Chapter 2:  Anplus’s First Step as a Knight

The indigo pupils trembled, and blue blood flowed from her temple.

“H-ha, haha.”

But Temeratia did not fall.

She had aimed true, but her power was woefully insufficient.

I don’t have time to regret that.

What did I just do?

Did I interrupt the spell midway?

But I can’t even control mana, can I?

“Y-you insignificant—!”

Having been raised in a military noble family, Temeratia was not so frail as to be felled by a single strike from a mere branch.

With a savage flicker in her indigo eyes, Temeratia stomped her boot into my chest.

I rolled weakly backward.

She pressed her fingertips to her temple and knit her brow.

“Did you make me bleed…?”

Mana flared from Temeratia’s hand.

The ground pulsed and spear-like spikes erupted.

Danger.

Could I do it again?

I swung at the lower part of the rising spikes, aiming for her thigh.

With a thud, a recoil hit me as if I’d struck a boulder.

I groaned and flung myself onto the ground in a sorry heap.

“Good. That’s the posture that suits you — crawl on the floor!”

How did I do that earlier?

The spikes forcing their way out of the ground made it hard to string thoughts together.

But finding an answer was how I survived.

Prone, sprawling, crawling on all fours, I thought desperately.

I knew little of swordsmanship, but I’d desperately studied magic theory.

At that moment I had severed the point where the blue glow of mana radiated.

Wasn’t that the momentary divide between the thing trying to dominate and the domination itself?

Of course it was only a theory.

Verification… I should try it now.

Gasping, I stared at Temeratia.

Perhaps she thought I’d kept a safe distance; she wore a complacent smile.

I could understand that.

More than thirty paces.

No knight could hope to defeat a mage with that space between them.

“ōt!”

So I had to move.

Like the many who’d collapsed under magical force until now.

If there was a difference between me and them, it was that I at least knew magic in theory, and I had just cut a spell — once.

I set my jaw and took a step.

Spear-like spikes shot up.

My heart pounded like mad.

Calm down.

I inhaled.

Try it like before.

I had to focus on the beat — the rhythm — to see it.

The pace was so fast that a single heartbeat had to be divided into four parts.

The blue light pulsed, manipulating the world in split seconds.

I had to sever that point.

How?

Before I could find that answer, a thick column of earth fell overhead.

When I flung myself to the ground, a broken rib jabbed into my lung.

“Gasp.”

Breathing raggedly, I thought.

I must move my body at the exact timing.

But I’d never lifted anything heavier than silverware.

If I truly have nothing, how did I do it earlier?

I searched through memories from the past eighteen years.

I even rifled through almost-forgotten memories of a previous life.

I had, once, controlled my body.

In a past life, a fitness-obsessed friend had dragged me to the gym.

Somehow I’d even posed for a body profile.

In this life, my social status forced me to learn ballroom dancing for a long time.

Gym training teaches how to tense a specific area of the body instantly.

Ballroom dance teaches rhythm in synchrony with a partner.

I had both abilities I needed.

If only I could recall them in time, I might sever the magic again.

I created an opening and ran through the dust rising from the crumbling pillar.

Columns of earth crossed like a grid, blocking my way.

I hurled myself into a pocket of space beneath them.

As I tried to get up, the sky and ground flipped.

Holding my waist, I groaned and looked up at the night sky.

What had happened?

The ground under my feet had suddenly jutted up.

“Just stay down.”

Temeratia snapped irritably.

“Why struggle? You’ve lasted this long. Do as you always do. Live as you always have!”

My breath caught.

“Do you really think thrashing about will let you beat me?”

The strength drained from my arm that was braced on the ground.

Right. Temeratia wasn’t truly trying to kill me.

It must have been a reckless mistake born of passion.

Tomorrow she would return to the city ruled by her family.

If I endured, the pain would end someday.

Endure again and again, suffer through the long life of blue blood and endure again… Endure and endure…

“Just kill me, then.”

That wasn’t living.

Staggering, I rose.

Even then I kept the branch clenched.

I looked up and found Temeratia had come a few steps closer than I expected.

She was surprisingly near.

She must have rolled forward when she rose into the air.

“You’ll regret this.”

“What did you say? I can barely hear the words of a young master who can’t cast magic.”

The ground pulsed and a field of spikes unfolded.

She smiled as if daring me to come.

“Ha!”

Fine. I’ll go.

Every step I took drove nails into my soles.

Blue blood flowed, bones rasped, wounds kept cicatrizing and reopening in a loop.

But I no longer crawled on the ground, collapsed, or dodged attacks.

If I was pierced, then so be it — I pushed on, my soles pierced over and over in silence.

The agony made me want to collapse, but retreating would only prolong it.

There is no rest where one runs to.

“You—!”

Temeratia hastily gathered blue light.

She realized I had drawn closer than she’d expected.

Spear-like spikes shot up.

I widened my eyes and fixed that moment.

Mana flared and the soft earth hardened like iron — that sliver was the opening.

Now!

I kicked off the ground and swung the branch.

With the shattering of glass, the spear-like spike fell uselessly, and the branch snapped clean in mid-air.

My body, which had never moved violently, now howled that it had reached its limit.

Temeratia wasn’t someone you could fell with a branch.

I needed the strength to bring her down in one blow.

I feigned a straight-on charge.

Five spear-like spikes shot up at once.

One alone had enough force to pierce me and leave me dangling.

I split my heartbeat into four beats.

I waited two beats until the spikes were within a span of my body.

On the third beat, soft flesh was pressed and held.

On the fourth beat, pivoting on my right foot, I spun and slipped past the spikes.

A moment. Eyes met.

Her indigo eyes distorted with horror.

I thought I caught a very, very faint look of admiration in them.

Using the tip of the branch that jutted from under my fist like a hilt, I drove it into Temeratia’s temple.

The elite mage’s eyes rolled white.

At the same instant I slumped down.

The space around me was dyed with my blood, glowing blue.

My eyelids grew unbearably heavy.

***

Unluckily for me, the senior knight who was on duty that evening, Dande, cleaned up the scene he’d found during his patrol.

He handed the unconscious Temeratia and the exhausted Anplus over to the maid.

He ordered the servants to smash the earth pillars that had lost strength after their mana leaked out and to spread gravel on top.

Watching the footprints being properly covered, he muttered.

“Not ordinary skill, is it? Did Young Master Anplus ever learn the sword?”

Dande still could not believe what he’d seen.

One branch had rendered Temeratia — trained as an elite — unconscious.

The movement he had once sought was there.

A sense of rhythm and reflexes that aimed for the precise space at the precise moment.

It might be a trivial talent compared to a noble’s magic, but for a knight it mattered more than natural bone and muscle.

If, really if Young Master Anplus were to become a knight…

Within a year he’d surely surpass Dande himself.

“Heh, that’s impossible.”

Dande sighed.

He was of a blue bloodline so diluted by repeated commoner marriages that he’d lost his ability to use magic.

He still had vigor and strength beyond a red-blooded commoner, but he’d lost magic, long life, and regenerative recovery — the trappings of blue blood.

Knights were such people: the lower rungs of blue blood who’d traded magic for physical prowess.

It wasn’t a position a young master who had once been on the path of succession would be expected to take.

***

“Impossible.”

I lay on the bed and brushed my side with my fingertips as if the hole had just closed.

The life force and regenerative power of a pureblood amazed me each time I experienced it.

“Still, next time I might actually die.”

I recalled the thrill when I swung the branch and struck Temeratia’s hand.

A smile escaped me involuntarily at the memory.

…If that attack had missed or been blocked, a powerful spell would have torn me to pieces.

Mana endowed strong vitality, but it did not increase the toughness of the body.

I needed the strength to protect myself.

“Would swordsmanship help?”

If I trained diligently with the sword, could I protect my body?

I looked out beyond the window.

Knights escorted mages of deeper blood.

In this world, magic easily outstripped physical strength.

But—

“Still, I succeeded once, didn’t I?”

After all, I was the one who was conscious at the end.

“Let’s do it.”

If I said I wanted to learn the sword, everyone would ask if I’d gone mad.

They’d tell me it wasn’t a task for me, that the pure-blood young master should quickly marry and bear children or take up administrative duties.

But I did not want to live the rest of my life being trampled by mages like Temeratia.

Also, having something move at my command and being able to change reality with it was unexpectedly pleasurable.

Once I decided, I leapt up and headed to the knights’ resting room in the corner of the first floor of the castle.

“What is it?”

A few knights who recognized me saluted perfunctorily.

“Is the knight who called my maid here a few days ago present?”

I felt secretly nervous despite my resolution.

Three years ago, a trivial request to open a letter at the crack of dawn would have had them come running with smiles.

But now my position was worse than those knights.

They just brushed me off, saying they were busy with duties.

“Yes. I was on duty that evening.”

“Can you spare a moment?”

By extraordinary luck, he followed me to the sparsely populated training ground.

“What should I call you?”

“Dande. Call me simply Dande.”

“Sir Dande. I have a favor to ask.”

Dande thought Anplus would ask him to keep the scene secret.

Many young nobles came to Anplus for similar reasons as Temeratia.

They visited once and found him a dull toy who only took hits, and never came back.

But if rumors spread that Anplus had fought back and felled Temeratia after resisting?

They would return to enjoy the same sadistic amusements.

It would be a disaster for the young master.

“Do not worry. I will keep it a secret that you can handle a sword, to the grave.”

***

“Teach me the sword.”

“Pardon?”

“Huh?”

Dande and I exchanged awkward looks for a moment.

After an uncomfortable silence, Dande spoke first.

“Had you already learned the sword?”

“All I’ve ever held that could be called a sword is a table knife.”

“Unbelievable. Even among apprentice knights there are very few who could handle a blade as you did.”

“Please don’t flatter me.”

I was skilled in the nobility’s manner of speech from long social life, and Dande’s praise first made me uneasy.

I thought he might refuse, saying I already did well enough and that it was unnecessary to learn.

He pursed his lips for a moment.

“If it’s not rude to ask, may I inquire why you resolved to take up the sword?”

I chose my words calmly.

First, I told him the raw desire that would make him nod immediately.

“The treatment I receive now cannot be called noble. The reason is that I cannot cast magic, and because of that I cannot stand on the battlefield.”

I paused and continued.

“But there’s no law that you must stand on the battlefield as a mage. I intend to learn the sword and stand on the battlefield as a knight. That way I might regain some shred of dignity.”

Knights who sometimes escorted mages and sometimes charged at enemy mages to strike them down were also part of the battlefield.

Dande nodded as if convinced.

“You wish to restore noble honor and treatment.”

Then I began, and confessed the remaining half of my true motive.

“It was pleasing that something obeyed my will. It was pleasurable to be able to change the situation before me with it. That’s why I want to learn the sword all the more.”

Dande’s face brightened as if he’d been waiting to hear that.

In a voice steady and knightly, he declared, “You have come to the right place, Young Master Anplus. I will teach you everything I have learned in the past twenty years as a knight.”

“Was it passable at least?”

Dande couldn’t believe it.

Beyond astonishment, fear.

What he’d never imagined had become reality.

Everything he’d learned over twenty years.

Young Master Anplus had mastered it all in a single month.