My Disciple Picked Up Another Family's Junior Disciple?
Things people set out to do never go quite as planned.
So what happens when an entire nation tries the same?
Naturally, every kind of mishap and disaster comes pouring out.
The Empire’s Hero Candidate Project was no exception.
“Master, I’ll give it my all again today.”
The boy Leo had been selected as a Hero candidate and taken in as the disciple of the Transcendent known as Cliff Sword, Drew Mace. The trouble was that reaching the realm of a Transcendent did not automatically make someone a decent human being—and in that regard Drew Mace ranked among the absolute worst.
“Hey! Get down to the village and bring me booze!”
“You call this side dishes?!”
Drew Mace had never intended to teach his swordsmanship in the first place. Despite standing at a height no ordinary person could ever reach, he spent every day chasing nothing but liquor, living the most wretched life imaginable. Having a disciple drop into that existence was never going to straighten him out.
The reason he had fallen so far was his own sword art. The Mace style—known as Barrier Swordsmanship—had once shaken an entire era with its renown. That glory, however, was strictly past tense. The style possessed many strengths, yet it had never produced a true strongest. Of course, a solid, respectable sword art was more than enough for most swordsmen to make their way in the world… but neither Drew Mace nor the rest of the Mace family could abandon their hunger for the absolute pinnacle.
As a result the family began its long decline. One by one members left to seek their own survival, hastening the collapse until only Drew Mace remained. He clawed his way all the way to the Transcendent realm simply to prove that the family style could still produce the strongest—only to discover, with crushing certainty, that the Mace style could never reach that height.
In the end he set down his sword and picked up a bottle instead, and so began the worst chapter of his life.
Hero candidate Leo spent his days under Drew Mace learning nothing of value, reduced to waiting hand and foot on the sudden disaster of a master the Empire had foisted upon him. Yet Leo never once complained. He always wore a smile while tending to that hopeless teacher—the same teacher who never taught him a single proper lesson.
Perhaps that devotion finally bore fruit.
One day Drew Mace set aside the bottle, took up a wooden sword, and taught Leo the Mace style.
It lasted only a single day.
Leo spent that day believing it the most rewarding of his life, and he fell asleep certain many more like it would follow.
The next morning, Cliff Sword Drew Mace never opened his eyes again.
Whether Drew Mace had sensed his approaching death and wanted to leave his disciple something—anything—or whether the mood had simply struck him by chance, or whether he had meant to start a new life only to be struck down by cruel luck… no one would ever know. Whatever the truth, Leo had received one proper day of instruction and was then left completely alone.
In such a situation the Empire should have found the orphaned Hero candidate a new master. Instead the Empire never even learned that Drew Mace had died, and it was never competent enough to handle matters that swiftly in any case. So Leo remained alone.
Left by himself, Leo picked up the wooden sword.
Though it had been only one day, he swung and swung without rest, determined to master everything his master had taught him in that single day. Before his master’s grave he swung with everything he had—again, and again, and again.
Without a teacher he had no way of knowing whether he was doing it correctly, yet Leo never stopped swinging.
He believed those days would never change.
Until a girl spoke to him.
“Pathetic.”
She possessed beautiful silver hair and gem-like eyes that were both mysterious and lovely. At a glance she was no girl who belonged in a backwater village like this. She had clearly grown up in a great house, waited on by servants. Leo understood little of such things, but he could tell with absolute certainty that the girl before him was someone special.
“Um… who are you?”
“You’re the Hero candidate Leo, right?”
“…Huh? Ah! Yes, that’s right!”
He had become Drew Mace’s disciple as a Hero candidate, yet he had never once been treated like one. The realization that he actually was a Hero candidate startled even himself.
“Must’ve been rough under that piece of trash.”
The words hit Leo like a slap.
“My master was not trash.”
“…? If Drew Mace wasn’t trash, then what is?”
“My master was not trash!”
Leo was an orphan. Drew Mace had been the first person ever to become his guardian. It was true the man had never properly done a single thing for him as a guardian; Leo was not blind to that fact.
But…
Even if it had been only one day…
The day before his master died…
The time they spent together had been real—undeniably true.
That single day was a precious memory Leo would never forget for the rest of his life.
That alone was enough for him. It was more than enough. No matter what anyone said, Leo refused to think of his master as trash.
Yet the girl, as if she neither knew nor cared, simply repeated herself.
“He was trash. He took you as a disciple and left you nothing, right? Just made you run booze errands all day. If that isn’t trash, what is?”
“My master left me something!”
“That half-baked, incomplete swordsmanship that doesn’t even have the basics down? If that’s all Drew Mace left behind, then trash is exactly what it is.”
In that instant Leo’s eyes fell on the sword at the girl’s waist.
“I request a spar! I’ll show you exactly what my master left me!”
Sera found the Hero candidate Leo standing before her endlessly fascinating.
After all, to him she was something like a senior sister. Across countless regressions she had served under many masters, and one of them had been Drew Mace. Naturally she too had suffered every kind of hardship under him. Had she not been determined to learn as many sword styles as possible in those days, she never would have endured it. Yet all that patience had earned her was Drew Mace’s empty death.
Ordinarily a Transcendent enjoyed a long lifespan, but Drew Mace had abandoned the sword completely and lived in utter ruin even after reaching that realm—effectively carving away his own life. In the end Sera had been forced to learn the Mace style from someone else. The name Mace might have been discarded, but the sword art itself had not vanished from the world, so it had been possible.
She had business in the area and thought, There’s probably a Hero candidate around here going through the same misery I did, so she had stopped by—only to find Leo. And now things had come to this.
At first she had simply meant to introduce him to the place where she herself had learned the Mace style…
How did it end up like this…?
Because Drew Mace had been trash, she had assumed that sharing that story would create common ground and everything would go smoothly. Apparently, unlike her, Leo did not consider Drew Mace quite so trash-like.
Well, as clumsy and chaotic as it is, he did learn the basics.
To think that trash Drew Mace had actually taught someone the foundations of the Mace style. From the perspective of a senior sister like Sera, it was genuinely surprising. He had died without teaching her a single thing, after all—despite the fact that she had done every single chore he ordered with perfect patience…
Well… I never devoted myself to him the way this kid did. A person’s sincerity can change another person… or something like that, I guess?
She felt no particular interest. No sense of unfairness like “Why teach him and not me?” either. To her, every master except Jade was now an existence that stirred no emotion whatsoever. She simply accepted it.
Still… when is this going to end?
“Cough! Cough!”
Leo was already covered head to toe in dirt. He tried to attack and was sent flying. He tried to defend and was sent flying. He tried to respond calmly and was sent flying. He tried to exploit an opening and was sent flying. He stood still and was sent flying. The result of being launched without rest—every single time by the sword wind Sera casually unleashed.
“Ready to give up yet?”
“Ah. Not yet! Not yet!”
I don’t get it.
He hadn’t even learned properly—just a crash course. Of course he would try clumsy attacks with “that” swordsmanship.
Hero candidate Leo… a name I don’t remember.
The Hero Candidate Project had been so slapdash that only a handful of candidates ever truly blossomed and made a name for themselves; most died pointlessly. Leo had almost certainly been one of those.
Originally he would have been stuck under some mediocre expert, learned nothing of value, then been shoved onto the front lines as a “Hero candidate” and died. But because I—who should have been under a Transcendent—ended up under a mere expert-level master instead, the chance to serve a Transcendent master fell to someone else. In this life that someone was Hero candidate Leo, I suppose. The problem is that the Transcendent he got was none other than Drew Mace.
Sera could not help thinking the boy had truly rotten luck.
“Uwaaaaah!”
Of course the boy himself had no idea how unlucky he was; he was too busy charging at Sera.
“Haa.”
Sera let out a weary sigh and swung her sword.
Whiiing!
Thud-roll-roll!
Struck cleanly by the sword wind, Leo once again tumbled helplessly across the ground.
“How about we call it finished now?”
“Not yet!!”
Leo stood up again. Even though Sera was holding back, his young body had long since passed its limit. Yet the light in his eyes had not dimmed in the slightest.
“Huff. Huff. Huff!”
At the same time, the presence radiating from Leo changed.
“Oh?”
Sera looked at him with genuine interest.
The reason the Mace style was called Barrier Swordsmanship and Drew Mace was called Cliff Sword was simple: the style itself created a domain and cut down any enemy who entered it—an aerial-supremacy style of swordsmanship.
And that was precisely why the Mace style could never become the strongest. When the strongest spear met the strongest shield the outcome was uncertain, but when the strongest sword art met the most defensive sword art, the strongest naturally won. A sword was a tool for killing the opponent with certainty; add the strongest technique and the destructive power became monstrous. Add the most defensive technique instead, and the story changed completely. In that case one might as well just pick up a shield.
In short, the Mace style carried a fundamental contradiction as a sword art. That did not make it trash. A trash style could never have built a reputation that shook an era.
The Mace style could never be the strongest, but it could be the best. If an expert or Transcendent who had mastered it appeared on a battlefield, that battlefield became a literal slaughter. A barrier sword that created its own domain of absolute aerial supremacy and cut down everything inside it—no other style possessed such overwhelming power on the field of war.
There was a reason Drew Mace had been called Cliff Sword and feared as a living terror. The man himself had simply despaired that he never became the strongest.
And in this very moment, a fragment of that Cliff Sword reached Sera.
Tuk.
A few strands of Sera’s hair danced as they fell to the ground. To be precise, she had allowed it. The force was so faint it never should have touched her, but she deliberately dropped her defenses to zero so that it could. The boy had earned that much of a reward. By imitating the very sword wind that had tormented him, he had managed to forge something resembling a Mace style of his own.
Of course a boy who had not even mastered the basics could never truly reach the realm of sword wind. Yet for a single instant, through the principles of the Mace style and pure force of will, he had brushed against that height.
“Magnificent, Hero candidate Leo.”
Even for Sera, who had lived through endless regressions and every kind of experience, it was something worth genuine admiration. She still considered Drew Mace trash, but she decided to acknowledge the boy’s stubbornness.
“Drew Mace did leave something behind in this world. I retract my earlier words and apologize.”
What Leo had done was nothing more than a crude, momentary fusion of the half-taught Mace style and the sword wind he had just suffered under Sera—yet for a boy who barely knew swordsmanship it was still remarkable. Strictly speaking it was entirely Leo’s achievement, not Drew Mace’s. But saying so would only hurt the boy, so Sera chose a kind lie.
“Hehehe…”
Thud.
Hero candidate Leo’s pure smile lasted only a moment before he collapsed where he stood.
Having already broken past his limits, it was the inevitable result.
“What an impressive boy.”
“That human kid’s pretty good!”
The Archmage William and the elf Riel, who had been watching in secret, finally revealed themselves.
“William.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Take care of him.”
“Pardon?”
“It’s a talent most people wouldn’t even notice. Leave him with anyone else and he’ll die without ever blooming. I’ll have to look after him myself.”
“….”
William briefly wondered whether he ought to say something like, Uh… my lord is busy, so wouldn’t it be better to leave him with someone else? He knew all too well that receiving Sera’s personal training was no blessing. But as a master of social survival he also knew better than to open his mouth, so he kept it firmly shut.
“Hey! Are you trying to kill this human boy?!”
An elf who had never known social relationships, and who had already witnessed Sera’s brutally effective yet terrifying training methods, Riel could only scream in protest.
The problem was…
“Let’s go.”
Sera was never going to change her mind.
“Hey! Don’t ignore me!”
Riel stuck to Sera’s side and began rattling off complaints. Even though she had objected, she already seemed to treat Leo’s fate as decided. For Leo it was the moment his only hope vanished—though William privately felt that hope had never existed in the first place, since Riel was never going to sway Sera.
“…Hang in there.”
William could only murmur the words as he gazed piteously at the boy’s unconscious face, still wearing that pure smile. Would this be the first and last time he ever saw that innocent expression? The thought sent a chill down his spine.
“Sigh…”
He was supposed to be helping the Hero, so why did every day leave him drowning in guilt…? William could not help feeling thoroughly confused.