The One Who Walks on Water and the Stablehand
A basilisk's heart was a famed elixir even in this world. A fine specimen, they said, could punch straight through the limits of whoever swallowed it.
It was rare enough that the seller named the price—and they meant to bestow a treasure like that, all gracious benevolence, on nothing more than a green recruit of the Human Lighthouse Order? I had been up all night sorting the domain ledgers, nearly shitting blood for the sake of wringing a little more efficiency out of the tax take, and this was where that money had been thrown away?
I could feel my blood surge hot enough to run backward.
That thing—I was taking it. No matter what. I ground my teeth, the resolve biting down hard, and they had the nerve to look at me and call me greedy.
Greedy? Have you ever chased the coattails of some white-haired vassal, scraping up proof of an affair, just to squeeze one more coin of tax out of him?! Have you ever pettily dug through every last ledger, found a tax left unpaid sixty years ago, and billed the grandson for it?!
That's how money gets made. Even if your old man's a marquis, you have to be vicious when there's gold on the table. And a basilisk's heart is worth being vicious for.
But you'll help make sure it does become mine, won't you, Jin? Am I wrong?
At that, Jin burned hotter, as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing.
Oh, come off it, who said anything like that? Anyway, the stronger I get, the faster I can find your body, right?
Then we help each other. Keep acting expensive and trying to slip away, and we'll both just end up tired. And from where you stand, isn't it better if I scrounge up every scrap I can and get stronger, instead of digging my heels in and refusing to train?
So what's the problem?
Then think it over slowly and tell me later. All right?
From living with him so far, Jin was nowhere near as deft at this kind of slippery, fast-talking handling of people as one might expect. Maybe, to him, even this counted as a sort of game. Convenient for me either way—he was easy to steer.
Well. Even if I aim for first, I probably won't take it.
My skill is the problem.
Jin tilted that round body of his, plainly puzzled. I didn't bother explaining. He'd learn soon enough.
What matters is proving what I can do, even if I never wear the top rank. Especially to Amber.
I had no wish to change the future in which Amber took first. That meant I had to make her choose to follow me herself. Once she stood at the top, the basilisk's heart would become mine as a matter of course.
If you judged by physical talent alone, he might have had a point. It wasn't that she lacked gift. She was simply unfinished, and to Jin's eye her ceiling would look plain enough.
But Amber Cutter's true talent had never been the sword. She had been born with a genius for field tactics. In the war against the demons still to come, the troops she led would not suffer a single annihilation. Without her, the demons would have swallowed the Esteria Continent in a flash. I couldn't say how a woman who had never once received a proper education came by an ability like that, but she was a talent I absolutely needed if I wanted a future in which I stayed alive.
Gather the novel's supporting cast, teach them properly, and let them fight the demons on their own. That way my utopia wouldn't take the damage.
Well. Just watch.
Jin looked unconvinced. Ask where a ball of flame keeps its eyes and I'd have had no answer, but that was the feeling of it—and fair enough, since Amber had hardly been friendly toward me.
I knew why she disliked me, and I believed she would come to me all the same. Setting the cause aside, that belief rested on one fact: Amber was aiming for first. To aim for first, she had to clear all three conditions of the second exam, and she was short one thing. The Order's sword art.
The Lighthouse sword art was built of eleven stars in all. No matter how kindly the knights taught it, mastering the thing inside the window of the second exam was impossible, because this art had been born differently from every other. Unlike swordsmanship specialized for fighting people, the Lighthouse art had been devised to kill demons efficiently. A student would suddenly cut at an empty sky, or leap up into a vertical thrust—passages far more baffling than ordinary sword work. Now that I had actually fought demons, I understood it, dimly. The first time I learned it, all I could think was what kind of garbage sword art this was.
Under those circumstances, someone who knew nothing of demons could hardly master it cleanly. How were you supposed to learn an eleven-star art when you didn't even know what you were fighting? You could ape it, clumsily. You could never master it. Even in the story, where Amber took first, she almost certainly hadn't passed by mastering it perfectly.
The proof was right in front of me. Of the forty-five candidates, the only ones attempting the sword art were myself and Amber, both chasing first, and one nameless idiot. Three, and no more. And as it happened, I was a man who had already mastered the Order's sword art. Even she would have to bow her pride and speak to me.
The moment water-walking training ended and I got back to Lighthouse Castle, I took a quick shower and went straight out to the rear yard.
"Ah, big brother—there you are! I waited so long I thought my neck was gonna fall off."
The nameless idiot was in the yard already, sidling up like we were old friends.
"Why am I your big brother? You're years older than I am."
"Way of the world, the strong one's the elder. Don't go getting sore on me! You have any idea how much you've helped this man?"
Mid-twenties, a powerful build, skin baked red by the sun—the idiot wore a slick, ingratiating grin as he pressed on.
"Sir Bjorn taught the sword in person, and just look how far this little brother has come!"
"And what, exactly, is your name?"
"Barton Wigner, how many times! Sharp fellow like you, why do you keep doing this to me!"
The first day came back to me—a man taking a knight's open palm across the ear and keeling over at my feet. So that had been him.
"Right. Barton Wigner. Didn't I tell you not to waste your time on the sword art? Grind the heart method and aim for Sword User. Your odds are better that way. The exam's nearly on us, so even that won't be easy."
"Grateful as I am for Sir Bjorn's wisdom, I reckon I've got no knack for the heart method. Oh, I'll be a Sword User someday, sure as anything. Just not in the days we've got left before the exam—impossible, I tell you. Not enough mana to my name, and water-walking's even less worth talking about. This here's the only chance left to me."
"Fine. If that's your will, I won't stop you. But how about standing back a little? I'd rather not blood my sword with yours."
"Ha! Forgotten everything you said after the first exam, have you? What was it again? That you'd have no interest in a knight order whose man went in first and left a drowning comrade behind?"
I sighed, hoist neatly by my own petard. Yes. I had said that—never dreaming some punk would stroll up afterward and try to squeeze something out of me for it. Not that I was teaching him out of any tender heart. I wanted Amber to see that I was willing to teach someone else.
"By the way, Sir Bjorn—goes without saying, but I'll ask all the same. You wouldn't happen to be a noble?"
"I am."
I hadn't named the house, but the Lighthouse knights' blatant conduct had apparently let the other candidates sense, however faintly, that I was nobility. Nobles didn't usually sit the entrance trials of the Human Lighthouse Order, so I must have struck them as odd. Curiosity was natural enough.
Barton's next question was not.
"Then… any chance you've got an older sister in the family?"
"What kind of nonsense is that?"
"No? Then what's that bitch leaning on, holding her chin up so high?"
Barton jerked his chin toward Amber, drilling the sword art in a corner of the yard, and cursed her.
"I say we train together and she sticks her middle finger right in my face. Had her figured for a girl with solid backing, same as you, big brother. Temper like that on a commoner, she'd have been beaten to death ages ago."
"Lucky for you she only raised the middle finger."
"Wh—what?! Sir Bjorn, you're taking that woman's side too?!"
Barton seemed to have been shut up in this rear yard ever since the first day, and plainly didn't know she was a Sword User. His attempt at suicide was none of my business, so I got to the point.
"So. How exactly do you want me to look over the sword art?"
"It's the Eighth Star. I still can't get a feel for it."
I glanced toward Amber. She looked just as consumed by drilling the Eighth Star—and maybe that was why, now and then, she looked this way.
"All right. Then today we focus on the Eighth Star."
Slowly, I drew my sword.