EP.12 – The Knight Wore a Black Octagonal Cap (4)
In his previous life, he had been a soldier—and not the sort who served a term and got out. He was a career man who had driven his stake in and stayed for ten years, which was another way of saying he was sick to death of training.
He had done more drills than he could count. Heat-season training and cold-season training, of course, and RCT besides, the regiment-level combat exercises. The long marches too, the ones they called a thousand li. Ten years in the army meant you got to sample nearly every kind of training there was.
...He was not particularly proud of it.
Every time a drill ended he came out ruined, feeling as if his health had burned clean away. What was there to boast of? It was nothing but tormenting people. And so Lee Han held that nothing in the world was as irrational as military training.
Not every army was like that, surely. Somewhere there had to be proper training, and units that had actually built a system.
Just not the outfit or the division I was in.
All they ever did was grind the soldiers dragged in for two years and send them home sick. So Lee Han hated that kind of training. What use was a drill that only tormented you and left nothing behind?
Seven days without sleep. That was real dogshit.
That piece-of-shit battalion commander. He snuck off to the BOQ—the officers' barracks—and slept, and still he wouldn't let them so much as close their eyes.
...Anyway. The point was this: he utterly despised training that was irrational and left you with nothing but illness. Something had to remain. You had to come away with some skill you could actually use later. That was the definition of training he had settled for himself.
And so—
What I'm about to do isn't torment. It's all for your own good.
Lee Han had secured a perfectly sound justification for the training he meant to begin.
Thus:
"All of you. I'm sure that nap did you plenty of good, so let's start some calisthenics. Just enough to work up a light sweat."
"...?"
The man in the black octagonal cap dropped his voice and gave the order.
"It'll be light. Light. All right, then—lightly. Let's just try a hundred jumping jacks."
"...!!?"
"No answer. Five hundred! You hear me? Five hundred!!"
"Y-yes, sir!"
"Late that time. And the cadence is 'Ack.' One word. You're cluttering up my head. One thousand. Execute."
"A-ack!!"
"Too quiet! I'll let it pass this once. Next time, be ready. Oh—and you will count exactly. There is no cadence on the last rep. Understood?"
"Aaaack!!"
"Good. Three hundred. Begin!"
A light warm-up had begun. The trap in that warm-up, however—
"...Three hundred...! Hk!?"
Yeah. I knew somebody would do it.
The final cadence, inevitable as a law of nature, did nothing but warm his heart. Lee Han was deeply pleased, wondering just how far this would go. That day, the jumping jacks that were supposed to be light calisthenics went on for a full two hours, because someone always shouted the last cadence.
Even after the "warm-up," they had a great deal left to learn. They had to memorize, without missing a single one, the fourteen movements the instructor called the PT Drill.
And yet at some point the order and the motions branded themselves into the students of their own accord. None of them was bright enough to memorize the set in a single pass, but fortunately the drill forced the memorization anyway. How?
Simple.
"Trainee Fourteen, fall out."
"A-ack!"
"You will fill thirty repetitions of movements one through fourteen, in reverse. Understood?"
"A-ack!!"
The sprout students, who had at some point begun to be called trainees, were watched by five assistant instructors in red octagonal caps, distinct from the instructor's black one, and anyone whose form went wrong was pulled out of the ranks.
Everyone who had tasted falling out clawed the movements into memory if only to avoid it again, and thrashed with everything they had so they would not get the form wrong. At a certain point all eighteen sprouts had fallen out once each, and from then on the ones who botched a movement grew fewer and fewer.
They had only stopped getting the movements wrong. That was all.
"Th-thirty... eep!?!"
"Trainee Twelve, fall out. The rest of you, start again from movement one."
"Ack...!"
They glared at the student who had shouted the final cadence. To end this hellish drill they had to complete all fourteen movements in order, and when they called the count they sometimes had to leave the cadence off the last number, and sometimes they had to put it on. The instructor was vicious.
Damn it! Just tell us never to do the last one! Why does he keep switching whether we tack the cadence on or not!
Rock-headed idiots! How did you even sit the entrance exam with brains like that!
Shit! Shit—! Shit—!!
Heat that felt as if their whole bodies were burning up. Bodies so heavy they might collapse at any moment, sweat and dust churned together as they rolled across the dirt. Minds going faint and far away. In that moment they were certain of it: if hell existed, it would be exactly this.
...And the instructor and his assistant instructors were the demons who tormented the sinners there.
And yet, in the middle of all that—
"Trainees. On your feet, all of you. Drink water. You may rest for forty minutes. Execute!"
"A-aaaaack!!"
Moved like believers who had just received the word of God, they shouted with all their might, from some store of strength they could not account for. Yes—a demon was a demon, but the instructor was a kind demon. How did he know so precisely? Every time they truly went hazy and felt they were about to die, he granted rest like rain in a drought.
"Uwaaaack..."
"I... I think I'm going to die."
"...zzz."
"Is this bastard asleep already?"
"...Right now, I think I could drop off myself."
They drank, and they ate the dates laid out beside the water casks, sweet enough to set their flesh trembling. In that moment they felt with their whole bodies that if the heavens possessed nectar and fruit, it would taste exactly like this, and then they sprawled in the shade where the trees grew thick. A rest of paradise. They did not so much as twitch. They learned, in their own flesh, what it meant to rest with every ounce of strength they had.
"Instructor. How in the world did you come up with training like this?"
Garand—red octagonal cap on his head, the assistant instructor's post settled on him like a hat of office—looked at the instructor in open admiration.
This was the training of that legendary mercenary company, infamous for being harsh and vicious: the Wild Wolves. Garand had endured it until he was sick of the very memory, and that was why he could tell. This drill was uncannily like what applicants suffered in hopes of joining the Wild Wolves. No. In some respects it was more systematic, and steadier.
"You wring the strength and flexibility of the whole body out to the limit, and the moment injury seems likely, you have them rest at once. It is like hammering iron."
Arno's uncommon eye, like Garand's, saw that the training was not merely irrational. There was mental pain and stress, to be sure, but they were not being driven hard enough to ruin their bodies. Falling out was the same.
"Like Instructor said, if somebody looked like they might get hurt, Kunta pulled them out. Did Kunta do good?"
That was why a trainee was sometimes fallen out over some petty nitpick.
"...I did sneak the last cadence in, quiet as I could, just like you told me, Instructor. But if this gets found out, I really think I'm going to be a traitor..."
That was why the cadence mistakes came so strangely often. It was Damian Paulet's handiwork, and if he were caught, every student would lynch him.
Well. Even if he were caught—
"If they catch you, don't say I told you to. Say you were messing around."
"...Then they'll run me through."
"And?"
"...!?"
Unlike the temporary assistant instructors, Damian was not granted the courtesy of being treated as a person.
"But, Instructor. Are we going to keep doing this training?"
And the MVP assistant instructor of the day was Irene Windler, who had used magic to head off the heat, and the heatstroke, before either could begin. For the record, the dates—a snack of the nobility—being on hand as rations was her doing as well. Foster daughter or not, she spent like a young lady of a ducal house.
"You all did well. We'll grind them like this for just one week."
"Is there a purpose?"
"Stamina and muscle can wait. First they need to experience it. I'm carving it into their bodies by force—what it feels like to squeeze out every bit of strength you've got."
"...I'm not sure they can endure it."
However carefully one set the rests and the limits, if this repeated for a week, well...
"Don't worry about that. I've got something good, as it happens."
"Something good?"
"Hm. We've got a little time. I'll show you."
Lee Han took the assistant instructors and left. And if he abandoned the students and they ran?
Then let them run.
He had no use for anyone who would flee because it was hard. Where was the shortcut, if you meant to grow strong? Everything was effort. And if they could not manage even the minimum of effort, then having them clear out now would only save Lee Han time, which suited him fine. He had not the slightest intention of forcing them.
Still.
I do have to give them a proper reward.
Steam bloomed up before them.
"...What is this?"
"Oh. A hot spring?"
Where Lee Han had brought the assistant instructors, there was a natural hot spring, and a very large one. It spread as wide as a training field, and it was deep enough that even Kunta, nearly seven feet tall, might lose his footing and thrash. Filling all that breadth and depth was spring water, clear and warm, breathing up soft curls of steam.
"Heavens..."
Leaving their astonishment where it stood, Lee Han went on.
"Ages ago, some slaver went looking for secret ground to build himself a villa, and he happened to learn there was a hot-spring vein in Vulcan."
"...A mere slave trader built a villa on a sacred mountain?"
"Well. In the end he only got the spring made. They caught him by the scruff while he was trying to put the house up."
"Caught by whom.... Ah."
There was no need to ask who. Why else would he know this place?
"Want to know what happened to the slaver?"
"...No."
Faced with that ominous smile, it seemed wiser not to hear the answer.
"But is it all right to show a place like this to us? If someone later takes a bad notion..."
It was a hot spring that beautiful, and that grand—an environment even nobles would covet. Handled poorly, it might be taken from him. Or someone might let the rumor out. Lee Han only snorted.
"Here? Knowing about it won't help anybody else find it. You think they call Vulcan a spirit mountain for nothing? Every time you climb, the ground shifts like a maze. Scholars say that because of the Mystery mana the mountain itself holds, it tries to drive people out, or kill them. Come up here greedy, and I'd wager Vulcan starts erupting again that very day."
Mana and Mystery did not belong to humanity alone. They existed everywhere in nature. Those were words left by Merlin, the legendary Archmage and sage. And one such piece of nature, bearing a Mystery of that kind, was Vulcan.
"W-we climbed it, didn't we?"
"That's because I know the way up, and because you don't particularly mean the mountain any harm. That'll be part of it."
"...I see."
The assistant instructors felt it was not merely that. If a mountain bearing a Mystery permitted a person, then the slaver he had destroyed must have been a loathsome villain, foul enough to offend Vulcan. And because he had struck such a villain down without hesitation, Vulcan had allowed him to climb; because they had come with him, they too had been allowed up. This was not a guess. It was a certainty. The records handed down through houses, mercenary companies, and tribes were the proof.
...And if those records held, then should they themselves harm the mountain, they would at some moment be cast out, or cursed.
What a man.
To be favored by a mountain that held a Mystery—that was a great deed. And he did not even regard it as a deed. For warriors to feel respect toward a man who had stacked up accomplishments like that was only the natural order of things.
"Talk wandered. Anyway. So long as this spring is here, neither that lot nor you will have your bodies fall apart."
"...Does this spring have some special virtue?"
"Wound recovery, healing the joints, waking the body's natural regeneration, and then—what, nicer skin and better health? There were a few more. I don't really remember..."
"......"
The assistant instructors were all thinking the same thing. They had better get into this man's good graces, somehow. Otherwise, when would they ever get another chance to come back? Without meaning to, the knight had won his disciples' loyalty.