Aura Tempering
A knight is like iron.
Just as iron grows hard when tempered, a knight grows strong when struck.
That was my family's motto.
It was the reason my father beat me every single day of my childhood, and backward and ignorant as the method was, it actually worked.
When the body senses mortal danger from physical force, the subconscious drives the aura into motion, and in the process, that aura naturally fuses with the body. The catch was that ordinary physical force wouldn't do — the mind had to genuinely feel its life was at stake before the subconscious would respond. It was a reckless, barbaric technique where the smallest mistake could kill you.
In other words, a perfect match for the ignorant and barbaric Milo.
"Ah, if it hurts too much, bark."
"Woof woof! Woof! Woof!!"
Before I'd even finished the sentence, Milo was barking in a frantic rush.
"Hmm. It's going well."
"I barked! I barked, damn iiiiit!"
Milo shouted back, indignant.
"Ah, my mistake. I told you to bark if it hurt too much purely to check whether things were proceeding properly. And it seems they are — very well, in fact."
"No, I'm telling you it seriously hurts!"
"Growth has always come with pain."
"This isn't growth-pain! It's real pain! You're insane!"
"So. Are you giving up?"
At the word giving up, Milo's eyes narrowed to slits.
"Frankly, it'd suit me fine if you did. This is a labor-intensive job — normally I wouldn't do it even for a hundred gold."
"Th-there's someone who'd pay a hundred gold just to get beaten?"
"He offered two hundred at one point. I turned him down, of course. Too much hassle."
"This guy is nuts—."
I wasn't lying. There really had been a man who offered me two hundred gold for a beating. The fact that he'd asked simply because he enjoyed being hit, however, was not something I needed to share.
"Son of a—! Damn it! Bastard!"
Milo spat a string of curses as he wiped his face with both hands. Then, his eyes hardening considerably, he looked up at me.
"This really makes you stronger?"
"Yes. I guarantee it. It's my family's secret art, after all."
"……You were a noble?"
Of all things, that was what surprised him.
"Couldn't you tell by looking?"
"No, I figured you were an orphan like me— aaaagh! Why did you hit me?!"
"In any case, the results are certain. You have my word."
Milo bit down hard on his lip — so hard it split, and blood trickled down.
"Fine. Let's do it."
He spoke with a face full of grim resolve. The man certainly had an impressive capacity for taking a beating. There was just one problem—
"Shall we?"
"……Pardon?"
"Your manner of asking is all wrong."
"That's not—"
Milo squirmed with a face like he'd bitten into something foul, then bowed his head deep.
"Please! I'm begging you! Beat me to a pulp!"
"'Beat me'? Anyone overhearing would get the wrong idea."
"Then what am I supposed to call it?"
"Tempering. The technical term is Aura Tempering."
"Tempering sounds even scarier—"
"Regardless. Do we have an agreement?"
At my question, Milo's face went pale. His eyes rolled about for a moment, and then, like a man condemned to the gallows, he let out a long, heavy sigh.
"Yes. I agree."
I resumed the work.
Milo clenched his jaw and endured. His expression was resolute, as if he had sworn never to scream.
"Kyiiieeeeeek!"
It did not, of course, last long.
"Kihheeek……."
I looked down at Milo sprawled across the floor and let out a quiet whistle in my head.
His durability really is first-rate.
Aura Tempering is agony. You have to be beaten until you feel your life is threatened — on the brutal fronts of my old war, only three men had ever endured it.
One was a pervert who savored the pain. One couldn't feel pain at all. Only a single man had ever withstood it fully intact, the way Milo just had.
True, he'd let out a fair number of shrieks along the way, but Milo never once gave up. His sheer toughness was staggering.
On its own, toughness might not seem like much of a talent. But someone who can merely survive Aura Tempering grows steadily stronger by default — which made it, without question, a genuinely good gift.
Better still, Milo's accumulated aura reserves were enormous.
Probably because he'd never received proper knight training in his life.
The aura he'd gained as a reward from the last Rift had never been properly digested, and so it had all piled up inside him like that.
Except—
This is too much, though?
The amount of stored aura dwarfed my estimates. This was far more than a C-rank Rift reward alone could account for.
It seemed Logan's story — that Unit 42 had been swallowed by a Rift and somehow returned — was true.
At minimum, that must have been an A-rank Rift.
I handled all four attributes — aura, dark magic, conventional magic, and holy power. When it came to Rifts, I was a specialist. Even I wouldn't bet my life on an A-rank Rift.
And rank-and-file guards had come back alive from one? It defied sense.
There'd been no trace of an Anomaly, so most likely the missing squad member — a woman named Charlotte — had cut some kind of direct deal with the thing.
She must be quite capable.
Not that anyone, whatever their capability, could hold a candle to Evangeline.
Anyway. Vast aura reserves plus superb durability.
"Congratulations. You're optimized for tempering."
Milo looked up at me, trembling like a leaf. His face was the picture of joy.
"O-optimized for tempering? What is that even supposed to mean?"
"Your stored aura is unusually large, and your ability to take a beating is exceptional. That combination makes you ideally suited to tempering. Now — raise your aura. Let's see it."
Milo lifted a quaking fist and called up his aura. It blazed to life like oil thrown onto a fire — a genuinely crude, thuggish aura.
"I-It really got stronger?"
Milo was overjoyed. The joy did not last.
"So you're saying we have to do this AGAIN?"
He muttered it with the face of a death-row inmate who'd just learned his execution had been postponed to tomorrow rather than canceled.
"'Again'?"
"……Then what? We're not doing it again?"
Milo asked, his face brightening. I corrected him flatly.
"Every day."
"E-every day?"
"Yes. Every day. Which means you'll get stronger every day."
Milo squeezed his eyes shut. Tears trickled from the corners.
They appeared to be tears of joy.
"Ah — write up your incident report before you sleep."
Milo's tears doubled.
The next day, the guard's morning roll call proceeded as usual.
There wasn't so much as a mention of the Republic's terror attack — clearly, the plan was to bury the whole thing. And no wonder. If word spread that the guards had failed to stop a bombing at the entrance ceremony, it would be a fatal blow to the reputation of the finest academy on the continent.
Evelyn was absent from this roll call too, and no one asked about her. It seemed no one had expected her to show in the first place.
The Chief Guard stepped forward and delivered the usual speech about staying sharp now that the semester was underway, and when he finished, Hanswell distributed assignments with practiced efficiency.
I glanced sideways at Milo. Catching my eye, Milo thrust his hand up with the expression of a man volunteering for a suicide squad.
"I request deployment to the male dormitory support duty with Grave-nim!"
"Grave 'nim'?"
At Hanswell's pointed remark, Milo shook his head in a panic.
"Pardon? I said 'me' and 'Grave' together, not—"
"……'Together'? Milo, watch your language. And assignments are not yours to choose."
"The male dormitory's always short-staffed anyway! Let us take it!"
"Be that as it may—"
"Come on! Let us go! I'm begging you! Kyiieeek!"
Milo flopped onto the ground and thrashed about. The surrounding guards took one look and laughed out loud. Hanswell's face went red enough to burst.
But unlike last time, he did not cave easily.
"Get up! Milo!"
"Let us go! Pleeease!"
"Denied."
Apparently determined to break Milo of his habits, Hanswell said it with iron firmness. His patience had clearly been reinforced since last time. The problem was that his opponent was Milo — who, without a moment's hesitation, pulled his shirt off over his head.
"Milo!! Put it back on this instant!"
"Don't care! Let us go, or the pants come off too!"
"……Fine! Fine, you win!"
Hanswell surrendered before he could stand any more of it.
"This is the last time. There will not be another."
He growled it at Milo through a badly contorted face. Milo nodded earnestly, then turned to me.
"This is the last time. Seriously, no more after this."
I did not nod.
And so, without any further incident, I was attached to the male dormitory duty rotation.
The male dormitory was familiar ground for me — I'd seen it plenty of times back when I was playing the game.
Inside, it was as opulent as a scene from a fantasy film. Red carpets ran down the corridors, and chandeliers hung from the ceilings. Utterly luxurious — the only problem was the smell.
A strangely familiar, musty odor hung faintly in the air.
Ah. It smells like a military barracks dorm.
Half-dressed men were scampering around cackling everywhere you looked. Apparently no matter how fancy the interior, house enough grown men together and it all comes out the same.
"This is why I hate dorm duty. Goddamn it."
Milo pinched his nose and recoiled in disgust.
Seban, the leader of Squad 9, which handled the male dormitory, waved us over with a flick of his hand.
He was a prickly-looking middle-aged man with a tired face. One glance was enough to tell he was the strict type.
"You two are on third-floor bathroom cleaning."
"Who told you to assign me toilets?! I don't even clean up my own!"
"Then go back to your post."
Seban answered Milo's whining with cold finality.
"Like hell! You try scrubbing somebody else's—"
"Yes, sir. We'll have it spotless."
I clamped a hand over Milo's mouth and answered.
Seban fixed me with a sharp look and gave his warning.
"Do that bathroom properly. Cut corners, and you won't be clocking out."
"Yes, sir. Leave it to us."
Seban gave a slow nod.
I hauled Milo along toward the central staircase.
"No way, you son of a—. How am I supposed to clean a bathroom?!"
"Relax. I won't be the one doing it."
"You're making ME do it? I can't! How am I supposed to scrub grown men's—!"
Milo exploded at full volume. He really, truly despised the idea of bathroom duty.
"Don't worry. I'm not making you do it either."
"Huh? Then who's doing it?"
"There's a professional."
"……A professional? There are professionals for bathroom cleaning?"
"There are."
At the foot of the central staircase, a guard was nodding off, head drooping.
"Which room is Raven's?"
"Ah, that…… Raven?"
At the name, the guard's expression soured into something distinctly unimpressed.
How strange. Raven was a man who had professionally trained himself to win people's affection. In the original game, he'd been universally popular — students, professors, guards, everyone. This reaction made no sense.
"Room 221. And be careful. Raven is……"
The guard glanced around furtively, then added in a low voice:
"got a venereal disease."
"……A venereal disease, you say?"
"That's the story — one word of conversation and your ears rot off. Damn it all. How did a guy like that even get into the academy?"
Listening to the guard, I finally understood what was going on.
Back when Raven had tried to approach Evangeline, I'd spread some choice rumors about him to keep her away. Apparently the stories had traveled considerably further than intended.
The culprit was obvious.
Has to be Evangeline.
There were guards posted on the second floor as well, but the moment they saw my worthless blue shirt, they didn't so much as check my ID — just gave me a nod. I found myself marveling, once again, at the power of the guard uniform.
Raven's room sat at the very end of the corridor. Whether thanks to the ugly rumors or not, there wasn't a single guard loitering near his door.
A good omen.
"Milo, go keep watch."
"Huh? What are you about to—"
"We need to hire a professional, don't we?"
I brushed off my hands lightly.