The Prodigy's True Nature
Three years had slipped by since the end of the genius festival. So much had happened in that time, yet when I tried to pick out the most significant events, only two truly stood out.
The first was that Luina and I had finally held a proper wedding ceremony. After her confession during the festival that day, I decided we should become true partners, not just a couple in name only, so we could be genuine parents to Elia. The only difference from a normal wedding was that it was a simple, modest affair with very few guests. If we had gone through the usual formal procedures, the moment we tried to book a venue, crowds of people would have descended on us. Both Luina and I agreed it was better to keep things quiet.
So we set up a simple altar right in front of our cottage and held the ceremony there. The only attendees were Zenle, Elia, Luina’s parents, and Enoch—who had shown up only because Zenle had practically dragged him along. With such a small gathering, the wedding was over quickly. Through it, Luina and I became husband and wife in every sense of the word. Right after the ceremony, we officially announced it to the Shardena Kingdom through Enoch: that Elia’s parents were Kael and Luina.
Of course, both the kingdom and the city went into an absolute frenzy at the news that Luina and I had a child together. But three years later, it was no longer something that really mattered.
The second major event was that, right after the wedding, Luina moved in with us.
“Once an elf holds a wedding ceremony, she can step down from her official position. It’s one of the few ways an elf can be allowed to have descendants,” she explained, then immediately left the post she had held for so long. That very same day, she came straight to our home and began living with us.
Naturally, Elia was overjoyed to have Luina with her every day. Zenle gave us a thumbs-up and said it was wonderful news. I, however, felt a twinge of unease at her words and had to ask.
“Luina… about those descendants… we don’t have to start right away, do we?”
“Ah…! Y-yes! I mean, we elves live forever anyway… there’s no need to rush… right.”
I had worried we might need to produce a little sibling for Elia immediately, but it seemed that wasn’t the case. Only after hearing her answer could I truly relax and feel pure happiness. After all, having experienced the trials of raising a child firsthand, who wouldn’t be a little terrified? Of course I would be delighted if another child came along, but I wasn’t in any hurry to make one just yet.
In any case, with Luina now living with us, nearly three years had passed. After cycling through all four seasons three times, spring had finally returned once more. Lately, I had taken on a new responsibility.
It was a gift for Elia, who had built up an astonishing amount of strength and muscle in the past three years. More precisely, it was the swordsmanship training she had longed for so desperately.
* * *
“Listen carefully, Elia. Before we begin learning swordsmanship, I’m going to teach you the proper mindset you must have first.”
“Yes, Dad!”
Over the past three years, Elia’s physical growth had far exceeded my expectations. Without any special herbs or potions, just daily training, her muscles had grown noticeably stronger each day, and any overworked tissue recovered completely in a single night. Her rate of growth and recovery was easily two or three times that of an ordinary person. While I couldn’t be sure about the growth speed, her muscle and wound recovery was practically on par with my own.
I didn’t know who her real parents were, but Zenle had been right—she possessed a body blessed with monstrous talent. Thanks to that, in just three years Elia had grown enough to begin learning my swordsmanship, even if only the basics. Today, I would teach her the sword for the first time.
“Now then… where should I start…”
Rather than jumping straight into sword forms, I began by explaining the mindset she needed to adopt. I wanted to ensure that Elia would never walk the wrong path with the skills I taught her.
That said, the mindset I intended to teach wasn’t some soft, modern ethical code. It wasn’t anything like “swordsmanship is only a last resort” or “you must never hurt others with your blade.” This was the continent of Marika, where human lives were worth less than scraps of paper. I had already lived here for fifty-eight years. I knew exactly what kind of world this was, so I began explaining the mindset she would need to survive.
“First of all, swordsmanship will be your means of self-defense, Elia. That’s why you must put in a great deal of effort. Only then will you be able to use it without hesitation when facing real people.”
“I’m confident when it comes to effort!”
Using swordsmanship on people. That was an essential quality any swordsman needed if they wished to survive on the continent of Marika. The people here—especially the thugs who would one day try to mess with Elia—were the kind who only understood reason after seeing overwhelming force. The only way to deal with them was to show that force. And to use real swordsmanship on living opponents, one had to invest serious effort. Swinging a blade at another living person was not something that could be done half-heartedly. That much was obvious.
The mindset I wanted to teach Elia was to keep her heart upright throughout that process of effort.
“But even if you become able to use swordsmanship on people, you must never kill indiscriminately. If you did, our daughter would be no different from the criminals wandering the streets.”
As I had said before, on the continent of Marika, human lives were treated as worthless. Even so, murder was still a crime and a sin that ate away at one’s soul. Therefore, if you had to kill someone, it could only be when your own life was at stake. That was the only situation in which taking another’s life was justified.
Hmm… maybe that was a bit too heavy for her.
I added those words, but upon second thought, perhaps it wasn’t something an eight-year-old like Elia needed to hear just yet. Of course, children from noble families who pursued swordsmanship or magic usually received this kind of education from the age of five, but it still felt a little early for Elia.
Yet when I saw her nod seriously at my words, I couldn’t help letting out a weak, helpless laugh.
“It must be difficult for you to understand right now, huh? But when you grow up a little more, you’ll understand what Dad is saying.”
“No! I understood it.”
“Really? As expected of our daughter—you really are a genius. It wasn’t too scary, was it?”
“Yeah! It wasn’t that scary.”
Elia answered with a bright smile when I asked if it had been too frightening. Looking into her eyes, I could tell she really wasn’t afraid. Perhaps because she had occasionally seen criminals being carried through the village covered in blood, or watched bloody gladiatorial fights with Zenle, she had already developed some resistance to such brutal topics.
…I really need to guide her properly so she doesn’t go down the wrong path.
Watching her, I swallowed hard, determined to make sure Elia only used her swordsmanship in the right ways. Getting used to the sight of blood was one thing, but the moment she began to enjoy it, there would be no turning back.
“Then shall we start learning swordsmanship now?”
“Yes!”
Having finished the preliminary talk about the proper mindset, I gently stroked Elia’s head and stood before her, wooden sword in hand.
“First, why don’t you show me your stance, Elia?”
“Okay!”
At my words, Elia immediately picked up the real wooden training sword she had received recently—not the toy one—and assumed a stance. She perfectly reproduced the basic posture of my swordsmanship that Zenle had drilled into her over the past three years. Because she had maintained it so often that it had become muscle memory, her basic stance was flawless and natural.
Standing in front of her, I took the same basic stance and raised my own wooden sword.
“Now watch closely, Elia. I’m going to show you the basic forms you’ll be learning from now on.”
“I, I already know how to do that!”
“Hmm? You know how?”
But the moment I raised my sword to demonstrate the basic forms, I couldn’t help letting out a puzzled sound at Elia’s declaration as she waved her wooden sword up and down. What did she mean, she already knew how? Neither Zenle nor I had ever taught her the basic forms.
As I looked at her with that question in mind, Elia smiled innocently and gripped her sword tightly.
“I watched Dad practice every day! So I can do it!”
She had been watching the training I did every single day. Claiming she had seen the basic forms I performed, Elia didn’t even give me time to stop her before she raised the wooden sword high above her head.
“Watch this!”
“Ah, wait a second, Eli—”
I tried to stop her, worried she might hurt herself, but the moment her sword came swinging down—
Shiiiiiing—!
I slowly lowered the hand I had raised, frozen stiff, my expression a mixture of shock and awe.
“……Huh.”
If anyone asked why, it was because the sight unfolding before my eyes was simply too absurd.
“You can really copy it?”
Swoosh—Swooooosh—!!
Even though her strength couldn’t possibly have reached adult levels yet, Elia’s wooden sword traced the exact paths with perfect precision, cutting through the air with sharp sounds. The basic forms I had intended to teach her were being executed flawlessly by her hands, despite never having received proper instruction. Since her basic stance had already been corrected by Zenle, she was perfectly replicating the forms I had demonstrated in a posture suited to her own body.
Those same basic forms had taken even Zenle and my other talented disciples an entire year to learn.
“And she managed it in a single day…”
Although she had watched my training every day, Elia had perfectly reproduced it after just one day. Of course, if my disciples had watched me swing a sword for several years, they too could have imitated it with considerable accuracy. After all, they were all overflowing with talent. My disciples were the most talented among the talented.
But as I had said, even they—except for the one with the greatest talent—would have only been able to copy it at a high level of completion at best. No matter how familiar they became with my swordsmanship, there were limits to what could be learned by observation alone. How could a person perfectly replicate something they had only seen over someone’s shoulder?
They say a dog that stays in a school for three years can recite poetry, but it still can’t perfectly imitate the teacher. Yet Elia completely overturned that logic, effortlessly reproducing my basic forms with perfection. Watching her, I finally realized something I had only vaguely acknowledged until now.
“Our daughter… really is a monster, isn’t she?”
Extremely rapid internal physical growth, recovery speed incomparable to others, and on top of that, an innate eye for perfectly copying others’ movements. Only today did I fully realize that Elia possessed monstrous talent far beyond anything I had imagined.