The City of Opportunity, Cambria (5)
One year would be enough.
Merlin burst out laughing at the boy's ambition. She felt no irritation at his claim that he would smash even the record Arthur had set. Higher aims were better, after all.
"That's the spirit. That's how you should talk."
She would have been disappointed if he had started whining instead. Merlin let out a long breath. He had secured basic funds, found a place to stay, and now the stage for serious work was ready.
In short, the foundation had been laid.
This was no longer a scramble to survive each day, but a moment with room to look ahead and prepare for tomorrow. Merlin was certain the timing was perfect.
"How much do you know about mana?"
What the boy had lacked.
Knowledge of mana, and a cultivation method.
This was the ideal moment to teach him both.
Mana—the energy accumulated within the body.
Najin knew precious little about it. No one had ever taught him. He had only grasped it by feel, watching those around him who could use it.
"Almost nothing."
He answered Merlin's question honestly. Somehow he had ended up handling mana, somehow he had ended up drawing aura along his blade—but if anyone asked how those things actually worked, he had no answer.
Just a gut feeling that doing it this way would work.
He relied on instinct alone, not knowledge. Merlin, who had watched him for a little over ten days, already knew as much.
"Right. You do lean on pure sensation."
Merlin continued.
"Handling mana by feel isn't a bad thing. If anything, it proves you have natural talent. But depending on sensation alone, without precise knowledge, has clear limits."
Basic theory. Basic knowledge.
"Whatever the discipline, moving while you know what you're doing is important. Swordsmanship, magic, mana—it's all the same."
Once he understood that, she said, he would be able to use mana more broadly and more variously. Najin listened carefully. Everything Merlin was telling him now was knowledge no one had ever taught him before.
And more than anything else…
Najin thought to himself.
He sometimes almost forgot, but the person standing before him and talking about mana was none other than the great mage Merlin herself.
A constellation of eleven stars.
The woman called a great mage in countless heroic legends.
He ran through the titles that followed her name—first mage to reach Mystery, great sage who touched Truth, sage who awakened to the essence of mana, and on and on. No one in history had delved more deeply into mana and magic than Merlin.
Just as Arthur had carved a new chapter into the history of the sword, Merlin was the one who had written the foundations of magical scholarship.
And someone of that caliber
was talking to him about mana.
He was receiving, free of charge, a lecture no fortune could buy. Najin had no intention of letting the chance slip. He fixed every word Merlin spoke with absolute attention.
"Even if mages and swordsmen handle mana differently, the process of accumulating it is basically the same. The split comes from how you use it afterward."
Using accumulated mana to reinforce the body and draw aura—that was a swordsman. Forming circles with mana and inscribing circuits into the soul—that was a mage.
"So I'm going to teach you a mana cultivation method."
A mana cultivation method.
The way to store mana inside the body.
"Originally I planned to start by opening pathways through your body and teaching you how to draw mana in, but…"
Merlin laughed in disbelief.
"You already know how to handle mana, don't you?"
"By feel, yes. I can handle it."
"Right. It's absurd, but the pathways are already open in your body. Opening the paths is harder than accumulating mana, so where the hell did you learn that?"
It's the exact same method Arthur used, she muttered under her breath. Najin tilted his head. He hadn't exactly learned it—he had simply read a fairy tale and followed what was written.
"You saw a few lines of that nonsense and just copied it?"
"Yes."
"I'm going to lose my mind."
Merlin sighed as if even being surprised had become exhausting. Method aside, pathways for mana already ran through Najin's body.
All that remained was to store mana within it.
To Merlin's eyes, the boy who had opened his pathways in a manner so similar to Arthur's was a perfectly prepared canvas. For now it was only a wide-open field—but from this moment on, they would raise a tower upon it higher and sturdier than anything else.
"Shall we start with breathing techniques?"
The cornerstone of the tower they would build. Merlin set the foundation stone down upon that broad field.
2.
"Breathe in, long and slow."
"Draw the flow into your body the way you always have."
Najin moved as Merlin instructed.
He felt the current settle into his flesh.
"Good. Drawing the flow into your body—that's fine. The problem is, you only use it for a moment and then dump it straight onto the floor. How should I put this…"
Merlin said,
"You're filling a bucket with water and immediately pouring it out on the ground. Sure, it works for that brief moment of use, but you'll never grow that way."
"Then what should I do?"
"Simple."
She smiled.
"Don't pour out what you've drawn. Let it soak into your body slowly. Can you hold it as long as you can manage?"
Until now Najin had used mana only in short, instantaneous bursts. Merlin was telling him to maintain that state for a long time.
One minute. Three minutes… five.
At five minutes, cold sweat ran down Najin's spine. His body throbbed. His nose stung. Another minute later, a bead of blood slipped from his nostril. Pain like a knife flaying him from the inside seized every limb.
"Stop."
Merlin warned him, and Najin released the breath he had been holding.
"Ghk—khah!"
His throat burned.
The cough he spat out was flecked with blood. Overcome by the pain, he sprawled flat on the floor of the room.
"The longer you hold mana inside your body, the more it seeps into you. What you just did is exactly that process. Of course it hurts like hell."
"I feel like… I'm going to die…"
Barely able to breathe, Najin forced the words out. Merlin grinned at the sound of his voice.
"Of course it hurts. Normally no one accumulates mana this way. Usually you absorb an elixir and focus on storing the pure mana that enters without letting any of it leak, or…"
Failing that,
"you go to a family's or organization's hidden mana spring or sanctuary and swallow properly refined mana. You don't do it like this. If you try to pack raw wild mana into yourself, your body gets shredded from the inside."
Listening to her, Najin's eyes flew wide.
"Wait—so this is the wrong method—"
"For someone with no money for elixirs and no connections to use a holy site or mana spring, this is the best you've got. And you can handle your body getting a little wrecked, can't you?"
What kind of nonsense is that.
Before he could even ask if she was treating someone else's body so casually, Merlin's answer came first.
"You're carrying Excalibur."
"…I am?"
"You have no stars yet, so most of Excalibur's functions are locked, but the recovery is still there, right?"
The regenerative power Excalibur granted.
Najin knew what she meant. That very recovery had saved him more than once while he fled through the underground city.
"It won't instantly close external wounds yet, but internal damage should heal quickly. Arthur was the same."
The method Merlin was teaching him now was originally Arthur's mana cultivation method—the crude, almost brainless raw technique that Arthur, who had possessed nothing, had built by wrecking her own body.
"Tear and heal, tear and heal. In that process the body is reconstructed into something optimized for holding mana. Thinking about it again it's still stupidly brutal, but…"
Merlin smiled mischievously.
"The efficiency is off the charts."
"It hurts like hell, though."
"You just have to endure the pain. What choice do you have?"
In our day everyone learned like this, she muttered. These soft modern kids lean on sanctuaries and elixirs and all that easy stuff. Then she went on.
"Training is supposed to be hard and miserable. If it's comfortable, is that even training? That's just freeloading."
Najin scowled.
"I never thought I'd meet a real fossil…"
"What did you just say?"
Groaning, Najin rolled over. After a few minutes he could move again. He leaned his back against the wall and slowly steadied his breathing.
"I just keep doing this?"
"Do it every morning in short sessions. This kind of thing is better built steadily over time than crammed in a short period."
And then, Merlin added,
"Just piling up mana doesn't make you stronger, does it?"
Najin caught her meaning at once.
"Go outside and move my body?"
"Yeah. That way it soaks in faster."
"Just breathing makes every part of me ache."
"Pain is how you know it's training. If it doesn't hurt, is that training?"
This damn…
"Urgh."
With a low groan Najin forced himself upright. His legs shook, but he still moved according to Merlin's instructions.
Arthur had trained this way too.
And he had to surpass that Arthur.
Reminding himself of his goal once more, Najin drove his body hard. Sword in hand, he left the inn and took a stance in an empty lot, swinging the blade. As he cut the air his expression grew complicated.
Old memories had surfaced.
Even in the underground city he had gone out to the empty lot every morning and swung his sword. And there had always been a master there, bottle in hand, dispensing advice.
"That's not how you swing a sword."
"Watch the tip all the way through."
"You can't just flail it around. Focus on your stance. Mind your breathing."
Oppen's voice lingered in Najin's ears.
Here there was no master watching him swing and offering corrections, but Najin still swung in silence, recalling every piece of advice Oppen had left him.
Swish.
In the deserted lot, only the soft sound of a boy's sword cutting the air rang out.
3.
Najin first noticed the change on the fourth day.
Following Merlin's instructions, he had drawn mana into himself every day and trained with his insides churning. Now he could feel something different in his body.
He felt lighter, and he moved faster than usual.
The speed of his sword had clearly increased, and every step he took was packed with power. Even without deliberately pulling in the flow to reinforce his flesh, he was moving faster than he had only days earlier. Najin was impressed.
The effect is real.
The growth was visible. Four days of coughing up blood and tearing his body apart had been worth it. Thinking that, he swung his sword a little harder.
"Hoo…"
After finishing his training, Najin washed the sweat from his skin with water he had drawn. As he cleaned himself he happened to glance at the mirror. Come to think of it, should he have disguised himself? The Church pursuers knew his face.
While he was turning that over in his mind, Merlin was looking at the reflection of his bare upper body and thinking something entirely different. His torso was covered in small scars. Across one shoulder in particular ran a long scar that looked as if a sword had drawn it.
Scattered scars.
And between them, the hard, split lines of real muscle.
These were muscles forged in actual combat—things people who coasted on talent alone never obtained. Looking at them, Merlin felt genuine admiration.
Truthfully, she had been worried.
Najin possessed talent and growth speed far beyond ordinary people. And geniuses of that kind, she had assumed, usually vaulted this high without ever laying a proper foundation.
But now that she had looked beneath the surface?
The foundation was solid enough.
Merlin smiled with satisfaction at a body tempered enough to endure harsh training. Because the base had been well prepared, proper methods produced immediate results.
Conditions met. Foundation set.
A boy who had been waiting only for the leap.
Gauging the steep curve of Najin's growth, Merlin considered. She could teach him how to handle mana and the basics of conditioning, but…
"Swordsmanship is the problem."
Swordsmanship. That was the issue.
Merlin was a mage through and through. She had watched Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table up close, yet she did not possess the martial talent to teach their techniques.
The boy was not a mage. He was a swordsman.
The swordsman who would one day wield Excalibur.
Simply accumulating and circulating mana would never raise him to the realm of Sword Seeker. Understanding the weapon called a sword and grasping its principles was required to reach that height.
"I've already thought about that part."
Drying off and changing clothes, Najin spoke.
"I've been going back and forth to the guild a lot lately, right?"
He was still not recognized as a proper mercenary. He needed a minimum record of results before he could take real commissions, so for the past three days he had been running the odd jobs the guild handed out.
Perhaps wiping out a pack of goblins had scored him especially well. The night before, the guild had dyed his nameplate black. That meant he was now a Black-rank mercenary—and that he was finally qualified to take proper commissions.
"There still aren't that many I can take,"
Najin said as he arrived at the guild,
"but I can accept private requests now."
Requests posted not by the guild but by individuals.
Among them was one he had already marked. The pay was not especially attractive, so few people chose it. To Najin, though, it was irresistible.
Seeking porter to haul monster carcasses.
A simple job—just follow a hunt and carry the bodies. What mattered was the identity of the person who had posted it.
Sword Expert of the Sword Church.
Mid-rank Priest Volkman.
The Sword Church—an order of sword-seekers who pursued only the path of the blade, people who had sworn to devote their lives to honing their swordsmanship.
In other words,
People who have reached the heights of the sword.
Najin smiled.
He reached out and took the request form. Of course the notice said nothing about this "Volkman" teaching him swordsmanship, but…
What did that matter?
Once he saw it, he would figure out how to copy it somehow.