The Ugly Gosling (4)
Stepping onto the sparring grounds, Franc offered his opponent a light bow.
"It's been a while, Sir Lazli."
"It has indeed, young master."
Lazli greeted him with a faint smile and eyes boundlessly warm. Though Franc was his lord's younger brother, the two had been inseparable playmates once, back when they were children.
"I will not go easy on you."
"...Understood."
And with that, the pleasantries were over. Right now, they faced each other not as a family knight and the youngest son of the house, but as opponents bound for a duel.
Sir Lazli's temperament, as I know it...
He was a stickler for principle so absolute it could stop the breath of anyone standing beside him. The way he would lay down his very life to fulfill his lord's orders was the sort of thing that belonged in a textbook for aspiring knights.
Which was why Franc swallowed dryly, his face tight with tension. Custom says the more skilled fighter yields three opening strikes to the weaker one in a duel like this... but expecting that kind of courtesy from a man like him is hopeless.
He measured the distance between them by eye. Five meters. Widening that gap was the first order of business.
"Begin."
The instant the words left Grand's mouth, Franc kicked up the wind and retreated in a great backward leap. Tap! One step from stumbling clean off the platform, he planted himself at the very edge of the arena and fixed his opponent in his sights.
Twenty meters of distance secured. Just right.
It went without saying that the narrower this distance became, the worse things would get for him. A mage who had only just reached the 4th level could hardly contend with a 5th-level knight at close range. The best move, then, was to settle the fight before that gap ever closed.
"Here I come."
Murmuring those words, Lazli slowly extended his sword, and mana flared to life around it. In the same breath, the entire bearing of the man changed — the aura of a predator ready to tear the thing before it to shreds at any moment.
"...!"
For an instant, it felt as though the very air above the sparring grounds had grown heavy. It was the pressure radiating from a 5th-level reinforcement-type knight, and as its icy weight pressed against his skin, Franc's body began to tremble like an aspen leaf.
Was Sir Lazli always that big?
No — it was only his presence making him seem that way. If anything, Franc was actually the slightly taller of the two.
Damn it, my body won't move.
Don't be afraid. He had sworn that to himself dozens of times before ever stepping onto the platform, and yet his fear-frozen body would not so much as twitch, like a mouse pinned before the eyes of a venomous snake. Nothing filled his mind but terror.
God damn it.
The moment fear took hold, the urge to flee came unbidden. He had always been a coward who did nothing but run.
"..."
And it wouldn't even be hard. One step — just one step back, disguised as a stumble, and this fear and pressure would scatter like smoke on the wind.
But.
Nothing would change because of it. He knew better than anyone, because he had given up more times than he could count. He knew that what awaited the one who ran was not comfortable freedom, but regret that clung to him night and day without respite.
"...Kgh."
A bitter laugh burst out of Franc before he could stop it — the skin of his back, where he'd taken that hit right before mounting the platform, was still burning.
How hard did he even hit me?
But it had certainly snapped him awake.
Let's try.
Even if he shattered getting up close. Even if he failed after daring to challenge. He would not run away again.
The moment resolve settled in him, Franc's eyes transformed, and he bit down hard on his lip. A metallic tang of blood, a sharp ache — and with them, he felt control of his body come flooding back.
"Wind Blade."
Shwaaaaaaaa!
Two swords of razor wind came hurtling at Lazli.
"...!"
Clang! Cang!
Having parried them on pure instinct, Lazli's eyes wavered slightly. ...Dual Casting? No — more than that, he scattered my momentum?
A faint smile touched his lips. You've truly grown, young master. It made him proud, made his chest swell — but it changed nothing about his intent. He had no thought whatsoever of holding back. A knight's orders from his lord were absolute law.
"Hah!"
Cang! Kang!
Lazli's eyes and body began to move in earnest. The two wind swords were driving at him from angles no ordinary knight could ever hope to swing through.
So this is what it feels like to face the sword-commanding arts the masters of the Eastern lands are said to use.
Of course, these blades must be laughably slow, crude, and full of holes compared to true sword-commanding. But for a 4th-level mage to produce something even resembling it was already an absurd feat.
Still — I've watched enough.
Kaang! In a heartbeat, Lazli slipped past both swords and charged straight at Franc. The wind blades scrambled after him, but they couldn't hope to match his speed. Abandoning them without hesitation, Franc completed a new spell.
Gust Hand.
A colossal hand of wind erupted from the ground and came crashing down, slamming Lazli beneath it. A spell woven of gale-force winds, powerful enough to crush an ordinary person flat —
Paaaaaaang!
— but Lazli tore it apart as though it were nothing and accelerated once more.
Figures. Big power means nothing if the wind-up is huge and clumsy.
He folded what he'd learned mid-battle straight into his tactics in real time. Franc's hands flew.
Wild Leaf.
A hundred-odd leaves spun from wind rose into the empty air, every one of them bristling with killing intent. Even as he charged, Lazli studied them closely.
Trying to stop my charge by any means necessary, I see.
Marking the position of each murderous leaf, Lazli tightened his grip on his sword. It won't be enough, young master.
Fwaah!
Lazli plunged without hesitation into space so lethal that a mere graze would flay his skin open. Each sweep of his sword flashed like lightning, and the leaves of wind shattered and scattered in every direction.
"Kgh!"
Watching it all, Franc's face twisted. Only seven meters remained. At the speed Lazli was closing in, he had time to prepare, at most, one more spell.
"No."
Then, as if reading the very thought from his mind, Lazli pronounced his judgment, eyes glinting cold.
"The duel is over."
He would not grant Franc the chance for another spell. As if to show off that everything he'd displayed so far had been only a fraction of his strength, Lazli's mana-reinforced body shot forward, faster than ever.
"...!"
Franc's eyes went wide as lanterns at the sudden surge of speed — and
Fwaah!
— the distance vanished in an instant, Lazli's hand shooting for his necklace.
-Listen carefully to what I'm about to say.
Oscar's voice from just before the match flickered through Franc's mind.
-I patched up your mana control by implanting the wind spirit into your body, but you still can't turn your whole body to wind at will. You haven't fully conquered your trauma yet.
-...So I just have to lose, then?
-Of course not. From what I've studied, Pungbaek is a genuinely broken kind of magic.
The ability to turn part of one's body into wind was exceptional in its own right. Physical attacks simply didn't work on it — anyone without magic or sword aura couldn't so much as touch you.
But the most fascinating aspect of Pungbaek, the one Oscar had zeroed in on, lay somewhere else entirely.
-Assimilation. That's the truly broken part.
Whatever you wore, whatever you held — as long as it was in contact with your body, you could turn that object into wind as well. That was the most absurd facet of Pungbaek in Oscar's estimation.
-Duels are always fought with each side hiding their final card to the very end. Your opponent will probably save something for last too — a massive burst of speed, say.
That moment would be the watershed. The instant the enemy let his guard down, the split second he sank into the swamp of believing he had already won—
-—your necklace will become wind and vanish.
Fwaah!
The moment Lazli's hand closed around the necklace—
"...!"
—his fingers closed on nothing but scattered wind, and the necklace at his own throat was instead ripped away. And of course, the one holding it now was Franc's white hand.
Just before the duel began, Grand Sirius's eyes, seated in the spectator stands, had been complicated ones.
...So he actually became a 4th-level mage.
What in the world had that Oscar fellow done overnight? Casting a sidelong glance at the man seated beside him, Grand asked, "You didn't use some forbidden magic to force his growth, did you?"
"If you mean Franc, I assure you the method was perfectly safe and wholesome. There's no cause for concern."
"...Concern? Ha."
Letting out a scoff, Grand turned his focus to the duel about to unfold, committing every spell Franc unleashed to memory, one by one.
Not bad.
He had grown a great deal. Back when he'd first learned magic and tried showing off every little thing, he'd been a sniveling brat who cried at the drop of a hat. And now here he was, grown sturdy and proud, trading blows on even footing with Sir Lazli while slinging spells of every color.
But that's where it ends.
Franc — his own younger brother — was simply not built for the mage's path. Not a matter of talent; a matter of temperament.
Your softness. Your kindness, overflowing past what anyone else could carry. Someday, those things will devour you.
Perhaps tolerable in a theoretical mage, but once a man chose the path of a battle mage, it could not be overlooked. His brother was not the kind of person who belonged on a battlefield.
All you'll gain there is wounds and regret. Or no — maybe you'll die without even getting those.
With that bleak future laid out so plainly before him, there was no reason to keep his brother on this path. Quietly running one of the family businesses would be better for you. A directorship at one of the major galleries would preserve his dignity well enough — for all his faults, the boy had the finest eye for goods in the entire family. In a line of work like that, there would be no place to get hurt, nothing for the family to worry over.
...And never again would you be fool enough to be devoured by your own magic.
While these short thoughts ran their course, the duel was already racing toward its end. The distance between the two had shrunk to a mere twelve meters. Grand, who knew better than anyone how quickly Lazli could move, was certain of it.
It's over.
His knight would not even grant Franc the chance to finish his last spell. He would carry out his lord's orders — crush him thoroughly — to the letter. And that prediction became reality.
"The duel is over."
In the final moment, Lazli revealed the speed he had been holding back, closing on Franc before the boy could even react. And then — fwaah! — the instant he reached to tear away his opponent's necklace—
"...!"
— Franc turned the necklace itself to wind, and ripped Lazli's away instead.
"Heh heh. And there's the outcome."
The Vice Tower Master, who had been watching the match, spoke up. Turning his head, he looked at Grand, who had shot to his feet, and asked, "Do you accept the result?"
"..."
Grand could not so much as answer; only his eyes trembled finely.
That magic...
The youngest son's anomalous attribute magic. That strange spell that turned parts of the body into wind — it had to have become his brother's most wretched trauma.
I was told, plainly, that he would never be able to use that magic again. Was I not?
This was no hearsay. He had gone personally to Vesalius Silva, the famous mana therapist of the Imperial Capital, and heard it straight from the man's mouth. Ninety-nine percent of mages threatened with the annihilation of their very being, he'd said, never overcame that fear for the rest of their lives.
Which means...
Oscar Crucian. It meant the man had played some pivotal role in lifting his brother's trauma.
After a moment of searching for words, Grand slowly inclined his head. "...I acknowledge the defeat."
Having accepted the outcome cleanly, he turned his gaze to Oscar. "How should I put this — congratulations, I suppose? Two more years of putting up with that hopeless brat, then."
"Don't be too heartbroken. I'll take good care of Franc."
"...Heartbroken? Ha. My schedule afterward is packed, so I'll take my leave."
As he made to exit the sparring grounds, Grand passed by Franc, who stood there hesitating, and paused for a moment. Then he murmured, briefly, "You've grown. A little."
"...I'm sorry?"
"Forget I said anything."
Franc stared for a long while at his brother's retreating back, neither turning nor pausing. Watching the scene from a distance, Oscar smirked.
That guy's a funny one too. Pretending he didn't hear it, huh.
Really — if he had genuinely failed to hear his brother's words, would his eyes be curved so sweetly into crescents? Looking for all the world like a man about to die of happiness.
Grand Sirius climbed into the back seat of a luxurious black sedan, the chauffeur holding the door open for him. The middle-aged man already waiting inside spoke without lifting his eyes from the newspaper he was reading.
"So you came alone."
"It would appear so."
Still unable to quite believe the result, Grand let out an empty laugh and went on. "My condolences, Father — coming all this way, carving time out of your busiest hours, just to catch a glimpse of the youngest."
"Ahem."
Adam Sirius — Guild Master of the Sirius Merchant Guild, Head of the Sirius family — cleared his throat.
"...I merely had some time to spare and stopped by. Don't read anything grander into it. Drive."
Vrrrm. The automobile pulled onto the road without the slightest tremor. After staring out the window in silence for a while, Grand spoke.
"You remember, don't you — that time one of those capital nobodies called Franc an ugly duckling."
A thoughtless noble who'd tossed the remark out as a joke, claiming the boy fell short of his siblings. When Father heard of it, he flew into such a rage that he cut off every foodstuff and supply shipment to the man's estate — and the fellow came crawling to beg forgiveness most humbly. Not that Franc ever knew.
"Why bring that up all of a sudden?"
"It struck me that perhaps the youngest is not a duckling at all, but a gosling."
"...A gosling? Not a swan?"
"No, Father. A gosling."
Grand looked up at the drifting clouds and smirked.
"It may be that within two years, he'll become the goose that lays the golden eggs."
Oscar Crucian — the man standing at his brother's side. He couldn't say why, but something told him that whatever that fellow said would come true.
A signature mage within two years. The White Tower restored to its former glory within five.
Wearing a dry smile, Grand muttered — already deciding he ought to invest in the White Tower — "The odds are slim, surely... but it can't hurt to get friendly early."
Identifying the worth of a thing before anyone else saw it, and putting money down in advance — that was one of the essential virtues of any merchant worth his ledger.