The Knight's Training Sword (1)
The Knight's Training Sword (1)
Ignoring the Firebird Dagger's chatter in my head, I looked around.
There were many artifacts besides the black sword wrapped in chains.
The Grand Archduchess paid no attention to the sword deemed dangerous, and the warehouse keeper was too busy explaining the artifacts to her.
No one was paying attention to me right now.
I whispered to the Ego Dagger in a very low voice.
"Are there any other artifacts here that were used by a Hero?"
[Except for a few accessories that look like things we've seen before, these are all new to me.]
Accessories didn't strengthen or make use of their owners' abilities; they simply used their wielders' mana as a battery.
Since I was trying to obtain a Hero's ability, they were useless to me for now.
I stole another glance at the sword wrapped in chains.
Was that really the only sword?
No, maybe I should be glad there was even one.
The only problem was that it was an absurd sword that killed whoever touched it.
Even so, the risk to me was much lower than it was to other people.
If everyone else died, there was no way I'd survive either.
They said the Founding King Carlos had used it just fine without dying, but since everyone after him had died, I would most likely die too.
The question was whether I could gain something before I died.
If I died without gaining anything, I would end up wasting a significant amount of time while experiencing immense pain.
But at the same time, another thought occurred to me.
'It's fine to die once just for a midway save. If I die next time anyway, I'll just repeat it.'
But what about the pain?
'Wouldn't it be better to die in one shot? Rather than being engulfed in pain until you die, wouldn't it be better to go out in one clean shot?'
A tempting voice kept whispering in my heart, asking if it wouldn't be better to grab the sword.
My reason tried hard to stop me, but I couldn't stop my eyes from wandering. Before I knew it, I was standing right in front of the chains.
I checked on the Grand Archduchess and the warehouse keeper again, but they were eagerly examining a spear said to have been used by a famous spearman—one that could bend incredibly far without ever breaking.
"This artifact seems to have a bit of a problem. I don't think it was meant to simply bend and snap back."
"Ah, it seems it was originally an artifact that built up the force as it bent, then released it in a burst. After all, artifacts can break down over time and with heavy use."
"May I take a closer look?"
The Grand Archduchess's hand slowly reached toward the spear.
"Yes, you may touch it. As long as you don't break it or take it out of the warehouse, it's fine. Of course, since that's how the artifacts are handled, some people have left them in a complete mess before leaving the warehouse."
Surely, she isn't planning to fix it here, is she?
Tuk. Tuk.
I lightly brushed the dust off my clothes, though there was barely any to see.
The Grand Archduchess, whose hand had almost touched the spear, flinched and pulled back. She cast a sidelong glance at me.
It seemed the Grand Archduchess had nearly repaired the broken spear without realizing it. The hint I'd given her had just barely brought her to her senses.
If she fixed the artifacts here, things would definitely get incredibly complicated.
It would be better to retrieve the broken artifacts separately later and just look around for now.
Well, the same went for me, too, but...
Fortunately, even if I caused trouble, things wouldn't get complicated for me.
Since no one knew, there was no way things could get complicated!
Once I made up my mind, the rest was easy.
Tak.
The only reason I could jump over the chains so easily was that they were so low.
I thought the blade was painted black, but looking closely, I saw that the blade itself was black.
Black metal. Did a metal or alloy like that even exist?
I reached my hand out toward the sword.
"Alex! What are you doing!"
Shoot, it looked like the Grand Archduchess had noticed.
When she said that, the warehouse keeper seemed to notice what I was doing too, and at the same time, I felt the mana inside the royal warehouse squirm.
As expected, just like when I first saw it, this warehouse was no ordinary artifact.
What on earth did they use such a massive artifact for? There was no way they used such an incredible artifact merely as a warehouse.
But unfortunately, the warehouse's mana moved too slowly.
Cheok.
Before they could do anything, my hand closed around the sword's hilt.
Flare!
My vision turned black, and then the world changed.
Simply put, the outcome was exactly what I had expected.
I was no exception.
<You have died. Restarting from the Automatic Save Point.>
I died the moment I touched the sword and returned to the past.
When I opened my eyes, I was on the road back to the Kingdom.
I was holding the dagger, and the Grand Archduchess was beside me, offering to fix it.
It was the exact moment after we had killed all the imperial knights who'd tried to kidnap her.
"W-Wait a moment."
I knelt on the ground as an overwhelming wave of pain washed over me.
I clenched my teeth, my body trembling violently.
Damn it, that death was way more painful than I thought.
I thought I would die painlessly, but that wasn't the case.
The startled Grand Archduchess screamed, and the people who rushed over poured a potion down my throat.
Unfortunately, it wasn't pain a potion could cure, and I didn't have any physical wounds.
It was just the phantom pain from my death lingering on.
Fortunately, the pain didn't last long.
I explained it to the others as a sort of aftereffect from the battle, and once they were reassured, they began cleaning up again.
They cleared the corpses, reinforced the knights, and repaired the broken carriage.
After spending a day resting and reorganizing in a nearby village, the group set off for the Kingdom once more.
Nothing had changed from before.
If anything had changed, it was that the journey back was a bit more comfortable because I'd looked so terribly ill after the battle.
On the way back, I organized my thoughts.
As expected, I had died and returned to the past.
Though I had survived, the result of grabbing the sword and dying wasn't much different from what had happened to the others.
But there was one difference between me and them.
I remembered what I saw after grabbing the sword, right up until the moment I died.
After grasping the sword, I thought I had truly died.
The world had turned black, and I had opened my eyes in a strange place.
I was standing in the middle of an empty colosseum, wearing the same clothes and with the same sword at my waist.
If the Roman Colosseum I visited in my past life had been intact, it probably would have looked like this.
Finding myself alone in the middle of a stone colosseum, I was honestly a bit scared.
I wondered if I had really died and ended up in a place like this, but fortunately, there was an entity that explained where I was.
[This is a training ground designed to cultivate Knights among the Heroes.]
The voice echoed throughout the entire colosseum. Or was it ringing inside my head?
Anyway, knowing that I wasn't dead made me feel a bit relieved.
But how had I been transported to a place like this just by grabbing a sword?
[Your physical body has not come here. This is a type of Mental World manifested by the Knight's Sword, utilizing the mana of the person connected to it.]
Huh, had it read what I was thinking in my head?
[Here, the user can learn and test swordsmanship through realistic sparring.]
I thought it was answering my question, but the voice just kept talking. It felt more like a recording being played than an Ego speaking.
By the way, my body hadn't come here?
If this was a Mental World, was it like a kind of virtual reality?
As expected, looking down on fantasy was a foolish thing to do. The more I dug, the more amazing things kept popping up.
With fantasy-style virtual reality this realistic, I didn't envy the VR of my past life at all.
More than that, what exactly was a Hero?
Everyone just thought of them as heroes who defeated the Demon King, but looking at these artifacts, it was becoming harder to accept that so simply.
Now even a Hero's training ground had appeared.
If those words were true, perhaps someone had manufactured the Heroes.
[The higher the synchronization, the more realistic the sparring and combat experience will be.]
Since it felt so incredibly real, was my synchronization very high right now?
[However, you can adjust the risk posed to your physical body by adjusting the synchronization. Although results in the Mental World will not physically wound your body under any circumstances, high synchronization can cause issues in the brain and nervous system. Please exercise caution.]
The words that followed felt incredibly ominous. Surely not, right?
[The current master of this training ground is the Hero Carlos. The training ground will proceed in the manner configured by the Hero Carlos.]
[Warning! The Hero Carlos has locked the current synchronization to maximum. If you suffer a fatal wound, severe damage to your physical body is expected.]
Sure enough, my worst fears had caught up with me.
I could finally understand why the people who grabbed the sword had died.
For whatever reason, the Founding King Carlos had caused the people who held the sword to die.
"Well, I just have to not lose."
Thinking about it, everything would be fine as long as I didn't die.
They said the people who held the sword died, but there was no way all of them were highly skilled knights.
They could have been ordinary commoners or untrained people.
In contrast, not to brag, but my skills were at least on par with those of a vice-commander in a decent knight order.
"If I have all my gear, I can even go toe-to-toe with a knight commander."
I drew the sword and dagger I had brought from the Academy.
Perhaps because it was a Mental World, the dagger hadn't said a word for a while.
Still, there was no issue with using my abilities.
Holding a blade in each hand, I drew up my mana.
A hazy aura shimmered over the two swords, one long and one short.
"Alright, whatever is coming, bring it on!"
It seemed to have been waiting for me to finish preparing.
Rattle.
The wall opposite me—the one blocked by iron bars—rose with the rattling of chains.
A dark passage was revealed, and I could see a human silhouette inside.
Thud. Thud. Thunk.
Footsteps echoed, and the silhouette fully materialized into human form.
Fortunately, it wasn't a monster.
It was a human. A fairly large one.
He wore leather armor and a helmet, making it hard to tell his age, but just from his build, he looked like a knight in his prime.
As the knight in leather armor drew closer, the back of my neck grew increasingly stiff.
'No, this is wrong.'
This wasn't a matter of size. Nor was it something to be happy about just because he wasn't a monster.
The approaching opponent's momentum radiated in all directions.
At the same time, that familiar voice spoke again.
[Your first opponent is the 15-year-old Carlos, from when he first used this training ground.]
What the fuck!
Curses spilled out of my mouth automatically.
"No, making me fight a Hero—even if we're the same age, this is cheating! Look at that build, how the hell is that fifteen?"
Since there was no one around, I vented my frustration loudly, along with a string of curses.
But that recording, which wasn't even an Ego, didn't answer.
The ghost-like Hero who appeared as my opponent merely raised his sword in silence.
I had clearly heard that this was a Mental World, but the presence radiating from the boy standing before me was no different from reality.
I was utterly overwhelmed by the sheer presence of a Hero, whom I was seeing for the first time.
I was utterly and ruthlessly crushed by a boy of my own age.