Chapter 14
It had been several days since I began training with Seria.
Of course, we had not achieved any particularly notable results in that time. Seria was still a swordswoman far superior to me; if anything, there were even aspects of swordsmanship I learned by watching her.
My daily routine also underwent many changes.
First, the amount of time I spent training increased dramatically. I had consistently devoted more than three hours a day to self-training, but that was nothing compared to Seria’s training volume.
Every dawn, I swung my sword alongside her; I swung my sword during our breaks, and I swung my sword again at dusk.
I could not join her for all that training, but I had decided to help her, after all. I, too, had a duty to devote myself to it wholeheartedly.
A noble’s word had to be kept. The words of commoners and nobles differed in weight from the very beginning. Was that not why nobles enjoyed wealth and glory atop the sacrifices of the common people?
Of course, it was laughable for me, a mere second son of a rural viscount, to talk about a noble’s duty.
Still, after spending several days together, it was not as though we had achieved nothing. For one thing, I understood Seria better than before.
The new facts I had learned about Seria were as follows.
First, Seria lacked common sense when it came to human relationships. Until now, that had been no more than a conjecture, but with each passing day, I grew more certain of it.
Her reaction to the flirtatious remark I had made last time was one example.
Thinking back, I was not even certain that Seria was ‘Sepia,’ and suddenly complimenting her appearance might have been rude. So the next day, I offered her a straightforward apology.
However, Seria merely tilted her head, as though she had not even taken those words to heart in the first place.
“……? No, it’s fine. It’s true, after all.”
“You mean it was a fact?”
I had reflexively asked that in response to an answer far beyond my expectations. Seria replied as though she were reciting an obvious truth.
“Yes, I’ve heard that a lot since I was little. So I thought, objectively speaking, that I was fairly pretty, but… um, am I not?”
From the way she subtly gauged my reaction at the last moment and lost confidence, I could tell that she had no ill intentions whatsoever.
In other words, she was not trying to boast. She simply accepted the word ‘pretty’ as an objective fact.
But words always concealed complicated contexts and intentions. Ordinarily, when someone complimented another person’s appearance, there was an underlying desire to make that person feel good.
Seria did not even know the basics of that manner of speaking. Only then did I understand how she had come to earn the nickname ‘the Yurdina brat.’
She was not rude; she was simply oblivious. As a result, her relationships with others must have been one failure after another, and eventually building walls between herself and other people had been inevitable.
I considered talking to her about that, but soon let out a deep sigh as though I had given up.
It was not a habit that could be fixed in a day or two. I merely gave her the answer she wanted: a pure evaluation of her appearance.
“Yeah, you’re pretty. Anyone would say you’re pretty.”
“I-I see.”
Seria added that it was a relief, then let out a relieved sigh.
It was not that she had been afraid of the possibility that she might not be pretty. Rather, she seemed reassured to have the information she already knew confirmed once again.
It seemed impossible to win Seria’s heart with only the basics Leto had taught me. In any case, unless I became certain that she was ‘Sepia,’ I had no intention of growing any closer to her than necessary.
And second, Seria seemed to lack the concept of ‘rest.’
On the first day we began training together, I followed her around all day, trying to keep up with her training volume. That was the conclusion I reached afterward.
Aside from eating and attending lectures, Seria devoted most of her time to training. It was an ideal image of a ‘hardworking genius,’ but improving one’s skills did not work by mindlessly throwing more hours at them.
Even the brutal training of my childhood, the most grueling period of my life, had been based on adequate rest and nutritional supplements. Without them, my muscles could have been damaged instead.
There was no way the daughter of one of the Empire’s most prominent noble families, House Yurdina, did not know that. Even so, I could not contain my curiosity and asked her.
“Seria?”
“Yes, Senior Ian.”
Seria had been drinking water from her canteen to replenish her fluids. As she answered, she glanced at me.
Her gray hair was soaked with sweat and glistened like dew. Her breathing was steady despite all the sword swings, and combined with those captivating aquamarine eyes, it gave her an almost dreamlike air.
The forest at dawn was quiet, and sunlight shone down on Seria as though gently revealing a jewel the world had kept hidden.
She really was pretty. I had that thought once more before posing my question.
“You’ve been swinging your sword all day since yesterday. Don’t you have any time to rest? If you keep going like that, your muscles won’t have time to recover, and your training will become less effective.”
Seria tilted her head again. She wore an expression that showed she could not understand the purpose of my question at all, a sight I had already seen several times since we began spending time together.
Seria tapped her lips with her index finger, then spoke in a voice that suggested she did not understand.
“Why not just drink a healing potion?”
At those words, I could only suppress a hollow laugh.
Yes, if there was no bread, one could simply eat cake. A ‘healing potion’ was an item that instantly healed injuries—in other words, an extra life.
With an effect that powerful, just how expensive would such a potion be? It was a treasure that even most nobles, let alone commoners, could only carry around one of for emergencies.
Yet Seria was apparently drinking one every day. And all so she could train more.
I had heard rumors like that before. The more fanatical children of high-ranking nobles sometimes trained while drinking healing potions.
But this was the first time I had seen the truth behind those rumors with my own eyes. That was only natural. No matter how many healing potions one drank, they could not relieve mental fatigue.
Humans were not machines. The mind needed rest just as much as the body did. Intense training every day was bound to exhaust the mind as well as the body.
That was why the academy’s club culture had become so active. Hobbies helped restore the body and mind after they had been worn down by studying and training.
Therefore, training while drinking healing potions was not merely a question of whether one could afford the cost. It was a question of whether one could endure that murderous volume of training.
She was truly a woman to whom the word ‘fanatical’ suited perfectly. I clicked my tongue in amazement.
“Don’t you get bored if all you do is swing your sword?”
Seria tilted her head yet again, then asked me in return.
“Can that happen?”
“I mean, there are plenty of things you can do besides training. You could drink with friends, join a club, or at least read a book……”
As I continued, Seria awkwardly scratched her cheek. Then she spoke cautiously.
“I-I’ve known nothing but the sword since I was little……”
I clicked my tongue inwardly. I did not know the details of Seria’s upbringing, but it was clear that she had not followed a path similar to everyone else’s.
Come to think of it, Seria was an illegitimate daughter. She had been born to a lowborn mother, so it was easy to imagine how she must have been treated by the powerful House Yurdina.
Was that why she had grown up knowing nothing but the sword?
She was at an age when she ought to experience not only life’s bitterness, but also its sweetness. She had only just turned twenty, after all. She had most of her life ahead of her, yet her path held nothing but the sword.
Of course, there were people who were happy living such a life. Seria’s passion for the sword was genuine.
But a life in which one had been given other choices and a life in which one had not were clearly different. I felt a lingering bitterness over that.
I did not pity her. Every human being had their own problems to carry.
Perhaps Seria had looked at me and felt something similar. To a genius, a person without talent was merely an object of pity or contempt.
Still, as her senior, I could offer her a few words of advice.
“Let’s go downtown next time.”
“To exterminate magical beasts?”
At Seria’s response, I could only click my tongue.
The academy had tens of thousands of people living on its grounds. More than half of its enrolled students were nobles, and many of the commoner students had wealthy merchant parents.
Naturally, the academy grounds could not satisfy such enormous demand. That was why a shopping district known as ‘downtown’ had sprung up around the outskirts of the academy.
It was quite large. Merchants from every nation had flocked there because of the enormous amount of money the academy circulated. Moreover, the academy was located at the center of the continent and had a warp gate, making it an excellent transportation hub as well.
In other words, one could say that an entire city had formed around the academy. And when young people in their twenties went downtown, they usually had one goal.
To go have fun. That was the usual assumption. Yet Seria seemed to have interpreted even this as an invitation to exterminate magical beasts.
Downtown was home not only to shopping streets, but also to a warp gate. From time to time, some academy students took time out of their schedules to accept magical beast extermination requests. They did so to gain practical experience.
When I was too dumbfounded to speak, Seria seemed to take my silence as tacit agreement. She nodded on her own and looked at me with dawning understanding.
“I’ve been thinking that my growth has stagnated with training alone lately. Before I entered the academy, I used to go on magical beast extermination requests, but lower-year students are forbidden from doing so… However, if I’m with you, Senior Ian, I might be granted permission.”
Faced with Seria reaching her own conclusions and admiring them on her own, I pressed a hand to my forehead, unable to figure out what to do.
In the end, the words that escaped my mouth were the simplest ones.
“……Yeah, not to exterminate magical beasts, but let’s go downtown sometime anyway.”
Perhaps she did not know because she had no friends to go with. I decided that I should show her around downtown.
And finally, Seria seemed unexpectedly impatient.
Her brutal training also seemed to stem from that impatience. It was almost an obsessive fear that she might fall behind if she did not swing her sword right that moment.
No matter how thoroughly she treated herself with healing potions, intense training carried an even greater risk of injury. In a sense, it was only natural that Seria sprained her ankle one day.
“Ah, ngh?!”
I had been swinging my sword beside Seria when I heard her delicate groan and immediately turned my head.
Seria was sitting on the ground, clutching her ankle. It did not take long to understand what had happened.
There was no swordsman who was unfamiliar with injuries. I hurried over to her.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes, it’s just my ankle… Ngh……”
It looked as though she had twisted it badly. Heat radiated from around Seria’s ankle. It had not swollen yet, but it was obvious that it soon would.
It was a sprain. I took some ointment from my coat.
“I-I’m fine. If I drink a healing potion, an injury like this is nothing… Hya?!”
I did not need to hear any more. When I applied the ointment to her ankle, Seria let out a cute shriek at the cold sensation.
There was something strangely amusing about such a sound coming from the mouth of a woman with such a cold demeanor. I deliberately rubbed her ankle as though I were massaging it.
“Ngh, ah… Sen-ior……”
At her whimper, in which pain and pleasure mingled, I finally stopped. Tears were glistening in Seria’s eyes.
Even someone accustomed to injuries would shed a few tears when something hurt. I had rubbed the injured area while pressing on it, so of course it had hurt.
A faint resentment lingered in Seria’s eyes. But what could she do? I was her senior.
I gave her a faint smile and said,
“Don’t be such a baby. And what do you mean, drink a healing potion? No matter how effective they are, healing potions aren’t omnipotent.”
Seria looked slightly sullen at my words, but she could not argue. I was entirely right.
My voice had begun with a laugh, but it gradually shifted into a scolding tone.
“You know perfectly well that even healing potions can’t eliminate all the fatigue that accumulates in your joints. That’s why you have to adjust your training intensity. Why are you in such a hurry?”
As I spoke, I took out the clean cotton cloth I carried in my coat. I brought it with me to every training session just in case, and it turned out to be useful at a time like this.
I picked up a short, stubby branch lying nearby and used it as a splint. Seria had only let out a few groans by then, but she soon averted her gaze.
“……There’s someone I want to defeat.”
“A fourth-year?”
This year’s Hunting Festival—the last chance.
It was a short clue, but not one that offered nothing to infer. At my absentminded question, Seria silently nodded.
A sigh escaped me. I felt a little frustrated.
“Seria, the academy isn’t the endpoint of your life. The world exists outside the academy. You’ll have plenty of chances to compete even after you graduate, so is there really any need to be in such a hurry now?”
“Because she’ll keep moving farther ahead.”
Now it was my turn to fall silent. As I firmly tied the splint against her ankle, I turned my gaze toward her.
Seria did not meet my eyes. She was looking diagonally down at the ground. Yet despair and a sense of defeat showed in her eyes.
She was biting her lip, filled with fierce conviction.
“As time passes, she’ll go farther and farther ahead. Far enough that I won’t even be able to compare myself to her.”
“……How can you be so certain?”
“Because she’s a Yurdina.”
I chose silence once more. Seria’s expression looked complicated. Just look at that gloomy, shadowed face.
It must have been a face she had shown no one. Everyone had at least one such expression. So I lowered my head again and wrapped a bandage around her ankle.
Even though it must have stung, Seria did not let out so much as a small groan. I could only hear the faint rustle as she lowered her head.
“The only place where a legitimate heir and a lowborn child can be judged without discrimination is the academy, Senior Ian.”
The world existed outside the academy.
I repeatedly turned over the words I had casually thrown at Seria.
Then I tied the bandage even tighter. It was the only thing I could do at that moment.
To Seria, the world was such a cruel place.