Chapter 101
Chapter 101
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 101
Chapter Title: The Cradle's Brutes (1)
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The man kept making dumbfounded sounds.
After a long while, he asked me.
How I did it.
“Uh, um.”
For the very person who taught me to ask how, I was utterly bewildered.
“You said it was a resonance of will.”
I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“……?”
“……?”
The man's face, as he looked at me, was filled with bewilderment.
For a while, we just stared blankly at each other with bewildered, or perhaps perplexed, expressions.
“……So, you’re saying you heard one sentence and immediately attained enlightenment? Is that even possible?”
He looked as if he couldn’t quite believe the situation.
It seemed a further explanation was needed.
So I explained.
That it wasn't my first time, that I was merely recreating something I had once manifested unconsciously.
“……?”
“……?”
But it seemed that explanation wasn't enough.
The way the man looked at me was as if he were seeing some bizarre creature, the likes of which the world had never seen.
“Thank you.”
Ignoring his stare, I bowed my head deeply.
“Thanks to you, a blockage I had has been completely cleared.”
I was genuinely grateful to him.
If he hadn't bestowed his teaching upon me, it would have taken me much longer to manifest my Geomyeong.
And countless trials and errors would have come with it.
In any case, it was something to be thankful for.
“More importantly, what brings you here?”
“Is that it? Aren't you happy?”
To him, who asked if I shouldn't be making a fuss after achieving a Geomyeong, I just shrugged.
Then, I quietly waited for the man to state his business.
“Are you, by any chance, from across the sea?”
It was a rather random question, but understanding the context wasn't difficult.
Far across the sea, there was a kingdom of Swordmasters.
In that place, where those who called themselves swordsmen, not knights, and prioritized the perfection of the sword above all else lived, a Geomyeong was said to be no great feat.
He must have thought my calm reaction would make sense if I were from that kingdom across the sea.
But that wasn't it.
I was calm because I knew my Geomyeong was incomplete.
With a half-baked Geomyeong that lacked the sword light that should have naturally accompanied it, there was nothing much I could do.
A clear, pleasant sound—my Geomyeong was nothing more and nothing less.
For now, that is.
“Tsk. You old soul in a young body.”
After clicking his tongue once, he belatedly stated his business.
“The Malserok, you must have heard of it.”
Heard of it? I even wrote it myself.
Without showing any sign, I waited for his explanation.
“Ever since I read it, you've been on my mind.”
I flinched inwardly.
Only inwardly, of course.
From the moment I first wrote the Malserok, I had prepared several plausible excuses for just such a situation, so there was no reason to panic now.
The ways to get out of it were endless.
“I was thinking you might be the one who wrote the Malserok.”
It was just that the man's words were far more direct than I had anticipated, which was a bit disconcerting.
But the bewilderment was brief.
I composed my expression.
For now, I intended to deny it.
Making the excuses I'd prepared would come after that.
But in the end, it was all pointless.
“Ahaha.”
The man suddenly burst into laughter.
“No way. It's funny even to me. Hahaha.”
And then, before I could even answer, he came to his own conclusion.
“Funny, right? A mere cadet writing the Malserok. Laugh, it's okay to laugh.”
“……Ahaha.”
“That's right. If it's funny, you should laugh. That's how you stay healthy. I came because I felt like I'd get sick if I didn't say this. Hahahaha.”
We faced each other and laughed like that for a while.
“You, you’re close with Professor Navian, right?”
“I wouldn't say close, but she does look out for me.”
“Same difference. Anyway.”
I thought he came because of the Malserok, but it seems Professor Navian was his real purpose.
For a while, the man persistently questioned me about Professor Navian.
Even so, the answers I could give were limited.
Not only did I not know much in the first place, but even if I did, I couldn't afford the consequences of carelessly revealing personal information about the Empire's greatest knight.
“Anyway, back to the main topic. If you have any information about the Malserok, let me know. Like if any of the professors are acting suspiciously, or something like that. I'll reward you properly.”
I couldn't understand why he was asking a mere cadet like me, but I agreed for the time being.
“Come to think of it, I heard you're the one leading that strange training method that's been popular among the Silver Eagles lately.”
When I said I wasn't so much leading it as just helping out a bit, the man shook his head.
“Ah. I'm not trying to blame you, so don't be so guarded. Just answer a few questions.”
To him, who asked about the Silver Eagles' activities, I answered truthfully, just as things were.
“Hmm. So the atmosphere itself isn't bad.”
Lost in thought for a moment, he clapped his hands with a sharp *smack*.
“Alright. I've decided.”
“……?”
“I'm planning to make a small change to the Cradle's teaching methods, but I don't know how the cadets will take it.”
To summarize his explanation, he was thinking of applying the new educational policy the Cradle was introducing to us, the Silver Eagles, as a trial run.
I couldn't know the details, but it seemed clear that the newly introduced teaching method was related to the Malserok.
After that, the man, who had been spouting pointless and unfunny jokes for a while, vanished abruptly.
“But who is he, anyway?”
Judging by his undignified words and actions, he didn't seem like a high-ranking knight, but from the content of his speech, he didn't seem to hold a low position within the Cradle either.
I figured I should at least ask his name the next time we met.
After staring for a moment at the spot where the man had disappeared, I picked up my sword again.
*Wooooong.*
As if it had been waiting, the sword cried out.
* * *
The once-chaotic atmosphere of the Cradle had now completely returned to normal.
The cadets who had been wandering the satellite city with gloomy faces were no longer seen.
Everyone seemed to have recovered from the shock of the Malserok.
The Silver Eagles were no exception.
My feelings were complicated.
It was a relief that the Cradle had returned to normal, but the problem was that the fervor for training had cooled down along with it.
One day, empty spots began to appear, and in the end, only Hummel Hildegard remained.
“What a shame. They were so close to coming over.”
“I know. I told you we should have stomped them a little harder.”
Lian and the other brats from Team 3 let out disappointed sighs.
It seemed they were quite bitter about failing to corrupt (?) the others.
“If I'd known this would happen, I would've crushed them to bits instead of going easy.”
“Hehehe. Still, we got a good taste of it.”
Watching those brats, I smiled contentedly.
These little bastards. How did they get so wicked?
They say once a person crosses a line, there's no going back, and that's exactly what happened to these kids.
Lately, aside from explaining the finer points of coordinated attacks, I barely needed to intervene at all.
It went without saying that I had put in no small amount of effort to get them to this point.
“Think of it this way. Whether your opponent is one or one hundred, you are all together.”
“Just as the left and right hands are not separate, each of you is part of one body, complementing one another.”
Looking back, it sounds like complete nonsense, but the brats believed my words implicitly and used them as their justification.
It had even reached the point where they had created their own childish and ridiculous slogan, "We are one," which they shouted frequently.
They were truly no different from battlefield brutes.
Of course, in my eyes, having rolled through battlefields for over ten years, they were still sorely lacking.
At the very least, when launching a joint attack, you should throw in some taunts that make the victim's blood boil.
“Hmm.”
Something seemed wrong, but it must have been my imagination.
In any case, thanks to their constant training, Team 3 was able to surpass the beginner level.
Recently, I had started teaching the brats the true Hapgyeoksul—forming a proper formation to surround and annihilate the enemy, going beyond the basic joint attacks of simply taking positions and charging.
With just that, the power of the brats' coordinated attacks became unrecognizable.
Even I, their teacher, couldn't last long before being knocked out.
Hummel Hildegard's situation was no different from mine.
“This is fun! More! Let's do more!”
Despite being miserably defeated every time, Hummel, for some reason finding it incredibly fun, constantly urged the brats on.
The guy who was always busy dozing off during regular classes had sparkling eyes whenever he was with us.
Indeed, Hummel, this guy wasn't normal either.
“In a team battle, our Team 3 will never lose.”
“If we were to do the flag-capturing battle again now, we wouldn't even need to use such complicated methods as before.”
The brats, who had recently gained a lot of confidence, seemed desperate for a team battle.
Of course, the typical squire's team battle was far from what they desired.
It was called a team battle, but it was closer to a series of individual duels where multiple people came out at once and each picked an opponent.
Of course, our Team 3 didn't have to follow that method.
As long as the numbers matched, the Cradle's professors wouldn't care how we fought.
Criticism would follow, but the brats were already prepared for it.
“I want a real fight.”
“There's a limit to what we can do among ourselves.”
“We need to see how effective this really is.”
The brats were constantly restless.
At times like that, I would just laugh.
I don't know anymore either.
The brats were already out of my hands.
It was much faster than I expected, and much more drastic than I had hoped.
Their daily transformation was now becoming quite burdensome even for me.
I wondered if Team 3 had always been composed of guys like this, or if perfectly normal guys had somehow ended up changing this way.
As of now, I had no way of knowing.
The only thing certain was that either I or the Malserok had been the catalyst for them.
Or perhaps it was both.
It was a little disappointing.
It would have been much better if this change wasn't limited to just Team 3.
But I wasn't impatient.
There would be plenty of opportunities to change the cadets from other teams in the future.
After all, the Malserok wasn't just Part 1.
Part 1 was merely a preview that outlined the general flow.
The real thing started from Part 2.
“Yan. What do you think?”
As I was chuckling to myself, Pon asked.
“Do you think the team battle will be a competitive event in the upcoming joint class?”
Come to think of it, the joint class for all the Silver Eagles wasn't far off.
Since the basis of the joint class was inter-team competition, everyone seemed to have high expectations.
“A team battle……”
I suddenly became curious myself.
Just how far could these brats go now?
And the opportunity to satisfy that curiosity came sooner than expected.
“There will be a change in the Cradle's educational policy going forward. And it will be applied first to the Silver Eagles' classes.”
The same words spoken by the man I'd met a while ago came from the mouth of Professor Dieter Rizzner, whom I hadn't seen in a long time.
“We will now begin the class.”
Professor Dieter Rizzner's gaze briefly swept past our Team 3.
For some reason, his eyes held a complex emotion.
But his gaze didn't linger for long.
“Today's inter-team competition will be a team battle.”
At last, Professor Dieter Rizzner announced the subject of the inter-team competition.
“For your information, there are no rules.”
Hearing that there would be no restrictions in determining the winner of the competition, the flustered cadets began to murmur.
Watching the stirring cadets, I let out a dry laugh.
The current situation was just too coincidental.
It was as if someone had intentionally set the stage for our Team 3.