Chapter 62
Chapter 23 Explosive Synergy (3)
Jade's gaze shifted to Moikan.
But as Jade watched Moikan, he cast a strange look at Whid.
A curious thought had suddenly occurred to him.
“Beastfolk and mana cultivation methods. Wouldn't that be putting too much power in their hands?”
Jade, who had been lost in thought for a moment, returned to reality.
Aruellia's voice, tinged with subtle concern, had broken his reverie.
“That’s why I’m keeping it firmly under control. And beastfolk aren’t all alike, either. What I’m researching now is a mana cultivation method suited to the monkeyfolk. Once it’s completed, probably only monkeyfolk will be able to learn it.”
“It might usher in a huge wave of change.”
“From another perspective, the monkeyfolk—or rather, Moikan—has worked incredibly hard. He’s practically created something from nothing.”
“When you put it that way, it really is peculiar. How did he even think of that? Normally, people try to increase the power they already have.”
Aruellia stroked her chin as she watched Moikan, who was still playing tag.
Unlike his relaxed demeanor at first, Moikan had been completely caught up in Whid’s psychological warfare and was barely managing to evade him.
“The monkeyfolk’s limitations were obvious, so he turned his attention elsewhere.”
“True. There are oddballs everywhere.”
“Exactly.”
Jade said this and looked at Aruellia.
His gaze seemed to say that Aruellia was one of those oddballs, too.
But Aruellia merely smiled faintly despite that look.
“If Moikan gets stronger by learning a mana cultivation method, people from various tribes might come looking. Won’t he end up forming a whole knight order?”
“That’s a long way off.”
“Who knows? It doesn’t seem that far away to me. Maybe elsewhere, but this is the Great Forest. It might be the place richest in mana on the continent.”
Unlike the clear and pristine atmosphere of Aruellia’s homeland, the Great Forest was saturated with an immense amount of mana.
That was why Aruellia believed the possibility was quite real.
Jade himself was one example, after all.
“It might be. But first, I have to complete a mana cultivation method suited to Moikan. That comes first.”
“I think it’ll work. It’s not just anyone doing this—it’s you researching it yourself.”
“As I worked on it, I found it helped me too. I’ve been able to identify things I hadn’t thought of before. It’s been useful in its own way.”
“Maybe I should improve my tribe’s breathing technique, too.”
Aruellia stroked her chin.
Despite already possessing immense power, Jade’s drive to improve never waned.
He worked tirelessly, as though he had a definite goal in mind.
Perhaps that was why Aruellia found him inspiring, too.
‘Though that very inspiration is also why I came this far.’
Judging solely by the power he possessed, Jade had already surpassed the bounds of an ordinary human.
But that wasn’t why she had come all the way here.
Aruellia had left her homeland and traveled to this distant foreign land because she had sensed something fundamentally different in him from every human she had met until then.
Swish.
While Aruellia was lost in thought, Jade casually held something out to her.
He had pulled a long, slender object from subspace and held it out for her to see.
“It’s a gift.”
“Huh?”
“You’ve helped me with all sorts of things, and I didn’t think it would be polite to thank you with words alone.”
“Wow!”
Countless emotions surged through Aruellia’s large pupils.
The unexpected gift had genuinely caught her by surprise.
Moreover, it was beautiful, which made her like it even more.
“Luckily, you don’t seem to dislike it. I thought you might because of its dark, drab color.”
“The design is absolutely beautiful! I’ve never seen curves this gorgeous! And this is black drake bone, right?”
“Yeah.”
Aruellia’s voice rose far higher than usual.
She was that excited.
“Thank you! I’ll put it to really good use!”
“You don’t have to thank me. It’s repayment for everything I’ve received from you.”
Seeing how exuberantly delighted Aruellia was, Jade shrugged.
But inwardly, he was pleased.
He believed that while the giver’s feelings mattered when giving a gift, the recipient’s satisfaction mattered too.
“I really love it. I think I’ll shoot some arrows for the first time in a while today. To get acquainted with this girl, too.”
Aruellia rubbed her cheek against the bow, which was as tall as she was.
Then she promptly vanished.
Carrying the great bow, she moved toward the Great Forest as if flying.
-I liked that bow too!
-Jade’s pretty good with a bow, too.
“I used to be a hunter, after all.”
As soon as Aruellia left, Sylestin and Elestra spoke up.
Sylestin in particular stared in the direction Aruellia had vanished, a look of deep regret on his face.
-Let’s ask Haren to make us another one! There’s plenty of material left!
“There is quite a bit left.”
-Exactly!
“But I doubt I’ll ever have much use for a bow. A sword is enough for me.”
Jade shook his head.
Maybe because Haren was a woman, she had gone beyond mere quality and added beauty to it.
But even if Jade had a bow like Aruellia’s, it would currently be nothing more than a decorative piece.
Boom! Bang!
At the explosive sounds, Jade turned his head.
He looked toward the children and spirit callers having one-on-one matches at one side of the training ground.
“Guh!”
“Just this once!”
The spirit callers had numbered thirteen, but two more had dropped out, leaving only ten.
They had ultimately quit because they couldn’t adapt to Jade’s training methods.
But that didn’t mean the remaining ten had passed.
Jade was still watching the ten and having them do only basic training.
“Guh!”
“Aah! I almost had it!”
For a while now, they had taken turns in one-on-one matches once a day, and surprisingly, their win rates were similar.
Neither side had managed to gain a clear advantage.
However, the mercenaries had taken the defeats much harder.
They were older, but each had spent a fair amount of time in the mercenary world.
Their ranks weren’t particularly high, but each was unquestionably a mercenary who had received a mercenary badge from the Mercenary Guild.
Yet they couldn’t decisively defeat children who had only just begun learning spirit arts.
“Damn it!”
“Huff! Hah!”
The difference in spirit arts, in particular, was far greater than expected.
Even though they had contracted the same low-grade spirits, the mercenary spirit callers could scarcely overpower the children.
Despite having far more practical experience.
“Good work.”
“……What on earth is the secret? Why is your low-grade earth spirit, a gnome, so different from mine when they’re the same?”
Quatis, the oldest among the former mercenary spirit callers, gritted his teeth and asked while Farzali took deep breaths with his spear still in hand.
Quatis could understand losing in close combat, since he had come from the city watch and was separately learning spear techniques from the knights.
He was still physically undertrained.
But the spirit arts match was what he couldn’t understand.
“It’s because we think differently.”
“Think? What does that mean?”
“We saw the lord fight with our own eyes. We saw how spirit arts should be handled and how one should fight. Spirit arts aren’t simply about giving spirits orders. You have to think more deeply and work things out.”
“Hmm!”
Quatis’s face grew grave.
The vague, abstract answer made no sense to him.
“A low-grade spirit isn’t necessarily weak. Depending on how it’s handled, even a low-grade spirit can display more than enough strength.”
“That’s exactly what I’m asking you to explain—how do you do that?”
“Haven’t you seen it enough times? You’ve experienced it firsthand, too.”
“……So it’s not a difference caused by the mana cultivation method?”
“That’s right. We haven’t been learning the mana cultivation method for very long, either.”
Farzali answered firmly.
It wasn’t as though he didn’t know what the former mercenaries were thinking.
But the matches truly weren’t being decided by the mana cultivation method.
He and the children from the marquisate had been learning the mana cultivation method, but the amount of mana actually accumulated in their bodies wasn’t very large.
“So it really is a difference in ability.”
“Isn’t the match decided by how you use your spirits? Of course, close combat can decide it too.”
“Sigh.”
That phrase—how to use spirits—struck him painfully in the chest.
In truth, Quatis knew that too.
He knew that their methods and techniques for handling spirits were completely different from his own.
He had assumed they handled spirits in such astonishing ways simply because they were young, but after hearing Farzali, that didn’t seem to be the case.
“Spirit arts are limitless. Doesn’t the lord always tell us to imagine?”
“……That’s the difficult part. Even imitating it is hard.”
Quatis said with a sigh.
He had even swallowed his pride and tried to imitate the children’s techniques, including Farzali’s.
But ultimately, he had failed.
He couldn’t handle spirits with the same delicacy as the ten children.
‘We’re all receiving the same training, too. Why is there such a difference?’
Quatis couldn’t understand it.
Apart from the mana cultivation method, the ten children and the former mercenaries trained their bodies for the same amount of time each day and received training from the trio of knights.
Yet whenever they sparred, the results were always similar.
There had been times when he’d won by luckily exploiting their carelessness, but not once had he crushed them through skill alone.
“You look pretty frustrated too, big brother.”
“Wouldn’t everyone be? Honestly, we entered the spirit arts first, yet we’re getting crushed.”
“But aren’t you happy in a way? The children have only just started, and they’re already this skilled. And we have the lord with us, the greatest spirit caller in the Kingdom of Polstein—perhaps on the entire continent.”
Ellie cast a sidelong glance.
She was sneaking a look at Jade, who was deep in thought.
“That’s why we’re holding out like this.”
“If only three of us have given up, that’s still not many. I thought maybe half of us would remain.”
“The important thing is that this test isn’t over yet.”
“You’re going to continue with us, right?”
Ellie said with a slightly tense expression.
Quatis had been struggling the most lately.
He was also the oldest.
“Of course. If not this time, there won’t be another chance. Even if there is, it’ll be several times harder than now. They’ll scrutinize us even more.”
“You really can’t discount experience.”
“But I still have my doubts. Can we really become knights? No—is it even possible for us to learn martial arts to that level?”
“It’s not impossible. Besides, he’s a marquis rather than a count, so he can appoint knights whenever he wants.”
Ellie’s eyes gleamed.
Rare as they were, there had definitely been female knights in the history of the Kingdom of Polstein.
Since it wasn’t entirely impossible, Ellie desperately wanted to become a knight.
A spirit knight, perhaps even the first on the continent.
‘The lord is practically a spirit knight already.’
She had never personally seen Jade fight, but she had heard the rumors until her ears were sore.
Rumors that he had single-handedly slaughtered knights of upper-Expert level.
Of course, people generally believed he hadn’t fought them using swordsmanship alone, but the result was what mattered.
“So you want to become a knight, huh?”
“What about you?”
“It’d be nice. But I want to become a spirit caller—a very, very powerful one. I don’t care about swordsmanship or spearmanship.”
“I don’t think the training we’re doing now is bad. In the end, you’re the one who has to protect your own body.”
“That’s true.”
Being a mage didn’t mean one was always protected by soldiers or knights.
A skilled warmage could wipe out an entire knight order alone, so there was no reason a spirit caller couldn’t do the same.
No, if we’re talking potential, spirit callers had an advantage over mages.
At least their mana didn’t repel aura the way a mage’s mana did.
“I wish this test would end soon.”
Ellie’s gaze slowly shifted to Jade.