Chapter 4
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 4
Chapter Title: The First Step
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Camilla's legion was bustling about, cleaning up after the battle.
The entire landscape was littered with corpses.
Stepping past the carcass of an Uruk with its head smashed in, Kaisen shooed away a crow pecking at a human brain and walked onto the field of slaughter.
“Haah, when are we gonna finish burning all these bodies… Huh? That kid, what?”
“Isn't that the Uruk Slayer?”
“Well, well, hold on a minute. Hasn’t he grown into quite the man in just a week? Hey, kid, come over to big sis. I’ll treat you nice.”
He ignored the mercenaries’ voices.
The black-haired boy simply walked.
Until he stood before Camilla, who was perched on the corpse of the Uruk chieftain he had slain.
“You promised you’d teach me swordsmanship if I managed to land a single attack, right?”
The FakeWarrior, who had been staring forlornly at the blade of Aradamanthel, lifted her golden dragon eyes to glare at Kaisen.
“That’s only if you don’t die, of course.”
“So the offer still stands?”
“I don’t know what you’ve been plotting with Wolf, but you only survived last time because of my whim, you little shit. There won’t be a second time. Piss off if you don’t want to die.”
Did they sense the killing intent in her words?
In that instant, birds burst from the forest behind Kaisen, flapping frantically into the air.
The horses pulling the supply wagons reared up, neighing as they pawed at the empty air. Even beasts trembled at her murderous aura, yet the boy remained composed.
He went even further, calmly drawing his mother’s shortsword from his back and aiming it squarely at Camilla.
“Then this is my answer.”
A sharp silence fell.
But just as quickly, the mercenaries who had formed a circle around Camilla and Kaisen erupted in a frenzy of cheers.
“Whoa, what did he just say?”
“I just got goosebumps.”
“That’s some serious nerve!”
Wolf, who could be considered an accomplice in this affair, offered a casual smile and a subtle taunt.
“What’s wrong? Scared you might actually have to teach him?”
At that playful provocation, the mercenary captain Eltram and his beastkin subordinates burst into laughter.
Camilla shot a glare at Wolf before letting out an irritated sigh and standing up.
Her displeasure with the situation was palpable, but the gesture signified her acceptance of the duel. The mercenaries cheered wildly.
“Fine, come at me. If you’re wishing for death, I might as well grant it.”
Childhood,
The Prelude to Summer (3)
Just for a moment.
The clock turns back six days.
—*Isn’t this difficult? You can take a break…*
Day by day.
As if time itself were being etched into his body.
The complex footwork started to feel not just familiar, but second nature to Kaisen.
—*I’m fine.*
Kaisen was truly desperate.
He trained voraciously, like a starving child.
He traveled with the legion, ate the food Wolf provided, and after eating, he would go to the place where Camilla trained, carefully avoiding the times she was there.
—*Show me the next illusion. I’ve mastered this one.*
—*You’re truly incredible. It’s only been three days…*
By the third day, he was already gripping Raminea’s shortsword and beginning to mimic the illusion’s hand movements.
—*But Kaisen, there’s a limit to what you can learn just by copying.*
—*So I have to earn her acknowledgment, right?*
—*Yes. There’s a vast difference between being formally taught and stealing lessons.*
And so, another day passed, and then another.
After six long, yet short, days of desperate effort, he now stood facing Camilla.
“I don’t know why you’re so damn eager to die, but fine. If death is your wish.”
Camilla’s weapon… was her bare hands.
As if he wasn’t even worth a tree branch this time, she looked down at him with annoyance, beckoning him forward with a flick of her fingers.
His breathing grew tense.
His heart rate quietly climbed.
After taking a deep breath…
Kaisen kicked off the ground and charged. A mixture of cheers and jeers erupted from the mercenaries.
“Yeah! A man’s gotta land the first punch!”
“You idiot! You’ll end up just like last time!”
But it wasn't the same.
Something, something was different.
The mercenaries fell silent, their mouths agape at the scene unfolding before them.
“Huh…?!”
Camilla, who had aimed a spinning kick at his abdomen, was the most surprised by Kaisen’s actions.
The moment he sensed the attack, the boy stomped his foot on the ground, braking his own momentum.
He used the force of the stop to twist his body, swinging his sword with the power of the rotation.
“Hey, that move is…?”
“Uh…?”
“Doesn’t it look like Lady Camilla’s footwork…?”
*What the.*
*The footwork of the Sipmunjado?*
In her confusion, Camilla faltered, dodging Kaisen’s all-out strike.
“Hah! Haaah! Haaah-!”
His battle cries were almost cute.
But the slashes that came with them were ferocious.
Perhaps because the fight had defied their expectations, the mercenaries’ cheering reached a fever pitch.
“Land one on her!”
“That’s it, yeees! He’s pushing her back!”
A murderous glint flashed in Camilla’s eyes as she effortlessly dodged the slashes, her expression colored with bewilderment.
*His only chance was in the first exchange.*
Camilla was the true successor of the Sipmunjado.
Whether her master had taught his son this part as a joke, or if Wolf had pulled some strange trick, she knew every single form like the back of her hand.
“Well, this is a surprise.”
And so, in the next moment, she twisted her body slightly, channeling that rotational force directly into a spinning kick.
*Enough force to rattle his brain. Just enough to scare him off with the pain should do it.*
In that split second when she decided to end it, Kaisen’s eyes glinted sharply.
*No?*
In that instant, Camilla let out a gasp at the series of techniques Kaisen unleashed.
“Huh…?”
He drew the scabbard along with the sword.
Crossing the blade and sheath, he thrust them into the path of her attack.
*How does this brat…?*
It was Won, the first form, the cross-block stance that was both the foundation and the core of the Sipmunjado, a unique sword style that utilized both blade and scabbard.
────THWACK!
The impact.
An excruciating pain, as if his bones were cracking.
As the shockwave washed over his entire body, Kaisen desperately held his defensive stance.
*I blocked it. But I’m still being pushed back…?*
The power was terrifying.
But by the time his feet had dug deep into the ground and he had been pushed back about a hand’s breadth, the impact subsided, and his stance stabilized.
On the other hand.
Camilla couldn’t recover from her attack. The mercenaries, who had been holding their breath, shouted out.
“Is this…?!”
“An opening, it’s an opening!”
“Her Ladyship is wide open, kid!”
Kaisen didn’t miss the opportunity either. He launched himself forward like a spring, closing the distance to Camilla.
“It’s over…”
Just as everyone’s cheers reached their peak, only Eltram shook his head with a sigh.
*Lady Camilla is a FakeWarrior.*
A soldier who had undergone physical augmentation to gain abilities surpassing even the beastkin, and had perfectly mastered martial arts. Humanity’s finest weapon.
“Uh…?”
The moment he was sure of his victory.
The moment he thought the tip of his sword had pierced Camilla.
*Thwack!*
Suddenly, the back of Camilla’s hand struck the spine of his sword, knocking it from his grasp. Her outstretched leg swept his feet out from under him, and he lost his balance.
*Huh?*
His vision filled with the black, ash-filled sky, and as the world spun, he found himself sprawled on the ground.
*What?*
A flash of something glinted.
His mother’s sword, which had been spinning through the air, stabbed into the ground right next to his face, making his hair stand on end.
*I lost…?*
The shadow of death loomed over him. Camilla must have come to stand over his head.
Pure white hair.
Golden dragon eyes.
The glinting eyes in her shadowed face were just like his mother’s, but her expression was entirely different.
“Farewell.”
Camilla pulled his mother’s sword from the muddy ground.
It was instantaneous. She reversed her grip on the shortsword and plunged it down toward Kaisen’s face…
Undeterred by the mortal terror washing over him, Kaisen kept his eyes fixed on Camilla. And so, he was the first to see her surprise.
“Why…?”
One second, two seconds, three seconds…
An eternity seemed to pass, but nothing happened.
Instead, Camilla found the scabbard that had been rolling on the ground and sheathed his mother’s shortsword.
“I’ve changed my mind. This piece of trash might be useful after all. Still trash, but if he can do this much in six days, he might be good enough for scouting duty later. Right, Eltram?”
Eltram chuckled and nodded.
“Yes, more or less.”
“What, a scout? No way. I’m not doing that. I’m going to keep challenging you until you teach me swordsmanship!”
Kaisen protested weakly, only to receive a dismissive look from Camilla.
“You owe me your life, don’t you even get that? And realistically, do you think a fucking pipsqueak like you could ever beat me?”
“Yes! Let’s go again! I can do it!”
At his bold reply to the formidable Camilla, the mercenaries clutched their sides and roared with laughter. Of course, they had to quickly start whistling and wander off the moment they caught Camilla’s terrifying glare.
“Don’t piss me off, just listen. As you can see, this legion is full of trash. We’re seriously lacking in useful vermin.”
“Aww, that’s so hurtful, milady.”
“Hear, hear!”
“Shut up, you trash.”
“Yessir.”
“See? They’re all like that. But if you promise to be my loyal little gofer, I might just indulge your cute little tantrum. I was just thinking I needed a useful gofer.”
“?”
“Stop blinking like that, or I’ll gouge those ink-blots out. Didn’t you hear me? If I tell you to take out an Uruk, you take it out. If I tell you to scout somewhere, you scout it. If I tell you to deliver a message, you deliver it.”
What the hell…
The mercenaries shook their heads.
*How’s a little kid like that gonna take an Uruk’s head?*
But Kaisen’s reaction was different.
“What will you do for me if I do that?”
“What do you mean, what will I do? You said you wanted to learn swordsmanship, right? I’ll teach you.”
At that answer, at those words that would drag him down the path of the sword, a path of spilling and being drenched in blood.
The boy’s eyes, which had been colored with hatred and despair, lit up.
For a moment, his master’s face overlapped with the boy’s, and an unbearably bitter pain struck Camilla’s heart.
*Master.*
*Did you entrust this sword to me so I would teach your son? Is that it?*
*But you, who fled the world of the sword, surely wouldn’t have wanted that…*
But if she sent him away now, he would either starve to death in the backwoods or get beaten to death begging some weirdo for lessons.
“The choice is yours.”
Camilla sighed and held out her master’s shortsword to Kaisen. She offered it to him hilt-first, still in its scabbard.
*I’ll let him choose for himself.*
Just as you did for me, I will for your son.
That should be fine, right?
Sincerely mourning the news that her master had finally, truly died after having a child and living happily somewhere in a remote, unknown land, Camilla finished her thought.
“Either go back, or stick with these smelly pieces of trash until you’ve learned everything there is to know about the sword.”
Kaisen stared intently at his mother’s keepsake, seeming to hesitate for a long moment, but in the end, he did not take it.
“If I don’t take this back… you’ll teach me swordsmanship?”
“That’s what I said. I’ll hold onto it as collateral to make sure you don’t run away. Can’t have you just eating our food and then bolting.”
“Really?”
“Have you spent your whole life being deceived? Ah, and if you get on your knees and beg, who knows. I might just teach you some basic forms starting today, so you can stop being such a weakling.”
Kaisen.
Her master’s son, who stirred such strange feelings in Camilla.
Amidst the laughing jeers of the mercenaries, he calmly knelt down.
“Have you no pride?”
*Is that something you can eat?*
With a look that seemed to ask just that, Kaisen said.
“I don’t need something like pride. As long as I can learn the sword, as long as I can kill Uruks, nothing else matters.”
The boy’s voice then seemed to be on the verge of tears, yet also grinding its teeth in fury.
Yes, in that moment, you desperately wished for it.
To enter this world of the sword, a world where one must shed endless blood, be endlessly soaked in it, and finally, sink and die in it.
*Haah…*
Staring at her master’s son with her dragon eyes, Camilla let out a deep, internal sigh and attached the master’s sword to her belt.
“Hey, Eltram. Go find a single-edged sword from somewhere.”
“A single-edged sword? What for?”
“You peasant, is that even a question? I have to teach this brat how to use a sword, don’t I?”
Were they moved by Kaisen’s sincere grit? At Camilla’s decision, the soldiers of the legion erupted in fierce cheers.
“Yeah, a real man like that is welcome, even if he’s a kid! Welcome, kid!”
“It’s been a long time since my heart’s felt this fired up.”
Wolf, who had watched the entire scene from beginning to end, looked at the boy with a mixture of concern and anticipation.
*To enter this maelstrom of war at such a young age… is it a blessing, or a curse…?*
That, only the gods would know.