The Fool's Sword (3)
Honestly speaking.
The Demon King had assumed that in that hell which was not quite hell, the boy would be pushed to his emotional limits—ground down through dozens upon dozens of failures.
In the end he would surely pick himself back up, but the Demon King had imagined the process would be anything but easy.
And yet, what a surprise.
He doesn't collapse even once.
He never showed it outwardly, but inside, the boy must have despaired a thousand times over. He must have shuddered at every moment beneath the driving rain of loneliness and self-doubt.
If he had seemed to be struggling, the Demon King would have run him through a reasonable amount of torment and then sent him back to reality with a pat on the head.
Had Cariel complained of the hardship, voiced his grievances openly, the Demon King would have accepted it without complaint.
But the boy never once resented anyone. Never once declared that he was done.
He simply threw himself into it, all the way to the end.
In that respect, he takes right after the Hero.
Truthfully, the resemblance showed only in those two eyes—amber, gold as if someone had gouged out a chunk of the sun and set it there.
Judging by appearance alone, it was Ermina's traits that stood out more. That black hair, fine as silk thread; his features overall delicate in line, almost pretty.
But his temperament? His fire?
Or to put it precisely—his grit? His will?
The single most essential aptitude and nature a Hero could possess.
In that, Cariel resembled Rueld.
…Granted, the boy had been beaten down and worn thin by now, but his innate character was too honest and too kind to curse or resent another. The way he swallowed everything, hoarded it inside himself until it curdled into self-loathing and gloom—that, try as he might to see it any other way, the Demon King knew took after Ermina.
And yet.
It was still too early.
Far too early to pass judgment on so little.
Even now, so much about Cariel remained unknown to the Demon King.
Anyone watching might say he'd already mapped ninety percent of the boy—that surely that was enough to know it all. But unanswered questions still lay scattered everywhere.
Perhaps my last source of amusement. And it's not as if I lack the time—so I'd like to dig into him slowly, at my leisure.
Ah, the true flavor of cheese and wine, aged as long as possible and drawn out only at the moment of peak ripeness!
By all common sense, a teacher and student could not be at the same level, nor hovering vaguely close to it—not if the concept of truly teaching was to hold.
And the Imperial Academy, standing at the very heart of the Empire, was a jewel among jewels—the most storied institution on the continent. To serve as an instructor there meant being counted among the continent's foremost educators and its foremost practitioners alike.
And yet.
They were, at the end of the day, human.
Each had their own circumstances. Some were swayed by those in power, some obsessed over reputation and performance records. Some were captive to their need for approval; others chased vanity more naked still. Some gave their all to the vocation of teaching, out of responsibility or genuine pride in it—while others had been shoved into the post against their will, or saddled with it as an unwanted hand-me-down.
And some treated the whole thing as a stepping-stone, hoping to climb to some higher place through it.
Lambert, now staring thirty dead in the eye, was, in exactly that sense, a man whose every facet could be called middling. Half-finished. Awkward.
If there was one thing anyone ever acknowledged in him, it was that he handled a sword well enough? That his physical gifts were exceptional?
He had certainly never been lazy.
But the wall of talent, the rampart of innate ability, was thicker still.
When he had suffered through eight hours of practice, those insufferable prodigies had ground away for hours more. Forgoing rest entirely—even their idle hours of eating and drinking they sacrificed to whet their skills.
Why would anyone live like that?
What did all that agony ever leave you with, in the end?
He had no regrets. He told himself he had none.
But as one year became several, and five stretched toward ten, the ground beneath their feet had split into two entirely different elevations.
Perhaps it was because he'd never had a stage on which to distinguish himself. Perhaps he'd simply never been given the credit.
Given only the chance, he might have been chosen too—by the Holy Sword, or one of the Sacred Relics, or some such thing.
He would curse his lineage out of nowhere, then curse the self of years past for not trying just a little harder—only to learn, again and again, that reality changed for none of it, that it only hurt.
And so Lambert became an adult—the very same kind of adult as all the other adults around him.
And so.
Here stood the child of the Hero. A boy once rumored, far and wide, to have been something extraordinary in his childhood—who, upon actually being seen, was this utterly talentless. Who didn't even try.
If that was all he was, why not simply twiddle a quill for the rest of his life? Why pick up a sword at all?
…Was he meant to be an easy mark? Is that it?
What on earth had he learned from Sir Rueld?
If I'd had a father like Rueld.
…I could have been a hero too.
"Enough! That is enou—!"
Lambert was jolted out of his brooding. A student was howling into the floor, face pressed flat against the dirt of the training ground, half-scream, half-plea.
It was a student whose skill was, for his age, not at all bad. Solid fundamentals, and no small measure of natural talent.
Almost like looking at his own younger self.
But in all his years as a swordsmanship instructor, Lambert had watched countless people with talent just like his. He, too, had once believed himself special—set apart, if only a little—and he had ended his climb one single step into the extraordinary. No further.
Setting foot inside the Imperial Academy was, in itself, proof that one had been acknowledged.
And so.
…He could not be allowed to be crushed into the ground like that, so listlessly. Call it a mock duel if you will, but a gap that wide was simply unbecoming.
And the one who had put that student there—
The Hero's stain.
The lizard's tail spawned by a dragon.
The one they called the Fool of Incompetence.
…Cariel Brendiar. Of all people.
Impossible. It could not be—and it should not be.
Indeed, every onlooker wore the same visible unease, plainly at a loss for how to process what was happening before their eyes.
"Next."
With a wooden practice sword resting across his shoulder, Cariel pronounced it without a flicker of feeling on his face.
"……."
With those parched, lightless eyes, he was calmly sweeping his gaze across the assembled students—the very people who had sneered at him and looked down their noses at him.
Lambert felt cold sweat trickle down his back.
What was there to be nervous about? He was just a student. Nothing about him was impressive, nothing special.
His mana handling was still a shambles; the meager energy that seeped from him was thin as a candle flame that even the faintest breeze would snuff out. His body, when it moved, was more pathetic than that of a wooden dummy.
So then why.
…Why had he won?
Come to think of it, Cariel hadn't actually subdued anyone with his swordsmanship at all.
The instant he dodged the first strike, he smashed his backhand up into the boy's chin. Then, having calmly deflected the opponent's desperate follow-up, he swept a foot behind the student's ankle to collapse his balance—and before the boy could so much as stumble, seized his left arm and bent it back behind him.
"……."
And what, one might ask, had the wooden sword in his hand been doing all the while?
Nothing.
He had simply been holding it.
No parries, not a single casual flourish—no menacing shout, no swing, no purpose whatsoever. He had simply been holding it.
That rumor… it was actually true?
The unbelievable story that Patina—the youngest female member ever admitted to the Golden Dragon Knights—had been floored by him in a single exchange.
If she were granting a concession to a close younger brother, a childhood companion with whom her ties had always been exceptional, that would be one thing. Easy enough to believe.
But was such a thing really worth raising a rumor over?
Unless… unless the truth was that his baseline was so abysmally low that a single loss was remarkable enough to gossip about. Even then—
Wouldn't that be its own fresh insult heaped upon Cariel?
"One lucky win and you think you get to lord it over us? Fine! I'll take you on myself!"
Another student stepped forward, expression full of swagger, as if he'd worked up great courage to do it.
A boy ranked a good twenty places above the last one in practical swordsmanship—the heir to a viscount's house. It seemed the very hypothesis of his own defeat had never once crossed his mind. He was brimming with confidence.
…And yet.
"??"
Cariel, gripping his sword in the reverse hand, lashed out in a single thrust.
The end of the wooden hilt—the likewise wooden crossguard, the pommel—drove straight into the student's Adam's apple. With a strangled ugk, the boy clutched at his throat and crumpled to the ground in an undignified heap.
"……."
The gaze Cariel turned down upon him did not waver by a hair.
No—that wasn't quite right either.
Is he… on guard?
No. Not wariness. That look was—
The gaze of a great predator, weighing whether to snap the prey's throat or let it live.
Because so long as the prey still breathed—
the hunt was not yet over.
"Next."
His foot twitched, ever so slightly—then did not carry through into a following motion.
Just now…
He could have driven that foot upward into the boy's skull, could have ground his heel across his throat, his face. It would have cost him nothing.
But he stopped short.
…Which meant.
Not emotion—reason. The boy was controlling himself, calibrating himself, with clinical precision. Every result he'd produced so far stood as irrefutable proof of it.
"……."
At some point, Cariel's gaze had come to rest on Lambert himself.
Those pupils, drained of light. Those eyes, clouded and sunk deep.
It felt as if the boy were rifling through the contents of his skull.
Lambert's skin crawled.
"Shall we continue?"
Continue what?
"Next."
He had felled only two. So why was it that no one stepped up to claim the next turn?
This was Cariel—the boy they had treated as so utterly harmless, so beneath contempt.
Even now, he looked barely steady on his feet.
So why… why had the ones who'd swaggered forward so boldly been dispatched as easily as children swatting flies?
"H-how can you fight bare-handed in a sword d—"
Even the student who tried to raise that objection aloud must have known exactly how cheap and sordid the excuse would sound. Perhaps that was why no one echoed him; his words simply trailed off into nothing.
"Then by all means, step forward and prove otherwise."
More precisely—
the moment Cariel fixed his eyes on him, the boy's voice died in his throat.
"If you wish it, I'll use a sword too. But be prepared to have your body broken. My training has been too short and my methods too crude—I haven't yet learned how to hold my strength back."
No hostility. No menace in his voice at all.
Only a calm, level warning—delivered like a judge reading out the facts of a case. And that very composure, that perfect stillness, only made the whole scene feel more and more like something out of place in the world.
If I had power.
If, for lack of power, he had been ignored and scorned and laughed at—bullied without cause, time and time again—
if his suffering had been entirely unearned—
could he really stand there like that? Could anyone—
be quite so… composed?
Neither cold nor hot, nor even lukewarm. A bearing that approached pure indifference.
Even as the arrows of resentment flew at him from every direction—
and there was no shortage of people in this room with no excuse to offer, none at all—
and that was precisely the problem.
It was kindling something ominous in every heart present.
"……."
Where, exactly, would the arrow of retribution find its mark? Which target was it trained upon, even now?
When would the bowstring be released? When would the arrow fly?
Above all—
…What was he thinking? What did he want?
The longer they watched him, the longer they studied him, the deeper the impenetrability of his intentions became—and the seeds of anxiety that had been sown in every breast finally, inevitably, sprouted.
As fear. As the unknown.
As if some invisible beast's jaws had settled at the nape of the neck, teeth just shy of closing—
the hard enamel, the sharp edge of each tooth tracing a slow, glacial line across skin and the fine hairs standing upon it.
Every sensation of it landed with visceral, aching clarity.
"Hahk—!"
One of the girls swallowed her breath whole. The moment Cariel's eyes turned toward her, she dropped to the ground without meaning to, her knees giving out beneath her.
"What will you do?"
Cariel asked it while looking Lambert dead in the eye.
A teacher might, within limits, conduct an instructional duel with a student. But only within limits. No further. It could not go beyond that.
To fight a student you were meant to teach to a standstill? There was no dishonor quite like it.
And even short of a true stalemate—if a teacher pressed a student to the wall and conceded only a few moves of slack, that too was disgrace.
And so.
Unless one was certain of overwhelming the opponent, facing a student across the practice ground held nothing but loss. Nothing whatsoever to be gained.
"……."
No. Wait. That wasn't—
Had he truly worried about such things, mere days ago? Over this Cariel? Over that pathetic stain? Over the Fool of Incompetence?
"I can't very well go around slitting every throat and driving a blade into every heart one by one, can I."
Out of nowhere—
with that same blank expression, Cariel suddenly let slip something utterly chilling.
"You should start catching on by now."
This—
"This is a development that can no longer be avoided."
"So long as you are a swordsman, a knight—"
"This is your final warning. Choose."
Would you face this with your life on the line?
Or—
"Will you keep it within the bounds of a simple duel?"
"C-Cariel. You can't… there's nothing you won't say to your teacher, is there…"
"Don't play word games with me. Isn't that exactly what you've always droned at me? Talk is where it ends. Say one more word—"
and I will kill you.
…….
He never made a sound.
Only his lips moved. But every word of it reached Lambert's watching eyes with perfect, unambiguous clarity.
"Th-this insolen…ce…"
"……."
Why.
Why did a boy who had just declared he would kill a man show no emotion at all?
Even the tiniest reaction—the smallest crack—would have been natural. Something. Anything.
And yet there was weight behind every word that left his mouth.
None of it made any sense.
But it made no difference whether Lambert understood or not.
Having granted what he evidently considered sufficient time to prepare, Cariel walked over calmly and leveled his wooden sword.
"Then—one move, if you please."
Cariel held a measure of pity in his heart.
Because he had been green, and foolish. Because he had been weak, and helpless. Because he had allowed these people's claws into his flesh far, far too easily—
this calamity had been set in motion.
If that, too, counted as his fault, then so be it.
And so—
It wasn't I who started it. But if it was ignited because of me, if it began with me—
then severing that rotten loop is, wholly and entirely, my duty. My responsibility.