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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 9
Chapter Title: Field Training
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Please take care of me.
"Yeah... You're a knight currently serving as a squire? I'm not interested in that. Why are you here? Our faces are awkward enough without dragging this out, so just get to the point."
"I came because I have something to ask."
"What is it?"
Arsen calmly explained what had happened that morning. Eloise's sudden appearance and her threats to the maid and him, the fact that he hadn't felt any particular aversion to her, and that Knight Palato had recommended he come here. He covered everything.
Luden's expression, unlike his first impression, turned serious as he listened.
"Come in for now."
"Understood."
Arsen followed Luden into the tower, where he was greeted by a space that perfectly fit the description of a "trash heap."
Dozens of books were scattered everywhere, along with unidentified objects, glass containers suitable for a chemistry lab, shields, armor, swords, and other items rolling around on the floor.
It didn't look like a place where someone lived—it could easily pass for a warehouse where anything was just dumped haphazardly.
"Take a seat... here."
Books and a breastplate that had been piled on two chairs fell off as Luden cleared a spot.
Once Arsen sat down, Luden, sitting across from him, stared straight through him and asked.
"So, what do you think?"
"It's got a lot of stuff."
"Not about my room!"
Luden snapped in anger, then cleared his throat with a hem-hem and composed his expression.
"Do you feel anything from me right now? Something unsettling, or unpleasant?"
"Not particularly."
To be honest, that bandit-like face was a bit intimidating, but he figured that wasn't the kind of aversion they were talking about.
Luden's expression shifted to one of wonder upon hearing the answer, then furrowed in thought moments later.
"Hmm... This is honestly baffling. I've only heard tales of people like you, never thought I'd meet one myself."
"What do you mean?"
"A constitution that doesn't reject mages. Normally, no one could sit here so calmly in front of me. I don't know exactly what it feels like since I'm a mage, but everyone acts like I'm a dung-covered cockroach crawling all over them."
Luden suddenly shot up from his chair and paced the room with his hands behind his back.
Kicking away any books or objects that got in his way.
"Constitution... hereditary... No, not that... Or is it? Mental? But that doesn't fit... My hypothesis is way off... Damn it..."
He muttered to himself incoherently, looking every bit like a schizophrenic patient.
Then he abruptly came right up to Arsen, grabbed his shoulders, and shouted.
"You! Do you have any family or relatives left in the territory!?"
"None at all. My mother passed away, and I don't know any of her relatives. My father is missing, and most of his relatives are either dead or left the territory."
Luden groaned in frustration at Arsen's words and slumped back into his chair.
"Damn it, I just need one, and you have zero?"
"Yes."
One of the things Arsen had hoped for when he first arrived here was Lenoc Knight's relatives in the Belluan territory.
They had treated him like a slave in the castle, but that was because he wasn't a knight yet. Now that he was one, he could track down his father's relatives, coexist with them if possible, or suck them dry and discard them if they were worthless scum.
If their lives were too impoverished, he was even willing to offer some support.
Arsen had learned, sacrificing his own childhood, just how important it was in a small society to have people you could rely on mutually.
Though the Belluan territory was too large to call a "small society" compared to the castle.
But it turned out that hope was unnecessary from the start.
When he asked Knight Palato about it, he received the shocking answer that all of Lenoc's relatives were dead or gone.
He asked why, but Palato just shook his head with an ambiguous expression and said, "It's better if you don't know."
"Damn it, that fucking! This goddamn Rha gives nothing helpful in my life and now obstructs me even here! Has to be trying to drive me insane with curiosity! Arrrgh! You son of a bitch!"
Luden stomped his feet and screamed like a madman.
He didn't hesitate to blaspheme Rha, something Arsen had never heard anyone do in his life.
A devout believer probably would have crossed themselves and fled the tower by now.
'No wonder they called him an eccentric.'
No, if this was just "eccentric," then Palato had been overly generous in his assessment of Luden.
If someone asked Arsen what Luden was like, he'd answer "crazy bastard."
Once Luden calmed down a bit from his frenzy, Arsen posed a question.
"Is the reason you're asking that because you need to know if this constitution is hereditary?"
"Hoo... Yes, you're sharp. My master and I debated this back when he was alive."
At the mention of "master," Luden's face softened in a way that didn't suit him.
"My master thought this constitution was like a mage's ability—passed down without regard to bloodline. I believed it was inherited through blood. It was a meaningless debate since neither of us had ever seen a real case."
"So mages aren't tied to bloodline."
"As far as we know. Mages are extremely rare, and even rarer is a mage's child becoming a mage. I've never seen it. A knight's child becomes a knight in about one-third of cases, though."
"Even if it's inherited like knights, it might not manifest."
"If it doesn't show, what difference does inheritance make?"
Arsen grew curious watching Luden sigh in defeat and hang his head.
"Could I learn magic, by any chance?"
At Arsen's question, Luden, who had been cradling his head in despair, suddenly laughed like a maniac.
His emotional swings were on the level of a bipolar patient.
"That's a question I haven't heard in ages! There are always a few idiots who ask that!"
His tone implied he was looking at the world's biggest fool, making Arsen bristle slightly, but he kept his composure without showing it.
Luden seemed disappointed, perhaps expecting a more heated reaction.
"Bottom line: no. Mages are born that way. It's not like knights who awaken."
Luden, grinning like he'd regained his energy, snapped his fingers, and surprisingly, a hologram appeared beside him.
It depicted a nude human body, like Da Vinci's golden ratio.
"Look. Knights like you use the heart—an organ everyone has—to circulate mana throughout the body."
With his explanation, blood vessels formed around the heart in the hologram.
"In contrast, we mages have a separate organ in the brain from birth. We manipulate ambient mana—twisting, turning, braiding it—to create special phenomena. That's magic."
Another hologram appeared, zooming in and making the brain transparent.
A new organ formed in the space between the cerebrum and cerebellum.
"Trying to learn magic without that is like saying you want to learn to fly without wings."
Luden swept his hand to the side, and the hologram vanished.
"Did I overcomplicate it? Two sentences: If you're not born with it, you can't learn it. So you can't. Enough?"
He clapped his hands, and a flame appeared above them.
It split into three strands, twisted together like braiding hair, merged into one, and vanished.
"That's sufficient."
Arsen swallowed his disappointment with a sigh.
Magic seemed fascinating and potentially very useful, but it was impossible anyway—and even if it weren't, the social risks looked too high.
He decided to just think of it as new knowledge.
Arsen stood up as if it was time to go, opened the door, and asked Luden while pretending to be casual, like sharing idle gossip.
"Oh, right. I heard a rumor once. Is there magic that preserves memories for reincarnation?"
"What?"
"For example, Knight Luden being reborn as a newborn infant with all his current knowledge intact."
Arsen tensed, watching Luden's face closely, but Luden just looked like he'd heard the strangest nonsense.
"Never heard of it. Magic circles are rare, but if such a unique spell existed, I doubt I'd be unaware. Back in the day, I traveled far and wide learning magic."
"I see."
"But if such magic really existed..."
Hidden by his bushy beard, his expression was ambiguous—smiling or crying?—but it radiated the bitter sorrows of life.
"...I wouldn't want to be reborn as a mage, at least. Magic is alluring, but a mage's life is hell. No one but another mage can ever love you."
At a loss for words, Arsen simply bowed his head and closed the door.
Seeing the loneliness in that bandit-like appearance and grumpy personality, Arsen wondered if the brat who threw tantrums that morning would grow up like this.
'At least next time, I should be kinder.'
As Arsen left the tower thinking that, a small shadow watched him from behind a tree.
* * *
The territory's knights periodically took squires on patrols outside the borders to deal with magic beasts.
Now that Arsen was Palato's squire, he couldn't indefinitely avoid that duty and spend his time leisurely training alone.
Thus, Arsen was now outside the territory, accompanied by Knight Palato and three squires.
"What's your impression of going on patrol?"
"Not exactly enjoyable."
The unique stench of decay outside hit harder after weeks away.
Arsen felt off from the smell, but Palato and the squires seemed unfazed, accustomed to it.
"Head to that hill over there."
The formation was diamond-shaped: Arsen in the center, Palato Knight ahead, and the other three squires on the left, right, and rear.
When Arsen asked about the formation, Palato's answer was remarkable.
'Threats from the front are handled by the strongest me, and you need protection just in case. If it looks dangerous, I'll use the squires as bait.'
To Arsen, who had been an outsider until recently, Palato's dual attitude—warm to him yet treating fellow squires as expendable—wasn't unique to him.
From his observations over the past few weeks, most knights were the same.
They treated fellow knights like siblings but viewed squires as disposable—here today, gone tomorrow.
Most squires were essentially soldiers, training their bodies and patrolling within the territory on regular days.
The talented ones joined external patrols, which had a non-negligible mortality rate.
Knights rarely died, but it wasn't unusual for one or two squires to die or be maimed after a few patrols.
Hearing that reminded Arsen, who had grown numb inside the territory, just how threatening this world was to humans.
'Since squires die easily, they avoid getting attached on purpose.'
As for his relationships with the squires, who were treated so disdainfully compared to him—there had been almost no meaningful interactions.
His ambiguous status made establishing hierarchy difficult.
The squires didn't want to acknowledge a boy from outside, five to ten years younger than them, as a knight. Nor did they feel right treating a boy who would surely become a knight with age as a junior.
The best response to someone they didn't know how to handle was indifference.
"Shame there's no spare Jin. You're a proper knight now, after all."
"Can't be helped. I'm still young with plenty of time, so it's fine. I'll wait for Knight Luden to make one."
Palato rode a Jin, but Arsen rode an oil lizard like the other squires—a lizard-shaped mount.
It was called oil lizard because the amount of oil extracted from its corpse was enormous.
Herded like cattle in life, squeezed for oil in death—small wonder they said Satan would go unemployed here.
Though he hadn't ridden the oil lizard—nicknamed just "lizard"—for long, Arsen's mount-handling skills were decent.
Whether because lizards were smarter and gentler than horses, or due to his talent, he didn't know.
He couldn't fight adeptly like the squires, but walking and running were no problem.
"Knight Palato, blade leopard on the right hill."
The chief squire guarding the right reported to Palato.
Turning to look, a massive ultramarine leopard stared at their group, preparing to hunt.
It was the same type as the magic beast that had nearly walked in on his bath before.
It felt like ancient history now.
"Planning to attack while so visible? Must be a young one that hasn't seen many humans. Boras, Olga. Go catch it."
"Yes!"
Two squires from the rear spurred their lizards toward the blade leopard.