I Am an Author, I Tell You
I am an author, I tell you. # Becoming the Sword Saint’s disciple. The problem is that this is actually real. It wasn’t just talk—Decaron really seemed dead set on turning me into a monster, because the training he started was brutally harsh.
“Is the daily exercise just running?”
“Yes. There’s a fixed course. Laps around the royal capital.”
“Oh. Quite the systematic approach. As expected from the disciple I chose.”
He could have just looked disappointed and given me something to copy for reference, but no. I wanted to say exactly that, yet I had to hold my tongue. The look in his eyes told me he was completely serious right now. In a situation like that, I couldn’t offer any opinions.
Decaron stared quietly at the map for a moment, then slowly opened his mouth.
“Fifty laps around the capital.”
“Fifty laps of the capital?”
“That’s right. You’ll run fifty laps every single day. Your body has more than enough potential, so even if I ease up a little, you’ll quickly become a proper sword wielder.”
“No, it’s not on that level—”
I started to say more but stopped. This Sword Saint named Decaron was far too serious. He looked incredibly earnest, like he was training his very last disciple in life.
And so I ended up running fifty laps around the capital every day. Together with the Sword Saint himself.
Tadadadadadadot.
“Run with more power! It’s not just running! The slower your feet move, the more times the enemy can swing their sword at you! More! More, more, more!”
What, are you giving me a breathalyzer test or something?
“The faster you run, the quicker your feet, the less openings you give your opponent—and the more you can strike at theirs!”
None of it was sinking in. If this were a martial arts story, he might have phrased it in a more refined way, but as expected from a Sword Saint in a rootless fantasy world. He just blurts out “run faster” with zero technical terms. Well, if a story like this suddenly went full wuxia it would be funny in its own way.
Anyway, there I was, running.
“But is running really all it takes?”
“For your body, running is enough for everything.”
Where the fuck is there such baseless logic? That’s what I thought at first.
But it turned out there really was. As I kept running, some kind of energy began spreading through my entire body. It definitely felt like something was happening physically. Could this be Holy Power? Was this what my master had mentioned?
Thanks to that Holy Power, my body kept recovering. While running for a long time, I felt it clearly. No matter how many laps I ran, the sensation stayed the same: I didn’t get tired at all. As expected, Holy Power really is amazing.
“Master, I feel something!”
“That’s not what I saw… Hmm. Still, your body doesn’t look tired at all. You’re not exhausted?”
“There’s some mental fatigue.”
“Then it’s nothing.”
No, can you even call that a proper answer? No matter what, from a human perspective. I’m not trying to play the gender card, but is this really something you make a delicate, fragile-looking girl do? This is the kind of training you’d try on those muscle women at the adventurer’s guild who turn into musclemen the moment you shave their heads.
“Hmm. Let’s make it a hundred laps.”
“Suddenly?”
“Don’t worry. At your current speed, it’ll be over quickly.”
Fifty more laps were added just like that. No novel I’d ever read had such a rootless training method. The annoying part was that, just as my master said, my body’s speed kept increasing with every run. This insane Holy Power. This ridiculous body. A body like this should have been given to a shonen manga protagonist instead.
“Keep running! Your feet must not stop! Run like you’re heading to your parents’ funeral!”
It was truly hellish.
There’s No Defeat in My Hero’s Party
In volume one, the hero Lars, having felt the limits of his own power, slowly began to put the training methods from his early days to use.
Lars the hero would wake every morning, patrol the surroundings, and perform breathing training that utilized Holy Power in order to regain his former strength. The so-called Holy Power Breathing Technique.
Unlike his days as the first hero, the hero Lars lacked Holy Power, but by using the Holy Power Breathing Technique he had employed only back then, he enlarged the vessel for his Holy Power.
It was a method of storing Holy Power in the lungs—exhaling and inhaling it as if truly breathing—recovering Holy Power while simultaneously storing it within the body.
I came up with this utterly rootless setting by doing this: “Hoo. Hoo. This is how I do it, fuck.”
Of course it’s a little different. I realized I had infinite Holy Power, and this was the method my master used to increase my physical capacity. However, I flipped it around in the novel and made it a setting for expanding the vessel of Holy Power.
My master only treats this Holy Power as the natural capacity of my body. Still, in the empire where this master of mine lives, it seems Holy Power is used precisely to build physical strength. From what I researched, it isn’t an entirely rootless training method—it can be done with mana too, but Holy Power is considered superior. Having learned that, my master trains me without the slightest hesitation.
I stopped the hand that was writing, slipped the manuscript into the drawer. It was time.
“Oh. Miss, today as well?”
“Yeah. He said come out without eating breakfast.”
For starters, I wasn’t allowed to eat in the morning. I had no idea what kind of rootless logic this was, but apparently you had to learn the sword on an empty, perfectly clean stomach. I’d even written the manuscript in one go. I wanted to raise a glass to myself for maintaining such majestic quality without any drop in standards.
The remaining time was spent learning every kind of training imaginable. Physical conditioning was the baseline, and then I was made to swing a sword like it was real combat. In short, there were no basic chores or “let’s start from the fundamentals” nonsense. Not that an imperial citizen would ever make someone from a kingdom do menial tasks anyway.
After running more than a hundred laps, we immediately moved on to sword training. He’d apparently bought an empty plot of land somewhere and trained me there. My master seems to be loaded.
“Uh-oh, how can you hold the sword like that! Are you a little girl?”
“I-I am a little girl, actually.”
For now I’m a woman. I’m Milene. And leaving that aside, a modern Korean person has no business holding a sword. Not that I could say that out loud, but anyway, I’m a girl. What do you mean, asking a girl if she’s a girl?
“You have to put real strength into it! Use the energy inside your body! Draw out the talent you possess!”
“U-uuu.”
I wanted to ask what the hell that even meant. It seemed like he wanted me to figure it out by pure instinct. I really don’t understand what kind of rootless nonsense this is.
“Yes. Yes. That’s exactly it!”
He does give praise when I do it right. But that’s that and this is this. I don’t even know what he’s praising me for. I just do as I’m told with everything I have, and when it’s correct he praises me, so I end up hearing “well done” without knowing what I actually did.
Before long I reached the level where I could handle a sword freely. Well, not quite that far, but at least enough to satisfy Decaron. It only took a full week of continuous training.
“Why is this actually working…”
“My disciple K. You possess talent greater than even the 4 Swords of the Empire!”
That’s probably just the Holy Power. If it’s Holy Power, I should go to the church and learn miracles instead. I have zero talent for swordsmanship. The only thing I have any talent for is magic, and that’s thanks to mana. I shouldn’t have any talent with the sword.
During a short break I collapsed into a chair. Then, suddenly, the words that plagiarist author had said came to mind.
—That body is high-spec, you know.
It can’t be. Surely that woman only meant high-spec in terms of being a saintess.
But how can this body learn everything it’s taught so perfectly? Maybe this body really is a monster. Or maybe that plagiarist writer added some other concept I don’t know about.
—Get up. There’s a saying that if you speak of a tiger, it comes.
That writer really must be the tiger. How does she show up exactly when she’s needed? This time she even forced sleep paralysis on me while I was awake. So I have things to say too.
“Hey, what the hell did you make my body into? No, Milene’s body.”
—Such trivial things aren’t important. This is part two now.
“I know it’s part two, but why is this body like this?”
Wasn’t it only supposed to be amazing as a saintess? A woman’s body having talent for swordsmanship—what kind of… No matter how I look at it, this is entirely that plagiarist writer’s fault. Isn’t that why my master is working me to the bone? If I were really just an ordinary girl, I would have collapsed from exhaustion by now and Decaron would have only taught me what was appropriate.
—Having high Holy Power alone doesn’t make a saintess strong. You need the Holy Power pockets to support that Holy Power and a perfect body to go with it.
“Holy Power pockets?”
—The ones on your chest.
Wow, have you ever seen such a vulgar writer? How can she say something like that without batting an eye?
“In short, to have perfect abilities as a saintess, the body itself was made outstanding?”
—That’s right.
“No, more than that. Hey. Do I really have to learn this? Hey, no matter that I used to be a man, I don’t want solid muscles on a woman’s body, okay?”
—It’s high-spec so it’s fine. So don’t call me for useless things?
With those words she vanished again.
God damn it. What the hell is that plagiarist writer trying to pull? More than that, “Holy Power pockets”? How vulgar. That crazy writer probably planned to turn this into an adult novel.
But it’s true that this chest is inconvenient in more ways than one. Holy Power pockets… I wish this didn’t exist. From a man’s perspective it’s nice to look at, but I don’t want to carry them.
For now I tried to gauge the situation. Wondering how long I’d have to keep doing this, the moment I came to my senses I walked over to Decaron, who was wiping away sweat.
“M-Master? Um.”
“Do you have something to say?”
“U-Until when do I have to keep doing this?”
Setting everything else aside, I fundamentally need to do things in moderation. I’m an author, after all. Not a swordsman—an author. An author only needs to know how to write.
But it must have looked like I was making excuses, because Decaron twitched one eyebrow. Ah, should I really make him regret this?
“Whining already! True swordsmanship must be trained every single day! Until your body becomes solid!”
There is no end to studying. It’s the same idea. Yeah. If Milene were truly a swordsman dreaming of becoming the world’s greatest adventurer, it would be natural. But I’m a writer.
That’s not the issue. In the end, all I can do is get rolled around by Decaron. And through a training method with no theory, no foundation, no nothing, I was growing stronger without even realizing it.
“This time, gather power at the tip of the sword.”
If I translate Decaron’s words, it means gather energy at the sword tip. I have no idea where such a method comes from, but I did as told and gathered strength at the tip of the blade. I’m not sure if anything was actually gathering, but I worked hard at it.
“Now stab the rock. Never hesitate where you stand. Move only your feet and thrust straight forward.”
Crunch.
I stabbed the rock cleanly. Starting from the point where the sword was embedded, the rock shattered apart.
I did something, but I still have no idea what the point was. Can’t you teach me in a more systematic way? It’s weird that the person who even wrote a textbook is like this.
“What exactly are you teaching me right now?”
“Oh my goodness.”
“Yes?”
“To have learned this technique already. As expected, you truly possess talent. A genius like this in a country far smaller than the empire!”
“H-Haha. I-Is that so?”
“Now, try doing it like a dance.”
“……”
It seems that among everything I learned, this was one of the techniques. The so-called Dance of Thorns—stabbing with brilliant, rose-like movements. Anyway, it can’t be explained in words. I learned it while getting beaten, after all. Move beautifully and splendidly like a rose, then stab like the rose’s thorns. That is the core of the technique.
There are so many settings I never saw in the original work. Shushushushushu—thrusting forward multiple times with the sword. It’s similar to rapier work, yet not quite rapier swordsmanship.
Besides that, he taught me various techniques suited to my body and proper sword arts. In particular, he passed on the Maiden’s Sword Dance designed for women. It was a bizarrely modified sword art created by adapting imperial swordsmanship handed down in the empire and referencing sword styles from noble families to fit the female form.
I was dumbfounded that a man like Decaron even knew women’s swordsmanship, but when asked how, the answer was simple: he had to. It wasn’t a matter of whether the ability was good or bad. If I didn’t do it, he wouldn’t let me go home until I did.
Perhaps because of his desire to raise me better than his previous disciples, I am currently going insane. The days feel like ten years each.
The only thought I could manage was:
“Master is truly great!”
He really is amazing. Using this kind of training method to strengthen me. That was all I could say.
Of course, this only applies within this world. That damn plagiarist writer bastard set up Decaron’s character sheet like this, so it can’t be helped.
Of course it can’t. If that writer bitch had made Sophia the protagonist, she should have focused only on the kingdom. Why on earth did she create such detailed settings for a Sword Saint from another country who barely had any importance? This is all that woman’s fault.
After swinging the sword for a long while longer, I finally returned home.
“Oh. Are you all right, miss?”
“I’m all right, more or less.”
All right or not, the original work can go to hell. Right now, surviving is what matters. What the hell are that prince and Sophia doing? Isn’t it about time they started moving?