Chapter 27
Chapter 27
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 27
Chapter Title: #5 Magic Beast Hunt (4)
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Tiria suddenly fainted, and Elric instinctively scooped her up in his arms.
“Ugh…!”
The added weight on his knee sent a stab of pain through him.
Luton reached out in alarm as Elric’s face twisted in pain, but Elric shook his head.
“I’ll carry her on my back. Please lead the way.”
“Captain! But your knee…”
“It’s fine. Let’s go.”
Luton gritted his teeth, then hurried ahead with an anxious look.
Elric slung her over one shoulder and shuffled forward, barely keeping his balance with his staff.
The snowfall thickened, narrowing his vision. That made him pour even more mental effort into spatial detection using mana.
It was then.
“Captain! Found it!”
Luton, who had gone far ahead, spotted the cabin.
Elric narrowed his eyes and looked toward him.
‘It’s there…!’
The cabin from his memories stood there unchanged.
It felt devoid of any signs of life, suggesting his master hadn’t returned even once since leaving.
Not that it mattered right now.
Elric headed straight for the cabin and pushed open the door.
Kiiiiiik—
An unpleasant screech accompanied the reveal of the interior.
“Cough! Cough!”
Luton waved his hands and coughed at the swirling dust.
Just as he reacted, the inside was filled with hazy dust, making it hard to breathe.
“First, let’s air it out. You lot, get a fire going over there.”
Elric ordered the hunters to light a firewood fire, then laid Tiria on the wooden bed.
Even bundled up like this, she shivered pitifully.
‘What the….’
Why had she come along in this condition?
At that moment, she just seemed reckless.
*
“For now, I’ll head down to the village. We don’t know how long the snow will last, so we need to ask for help.”
“Please do.”
“Hey, you old men, follow me.”
It was the moment they had roughly cleared the dust and lit the fireplace.
The cabin interior had definitely warmed up, and Tiria’s breathing had steadied as she fell into a deeper sleep.
Luton took the hunters and left the cabin to seek external help.
Only then did Elric, alone in the cabin, sigh and sit down.
‘What a ordeal this is….’
A hollow laugh escaped him.
Had coming on the hunt with his injuries been the problem?
No, this was an accident.
What were the odds of a sudden blizzard under such a clear sky?
Elric shook off stray thoughts and warmed himself by the firewood.
His expression wasn’t great.
‘This is troubling.’
He had long surpassed the realm where heat or cold could affect him, so illness from that wasn’t a worry—but his knee was the issue.
He’d been recovering well, but pushing it unnecessarily might extend his recovery time.
That was troubling, but on the other hand… fortunate?
‘…Fortunate?’
Why fortunate?
Elric groaned and rubbed the back of his neck.
‘Master would’ve scolded me.’
The man who taught that body management was the most important virtue for a knight.
Sitting in his master’s old cabin made those thoughts flood even stronger.
Elric looked around the interior.
Everything was just as it had been.
The wooden sword on the wall, the quill and yellowed paper on the desk, the fireplace, and that shabby wooden bed.
The man had only taken his sword when he left, so of course it was all still here.
‘I wonder what he’s up to now.’
With his mind at ease, his thoughts drifted further.
Confronted by his traces, Elric suddenly recalled his first meeting with his master.
*
It had been 18 years ago already.
Back then, six-year-old Elric was just starting to make a name for himself in the village as a little troublemaker, and that day had been a snowy winter day just like today.
Obsessed with knight games, Elric led the village kids up the back mountain.
Magic beast hunt.
Innocent children setting out on a journey that risked their lives.
They’d often played “magic beast hunt” in the back mountains before, so none of them really saw it as dangerous.
Adults’ warnings just felt like nagging at that age.
Friends whose faces were now blurry, plus Luton and Bart.
Elric huddled with his friends and climbed the mountain.
“Grrrrr—”
But that day, they encountered a magic beast.
Black body, yellowish eyes.
That was the last of Elric’s memory of it.
Everything after was still foggy, like mist, even now.
The only thing he could be sure of was that he’d met the magic beast that day, gotten a deep wound on his nape, and the scar still remained below his ear.
His master was the man he met that day.
“You’re awake.”
Elric came to on the cabin bed.
With wild white hair, unkempt beard, and clothes crudely stitched from beast hides, he looked like a bandit living in the mountains.
Yet there was a mysterious power in that aged voice.
“Bold, facing a magic beast despite your age.”
His master was the benefactor who saved Elric from the magic beast.
According to him, Elric had been holding a stick against it.
Elric only later learned that if the beast hadn’t been toying with him, and if his master hadn’t found them, he would’ve died in moments.
What came after was still vivid.
Elric thanked him, bandages wrapped around his neck and jaw.
In response, his master made that proposal.
“Th-thank you, sir…”
“No need for thanks. I didn’t save you for free.”
“Huh?”
“Kid, learn the sword from me.”
Looking back, it was funny.
“Who’re you, mister?”
So rude—even now, Elric cringed at his past self.
And his master seemed even greater for enduring it.
His master said just one word.
That one word captivated Elric.
“Knight.”
Those gleaming golden eyes were still vivid.
“I am a knight.”
That was their first meeting.
*
Crackle, crackle—
The firewood screamed in the hearth.
Elric poked it with a spit, a wistful smile on his face.
‘He was such a strange man.’
Recalling his master brought many oddities to mind now.
First, his identity—Elric still didn’t know what his master had done.
He’d lived alone in this dangerous mountainside, sustaining himself by hunting, with no ties to the villagers.
When asked once why not live in the village, the answer was, “I only associate with humans.”
That wasn’t the only weird thing.
‘His training methods were strange too, come to think of it.’
He called himself a knight with deep swordsmanship knowledge, but his training had many odd corners in hindsight.
Having lived through battlefields, Elric now knew a knight needed a sturdy body and refined mana.
That required physical conditioning and mental cultivation for mana control.
But his master’s way was different.
-Open the Sword Realm.
He’d say that and repeat spars endlessly.
Sparring was too polite a word.
He just kept exposing Elric to killing intent nonstop.
-Get up. Humans don’t die from that.
Repeating that while swinging a razor-sharp blade.
He did teach a mana cultivation method, but it was far from one strengthened through mental discipline.
Elric still didn’t know its name.
He just called it ‘Sword Realm’ for convenience, borrowing his master’s words.
The funny part was that it actually worked.
A swordsmanship focused solely on offense, ignoring defense. And a bizarre mana cultivation that grew stronger the thicker the killing intent.
Elric couldn’t deny their huge role in reaching the Continent’s Seven Strongest at 19.
As his thoughts continued, a question arose.
‘Is he still alive?’
He left the cabin the day Elric turned 12.
Just saying it was time to go, so Elric didn’t know his whereabouts.
So strong, he wouldn’t die to a blade—but he was already old.
Maybe he passed from old age.
‘No… probably not.’
Elric couldn’t picture him dying of natural causes.
As he chuckled wryly—
Flinch—
Elric’s body jerked.
His head snapped up.
His gaze turned toward the village.
Something pinged on the wide mana net he’d spread.
“Damn…!”
Elric shot to his feet.
It was an individual cloaked in mana strong enough for a Blade Wolf.
‘Not just one!’
They were in a pack.
Five of them.
In the center, arrayed as if encircling—
“Luton!”
It was Luton.