My Daughter Wants to Learn Swordsmanship
Right after Kael left for the training grounds with a quiet grunt of effort.
Elia, who had been lying on the sofa hugging her teddy bear, carefully sat up. If anyone asked why, the answer was simple: she wanted to watch her father train.
She rose from the sofa and padded over to the window, setting the teddy bear on the chair there before kneeling on top of it. The position gave her a perfect, unobstructed view of the training ground. When she spotted Kael drawing his wooden sword and beginning his practice in the wide open space, a small sound of wonder escaped her.
“Wow……”
Aside from her earliest baby days—which she couldn’t even remember—Elia’s first clear memory of watching Kael train went back to when she was three. And from that moment on, she had always felt the same thing while watching him.
“So pretty……”
The way Kael swung his sword was breathtakingly beautiful. From the wooden rod in his hand, dozens, hundreds, thousands of different paths bloomed in the empty air only to vanish again. They didn’t shine or sparkle or give off any warmth, yet Elia couldn’t help thinking those trajectories were beautiful.
Soldiers with talent far above the average citizen. Knights whose gifts made those soldiers look ordinary. And then the rare few powerhouses so far beyond even those knights that comparison became meaningless. Kael was the man who had personally forged and taught that elite handful—and whose own talent surpassed them all.
The swordsmanship he had honed and sharpened on battlefields where every moment could mean life or death had been born from a god-given genius. That was why, even though Elia didn’t know the first thing about swordsmanship, she could still sense the weight of time and effort contained in every movement. How could she not find it beautiful?
That was why, not long ago, she had asked Kael to teach her.
Of course, the request had been firmly denied. He told her she was still too young and that he would teach her when she was a little older. Even when Elia—doing something she had never done before—had teared up and thrown a tantrum, the answer remained the same. If she asked again now at five years old, the result would probably be no different.
But this time, Elia had a plan.
If throwing a tantrum by herself wouldn’t work, she just needed an adult who would throw one with her.
Knock, knock, knock───
Once Kael was fully absorbed in his training, the sound of knocking came from the cottage door.
The gentle woman’s voice that followed the knock made Elia slide down from the teddy bear at once. She ran straight for the door.
“Mommy!”
Click───!
Once a month. That was all the time she got to see her mother. Elia flung the door open, calling for her—and there stood a woman with light purple hair and bright orange eyes.
Luina’s eyes widened in surprise at the sight of Elia bursting out, but she quickly scooped the girl into her arms and lifted her up.
“Elia? Where’s your father?”
“Daddy’s at the training ground!”
“Ah, he’s training. That explains the sounds I heard from back there.”
Being held by Luina lifted Elia’s whole world higher. Her mother’s face was suddenly right in front of her. Elia breathed in the fresh, natural scent that always clung to her and smiled faintly, wrapping her arms around Luina’s neck.
“Hehe… Mommy smells nice.”
“Ahaha, that tickles. You really are something, Elia.”
Luina patted her daughter’s back with an expression that said she couldn’t be helped, adjusting her hold. Some time passed while Elia stayed nestled in her mother’s arms. Finally the girl lifted her face from Luina’s hair and declared:
“Mommy! I want to learn swordsmanship!”
“Swordsmanship?”
If throwing a tantrum alone wouldn’t work, she just needed an adult to throw one together with her. And the only person who fit that childlike logic was her own mother, Luina. If the two of them asked Kael together, surely he wouldn’t be able to refuse. This was the perfect plan Elia had spent three whole days devising!
Confident that her flawless scheme would succeed, Elia beamed with victory.
“No.”
The triumphant smile that had filled Elia’s face vanished in less than ten seconds.
Luina set her daughter down and answered firmly.
“Why? Why not?! I want to learn swordsmanship!”
“No. If you start now, you’ll ruin your body. Swordsmanship is better learned when you’re a little older.”
Elia had never expected Luina to refuse so decisively. She asked again in a rush, but the answer was almost identical to Kael’s. Learning now would hurt her body, so they would teach her when she was bigger. But to five-year-old Elia, the part about hurting her body didn’t really register. All she heard was that she wasn’t allowed to learn swordsmanship.
With her last resort gone, Elia collapsed to the floor in despair.
“Hic……”
She hadn’t meant to cry at all, yet large tears began to well up in her big eyes. The first perfect sense of defeat in her young life broke through her naturally expressionless face, and the tears started to fall.
“Hic…!”
She hadn’t wanted to cry, so she tried desperately to stop, but the more she fought it the harder the tears came. And the one more flustered than anyone by the flood soaking the cottage floor was Luina, who stood in front of her.
“W-wait, what?”
She had never imagined that simply being told she couldn’t learn swordsmanship would make Elia cry. Luina was utterly flustered. More than that, in the five years she had been visiting the cottage, she had never once seen Elia cry—which only made her panic worse.
Who could have guessed that this child—who almost never smiled and whose emotions were so faint—could cry so heartbreakingly?
Did she want to learn that badly?
The question flashed through Luina’s mind, but it wasn’t important right now.
“E-Elia? Mommy’s sorry! So just calm down a little and we can talk slowly…”
“Waaah…!”
Luina hurried to stem the tears, but they only poured out faster. For a moment she wondered if she should just lie and say she would teach her swordsmanship, but she quickly shook her head.
If she learns at this age, her body really will be ruined…
Elia was only five. Her baby teeth hadn’t even all fallen out yet, and her bones were still soft. If she tried to learn Kael’s swordsmanship now, not only would her muscles be damaged—she might even injure bones that hadn’t finished growing. Luina couldn’t lie and promise to teach her, not when it would only lead to even bigger tears later.
What should I do…?
Luina’s mind spun at full speed as she searched for anything she could do. She didn’t think this hard even when fighting strong enemies. At last her thoughts came to a stop, and the words that left her mouth were the final compromise she could offer.
“Th-then… how about we start with the basics of swordsmanship?”
“…Really?”
The “basics” she spoke of were really just physical conditioning. It was the biggest concession Luina could make to stop her daughter’s tears.
After finishing training, I found Luina standing restlessly in front of the training ground for some reason. When I asked what was wrong, she gave me a quick summary of everything that had just happened.
“…So that’s what happened, Kael.”
“This is… a bit of a headache.”
It seemed my daughter had been pestering me to teach her swordsmanship for years, and now she had even reached out to Luina for help. Naturally Luina had refused, and Elia—who apparently hadn’t expected rejection—had burst into tears. In her panic, Luina had ended up promising to teach her the basics.
As a result, I could see Elia through the window, hopping around the house in delight.
“S-sorry… Kael.”
“No, it’s… you don’t have to apologize. I would’ve been just as flustered if I saw her crying.”
Even I had only seen Elia cry a few times. I had never seen her sob like that. If she had broken down in front of me the same way, I probably would have reacted similarly—panicking and saying anything I could think of to make her stop.
I waved off Luina’s apology and let out a small sigh.
“Still… basic training, huh.”
“Simple physical conditioning shouldn’t be a problem at her age, right? We can have a lightweight wooden sword made for her.”
“Yeah, that much should be fine.”
Even in her panic, Luina hadn’t thrown out the words “swordsmanship basics” lightly. What she had promised was physical training. Of course, if they left out the sword entirely Elia would throw a fit and say it wasn’t swordsmanship at all. So Luina’s solution was to make a nearly weightless practice sword and focus on building her stamina.
“Mm, it’s not a bad idea…”
Starting physical training now wouldn’t be bad at all. Until now I had avoided it because I didn’t want to push her into anything strenuous too early. But if her desire for swordsmanship was this strong, teaching her proper stance and basic conditioning should be all right.
However, there was one serious problem.
“…I don’t know how to teach physical conditioning.”
The issue was that I had no idea how to train someone’s stamina. If you asked why, it was because the strength I possessed had been with me from the moment I first arrived on this continent. Although I could control it now, I had never built this power up from zero. So when I trained my disciples, I never gave them proper conditioning alongside technique—I simply taught them the swordsmanship I knew as efficiently as possible. Those who couldn’t handle my style because they lacked the foundation dropped out on their own. Only those who were already tempered could accept my teachings. That was how all my disciples had come to be.
Therefore, I had no specialized knowledge for teaching Elia physical conditioning. At the same time, I couldn’t teach her with half-baked, sloppy information. Since she was going to learn, she might as well learn properly and correctly. I scratched my head, feeling troubled.
“For you to teach her conditioning, Luina…”
“I can’t come here often. It would be too much.”
Luina held an important position in the elf village. Even after the war ended, she had been busy being dragged into one major incident after another. Asking her—who could only visit once a month—to handle Elia’s physical training was unreasonable.
Then who should I entrust with the conditioning I had already promised her?
After a brief moment of thought, one person came to mind.
“…Well, she does contact me occasionally and says to call her whenever I need her. It should be fine, right?”
“Hm? Who are you talking about?”
Luina tilted her head at my murmur. Instead of answering, I took out a communication orb from the pouch at my waist. It was a device developed and mass-produced by the Magic Tower over a decade ago through groundbreaking ideas. Now it was used across the entire continent.
When I poured mana into the orb, my power spread through its transparent interior like ink. As long as I spoke the name of the person I wanted to contact, it would automatically connect to their registered orb. I quietly spoke a name I hadn’t said in a long time.
“Zenle Hyde.”
The Knight Commander of the Shardena Kingdom—the capital of countless cities—and a fierce general who had made her name on the front lines of battle. A genius who had reached the level of Sword Master at the youngest age in history. A peerless talent whose striking beauty made her an object of admiration for many. And finally, my third disciple.
I called her name in a low voice.