Garland was right.
I had been acting like a spoiled child.
Faced with a defeat I had never experienced before, all I did was dig a hole and burrow deeper, deeper, trying to hide.
I had forgotten the promise I made to myself in the early days of this possession, that I would live without becoming arrogant because of the cheat-like abilities of a swordmaster.
Before I knew it, I had been relying on power that was simply given to me without any effort.
Shame flooded over me at the realization that I had been living complacently.
It wasn’t me wielding the power of a swordmaster; it was the power that had been wielding me.
Master and slave had switched places.
“Huuu…“
The next day, when I returned to the quarters where Surabar was staying, I received knight training from Sir Garland in a secluded corner.
Swordmaster. Overwhelming physical ability. Strength and speed that surpassed human limits.
There was no need to discard them entirely, but I decided to set them aside for now.
Sir Garland was not a warrior great enough to leave his name in history, yet he was undeniably a man among men who had received training worthy of being called a knight.
His knighthood was not granted simply because he was the son of a margrave; he had earned it by defeating three knight trainees of the same rank in combat.
If we judged purely by raw strength, Sir Garland and other knights of his level were “easy opponents” for me or Surabar.
But that did not mean the techniques they had mastered could be ignored.
Sir Garland had memorized interpersonal combat techniques and knowledge that I lacked like a textbook.
For the first time since I was born; no, since I possessed “Paramir”; I subjected myself to the tedious training of a knight.
Starting with the basic stances of knighthood that I was completely unfamiliar with, I repeated vertical slashes and horizontal slashes from early morning until late at night without rest.
If someone had told the old me that a man was doing ten thousand straight punches a day, I would have laughed and called him an idiot.
No, I definitely would have.
But on the third day of this basic knight training… I learned what it truly meant for every muscle in my body to feel like it was being torn apart.
Sir Garland, of course, knew I was a swordmaster and was fully aware that my natural recovery ability was superhuman, far beyond that of ordinary people or even himself, a formally knighted man.
Because of that, the amount of training I was made to do increased to a level that could not even be compared to the original.
Ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times…
The time given was the same, but there were many ways to increase the load on the body in that same time.
It wasn’t even difficult.
Right now, I was wearing chunks of iron all over my body; the ones I had obtained under the excuse that they were needed for Surabar’s training.
“Nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine…! Ten… thousand…!”
“Rest!”
“Puhhaaaaa—!!”
I’m exhausted! Completely exhausted!
I collapsed flat onto the training ground floor, still draped in the clanking iron weights.
I had long since stopped caring about the disgusted looks from the beastmen watching me.
Sir Garland was no great general or outstanding knight, but he was a proper instructor.
Perhaps he was even more talented at this than at being a prince or a margrave.
That was how sensitively he noticed whenever I still had strength left and tried to slack off during training; he would immediately bark orders at me.
Although he didn’t train himself, he stayed with us in the training ground where Surabar was from early morning until late at night, so dark circles had formed under Sir Garland’s eyes as well.
Spending time like this together made me realize once again that Sir Garland was no ordinary person.
To think he could push a swordmaster to the point of raising both hands in surrender… truly, a formidable man among formidable men.
“You really are tired, aren’t you. Pamir… Sir. Are you all right?”
“Talking… is… hard…… can’t… do…”
“You’re not faking it, I see. Bring some water here. A lot. Water to splash on his face and water to drink.”
“Yes, Lord Surabar.”
At Surabar’s command, the women instantly rushed to the kitchen and brought water.
Splash!
Would it be too much to say it felt like pouring water on a fish that had just been caught?
But being the fish on the receiving end of that baptism, I wanted to protest somehow.
The problem was I didn’t even have the energy to do that.
In any case, lately Surabar had been watching my crash-course knight training under Sir Garland with far more interest than his own workouts.
There wasn’t much entertainment in the gladiator quarters, after all.
“…Surabar, want to join?”
After a long while, when I finally regained enough strength to speak, I asked the captain who was flirting (at least it looked that way to me) with the beastman women around him.
The women didn’t know exactly what our relationship was, but they seemed to have figured it out roughly by instinct.
Ever since Surabar arrived, everything in the quarters had changed.
The women had barely escaped from the deep underground to a place where sunlight finally reached; they had no desire to return to those old days.
“I’ll pass. It’s already too late for me. I can’t escape the fighting style I’ve built.”
“Surabar is right. It’s extremely hard to forcibly change a style that someone has already made their own. Sir Pamir’s case is the unusual one.”
“What the; when did you two get so close?”
“We just happen to agree on this.”
“Sometimes we think the same thing, that’s all.”
Ugh…!
Still wearing the iron weights, I forced myself back to my feet.
There was one final training session left for today.
Sir Garland was already prepared, holding a blunted practice sword (same weight as a real one), just like yesterday.
On the first day, the beastmen in the quarters had been utterly shocked to see a “prince” from a foreign land personally crossing swords with his own guardian knight.
But now it had long since become just an exciting spectacle; or something on the level of a circus performance.
“The spar has already begun.”
Surabar said.
He was right.
Sir Garland terrifyingly fast brought his sword straight down toward my head; precisely toward the crown of my skull.
Since it wasn’t a shinai, there was no takon~! sound.
Instead, the ground I stood on seemed to collapse, making everything spin.
The pain jolted my exhausted body awake.
I steadied my stance, forcibly ignoring the iron weights pressing down on my entire body, and faced the spar using only the orthodox knight footwork and the most basic slashing forms that Sir Garland had taught me.
The result? Naturally, another crushing defeat just like yesterday.
There was a reason for all the training I had done until now and for the training weights I still hadn’t taken off.
They were meant to drag the unique stamina, reflexes, and raw power of a swordmaster down to the level of an ordinary person.
For whatever reason, the King of Bers had not given us ordinary iron weights but ones enchanted with magic that interfered with the circulation of mana inside the body.
They were extremely valuable items.
When I said they were needed for Surabar’s training, he handed them over immediately.
As expected, even if he seemed like nothing special, a king of a nation was not someone to be taken lightly.
The way he gave me anything I asked for with a simple “here” was on a completely different level from the former Margrave of Mosul who had styled himself a king while plotting rebellion.
Come to think of it… I wonder if everyone is doing okay. They said they were heading to the fortress city in the north… I hope they arrived safely without incident.
For the first time in a very long while, I thought of Perdual, Tenok, the cheerful Black Tails; my “family.”
Those guys who loved meat, loved alcohol, and loved women; they spent every large sum they got their hands on without ever saving a single coin.
It might actually be better for them to work as soldiers in a military city.
Compared to the Kingdom of Bers, where people called beastmen “tail-bearers,” chained them, enslaved them, and even forced them to kill each other, the Human Empire truly deserved to be called an empire.
Even in Mosul there had been subtle discrimination, but nothing as horrific as this ever happened…
“Sir Pamir. Get up. There is still time left.”
“I’m really going to die.”
He doesn’t let me rest for even a moment.
Ugh…! My joints cracked as I stood up.
Oh man, at this rate I’m really going to collapse from exhaustion.
***
Cedmos said,
“The new Archduke certainly seems like an interesting person. To think she poisoned and killed the entire previous family head and all his blood relatives overnight… Even the most ruthless noble successor would find that difficult. Well, if I had grown up receiving that kind of “affection” from my father and half-siblings since childhood, I might have done the same. The Greenwood family has always been notoriously strict with their children’s education, haven’t they? Come to think of it, why did she only act now? I’m curious if she suddenly had a change of heart.”
“…You had better watch your tongue, Cedmos. This is not something to bring up in front of others.”
“As His Majesty wishes.”
Cedmos shrugged and shut his mouth.
Yet his eyes still glinted mischievously toward his lord, like a boy whose bones hadn’t fully hardened.
A sword that has left my hand is hard to control…
Red still hadn’t figured out how to manage the “Guardian Deity of the Kingdom” who had become far too free-spirited.
“Not bad. Dealing with a young girl is better than dealing with that Ged bastard. It was nice to see her voluntarily lower her head. I don’t know how long she’ll keep it lowered, but for the time being, it means she intends to stay quiet and coiled up.”
“With me here, there is no need for Your Majesty to worry. Anastasia Greenwood is a woman who poisoned and killed her father and all her siblings in a single night. Wouldn’t it be wise to remain a little cautious?”
“I am aware. More importantly, have you picked up some new hobby lately? The number of corpses I have to clean up has decreased.”
The corpses Red spoke of were, of course, tail-bearers.
When he was not guarding the king, Cedmos pursued his own hobbies.
The problem was that those hobbies involved tormenting the already scarce tail-bearers in the kingdom until they eventually died.
Yet lately, Red had not received any reports of his sword harassing tail-bearers.
The two tail-bearers he had recently received from Mosul and kept in his mansion were still alive.
Almost half a month had passed.
Considering Cedmos’s vile tastes, this was something that should never happen under “normal” circumstances.
“Ah, about that… My senses have felt a bit dull lately. I’m going back to basics and retraining. It’s been so long since I had a proper real fight that I was worried I might have gone rusty.”
“To hear the words ‘gone rusty’ come from the mouth of a war hero is hard to believe, but I will believe it. If you continue like that from now on, I could ask for nothing more.”
“Haha, that will be difficult.”
“Of course. Truthfully, I never expected it anyway.”
Clicking his tongue and issuing an obvious dismissal, Cedmos gave an exaggerated bow to Red and left the office.
A hobby? Playing with tail-bearers until they died miserably?
He had no time to waste on such things now.
Cedmos recalled the swordmaster from Mosul he had encountered in the colosseum.
Young, strong, astonishingly pure.
His mouth watered just thinking about it.
If he hadn’t been distracted at the time, if he hadn’t reached the realm of swordmaster before the other man, if he hadn’t enjoyed the benefits of all the years spent as a swordmaster…
Cedmos felt every hair on his body stand on end.
It was only natural that he hadn’t cut the man’s throat right then and there.
Such audacity; to glare straight at his heart in an unfavorable situation.
Truly a remarkable talent.
The gods in heaven paid no attention to mortals on earth, so that talent could even be seen as something granted by a demon.
The essence didn’t matter.
Cedmos wanted to fight Paramir with everything he had.
He did not want a hollow victory by surprise attack.
If he had forcibly started a fight back then, at best he would have cut off the man’s head in the throne room while his own heart was pierced at the same moment and he died.
That was not a fight.
It would be nothing more than intentional suicide.
A battle where life and death crossed; that alone could make Cedmos forget the bitter defeat of his past.
“When we cross swords next time… I don’t know whether I will die or you will. Either is fine. Our fight will become legend.”
Legend…
Cedmos thought of the swordmaster from the Demon King’s Army who had taken one of his eyes.
Zork.
The young swormaster from Mosul reminded him of that terrifying beastman swordmaster.