The Forest, Not the Trees
"Hah."
Raon exhaled a thin breath through his teeth after unfolding every last one of the twelve forms of the Garam Footwork.
Not bad.
His body had moved exactly as he'd drawn the stances and the current of the footwork in his mind. It felt as though he were standing outside himself, watching his own movements with a stranger's eyes. Going forward, it might even be worth using the Ring of Fire to lock down a martial art's flow first, then set his body in motion.
"Hm?"
Raon narrowed his eyes. The training ground, which ought to have been ringing with the noise of footwork drills, was as still as a library. Sensing a strange weight of stares on his back, he turned around.
"Holy shit…"
"Wh-what the hell…"
Burren and Marta stood with their mouths hanging open, half gone from their senses, while Runaan waved a clenched fist. Judging by the shape of her lips, she was saying Teach me.
And it wasn't only the three of them. Every trainee and instructor in the training ground had their eyes bulging as if they might pop from their sockets.
"Why is everyone—"
"Raon."
At the call, surprise still clinging to it, Raon turned again. Rimer, who had been lying on the platform, had come down at some point and now stood in front of him.
"Did you already know the Garam Footwork?"
His green eyes trembled, fine as a harp string just plucked. The shock was unmistakable.
"No. This was my first time seeing it."
It merely shared a similar current with the Shadow Footwork he'd mastered in his previous life. He had never even heard of the Garam Footwork.
"Then how…"
Rimer left a great deal unsaid, but his face made the rest of the question perfectly clear.
"How should I put this."
Raon scratched at his lip and offered a faint smile.
"I could read the flow."
"You could read the flow?"
"Yes. When you demonstrated the footwork, I wasn't looking at the stances or the sequence. I was looking at the flow."
The Garam Footwork ran along a current close to the Shadow Footwork of his previous life, which had made grasping its essence relatively easy.
"Instead of looking at the trees, I took in the whole forest. That's how I saw the way the footwork moved."
"Ha. Unbelievable."
Rimer clutched his head, reduced to nothing but a string of exclamations, as if language itself had failed him.
"I figured it'd take at least a week."
He muttered that he had never expected a footwork art he'd gone to such lengths to find would be cracked this easily.
"I'm sorry."
"No, no. You've got nothing to be sorry for. I was just surprised."
"Mm…"
Raon clicked his tongue so quietly no one else could hear.
Was I too fast?
He'd simply felt a thrill at the flow the moment he saw the footwork and reproduced it as it was. He hadn't expected them to be this shocked.
Then again, even in my previous life, footwork was the one thing I was confident in.
In the life he'd spent as an assassin, his raw combat power had never reached Master — but his footwork had been a match even for Masters.
"To be astonished by such paltry steps… humans truly are pathetic. The Ice Flower Steps This King created in the Demon Realm could freeze an entire mountain and sea with a single stride—"
Yeah, yeah.
Raon swatted Wrath aside the instant the demon popped out to start bragging.
"Ahem."
Rimer cleared his throat once, then clasped his hands behind his back and turned away.
"For a first attempt, you did well enough — but the stances are still lacking. The flow is fine, so put your attention on each individual form. If you have questions, ask the instructors, not me."
"Understood."
Raon nodded and turned around. He could feel the gaps himself; it was, after all, the first time he had actually performed the art.
"Hah!"
"Y-you want us to teach that?"
"I think he's already better than me…"
The instructors shook their heads, their faces so wretched their eyebrows drooped all the way to their cheeks.
After finishing her Garam Footwork drills, Marta left the training ground with the butler Camel.
"That footwork looked rather promising."
Camel scratched his chin and smiled.
"It will serve well enough as a foundation until you inherit the master's own footwork. You would do well to learn it properly."
"Got it."
Marta gave a small nod as she walked toward the Main House.
"Young miss. Has something happened?"
Sensing that she was not her usual self, Camel drew up right beside her.
"Hah…"
Marta, who had kept her silence, wrinkled her nose and turned her head.
"How hard is that footwork to pick up?"
"Hmm. It is a foundational footwork, certainly, but the flow is quite intricate. It is not an easy thing to learn."
Camel closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them.
"You have a gift for footwork as well, young miss. You should be able to grasp the flow in about three days."
"Three days? Fuck…"
Marta shook her head, looking as if she could not believe what she was hearing.
"Young miss?"
"Then could a trainee learn that footwork in a single go?"
"Warriors who have reached a true realm could copy it at a glance, but a trainee? Impossible. They have no theory, no knowledge, no experience of footwork whatsoever — and the depth of their martial learning itself is paper-thin."
"There's a bastard who did it."
"I beg your pardon? What do you mean…"
Camel's eyes flew wide.
That's possible?
Even if the Garam Footwork was built from basic steps, the martial current running through it was dense and precise. A trainee mastering it on the spot was impossible unless the child had been practicing footwork from the moment they were born — a monster, in other words.
He looked at Marta's face. The shock still had not left it. And at that expression, a single trainee's name flickered through his mind.
"Surely that trainee isn't Raon?"
"Who else would it be if not that crazy bastard."
"Well, that's…"
Camel clamped a hand over his mouth and barely managed to swallow the curse that had been about to slip out.
"Could you explain what happened?"
"After the demonstration, everyone started practicing. That guy just stood there by himself with his eyes closed, then opened them right before training ended. And after that…"
Marta told Camel everything — every astonishing thing she had seen in the training ground.
"Heavens…"
Camel shook his head slowly.
The boy has lost his mind.
Standing still with his eyes closed for that long meant he had been learning the Garam Footwork inside his head.
To be able to employ mental imagery at that age…
He had thought the boy was merely a little more gifted than most — gifted enough, perhaps, to let light fall on the Annex once more. But no. Raon Zieghart was a monster who could become the bridge carrying the Main House's light all the way to the Annex.
I need to report this at once.
This was information of the highest importance. Once he had seen Marta back to the Main House, he would have to take the story straight to Denier.
"Hm?"
As he walked, he realized Marta was no longer beside him. He looked back and found her coming along behind him with her head bowed.
Tsk. I was too careless.
It had not been long since Marta had lost to Raon. He had been far too insensitive.
"Young miss. Raon's talent and yours are of different kinds. It is not a matter of who stands higher or lower…"
The words of comfort died in Camel's throat the moment he met Marta's lifted gaze.
Those eyes.
They were not the eyes of someone who had been defeated. They were a challenger's eyes — the eyes of a beast that meant to tear the back of the one running ahead and devour it. And they were the same eyes he had seen the first time he met her, at the branch of the White Blood Cult.
"I'm glad."
Marta twisted her mouth into a smile.
"The one who beat me isn't a fake."
A savage smile blooming on that refined face sent a chill crawling up Camel's spine.
I had it wrong.
He swallowed dryly. Marta had not been disappointed by the gap in talent between herself and Raon. She was taking a fierce, living pleasure in the thought of bringing down someone stronger and more gifted than she was. Marta was not the kind of person who needed anyone's worry, or anyone's consideration.
"Young miss."
Camel bowed his head, and Marta walked past him. Watching that small, unyielding back and the stride that pushed forward on nothing but confidence, he could see her future taking shape — the image of a terrifyingly beautiful swordswoman looking down on the world from the highest throne.
"…And that's what happened. Learning a footwork art inside your head at that age — does that even make sense? The Patriarch's grandson is a genius, no question about it!"
Rimer grinned as he looked up at Tiger Rock on Bukmang Mountain, the place he always met Glenn.
"What are you, the boy's butler? Every time we meet, it's nothing but talk of that child."
A voice of grave dignity poured down from the rock, and Glenn's expressionless face came into view.
"I'm only answering the questions Your Grace is curious about."
Rimer did not lose his smile, even in the face of Glenn's cold atmosphere.
"Your grandson learned a footwork art through mental imagery. Are you not astonished?"
"It couldn't have been true mental imagery. To learn martial arts that way, you would need to be at least Expert Peak-Class."
Glenn waved a hand lightly. He could not, however, hide the faint tremor at the corner of his mouth.
"As the boy said — he looked at the forest, not the trees, and read the flow of the footwork. The Garam Footwork is an art whose heart is the flow."
"Even so, isn't it remarkable? Where else would you find a child like that!"
"……"
Glenn did not answer. Hands clasped behind his back, he simply watched the Main House at the foot of the mountain.
"You look pleased. I knew I was right to come tell you."
Rimer flicked a glance at Glenn's face and smiled.
"Enough noise. If you've said your piece, go back down. And as I tell you every time — pay attention to the other children as well."
"You don't trust me? I'm the Light Sword. The Light Sword. I have it well in hand, thank you."
"A man on death's door calling himself the Light Sword. Please."
Glenn flicked his hand as if the whole conversation were a nuisance, but Rimer did not go down. He leaned his back against Tiger Rock instead.
"Hmm. The servants at the Main House look busier than usual. What are they preparing for?"
Rimer whistled as he watched the people bustling about the Main House.
"It isn't a preparation. We have visitors coming."
"Visitors?"
"In a few days, an envoy from the Owen Kingdom is due to arrive."
"An envoy from the Owen Kingdom…"
Rimer narrowed his eyes. Owen was a kingdom seated at the heart of the continent, and together with Zieghart it formed one of the pillars of the Six Kings.
"That explains it."
Almost no faction maintained friendly relations with Zieghart. He had thought it strange to hear they were receiving guests — but Owen was one of the few that did.
"Who's leading the envoy?"
"The Third Prince, I'm told. In practice, it will be Duke Tartan."
"Oho. So that madman finally made duke."
A savage smile touched Rimer's mouth at the name Duke Tartan.
"Wait — if it's Carten's Third Prince, isn't he still a child? He'd be around Raon's age, or Burren's…"
"I have no interest in that, so I wouldn't know."
"I see."
Rimer nodded. Unless the King of Owen himself came with the envoy, there was no reason for Glenn to take an interest.
"Tell the trainees to keep their form in order, so they can stand with pride no matter who is watching."
"Pardon? Us as well?"
"The Third Prince is bringing the kingdom's trainee knights with him. They wish to observe the training of our swordsmen and our trainees."
"And you allowed that?"
"Of course."
Glenn's deep crimson gaze turned on Rimer.
"…It's been a long time since I heard those words."
Rimer murmured that he used to hear them every day, and a faintly bitter smile crossed his face.
"If your curiosity is satisfied, go down. How long does the head instructor intend to leave the training ground empty?"
Glenn's mouth tightened, his brow furrowing.
"Yes, sir!"
Rimer raised a hand as if in salute and bent at the waist. He turned his back and started down, then suddenly stopped.
"Hmm…"
He looked out at the distant 5th Training Ground and clicked his tongue.
The Third Prince and trainee knights, is it…
If the Owen Kingdom's envoy included children Raon's own age, a rather excellent idea had just flashed through his mind.
Rimer turned his head, looked at Glenn, and grinned.
"That face. You're thinking something strange again."
Glenn wrinkled his nose as if he had seen something he would rather not.
"No. It won't be strange."
Rimer shook his head, his smile growing even more shameless.
"It will be something that helps the young sprouts of Zieghart."