Put It All on Me
Deep in the night, in a lonely vacant lot where no one ever bothered to tread, Kael trained as he did every day.
I don’t trust anyone anymore.
The only one who could protect him was himself.
No one in this world would fight in his place.
Hadn’t he already learned that lesson the hard way from that monster called Harkan?
If not for Balmung’s power, Kael would have died that day.
Surviving had been nothing more than luck.
This was a world ruled by the law of the jungle. If he wanted to live, he had no choice but to grow stronger.
Complaining won’t change anything.
Kael had two goals.
Revenge against the Empire.
And living well, with plenty of money to enjoy it.
Preferably until he was old enough to paint the wall with shit, if that was what it took.
To make that dream come true, he needed power. And he needed to become strong as fast as humanly possible.
“Ssshh, hoo.”
Kael steadied his breathing. Sweat poured off him like rain, and white steam rose from his body.
He had pushed himself right up to the limits of his stamina.
Impossible to pin down.
Balmung thought as much.
Kael might act light as air most of the time, but he never skipped training.
He was the sort of bastard who’d threaten to stuff people into the latrine without the slightest shred of manners, yet when it came time to train, he became more serious than anyone.
At those moments, he showed a level of concentration so sharp that even Balmung found himself impressed.
A genius, then.
Balmung was not fond of the word genius. The standard was too vague, and he had seen too many mediocre creatures praised under that name.
To his mind, those whom others called geniuses were all, without exception, lacking in some vital measure.
[Do you intend to continue?]
“Yeah, I have to.”
Once his breathing had settled, Kael immediately grabbed Balmung’s hilt.
The tremor in his shoulders subsided, and his stance sharpened into a clean, focused edge.
“Hoo…”
He exhaled and swung the sword.
Swish.
It was by no means fast. In fact, it was strangely slow.
But speed was not everything.
And no amount of greed could conjure a shortcut where none existed.
I’m only a beginner who’s just now entering swordsmanship.
He had no intention of forcing some half-baked stubbornness into the equation. If he was a beginner, then he’d learn like one—starting with the basics.
Kael had once been a professional athlete who competed on the world stage. He knew better than most just how important fundamentals were.
There were no shortcuts. Master the basics properly, and you’d suffer less later.
Besides, opportunities like this don’t come around every day.
Kael had an eye for quality.
Balmung was an excellent teacher. Every time he listened to the sword’s critiques and advice, he learned something new.
[No matter how elegantly one dresses it up, swordsmanship is, at its core, merely the art of harming others. One does not need much skill to kill a man. You saw it yourself, did you not? That insolent beast of a man was beheaded in the end and died just the same.]
That was true enough. Even the monster that had seemed scarcely human had not escaped death once his head was severed.
Kael swung the sword the way Balmung had taught him.
Swish.
The tip drew a graceful arc through the air.
A sword was harder to keep steady the slower you swung it.
Yet now, no matter how slowly Kael moved the blade, its tip no longer wavered.
[I suppose one could say you have taken your first steps at last.]
Balmung’s swordsmanship consisted of four forms in total.
Of those, the first Kael had learned was the slash that most people would simply call the foundation of swordsmanship.
Balmung called that slash Straight Mind.
There was nothing flashy enough to inspire awe.
It was a simple, intuitive technique focused solely on cutting down the opponent.
Plain at a glance, but Kael had already experienced the limits of that Straight Mind.
I used this simple slash to overpower both Harkan and Luke.
And what was more, it had been wielded through Kael’s own hands.
The sensation, the experience of that moment still lived vividly in his body and mind.
Still a long way to go.
Balmung might have said he had taken his first steps, but Kael knew exactly how lacking he still was.
There was a tremendous gap between the sword that had cleaved Harkan and the sword Kael could use now. It was almost embarrassing to compare the two at all.
This bastard is absurd.
But Balmung thought differently.
It had only been one week since Kael had begun learning the sword in earnest.
For an ordinary man, it would take ten years.
For a talented one, five.
And for a genius, one.
Yet Kael had learned it in just one week.
Even if it was only the basics, it was honestly ridiculous.
In a single week, Kael had grasped the foundation of Straight Mind.
It was absurd. His growth rate had already soared far beyond the bounds of normality.
Still, Balmung did not say that aloud. He knew the most lethal poison for a genius was arrogance.
[That will be enough for today. There is no benefit in overdoing it.]
“Yeah, fine… Then I’ll just loosen up a bit more and call it a day.”
After setting Balmung down, Kael began moving his body lightly.
He bounced in place, threw punches into the empty air, then later added kicks at the right moments, along with sprawls and the motions for takedowns.
It was shadowboxing—the same thing he’d done every day back when he was an athlete.
The reason he still did it now was habit. If he didn’t, it felt like his skin would crawl.
[…Just who taught you that martial art?]
“Come on, who’d I learn it from? I figured it out myself.”
[How amusing. Do you take me for a fool? That martial art is strange enough on its own, but your conditioning methods are unusual as well. Where in the world did you learn such things?]
“Well… I guess I learned them from books and stuff?”
[Hmph. If you do not wish to speak of it, then say no more.]
Kael brushed it off with a vague answer. It wasn’t that he wanted to hide anything so much as it was that he simply couldn’t say it.
Telling him I learned it in a world different from this one would really go over well.
In any case, Kael was spending every day training his body while learning the sword. To him, basic physical ability mattered even more than swordsmanship.
Cardiovascular endurance, strength, muscular endurance, reflexes, explosive power, even flexibility.
Kael kept training without pause, raising every aspect of his physical condition.
There are limits without a coach or equipment, of course.
Back when he was a fighter, he’d had specialized coaches for every discipline. Before a match, there were even concentrated training periods called camps, where he could push his skill to the extreme.
Scientific, professional training could improve a human body quickly and efficiently.
If I don’t have teeth, I’ll make do with gums.
He might not have the equipment, but he still had memory and knowledge. Kael used those to strengthen his body.
[I may dislike it, but…]
Balmung, too, had no choice but to admit it as he watched.
Kael’s training methods were extremely effective.
* * *
“Then shall we indulge in a little deviation today, for a change?”
“...For a change?”
Luke tried to object, but Kael ignored him lightly.
The two of them naturally made their way toward the underground arena called Fight Club.
As they descended the stairs, a thick mix of blood and sweat greeted them in the air.
Cheers and shouts burst from beyond the iron mesh, followed by the crack of fists landing hard.
The feverish heat of people stoked by money and violence filled the underground to the brim.
“...What exactly is supposed to be fun about this?”
Luke frowned as though he had just witnessed something disgusting.
It was an entirely understandable reaction.
Raw violence.
Flesh split, bones shattered, blood splattered across the floor.
And people roared as they wagered money on such horrifying, brutal scenes.
This is a little awkward to say, but…
Honestly, it was right up Kael’s alley.
The moment he stepped into the underground arena, he could barely keep the corners of his mouth from lifting.
“Ah, guests. I’ll escort you to your seats this way.”
A man who looked like an employee of Fight Club guided them to their places.
Compared to the rest of the venue, the area was clearly much more comfortable, reserved for guests who had paid enough to sit in the premium section.
Kael sat down naturally and thought,
I can pretty much guess where this is going.
The Fight Club associate who had brought Kael here kept glancing at him nervously, clearly unable to settle down.
And several other spectators kept sneaking looks in Kael’s direction as well.
With that much obvious reaction, it would be strange not to notice something was up.
I just hope this doesn’t turn out too predictable.
He was a little curious about how they planned to broach the subject.
Feeling like a man who’d come to the movies, Kael settled in and began watching the match with a small sense of anticipation.
“...Hm.”
After watching for a while, Kael made a faint expression of discomfort.
Since it was an unregulated bout, it was certainly violent and stimulating, and at first it had been watchable enough—but after a while, how should he put it?
[Pathetic.]
Yeah, pretty much.
The overall level was painfully low.
It was basically a street brawl, with no technique and no strategy whatsoever.
Wow, this is boring enough to make me lose interest.
Just as he was beginning to get bored, the same staff member who had led him to his seat approached.
“Are the matches to your liking?”
“Not really. They’re boring as hell.”
“...Haha, I see. Ah, in that case, sir, we’ve prepared a special event just for you. If you’d be willing, might I explain it to you?”
“An event? You’re not going to tell me to go down there and join in, are you?”
“...”
“Wow. So that really was it?”
Kael gave an incredulous look at the employee’s stone-stiff face.
“W-well, the thing is…”
“No, I mean, I’m not saying I hate it.”
Coward. It was less interesting than he’d expected, but Kael still grinned and went on.
“So? I just head down now?”
* * *
“...He really does all sorts of things, doesn’t he?”
Luke let out a dry laugh when he saw Kael enter the ring encircled by iron mesh.
He’d already thought the man was impossible to predict, but even then, he’d never expected him to go so far as to personally enter an illegal match like this.
And just before stepping in, Kael had even handed Luke all the money he’d won at the gambling den and left him with these words:
- Put it all on me. Got that?
At the time, Luke had truly had no response at all.
That man… is he really the captain of the guard?
He’d genuinely begun to wonder.
What kind of superior told a subordinate to bet money in a situation like this?
In the first place, it was strange enough that a guard captain would even participate in a match like this.
“...Ahem.”
Of course, that did not mean Luke had failed to place a bet.
In the end, Luke had bet on Kael.
All the money he had to his name.