The Price of Pride
Damn. That was nearly the end of me.
"You... you didn't understand?"
"I said it was easy because the transfer exam is easy. What are you talking about?"
What? What was he saying now?
If anyone had the right to ask that, it was Beryl.
Elites from every corner of the world gathered in that place, and only a handful were chosen. How could anyone who had clawed through competition that hellish possibly be weak? The boy had beaten him one-sidedly, yes, but the shock had come from a child—a beggar, no less—laying hands on a grown man. It had not been shock at his skill. There was no chance some student admitted to Elysia Academy could fail to defeat one ordinary administrator. An Academy student would never have pummeled him with fists the way that brat had. Magic would have put him down faster, and far more cleanly.
And yet he had felt nothing from the child. Not a mana heart. Not even mana. All that had reached him was the pure strength of a body.
Impressive, in its way. But it cannot compare to magic.
Flesh alone could not quench fire, could not shatter stone, could not stand against telekinesis.
He beat me, but he is still young. The road ahead of him is bright... So as his elder, I owe him honest counsel...!
"I can see you fight well. But the body and magic are entirely separate things, are they not?"
"Magic? What is that?"
"...Pardon?"
What does this brat even know?
Ignorance of the Academy was already hard to swallow, but he could force it down. Suppose, by some thin chance, the boy lived at the farthest edge of the frontier and was simply too young to have heard the name. But ignorance of magic? That was impossible.
Most of this world was built of magic. When anything was raised, telekinesis moved the stone. When anyone bathed, a magical tool heated the water. Even an ordinary street vendor cooked with flame magic, and the children of any neighborhood, feeble as their spells were, still used magic. And he didn't know what magic was? He didn't know magic?
There was no explaining it past that. How was one meant to prove that one and one made two? Proof had nothing to do with it. It was common sense. No one could lecture another on the self-evident order of the world.
Forget it. Let him live through it once. Then he'll understand.
Even an Academy student would not throw himself at killing one beggar child, and a single real fight would teach the brat his place.
Beryl finished that brief stretch of thought and began, with careful courtesy, to explain.
"Ha ha... Then we'll set magic aside, and I'll tell you more about the transfer exam."
"Go on."
"As I said, the transfer exam is a matter of naming one enrolled student and defeating them. But this is the part that matters. To sit the exam, you must pay a fitting price."
"A price?"
"Think on it. Skip that brutal entrance examination, win a single duel, and you are admitted. If the Academy accepted that with nothing given in return, the entire year would be nothing but transfer exams."
It was the logic of a man with nothing to lose: jab at the fruit you cannot eat, just to see. Win the duel and you passed. Lose, and you were no worse off than before. Were there no price, even a mere administrator like Beryl would have taken one stab at it.
"Hm... Must I offer up my life, then?"
"What would the Academy do with a life? Taking one would only ruin its reputation."
"Then what am I to do?"
Cheon Hwi had nothing he could put forward as a price. He was a beggar who could not buy so much as a dumpling, let alone some precious artifact. What was there to offer?
For a man like that, Beryl produced a single method.
"You may stake your pride."
Pride? That thing I know by the name?
For a moment Cheon Hwi was simply lost. You could not eat a beggar's pride, and you could not sell it. Take the thing, and what would anyone do with it?
Whether he caught the suspicion in those eyes or not, Beryl hurried to add more.
"Most who enter the Academy are nobles. And the price of the transfer exam is not paid to the Academy. It is paid to the person you duel."
"Then what has pride to do with it?"
Beryl ignored the question and pressed on.
"Those noble brats love nothing better than cutting someone else down."
"Ah."
Now that he thought of it, his previous life had been the same. The highborn flaunted their power every day, sneering that a lowborn was only a lowborn and a commoner only a commoner, and they likened the common people to weeds too numerous to count—grass underfoot, and nothing more.
As ever. There is no understanding how those highborn think.
"Were you a commoner with even a modest fortune, it might be different. A beggar with no family, no friends, not even coin has nothing worth taking. It would likely end with a single humiliating apology. A small price."
"Hoh?"
The man was right. And yet, strangely, it stung.
"If you cannot even offer pride of this sort, then frankly, there is no way for you to sit the transfer exam."
True enough. What did pride amount to? If that was all it cost to enter the Academy, the price was cheap.
"No. That will more than suffice. You have my thanks. Can I sit the exam at once, then?"
"No. It will probably take a week."
He had asked it with the hope of meeting his disciples already rising in him. What came back was cold.
"And why now!?"
"Receiving candidates to duel you takes three days by itself. Selecting one from among them is given another three. The last day is for both sides to confirm the terms."
"Why is there so damned much of it?"
"Because that is how it must be. This is, in name at least, the greatest academy in the world. It is hardly going to be knocked together on the spot, is it?"
Had admission itself been the goal, a week would have been easy to weather. But entering the Academy was not the destination. It was only a step on the way to his disciples. And still it demanded a week.
What choice was there? The place called itself the finest academy alive, and he had not recovered even a tenth of the strength of his previous life. Raise a storm and he would be put down at once and thrown out. Forget finding his disciples. He would be hard-pressed just to keep his own hide intact.
Ah. My luck.
"Fine. I'll endure. Where am I meant to wait out this week?"
"That would be for you to decide, wouldn't it?"
"What? I'm a beggar. Where exactly am I supposed to live?"
"And why are you asking me?"
Cheon Hwi brooded for a moment, then arrived at a different answer.
"Right. Since when have I been one to endure? Wait for me, Academy. I'm coming now."
When a mountain stood in his way, he did not go around it. He went through. When an enemy barred the road, he did not slip aside. He cut them down and walked on. This time would be no different.
"Let go. I'll dance a sword dance in there, and the exam will sort itself out."
"Ack! You can't! And what sword dance, when you don't even have a sword!"
"What are you saying! My sword is right—... it isn't?"
Ah. Right. He didn't have a sword.
In more than seventy years he had never once let a blade leave his side, so of course he had assumed it was with him.
Damn. That was a close one.
Then a sword would have to come first... but from where?
It was a sizable academy, and perhaps for that reason there was no shortage of forges and shops that sold blades. The problem was something else.
He was a beggar.
Who handed a sword to a beggar? A blacksmith was a merchant who sold for coin. He was not about to press a blade into empty hands out of kindness.
Hah... I hadn't meant to do it this way.
"Boy."
"Have you finally changed your mind?"
Beryl asked it full of hope.
"Right. Charging straight in wouldn't settle anything."
Cheon Hwi answered that hope.
"Aigoo, wise as ever!"
"Which is why I need you to give me some money."
"...What?"
"Did you not hear me? I said give me money. I have a sword to buy."
Ah. Right. He's a beggar.
He had scrubbed from his mind the part where a beggar had beaten him and left only the beating itself, and for a moment the two had tangled. Even so—he was a grown man, an administrator of the Academy. To be shaken down for coin by a beggar...!
"Well? Are you handing it over?"
"I was thinking where I'd put it! Here!"
"Good. That's how it's done."
Demon brat.
A grown man, wrung for money by a child beggar—and not even as alms. It was a cruelty one could hardly watch with open eyes.
He got a sword.
It had been miserably hard, but he got one.
There are far too many of these.
Too many weapons? It was a forge. A forge was not going to be short on arms, and had the number of weapons been the trouble, he would never have grumbled in the first place. Even in the Central Plains there were fighters who went past spear, saber, and sword to fans, staffs, even sickles. Weapons were not going to be few.
The trouble was not how many weapons there were. It was how many kinds a single weapon came in.
He knew that arms divided into types. Even in the Central Plains, the word sword held sabers, throwing blades, and plenty besides. But—
I have lived a long while, and I never knew swords came in so many kinds.
Too many. Absurdly many. He could hear the words well enough. Understanding them was another matter. Straight swords of the East, curved sabers from overseas—they sorted them that way, and that much he could accept, because at least they said it in a tongue he knew. But longsword? Rapier? Stiletto? Those he could not parse at all.
A stubborn old man past eighty simply could not make peace with the words. He doubted he ever would.
Finding a sword has already cost me four days.
Three remained. The last of them was for mutual confirmation, so in truth he had two. Two days in which to choose who would duel him, and at a price he could bear.
With that weighing on him, Cheon Hwi returned to the Academy. What met him was not an administrator like Beryl, but a guard trained as a guard ought to be.
"Name."
"Cheon Hwi."
"Purpose."
"I've come for the papers to choose an opponent for the transfer exam."
"Here. The documents must be submitted within two days. Fail to submit them, and you will be deemed to have withdrawn from the transfer exam."
"Suit yourself."
The exchange, cold and empty of anything but purpose, ended as quickly as it had begun. They parted with Cheon Hwi holding a thick sheaf, and the guard empty-handed from having given it over.
Awfully thick.
He had heard there were plenty of students willing to stand for a transfer exam. Most of them would be confident they could win, and confident they could name a price for the privilege. To an enrolled student, a transfer applicant was little different from a gift box.
Even so.
I didn't think they'd reach for that much from a beggar.
He was reminded, all over again, that human beings were greedy creatures.
"Now. Let's have a look at the price."
Candidate:Cinea Radian
Price:Ownership of the Transfer Applicant
The paper buckled with a harsh crunch.
The moment he read the first line, Cheon Hwi had no choice but to crush the documents in his fist.