The Long Winter Passes (9)
In the past, Regulus Serion had been born with a talent that eclipsed any generation before him within the talent-obsessed Serion family.
From the moment he first picked up a sword as a child, he could match grown soldiers. By the time he came of age, he rarely lost a duel, even against seasoned knights.
Furthermore, as an only child with no brothers or sisters, and with a father who had never taken a concubine, he had no need to fight for the succession.
Consequently, the family left him to his own devices. He unleashed his innate genius and honed skills to his heart's content, elevating both his own name and the family's prestige.
His life was a smooth, golden path, free of obstacles.
But one day, an event occurred that would mark a turning point in his life.
It was the arrival of his master, the man widely known as the Sword Saint, Sargas, who paid a visit to the Serion estate.
No one knew why a wanderer who drifted aimlessly across the continent had come to the House of Serion.
Even less was known of the whim that made him settle down there to teach his swordsmanship.
Regulus welcomed this as a blessing.
Given the man's reputation as the Sword Saint, he would surely guide Regulus to even greater heights.
Whatever Sargas's reasons for visiting, there was no reason to refuse the master's offer to teach him.
Just as he had hoped, Regulus learned much from Sargas and grew rapidly. However, a problem eventually arose.
At a certain point, his growth ground to a halt.
With only a single step left to take, he could not reach his master's level—the realm of the Sword Saint.
It was the very first wall he had ever encountered in his otherwise effortless life.
Regulus tried extending his solitary training hours and eagerly challenged his master to duels.
Yet, despite all his efforts, he could not scale that first wall.
In the end, his first and only master passed away without Regulus ever reaching that same realm, or even catching a glimpse of it.
And so, Regulus agonized.
Even when his master was alive, he had devoted every waking moment to training.
Sometimes he forgot to eat and sleep, neglecting the affairs of the family to push himself further.
He kept going until his friends and even his loved ones, exhausted by his obsession, abandoned him one by one.
Why, then, could he not cross the wall that had suddenly appeared in a life previously devoid of obstacles?
Soon, he was forced to draw a single conclusion.
His talent was simply insufficient.
Since he had spared no effort and still failed to reach it,
he concluded that the issue lay not in effort, but in an innate difference in talent.
There was no other way to explain it.
Thus, he became obsessed with his children's talent.
He believed that only someone with talent superior to his own could ever hope to reach the realm he had failed to attain.
At the same time, he wanted to prevent any child born without talent from wasting their life and relationships on a futile pursuit.
All three of his children, from his eldest son to his youngest daughter, had witnessed the realm of the sword their master demonstrated before his death. Consequently, all three dreamed of becoming the Sword Saint.
At the time, he was grateful that his children had caught even a brief glimpse of his master's technique. Later, he would come to curse that very fact.
The reason lay, above all, with his eldest son.
His eldest, Richar Serion, was a handsome, intelligent boy with a quick mind.
He was upright and kind-hearted, always mediating between his younger siblings to keep the peace.
Though, occasionally, that gentle nature led to him being taken advantage of.
With his deep loyalty to the family and immense love for the sword, he had declared he would reach the realm of Sargas—the height his father had failed to attain. He was, in every way, the perfect heir to succeed the house.
Except for one fatal flaw: he possessed absolutely no talent for swordsmanship.
Despite being his son and carrying the Serion bloodline, his swordsmanship was so poor that even servants who knew nothing of the blade could tell he lacked the gift.
Regulus himself, the knights who trained him, and even the servants urged him to abandon the path of the sword.
Yet, despite their warnings, Richar Serion only burned with greater passion, throwing himself into his training with even more fervor.
Regulus was left with no choice but to worry.
If his son had been a profligate scoundrel chasing women, it might have been easier to bear. But at this rate, his son would waste his youth on a futile endeavor.
Just like he had, Richar would waste his steps trying to reach a place his talent could never take him.
In doing so, he would lose his relationships, his chance at love, and all the other paths that would be buried under the flow of time.
As a father, he did not want his son to make that choice.
Thus, he resorted to extreme measures, forbidding him from swinging a sword.
He sparred with him directly, overwhelming and beating him to break his spirit. At times, he even banned him from holding any sword belonging to the family.
When Richar grew old enough to attend the academy, Regulus pulled strings behind the scenes to intercept and hide his application to the Knight Academy.
Yet, despite all of this, Richar Serion's resolve did not break.
He took his application in his own hands and set off to enroll in the Knight Academy himself.
Alone, without a single Serion guard to accompany him.
The result was tragedy.
When a long time passed without any word from Richar, a worried Regulus took his knights and set out to find him.
He feared it might just be rebellion against the family, but a dark premonition gnawed at him.
And, as fate would have it, his premonition was correct.
He searched the academy, the surrounding markets, and the inns, but his son was nowhere to be found.
Realizing the gravity of the situation too late, Regulus spent his own fortune hiring trackers to search for his son.
At last, they found him. Deep within the forest along the road from the Serion estate to the academy, his son lay as a gruesome corpse.
When he first saw it, he did not think it was his son. No, he refused to believe it.
The body had already decayed to white bones, showing how much time had passed since the tragedy.
The damage was severe, leaving it unclear whether he had been attacked by bandits, wild beasts, or a magic beast driven mad by mana.
Despite the passage of time, Regulus's seasoned eyes could piece together what had happened just by looking at the state of the remains and the surrounding tracks.
He could picture his son, struck down by an overwhelmingly powerful foe, his bones shattered, unable to even stand, yet resisting desperately until the very end.
Regulus wanted to deny it, praying it was not his son, but unfortunately, a necklace bearing the Serion crest gleamed around the corpse's neck.
It was an item Richar had kept with him even as he left home, despite his growing resentment toward the family.
Most decisively, the corpse's hand still gripped a crudely forged greatsword.
It was a crude weapon that Richar had forged himself after being forbidden from using the family's swords—a blade uniquely his.
On that day, Regulus wept aloud for the first time in his life.
The man who had always maintained his dignity wept and sobbed wretchedly, heedless of those around him.
He beat the ground and wailed repeatedly, not even noticing as the sun dipped below the horizon.
After that day, he lost his smile and became cold.
He grew even stricter with his remaining two children, and his obsession with innate talent only deepened.
Out of his long grief, he made a vow.
He would be more thorough from now on.
He would ensure that this tragedy never repeated itself with his remaining children, or the generations to come.
He would make sure that those without talent would never even dream of throwing themselves toward unreachable goals.
His second son, Rinaldo Serion, had left home because he couldn't bear it, but that was for the best.
At least he wouldn't drown while flailing after a hollow dream like the eldest had.
His youngest daughter, Seraphina Serion, was born with talent superior to his own, so he treated her with extreme severity, ruthlessly stripping away anything unrelated to her growth.
But when he discovered someone with even greater talent than hers, he abandoned her without hesitation.
He intended to teach her a harsh lesson to show her that her dreams were futile.
Because he didn't want her struggling for a dream she could never reach.
...Or so he had thought.
Today, his daughter Seraphina had shown him. She had proven it.
The realm he had chased was not determined by talent alone.
Having watched his master's sword for so long, he could not fail to recognize that the sky-splitting strike she used to finish Mark was his master's technique.
If so, there was only one conclusion.
...
Leaving the arena where the exam was still underway, Regulus Serion wandered aimlessly through the academy grounds with a dazed expression.
The results no longer mattered to him.
Though a considerable amount of time passed, he did not stop walking.
Eventually, his steps halted in a scenic yet secluded spot overlooking the Knight Academy building.
It was the place where the gravestone of his eldest son, Richar Serion, stood.
Although a memorial stone for Richar existed at the family estate, his actual remains were buried here.
Though he could never know the truth, Regulus believed his son must have died cursing him and the family until his final breath.
Using his connection with the academy's principal, Rium Kitokal, Regulus had requested that the boy be buried here, in sight of the Knight Academy he had so desperately wished to attend.
Regulus stopped and fell to his knees before the gravestone.
It was not out of conscious thought, but an instinctive realization that he had to do so.
...
The sight his abandoned daughter had shown him today.
Even without innate talent, she had reached the realm of the Sword Saint.
With that, Regulus was finally certain.
He was wrong.
He had been wrong all along.
Stopping his eldest son had been a mistake.
...He was wrong.
"I'm sorry... I'm sorry...! I... I was wrong..."
Drip, drip. Tears, which he had not shed once since that day, began to fall again.
"It's my fault... it's all my fault...! Your father was so foolish...! I'm so... so sorry...!"
He clawed at the dirt and wailed.
Just like the day he had first laid eyes on his son's corpse.
No, perhaps even more bitterly than that day.