The place I arrived at after following the old man was a training ground inside the castle.
The fact that he had brought me here meant his purpose likely had something to do with my martial prowess.
Well… there was only one use for a training ground.
Sparring, or practicing weapon techniques.
It wasn’t as if some noble young lady would spread out a mat in the training ground and dig into a lunchbox.
Not in a place that stank of men’s sweat like this.
Of course, there were female knights too, but they usually trained in private practice rooms.
In any case, if there happened to be a young lady with such peculiar tastes, I offered my humble apologies in advance.
‘Come to think of it, there might be people who come to look at men’s muscles.’
All sorts of stray thoughts crossed my mind, but I shook my head and quickly pushed them aside.
Getting away safely from the old man standing before me was more important right now.
I didn’t know his purpose, nor his identity.
Normally, one would start by introducing oneself—“I belong to such-and-such, and my realm is such-and-such”—but this old man had none of that, so he looked suspicious at first glance.
Something about this felt ominous… As I’d said earlier, getting involved with him seemed like it would be troublesome.
And while becoming the disciple of a true expert was welcome, I still strongly preferred learning from someone more trustworthy and well-known.
‘How should I get out of this…?’
I began to rack my brains.
Judging the old man’s face with the eye for people I had honed over my long life as a mercenary, he seemed as though he already knew everything about me.
When he’d stared through me earlier, it probably hadn’t just felt that way—he had likely truly grasped it.
Against someone like this, deliberately losing would be extremely difficult, and so would winning with all my might.
Deliberately losing so the other party would lose interest in me?
Since he knew my ability, my intentions would obviously be seen through at once.
That method would instead be a self-defeating move that tangled me up with the old man even more.
He would demand I show my true skill and spar again.
Then was the correct answer to defeat this old man and say, “You’re not skilled enough to teach me”?
………
As if.
Among those of us who make a living wielding weapons, there is a famous saying known far and wide.
“Beware the elderly, women, and children.”
In particular, it is best to be wary of the elderly no matter what.
If they lack martial strength, then they are excellent in wisdom and worldly dealings, sharp at reading the room, and know all too well how to survive in any given situation.
And if they do possess martial strength, it means they are owners of skill great enough to have survived for a long time.
The old man before me was clearly much closer to the latter of those two cases.
As I said earlier, he was an old man with a faint presence.
Naturally, the aura emanating from him was also extremely faint.
Almost like a plant, one might say.
But let’s think about this with common sense.
How many people in this world could possibly have an aura like a plant?
At least in my experience, this old man I met today was the first.
Any ordinary person possesses some degree of aura.
Whether sorrow, anger, joy.
Or… perhaps killing intent.
In any case, it is normal to have something.
But the aura I sensed was so faint it resembled a plant?
‘It means he’s a master I don’t dare read.’
Now then, let’s summarize.
I can’t deliberately lose, and it’s impossible to win and send him away either.
Then there is only one conclusion.
I lost, but I fought well. In short, a respectable loss.
Not losing on purpose, but not winning either.
Losing in a way that would lead him to think, “Your expectations were simply too high~”
One could say it was a high-level technique that required an extremely difficult degree of skill.
“Draw your sword.”
As expected, the old man demanded that I draw my sword.
‘I was wondering why no one told me to hand over my weapon when entering the castle…’
“Whew…”
I exhaled deeply, then slowly drew my sword.
—Shrrrng.
Since I had come here without even a moment to rest after finishing the battle with the monsters, there was still a bit of monster blood and flesh clinging to my sword.
To someone else, the state of my blade might look as if I had neglected its maintenance.
But anyone with even a little eye for such things, or anyone who had hunted a beast even once, would know.
Despite having cut through the bones and muscles of monsters, my sword had neither chipped nor dulled.
For someone skilled—especially a mercenary—it was not a particularly surprising state.
A weapon was like one’s lifeline, and it had to be something one could swing at any time.
Yes, it had to be ready to swing at any time.
Just like now.
—Krrrk…!!!
Without the slightest warning, a formless blade suddenly flew toward my left shoulder.
“Krgh!”
Using the force of the blade as much as I could, I barely managed to deflect the old man’s attack.
Put into words, it might sound like nothing more than “I was attacked,” but it was actually an extremely difficult attack to receive.
First of all, the fact that it was a surprise attack demanded tremendous reflexes,
and since the attack was invisible, I essentially had to predict its position by instinct.
On top of that, the predicted location was not the right side, but the left—more precisely, my left shoulder.
Ordinary swordsmen like me keep our scabbards on the left.
The reason is simple.
Most people are right-handed, so it is convenient to draw the sword from left to right with the right hand.
However, what the old man aimed for was my left shoulder.
In other words, to block that attack, I had to draw my sword from left to left.
Not drawing diagonally by tilting the scabbard slightly, but drawing at a right angle and receiving it.
That was the only way to block the old man’s attack.
In any case, the moment I diverted the attack, I turned my gaze back to the old man.
On a real battlefield, an opponent does not wait until I have parried an attack and readied myself again.
It was basic common sense that a follow-up strike would immediately come.
However,
‘Huh??’
As if mocking my prediction, the old man took no follow-up action at all.
He merely stood still in place, just as he had when he first entered the training ground.
And that wasn’t even the only surprising point.
As far as I could tell, the attack just now had been carried out without a weapon.
How could I be sure?
Because there was not a single weapon in the old man’s hands as they appeared in my eyes.
Instead, the air was faintly rippling at his fingertips.
“…Aura.”
The old man was drawing aura from his fingertips.
Usually, it is common to draw out aura through a weapon.
I hadn’t learned it in detail either, so it was a little hard to explain, but from what I’d heard, it was apparently a matter of mental imagery.
In order to use aura for attacking, one had to imbue it with will and refine its form appropriately, and at that time, the visual information of a weapon helped—or something like that.
In any case, based on that, it meant that monster was now picturing and thinking of the absurd mental image of “cutting a person in half with his hand” as if it were actually happening in reality.
Without mental imagery that strong, aura would not properly respond to the user’s intent.
“You son of a—!”
—Bang! Bang!!
I had clearly shaken off my thoughts before this one-sided beating that didn’t even resemble sparring began, yet I had unconsciously been admiring him in my head.
If I had come to my senses even a little later, I would probably have been hit by that attack, and my upper and lower body would have bid each other farewell forever.
—Kwa-dudududuk!!
After that, troublesome attacks continued to pour toward me without end.
That damned monster of an old man finally seemed satisfied and stopped about an hour after the sparring began.
‘The aura at his fingertips has completely vanished.’
The old man was so faint in every way that I would believe it if someone called him a ghost, and on top of that, there had been surprise attacks and invisible attacks.
Honestly, I could think even this was some sort of psychological warfare… but now I was simply exhausted.
If he was going to kill me, then so be it.
If that man had truly intended to kill me in the first place, he would have done so long ago.
Fortunately, the old man stopped attacking and spoke to me.
“It is you.”
“Pardon?”
A senile old man who had attacked me to his heart’s content until now and then suddenly said something incomprehensible.
“From now on, you will learn the sword from me. You have no choice. Fate has already been decided.”
“No, well, if I can learn from an expert like you, that’s good for me, but honestly, you know your explanation is lacking, don’t you?”
At my question, the old man let out a faint groan and fell silent.
“The answer to your question will naturally be resolved with time.”
He simply answered vaguely like that.
Since it didn’t seem like he would answer even if I asked more, I threw out a second question.
“Then if I learn the sword from you, do I have to quit my mercenary work?”
“No. One week. That much will be enough.”
Hmm…
I could learn the sword from someone of that level with only a week?
‘Even if I get nothing out of it, I have to do this.’
As I said before, I had originally intended to refuse.
But if he was a master of this caliber, the story was different.
So what if he was a strange, unknown, and untrustworthy old man?
He was probably some hidden eccentric or something.
“Understood. Do we start today?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll stop by the mercenary corps for a moment. I need to tell them I’ll be taking a week off.”
The old man nodded without a word.
After confirming his reaction, I immediately set off for the mercenary corps.
“You’re back. What was it this time?”
Mari, who handled administrative work in our mercenary corps, greeted me with a smile as usual.
“There was a strange old man waiting for me. He said he’d teach me the sword.”
“I’m sure you refused properly this time too, right?”
“No. This time, he was a real master. I think he’s stronger than our corps leader.”
“What??? Really?????”
Mari’s eyes widened as she asked me.
“Yeah. Really. So I think I’ll be away from the mercenary corps for about a week. That should be all right, shouldn’t it?”
“Uh… please wait a moment.”
Fortunately, while the leave procedure would normally have been long and complicated, the fact that I had never taken a break until now and had just returned after completing a request meant I was able to finish the entire leave process in ten minutes.
“Everyone will feel quite empty without you, Evan.”
“Come on~ Those people? They’ll manage just fine on their own.”
After exchanging a brief farewell with Mari, I packed my things and came outside.
“What’s this? You were waiting right out front?”
The old man was waiting for me in front of the building of the mercenary corps I belonged to, the Torch of Dawn.
“Let’s go.”
The old man once again said only what he wanted to say, without answering.
Then, without even waiting for my reaction, he began walking toward somewhere.
I did think it wouldn’t kill him to answer a little more properly, but well… in any case, as long as I learned the sword, that was enough for me. I didn’t really mind all that much.