1. Preparations for Running Away (2)
Perhaps because of his trash-like body, after a simple warm-up he headed straight for his private training ground. As befitted a space used by a child, it was rather small, but what mattered was that it was a private training ground.
“The young master went to the training ground!”
“What’s so strange about that? They all go there.”
At the maid’s words, a freckle-faced maid replied as though it were nothing new. The maid then spoke as if frustrated that she hadn’t understood right away.
“I mean the first young master.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
At her answer, the freckled girl looked surprised.
Although every young master except the youngest had already completed their magic awakening, the eldest son, the oldest of them all, had failed to awaken his magic.
Despite breathing and training every day within a magic-gathering array and taking elixirs without fail, the fact that he still had not awakened his magic meant he was a being unfit for Leonhardt.
Even so, why had they kept him in the mansion until now?
The reason was simple.
He was the family head’s warning not to become such trash.
Everyone was meant to look at the eldest son and understand that if they did not want to be weeded out like that, they had to work hard. And all the sharp-witted young masters knew it.
The first young master had realized it as well, which was why he had fallen into a slump and shut himself up in his room without making any effort.
“C-could it be that he awakened his magic?”
“Everyone wondered that too and took a peek, but apparently that’s not it.”
“How do they know?”
“I heard a knight secretly checked.”
“Ah….”
At the maid’s words, the freckled girl made a pitying expression. The maid beside her wore the same expression, and the two chatted as they disappeared into the mansion.
The rumor that the eldest son of Leonhardt had begun training again spread throughout the mansion, but it soon withered away.
Unless he had awakened his magic, it was not something worth paying much attention to.
Around the time everyone dismissed it as a dunce struggling again and returned to their own duties, Jayden stood in the training ground, holding a wooden sword with an iron core and swinging it experimentally.
“As expected, the Lion Sword Style doesn’t suit me.”
Feeling as if something kept tangling, Jayden frowned, stopped practicing the Lion Sword Style, and wiped away his sweat.
“Was that old man’s advice right?”
Before he had become the family head, an old man had once looked at him with pity and said something.
He was not someone who had reached Master level, merely an ordinary retired mercenary.
“Young master, you are swinging a sword that does not suit your body. If you had simply trained steadily in the basic sword forms, you would have been better off than you are now….”
At the time, Jayden had looked at the old man speaking so pitifully with an incredulous expression.
He had been so dumbfounded that he later looked into the old man.
The Steel Mercenary.
Once, he had been fairly successful in his own right, but across the continent as a whole, he was the sort of mercenary one could find anywhere.
He had entered the fifth stage in his later years, but that was all.
Even in Leonhardt, the fifth stage was not exactly common, but in terms of sheer numbers, quite a few had reached that level.
Even so, the words had continued to bother him.
“The basics, huh….”
Turning the old man’s words over in his mind, he raised his sword.
Basic swordsmanship that every soldier learned.
Vertical slash.
Horizontal slashes to both sides.
Diagonal slashes to both sides.
Upward strike.
Thrust.
Block.
Eight basic sword paths.
It was such a foundational martial art that the spearmanship one learned first upon enlisting was the same as this.
If methods for using magic power and footwork were added to it, it became the Imperial Basic Sword Method.
Whoosh!
He raised the sword and drew it down in a straight line.
He erased things like the Lion Sword Style and advanced swordsmanship from his mind and simply repeated drawing the sword down, cutting, and thrusting.
He deleted all the miscellaneous skills he had learned to survive because he had no talent, and held only swordsmanship in his head.
The realm he had achieved on his own in a short time, without a status window or skills, began to melt into his basic swordsmanship.
It had been a fifth stage created artificially by stuffing himself with the imperial secret elixir and a fragment of a fire dragon’s heart, but perhaps his countless real combat experiences had not gone anywhere. Even though his body had been idle for a long time, his movements looked fairly proper.
“Hoo….”
Jayden stopped his sweat-soaked body and tilted his head.
“I felt something there….”
Frowning at the sensation of something familiar, Jayden swung his sword again.
Because his body was still young, he had to rest from time to time, but even taking that into account, it was not bad.
The act of repeating simple sword paths itself had meaning.
Stretch.
Run.
Swing the sword.
Eat.
Sleep.
Just repeating those five things gave him a clean feeling different from when he had practiced the Lion Sword Style.
Enough that he could understand what it meant for something to fit perfectly in his hand.
It was completely different from when he had trained in the complicated Lion Sword Style. All he was doing was swinging the sword simply, yet for some reason it felt comfortable.
It was ironic that, after he had become the family head and seen all kinds of high-level sword styles, such simple basic sword forms suited him better, but because they were simple, they were better.
Because the more he drew the sword down without thinking complicated thoughts, the more it felt as if swordsmanship was being engraved into his body.
“Is this what it feels like?”
It was the same vertical slash, but unlike before, the quality of the sword line improved.
Jayden did not merely repeat the motion. He focused on each and every swing, trying to correct the subtle sensation, and the more he did, the better the feeling in his hand became.
Perhaps because of that feeling, he swung his sword like a man addicted to drugs, and exercised to improve his stamina so he could swing it more perfectly.
And so, a month passed.
His body, which had broken down after he had shut himself in his room and lived like a wreck, had mostly recovered.
Since it was a body he had once trained diligently, his physical recovery proceeded quite quickly.
Because of that, Jayden became convinced that his body needed to be trained based on basic swordsmanship.
As if to prove it, he could feel a flow of magic power in his body, something that would not have existed in the past.
“The old man was right.”
Certain that the old man’s words had been correct, Jayden smiled bitterly.
In truth, if he had awakened his magic after swinging a sword a few times, Jayden would have been a genius, but unfortunately that was not the case.
He had merely found swordsmanship that suited him.
The lump of elixirs that had been unable to shine because of the ill-suited Lion Sword Style, and the mana accumulated inside his body, had naturally reacted, causing his magic awakening to occur.
“Now I have even more reason to leave the family.”
He, for whom the Lion Sword Style did not suit, had no reason to remain here.
And it also proved that his choice to go to the Northern Army training center was the right one.
Because the Northern Army training center was where the imperial basic swordsmanship was taught in the most systematic way.
The Imperial Basic Sword Method, a developed form of basic swordsmanship.
Structured enough to be divided into beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels, the Imperial Basic Sword Method became more complicated with each stage, like the high-level sword styles of noble families, but its form was always based on basic swordsmanship.
That was why it actually suited him.
The hope that if he pursued simple sword forms, one day he might possess a unique sword style of his own.
The dream realm he had been unable to reach in his previous life no matter how hard he had tried.
“Can I challenge it this time?”
Beyond the fifth stage, where one blossomed the nature of one’s magic power, was the sixth stage, where one obtained a unique sword style.
He could not even dare dream of becoming a seventh-stage Master, but if his experience from his previous life was added in, perhaps he might reach that stage.
‘It might be possible in this life.’
Thinking that to himself, Jayden checked the condition of his body.
“Hoo… I think this should be enough.”
He had awakened his magic and built up his body to some extent, so he thought it was about time to go meet the youngest.
To determine whether the boy’s talent was real and how much potential he possessed, Jayden changed out of his sweat-soaked clothes and headed toward the room where the youngest would be.
“Y-young master?”
He saw a maid who had been cleaning the youngest’s room looking at him with startled eyes.
“Where is the youngest?”
“That’s…”
“I asked where he is.”
At Jayden’s question, the maid started in fright and hurriedly guided him to where the youngest was.
“It is here.”
“Here?”
Hearing that he was in a place like a tiny storage room, Jayden stared coldly at the maid.
No matter how much he was treated like a cripple within the mansion, he was not in a position to be toyed with for amusement by some mere maid.
“I-it’s not a lie. He really is here.”
“Then you people treated the youngest like this?”
When Jayden looked at her as if she had lost her mind, the maid flinched in alarm and hastily waved her hands.
“Absolutely not! The youngest young master wanted this himself.”
“What kind of bullshit is that?”
With an expression that said he did not understand, Jayden opened the door himself and went in. Then he saw the youngest curled up inside.
Looking at the youngest, Jayden asked with an incredulous expression.
“What are you doing there?”
“B-Brother?”
When light suddenly poured in, the youngest started in fright, then looked shocked upon seeing Jayden.
Jayden stared at him with displeasure, then frowned and motioned with his eyes for the maid to leave.
Then he closed the door.
With not a single ray of light coming in, the youngest could no longer be seen.
“What are you doing in a place like this?”
The youngest did not answer Jayden’s question.
“I asked what you’re doing.”
Something Jayden, who had awakened his mana, could not do at this point.
The killing intent that could be gained through actual combat, something he had not experienced even once in this body.
When he imitated it through his experiences from the past, a thick killing intent slowly began to spread through the room.
“Come out.”
“I… I don’t want to!”
When he opened the door and tried to half-drag him out, the boy thrashed and resisted him.
Jayden looked strangely at the youngest and tried to put strength into it once more, but the boy resisted again with a strength an ordinary child could not have produced.
“You…”
Jayden, who had immediately noticed his mana awakening, stared at the youngest in disbelief. The boy, with a frightened expression, pulled his hand free and crouched down again in a corner of the tiny room.
Finding the boy’s behavior strange, Jayden closed the door again and asked calmly.
“Why is someone who’s even awakened his mana doing this in here?”
“That’s…”
“If there’s something you’re afraid of, you can ask a knight to protect you. If not, you can build up your own strength. Why are you holed up in here?”
“I… I hear a ghost’s voice.”
At the youngest’s tearful words, Jayden tilted his head.
“Could it be a spirit…”
“No!”
At the youngest’s immediate denial, Jayden asked with a puzzled expression.
“How can you be so sure?”
“I asked a spirit master. And I checked in books, too. It’s not a divine beast either.”
At the youngest’s words, Jayden looked puzzled.
He wondered if it was a mental issue, but that did not seem to be the case either.
If it was neither a spirit nor a divine beast, then it meant a mere ghost or specter-type monster was speaking to him, but that made no sense.
Because there was no way the family would allow a ghost-type monster to roam around in the heart of Leonhardt.
‘No way!’
With an expression that said it could not be, Jayden looked at the youngest, Aiden.
“Aiden.”
“Yes?”
“Come out. There’s something I need to check.”
“I… I don’t want to. If I leave here, that voice will…”
When Aiden said he did not want to and refused to come out, Jayden frowned and said,
“Come out. If I’m right, I think I can fix that for you.”
The moment Jayden spoke, Aiden’s eyes went round. He was trying to judge whether what Jayden had said was true or false.
“I have an idea what it might be, so come out. Otherwise, you’ll be tormented by ghosts for the rest of your life.”
At those words, the boy slowly rose from his seat with tearful eyes.