The Disciples Who Returned With Children
The journey back to me had been an arduous one for my disciples. They had been abandoned at a very young age and barely survived by scraping by on the streets.
Still, once they reached their teens, they succeeded in learning swordsmanship and the Mana Breathing Method on their own. They became fairly recognized swordsmen and formidable warriors.
After that, it seemed like their lives were finally turning around. They accomplished all sorts of feats and built up quite the reputation.
But then one day, they faced a special-grade magic beast—one capable of single-handedly destroying an entire kingdom.
They claimed victory, but at the cost of one of them losing a leg. In the end, unable to wield a sword properly anymore, I retired and ended up in this current situation.
In my early twenties, at the prime of my life when I should have been roaming the continent at my peak, I suddenly found myself treated like some old man relegated to the back room.
Of course, at first I tried to keep going even in that state. But there was no place that welcomed a one-legged swordsman who walked with a crutch. And the name that had once been praised as the strongest on the continent faded from people's memories far faster than I had expected.
Still, every now and then I'd run into someone who recognized me and gave me a pitying look, or people who openly gossiped about the fall of a once-great warrior. In the end, I wandered aimlessly across the continent, avoiding people as best I could.
The place my feet eventually carried me to was here—the remote Is Territory, located at the very edge of the Sorta Kingdom. A place where almost no one recognized me, and even fewer pitied me.
I decided to start a second life here. I poured every last coin I had into buying a small empty lot on the outskirts, repaired a leaky old building, and opened a modest swordsmanship academy.
Seven years had passed since then. Even I hadn't expected to be playing the role of academy director in this rural backwater for so long, but looking back, it had been a rather fulfilling time.
Kids who didn't even know the basics of swordsmanship and could only swing wooden sticks around had grown into proper adults who now held real blades.
Some of them even possessed enough talent that, with a bit more growth, they could surpass the version of me whose development had stalled all those years ago.
Of course, most of them only reached the level of basic Aura Users.... Still, I could proudly say that I'd trained quite a few decent swordsmen who could more than pull their weight in any mercenary band or local knight order.
“Director, here’s this month’s tuition fee. Thank you as always!”
“...Ah.”
Today, one of my most diligent students spotted me on his way out after training and greeted me with impeccable manners, offering something. I accepted the heavy pouch of silver coins he held out with both hands and cleared my throat lightly.
“Ahem, hm! Good. Don’t slack off on your Mana Breathing training at home either. See you tomorrow.”
“Thank you! I’ll be going now!!”
The boy answered energetically and left the training yard. After the remaining students had all gone and I was left alone, I gently shook the pouch up and down in my palm.
Jingle, jingle—!
“......”
Barely suppressing the twitch at the corner of my mouth, I cheered inwardly. Hell yeah... Tonight I’m filling my stomach properly with ale. The thought of freshly fried greasy sausages and heavily salted potato fries from my usual tavern already had my mouth watering.
I hummed a little tune, planted my crutch, and slowly stood up. I nudged the wooden training swords scattered across the floor into a rough pile with my foot, then carefully secured the creaky lock on the academy’s front gate that always squeaked in the wind.
The evening air, with the sun setting and darkness settling in, was pleasantly cool. Autumn’s almost over... I wonder how the tavern’s doing. Imagining the raw, unfiltered heat that only a frontier tavern could offer, I turned around with a light heart.
“......”
“......”
Right at my feet, blocking the entrance to my academy, stood a mysterious group. Two young women and three small children. At first, I thought they were outsiders who had lost their way in the late hour, or perhaps parents who had heard rumors and come to enroll their child.
Is one of them a mother here to register her kid? No, both of them look way too young to be mothers.
I narrowed my eyes and examined their silhouettes in the darkness. The women looked no older than their early to mid-twenties at most.
Yet the children they carried seemed at least seven or eight years old. If they had given birth around age fifteen, the math was strangely off.
Even as my confusion grew, since they seemed to have come looking for me, I was about to greet them—when moonlight slipped through the clouds and my gaze landed on one of the women.
Hair that was mostly pure white with a subtle blue tint. An incredibly unique and pretty face with a detached, slightly dazed expression, paired with that signature cynical yet noble aura.
...No way?
The appearance matched someone from my memories far too perfectly. I stood there frozen, mouth hanging open in shock.
Carnea. The woman before me was unmistakably my most cherished disciple—the one I had treasured from the moment I first met her six years ago until we parted three years ago. The only one I had been certain could one day surpass me.
And Carnea, having noticed that I recognized her, slowly set down the boy she had been holding. Then, with an indifferent expression, she looked straight up at me.
“Airent sir, it’s been a while.”
Her voice was dry and flat, completely without inflection.
“Is that really you, C-Carnea?”
“Ehh~ That’s not fair, Master! There’s me, Renien, too!”
The red-haired woman standing beside her was unmistakably Renien, the other disciple who had always stuck close to Carnea. But before the joy could even fill my chest, my gaze naturally drifted down to the three children standing at their feet, staring up at me with wide, innocent eyes.
Don’t tell me… they got married?
Disciples who had shown up after three years with no warning whatsoever. And three children. One of whom Carnea had just been holding with practiced, familiar ease.
“You two… just what the hell have you been doing out there? No, before that—who are these kids…?”
My voice trembled without me realizing it. I wasn’t sure why I was reacting this way. But it was clear that this unpleasant feeling—whether it was betrayal or sheer bewilderment—was tightening my throat.
Carnea stared quietly at my wavering eyes for a moment, then let out a small sigh and shook her head.
“First, let me correct your misunderstanding.”
“Misunderstanding? Then these children are…”
“Geez, Master, your face has gone completely pale. We didn’t go out and have kids or anything!”
Renien jumped in, waving her hands frantically. She poked the cheek of the boy standing on the ground—who was sniffling while looking up at me—and said,
“Look a little closer. Don’t they resemble any of our fellow disciples?”
“Fellow disciples…?”
At Renien’s abrupt remark, I openly looked skeptical but still examined each child’s face one by one. Thankfully, none of them looked exactly like Carnea. Instead, I noticed familiar dull eyes, stubborn-looking brows, and messy brown hair that stuck out in every direction.
“...Jade? And these are Mila and Lucy?”
Huh? Why did these kids I’d never seen before look exactly like my beloved disciples?
As I muttered their names with a stupid look on my face, the eight-year-old boy Carnea had set down came toddling over and threw his arms around my pant leg.
“Ma-athter… my legth hurt…”
A heavy lisp. But that tone—full of forced bravado yet somehow clumsy—was exactly how Jade used to whine and follow me around complaining that training was too hard.
“But Jade was practically my little brother, four years younger than me?”
As I blinked in utter confusion, unable to make sense of this bizarre situation, Carnea added an explanation in a voice that still betrayed no emotion.
“Not long after we left your side, the Empire made an unreasonable request for support.”
“That’s right! It was right before the subjugation of that frontier special-grade magic beast. The five of us teamed up again after a long time and moved together,” Renien chimed in.
Special-grade magic beast. At those ominous words, the stump of my severed leg began to throb again.
“Of course, thanks to your teachings, Master, we succeeded in taking its head… but…”
Carnea’s indifferent eyes turned toward the three small children huddled together on the ground.
“Right before the kill, those three idiots took the curse of the breath the beast exhaled in its death throes head-on instead of blocking it. We thought it was a deadly poison that would rot the flesh and poured holy power into them immediately, but when they came to, they were like this.”
“...Huh.”
Even after hearing such a detailed and kind explanation, I still couldn’t believe it. I adjusted my crutch and pressed a hand to my forehead.
Elite swordsmen in their early twenties who, in just three years, had grown skilled enough with the sword to make a name for themselves across the continent—had turned into snot-nosed little kids overnight and appeared before me? Was I really supposed to just accept that with a simple “Oh, I see”?
Still, there was nothing else I could do but believe it.
“...So you brought them here to find me?”
“We needed a safe hiding place to avoid outside eyes until we could find a way to break the curse. This was the first place that came to mind.”
Carnea took one step closer. Then, after glancing briefly at my empty pant leg, she added in a very small voice,
“And… maybe because we went through a lot, I missed the stew you used to make, Master.”
It was such an awkward act. The fact that someone who always seemed bored with the world would say something so wistful was honestly funny. But separate from that, I wasn’t cold-hearted enough to turn away disciples who had come seeking help.
“Ma-athter… food pwease.”
I looked back and forth between Jade, who was clinging to my pant leg with a goofy grin, and Mila and Lucy, who were already whining sleepily as they plopped down on the ground.
In the end, I raised both hands in surrender and spoke.
“Looks like that refreshing ale is off the table… It’s cold out. Come inside for now.”