Awakening
“What did I just miss?”
Whoosh!
Rubellion’s blade skimmed past my cheek. A split second too late, the skin split open and the northern chill seeped straight into the wound.
“And what did you miss this time?”
Slash!
His sword carved a diagonal line across my shoulder. Every single motion—every path of that blade—remained completely invisible to me.
It couldn’t be only the gap between four Cores and six. The way he kept asking meant I was supposed to be able to see it, yet somehow I still couldn’t.
The real problem was…
…Fuck, I don’t know either!!
Why couldn’t I see it? He said I was looking twice and I was looking twice—so why?
My brain simply refused to understand.
“You are a knight, yet you move your body like a mage.”
Slash!
“And though you are a mage, you wield mana like a knight.”
Whoosh!
Nothing but riddles since we started. What are you, a sphinx?
I move like a mage and use mana like a knight?
I’d never thought of it that way. All I’d ever focused on was how to use both in harmony—how to fuse them together.
Isn’t that normal? Either you specialize and focus, or you let them complement and elevate each other. One or the other.
I chose the latter and thought I’d been doing fine. Hell, I’d grown so explosively that other people were green with envy and quietly panicking.
“Boy, if you don’t find the answer soon, frostbite is going to make your life very unpleasant.”
“Kh…!”
“You are a knight, yet you move like a—”
The hellish riddle continued. He repeated the same words while swinging his sword without mercy. At this rate my body would end up looking like a rag, so I put some distance between us.
Scattered across the snowfield between me and Rubellion was the blood that had sprayed from my wounds—like some piece of modern art. If I pressed paper against it and sold the print, how much would I get?
“Haaah… haaah…”
“Giving up already? A man who draws his sword should at least swing it properly!”
He didn’t chase me. Instead he tapped his own shoulder with the flat of his blade.
“Kh… I can still go!”
“Good. That’s the escort knight of Her Highness the Princess!”
With a satisfied laugh he swung again.
Shhhraaak—!
Dozens of silver sword auras exploded from his blade and came screaming toward me.
He said it was inefficient. So be efficient… Looking twice is wasteful, so just once… only once…
The safe spot—
There!
BOOOOM—!
I planted my feet on the single point that had flashed into view for an instant. Every sword aura whistled past me by the thickness of a few sheets of paper.
“Yes. That’s it. That’s how you look.”
“……!”
A jolt like electricity raced through my entire body. That sensation just now—I clung to it, desperate not to forget.
So that’s what he meant.
I finally understood what he’d been saying. Looks like I really do have to learn by getting my ass kicked.
Shhh-shhh-shhh-shhk—!!
Even denser sword auras, woven like a net, came flying. But this time I saw them. The feints mixed in among the real strikes, the sleight of hand—I stepped straight into the gap.
“Ooooh—!!”
“That’s it! That’s the way!”
Cheers erupted from the watching knights.
“Whoa, did he just have a breakthrough?”
“So is Ricarton a five-Core knight now?”
“Don’t be an idiot. You think five Cores is something you reach with one tiny realization? If it were that easy we’d all have been five-Cores ages ago.”
“Ahem… Northern knights do tend to run their mouths a little…”
“Ah—sorry…”
Rubellion rested his sword on his shoulder and laughed heartily.
“Hahaha! That’s it. You look with the Mana Eye and the flesh eye at the same time! Checking something you’ve already seen a second time is nothing but wasted motion.”
“Mana Eye and flesh eye…”
Until now I’d treated what my eyes saw and what my mana felt as two completely separate things. Old habits from my previous life that I still hadn’t shaken off.
…Time to say goodbye.
I would bury the me of my past life right here.
I am Ricarton.
Escort knight of Seriel Adelin Acilion.
“That’s a fine face, boy.”
He let his sword hang loosely the same way he had earlier. This time, though, I saw it clearly—every motion.
While lowering the blade he accelerated only the mana wrapped around it for a single instant. The result: the mana reached the impact point first while the physical sword was still falling, and the blade simply followed the path the mana had already carved.
I saw it with the Mana Eye, then confirmed it again with my flesh eyes—so even though I’d watched his movement twice, I still missed it.
No. I missed it because I watched it twice.
“You saw it.”
“……I saw it.”
“Then our bodies are warm enough. Shall we have a real spar?”
“……That was just a warm-up? We’re not done?”
“Hahaha. You still haven’t swung your sword properly even once.”
The moment he began drawing mana again—
KRAAAASH—!
The ground beside us erupted. A massive tusked beast like a mammoth burst up through the snow, ice glittering along its hide.
“Ice Tusks!”
“Something that size is a giant magical beast! A Giant Ice Tusk!”
“BUWOOOOAR—!!”
The roar of the Giant Ice Tusk shook the air, and from the hole it had left, boar-sized Ice Tusks came pouring out by the dozen.
“……No wonder we couldn’t see them—they were tunneling. Boy, step back.”
“I can fight too.”
“Hahaha. There’s something I want to show you.”
Rubellion raised his sword high overhead. Sunlight breaking through the clouds fractured into countless rays at the tip of his blade.
“This is the realm you should aim for. Or perhaps, for you, even this will only be a waystation.”
Wind suddenly howled toward him. I immediately looked inside his body.
The fifth Core, then the sixth, lit up one after another.
FWOOOOSH—!!
A storm erupted around him as if he had cast a spell.
“Young knight, simply watch. This is nothing more than the footprints of a knight who walked the path ahead of you.”
When the storm cleared, his sword had already struck the ground.
It was clean.
And perfect.
A single stroke.
——KUUUUNG!!!
The sound arrived a beat late, chasing the path of the blade. The mountain-sized Ice Tusk split cleanly into two halves, and the earth along that same straight line—hills and all—was cleaved in two.
“……Holy shit.”
So once you reach six Cores you can actually cut the ground itself.
“BUWOOOAR—!”
“SQUEEE—!”
With their leader killed in a single blow, hundreds of Ice Tusks went berserk. Eyes blood-red, they charged through a cloud of powdery snow.
“Boy, do you enjoy hunting?”
“Not really my hobby.”
“Hahaha. Then today you’ll pick up a new one.”
He sprinted forward first. I ran right beside him.
“Boy, care to bet who bags more?”
“How am I supposed to beat the Commander?”
“Hahaha, I’ll only use up to my fourth Core. You’re free to use magic.”
“……Deal.”
His emergency balance patch was more than acceptable.
Mana from the opened Cores flowed through my circuits and reinforced my muscles. A different kind of mana rose from my dantian and followed the same paths.
Lightning sparked to life in my left hand.
CRACKLE-ZZZT—!!
The electricity raced across the snow and turned dozens of Ice Tusks into roast pork—
“Grunt—.”
“Buhiit?”
—or rather, it didn’t.
“What the hell.”
They tanked a fourth-Class lightning spell by simply shaking their heads.
“Hahaha! Forgot to mention—northern magical beasts have strong mana resistance.”
“Are you serious…”
You could’ve told me that before the bet.
Bet’s off. Table flip!
Balance patch again!!
Screw it.
Fine. No choice.
I poured every scrap of mana into reinforcing sword and body. Their stiff, tough hides barely took an edge, and their tusks were hard enough to stop my blade cold. Only by honing the mana to a razor’s edge could the sword bite.
And there were hundreds of the bastards.
Just what kind of place was the North?
Thud! —Crack!
An Ice Tusk charged into the spot where I’d been standing a second earlier and buried its head in the snow. Instantly, ice spikes erupted from the surrounding field.
“If you take a direct hit from an Ice Tusk’s mana, frostbite will be the least of your worries. Careful!”
I’d fought magical beasts while on the run before. They used mana too—different in nature from human mana, but the principle was roughly the same. So a creature pouring out mana this dense should have something like a Mana Eye of its own.
I shifted mana the way one projects sword aura. Exactly as Rubellion had done, a blade of pure mana reached the impact point first.
The beast stopped dead in front of it.
I didn’t stop. I leapt once more and drove my sword straight through its brow.
“……I was saving that for our next spar.”
Beside me, Rubellion’s shoulders slumped in exaggerated disappointment.
Slash—!
“Kyaaaak—…”
“That’s… five hundred and six!”
I’d been swinging my sword in a mindless frenzy, and before I knew it the sun was already dipping low.
“How many for you, boy?”
“……Two hundred eighteen.”
I wasn’t cursing. Somewhere in the middle I’d gotten too tired to keep count, but it was roughly that many.
“Hahaha. I win!”
He looked as delighted as an uncle who’d just beaten his nephew at a holiday game.
“We’re finished here. Process them before the sun sets!”
“Yes, sir!”
Knights of the Pure White Knighthood rushed in and began butchering the Ice Tusk corpses. While the two of us had been fighting, the other knights had apparently been clearing out magical beasts migrating south from different points.
The northern knights worked with practiced speed, harvesting mana stones and useful byproducts. Seriel’s knights watched and learned beside them.
By the time every last carcass had been processed, the sun had already slipped behind the mountains on the horizon.
“Let’s head back.”
“You’ve returned.”
“Yes.”
The moment Seriel saw me, her brow furrowed.
“I distinctly ordered you to deal with magical beasts, yet you return covered in sword wounds. What happened? Were you ambushed?”
“Ah. This… isn’t from that.”
Seriel was worried about me? The surprise and the quiet swell of emotion almost made me spill the whole story, but it would drag on and only worry her more, so I held back.
“If you start speaking, finish the sentence, you frustrating boy!”
Her fist clenched, so I hurried on.
“Ah—it really wasn’t anything serious. The Commander of the Pure White Knighthood gave me a sparring lesson, and I was too slow to grasp the point. You know how I am—I only learn by getting hit. Still, I managed to shed an old habit and learned how to align the Mana Eye with the flesh eye. And I immediately applied what I learned from the spar in actual combat.”
When I finished she gave a small nod.
Mm. That felt like a mutually satisfactory briefing.
“Then…”
“Very well. I understand. However.”
I was about to leave with a pleased smile when she spoke again.
“Yes?”
Seriel rose from her seat. Why get up? Just stay by the warm fireplace where it’s comfortable.
Her insulated boots clicked across the floor as she walked to a cabinet.
“Even after taking that many blows, it seems you still have not grasped the proper manner of speaking with me.”
When she turned, a whip was in her hand.
Not an ordinary whip—one studded with iron thorns.
Why on earth was something like that kept in a drawer?
“……Y-Your Majesty?”
“It appears my instruction has been insufficient. I shall engrave the lesson thoroughly this time.”
Whiiip— CRACK!!
A terrifying crack of air split right in front of my face.
“W-Wait a moment! You’ll actually kill me!”
“Awaken! Awaken, Ricarton!!”
“Aaaagh! Your Majesty! Aack!! Aaaagh!!!”