Chapter 5
Chapter 5
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 5
Chapter Title: Even in Legends, There's a Class Difference (2)
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Several hundred years after losing my powers, the first time I faced the true aura of a real knight was something I couldn't handle.
I chickened out, plain and simple.
If the court knights hadn't surged with their own auras to shield me, I might have put on quite the pathetic display.
No, perhaps I already had.
Thinking that my uncle had witnessed me like that stung my pride. It was all the fault of this body that failed to live up to its size. Even the slightest tremor got amplified several times over by the excess flesh. My pudgy face refused to obey my control entirely.
"Hundreds of years honing the sword, all for nothing."
Chickening out before the opponent even drew his blade. The self-loathing was beyond measure.
"Hoo."
I let out a sigh and calmed my mind. Then I sorted through what I'd seen in my head.
"Quad Chain..."
That tsunami-like surge of aura and those ferocious eyes reminded me of beings I knew all too well.
Sword Masters.
Superhumans who could conquer anything with a single blade. My uncle was just like them. The only difference was that what elevated him to their level wasn't a single heart, but four interlocking rings.
"The world has truly changed."
A blue sky stretched overhead. The same vivid blue I'd seen hundreds of years ago. Yet the world beneath it had transformed beyond recognition.
"Your Highness!"
Lost in sentiment, I heard a maid come rushing up in a panic.
"Her Majesty the Queen is headed this way!"
"What? Why now?!"
I barked, and the maid hurriedly explained the situation. Word of the commotion in the training grounds had already reached the Queen.
"Tell her I'm not here!"
"Y-Your Highness!"
My absurd order left the maid with a tearful expression.
"Her Majesty the Queen has arrived!"
By then, the Queen had already shown up. There she was, attendants in tow, hiking up her skirts and trotting toward us.
Damn. This lady was seriously uncomfortable.
Her overflowing maternal affection, her habit of treating me like a child—every bit of it grated on me. I'd been doing my best to avoid her, but here we were, crossing paths again.
"Ian!"
Spotting me, she quickened her pace.
"What happened?"
She directed the question to my escort knight, though her eyes stayed fixed on me.
"The boy provoked me, so I merely humored him for a moment."
The reply came from an unexpected direction. I turned to see my uncle standing there, having approached unnoticed.
"Provoked you? What on earth did this child do?"
"He questioned my qualifications."
The Queen looked eager for more details, but my uncle had no intention of elaborating.
"You should head back now. Do you really think I'd harm the boy or something?"
Harm, she says. Harm.
I pretended to rub my bruised rear, but no one was paying me any attention. Feeling awkward, I stealthily dropped my hand.
"He's blood, my nephew, worthless or not. I beg you, brother-in-law, don't forget that."
"That's precisely why it's getting harder to lay a hand on him."
It was such a valid point that I found myself nodding unconsciously. The Queen's love for her children bordered on excessive. Even my spoiled nature owed something to her influence.
"So you go back. And you—follow me."
I started to ask why, but my uncle just clicked his tongue.
"Training."
Only then did I remember that today's training hadn't even begun yet.
**
"Hah... hah!"
My breath rose to my chin, and my body felt ready to collapse at any second. But my uncle still hadn't told me to stop.
Tiring out first would bruise my pride too much. I'd endure no matter what, forcing those words out of him first: that's enough.
That had been my mindset just moments ago.
"Get up."
I'd run until my legs gave out, tumbling to the ground. But instead of halting the training, my uncle hauled me back to my feet by force.
Hey, this guy... did he just smirk?
I definitely saw it. The corner of that man's mouth twitch ever so slightly.
What the hell? Was he taking out his anger on me?
"Just so you don't get any ideas."
My uncle spoke out of the blue.
"I've already wiped that little incident from my mind."
Watching him spout off without being asked made it clear: he was still holding that provocation I'd thrown at him deep inside.
Acting all magnanimous on his own. Unbelievable.
"With that kind of grit, you'll win some respect, huh."
"Double Chain? You'd be lucky to beat a Single Chain."
"If it's too much, just quit. No more suffering then."
My uncle's revenge went beyond just rolling me into the dirt. Every snide remark he tossed out scraped at my insides like nothing else.
"That's enough for today."
Only after I'd rolled across the ground a dozen or so times did my uncle finally call it quits. By then, I was in a state beyond wrecked.
"Hah... hah."
I sprawled on the ground, staring up at the sky. Footsteps approached. I turned my head and watched my uncle walking away. Not a hint of nephew-uncle warmth in sight.
Well, I wasn't in the mood for that either.
I glared at his irritating back, then forced my body upright. It took a good deal of grunting before I managed the posture I wanted.
"Hoo."
Sitting there, I regulated my breathing. The breath that had risen to my chin sank back to my chest, then my gut. Slowly, I drew the surrounding mana into my body.
And so my daily routine came to an end. Or so I thought.
"Your Highness. I've been waiting."
I staggered back to my chambers like a corpse, only to find a middle-aged man with a goatee greeting me at the door. He was one I'd recalled when I tossed out that amnesia bait earlier.
"Royal Physician?"
"For you to remember a lowly wretch like me—I scarce know where to put myself."
The court physician groveled in exaggerated honor. As I'd sensed before, ambition oozed from him.
"Why are you here?"
I narrowed my eyes, as if to ask what he was after. He rolled up his sleeves and replied.
"Please allow this servant to examine Your Highness's noble body."
It had to be the Queen, unable to stomach even a scratch on her precious son.
That skirt-chasing wind for real...
I shook my head, but the physician strode forward briskly. A pure white glow gathered in his hand. I panicked.
"No!"
Startled by my sudden outburst, he stumbled back. He seemed genuinely shocked; the healing light in his hand had already faded.
"Y-Your Highness? Did this servant commit some blunder..."
"Blunder? Not yet. But you nearly did."
"This fool fails to comprehend Your Highness's words..."
"No need for excuses. Just go."
He persisted, citing the Queen's command.
"Go! I said go!"
But when I acted like I might kick his ass, he couldn't hold out and fled like a rabbit.
"Your Highness, why refuse the physician's healing magic?"
Once he was gone, my escort knight asked. It was Kals Yulihi, newly assigned to the prince's palace.
"Healing magic is poison to me."
Overworked muscles tear and swell, growing tougher in the process. But healing magic knits them perfectly closed before they can harden.
All my efforts tumbling across the training grounds that day would go to waste.
Absolutely not.
Recalling the culprit who'd nearly ruined my hard work, I grumbled to myself. Then I felt a gaze.
Kals was staring at me with a look of surprise.
"Ahem."
Feeling oddly proud, I cleared my throat with a fake cough.
**
The next morning, I dragged myself to the training grounds, only to find my uncle waiting.
"Looks like the palace doesn't have many skilled mages."
"Think what you will."
My indifferent reply made him furrow his brow.
"You didn't take the healing magic after all."
"Knowing full well it'd be poison—would you, Uncle?"
There was no reaction like Kals's. My uncle merely nodded once.
"Run. Until I say stop, just like yesterday."
I obeyed without a word and started circling the grounds.
Ughhh. I'm dying.
My whole body screamed in protest. Every impact with the ground made my knees threaten to buckle. But I gritted my teeth and bore it.
Damn this pride of mine.
I endured on sheer resolve to shed this flesh and smash flat that irritating uncle's nose.
"Stop."
I'd braced myself for how much more he'd push me today. But surprisingly, he called it quits far earlier than expected.
"I naturally assumed you'd take the healing magic."
Too blunt for an excuse, too stingy for an apology. He just looked genuinely caught off guard.
"We'll end here today."
He stared at me intently, declared training over, and left.
"Ugh."
That was when my pride-held body finally gave out.
"I'm really gonna die."
**
The next day was the same. And the day after that. My routine never changed.
I ran laps around the training grounds every day.
My unrecovered body from the previous day swayed on its own, and the pain from abused muscles tested me with every step.
But I clenched my teeth and powered through.
I couldn't accomplish a damn thing without shedding this cursed flesh.
My uncle never ordered anything else from me. He controlled me utterly.
Run, walk, rest—it all began and ended on his command. Even my meals had changed drastically under his intervention. The nearly unseasoned meats and vegetables tormented my newly awakened palate.
Under the pretext of trimming my fat, my uncle meddled in every aspect of my life.
But there was one thing he never touched.
Mana Heart.
Whatever I did with my Mana Heart, he ignored it completely. Whether I groaned gathering mana during breaks or quietly circulated it mid-training to rally my weary body, he showed zero interest.
As if some puny Mana Heart meant nothing to him.
A week passed like that. Then a month.
"Hm?"
My uncle, who always stood bare-handed in the center of the grounds, was holding something today.
A wooden sword.
"You need to know at least one basic sword form for our bet to hold water."
His face indifferent, he raised the wooden sword.
"This is the kingdom's training sword, what knights learn to build their foundation. I won't demonstrate it multiple times, so watch closely."
He had no intention of teaching Ballerhard swordsmanship. Instead, like some act of charity, he showed me the kingdom's training sword.
Yet that sword motion felt strangely familiar. Deformed and abbreviated as it was, I was certain.
"You said this is the sword kingdom knights learn as a foundation?"
Something in my question made my uncle's expression harden.
"It's a training sword, so it lacks real edge. But it's faithful to the basics, making it decent for beginners."
The tone implied it was still too good for the likes of me.
"Lacks edge. Decent, huh..."
I couldn't help but laugh.
"So that's how people rate this sword."
I knew better than anyone what this swordsmanship my uncle dismissed as trash really was.
It was one of the traces I'd left on the world long, long ago.
Dragon Slayer Sword.
The blade that slew the Mad Dragon, reduced to a trifling training exercise.
How utterly ridiculous.