A Physique Beyond Reason
All the knights burst forward at once. Messi fell in beside them as if they had rehearsed it, matching their line as he began to run.
Must be because it's a long-distance race. Nobody's planning to go all-out from the start.
Messi had intended to ease into it himself — a light jog to warm up before he really opened the throttle. He assumed the knights had the same idea.
They did not. Before they had even taken their places at the starting line, the knights had agreed on the opposite strategy.
"We go hard from the jump. Open up a full lap on him before he even knows what's happening."
"Heh heh heh. I like it. We'll have some fun with him. Once we've got a lap, we surround him and tear him a new one."
"Can't wait to watch the half-breed go crying for his mommy..."
They were certain the plan was airtight. He was just a late-starting freshman, after all. The fact that he was the family head's benefactor gave them a moment's pause, but this was a knight order's aptitude test — what else were they supposed to do? Knights had always been a brutish lot at heart.
If he thinks he's getting special treatment, he's in for a rude awakening. We'll give him a taste of how things really work.
The knights exploded off the line at a full sprint.
And then something was wrong.
What?
Why isn't the gap opening?
They were running at maximum speed, and yet that Messi fellow was keeping pace with them as if he were out for a leisurely jog. Worse, he was running along the outer edge of the training ground — holding the same line as the rest of them from the longest possible path. That was no small feat when every knight was going all-out.
By the time they had rounded half a lap, the gravity of the situation began to dawn on them one by one.
What the hell is this?
This guy... he's way too fast.
"Change of plans, Hulan! Get in close and throw him off! Trash-talk him — mess with his pace!"
"W-what am I supposed to say?"
"Don't start acting like an amateur! You're the one who got even a wicked god fired with that 'everyone has parents' line!"
The knight Bacillus had given operational command issued an order Hulan couldn't refuse. Hulan's face went even paler. It felt like he was paying the price for every hazing he'd ever inflicted on a new recruit.
And of all people, today's test subject was Messi. Messi — the man who knew exactly what Hulan had done in the Forest of Resentment. Anyone with half a brain would also know that Messi was the one who had talked the young lord into sparing the traitors. And now Hulan had no choice but to heckle him. He was, to put it mildly, in a bind.
He drifted closer as they ran. Messi had noticed him coming a while ago, and offered a small nod of greeting.
Inside Hulan's head, a devil and an angel seemed to be locked in mortal combat. His eyes darted wildly. Sweating profusely, he wrestled with himself for a long, agonizing moment — then called out.
"H-hey!"
"Hm?"
"I heard the dog your father raises likes the neighbor better than him?"
"...?"
"And your mother's cooking is supposed to be terrible?"
"And every one of your siblings is ugly except you?"
What is this guy even saying?
Hulan's insults were so feeble they were barely insults at all. Messi found the whole thing more irritating than anything else, so he simply ignored him and pulled ahead. The moment he picked up the pace, the knights behind him fell into visible disarray.
"Hulan, you useless piece of shit! What kind of trash-talk was that?!"
"Okay, but that first one was actually kind of messed up depending on how you read it?"
"Shut up! All of you, catch up already!"
They tried. The gap between them and Messi refused to close.
By now, Messi was starting to find it strange himself.
Why aren't they catching up?
Were they trying to conserve their pace? But if they let the gap open this early in the warm-up, they'd only have a harder time closing it later. So Messi changed his own plan. He decided to run for real. If they were going to hang back like that, the smart move was to open the distance and leave them behind.
BANG!
He drove his lead foot into the ground and launched himself forward. Dirt exploded from the impact. The knights chasing him caught a faceful of sand and soil and spat curses. By the time they had blinked the grit from their eyes and spat the dirt from their mouths, Messi was already far ahead.
That was when the knights began to make a serious miscalculation — born of the stubborn conviction that nobody could possibly be that much faster than them.
"H-holy shit..."
"Is he using mana? That's cheating!"
"So that's why he's so fast. Fine — we use it too!"
Laboring under that misunderstanding, the knights threw themselves after Messi in a frenzy. The moment they started circulating mana, their bodies lightened and they surged forward. They managed to close some of the gap. They could not catch him.
How? They were using mana now. The knights sank deeper into confusion.
Bacillus's eyes flew wide. Who could have predicted that a routine aptitude test would produce a spectacle like this?
The active-duty knights can't catch him?
Even without using mana, the volume of training these men received on a daily basis was on another level. These were people who sprinted in full plate armor. And they were the ones chasing from behind?
Then Messi really opened up, and Bacillus was even more stunned.
He's not using mana...
Running with mana meant using the energy inside the body to lighten oneself, to almost float. Leaving footprints like that meant he was putting his full weight into every stride. You could do it with mana, technically, but it would be wildly inefficient. If the knights had been able to look at it coldly from a third-party perspective, they would have realized the same thing — and they wouldn't have embarrassed themselves by burning mana on a chase they couldn't win.
But the regular knights are using mana and they still can't close the gap... What in the world...
Just what was this Messi? What kind of body did you need to match mana-users while running on nothing but raw flesh? Bacillus's mouth hung open. He had never seen anything like it in his life.
"Wahaha! Hell, this is better than a play!"
Ereb's delighted laugh rang down from the viewing stands.
Around the forty-seventh lap, Messi realized something.
There's nobody in front of me. Nobody behind me, either.
The track had emptied out without him noticing. Should he keep running by himself? He was still considering it when he spotted Bacillus, who gestured for him to stop. Messi pulled up right in front of him.
"Is it over?"
This bastard isn't even breathing hard.
What kind of absurd stamina was that? Fortunately, Bacillus was wearing a closed helm that hid his face, so his expression went unseen.
"Yes. It's over. You just outlasted every active-duty knight in this order on pure stamina."
"I see. Thank you for your hard work."
"...You're the one who did the hard work."
Messi's courtesy somehow came across as the unhurried ease of a man who hadn't been taxed at all. Which wasn't wrong. For Messi, this test had been easy. A footrace? After absorbing Enzo Muerte's power, there was no stage simpler than this. And he hadn't even used mana. He hadn't expected the gap to be this overwhelming, and he was a little surprised himself.
"Follow me. Next is the strength test."
Messi fell in behind Bacillus without complaint.
On the training ground, iron balls of various sizes had been laid out — prepared while Messi was running. They were said to be the work of Little People artisans. To increase their weight, all manner of minerals had been alloyed into them, and nobody knew exactly what they were made of. Time had erased even the era of their forging. Bacillus himself had lifted them during his squire examination, and the commander of that era had lifted them during his. They were tools with a formidable history.
There were eight in total. The lowest, Tier 1, weighed fifty kilograms. The highest, Tier 8, weighed four hundred.
"These are the Squire Test Iron Balls. Candidates sit the squire exam anywhere from age seven to fifteen, and given how heavy they are, almost nobody ever lifts the ones in the back."
"But it sounds like someone has."
"There is a known record. Sir Grotein lifted Tier 5 at the age of thirteen."
"...Thirteen?"
"Well... some people are simply born with a different kind of strength."
The bitterness in his voice suggested Bacillus's own record had fallen well short of that. He immediately summoned a knight. Dexter — the same man who had been barking at Hulan during the run. He was the largest man Messi had seen aside from Grotein.
"A regular knight your age can usually lift Tier 4 or 5 without using mana. Watch closely."
Dexter glanced at Messi, snorted a laugh, and planted himself in front of an iron ball, huffing through his nose. It was not the "usual" Tier 4 or 5. It was Tier 6. He clearly intended to recoup here the humiliation he'd suffered on the track.
"Dexter. You're not overreaching, I hope?"
"Hahaha! I've been forged as a knight since I was a boy. You think I can't lift a single iron ball?"
He said it while looking at Messi, and there was an edge in the words. For all his bluster, he was tense as he gripped the base of the Tier 6 ball. He folded his legs, dropped his hips, and kept his back in a straight line. He took a few short, sharp breaths, braced his core, and exploded upward, pouring every ounce of his strength through his body as his legs drove straight. His thigh muscles must have been swelling to the point of bursting.
"HNNNGH!!!"
Dexter's face flushed crimson as he hoisted the iron ball. Lifting three hundred kilograms in full plate was a genuinely impressive feat. As he'd said, it was the kind of result only years of knightly training could produce.
THUD!!
He set the ball down and grinned at Messi. He had strained so hard that blood was running from his nose.
"Why don't you start at Tier 3?"
Bacillus made the suggestion with Messi's build in mind. Even Tier 3 looked like a stretch, but he needed an accurate read on Messi's potential.
He's got the stamina, and if he can lift Tier 3 without any specialized training... that means the foundation is excellent.
The point of this test was not a contest of strength. It was to assess aptitude. If Messi could manage that much, Bacillus was prepared to give Viscount Ahental a glowing evaluation.
Messi shook his head.
"...Did you mean to say Tier 6?"
Perhaps Dexter had gotten under his skin, and he'd misspoken. But Messi walked over and stood in front of the Tier 8 ball. It came up to his chest.
Even Bacillus was taken aback. There was no way a man of such ordinary build could lift that with raw strength. He had seen Grotein hoist it in his active-duty days, of course — but Grotein was a different creature entirely, both in physique and in the intensity of his training.
"Don't be reckless. There's always at least one fool who snaps his back trying this during the squire exam...."
"Wh-what?"
Dexter, standing beside him, made a startled sound. He looked, not quite believing — and the Tier 8 ball had already left the ground, if only by a little.
That was impossible.....
It rose.
"...?"
"?"
Messi scooped it up and lifted it with such casual ease that for a moment neither man could speak. Bacillus recovered first.
"...Put it down."
"Yes."
BOOM!!!!
Judging by the weight of the impact, there was nothing wrong with the ball. If something was wrong...
What the hell is this guy?
It was him. He was the anomaly. Monster-class strength packed into a frame like that... it was something that existed outside the bounds of common sense.
Bacillus gave up trying to understand Messi's physical abilities.
Viscount Ahental had been beaming at first. The running had exceeded every expectation. If Messi had embarrassed himself after that morning's bombshell announcement, the plan itself wouldn't have changed, but it would have been awkward. That worry was gone now. Ramang's high evaluation had been right on the mark.
"I'll concede that your eye for people is excellent, Ramang."
"Haha... yes..."
Ramang smiled weakly at his lord's praise.
No... what I saw wasn't this.
He had run with Messi in the Ant Tunnels, and Messi hadn't been this fast. The bewilderment didn't stop there. It started when Messi opened up into a full sprint and the knights began using mana to chase him. From that point, even Viscount Ahental seemed to find it odd. He turned to Ramang.
"Is Sir Messi using mana right now?"
"It doesn't appear so..."
"But our knights look like they are..."
"That's how it looks to me as well..."
"Then how is it that they still can't catch Sir Messi?"
"....."
Ramang had nothing to say. He didn't know what kind of situation this was any more than the viscount did.
Eventually, knights began dropping out — some having exhausted their mana, others simply too tired to keep running — and Messi's run came to an end.
"Does this make any sense?"
It does not...
Ramang shook his head at the viscount's question. And it didn't end there. When Messi lifted the Tier 8 iron ball without a second thought, the entire gathering fell silent. Viscount Ahental's eyes were wide. He made no effort to compose himself. Ereb, who had been enjoying the whole thing like a festival, and Ayres, who had been scowling throughout, both sat with their mouths hanging open.
Every man of House Ahental had sat the squire test. They all knew what that Tier 8 ball weighed. The viscount muttered.
It was meant for himself, but everyone around him nodded in agreement.
One last verification remained. A formal squire test evaluated a candidate's aptitude as a prospective knight, which meant horsemanship, close-quarters combat, and wrestling would normally be assessed. Those had been omitted this time; the focus was solely on gauging Messi's potential. But one thing had to be addressed.
A practice wooden sword was tossed in front of Messi. He caught it — and a familiar face stepped forward.
"Sir Ramang."