Chapter 63
A thesis defense is a defense held to earn one's degree.
It's called a defense because, during the process of earning it, you have to fend off a merciless barrage of questions from professors.
Of course, it's a nightmare for graduate students,
and without a doubt, an event where every professor licks their chops and vivisects a graduate student alive right there at the presentation!!
- Gulp….
Of course, that's not literally what happens.
A defense is ultimately where they say, ‘Let's see if this punk is qualified for a master's or doctorate, shall we?’
so from the professors' perspective, it is only right to verify everything thoroughly.
“Heh heh, are you nervous? As expected of a young fellow.”
“He looks exactly like my student did when he defended his degree! Ha ha!”
The problem is that the graduate students end up half-dead.
This was no exception for Akion in his previous life.
Back then, Akion was conceited enough to think he was pretty smart. He only thought it to himself, but still.
The first thing to completely crush that arrogance was his master's defense.
- Shiver…!
“Y-young master, are you all right? You seem incredibly nervous…!”
The sensation of having his brain fried by countless questions from countless professors…!
That day, Akion learned to respect and admire the countless seekers of knowledge in the world.
“I'm fine. I have to do it.”
“Then Goldie will quietly cheer you on…! Hang in there, hang in…!”
That was why the Akion of today existed,
and after awakening his memories of his previous life here… he resolved to pass on the knowledge the giants called professors had given him.
Leaving Goldie's encouragement behind,
- Tap, tap… click!
Akion stepped up to the podium.
He had lectured in front of people several times in both his previous life and this one, but….
“Phew.”
never in front of a crowd of at least a thousand people.
The lecture at the Redashed Tower had also been given to people who felt more like students than researchers or professors.
In that respect, this was even more burdensome, but….
- Swish.
Wasn't this also the weight of a laboratory?
For the sake of his own private laboratory, Akion was willing to pick up a piece of chalk.
- Tap, tap-tap, swish, tap.
What Akion wrote in large letters on the blackboard was….
E = mc2
F = ma
one of the great formulas explaining energy and force.
“The wind blowing, lighting a fire, children running around with puppies, and stuffing dinner into a body worn out with fatigue….”
And Akion's next statement was,
- Tap.
“Everything, even the process of shaking the earth with magic and smashing a giant tree with a swing of aura. I believe I can explain it all with these formulas for energy and force.”
“Oh-ho.”
A challenge directed at everyone seated in the grand lecture hall,
“Even mana.”
“H-huh?! How arrogant…!”
More precisely, it was a challenge to the common sense they held.
*
Akion's explanation was not much different from the one at the Redashed Tower.
Aside from Goldie and the tower master, none of those present knew anything at all about the concept of energy.
“Then using a waterwheel turning in a river to grind wheat is also… a conversion of energy?”
“Yes. You happened to give an apt example. I said that water flows from high to low because of potential energy, correct? That became the water's kinetic energy, and that kinetic energy was transferred to the waterwheel─.”
“Young Master Akion's theory is truly fascinating. I once saw something called a water tank when I visited the Enersis estate. At the time, I heard one of the young master's workshop employees say, ‘The water level is important to water pressure.’ Is this also the effect of potential energy?”
“Yes, that is a very keen observation. However, the diameter of the outlet also affects the water pressure….”
Potential energy due to gravity.
The kinetic energy generated by it.
The rotational motion that followed, and the loss to heat energy due to friction.
He even added the law of conservation of energy.
“Come to think of it… we do have to keep supplying mana to keep a flame burning.”
“Indeed, when swinging a sword, its power does increase exponentially as the sword's speed increases.”
All the professors who had initially been half-doubtful or outright disbelieving were slowly nodding.
At this point, Akion expected the mages to make a huge fuss, as they had at the tower.
“It was a concept I had vaguely considered… but I never imagined it could be formalized into equations like this.”
“Couldn't this be added to the Introduction to Basic Magic course? It seems undergraduates should be required to learn it… I ought to ask Young Master Akion to write a textbook as soon as the lecture ends.”
Fortunately, that did not happen.
Perhaps because they were educators,
they were calmly accepting and organizing Akion's knowledge.
“Hmm. It certainly is fascinating. The concept of energy Young Master Akion presented is new, yet… it is consistent with the existing fundamentals of magic. Excellent. It could be developed into an academic discipline.”
“Thank you, Lord Telomian. Your unstinting praise is making me smile despite myself.”
And then there was that mage named Telomian.
Montefiora had given Akion advance notice, saying that he ran the Department of Magic in Montefiora's frequent absence from the faculty… effectively its head.
He was also said to be a master of water magic and ice magic.
Seeing him smile so broadly, Akion must have explained it well enough not to provoke any resistance.
“Ahem. I see, I see. If we also consider mana to be energy….”
Of course, seeing that stubborn, meticulous-looking face, Akion was reminded of the professors from his defense.
While he tensed up, wondering what question Telomian would ask….
“I see! In the end, everything is connected!!!”
- Flash─!!!
“Whoa! Lord Telomian?! Don't tell me that lecture just advanced you to the eighth tier?!”
“I heard you were on the verge of the eighth tier. This is cause for celebration!”
“Oh, come on.”
He advanced in rank right in front of everyone.
To be honest, Akion had expected even this much.
How many insane mages had advanced right there on the spot at the Redashed Tower?!
On top of that, several flashes of advancement had already gone off among the academy students sitting there during the lecture.
So a professor-level mage advancing… was nothing special to Akion anymore.
- Flash─!!!
“T-two times?! The ninth tier?!!!”
“Th-th-th-this is incredible!!! Congratulations, Lord Telomian!!!”
“Oh, fuck.”
But wasn't advancing twice in a row a bit much?
Akion's challenge to hold back his swearing had been reset to day one.
*
“Father, why haven't you advanced in rank for over two years?”
“You little brat, what nonsense are you spouting when you said you didn't know much about magic….”
Since the Enersis were a mage family, Enersis knew very well how grueling it was to rise in rank.
“Every time you rise one tier, the difficulty of reaching the next tier doubles.”
“Ah-ha. So Father has no talent─ Guaaagh! I'm sorry, I'm sorry!!”
“I've been letting you get away with too much lately….”
To put it into simple numerical terms….
If it takes roughly ten units of effort to reach the first tier, where one awakens mana,
then reaching the next, second tier requires 100 units of effort,
and the third tier requires 1,000.
Of course, they say the amount of effort varies according to talent as well,
but in any case, the difficulty rises exponentially at higher tiers. Apparently, reaching the eighth tier means you've been tremendously successful as a mage.
“Hahahaha!! At this rate, you could even take over as head of the department!”
That was why the consecutive advancements that had just occurred were absurd.
Even if he had been right on the verge of the eighth tier, how could he jump straight to the ninth with a double advancement?
“You flatter me, Lord Montefiora. You, Lord Montefiora, are at the tenth tier, so you must continue serving as head of the department.”
“Because you don't want to take on the troublesome responsibility?”
“Ahem, that is too harsh a joke.”
The reception after the lecture became noisy with Montefiora congratulating Telomian.
Akion, the cause of it all, looked positively miserable.
“Why the long face?”
“Something impossible happened again.”
“Even I found it impossible. I've never seen consecutive advancements before.”
It was astonishing enough to make even the tower master recoil. What about everyone around him?
All kinds of gazes—envy, jealousy, awe, and more—were flying his way.
“That's why all the maids are obsessed with you, Young Master!”
“Goldie, Goldie. That wording is a little strange, don't you think?”
“But it's true, isn't it?”
No wonder the mages from the Redashed Tower, the mages belonging to the estate, and even the maids…
every magic-user was obsessed with Akion.
“Young Master Akion. I enjoyed your lecture.”
“Ah, Lord Denzel!”
The least affected, at least, seemed to be the Department of Knight Studies.
The professors from the other departments had simply listened and left,
so only the primary invitees, the Departments of Magic and Knight Studies, had come to the reception.
Perhaps Akion's scientific principles were easier for mages to understand; they were relatively well-behaved.
“I was deeply impressed by your new concepts, Young Master. Above all, the fellows from the Department of Magic seemed completely excited… Now that things have turned out this way, perhaps you should settle down at the academy?”
“Well, even if that were not the case, I suppose I would have to continue researching magi-engineering by His Majesty the Emperor's command.”
“Ha ha ha! The empire's future is truly bright!”
The head of the Department of Knight Studies and former commander of the Imperial Knights.
Denzel Rossington.
“More than anything, that thing… you said force was the product of mass and acceleration, yes? It gave me a good idea.”
He had stayed by the previous emperor's side until the emperor's passing, then retired immediately afterward and became a professor at the academy.
The surprising thing was… despite having served as commander of the Imperial Knights, he was only a baron.
He had risen from commoner to commander with nothing but a sword, and the previous emperor had only barely managed to bestow even a barony on him after Denzel repeatedly refused a title.
“I'm glad my knowledge has been of help to you, Lord Denzel. If you don't mind, could you tell me how it helped?”
“Of course. It concerns martial arts!”
Even now, he led a simple life, commuting from a mansion near the capital's slums.
There was even a rumor that young knights imitated him because of his frugal lifestyle.
“Uh… knights have occasion to use martial arts….”
“Hahaha, for all your genius, you certainly don't know much about actual combat. You'd be surprised how often martial arts come in handy.”
“Ah. My apologies. Knights use wrestling too, don't they?”
Anyway, Akion was flustered by the sudden talk of martial arts.
Then, remembering that wrestling was originally a technique used by knights, he awkwardly scratched his head.
“You say you don't know, yet you know everything, don't you?”
And Denzel's opinion of him shot up at the mention of wrestling.
Contrary to popular imagination, a knight is a profession that uses feet, fists, and wrestling as well.
In fact, first-year students in the Department of Knight Studies have all their romantic illusions shattered when they get hit by the fists and feet of professors, teaching assistants, and upperclassmen during sparring.
“In any case, I'm glad my knowledge has helped with Lord Denzel's martial arts. Um, unfortunately, my knowledge in that area is lacking, so I'm not sure I can keep up with the conversation.”
“Ha ha ha! I have no intention of embarrassing you. I merely offered my thanks; failing to do so would go against my knightly code.”
Denzel, something of the vanguard of first-year education.
Even as he praised and defended Akion, his mind repeatedly replayed the martial art he had once witnessed.
- Bang!!
“Hoo, hoo…! The distance was short, yet the destructive power was tremendous…! What was that martial art called?”
“No one who took this technique had ever survived… Ha! You're a tough one, stronger than I expected! Very well, in my good mood, I shall at least tell you the name of this martial art.”
Before becoming commander of the knights, Denzel had once crossed to the Eastern Continent to train as a wandering warrior.
He had been rising rapidly, but one day, a single martial art that completely crushed him in close-quarters combat humbled him.
It was said to have formed the foundation for him eventually reaching the Master level, but….
“It is called the one-inch punch. It is striking with tremendous force from a very short distance.”
“The one-inch punch….”
“You can learn the rest by taking the hits.”
“Huh? What do you mea─ Guh?!?!”
Even now, as he entered old age, Denzel still remembered the martial art that had defeated him for the first time when he was young.
“Thank you again, Young Master Akion. Force is mass times acceleration… Yes, acceleration….”
“Uh, yes. Well…. I'm glad I was able to help, but….”
And today.
Thanks to a single formula Akion had taught him, he felt as if his vision had opened wide for the first time in decades.
*
- Thud, thud.
Even after Akion's lecture ended, Denzel continued endlessly replaying memories of the past.
No matter how many dozens, hundreds, or thousands of times he tried to imitate that one-inch punch… he could not even grasp its principle.
“Force is… mass multiplied by acceleration.”
F = ma
He had thought his fist was weak because he lacked time to accelerate, but that was not it.
‘It wasn't speed. I was lacking acceleration.’
Even when swinging a sword, you had to brace every joint in your body and swing the sword at maximum speed!
The one-inch punch worked on the same principle.
All he had to do was stiffen his body even further, until it could be called a rigid body,
then add one piercing straight punch that gathered the force to the extreme so that no kinetic energy was lost.
Denzel had become fixated on the idea that swordsmanship and martial arts were different,
and had spent decades lost in pointless worry.
And yet….
- Tap.
He was overcome by joy.
Rather than the despair of realizing that decades of confusion could be resolved by grasping a single simple principle,
“Haha.”
the joy of finally finding a path forward—as a martial artist—came first.
The empire had a saying: ‘A knight is a knight even in death.’
It is used to mean that a person's character does not change until death, but….
“Heh heh, I feel as if I've become young again….”
Feeling as if he had returned to the days of his youth, when he had lived obsessed with training,
Denzel enjoyed his walk home all the more.
And so, when he walked toward his modest mansion,
“……”
he found that all the lights in his house were off.
For reference, he had taken in a girl named Angela, whom he had rescued when he was young, as both a maid and an adopted daughter, and they lived together.
“Look at this, Sir Knight! It's incredibly bright!”
“Hahaha, you like it that much?”
At her request, he had also managed to install an incandescent light bulb.
By now, with the sun almost completely set, bright light should have been spilling from inside the mansion….
Denzel began circulating the mana within his body according to his mana circulation technique.
- Clack, screeech….
He slowly opened the mansion door,
“Welcome, Denzel Rossington.”
and was met by a group of black-hooded assassins filling the mansion's hallway.
These were people Denzel knew very well.
“The Crows of the Black Star?”
“We're honored that you haven't forgotten us yet.”
The Black Star Cult, a group of dark mages.
The Crow unit belonging to it.
A brutal assassination unit enhanced with black magic, they were the root cause of the previous emperor's premature death.
“I killed an entire unit, but you raised another full brood in that pit of hell.”
At the time, the Black Star Cult had sacrificed the entire Crow unit to shake the empire,
and although every member of the unit died, the previous emperor was critically wounded.
Back then, Denzel had asked to be punished out of guilt for failing to protect him, but….
“Whoa, whoa, don't get so angry. And besides, we… aren't strangers, are we?”
“You rotten bastards, did you defy the will of the Heavenly Lord and come back from the dead?!!!”
The previous emperor, saying it was not his fault, had retired him before dying in order to ease his guilt.
Denzel had started as a commoner and, after catching the previous emperor's eye, had become commander of the knights….
“This time, I'll chop every last one of you into fine pieces and make sure you never crawl out of hell again.”
- Click.
To Denzel, the Crow unit was a bunch he could never tolerate.
“Even after seeing this?”
“Mmph, mmph!”
“Angela!!”
But his maid and adopted daughter, Angela Rossington, was being held by them.
“Release Angela at once!!”
“Whoa, whoa, calm down, I said. We have only one demand, Lord Rossington. We want to fight you again. Fair and square, that is.”
The black hood who appeared to be their leader pointed at the sword hanging from Denzel's waist.
“But you have to fight without that sword, Lordship.”
“How perfectly fair.”
“Ah, of course we'll keep our promise. I swear it on my black magic.”
“That's the most trustworthy thing you've said yet. Hmph.”
Telling a knight who wielded a sword to throw it away was no different from telling him to give up the fight.
Besides, Denzel was currently without armor as well.
- Slide, clang…!
“Mmph, mmmph!”
“Heh heh, our Lord Denzel. How brave of you.”
Even so, Denzel unbuckled his sword for Angela's sake and threw it toward the assassins.
“Will this do?”
“Of course, of course! Just like Lord Denzel Rossington, the knight who has broken a promise only once!”
The one promise he had broken was his promise to protect the emperor.
Denzel ignored the taunt and silently glared at the assassination unit.
‘Seven. No, ten if I count the ones hiding behind that door?’
Facing the assassins drawing daggers from inside their clothes… he continued to recite the secrets of the one-inch punch he had realized thanks to Akion.
“Then die.”
- Tap!
After taking such a beating on the Eastern Continent,
he recalled the movements of the master he had etched into his eyes so he would never forget them until death….
“Denzel's neck is mine!!”
“No, it's mine!!”
- Swish.
The assassins, only a few steps away, lunged at him simultaneously.
If there was any consolation, it was that the narrow hallway allowed only about two to attack at once.
‘Brace the joints, minimize energy loss, and use the transfer of body weight….’
Denzel now physically manifested the principle of the one-inch punch he understood.
His rigid body would become a massive battering ram, and its tip would be like a violent wave.
If the reclusive master who had once beaten Denzel senseless had seen him now,
- Clang!!
“Guhh?!”
he would have scolded and praised him at the same time for realizing it so late.
At last, the one-inch punch blooming from Denzel's hand crushed through the assassin's breastplate and chest.
“W-what─ Guh!!”
- Crash!
When the assassin who had seemed to stab Denzel went flying, coughing blood,
the assassin who had leaped in alongside him was caught by Denzel's wrestling.
- Crunch!
The assassin who fell to the floor was killed instantly when Denzel broke his neck.
“Phew, this is harder than I expected.”
“……”
“It seems difficult to use in actual combat. I wonder if it is suitable only as a defensive measure. Heh heh.”
The momentum shifted in an instant.
The leader of the assassination unit narrowed the red eyes beneath his hood sharply.
“Eastern Continent martial arts?”
Because it was a martial art familiar even to him.
More precisely, he had recognized which continent that martial art came from.
“Curious?”
Of course, Denzel had no intention of telling him.
- Snap!
He assumed exactly the same stance the reclusive master had taken then….
- Beckon, beckon.
“If you want to know, beat me and ask. Just don't get your throat slit like last time.”
He taunted them by crookedly beckoning with his fingertips.
Don't die like last time.
- Crack!
At that moment, all the members of the assassination unit who had once been killed by him lost their grip on reason.
“Kill him!!”
“Graaah!!!”
- Boom! Crunch!
Denzel's mansion filled with commotion at the untimely uproar.