The Third Prince's Forced Training
Thereafter Jeraid was dragged off by Akina and forced to undergo the training required to become a knight.
Naturally he wanted no part of such a life and tried to persuade her of some mutually convenient arrangement, yet she remained immovable.
"Do you think the royal family will simply sit still once word of this gets out?!"
"Yes."
"Wh-what?!"
"At present Your Highness is my disciple before you are a prince. Moreover, this training is the basic foundational regimen every knight receives—from third-rate freelancers all the way up to the royal knights themselves."
Akina continued to press the still-rebellious Jeraid.
"I-I'll speak with Father!"
"By all means. I am personally curious whether His Majesty the King will indulge Your Highness's tantrums."
He made for the communication chamber and requested a magical link on the royal direct line. Upon learning the call came from the third prince, the royal communication mage announced he would report upstairs, vanished, and returned several minutes later.
"I have reported the matter to His Majesty the King."
"G-good! What did he say?!"
"He bade me convey that you should sacrifice yourself for the benefit of the royal family."
"What……?"
"Furthermore, His Majesty stated that henceforth there is no need to report any communications from the third prince."
"……."
"I shall disconnect now."
With those words the royal communication mage, with unforgivable insolence, simply cut the link.
"……."
Though he knew the order had come from his father, a stubborn hope still flickered in one corner of his heart that the mage had simply failed to report properly. Afterward he reconnected again and again, interrogating the mage or demanding to speak with Father directly; the royal communication mage answered only with silence.
That a mere communication mage could so brazenly ignore a prince's commands was possible only because the king's own order had been given. In the end Jeraid understood: he had been sold off for the benefit of the royal house.
"I will escape. No matter what."
After a full week of training under Akina, Jeraid found every drill meaningless and worthless.
"I already cultivated Prana—why the hell do I need training?!"
Once a person's Prana rank rose high enough, even someone who had never trained a day in his life could match a knight's raw power. Training of this sort did create differences in ability, of course, yet those differences never equaled even a single full rank advancement. He had naturally protested to Akina; her reply had been this:
If your Prana rank climbs while you still do not know how to use your own muscles, efficiency falls to half or less. Only after you forge the muscles required to swing a weapon and move with efficiency can you finally bring out true strength.
It was sound doctrine any man who had ever risked his life against an enemy would accept without question. To Jeraid it was nothing but the lecturing of an old fogey.
"Find me a way out of here—anything will do!"
In the end the only thing left to him was to browbeat his attendants.
"That is……"
"We would like nothing better, yet……"
The attendants exchanged glances and began their excuses.
"We must remain at Your Highness's side at all times for both protection and attendance."
"Should others witness us moving about on our own, Your Highness's plan will be exposed."
"This—! Haa…… Fine. Then we will simply walk a little."
Jeraid conceded the point and decided to tour the fortress for a while, if only to cool his head. Akina herself had said he might go anywhere so long as he did not step outside the gates. Thus they set off together in search of some escape hole—yet the attendants again traded looks and, with perfect naturalness, began to steer the prince.
"Rather than wander at random, it would be wiser to examine one location at a time."
They guided Jeraid toward the library. Fortunately the library lay in a rather secluded corner, so he believed the attendants were earnestly hunting for an escape route.
"Hm?"
Something caught his eye.
A frame smaller than his own. Hair and eyes of purest white. A boy whose beauty leaned slightly masculine yet remained androgynous.
Found him.
That's the target.
According to their information, the attendants now faced Kaisent, who had finished morning training and was heading for the library.
Deep-scheming nobles and royalty never extract only a single profit from a single plan. The present king in particular—having toppled his elder brother to seize the throne—possessed both military talent and a mind for intrigue; once the war ended, that latter quality had only grown more pronounced. Sending the prince to Akina served to strengthen the political bond, yet it also allowed the attendants to observe the otherworlder named Kaisent under natural circumstances.
When the report first arrived that Akina was personally drilling an otherworlder, the king had merely thought, A talented specimen, then. The fact that this specimen—younger even than the third prince—had slain the otherworlder known as Blood Zen changed everything. The knights present at the time had unanimously declared that Lillian, Priscilla, and Lilith were all powerhouses who had reached Master rank. That Blood Zen had faced three such Masters simultaneously and subdued them without killing them already spoke volumes of his strength; yet Kaisent alone had finished off the very man who had subdued three Masters.
The humans of this world—especially those who held power—instinctively feared otherworlders whose values and knowledge differed from their own once those otherworlders began to gain strength. Therefore, while dispatching the prince to Akina, the king had issued the attendants a secret mission: see Kaisent with their own eyes and confirm what he was. In the worst case, should they judge him an otherworlder who threatened royal authority, they even carried a kill permit; the royal family would handle the aftermath. Naturally they had been chosen from among those capable of surprise assault or assassination without hesitation—men who could face a powerhouse strong enough to defeat Blood Zen.
"Hey! You!"
"!?"
Something the attendants had never anticipated occurred. Jeraid himself shouted and called Kaisent over. They had intended to approach slowly, take the boy's measure, and learn his disposition; the prince's sudden outburst left them startled.
What now?
It's a chance.
A chance?
Right now the third prince is seething with irritation. He will naturally make unreasonable demands; watching how the otherworlder responds will tell us everything we need to know about Kaisent.
Not bad at all.
Having swiftly exchanged intentions, they simply let Jeraid do as he pleased.
"What is it?"
Knowing nothing of the undercurrents, Kaisent came trotting over the moment he was called. Looking at him now, one could not find so much as a scrap of a powerhouse's aura no matter how hard one searched; it was almost impossible to imagine that so innocent-seeming a boy had single-handedly defeated the powerhouse called Blood Zen.
"What is it? Do you even know who I am? I am the third prince of the Halrot Kingdom—Jeraid de Val Galaig."
Jeraid remembered perfectly. This was the otherworlder who, at the victory banquet held after the Outer God Alliance occupying the royal cemetery had been purged, had stolen every scrap of attention that ought to have belonged to him.
"My apologies. Being an otherworlder, I have never had the opportunity to look upon members of the royal family with my own eyes."
Kaisent bowed his head with impeccable courtesy. The mature composure was unsuited to his age, and that very maturity only stoked Jeraid's rage higher.
He doesn't know me? I was at that same banquet!
After monopolizing the gazes of every woman who should have been looking at me—after all that—he fails to recognize someone who stood in the same hall?
He wanted nothing more than to invoke lèse-majesté on the spot and heap every possible punishment upon the boy. Yet over the past week he had also heard certain things. Akina doted on the child so thoroughly that she even set aside time to train him personally in the exclusive grounds reserved solely for members of the Karayden family. Should a commotion grow large enough for Akina to notice, she would instantly realize he was manufacturing a grievance and might then inflict some "disadvantage" of her own.
"Ahem. My throat happens to be dry. Bring me cool water and I shall forgive the slight."
"Water? One moment. Uniran."
Kaisent employed magic from Lilith's world and conjured water from empty air. Once Lilith had become a Lost Heroic and he had fulfilled her long-held wish, he had gained the ability to use the magic she herself employed. Originally that magic was word-spirit sorcery handed down among dark elves; because it used a dark elf's soul as its trigger, no other race could wield it. Until now Kaisent had been unable to imitate it either—yet through the Emblem system it had become possible.
At least he is a mage—that much is confirmed.
But which tradition? It feels different from the magic of our world.
The attendants, sensitive to mana, immediately sensed that Kaisent's spell differed from any magic they knew.
"Are you telling me to drink like one of you lowly things—without so much as a cup?!"
"Ah—my apologies."
Despite Jeraid's mounting peevishness, Kaisent never once frowned. With a motion that felt almost like forming sword-aura bare-handed, he shaped a cup of pure internal energy and poured the floating water into it.
Magic?! No—this is not magic!
He processed mana itself into the shape of a cup!
Men who had witnessed every sort of powerhouse within the royal court were stunned that Kaisent could casually display a technique requiring such microscopic mana control. Jeraid, of course, knew none of this; believing the cup mere magic, he simply struck it aside.
"How dare you offer me a cup fashioned from such cheap magic! Have you no manners at all?!"
"Pardon? Then how should I……"
"Run and fetch proper water this instant!"
"Y-yes……"
Kaisent tilted his head at the continuing stream of unreasonable demands yet turned and began running to fetch water.
Master, according to the library's knowledge, the "manners" this self-styled third prince just spouted do not exist. Analysis of vocal intonation and speech patterns indicates clear malice toward Master.
Artemis urged him to refuse the prince's order that dared set Master to water-fetching and to inform Akina at once.
It's fine. I've nearly finished every book here anyway; I was already wondering what to do next.
Thanks to the dimensional warehouse, reading material had been growing scarce. Kaisent simply accepted the errand and carried it out faithfully.
Besides, there's no reason to feel sudden malice toward someone you've only just met.
He and the prince were strangers. How could malice arise at a first meeting? Assuming the boy was merely on edge in an unfamiliar environment, Kaisent filled a cup at a nearby rest area and returned.
"Your Highness, I have brought the water."
"Hmph."
Jeraid snatched the cup, took a single sip, then hurled it away in irritation.
"It isn't cold! Bring cold water!"
"……"
Even Kaisent's patience began to fray under the endless childishness. Sensing the first flicker of dissatisfaction on the boy's face, Jeraid delivered the line he had prepared.
"Come to think of it—you belong to the Wolf Mercenary Group, do you not? Remember that, depending on your conduct, I can hold the entire company accountable as well."
In that instant Kaisent barely managed to swallow the surge of anger that rose unbidden. He himself could endure a little hardship and be done with it; he could not tolerate anyone toying with the lives of his comrades.
Send him into the dimensional warehouse. Through the trash-disposal aperture I will ensure he can neither die nor live inside the zero-dimension.
Outside the warehouse, the flow of time was nearly nonexistent; a single second of this world could be experienced as a hundred years, a thousand, or far longer. Moreover the mind would feel every moment of zero-dimensional time while the body felt none of it—so to die one would have to wait for the flesh to starve to death across hundreds of millions of years in a void of absolute nothingness, all the while clearly tasting the agony of a body slowly starving for tens of thousands of years. The murder Artemis proposed was far more cruel than any ordinary killing.
"…I apologize. I will bring it again."
Yet Kaisent merely picked up the discarded cup and returned to the rest area.
Remarkable patience.
For an otherworlder, the royalty of our world is not easily accepted. Even so, he does not flare up at the prince's rudeness. That alone means he possesses at least the knowledge and common sense that apply in our world.
The attendants continued to analyze Kaisent's every reaction and draw their conclusions. Afterward Kaisent was forced to run back and forth several more times under Jeraid's capricious orders. Naturally the spectacle drew the attention of the surrounding knights; Kaisent, who normally moved in quiet stillness, had never been seen scurrying about like this.
Those knights with initiative investigated and soon learned that the third prince was issuing one unreasonable command after another. Under ordinary circumstances they would have reported the injustice to Akina at once. The problem was that their long-standing opinions of Kaisent itself blocked that natural response.
He needs to learn first how to submit to the royalty of our world.
An otherworlder who is also strong—who knows what he might do later? Better to break the habit now.
That much was still relatively mild.
If he cannot restrain his anger and so much as lays a finger on the third prince, we will have perfect justification to kill him.
I refuse to watch an otherworlder strut about successfully in our world.
Otherworlders are dangerous. Every last one of them should be exterminated.
In the more extreme cases they deliberately chose to stand by and watch, hoping Kaisent would strike the prince and thereby hand them a pretext for punishment. Had anyone reported to Akina at that moment, she could have intervened and prevented the situation from growing serious. No one, however, foresaw that the knights' judgment would later become the spark for a catastrophe that would shake the entire Halrot Kingdom to its foundations.