I Am Knight Lee Han
Once morning training was done, he washed with meticulous care. He had no interest in hearing anyone nearby remark on the smell of his sweat.
After that, he ate again. Taking in nutrients mattered every bit as much as the work itself.
Stew. Meat, vegetables, tomato sauce, and the rest, left to simmer through the night. Stew, as it happened, was one of the few dishes that let you actually absorb what you put into it. He had used nothing but cheap ingredients, yet a long, slow cook softened them until they were easy on the stomach, and herbs anyone could get—tomato, basil, and their like—rounded the flavor until it was honestly good. For a poor commoner knight, it was more than enough to be satisfied.
"Hoo. That hit the spot."
After eating came rest. Lee Han was as thorough about recovery as he was about intake.
A short doze of thirty minutes. It lacked the force of real sleep, but a light nap still paid for itself many times over: brief, sharp, and enough to ease both the body's stamina and the mind's fatigue.
He rose from it and stretched.
Morning routine, more or less finished?
Seven hours of sleep. A stretch the moment he woke, then training at full power, then food. Sword practice, a wash, and food again. A nap, then another stretch. The routine that opened every day he had.
Three years of it, and not a single day missed. Even the morning after the knight captain—a man as good as his mortal enemy—had pounded him like dough.
Worse, once I recover the next day I can feel the body getting better. Disgusting.
If anyone asked why he kept up training this mad, Lee Han would have answered that he did it because it worked.
Train until the body breaks, then let a troll's regeneration knit it back together, and the body comes out a little better than before. The gain was no more than a snail's crawl, but the point was that there was a gain. Grow in strength and stamina by 0.01, and past a hundred days that 0.01 has become 1. Past a thousand days, it has become 10.
Once he had felt that for himself, he never stopped.
A gain of 0.01 might be despair to someone else. He was no noble. He had no proper master. All he owned was a body that still worked. For a man like that, even this faint method of growth was a lamp of hope. And sometimes the gain was 0.05. Sometimes it was 0.1. The pleasure of improvement was beyond comparison with anything else, and Lee Han believed he was walking, quietly, toward the completion of himself.
"...Hah. But seriously. When do I actually win."
People were not machines, though, and gloom had a way of dropping in without warning. Today, of all days, was one of those.
The walk to work was not going to be pleasant.
The farther he walked from the Outer Farm Ward—the district known as the home of farmers and outcasts—the more a thriving city opened around him.
An overwhelming majesty, worthy of the capital of the Pendragon Kingdom. The nearer one drew to the Royal Castle, the thicker the commercial streets became, and buildings that would not have shamed the modern world, along with sculptures like works of art, were nothing rare.
It had not always been this large. After the war turned the kingdom into a great power, they had built the capital up to match the name.
Show this view to anyone who remembered the old one, and they would refuse to believe their eyes, lost for a while in simple confusion.
Before he knew it he had entered the city where the capital's nobles lived, and the Royal Castle rose before him in all its grandeur.
A castle some people would look on with longing. Lee Han could agree that it was impressive.
"...I really don't want to go."
His face could not have crumpled any further. The reluctance showed in every line of it.
He stood there for several minutes, as if fighting some private war of nerves. Then, telling himself there was no helping it, he went up to the gate.
And at once—
"Hail! Sir Rihan!"
"Good morning, Sir Rihan."
"Yeah, good work, all of you. ...And my name isn't Rihan. It's Lee Han."
"...Isn't that the same thing?"
"......"
Ah, Grandfather.
The honorable old house of Deoksu Lee was being snubbed by an entire medieval world.
Should he beat them for it?
...Yes, sir.
It sounded like something his grandfather from his past life would have said, so Lee Han nodded and held out his mark.
A necklace in the shape of a Silver Lion Dog Tag. A soldier shone a magic implement over it, and the mark lit blue. The trick called to mind a fingerprint scanner, or an iris reader. Magic really was something.
"No issues. Have a hard day, Sir Rihan."
"...I don't want a hard day."
"Haha. And a fine sense of humor."
"......"
What, exactly, was so funny about this man.
Sour at the feeling that everyone but him seemed perfectly happy, Lee Han went in through the gate. He couldn't speak for anyone else, but the stress had piled up nicely. Touch him now, and he felt liable to explode.
Just let one of them come.
Hoping for it, he made straight for the outer grounds where the knight order kept its post.
"It's Rihan."
"He's here."
"Wonder how today goes."
"The Captain's in, isn't he?"
A knot of men in the same armor as his own—silver plate bearing a white lion—offered him a welcome. Of a sort. While quietly avoiding his eyes.
Gutless, the lot of them.
A commoner walks in, and they ought to glare, curse, and pick a fight. Charge him like they mean to die, shove him into a trap, send an assassin or two. Why didn't a single one of them have that much spine?
The old ones had spirit, at least.
Noble-born knights who had tried to stick a blade in him, sent assassins, and actually set out to kill him. He had enjoyed those. Whenever the stress built, they handed him a perfectly legitimate excuse to beat someone down.
Not anymore. He had thrashed so many of that breed that, at some point, the people willing to pick a fight with him had simply vanished. Looking at it now, you could call it the turn of an age. You could feel the years.
Should've left a few.
He ought to have kept a couple of the yapping little Chihuahua types, the ones who would bare their teeth so he could beat them later. A small regret, and his brow had just begun to knot when—
"Lee Han. Whose funeral are you planning, with a face like that?"
"...Won't you at least pick a fight with me?"
"No. What kind of lunatic picks a fight with a monster like you."
"You're milking it."
"...I am not milking it, you ass."
Jake. Noble-born, and one of the vanishingly rare decent ones who did not look down on Lee Han for being a commoner—and one of the few friends he had in the order. He even said the name properly. His skill sat in the upper ranks, and he would have made a fine outlet. No. A fine sparring partner.
"Don't look at me like that. Spar with you and my bones ache."
Jake shut the opening down in advance, as if cutting off a crisis before it could start. Sharp-eyed, as always.
"You're a noble. When a commoner gets cocky, you're supposed to take offense and come charging in swearing you'll kill him. Tsk, tsk."
"...I don't know about the rest of it, but I can see how narrow your idea of a noble is."
Jake had joined the order in the same cohort as Lee Han. He knew exactly how hard Lee Han had collided with the noble-born knights in the early days. He also knew, with perfect clarity, what had become of the nobles who collided with him.
Ugh. Still gives me chills.
The shock of that day had left a deep mark on Jake as well. They had harassed Lee Han past anything you could call reasonable, and at last crossed a line no one should have crossed. After that, Lee Han became a beast for whom the word demon fit, and beat them as if he meant to kill them.
Others rushed in to stop him once he ran wild, and every one of them was hurt badly enough to need a long convalescence. Trying to stop him had been worse than doing nothing. If the Captain had not stepped in that day, three of the men on that ground might well have died.
Afterward, talk went around inside the order that Lee Han ought to be expelled, that he ought to be punished. The Captain ignored all of it. It might have looked as if he were protecting Lee Han in his own way, but Jake, and the sharper members with him, knew better. Lee Han had wanted the retaliation. He would have welcomed being thrown out. Without the Captain, he would have resigned a hundred times over already. So the Captain had made himself a shield for the sake of making Lee Han miserable, and while Jake thought that was too much, he understood the feeling.
And well he might.
Because he really is that strong.
Too certain a talent to give up on. When Jake said he did not want to fight him, it came from the bottom of his heart.
The order's training, to be honest, was nothing special. Not harsh, and not particularly hard. If anything, a fair share of it was left to each knight's own discretion.
Anyone watching would think this was the major leagues.
Something he had heard in his past life: most of a major leaguer's training was the player's own burden. You spent your own money, carved your personal time down to the minute, and honed yourself until you could survive an arena of endless competition and earn the right to the name. That was a major leaguer's life.
It was much the same here. Most of those who kept the title of knight were disciples of some renowned knight, or nobles backed by their houses. So they trained in private to raise their own ability, and they never displayed their methods in front of anyone else. The training itself was a secret art, and property.
They've all got something, I'll give them that.
Like a recipe handed down through hundreds of years, knights were treasure goblins. Cross hands with them now and then, and they surprised you with methods you never saw coming.
Like now.
Whoosh!
Clang!
Two knights faced each other with training swords whose edges had never been honed, and sparred. Every time the blades met, sparks bloomed, gorgeous—and the display of high swordsmanship was more dazzling than the sparks, stranger than a circus.
Flash!
One knight's sword bent like a whip and pressed his opponent. What astonished Lee Han was that the man under that pressure broke it without hesitation, swung, and in a single instant showed three cuts.
"Flashy. Real flashy."
A banquet of brilliant swordsmanship that had nothing whatever to do with him. A precious experience: pleasant to the eyes, and satisfying by proxy.
Not that watching swordsmanship meant he could copy it.
In the novels, every guy who gets reincarnated is a prodigy and a copy-genius. Why am I like this?
There had been a time he sparred with the knights in the hope of stealing their swordsmanship. Far from stealing it, he had only come away with more questions. He could not understand why they moved like that, or why that stance produced that kind of destructive force.
From what he had heard, houses with real history possessed a secret art called the Fighting Art. Learn it, and you gained the strength of ten ordinary men. Some said it was the struggle to reach Aura. Struggle or otherwise, it was certainly impressive. A feast of sword arts, the kind a martial artist would have used in the wuxia novels he had read for fun in his past life.
......He was jealous.
"They've all got talent."
"You're one to talk."
"Hm?"
"Hah."
Why was this guy picking a fight all of a sudden? Was this a signal that he wanted to—
"For the record, I am not sparring you. Ever."
"...Mm."
Lee Han was disappointed. It was not only Jake. Everyone else avoided sparring him too, which meant he had no chance at all to blow off the stress.
Kids these days—
"—Senior Rihan!"
"...Hm?"
"I request a spar!"
"......Oh."
Well. Look at that.
There is one. A useful one.
Lee Han smiled wide.