What Kind of Stage Is This?
In exchange for a temporary stay at the royal palace, I had agreed to oversee Adela’s training.
It was something Bahamart had asked of me before, and right now this was the only payment I could offer.
“This way.”
Following Adela to the training grounds, I found a considerable number of knights continuing their drills. Knights swung their swords through empty air at the middle-aged instructor’s barked commands or ran laps around the well-packed parade ground. Some struck wooden dummies with practice blades; others sparred against one another.
There are kids here too.
Looking closer, it wasn’t only full knights—apprentice knights and promising young candidates were training as well. At my appearance the knights’ gazes momentarily locked onto me, but Adela stepped forward as if to shield me from view.
“C-Commander? The person behind you…”
“Focus on your own training. Waste training time on nonsense and you’ll regret it.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
“Y-Yes!”
“She said get back to it! Everyone focus!”
“Yes!”
The knights and apprentices stole glances my way before resuming their drills. I followed Adela and spotted an empty sparring arena, pointing it out with a finger. Adela nodded and led me over.
It was a dirt-floored sparring ground roughly thirty meters across—a decent size—and there were at least three more just like it nearby. In the white tents beside the arenas, priests who assisted with healing sat leisurely sipping coffee. Guess the knights didn’t get hurt all that often.
“It’s not just knights, huh?”
“Yes. This place is used by everyone belonging to the Royal Knight Order. Naturally that includes the apprentices.”
“Ahh~”
“Have you come to tour the training grounds?”
“Nah, I’m here to help with your training.”
“…Pardon?”
“What do you mean, ‘pardon’?”
I picked up a well-carved wooden sword from the weapon rack along the side of the arena.
Whoosh!
The blade sliced through the air at my touch.
“…Me, you mean?”
“Yep.”
“I thought the training ended after last time. I never expected you to look after me again.”
“Figured I’d earn my keep a bit.”
“Earn your keep… Ah. I see.”
Adela nodded in understanding and took up an identical wooden sword. Watching her assume a stance with the practice blade, I shook my head.
“Grab a real sword.”
“Pardon? But Lady Fire Dragon…”
“Worried about me?”
“Th-That’s not it.”
“Then grab a real one. Last time I saw, you couldn’t show your full potential with a wooden sword.”
Adela hesitated a moment, then nodded, returned the wooden sword to the rack, and drew the blade at her waist.
Shing!
The silver sword embroidered with golden thread gleamed brilliantly under the sunlight. That was…
“Airi’s sword, huh?”
“Yes. It’s still far too grand for me, but I strive to become a knight worthy of the great hero’s weapon.”
“You don’t have to be worthy.”
“Pardon?”
“Airi started out just swinging that weapon around to take down demonkin. Did you know she was a farmer’s daughter?”
“Th-That can’t be!”
“It’s true, though.”
“Impossible. She was clearly the daughter of a count’s house, chosen by the Goddess…”
“That’s a lie. Bahamart just fabricated it because he hated seeing people look down on Airi.”
She had been a farmer’s daughter who had never even learned self-defense, let alone swordsmanship—yet that single weapon alone caught Bahamart’s eye and made her a member of the hero party. Of course she had talent, so over time she came to be called a genius of the sword and learned to wield what had once merely been swung as if it were an extension of herself.
No one starts out perfect.
Even great heroes have their fragile, clumsy beginnings. My words left Adela frozen in shock.
“Want to hear something funny? When Airi was about fifteen she lost her sword once and cried so hard the world seemed to end, rolling around on the ground…”
“P-Please stop!”
“Why?”
“Please don’t shatter any more of my illusions…”
Adela wilted, going all limp. She usually seemed endlessly solid, but moments like this made her look so much like the Airi of old. I grinned and spun the wooden sword like a toy.
“What’s the Airi in your fantasies like?”
“…She is cool-headed. Kind to the poor and weak, yet merciless toward demonkin.”
“About half right, yeah.”
“……”
“Though the ‘cool-headed’ part is a bit of a stretch…”
“…If you think she’s the same as me when I’m holding a wooden sword, you’re in for a rude awakening.”
Fwoosh!
Golden mana surged from Adela’s blade like an explosion. The volume of mana was incomparable to when she held the wooden sword. The pressure was so intense that even the priests leisurely drinking coffee in the tents—not to mention the knights on the grounds—tensed up. I gripped the wooden sword properly, no longer treating it like a toy.
“Good. That’s how a descendant of Airi should be.”
“Here I come!”
Adela’s trajectory shot toward me, and I casually swatted it aside. And then—
Slice.
“Oh.”
“I told you to stay on guard!”
The wooden sword in my hand was severed as cleanly as if it were tofu. A combination of the Airi-style swordsmanship that put strain on the opponent’s weapon and that broken sword capable of turning a legion commander into cube steak. Even if it was for defense, to put this much strain on an attack…
Not bad.
I had reinforced the wooden sword with mana, after all. Seeing me lose half my weapon in an instant, Adela confidently prepared her next attack.
“Another opening.”
“Kh?”
Thud!
Without a second thought I discarded the weapon and drove my fist down onto the top of her head. She barely managed to raise her sword to block the punch, but she couldn’t stop the aftershock—rolling across the sparring ground just like the Airi of the past. Adela staggered as if her head were spinning. I waited for her to recover, and she rapidly circulated her mana to force her mind awake.
“Oh. You learned mental awakening techniques too?”
“……”
Clack.
Without a word Adela raised her sword. With a serious expression she began preparing a massive technique. All six cores circulated in unison, channeling the path of mana to the tip of her blade, and a tremendous aura whirled around her.
One of the ultimate techniques of the Airi-style swordsmanship. The technique that had once shattered the seventh legion commander into pieces was now being unleashed by her descendant after so much time. Watching it, I reminisced about the past.
“Ah.”
“You can’t just transform out in the open like that.”
I smacked the top of her head one more time.
What kind of stage is this?
“The technique’s good, but you’re way too slow.”
“……”
“If you use that in a real fight you might drop dead before you even finish casting it, so try not to. Or find someone who can buy you time.”
“…Weren’t you waiting for me?”
“Why would I?”
I poked Adela’s cheek as she lay on the sickbed after being treated by the priests, tilting my head. Adela looked up at me with half-open eyes, somehow seeming a little wronged.
“When it comes to mental awakening…”
“I can wait for recovery, sure. But there’s no need to watch a technique you telegraph so blatantly.”
“……”
“Taking hits like that just builds bad habits. It’s not like the battlefield is some ultimate-technique contest.”
“…You’re right.”
Adela squeezed her eyes shut. Even she must have thought this was a bit much. No matter the gap in skill, to make a mistake like this… She hadn’t blundered this badly when we sparred at the nest before.
Is it because there are so many eyes watching?
The heroes had been watching back then too, but this time it was a spar in front of the knights under her command. Maybe she wanted to look dignified and cool as the knight commander.
“Ugh…”
“Just get better at it. From now on.”
Of course the result itself was a net negative. Still, she had shown off a cool technique, so she might have earned some respect.
Creak.
“Anyway, rest up. I’ll check on you again tomorrow… no, in three days.”
“…Yes. I absolutely will not disappoint you then.”
“Sure.”
Whether that would actually happen was another story.
After finishing Adela’s training I wandered around the grounds. Helping Adela once had roughly settled a month’s worth of room and board—by my own reckoning—but there was still some left. Besides, after three months of eating and sleeping I wasn’t particularly tired even without sleeping right away. So whenever I got bored I started giving pointers to the knights and apprentices, and before I knew it…
“What the.”
“Oh, fancy meeting you here.”
I ran into someone I really shouldn’t have.
“Evan.”
“Oh! You remember me. I’m honored!”
He had ashen-gray hair of a dark shade and the look of a model student—the guy who had taken those magic gold coins whose minting was banned from me.
“What’s a hero doing here?”
“Hahaha! One thing led to another.”
I wondered if these crazy heroes had tracked me all the way to the royal castle, but listening to his story that wasn’t quite it. Evan had been preparing for the knight exam for a long time, and running into me was pure coincidence. When I checked with the kingdom side he had been diligently clearing quests for half a year…
“Don’t worry. I have no intention of telling anyone.”
“Really?”
“Yes. If I were to reveal Lady Lea’s location to the heroes, they would flock here, and then the kingdom would impose sanctions on me. I don’t want to lose the knighthood I worked so hard to obtain.”
“Do anything stupid and you’re dead.”
“Rest assured. I won’t even tell Lady Lea’s disciples.”
“What have you been up to?”
“They’re searching hard for you with someone named Haring at the center. Doesn’t seem like they’re getting results, though.”
“I told them not to look.”
Just a waste of time. If they trained or hunted monsters in that time they could get so much stronger. Honestly, my disciples’ separation anxiety was the real problem. It never used to be like this in the past.
“Shall I contact them separately? As you know, heroes have a means of communicating with each other…”
“That would just make it more obvious.”
“Ah. Right. Then I won’t do anything.”
“……”
“Is something the matter?”
“Come to think of it, I’ve been curious for a while.”
“Yes?”
“How do heroes contact each other? It doesn’t seem like telepathy or magic.”