Hearts of Steel
Wooooong!
A faint resonance thrummed through the air, and the men of the 4th Platoon, still seated, flinched as one. Their bodies trembled.
So this… was mana?
Some among them were feeling it for the first time in their lives. Others had sensed something vague and distant before, without ever knowing its name. Most had never imagined they would touch it at all.
Only those whom Arteon had guided now felt the flow of mana with absolute clarity.
“Open your eyes.”
At Arteon’s quiet command they slowly lifted their lids. He looked over them and spoke again.
“You all felt it, didn’t you?”
“……Yes.”
“It’s incredible, Platoon Leader.”
“So this is mana.”
They had believed they would never have the chance to feel such a thing in their lifetimes. Mana was the relic of the privileged, the exclusive domain of the strong.
Arteon continued, addressing the entire platoon.
“From now on you will train without a single day of laziness. You must keep up your current regimen while adding this on top of it. Your days may grow even busier.”
His gaze settled on Grein.
“Grein. For the time being I will devote myself, by order, to training the convict soldiers. This will not be finished in a day or two, and during that period I will have no spare attention for the rest of you.”
“Do not worry, sir. Whatever you have ordered, I will carry it out even at the cost of my life.”
To the 4th Platoon, Arteon’s training had always been exactly that—something they performed every single day as if their lives depended on it. And now he had even taught them a true mana cultivation method, not some worthless scrap sold on the streets.
……A real mana cultivation method.
If they mastered this, they too could climb to higher realms.
Arteon nodded at Grein’s reply.
“Do not grow slack. The road our 4th Platoon must walk from here on will be nothing less than the hell-road of the North.”
He added one more thing.
“While I train these convicts, I intend to fill the empty places in our platoon with some of them. But when I return…… those of you who have fallen short will no longer keep your seats.”
His voice was calm, yet every man present knew he meant every word. Not one of them voiced a complaint. This was that kind of place.
To stand with Arteon meant becoming an iron-blooded warrior capable of punching through hell itself……
All of us…… must become that.
To follow in Arteon’s footsteps, they had to grow stronger. Every man of the 4th Platoon understood it.
“Understood!”
“Leave it to us!”
“We will never lose to those juniors!”
The platoon rose as one and roared toward Arteon. Voices full of spirit. Eyes burning with resolve. Bodies hardened by training.
Arteon’s lips twitched into a faint smile.
“I’ll be looking forward to it, then.”
“Platoon—attention!”
Grein’s shout rang through the barracks. With sharp, precise movements the men snapped into perfect attention.
“Salute to the Platoon Leader!”
“Hearts of steel!”
The cry seemed to set their hearts ablaze. Arteon, who had already begun to turn away, pivoted back to face them and brought his heels together.
Snap!
Then—
Thud!
He drove his right fist hard against his left chest.
“Hearts of steel. I look forward to seeing how much better you have become.”
With those words he turned once more. How many months it would take, he could not yet say. But by the time the real war began……
Much will have to change.
Them…… and
me as well.
Behind the departing Arteon, the cold northern wind began to howl with sudden force.
Arteon.
Those four syllables were branded into the minds of the convict soldiers within mere days, as if tattooed onto their brains.
“I-Instructor…… huff…… huff!”
Their legs refused to move. Nearly five hundred convicts kept forcing their bodies onward under the relentless prodding of the instructors, yet—
“Huff…… huff…… huff……!”
“W-wait…… ghk……!”
The brutal physical training had driven them to the absolute limits of flesh. A few with superior stamina managed to keep pace somehow, but—
“Leaving your comrades behind? Think you can just run off alone and be done?”
Arteon closed in from the side, kicked the thighs of the stronger ones, and pointed at the men collapsed behind them.
“Get this through your heads! If the entire unit cannot finish together, every last one of you starts over! Does a fallen comrade feel like dead weight to you?!”
Perhaps some of the fitter men truly thought so. Arteon knew that very mindset was the first thing that had to die.
First……
He had gathered a pack of trash, but they could not remain trash forever. Learning stamina and tactics was easy enough. The true malice and the true camaraderie required on a real battlefield were far harder to forge. Without them, a man was nothing but a burden who endangered his own allies.
I start by tearing out this rotten spirit and rebuilding it from the ground up.
That was why he drove them to the brink. Only those who could still care for their comrades even in such desperate straits would survive.
On the northern battlefield…… being outstanding alone means nothing.
Learning how to move as one was the foundation of this training—the bare minimum that would let them pull their weight when the real fighting began.
Of course there will be plenty of noise at first.
But even that noise would soon vanish. He would grind them into such utter exhaustion that they would lack the strength left to quarrel.
From sunrise to sunset they never stopped moving. Nothing more complicated than running, walking, crawling. Yet once the sun set and the blade-sharp cold swept in, they forgot the day’s resentments and clung to one another simply to endure the night’s agony.
In this manner a full month passed under Arteon’s command of the convict training.
The early friction gradually disappeared. Little by little a clear outline began to emerge in the convicts’ drills.
“Run, damn you! Lose to the 10th Squad again today and every one of you gets a thrashing!”
“Uwaaaaaaah!”
“Climb! If you can’t do it on two legs, crawl on all fours!”
“Uwaaaaaaaaagh!”
Up the snow-choked slope of the canyon, dozens of convicts screamed like madmen as they ran and ran again. Ten squads of fifty men each.
Arteon trained—no, broke—them by the simplest methods known to man.
“Out of the way!”
“Uwaaaaaaah! We won!”
The first soldier to snatch the flag at the summit howled almost as if weeping. One of the instructors watching from below muttered,
“……So the 4th Squad finally took it today.”
“They’d been getting crushed by the 10th every single day.”
“They’ll eat their fill tonight for once. I’m sick of hearing them whine about being hungry.”
The instructors traded remarks about the past month’s hardships while staring upward. Arteon simply watched the men and murmured under his breath,
“Physical conditioning…… I’d say the basics are solid enough now.”
“……?”
“Sir?”
At that quiet remark the instructors’ heads snapped toward him at the speed of light.
An entire month.
Treating them as less than human, grinding them that mercilessly—
Th-that was…… only physical training……?
Is this kid some kind of demon?
They would swear that the intensity of the past month’s regimen was something even regular troops would struggle to complete at a hundred percent. Naturally none of the convicts had managed every single day without fail. Each day might well have felt like hell. Every night they may have spent hours repenting the crimes that had brought them here.
And all of that had been “only” physical training?
Arteon ignored their stunned looks and turned his head. At the end of his gaze stood Battalion Commander Major Luokal.
“The framework is in place, then?”
“Yes, sir. After three days of rest starting tomorrow, we can properly organize the units and begin the basic education that regular troops receive.”
“Far faster than I expected. Honestly I doubted they would be ready even by the day the war began.”
Luokal’s admiration was genuine. Entrusting the task to Arteon had proven the correct decision. Moreover, fewer than twenty men had washed out into menial labor. Arteon had completely laid the foundation for a convict unit.
……Perhaps it was only natural. In his previous life, the people Arteon had dealt with most often had been convict soldiers.
……I was one of them myself.
That was why he understood better than anyone what they thought and what they truly wanted. Of course, he had not devoted himself to this mission merely because it was the battalion commander’s order.
“Battalion Commander. Then the condition I mentioned at the beginning…… may I claim it now?”
Arteon spoke. Luokal’s eyes settled on him. A brief silence followed, but there was no real hesitation.
“Of course. I know full well how hard you worked for it.”
“Thank you, sir. I will select them first.”
The single condition Arteon had demanded of Luokal: once the training ended, he would pick a portion of these men to fill the ranks of the 4th Platoon. From Luokal’s perspective they already belonged to his battalion; there was no reason to refuse. Even if they had belonged to another unit, a promise once given was a promise that had to be kept.
“You’ve all worked hard these past weeks. Keep up the good work.”
As of today his duty as chief instructor was finished. Arteon offered polite thanks to the instructors who had trained the convicts alongside him, then turned and walked toward the gathered men.
When he reached them—
……
Gulp.
Ten convict soldiers stood waiting before him. The ones Arteon had pointed out at the very end of the final drill. Their eyes were completely different from the day they had first met him.
Arteon looked them over and said,
“If you follow me, you will look back on this place as paradise. Still…… are you certain? It’s not too late. Anyone who wants to change his mind can transfer to another unit right now.”
“Wh-why do you keep saying the same thing? We’ve already made up our minds.”
The immediate retort came from Kamarkan of the Turak tribe. On the first day he had left a strong impression even among the convicts, and throughout Arteon’s training he had never once fallen out; he had endured to the very end.
Kamarkan’s sharp eyes locked onto Arteon.
“Somehow…… if I follow you, I feel like I might become as strong as you.”
That miraculous power he had witnessed on the first day.
Could I…… become like that too?
Arteon turned the same question on the others.
“All of you feel the same?”
No one answered. Yet that silence carried more unshakable resolve than any shouted reply.
Arteon looked at them and spoke.
“Welcome to my platoon.”
He said “my platoon”…… yet somehow it sounded like “hell.” The moment everything became final, a fleeting urge to take it all back flickered through several minds—and every one of them deliberately crushed it.