The Degenerate Lord (2)
“...”
Müller didn't answer.
He simply stared at me, standing there with a wooden sword in hand.
It was fair enough. A lord who hadn't shown his face at the training grounds once in three years was suddenly standing here like this.
“My lord.”
“Yes.”
“Are you unwell?”
“Perfectly healthy.”
“...I see.”
“I only need one exchange. It won't take long.”
“Heh...”
Müller let out a short breath.
It wasn't a sigh.
Sighing at the head of his house would be a breach of courtesy, and this was a man who reined in even that.
“Very well.”
Müller picked up a wooden sword.
It wasn't a real blade, but the entire atmosphere shifted all the same.
“Come at me.”
“Thank you.”
I offered my thanks to the man who had granted my request.
Lord of the house or Knight Commander—none of that mattered here. As a warrior, Müller held the greater reputation, plain and simple.
The knights fell back in a wide circle.
Dozens of men, every one of them watching me.
“...”
Their eyes weren't unfamiliar.
Hunters knew better than anyone that practice as close to real combat as possible was what mattered.
It feels like being a monkey putting on a trick show.
But this much? Nothing I couldn't handle.
I settled into my opening stance.
“Here I come.”
“Yes.”
Smoothly, I lowered my stance and stepped in to close the distance.
Two steps in, I already knew.
Oh, hell.
My body wouldn't obey.
My head understood perfectly. Drive off the left foot, close in fast, carve a slash into the opponent's flank.
A basic technique, one I'd drilled thousands of times.
But my body simply couldn't do it.
The muscles in my legs and core were a wreck, and I didn't have the strength to swing a sword like a natural extension of my limbs.
And this was not a problem mana could solve.
Whoosh.
“...”
My blade cut through empty air.
Everything Müller had done to evade my attack was a single step backward.
“My lord.”
Having apparently sized me up from that pathetic strike, Müller lowered his wooden sword.
“Shall we call it there?”
“...”
“You should retire for the day.”
“One more.”
“...Pardon?”
“One more exchange, please.”
I said it plainly.
I could hear the knights on the sidelines murmuring.
Worry for the degenerate lord? Concern for my well-being? Not a chance. They were laughing at me.
Strangely, I didn't mind at all.
I'd heard the same thing plenty of times before.
Why work so hard when you could compromise, coast along, and live comfortably?
And every time, I'd answered by raising my sword instead of my voice.
“...”
I closed my eyes and groped for it—the thing living inside this body.
An amount of mana far too generous for such a trash excuse of a physique.
And yet it wasn't even half of what I used to have.
But the memories of this body held no trace of any training to accumulate mana. Strange.
Doesn't matter.
I had no time to play detective over this body's missing history.
What mattered was gauging my maximum combat strength right now.
All right. Let's say I eventually fix the muscles and nerves with exercise—but what happens if I channel mana into an attack as I am?
If someone came to kill me in the dead of night, how far could I push them back?
To find out, I readied what would likely be my final strike.
“Coming.”
Crack—!
I kicked off the ground.
And I studied my target, plain as day.
His right foot is half a hand-span forward.
His weight was planted on the front foot.
His sword hand hung low, elbow tucked tight against his body.
A stance that could whip upward at any moment.
Which meant I abandoned the high line entirely.
Low left.
That was where he lagged half a beat.
Müller Guderson hadn't thought much of it at first.
He had no idea why Romeo, the head of House Jackson, was suddenly acting this way, but he figured a few perfunctory exchanges would settle it. He was not a generous enough man to shower praise on the boy merely for showing up to training.
But the moment the young lord launched his second attack—
What is this?
The footwork bearing down on him was anything but ordinary.
Not fast, specifically. After three years of neglecting training, that much was natural.
Yet the rhythm was impossible to read, the angle of approach off-script—and even the infinitesimal tilt of the sword's grip.
These were the methods favored by knights who had grown adept at killing on real battlefields.
And on top of that—he read my stance?
A lion facing a rabbit, and still Müller found himself freezing mid-motion.
Since coming to Milane, no opponent had ever forced that out of him.
Smack—!
“Guhhaaak!”
A pitifully weak impact, given how boldly the attack had come.
“My lord!”
Müller shouted toward the staggering Romeo.
The young lord's strength gave out at the last instant, and his head dropped forward.
This crippled bastard.
Cursing was all Romeo could manage.
He'd wondered, and wondered—and it turned out this body couldn't even carry a mana-infused strike through to the end before breaking down.
What good was reading the opponent's every move when the body itself was the problem?
The pampered young master of a golden-spoon house? A knight sworn to defend people from monsters with his blade?
Forget all of that—any farmer in this world moved his body better than this, and none of this would have happened if he hadn't trained himself down to less than a farmer's level.
“Goddammit.”
His consciousness dimming, the curse slipped out before he could stop it.
He was nominally nobility now. He really would have to watch his mouth going forward...
“M-My lord!”
“Hey! Somebody get over here, now!”
The training grounds erupted into chaos, and the knights came running.
They crowded around the fallen Romeo, a few of them shaking his shoulders.
“He's breathing!”
“Fetch a physician!”
the vice commander bellowed.
A murmur rippled through the knights.
“Why would he even do something like that...”
“Fainting from swinging a sword like that? Is that supposed to make sense?”
“With a body in that state, of course he did.”
“Looks like that was his first time putting mana into a strike, too.”
That was all the knights had seen.
A frail young lord throwing a tantrum and collapsing under his own power—a finale that fit Romeo Jackson's track record precisely.
But one man among them was seeing something different.
Müller hadn't moved a muscle, wooden sword still in his grip.
...That final instant.
He replayed the brief exchange with the fallen young lord.
Romeo's blade flashing toward him at the very end.
His body had failed him and the force had drained away, but the judgment itself had been flawless—he'd struck at Müller's blind spot while concealing his own technique. And those eyes, utterly without hesitation, aimed straight for a vital point. Where in the world had that come from?
A young man who had whiled away his years on a peaceful estate, wearing that face?
But his thoughts kept sliding toward the impossible.
He looked exactly like a knight who had courted death a thousand times over on the battlefield.
“...Ugh.”
I opened my eyes.
The same ceiling I'd woken to on my first day in this world.
“You've been abed all day, my lord.”
“...”
Hans was standing beside me.
I was seeing him far more often than expected.
“How is your body?”
“...Manageable.”
I pushed myself upright.
My whole body ached as if I'd been beaten black and blue—like I'd joined a raid far above my level.
“Sir Hans.”
“Yes.”
“I disgraced myself at the training grounds yesterday. I apologize.”
“Why are you apologizing to this old man? More importantly—”
Hans produced something, sorting through it carefully.
“I have a report to give.”
“Go ahead.”
“It concerns the House of Arden, as I mentioned yesterday.”
“...Ah.”
Right, that.
Hans had just reminded me that this body of mine couldn't simply while away its days swinging swords and building muscle.
“So it didn't end with a mere protest after all.”
Hans held out a sealed letter.
“They have requested an audience.”
“...An audience?”
“Yes. You are instructed to come to the ducal residence in the capital, Rohan.”
“Hmm.”
I took the envelope.
The paper was thick and heavy. The crest stamped into the wax seal was unfamiliar, but Romeo's memories supplied the answer on their own.
The Ducal House of Arden.
One of the most storied noble families in the empire.
And.
The very house that belonged to this story's female lead, no less.
The novel kept its overall tone light and hero-friendly, so naturally her family was loaded to the gills.
“Sir Hans.”
“Yes.”
“If the House of Arden summons a callow young pup of a lord from House Jackson for an audience, what does that usually mean?”
“...”
Hans took a moment to choose his words.
“That is not a request, my lord. It is a summons.”
“Is that so?”
What Romeo Jackson had done wasn't hard to dig out of these memories.
A social gathering in Rohan, not long ago.
Drunk out of his mind, Romeo picked a fight with the daughter of Duke Arden and threw a tantrum.
Specifically—because she had refused to accept a necklace he'd bought with his own money.
Oh, brother.
I sighed and pressed a hand to my forehead.
The lady of the ducal house he'd picked a fight with was none other than Catherine Arden—the female lead herself.
The woman every strong knight in this novel went berserk trying to protect, or simply to catch her eye.
If you're going to start trouble, at least check who you're starting it with.
Then again, picking fights with people you shouldn't touch, for zero gain, was practically the job description of an extra villain.
“I'll prepare a letter of formal apology and reparations.”
“That's not a solution I care for. Is there another way?”
“There is the option of asking for help from someone sympathetic on the Council of Elders...”
“Let's hold off on that too.”
I didn't need to hear Hans finish to know the score.
Ever since the man who would have been my father died, the family's Council of Elders had been circling the estate's revenues like vultures waiting for a kill.
Milane was, in any world, a land where money flowed most freely.
It was only natural that it crawled with hyenas.
“If I were to go to the House of Arden myself—would the Duke actually kill me?”
“Duke Arden is said to be a knight of profound faith. But he cherishes his daughter dearly, and the men who covet Lady Catherine will hardly stand idly by.”
“Hmm...”
No matter how I looked at it, Hans clearly considered this the worst possible option.
My thinking was the exact opposite.
“Then I'll go myself.”
“My lord?”
The simplest solution in the world was to settle things with your own two hands, wasn't it?
The real question was how much I could recover before the appointed hour.