The Third Ring of Fire
House Zieghart lived up to its reputation as the ruler of the north, fielding armed forces of overwhelming might. Every one of those units could take on a hundred men apiece, but if you asked which was the bravest, five people out of ten would name the War Demon Corps.
Karoon Zieghart, commander of that corps and Glenn's second son, clicked his tongue, his face twisting.
"A patient. Didn't they say he was a patient who can barely even move?"
"The maids who overheard the conversation between the Saint of Rags and the Patriarch weren't just one or two, my lord. They were quite clear that he was suffering from a serious illness."
"I heard that too. When I saw him before, and again today, that child's body was anything but normal. And yet…"
Karoon Zieghart tapped the desk. With every tap, it wasn't the desk that shuddered—the entire office did.
"That brat withstood Father's presence."
The pressure Glenn had unleashed was, compared to his true power, no more than a firefly before the sun. And yet a twelve-year-old—a sick child—had endured it. Even having witnessed it with his own eyes, Karoon could scarcely believe it.
"Could Burren have withstood it?"
No answer came to the question that was half spoken to himself.
"No. He couldn't have."
His own son, Burren, had begun training at seven and had been fed quality elixirs at every opportunity. Even Burren, raised like that, would never have endured their father's presence—and the fact that Raon had done it kept circling through Karoon's mind.
"Sylvia's talent was unmatched by anyone, too."
Now she was a cripple, her aura core and mana circuits shattered, but in her prime no one had come close to Sylvia's gift.
"Can we place someone in the Annex?"
"It will take some time, but yes, it's possible."
The butler waiting by the door nodded.
"Do it."
Karoon turned, a cold light in his eyes.
"I want a full report on everything that happens there."
Raon left his room before the morning had even broken. He loosened up lightly in front of the garden, then started running circuits around the Annex. He had said he would train in preparation for the coming instruction, so no one was going to stop him.
"Hah…"
He hadn't been running long before his breath was scraping the back of his throat. This body was incomparably weaker than the one he had known in his previous life.
"Haaah."
He held the ragged breathing in check. In through the nose, out through the mouth—he focused on that simple rhythm and circulated the Ring of Fire.
Every breath that entered and left him carried the mana of nature. Grains of it, fluttering like pollen, threaded through his mana circuits, lending vitality to his flesh and settling the frost that kept blooming inside him.
A good flow.
Raon nodded to himself. The Ring of Fire revealed its true worth when paired with physical exertion. The volume and purity of the mana he was circulating now were in a different league from when he sat still.
"Hoo…"
His clothes were soaked through with sweat and a sweet taste had risen on his tongue, but the vitality the Ring of Fire poured into him pulled a smile onto his face of its own accord.
"Raon!"
He was just sinking deeper into the fierce pleasure of a body pushed to work when a window slammed open and Sylvia's face thrust out of it.
"What are you thinking, pushing yourself like that on the first day!"
"Hah—hah…"
Raon stopped and stood there panting.
"Look how much you're sweating. That was far too much!"
"I, uh. It just happened."
He hung his head, still dragging in rough breaths.
This isn't interference. She stopped me at the right time.
Sylvia was right. His body was still closer to a patient's than an athlete's. Even with the Ring of Fire feeding him vitality, running any farther would have done real damage.
There's still plenty of time.
A full month remained before basic training began. That was enough to raise the Ring of Fire from the peak of Two-Star to Three-Star. No need to rush. Slow and steady would do.
"I'll rest in my room."
"Is your body all right? Nothing feels strange?"
Sylvia's wavering eyes raked over him from head to toe. He shook his head.
"Nothing. I should stop for today and rest."
"If you push yourself like this again tomorrow, I won't let you train at all."
"Don't worry."
Raon offered her a faint smile and went inside.
Time to cultivate the vertical ring.
The Ring of Fire that turned on a horizontal axis developed the body; the one that turned on a vertical axis developed the mind. He had been running the horizontal ring until now. It was time to refine the vertical one.
Raon sat on the floor and lowered his eyelids. He sank his mind far quieter than he had while running, and drew in the mana of the world.
A thin shadow began to take shape beside the two rings already circling his heart.
Glenn Zieghart left the Lord's Palace and walked alone to the 5th Training Ground.
He opened the gate and stepped through. Instructors were packing down a stretch of yellow earth wide enough to hold hundreds of people.
"We greet the Patriarch!"
Glenn raised a hand to the saluting instructors and entered the chief instructor's office, a building set at the edge of the grounds.
In the middle of a room that looked as if it had never been tidied, a single rocking chair was tipping gently back and forth. On it, a man lay as if dead, a straw hat pulled over his face.
"Stop pretending to sleep and get up."
"Ugh…"
The man in the chair let out a stale breath and pushed the hat aside. He looked perhaps twenty. A handsome youth with red hair falling around his face yawned and sat up.
His ears, unlike a human's, rose like blades of grass, and his features held a beauty that did not seem to belong to this world. Pointed ears, a face that had stepped beyond the human. The chief instructor of the 5th Training Ground was not a man at all. He was an elf, one of the races of nature.
"The only one my Sleep Art doesn't work on is you, Patriarch."
"The instructors are out there sweating, packing down the earth, and their chief instructor…"
"They're following the orders I gave them. I work with my head, they work with their bodies. Perfectly fair, don't you think?"
"Rimer. Ten years, and you still haven't grown up."
"People die when they change. Ah—right. I'm an elf."
The elf called Rimer laughed under his breath and rose from the chair.
"What brings you all the way out here today? Don't tell me it's about your youngest grandson?"
Glenn said nothing. He only looked at him. They had ridden battlefields together, and Rimer seemed to read the thought in his eyes alone.
"Sylvia came and pleaded with me, but I didn't expect the Patriarch himself to show up."
"Sylvia did?"
"She asked me to make sure Raon doesn't get hurt. If you've come to make the same request, you wasted the trip."
The playfulness drained from Rimer's green eyes, and they sank low and still.
"You said yourself you wouldn't lay a hand on this training ground. I will not accept exceptions. Not even for your youngest grandson."
"Do so."
"Pardon?"
Rimer's mouth fell open at Glenn's nod.
"Don't lower the intensity. Raise it as you see fit. Weed out the riffraff."
"Raise it, sir? Not lower it?"
"That's right."
"Then your grandson will wash out too… Ah!"
Rimer clapped his hands, a smile spreading across his face.
"Well now. You love that youngest grandson more than I thought. The love you never managed to give Sylvia properly, you're pouring into that boy…"
"If you weren't a comrade, your head would have left your shoulders just now."
"Eheheh!"
He put on a sly look and rubbed his neck.
"Separate the jade from the stone. Make sure only those of real quality receive your training."
"Are you ordering me to hold a selection exam for the trainees?"
"That's up to you."
"Understood!"
"I'm leaving."
"Yessir!"
Glenn took Rimer's salute and stepped back out the door. On the way, the instructors were still packing down the earth.
Glenn looked west, toward the Annex, then turned and walked back to the Lord's Palace. His steps seemed a little heavier than usual.
Raon sat in his room with his eyes closed. For more than three hours he had not moved, and a golden haze was seeping up from his shoulders.
Water Attribute Resistance has risen to 3-Star.
One strand of the Curse of Bitter Cold has vanished.
"Done."
Raon clenched a fist as he looked at the translucent messages floating before his eyes.
Three-Star is a different animal.
It felt as if a rush of cool mana had swept through him from head to toe. His body had grown keenly sensitive; his mind was clear. The mana circuits had widened, the pain of the cold had eased, and the shape of muscle was beginning to take in his arms and legs.
The difference is obvious once you leave the entry level behind.
Three-Star was the true beginning of the Ring of Fire's beginner stage. He had only just stepped onto that first stair, and already the gap in body and mind was enormous.
The status window is playing a part, too, no doubt.
Thanks to these almost magical messages and the status window, the Ring of Fire was producing effects far beyond what it had in his previous life.
And one strand of the Curse of Bitter Cold is gone.
He stood and moved his body lightly. He felt light as a feather. In this condition, he was confident he could endure Zieghart's basic training no matter how brutal it proved to be.
No. More than that.
He wouldn't merely endure it. He had the feeling he would not fall behind even the children of Zieghart who were called geniuses.
"Hm?"
He was still riding that lift when his stomach growled. Come to think of it, he had skipped both lunch and dinner.
I should at least eat.
He left his room and headed for the dining hall. A low light was on, and Sylvia was sitting at the table.
"Mother? Why are you here at this hour…"
"I was waiting to eat with my son."
Sylvia smiled brightly and patted the chair beside her.
"It's late."
Refining the third Ring of Fire had pushed him well past mealtime, but Sylvia only smiled and pulled the chair out.
"It's all right. Sit down. Quickly."
Raon sat beside her with an awkward look on his face.
"Helen."
"Yes, my lady!"
Helen's voice answered from the kitchen. A moment later the maids brought out the food—every dish one of his favorites.
"Raon."
Sylvia pushed the plates toward him, an uneasy smile on her lips.
"There's something Mother needs to tell you today."
"Tell me?"
"Mm…"
She nodded, then did not open her mouth for a long time.
"You're a clever boy, so you must have thought it strange. Why we live apart. Why other people speak of us the way they do."
"Mm…"
Raon set down the fork he had been holding. It seemed Sylvia meant to tell him about the past before his training began. He already knew a fair amount of it, but he sat still and let her believe he didn't.
"I'm a sinner. I ran from the responsibilities I was meant to bear, then came crawling back just to stay alive."
Her words began more heavily than he had expected.
She had fallen in love with his father, an ordinary knight she had met by chance on a mission, and in order to be with him she had destroyed her own mana circuits and aura core and fled the house.
"You had an older sister, too. She was two years older than you. Her name was Sia."
"Then she…"
"Yes."
Sylvia's voice sank below gloom, a sound that seemed to well up from the floor of a cellar.
"An officer of Eden who recognized my face came for us. Your father wasn't that strong, and I was carrying you. There was nothing either of us could do."
Eden was one pillar of the Five Demons, the bloc that stood against the Six Kings to which House Zieghart belonged. For all the warmth of its name, it was a monstrous organization that fielded more powerhouses than a kingdom.
"Then how did you make it back here?"
"Your grandfather had assigned escorts without my knowing. They were a little ways off from us, and they only arrived after your father and your sister had already been taken."
"Grandfather did?"
Raon narrowed his eyes. He would never have imagined that Glenn—a man who looked as if you could stab him and not draw a drop of blood—had secretly placed guards on them.
"That's why, in this house, I'm a sinner. I have nothing I can say to your grandfather. Nothing at all."
Sylvia bowed her head deeply. Helen and the maids said nothing, only clenched their joined hands.
Raon looked steadily at the woman with her head down.
Selfish.
Sylvia was selfish. She had stepped away from the duties of her house for her own happiness, then come back to beg for her life. He understood, now, why the direct line and the collaterals treated her so harshly.
And yet…
She was the one who had given him a new life, and an affection he had never once felt before. Even if the whole world called her selfish, to him she was the only mother he had met across two lifetimes.
"Mother."
At Raon's voice, Sylvia lifted her head.
"Do you regret it?"
"Regret?"
"Do you want to go back to before you left the house?"
"No. I don't regret it."
She shook her head without a flicker of hesitation. She told him she had lived like a ghost in this family until she met his father and his sister, and that only then had she lived like a person for the first time.
"But I am sorry for what you have now. For being a worthless mother…"
"Were you happy<|eos|>