I Respect You, Teacher Carrier

Training, day seven.

Klein had warned her it was absolutely out of the question, but Lupin had been psyching herself up anyway. Once today's training was over, she was going to ask Tasili about his relationship with the leader of the Heavenly Mandate Cult. She meant it.

She'd picked it up the hard way, scuffling and squabbling through the orphanage: the conversations that are hard to start are the ones you start after you've already traded blows.

That, however, was before training began.

The moment her body had to move, curiosity was shoved to the back of the line. When you're contorting yourself for dear life, who has time to think about a thing like that? In technical terms, it was tunnel vision.

More than anything, she wanted to complete Shadowless Flash — and Tasili was a perfect iron wall. There wasn't so much as a hint that an attack might land. And it was high summer now. Fly around in the open air and at least the sweat would dry; stuck sawing back and forth in the same spot, she had no choice but to broil.

"Master. Couldn't you ease up a little now? I seriously can't see a thing. I'm just standing in front of a pitch-black wall, slamming my head into it over and over."

"No. Think back on everything I've taught you so far and unfold the forms from there, and the answer will show itself in the end. Besides, this is barely the second day. Don't get anxious. Compose yourself."

Whining wasn't going to work.

What a strict master!

With no other choice, Lupin turned over the things Tasili had told her.

The Shadowless Sword Style lived on speed, and on a single strike carrying that speed. But if you couldn't finish the fight in one blow, you had to think in a chain of strikes — and you couldn't let yourself be shackled by the forms. Anyone who trained the sword came to understand, as a basic truth, that their ultimate art lay in that speed. Slow down to set your stance, and the path of the blade drew itself in your opponent's mind whether you liked it or not.

Chewing on those words, Lupin naturally thought of the Maze Rat and Klein. The moment she dropped her stance, they read the direction and shut her down. She'd only won because of the aura restriction; in a match without that limit, she couldn't have sworn to the result. So she was training Shadowless Flash, a strike meant to overturn the enemy's expectations and hit from behind and from the flank...

And yet Tasili, who had the forms completely internalized, shut even that down with ease. The first few opponents might eat it simply for not knowing it, but once the data piled up, she would be stonewalled in the upper brackets. Exactly the way Tasili was brushing her aside now.

"Something just occurred to me. Can I actually fight with only the four forms you've taught me...?"

"You can."

"Come on. Shouldn't you also teach me the forms I haven't learned yet? Hidden secret techniques and all that?"

To Lupin, who wanted to get stronger, Tasili said:

"If it turns into a long fight, you hold the advantage anyway."

"No — Master, if you put it like that?"

Lupin knew it herself. Drag the fight out and the opponent's aura ran dry, and she won by default. But she'd already fought plenty of those grinding matches. What she wanted now was to win with the sword, too.

Naturally, her stubbornness flared.

Ah. So Master's telling me to figure it out on my own from here!

If that's how it is, what's the point of begging any further!

...From now on, it's my freestyle!

And so Lupin walked right into the trick Tasili had laid for her.

Watching the confidence return to her face, he felt a quiet relief.

Good. The method worked.

If you meant to teach someone who bolted the moment you tried to force a lesson on them, you obviously couldn't use the same approach as with ordinary disciples. Surprisingly, even Tasili had stumbled onto a small realization of his own — and when was that, if not the times Lupin charged Yegor, demanding he teach her something?

Strangely enough, if Yegor explained everything, Lupin grew bored. If he stopped halfway, or taught it in some crooked, teasing way, she latched on, insisting that couldn't be all of it and begging him to tell her more. Tell her the whole thing and she ran; cut the explanation short and she flipped the table, outraged that he'd quit mid-sentence. A strange person. That was Lupin.

In fact, when Tasili had first taught her the forms, he'd abandoned the mnemonic verses and started demonstrating ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠them with his body for exactly this reason. To teach Lupin, you first had to wait for her to declare the explanation lacking and overturn the board. The moment she overturned it, she ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠soaked up everything she'd been told like a sponge. As a bonus, she sometimes produced a twist no one had seen coming — and that, too, was something to look forward to.

"Nnnnngh."

And so Lupin had been sunk in thought for a while now, without even drawing her sword. She'd entered preparations to flip the board.

How was she supposed to reach her master's blind spot? What, exactly, would it take to break through?

She had beaten Emelin, Grade 8, and she had beaten Klein, Grade 9 — unofficial. And yet she had never so much as grazed a single hair of Tasili, officially a mere Grade 6.

Was it a matter of speed? No. In speed, Lupin was ahead of him. Tasili himself had said she was the only person who had evaded his all-out assault with nothing worse than a few strands of hair cut. So Master was a loser hiding his strength — no, a grandfather hiding his strength. Had he been deliberately trying to make her look down on him?

Why? Because if it was too hard, she'd run?

Unexpectedly, Lupin hit on the right answer at once. It was the same vicious little trick university professors back in the modern world used when they spotted a graduate student they wanted and set out to hook them: You understood something this difficult right away? You've got talent!

Anyway, as she'd just figured out, Tasili was sitting squarely on top of her head. There was absolutely no winning by ordinary means.

Time to flip the premise!

I don't have to break through. I just have to make Master the one who breaks, right?

"Master."

"Yes."

"This disciple has one wish in life."

"What is it. Speak."

As a rule, you don't talk during a duel. Try to scatter your opponent's focus and all you do is open a gap for a counter. And the calmer and stiller a person was — someone like Tasili — the more completely a mental attack delivered by a wicked tongue failed to land. By that measure, this attempt of Lupin's was truly outlandish.

"I want to know what kind of relationship you had with the Heavenly Mandate King."

For the first time in a very long while, a crease formed between the brows of Tasili, who was always gentle.

Taking that as her signal, Lupin leapt.

One. Two.

The instant she planted the third step, she struck — not for his back, but straight for his front. The back got blocked every single time anyway, so if she ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠handed him the certainty that she was going for the back and then went for the front—!

————Thwack!

"Kkh!"

A numbing pain exploded across Lupin's skull. She shrieked and flew on in the exact direction she'd been charging, slamming into a tree.

"Kyaaaagh!"

It hurt so badly she half-believed her head had caved in. So this was what Klein had meant about splitting open in the shape of a chest. But when Lupin scrubbed at the top of her head, there was nothing wrong at all. How could there be pain like this with no external injury? Was Master actually an illusionist? Had she not been hit at all — was this phantom pain? Sprawled on the ground and spasming, Lupin managed to think every stray thought there was.

In the meantime Tasili came close, lifted her hair, inspected her scalp, and spoke.

"I never imagined you would try a method like that. An ordinary person would certainly have shown an opening. That much, I will grant you."

Whoa. My mental attack landed.

I can dominate Master!

She hurt enough to cry, and yet her face alone was smiling.

"Hehehe. If it worked, then I'm so gla—"

Smack!

It was a lighter knuckle-rap than the last one. Hit a place that already hurts, though, and the original pain doubles. That's just how it works.

"Ghk—!"

This time Lupin rolled sideways for a good long while before crashing into a tree. The tree, which had been standing there perfectly fine, startled at the pink wild boar that had suddenly come tumbling in and listed to one side.

Tasili approached again.

"A fight has no true good or bad to it, and yet there are things one ought to ask, and things one ought not. Did you not hear it from Klein?"

"Ghk... huk. But what am I supposed to do when I'm curious? I was hoping I might beat you while I was at it, Master..."

It was strange. Her head was perfectly fine. Her skin was clean. She wasn't even bleeding. And still the pain wouldn't fade.

"Master, you were actually a mage, weren't you.... How can it hurt this much? I don't even register most things as pain. This hurts so badly it doesn't make any sense. What kind of magic did you just cast?"

"A technique I learned from an old adventuring companion — the man now called the Heavenly Mandate King. It is not a physical blow. It is a method of striking the senses."

In short, a technique that dealt damage directly to the nerves, which meant physical defense was completely useless. No matter how full Lupin's body was of the power of the stars, its flesh was built no differently from an ordinary human's, so stimulating her sense of pain head-on produced exactly this. Thanks to it, though, a new Growth Value stirred awake.

"Holy shit. The leader of the Heavenly Mandate Cult is seriously terrifying. So this is what he tortures people with — that's why the shrine maidens are all brainwashed, walking around in those clothes like it's nothing..."

Tasili looked like a man with a great deal he wanted to say. Even if that person had been good once, now he was nothing but a vast evil that had turned its back on the world. A disciple so much younger failing to see the man for what he truly was might well be inevitable. And laying the whole thing out in painstaking detail just to persuade her would make for a rather ridiculous scene, wouldn't it. Time flows, the world changes, and the generations turn over regardless.

Still, the objective truth he himself had seen and heard — that much, he could give her. The judgment would be Lupin's to make.

"It may take the better part of a day. If you don't mind, I will tell you all of it. My only worry is that it is a story from quite some time ago, so I may say things that need not be said, and tack on unnecessary asides."

Lupin got to her feet, rubbing her head the whole way. The crown of it had already been styled into a complete bird's nest.

"It only takes a day? Just how strong was that party? A normal adventure to take down a Demon King drags on for years. I figured we'd have to set aside a week to get through the whole story. Oh, right. You were that strong, so that's how the Heavenly Mandate Cult has held out all this time."

"...It is unusual. All you usually care about is treasure chests, and yet here you are, this interested."

"Uh. Well. That's true. But I do get curious about the stories of people I'm close to. Hehe."

For Tasili, who had always worried because his disciple put treasure chests ahead of people, no words could have been more welcome. It meant that, at least where the people around her were concerned, she thought like a person. For now she simply didn't have many she was close to. If her connections grew and spread, perhaps even her madness for treasure chests would slowly sort itself out. He could allow himself that kind of hope.

In that case, there was no reason he couldn't tell the story.

Even so, the one thing ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Tasili wanted to prevent was Lupin drawing any closer to the cult, and so he resolved not to paint the Heavenly Mandate King as one of the good guys. He'd already been uneasy, watching her treat Klein less like a prisoner and more like a cherished little sister. So this was the part he had to tell first.

"Have you ever heard of a country called Snowheim?"

Lupin shook her head, smiling brightly. Of course. There was no way she would know a country that had been destroyed twenty years ago.

Tasili scratched a simple map into the ground with his staff. Rostov. Cross the vast bay to its north, and you reached the border with the demonkin. Cross one more river beyond that, and you came to a land buried in cold wind and snow for half of every year. Its name was...

"This is where Snowheim once stood. It belongs to the demonkin now."

Unexpectedly, it was a place Lupin knew. Beyond the Scavenger Lodge — that was the Snowheim Tasili meant. A human-trafficking ring had scammed her out of a treasure chest there, so forgetting it was impossible. More than that, her farming of Abandoned Chests had never been limited to human territory, and in the place he indicated she had seen more than a few castle walls and palaces left as nothing but ruins.

"And? This Choco— no, this Snowheim?"

"The leader of our party back then — the present leader of the Heavenly Mandate Cult — carried out a massacre in Snowheim."

"A massacre."

Tasili let out a long sigh, as if steadying himself.

"I mean it literally. Alone, he took the life of an entire country."