Chapter 121: Self-Esteem
Chapter 121: Self-Esteem
The mansion where two had become one.
Time, once rewound, flowed forward again, but The Sword That Severs the Yoke and the soldiers' helicopters did not appear.
Watching the female disciple train alone, swinging her sword in solitude to hone her body—
a little scattered, yes, but watching her set off a chain of thoughts.
The old story about the flea trapped under a glass cup: keep knocking its head against the ceiling and its jumping height dwindles.
The elephant tied to a thin rope as a calf, never breaking that flimsy cord even as a full-grown adult.
Not a perfect analogy for the current situation, but the feeling I got was similar.
The task of making a flea jump higher.
The task of making an elephant snap its rope.
And the task of breathing confidence into a disciple.
How exactly does an outsider step in and rewire a person's head for that?
The disciple and The Sword That Severs the Yoke had lived their lives with just the two of them.
Because of that, sparring had always been a closed loop between master and student.
Five years of training without landing a single clean hit—how could she not burn out?
'She could've at least had her spar with some other Incarnations in between....'
This was The Sword That Severs the Yoke's bone-deep blunder, born of doting on her disciple like a daughter.
From her perspective, she must have believed she was giving her student every last thing she had, start to finish.
But precisely because of that, she'd failed to notice her own disciple's confidence eroding.
Han Ye-ji, too, had once slipped into nightmares at the Academy over skills that refused to improve.
She'd been trapped in a repeating dream of washing out of the shooting range, her mental resilience grinding down.
Back then, a hint I'd overheard from an instructor let me boost Han Ye-ji's abilities and resolve things.
Could I use that same method now?
A woman who could cleave boulders with a wooden sword was sinking into gloom because she couldn't slice a mountain ridge.
Depression built on talent and skill that tremendous practically qualified as a kind of fraud.
Her benchmark was a Constellation who split tidal waves and blew mountain ridges apart with a blade, yes—
but this disciple had picked up a sword at fifteen and, in five short years, was making a name across the continent.
Barely twenty years old. Two or three years younger than my own Incarnations.
And yet a swordswoman whom all my Incarnations combined couldn't so much as graze a sleeve, let alone touch a finger.
What could I possibly teach a swordswoman like that?
The disciple training alone in a world without The Sword That Severs the Yoke.
I watched her and wracked my brain, but no good ideas came.
It wasn't as if I had counseling experience. What was I supposed to do, fix this myself?
If anything, my Dream Demon magic-soaked brain insisted on a different approach to lifting her spirits.
'Pouncing on her wouldn't do a damn thing for her confidence with a sword....'
The pale nape of her neck and the fine, soft hair revealed as she swept back her sweat-damp tangles.
The firm, bouncing sway of her chest—she'd tossed her top aside in the heat, wearing only her trousers, and the sight was pleasingly bouncy.
I was a man, and a Dream Demon at that, my sexual energy never waning—so sure, I got hard—but that wouldn't solve the problem.
If this were some bargain-bin erotica where jamming my dick in magically fixed everything, I'd have thrown her down already.
A magical cock that resolves every issue just by thrusting—even a Dream Demon can't pull that off.
Not that I could make her dream of defeating The Sword That Severs the Yoke, either.
To this disciple, The Sword That Severs the Yoke was an insurmountable wall, yes—
but she was also an idol blazing gloriously at the end of the path she walked.
Show an aspiring idol the downfall of the star they've modeled themselves after, and confidence isn't exactly what blooms.
'Driving me insane, seriously.'
This didn't look like a problem I could solve on the spot.
Having made that judgment, I tried moving my magic power.
Until now, whenever time passed and progress hit a wall, I'd been ejected automatically—
but now this space had undergone a major shift, and I had a feeling I could leave at will.
Rather than agonize solo for days on end as a total layman, I'd just step out and hear a specialist's opinion.
Psychologists, counselors, mental-health-care experts.
I'd ask the Academy to round up a few vetted professionals from those fields. Simple enough.
Two Constellations, one of them the strongest on the Eastern Continent.
Who'd refuse a request to summon some experts when two Constellations made it?
With that thought, I flexed my magic power.
I still couldn't pass beyond the compound walls—
but inside those walls, I could move as I pleased.
The disciple didn't react when I summoned or created things around her,
but I could now come and go freely.
'Guess I can finally stop the offerings.'
How many sacks of jewel dust had I poured onto that training ground floor by now?
The sight that made my commoner's heart bleed from its hidden corner was finally over.
"And how did it go today?"
Even this by-now-familiar routine was probably done after today.
Lying on a mat in the center of the training ground, receiving gazes laced with worry and expectation.
"Has there been any progress...?"
Lee Ha-rin came over naturally and helped me to my feet.
Behind Kim Ha-eun, who was quietly rolling up the mat,
The Sword That Severs the Yoke sidled closer and arched an eyebrow in inquiry.
No reason to hide anything, so I might as well tell them everything.
"Hah. To think that was the cause. Is too much talent a poison, or should I deem my disciple arrogant...?"
The Sword That Severs the Yoke lost her words upon hearing that her disciple's qi deviation stemmed from the chasm in skill between master and student.
Well, this wasn't some ordinary master-disciple relationship. It was a Constellation and her Incarnation.
The cause was so far outside her expectations that she kept fidgeting with her sword hilt, visibly thrown.
"If that is the case... what should be done?"
"I'm planning to request specialists from the Academy."
"Specialists? What sort of specialists?"
"People like psychological counselors. Removing the source of terror or fear is something I can do—removing defeatism and helplessness is another matter."
The Sword That Severs the Yoke nodded as if she understood.
She'd be well aware, that everything Kim Ha-eun and I treated was trauma and PTSD.
She had a rigid side, but she seemed to grasp this kind of thing.
Still, when I mentioned that we probably wouldn't need these large-scale offerings starting tomorrow,
Lee Ha-rin, who'd been propping me up, looked happier about it than The Sword That Severs the Yoke did.
Made sense. This was Lee Ha-rin, who lived and breathed magic research.
Performing the same massive ritual every single day had to be a nuisance.
What she hated here wasn't the hassle of a large-scale ritual—it was the repetition. The ritual repeating.
It was like telling a novel-lover to read the same volume of the same book every day.
"Also, I'm now able to enter your disciple's dreams without the offerings."
"That's a good sign, isn't it?"
"Yes. We can take it as progress."
"I entrust my foolish disciple to your care."
Today, too, Kim Ha-eun dashed off toward her patients, saying she'd gather more magic power.
The Sword That Severs the Yoke likewise stepped onto the wind and flew off somewhere.
One thing was different: the sight of the disciple, tied up and staring blankly into space.
"Um... my Constellation? Shall I take her with us?"
Suffering qi deviation didn't mean she'd turned into a maniac lunging to murder everyone around her.
If I had to put it into words, she was more like a skittish beast—reason gone, moving on pure instinct.
The master who'd beaten her like a dog terrified her, so she whimpered and cowered whenever she was near.
Me, whom she'd met for six straight days, wasn't scary or threatening, so she paid me about as much mind as a cow does a chicken.
the straitlaced Sword That Severs the Yoke had balked—how could a grown man's room house a young woman?
And Lee Ha-rin and Kim Ha-eun had said they were uneasy letting a mentally unstable swordswoman into the Sanctum—
"Would you come to my quarters with me?"
"Yes, understood."
I could just call Lee Ha-rin to my quarters as well.
Seeing Lee Ha-rin trotting along behind me and the disciple being led along docilely, I let out a quiet laugh.
Lee Ha-rin, wearing a choker that was really a leash, held the rope binding the disciple's wrists and tugged her along.
What was this, a choo-choo train? A woman on a leash dragging a woman in restraints, both trailing after me in a line.
Sure, calling it the same room was a technicality—the living room alone looked to be thirty pyeong, plenty of space to be comfortable.
This wasn't a building constructed as living quarters; it was an Academy building designated as a Sanctum and retrofitted afterward.
Counting the bathroom and the bedroom, it probably pushed close to sixty pyeong.
I'm no expert on apartment square footage, but it looked a lot bigger than the home I'd had in my previous life.
Or maybe that was just the perspective of being in a tiny elf body.
'Worst case, I'll just retreat up to the Sanctum.'
The space was more than large enough for three people, and if anything felt awkward,
I could just ask the Academy or The Sword That Severs the Yoke to provide a caretaker.
With that thought, I headed for my quarters, the Academy personnel's eyes stabbing into my back.
I took the lead and opened the door, and there was the Retriever, tail swishing gently side to side.
"Wh—how did this one...?"
At Lee Ha-rin's startled voice, the guards' heads whipped around.
This was literally the Sanctum where a Constellation resided—security should have been airtight—and yet a dog had breached it.
On top of fetching lost items, the creature apparently had some tricks, managing to wait inside a locked door.
The beastman Incarnation guards who'd been stealing glances my way now looked at me, flustered.
The Retriever wasn't my familiar—it was Lee Ha-rin's.
Its routine was to stay in Lee Ha-rin's quarters, then head to the magic instructor's research building,
and spend the afternoons running around the training grounds playing with the cadets.
So popping out inside my Sanctum naturally threw the guards into confusion.
The hellstorm of continent-wide discipline raining down from the chancellor after the murder incident—how much blood, sweat, and tears had they poured into security since?
And yet one dog—not even a small breed, but a sturdy Retriever—had slipped right past them.
The young female guard, her face gone pale,
drooped her pointed ears, so I waved her off and stepped inside the building.