Chapter 5
Chapter 5
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 5
Chapter Title: Training (1)
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“Victor! What in the world is this about!”
Paul Haksen, the head of the Viscount Haksen family, grabbed Victor and demanded an explanation of the whole affair.
Victor explained everything that had happened in the city with a voice full of uncertainty.
As expected, Paul Haksen didn’t believe Victor.
“Where did you come up with this nonsense!”
“I-it’s true!”
“Demian has never held a sword in his life! And you’re saying that boy killed dozens of men and even took out an apprentice knight?”
Victor felt unjustly on the verge of death.
What made it even more frustrating was that it sounded unbelievable even to him.
“This won’t do! I’ll send someone myself to verify it!”
Paul Haksen immediately dispatched the butler to Landwalk City.
The butler who left at dusk returned the next day at lunchtime.
“How did it go?”
The butler hesitated to answer. Only after Paul Haksen urged him did he speak.
“Victor was right. There was a massacre at a tavern run by the Black Snake. Rumors are spreading throughout the castle that the perpetrator was a single nobleman.”
Paul Haksen clutched his head.
He was so confused that the world seemed to spin before his eyes.
“You’ve done well. You may go now.”
The butler bowed and left the room.
Once the butler was gone, Paul Haksen turned to his wife.
“Did you hear that, dear? It seems that boy got into some serious trouble.”
Paul Haksen was well aware of the Black Snake.
It often came up as a topic at noble gatherings.
“This is bad. They won’t leave us alone now that we’ve crossed the Black Snake.”
It stung his pride, but the Viscount Haksen family was a very minor house.
They lacked the strength to withstand retaliation from a massive organization like the Black Snake.
“I just can’t wrap my head around it. As far as I know, Demian has never learned swordsmanship. How could he...”
His wife quietly approached and gripped her husband’s hand tightly.
“Dear, I don’t know the details... but isn’t it a relief anyway?”
“A relief? What do you mean?”
“At least Demian came back without getting beaten up, didn’t he?”
Paul Haksen wore an incredulous expression.
He wanted to say this was no time for jokes. But his wife’s face showed she was serious.
“I’m just as confused as you are. Still, it’s better that he did the beating than got beaten.”
“This time it wasn’t just a beating...”
Paul Haksen said with a bitter expression.
“Don’t worry about the Black Snake. Those thugs wouldn’t dare lay a hand on nobles.”
Objections kept rising in his mind, but Paul Haksen held them back.
He knew it was best to empathize with his wife right now.
“We’ll question that boy about it slowly later.”
“...Understood.”
Paul Haksen let out a deep sigh.
“By the way, what’s that boy doing now?”
“They say he’s running.”
“Running?”
Paul Haksen looked baffled.
His wife said it casually.
“They said his stamina is too weak, so he’s been circling around the estate since dawn.”
* * *
The morning after returning from Landwalk City.
Demian Haksen rose from bed at dawn.
His body, accustomed to laziness, craved more sleep, but superhuman willpower held it at bay.
Demian Haksen changed into comfortable clothes for movement and stepped outside.
“How long has it been since I felt the dawn air?”
During his Death Knight days, Demian Haksen had been trapped in his own body, stripped of freedom.
Thus, the coolness of the dawn air felt especially welcoming.
Before beginning his morning training, Demian Haksen pulled out a glass vial he had prepared in advance.
It was the potion he had taken from Andersen Home.
He brought the vial to his lips and gulped down the potion.
It instantly transformed into vitality and spread throughout his body.
“Better effect than expected.”
Now, what Demian Haksen had to do was absorb all that vitality from the potion.
The best way to absorb vitality was to move his body directly.
The more he strained his body, the faster the vitality absorbed to restore it.
“Hup, hup.”
Demian Haksen began running along the estate’s boundary.
His body, never trained before, moved at a pitiful pace.
It was slow, and he was soon out of breath after just a short distance.
“Hah, hah.”
Still, Demian Haksen didn’t stop running.
It was agonizing, but he could feel the potion’s vitality absorbing that much faster.
Truthfully, Demian Haksen didn’t know much about training a human body.
This was just recreating the training method he had learned from his mercenary captain.
‘Still, it was a knight family’s training method, after all.’
Surprisingly, the captain of the mercenary group he had been part of in his previous life was a former apprentice knight.
Everything he knew had come from a knight family.
Knight families, which raised knights generation after generation, were famous for their efficient training methods.
‘The captain said all training starts with running.’
He insisted nothing beat running for building basic stamina and endurance, making the members run every dawn.
They had grumbled back then, but soon realized he was right.
‘What I need now is stamina.’
Swordsmanship wasn’t unimportant.
But stamina was the top priority right now.
With such poor stamina that he tired just swinging a shortsword, he couldn’t accomplish anything.
‘Once I build stamina, I’ll focus on swordsmanship.’
In his previous life, Demian Haksen had felled countless powerhouses and absorbed their techniques and realms.
From that foundation, he reached a new realm.
A realm no one in history had achieved.
Demian Haksen named that realm the ‘Divine Sword’.
‘Some might call it arrogant if they heard.’
But he had no intention of changing the name.
The realm he had reached deserved such a name.
The evidence was that he had extinguished the mighty Archlich Dorgo with a single stroke.
However, manifesting the ‘Divine Sword’ realm was impossible now.
‘My stamina is too low, first of all.’
The higher the realm, the greater the burden on the body when manifesting it.
He couldn’t manifest the Divine Sword with a body that tired after a few swings.
‘And I need to create new swordsmanship.’
In his previous life, Demian Haksen had honed his swordsmanship based on his Death Knight body.
Thus, now back as a human, he couldn’t use the swordsmanship he had created then.
He needed to forge new swordsmanship suited to a human body to manifest the ‘Divine Sword’.
‘I could create decent swordsmanship anytime... but I won’t settle for that.’
He had no intention of settling for merely regaining his previous life’s power.
He aimed to create absolute swordsmanship that surpassed his Death Knight days.
And thereby reach a realm far beyond the ‘Divine Sword’.
‘I need to learn a new mana cultivation method too.’
A mana cultivation method was a way to absorb external mana and store it in the body.
It was essential for becoming a knight.
‘All the mana cultivation methods I know use black mana.’
Black mana and mana were completely different powers.
Thus, he needed to learn a new mana cultivation method that used mana.
His mercenary captain had taught him one, but it was low-level.
Even as a former apprentice knight, he had been expelled during training, so he hadn’t received any advanced methods.
‘So much to do, but no time.’
There was a reason Demian Haksen was rushing like this.
Beyond his family’s happiness, he had one more goal to achieve.
‘Dorgo.’
Having returned to the past, Dorgo would still be alive.
Dorgo’s goal was humanity’s destruction and building an empire of the dead.
Without slaying Dorgo, he couldn’t speak of his family’s happiness.
‘I need to reach the Divine Sword as soon as possible to kill that bastard again.’
Dorgo had prepared for centuries to annihilate humanity.
However, without Demian in this life, he wouldn’t achieve his ultimate goal.
But he would undoubtedly wreak havoc on the world in some way.
‘Without killing him, peace is impossible.’
Dorgo had mastered all black magic, with undead creation being his specialty.
The undead he created weren’t just powerful—they possessed bizarre abilities and intelligence.
Undead that thought and learned like humans, with special powers.
Their danger was beyond imagination.
‘Especially the Three Great Demon Kings he created were disasters in themselves.’
Dorgo had dared to bestow the title of Demon King on his three masterpieces.
But no one who actually faced them called the name excessive.
Each of the Three Great Demon Kings possessed national-level power.
‘They were still weaker than me, though.’
As a Death Knight, Demian Haksen had overwhelmed them.
Even all three together couldn’t match him.
But that was only as a Death Knight. He couldn’t afford complacency now.
‘Soon, Dorgo will show his tail.’
If Demian Haksen’s memory was correct, in a few years, Dorgo’s undead would appear in the world.
They would begin gathering materials needed for war.
He dispatched his created undead across the world to collect all sorts of resources.
Even during his mercenary days, Demian had taken a mission to hunt undead and encountered Dorgo.
‘Before then, I need to grow strong enough to kill Dorgo.’
Regression didn’t revert his emotions to the past.
Hatred for Dorgo still burned in Demian Haksen’s heart.
‘I’ll definitely kill you.’
With that thought, Demian Haksen quietly ground his teeth.
* * *
Several days passed since Demian Haksen began training.
In that time, he had changed remarkably.
“Hup, hup.”
At first, he was so slow it was hard to tell if he was walking or running.
But now, his running speed had increased dramatically.
“Hup, hup.”
His stamina had improved greatly; he could run for over an hour without tiring much.
Proof of his diligent focus on training. Of course, the potion played a big role.
Without absorbing the potion’s energy, his stamina wouldn’t have improved this quickly.
The run that started at dawn ended at breakfast time.
“Now it actually feels good to run.”
Demian Haksen sat under a tree’s shade, catching his breath. He uncapped his prepared canteen and drank deeply.
“Kah, refreshing.”
Over two hours of running, but Demian Haksen’s training wasn’t over yet.
Today, he planned to add a few more stamina-building exercises beyond running.
All methods directly taught by his mercenary captain.
“By the way, why is the Black Snake so quiet?”
Since that day, they hadn’t made a single move.
“What are they plotting?”
Once he built up some stamina, he planned to wipe out the Black Snake completely.
With his potion supply gone, he needed to restock anyway. He intended to visit Landwalk City soon.
“Enough rest. Let’s get started.”
Demian Haksen stood and resumed training.
* * *
Demian Haksen’s training ended around lunchtime.
As he dragged his sweat-soaked body toward the mansion, he spotted several luxurious carriages parked in front.
‘Whose carriages are those?’
They didn’t look like something a commoner could ride.
As Demian Haksen approached to check the crests,
“Young master! Young masteer!”
Victor came running with an urgent shout.
Victor stopped in front of Demian Haksen, panting.
“B-big trouble! You need to go to the drawing room right now!”
“What’s going on?”
“T-the Ryanbloom Marquis Family has sent people!”
Ryanbloom.
At that word, Demian Haksen felt a bad premonition.
“No way it’s the Ryanbloom Second Son who came, right?”
“H-how did you know? The Second Son and his escort knights have come to our estate!”
Damn.
Demian Haksen pressed his palm to his forehead.
His head throbbed.
‘I hoped it wouldn’t happen, but I already crossed the Second Son.’
One of the biggest incidents from his previous life had already occurred.
“Thanks for letting me know.”
Demian Haksen thanked Victor and dashed to the mansion.
He flung open the drawing room door and entered.
He saw his family first.
Father, mother, older sister, and younger brother—all gathered.
“Demian?”
The family cried out in surprise.
Without time to reply, Demian Haksen shifted his gaze.
“Oh, you’re here?”
Across from where the family sat.
An unwelcome face was there.
“Sorry for dropping by unannounced. But I couldn’t wait any longer.”
A face full of mischief.
A build smaller than Demian Haksen’s.
Yet astonishingly toned muscles.
He didn’t need to dig through memories to recall this man’s name.
“Demian Haksen, so how do you plan to pay for slapping my face?”
The Ryanbloom Marquis Family’s Second Son.
Erwin Ryanbloom asked Demian Haksen.