Teaching, Learning, and Growing (1)

Teaching someone is a difficult endeavor.

To instruct another human being, one must possess at least a baseline of mastery over the subject at hand. For someone like me—possessing a wide breadth of trivia but lacking true depth in almost all of it—the role of a teacher was inherently a stretch.

Yet that was hardly the only reason education was so fraught.

The true peril of teaching lay in how easily it seduced one into conceit. The arrogance of believing you were enlightening an ignorant soul was an intoxicating gateway to superiority. And once superiority took root, it stripped an educator of the most vital qualities: respect and consideration for the student. An educator stripped of respect was an educator who had already failed their duty.

These were not empty platitudes.

In my past, I had been blinded by the hollow mantle of a "Hero." I forgot my own station, lost sight of my limits, and utterly failed as a teacher. The cost of that failure had been paid in the lives of my disciples.

Because I bore that scar, and because I refused to ever repeat that fatal mistake, I poured everything I had into teaching Astrea. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠And to my immense relief, she proved to be the finest student anyone could ever ask for—far more than I deserved.

"Master, am I doing this right?"

"Hold that pose for a second."

Pausing her movement, Astrea looked to me for guidance. I asked her to wait and slowly walked around her, scrutinizing every detail of her stance.

Her feet were planted firmly into the earth, grounded yet coiled like springs, ready to launch into the air at a fraction of a second's notice. Her arms were suffused with coiled power, yet devoid of any stiffening tension. In her hands, two iron bars were gripped with unyielding, bone-white resolve, as if she would never let them go.

Taking in the sight, only a single word came to mind.

"Perfect."

Perfect.

If there was one thing I had realized over the past two months of playing the master in earnest, it was that no existence on Earth was more suited to that word than Astrea.

If she's already at this level, it won't be long before we can start proper sparring.

Frankly, I never imagined we could spar after a mere two months. Even if I pulled my punches, sparring was an exercise that required a baseline of technical proficiency. Accumulating that baseline usually demanded the one thing no one could circumvent: time. Yet Astrea seemed entirely unshackled by the constraints of time.

Thanks to Leon, I had swordsmanship knowledge rivaling a master's forcefully crammed into my head, along with over a decade of anti-monster experience and two years of life-or-death battlefield combat. I had accumulated no small amount of seniority and practical grit, yet I couldn't shake the creeping suspicion that she might overtake me in just a year or two.

Whether that was the inherent cheat of being a Hero or simply raw, unadulterated genius on her part, I couldn't say. But the world really was an unfair place.

Astrea trained exclusively during the daylight hours. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Meanwhile, I instructed her by day while practicing alongside her, then spent the entire night honing my own blade while she slept. And despite that, our rates of growth were neck and neck. If you looked purely at the hours, I was putting in double; if you looked at the volume of study and drills, triple. To be running neck and neck despite that disparity meant one of two things: either I was an utter dullard, or she was an absolute prodigy.

"...Or maybe instead of her being a genius, I'm just hopelessly untalented," I muttered to myself.

Even after receiving an Interdimensional Data Delivery and drilling tirelessly for over two months, I couldn't manifest so much as a wisp of sword aura, let alone a flying slash. By any objective metric, I was the dullard here. On top of that, the gulf between my mind and my body remained vast. In numerical terms, if my brain understood one hundred, my flesh had barely caught up to one.

"...Master, did you call for me?"

"No, it's nothing."

My self-deprecating murmur must have slipped past my lips, because Astrea turned her head toward me with remarkable speed. Her hearing was terrifyingly sharp.

"You're doing great," I told her, clearing my throat. "Repeat that movement ten more times. After that, we'll begin our usual routine: ability classification ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and psychic control drills."

"Yes, Master."

Watching her dive right back into training with unwavering focus was deeply endearing. What kind of master wouldn't feel proud watching a disciple absorb instruction so thoroughly that she exceeded expectations at every turn? In every possible sense, Astrea was the kind of student an instructor dreamed of teaching.

I need to push myself harder.

Shaking off my idle thoughts, I watched her form for another moment before walking over to a quiet corner of the clearing. I picked up a pair of metal rods, gripped them tight, and began swinging. I had no intention of becoming a master outshined by his own apprentice.

Evening came once the lessons and drills drew to a close.

From deep within the crumbling ruins of the city, a faint murmur of sound drifted through the quiet air.

The source of the noise was an ancient television screen. Decades ago, wall-mounted flat screens had been prized as premium home appliances. Here in the twenty-second century, it was nothing more than an archaic relic of a bygone age. In fact, one didn't even need to look to the twenty-second century; by the late twenty-first century, holographic interfaces and augmented reality had already rendered such glass panels thoroughly obsolete.

Yet I had no choice but to dig up this ancient antique.

Whether holographic displays or AR units, nearly all advanced electronics on the surface of Earth had long since been pulverized into scrap or fried into slag by global EMP strikes. The only functional electronic hardware remaining were relics sealed away in deep subterranean fallout shelters.

I had scavenged these prehistoric components with no small amount of effort, rigged them to batteries charged by my psychic abilities, spliced wires, and hooked up an old computer database I had managed to salvage. The result of this makeshift engineering was a television currently broadcasting a nature documentary about the Amazon rainforest.

"......"

The one staring unblinkingly at this musty, fifty-year-old documentary was Astrea.

I had hauled this television setup and the documentary archives here seven days ago at her request, but even after a full week, she remained utterly entranced by it. Watching her sit there, eyes glued to the screen from the end of dinner right until bedtime, bordered on an obsession.

'Master... could we ever visit the places shown in that video?'

The documentary showcased countless breathtaking vistas, and in truth, physical distance was never an obstacle. If it was anywhere on this planet, I could easily throw Astrea on my back and run her there in no time. The true problem lay in the state of those places today.

Africa was leveled into ash decades ago when it was used as a meat shield for Europe, and the Amazon was scorched into an endless expanse of soot when South America collapsed during the Second Main Gate Wave...

The only region that retained any semblance of its original environment was Antarctica. But even there, almost all flora and fauna had gone extinct, leaving behind nothing more than a desolate, lifeless permafrost.

When I gently broke the truth to her, she had merely nodded with a quiet, 'I see. Thank you for telling me, Master,' acting as if it were no big deal. Yet beneath that placid exterior, her behavior had noticeably shifted from that day onward.

Her fixation on these ancient documentaries was one manifestation of it. Another was the way she began weaving quiet, persistent questions into our daily conversations—asking things like, 'Why did Earth become like this?', 'Why was there a war?', and 'What are the Gates?'

Even the way her expressionless face had softened, just for a fleeting second, when I told her I was making small efforts to restore Earth's environment had been part of it.

"Just what on earth did the Human Alliance do to you, and what kind of history did they teach...?"

I couldn't hold back a heavy sigh.

Not knowing where this strange fixation stemmed from or how it would shape her down the road made it an unsettling puzzle. Still, there was one saving grace: while she possessed an intense curiosity about old Earth, she harbored no resentment or suspicion toward me.

It had been roughly two weeks since I laid bare my past and the atrocities I had committed on this planet. Some might have called it reckless to confess so early, but it had been a calculated decision made after agonizing deliberation. Astrea had almost entirely lowered her guard against me by then. If she were to feel betrayed or heartbroken upon learning the truth, it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was far better for it to happen before her emotional attachment ran too deep. And from a colder, more ruthless standpoint, if she were to turn on me with hatred, that window would have been the easiest time to eliminate her without hesitation.

Yet when I finished confessing the gruesome truth with a dry throat and a racing heart...

'I... had a feeling it was something like that. At school, they taught us there was only a single human being left alive on Earth, and...'

'None of that matters to me. You saved my life, Master. The only reason I am alive today is because of you.'

'And you are the reason I have a life to live from now on.'

She had delivered those staggering, heart-stopping declarations with her usual poker face, entirely deadpan, saying things so heavy they nearly crushed me on the spot. My face had flushed crimson in a split second, and it remained a closely guarded secret how desperately I scrambled to hide my burning cheeks from her.

"Ahem..."

Clearing my throat to shake off the lingering embarrassment of that dark memory, I quickly summoned the interface for the Demon Lord Gallery. As the old proverb went: there was no medicine more potent for banishing stray thoughts and inner demons than good old-fashioned shitposting on the gallery.

Glancing past the familiar banner, I promptly clicked over to the Recommended Posts tab. True to form, the board was stocked with a handful of intriguing threads perfectly suited to blowing away my mental clutter.

Was it thanks to that massive pruning operation? Ever since the chronic trolls and instigators were wiped out two months ago, the gallery—while still a chaotic arena where brawls constantly erupted—had become far more tolerable than before. Just skimming through the list of hot posts made my mouth water. Three months ago, clicking on a recommended thread required taking a deep breath and bracing for psychic damage. Now, you could browse the board in peace. It was nothing short of a total renaissance.

As I grinned, ready to click into a thread, one particular headline caught my eye.

For the past two months, the only moderator announcements had been about appointing new sub-mods. A proper notice from the moderation team was a rare sight, and the author was none other than the Marquis of Wolves—a veteran deputy manager who had been MIA for quite some time. My curiosity was piqued immediately.

"What's this?"

A Trade Tab? What could that even be?

Brimming with curiosity over a long-overdue official announcement and the mystery of this newly planned board, I gently tapped the link.