—Excerpt from a conversation with the Great Sword Duke
☆ ☆ ☆
There were two gardens at the estate of Count Roman.
First, a small garden facing toward the capital, meant for receiving guests. And then, in the rear, a broad garden that also served as a training ground, facing a mountain that was an offshoot of the Kon-Tian Mountains.
This wide field, covered in grass, had no clearly defined boundary, so it was somewhat ambiguous to call it a garden. Still, they regarded only the portion managed by the retainers as the garden and used it for various purposes.
In one corner of that garden, a young man had strung a hammock between the trees and was gazing up at the sky. The sun was already setting, yet whether he had no intention of going inside or had simply lost all sense of time, the young man only stared blankly at the sky.
It had already been close to several months since he had begun passing time like this, staring vacantly at the sky.
The young man had not been this way from the start.
No, it was quite the opposite. As befitted the son of a martial family, he loved training more than anyone, and he loved talking about swords with his father and brothers and swinging one himself.
But the reason the young man swung a sword was not simply to become stronger.
Compared to warriors who swung their swords all day long in order to grow strong, the young man had a weak sense of purpose. No, it would be more accurate to say he had almost none at all.
That was because he had no desire whatsoever to become stronger. Nor did he have any interest in using that power as a means to crush someone underfoot and smash them apart.
There was only one reason he trained diligently in martial arts.
Because the young man himself loved swinging a blade. To be precise, he liked that everything happened exactly as he imagined it.
When he was young, he had not known. As a child, he had simply trained as his father taught him, and for the parts his father had neglected or failed to teach, he learned and practiced by following his mother and the teachers brought in from outside.
But he soon realized it. He had almost no talent in any field. No, to be precise, not only did he have no talent, he also found them unbearably boring.
He tried every hobby, including musical instruments, but no matter how much he did, he never improved. Since he did not improve, he quickly grew bored, and the teachers who had been brought in ended up leaving in less than a month.
Perhaps by now, they were diligently badmouthing him elsewhere, saying that unlike his older brother, the second son of House Roman had no talent at all.
Socializing and interpersonal relationships were unbearably boring as well. How was one supposed to read what was going on inside another person? And how was one supposed to adjust oneself to that? The teachers skilled at it, his mother, and his older brother all seemed like people with supernatural powers. His father agreed with him on that point to some extent.
Etiquette was boring too. He had heard the reason why he had to learn it and understood it, but it simply would not enter his head.
His father and mother said this was the one thing they absolutely could not compromise on, so the etiquette teacher did not leave and was able to remain at House Roman. It had nearly driven him mad.
He could not understand it. Why did he hate learning this so much?
According to the explanation given by his mother, the countess, it did seem like something he ought to learn, so he forced himself to cling to it, but it was just far too uninteresting.
But as he grew older, he realized something. The reason he found all those things uninteresting was because there was one thing he was far, far too good at.
And that the root of all his troubles lay there.
The first things he had begun learning as a child were how to use his body, Bander training, and swordsmanship. Those three. He heard that ordinary people began at five, once their bodies had developed to some degree, but because of his father’s strong insistence, he had apparently started much earlier than that.
Training was incredibly fun. It was not difficult at all. His father had said that training was difficult because the meager flesh had not yet gained the ability to realize what one imagined in one’s head, and so one struggled to close the gap between reality and the ideal; therefore, one must always strive earnestly and clearly.
He had none of that whatsoever. His father was apparently famous outside for being a man who did not lie, but at times, he could not help thinking that might not be true.
His mind constantly drew out how he ought to move. Once he pictured it in his head, his body was already moving before he knew it. As he followed along, his body would become stronger until it could move in accordance with his mind. Then another path would appear. This process repeated endlessly.
His body taught him where to swing the sword.
He did not particularly need to think about why he should swing or how he should swing, nor did he want to. It made his head hurt. When he simply swung toward the place he felt he should swing, his father would often praise him. He did not know why swordsmanship was necessary, but according to his father and brother, there was a profound depth to it that he had yet to comprehend, so he memorized it for the time being. He did not know whether he would ever have a use for it.
Bander gathered even when he merely breathed. When he did as his father instructed, it seemed to gather more slowly instead, so partway through, he secretly stopped practicing Bander-Roa behind his father’s back as well. His father said it was a secret training method passed down over hundreds of years, but it did not feel that way at all. If it gathered better just by breathing, why would he go through the trouble of gathering it step by step according to that order?
His father said that if one trained hard by following it, one would eventually encounter something like a wall… and to be honest, there were moments when he did sort of falter.
About five times so far, maybe……? But it was not a wall, more like a single sheet of paper……. The fifth time, he did seem to stumble for a few days, but he got annoyed, skipped meals, and worked a bit hard at it, and soon it worked the way he wanted again. That was five years ago.
He had been used to things going the way he wanted! So he thought that was only natural. But it was not. Aside from swinging a sword and using his body, not a single other thing went the way he imagined.
After he crossed that wall at the age of twelve, not one of the other things he began learning went as he wished.
They were not at the level of the wall his father had spoken of. Liberal arts, horseback riding, socializing, musical instruments… It felt as though the Heavenly Mountains were blocking him from the very starting point.
That was why, though he knew he had to do them, he simply could not grow attached to them. And naturally, he ended up focusing on what he could do well, what worked the moment he tried it.
His parents also seemed to have given up to some extent, except when it came to etiquette, and from then on, the world was his. After breakfast, except for the hellish forty-five-minute etiquette lesson, he could spend the entire day doing whatever he wanted.
Then, one year ago, a change came to him.
To be precise, what had happened five years earlier came to find him again one year ago.
Something blocked him.
It felt as though he could almost see something, but he could not. He could not cross over. Things did not go as he imagined. Bander no longer increased. His body stopped developing as well.
He thought it would work this time too if he spent a few days on it, so he tried like a madman… but this time, he saw no possibility whatsoever. It was the first time in his life anything like this had happened.
And he realized it. The young man’s own patience extended only this far…….
Until now, he had swung because he liked that things happened exactly as he imagined, but once they no longer did, this too became as boring as the instruments and art he had learned before.
He did not feel that his skill would decline if he stopped, nor did he feel that his skill would improve if he continued. That was certain. And one more thing was certain as well: he had to find a method different from any he had used before.
That was why he had been sitting here, staring blankly at the sky for months.
Since things did not go as he imagined, he did not want to do anything. So he stared at the sky and thought, “with only his head,” about how he could make things go as he imagined again. It was his first time experiencing this…….
He could not see at all the path that had guided him to the next realm until now. To be precise, it did not connect.
In the past, it had been drawn endlessly inside his head. How he could move in order to take one step further than where he stood now…….
His body and mind had whispered to him without end. Swing as you see fit, move as your heart desires… and the world will allow you more.
But now, that was not the case. It appeared in brief glimpses, then broke off… and even when things seemed to be going well, he would suddenly lose the way forward. The reason he had stopped training midway was because all of this annoyed him so much. Never before had anything like this happened.
As he wrestled with these thoughts, Sian eventually had to recall the answer that his mind had been ignoring, but that his subconscious had been shouting at him without cease.
‘Ugh…….’