Crude Habit
Crude Habit
A brilliant red light rippled.
As I pulled out the cork, a faint scent of herbs and a heavy wave of magic brushed against the tip of my nose.
A top-tier healing potion supplied only to the officers of the Imperial Knights.
I approached Ines, who was sleeping soundly in the corner of the bed.
As I carefully rolled up her shirt sleeve, her white forearm, which she had mangled by biting into her own flesh, was revealed.
Terrible bite marks, still oozing blood, were on her torn raw flesh.
I tilted the potion bottle and slowly dripped the red liquid onto the wound.
Chi-ik-.
The potion seeped into her skin with a faint hissing sound.
The effect was immediate and overwhelming. The torn muscles knit together, and new flesh filled in over the gouged skin like melting snow.
In just a few breaths, the horrific scars were perfectly erased, and her skin returned to its original, flawless, smooth, white jade-like state.
"......."
I gently stroked Ines's white forearm with my thumb.
I poured the remaining potion over the sword wounds on my shoulder and thigh.
The hairline fractures in my bones and the pain in my muscles vanished as if washed away.
I set the empty glass bottle down on the table.
This sensation of perfect healing made me realize the heavy weight of the unrequited goodwill extended by that 'adult' last night.
'Valian.'
Having experienced countless deceptions and betrayals in my past life, I loathed the species known as adults and distrusted them to my very core.
However, in the face of this simple and upright consideration that instantly erased the scars of Ines, who had been bleeding in her empty unconsciousness...
I couldn't help but feel the cold hostility coiled deep within my Dantian soften, even if just a little.
Of course, I have absolutely no intention of letting my guard down, drunk on such petty sentimentality.
'Whether it's joining the Knights or whatever, I just need to perfectly drain his Aura and then discard him.'
I pressed a short kiss to the sleeping lover's forehead, while outwardly drawing a cold line, telling myself he was still just a tool to be thoroughly exploited.
It had been a few days since Professor Walder's calls had abruptly stopped.
What filled that quiet void of daily life was the secret training with Valian that took place every night at the Academy's 1st Training Ground.
Clang-! Crack!
The dull sound of wooden swords clashing sliced through the night air.
I engraved the orthodox Imperial training method passed down by Valian into my mind, and in one breath, pulled up the energy from my lower Dantian to form it on the blade.
A bluish Aura sword energy wrapped around my wooden sword, emitting a sharp whistling sound.
An overwhelming ability to learn, reproducing in just a few days an achievement that ordinary knights would take years to attain.
However, Valian's thick brow, which had lightly deflected my sword strike, was twisted as if he were extremely displeased.
"Stop."
Valian lowered his wooden sword and shouted heavily.
"That is not the breathing trajectory I taught you. Kyle. You are currently wasting your energy in the most stupid and ignorant way possible."
I wiped away the sweat beading on my chin and silently met his gaze.
His sharp eyes, having experienced countless battlefields, were perfectly piercing through the essence hidden behind my swordsmanship.
"Unlike mages who borrow external mana, a knight's 'Aura' is pure life force and internal energy (Naegi) drawn entirely from within oneself."
Valian tapped my chest, specifically the location of my Dantian, with the tip of his wooden sword.
"But your method isn't controlling the flow. It's closer to 'self-harm,' where you forcibly squeeze out your life force, make it run wild as if to explode your muscles and blood vessels, and then shove it into the tip of your sword."
Valian's warning was accurate without a single error.
I bit my lip.
In the previous life, to survive the living hell of the front lines.
I had forcibly pulled up my Aura by whittling away at my lifespan and flesh, and that beast-like method was perfectly engraved into my muscles and bones as memory.
"It's a method that even a fully developed adult body would struggle to endure."
Valian's metallic voice rang through the training ground.
"If you repeat that with your immature teenage body now, you won't even last a year before your blood vessels burst and you become a cripple. You are burning away your entire tomorrow just to kill the enemy right in front of you."
I know.
My head knows that the precise and detailed energy control method taught by that noble knight is correct.
But the moment the killing intent of a real battle enveloped my body, the survival instinct engraved in my bones kept making me choose that beast-like rampage from before.
"Again. We start over from the root of your breathing."
When I remained silent, Valian sighed as if frustrated, yet he never gave up on me or turned away.
He silently approached me and, with his rough, calloused hands, corrected the angle of my wooden sword and the tempo of my breathing, one by one.
Unlike the trash in my past life who threw us into the jaws of death under the pretext of a greater cause.
An upright correction, trying to forcibly break the shackles of a beast burning away without a tomorrow.
I did not express any gratitude for that heavy goodwill.
But inside, I chased his breathing all night long, feeling like I was coughing up blood, just to erase the crude habit that was gnawing away at my body.
One day, while I was gradually embodying the Aura control method.
Finally, the secret summons from the old fox, Professor Walder, arrived.
As soon as I opened the door to the office and entered, the disgusting smell of chemicals and a faint scent of blood pierced my nose.
"It's been a while. The research dragged on, so the summons was late."
Walder, sitting in the deep shadows behind the desk, greeted me with his murky eyes flashing.
Dark circles had settled under his eyes, but his pupils were glistening with insane academic fervor.
"That traitor priest you caught. I've been quite busy keeping him locked in the basement, torturing and dissecting him alive for days and nights."
Walder licked his lips with a fishy smile.
It wasn't just a matter of digging for information on the magic tool I had stolen. He had committed the cruel biological experiments typical of mages.
"What exactly did you verify to do that?"
"A while ago, when you, a commoner, emitted overwhelming 'Holy Power' right in front of my eyes."
Walder buried his chin in his clasped hands and fixed his gaze on me.
"The common sense about magic and Holy Power that I had spent my whole life building collapsed for a moment. So, I tore apart that priest's brain and heart to re-verify the essence of Holy Power from the ground up."
My nerves stood coldly on edge at his words.
The most heretical and accurate diagnosis in the world, from which a clue to curing Ines might emerge.
"I'll start with the conclusion."
Walder asserted in a voice mixed with metallic sounds.
"Holy Power was exactly as I knew it. The quantity and quality of the energy are determined by 'faith,' and it is strongly influenced by the vessel one is born with. In other words, those who do not believe in God can never draw out Holy Power."
Walder's eyes flashed creepily.
"But. How on earth do you, a blood-crazed atheist swordsman who doesn't believe in things like God's mercy, wield that sublime miracle?"
"......."
I did not answer and maintained a blank, silent expression.
Walder, too, was not demanding an answer from me right away. He thrust the chilling hypothesis he had derived himself in front of me as if displaying it.
"The hypothesis I reached after dissecting the priest's brain waves is this. Holy Power is strongly influenced not only by the magnitude of faith but also by the 'depth of emotion' toward the object."
Walder stood up from his seat and slowly walked toward me.
"From there, I derived one terrible conclusion."
The mage's murky pupils dug into my pupils.
"Holy Power is not necessarily limited to an uncertain, massive entity called 'God.' Whether it's a living, breathing human or an object. Just by 'obsessively and strongly believing' in something, there is a probability that the miracle can manifest from within a human."
Bang.
My heart pounded.
Not a prayer to God, but a blind obsession and devotion toward a single object.
The essence of that desperate miracle Ines had shown to save me in my past life was being perfectly dissected through Walder's mouth.
"Think about it."
Walder rested his chin on his hand and smiled fishily like a snake.
"Why is it that I, a great mage who has pierced through the truths of the world and magic, cannot wield even a handful of Holy Power? Why do mages stand in complete opposition to this miracle?"
He tapped my shoulder.
"It is because the essence of us mages is an infinite spirit of inquiry into the truths of the world. In other words, endless 'doubt'."
Doubt.
The attribute of magic that constantly questions and calculates to uncover the principles of the world.
"You can never perform a miracle with faith mixed with doubt. That is the perfect difference between magic and Holy Power."
As soon as Walder's explanation ended, the air in the office froze, becoming suffocatingly cold in an instant.
The smile that had been scanning me was completely wiped from Walder's face.
Instead, the sharpest and most ruthless insight, worthy of the Empire's dark power broker, gripped me as if grabbing me by the collar.
"Then I will ask."
Walder's metallic voice rang out as if to tear my eardrums.
"You, who emit miracles born from blind faith, without a single shred of doubt mixed in."
"......."
"Kyle. What on earth are you so blindly believing in and craving?"