A familiar ceil—
“I’ll skip that sort of development.”
Because… I’m already so used to it that it’s boring.
***
Well…
My body recovered just fine.
Honestly, it’s a little embarrassing to say, but apparently the attack had only grazed me in the first place.
Thanks to that, there weren’t any serious injuries.
???: Wait, an attack of that level didn’t completely miss, and just grazing you wasn’t fatal?
???: Would a person be fine just because they were a mere 1 km away from an erupting volcano?
I get what you’re trying to say, but…
Yeah.
I was fine.
Anyway,
none of that matters right now.
There was something else I had to think about as quickly as possible.
“He said he had something he wanted to give me… Was this it?”
The moment I regained consciousness, I was busy analyzing the sword William had shown me.
What he had given me.
It was not an act of violence without reason, but a gift.
A gift given only to me—or only to those like me.
There is a saying: “Opportunity comes to those who are prepared.”
I don’t think it’s wrong.
But if you ask whether I agree with it one hundred percent, I don’t.
I would change the wording slightly and say, “Opportunity comes to those who are qualified.”
It’s a little different from preparation.
What kind of preparation one has done is also a problem, but more than that, the greater reason I think this way is because the world sometimes refuses to bestow grace even upon those who have prepared.
I prefer the expression “qualification” over “preparation.”
The difference is something like this.
For example, say someone wants to become a knight, so he practices weapon arts diligently.
After training with blood and sweat, he checks the recruitment notice for a knight order, thinking that as long as he goes to the right place on the right date, he’ll pass—only to find out that only twenty-year-olds can apply.
In the end, that person lacked the qualification of age, and despite having worked hard at the preparation called effort, he couldn’t even attempt to become a knight.
The world is not a beautiful place.
It simply flows on.
That’s why situations commonly referred to as “getting screwed over by unfairness” are more common than one might think.
That is why I use the word qualification, a word that encompasses all factors such as preparation, luck, timing, and so on.
The current situation is the same.
Suppose a child, a man my age, or someone at the same realm saw the exact same sword from William.
Among all those countless people, the only ones who could seize an opportunity from seeing William’s sword would be those who possessed the same qualifications as me.
Well… William didn’t give his gift in an especially obscure way, so more people than I expected might be able to gain enlightenment from that sword.
The fact that he crudely increased its size to attack,
and the fact that he swung that stupidly massive sword as slowly as possible.
All of it was William’s consideration.
Thanks to that, I was able to extract many things from that sword in detail.
If it had been smaller or the attack had been too fast, I probably wouldn’t have been able to obtain much from it.
Ah,
you must be curious what I obtained.
To summarize only the core of it: from William’s sword, I obtained a clue about Aura Blade, one of the symbolic techniques of a Swordmaster.
Because it was a sword made purely of aura, the flow of aura was extremely clear,
and with my talent, I was able to grasp it well and figure out how the aura was flowing and what I was lacking.
What I lacked right now was a world of my own.
Aura is a world.
By now, you’re probably quite familiar with that phrase.
But you may still not fully understand what a “world” feels like.
After all, I haven’t explained everything about worlds until now.
So, to add an explanation for the sake of understanding…
For example, suppose someone’s aura is flame.
Then is that person’s inner world a flame?
World and aura are not connected in that sort of way.
To be precise, they can be, and there’s a high chance they are, but they don’t necessarily have to be.
It’s more like even if it’s something related to fire, it ultimately outputs as fire?
Say someone imagined a star and made that his world.
Stars emit light, right? Light feels like it should have some heat to it, right?
Then the aura comes out in the form of flame.
Something roughly like that.
Except when using Imagery Manifestation, like last time.
That’s more like directly pulling out the inner world the user specifically held in order to use aura.
Instead of it outputting as flame because it’s a star, the star itself appears?
Anyway,
now then… what does this story have to do with me lacking a world?
As I saw before through Imagery Manifestation, my world is the holy flame at the summit of Mount Tusnis.
But I have never once possessed such a world, nor do I have any particular reason to possess one.
That is the problem.
There is truly nothing related to it at all, so until now, I had even been misunderstanding why my aura was flame.
If I hadn’t tried even a simplified form of Imagery Manifestation, I would have misunderstood for the rest of my life.
“No, I naturally thought that the main reason my aura took the form of flame was because I once blankly stared at a burning village.”
Usually, what leaves a deep impression on the user forms their world and manifests as aura.
Among all the aura users in the world, there probably isn’t anyone else who has mistaken their own world like I did.
Why?
Because without a definite image of one’s world, one can neither awaken aura nor make use of it.
A clear mental image of one’s world is the prerequisite for aura, so most people tend to know a lot about their own world.
But somehow, I kept drawing out and using aura while only thinking of the image of fire, performed Imagery Manifestation, and even reached the upper level of Expert…
Honestly, if I consulted someone about my problem, I’d have nothing to say even if they began by telling me I was spouting nonsense.
Anyway…
This is the problem with my aura that I saw in William’s Aura Blade.
The holy flame that forms the foundation of my aura is not a world I chose by my own will.
Therefore, I cannot strengthen that world as I please or make it more solid.
It is a little funny to be discussing and receiving feedback on “the reason I haven’t reached Master” when I haven’t even been at the upper level of Expert for long, and I haven’t had any life-or-death battle that could serve as a trigger.
“Hmmm…”
In any case,
how should I solve this problem?
Just as I was pondering quite deeply and my thoughts were about to sink further,
—Creak.
The door of the hospital room I was lying in opened.
Naturally, I thought the person opening the door would be Belle or one of my party members.
That they had come to check on my condition like last time.
But,
that thought did not last even a second before it changed.
From the aura I sensed to the sound of the footsteps and breathing, everything was completely different from Belle or the others.
That said, I did not particularly feel any malice from this unknown person.
I hadn’t seen his face or even looked at him, yet it was quite strange.
—Srrk.
Just as my hand moved toward the sword placed beside the bed and I was wondering whether I should stay wary or prepare for the unexpected,
“Hoho… There is no need to be so tense.”
The man who revealed himself was someone quite familiar to me, yet also a little surprising.
“William… Galahad?”
“That is correct. It is this old man. Fortunately, it seems there is nothing wrong with your memory.”
William answered with a smile.
Though his gray eyes were not smiling at all as they stared at me.
But that mismatch didn’t particularly make me uncomfortable. Rather, as I said before, it felt as though he was looking at something other than me.
That part, instead, made me feel oddly unsettled and chilled.
“Hmm… Just as expected. You took away exactly what I intended.”
What he intended?
No. Of course he intended it.
Only by knowing what I lacked could he give me something that would fill it.
“All of this is the fate intended by the Lord God. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Pardon?”
“At present, there are only two people in the entire world who can answer the question you hold.”
“That means… one of them is you, Commander?”
“Correct. Aside from this old man and His Holiness the Pope, no one can know.”
Tsk…
This was a bit outside my expectations.
In the case of Grandmasters or certain Masters, if I could prove that my question wasn’t a joke, wouldn’t they still give me some sort of solution?
Or couldn’t I eventually create my true world through the advice they gave me?
The first human to possess two worlds??
That was what I had been thinking, but…
If this old man, one of the Grandmasters, was saying that…
It probably meant that if I had simply left the Holy Kingdom and carried out some other request, I would never have been able to break through the wall to Master.
Thinking about it now, cold sweat does start to flow a little;;
This is why they say you never know what will happen in life.
I’m glad my fate wasn’t to never reach Master before I died.
I nearly died after digging uselessly on my own.
But,
putting my surprise aside, I should still ask what I need to ask.
The person who could resolve my doubts and problems was right in front of me, so I couldn’t just sit there in shock.
“Why? Is my problem related to the Holy Kingdom?”
“That is an accurate guess, but… it would be better to talk after leaving this place. There is a good space nearby.”
“Will it take long? My party members might be surprised if I suddenly disappear… Even if I go, I think I should at least tell them first…”
“Ah, that?”
William explained to me with an expression as if he had just remembered.
“If you mean the Hero’s party, they have already departed.”
“What??”
Fuck?
Did they abandon me??
“It is not what you are thinking. It would be best to think of it as them training together with the Knights of Radiance, each improving their skills in their own way.”
“And because I was unconscious, I couldn’t participate in the training?”
“No. Your problem can only be solved by this old man, so you remained here with me.”
“Tsk…”
So that’s how i—no, how does he keep guessing what I’m thinking?
Can he read my thoughts with those eyes??
“In any case, follow me. Time is not given to us without limit. Even now, the Demon King is expanding his forces. The Lord God may be omniscient and omnipotent, but we humans are not. The sooner we prepare, the better.”
“For now… understood.”
I was a little flustered that things had suddenly developed like this,
but well, it wasn’t as if something like this had only happened once or twice.
It was about time I got used to it.
In the first place, someone who was always busy protecting the Holy Kingdom and various key figures was saying he would help me grow.
In that case, even if he told me to leave the Hero’s party because he would teach me, it would be right to ask for a brief leave and go.
The teachings of a Grandmaster?
If I don’t receive something this precious now, when would I ever get another chance?
“Even if I fail, I’m going.”
I naturally began moving somewhere, following the old man.