvel enough. Call it balance, or else—
"Instructor, your toes are incredibly strong."
"I train them a fair bit."
"...I'm not sure that's something training can even do."
"Turns out it can."
"......"
He was climbing with his shoes off. Shoes only got in the way, so he went up gripping the earth with his toes, and the prints he left behind brought nothing so much as a mountain beast to mind.
"Don't just stand there talking to me. Look after that one."
"Yes."
Irene's mana stirred, fluid, and closed around someone. Those who had fainted, or who were begging under the onset of dehydration, rose in the grip of her telekinesis.
"Haa. This is getting a little heavy too."
"If you don't want to, you don't have to. You'll just have to walk from here on."
"...I'll devote myself to rescue work."
Irene was not trudging along in good faith like the others. She moved with her body lifted a little off the ground, as if levitating—telekinesis again. It was, by one reading, a violation of the training, but Lee Han had allowed it. Once he heard that telekinesis was to a mage what muscle was to a warrior, he had warmed to the idea of her using it. Besides, a march was impossible for Irene Windler from the start. Her stamina was still weaker than a kitten's. What march? It was more efficient to put her on relief work and leave it at that.
She'll do.
He had meant to load anyone who collapsed onto a cart himself. No need for that now. Magic still sat wrong with him, same as ever, but he would not deny that it was convenient.
"Ah. Another one down."
Up they went. She was hauling not only herself but more than ten students, every one of them fainted or fallen, and among them was Levi Fault, who had dropped at the very start of the climb. Lee Han had no mind to scold her for it. That she had walked this far on that frame was already a miracle. She had come on willpower, not stamina.
"In willpower, the sprout's ahead of those guys."
"Levi's pretty stubborn. She says she has to work even harder if she's going to raise her house up, or something like that."
"...Gotten close with Chick No. 1, have you?"
"We just drink tea and eat together, that sort of thing? Not quite friends yet, but acquaintances, sure."
"Isn't that what people usually call friends?"
"...I haven't really made friends before, so I'm not sure."
"Mm. Sorry."
"...Being apologized to makes it even more pathetic."
Arin. Don't say things you don't have to. You're embarrassing me.
Unexpectedly enough, this strangely humane ranger march was off to a smooth start.
Well.
"S-save me..."
From the students' point of view, it was not smooth in the slightest.
They did not conquer Vulcan. They never reached the summit. That had been Lee Han's intention from the start. He had never said the peak was the goal. He had only told them this was the mountain they would climb, and so their destination had never been the crown of it.
"Set the packs down."
The midpoint of Vulcan. Three full hours of mountain travel ended at last, and when the loads came off, the ground shuddered once beneath them. That was how much materiel they had hauled up.
"I—I'm alive..."
"...I thought I was leaving for Avalon at my age."
They were simply grateful to have climbed this far and lived, more grateful for that than for any accounting of what they had carried. It had been harsh, and then harsh again. Hell itself had nothing on—
"The maid, built nothing like any of you, is standing there perfectly fine. So what are you?"
No one answered.
"Tsk, tsk. Pathetic."
A few miserable groans. They wanted to argue and could not. Of course they couldn't. They had spent the climb fainting and dropping from exhaustion, while the one person who had carried more than any of them and still finished on her feet was a maid.
"Hehe, the air's nice here. Sir Knight! Should I pitch the tent in this spot?"
Cheerful. Was she not even out of breath?
Layla Winter. The royal maid had walked the same penitential road and did not look as if it had touched her. What was she? Lee Han barked at the students staring in disbelief.
"Know some shame. Lady Layla is far smaller than any of you, and she carried more than you did and finished the march."
Even to Lee Han, she was a strange breed of person. Truly—how was that body unbothered? He had told her more than once to let the telekinesis move her, and she had only said:
"It's not really hard, though?"
And she genuinely had not looked as if it were. No ordinary person, however you looked at her. He half wondered whether she had been born with a Heavenly Martial Body, or a Phoenix Physique out of some murim tale. The secret of that body could wait. What mattered now was that he had to turn these things from sprouts into wildflowers inside a month. Everything he did from here was bluff and kindling, meant to set their motivation alight. A bigger fire now would make the days ahead go better.
Instructor work isn't easy either.
Feeling, in private, a new respect for the teaching profession, Lee Han fed thick oxygen into the embers that were dying in them.
"Same goes for Levi Fault. You lot at least learned swordsmanship. Levi Fault didn't even have that, and she's never learned the Fighting Art either. A frail body. And in that state she walked a full ten kilometers. On willpower alone!"
The students looked at Levi Fault. Her legs were still shaking, but she was stubbornly trying to get up. On that frail body.
"You've lost. I'm not telling you to swallow your pride because you lost to a girl. You lost to a beginner! Willpower, persistence, grit—in every single one of those—!"
Fists clenched hard. This was no longer oxygen. He had poured oil on them, and the will to move crawled back into minds that had been collapsing from exhaustion.
"Get your heads on straight. Training has already started. I helped the ones who dropped on the march, but that wasn't because you're precious to me. I saved you because you were pitiful."
The heat shot up hotter still. He knew exactly where to press if he wanted a person to burn, and exactly where to press if he wanted them to come apart.
"Damn it..."
Most of them ground their teeth in humiliation and despaired of their own wretchedness. The air said they would thrash something, anything, if it would let them vent. Here he had to loosen his grip a little. A fire that flares all at once dies just as fast. Keeping it low and even was how you made a fire last.
"Good. I'd like to think you've come to your senses a little. Tsk. From now, tents up within thirty minutes, then a noon nap. Ninety minutes. After that I'll tell you about the basic training and the schedule, so until then you rest those bodies with everything you've got. Understood? Everything you've got."
Rest was part of training. He said so often enough, and the students answered with everything they had, as if the answer itself were a shout. Life was back in their eyes. Good to see. Lee Han gave a single nod, then turned his gaze on the ones who were, somehow, perfectly fine.
"You lot. Come see me for a moment."
"Kunta wants to sleep too."
"I'm tired as well, though."
"Even a mercenary company gives you rest..."
"And what do you want me to do about it?"
"......"
They had no choice but to be dragged along. One of them, of course, tried to hide in the crowd and slip his gaze.
"While I'm still asking nicely. Out. Now."
"Th-the nap..."
"A nap for an assistant instructor? What kind of luxury is that?"
"...Assistant instructors are people too! People!!"
"Since when?"
"...Damn it."
The assistant instructor wept.
"You holding up, Jack?"
"My lord."
Jack bowed his head. Roen, his lord, had borne that weight and marched an absurd distance without looking tired in the least. It suited a man whose fundamentals already stood above a knight's. Jack, by contrast, was spent to the bone. His own capacity was hopelessly wanting, and the disappointment in himself curdled into shame.
"Rest. You look exhausted."
"...I'm sorry. I'm hopelessly lacking."
"No. Your talent has only just begun to bloom. That can't be helped. If anything, it's admirable that you can keep up with a forced march like this only half a year after you decided to become a knight."
"...Next to my original trade, I'm still hopelessly shabby."
"...That is true."
Jack was a plain man, his impression somehow a little blurred—the sort of man you might see anywhere along a road. Some said his face was so faint it never stayed in the memory. That, too, was Jack's talent: a gift for not being remembered, for blending in anywhere and vanishing when he wished. It was why he was a man better suited to being an assassin. He had little talent for knighthood, but in espionage and assassination he might well climb to the very top.
Even so.
"It was still my choice. Even a man like me can become a knight. You were the one who told me that, my lord. So don't make that sorry face. Was what you said to me a lie?"
"No. There was no lie. All of it was sincere."
"Then that's enough."
"...Even so, I'm sorry. Because of my greed, I feel as if I've overturned every plan that was already set."
"It's all right. You said yourself that my lord's foresight isn't absolute, didn't you?"
"Mmm..."
At Jack's words, Roen made himself nod. Jack believed the ability Roen possessed was Foresight.
Yes. This is enough.
It was enough that he knew only that. Better if no one knew the true secret. Let it out, and it would only stir a greater chaos, and that was not what he wanted. While he kept that buried, Jack forced his weary body upright and went on talking.
"In any case, the real recruitment doesn't begin in earnest until next year, does it? There isn't much worth recruiting at present, so this year may as well be time spent honing our strength. ...More than that, you yourself seem interested in the instructor's training."
"It's a different way of seeing things. Learn it, and it will help later without fail. Especially if we end up fighting the Temple."
"Mmm..."
At his lord's words Jack swallowed a sound and glanced around. No one could be allowed to overhear. Fortunately his lord was not careless enough for that. The sound around them had been cut off completely. Thorough, as ever—enough to make the worry look foolish. Roen was grateful for the loyalty and took care not to show it, going on in a hard voice.
"Jack, remember. You must become strong. The instructor's harsh training will make you stronger than you are now. I'll say it again. I must not be the only one who grows strong. You have to grow strong as well. Alone, I can never defeat them."
"Yes."
Why else had they enrolled in this worthless academy? First, to build strength where they had no enemies. Second, because there was someone in the Royal Capital who had to die. And last of all—
"So watch this training well. I'm certain a great many unexpected talents will come out of it."
Securing people of ability, and establishing a faction. Those aims might be realized not next year, but starting with this one, depending on what change the instructor's lessons worked in them—in people no more regarded than wayside weeds.
"Do you truly think so? Honestly, I'm still only half convinced."
"I'm not certain either. But Jack, this is how I see it."
They might be nothing but weeds no one cared about now. And yet, perhaps—
"They may be wildflowers, waiting to bloom."
And he was a man who preferred wildflowers to anything raised in a greenhouse. The boy looked ahead with expectation, and the assassin shook his head, thinking that his lord was, now and then, a romantic chasing after sentiment.