episode_0075

Asher realized he had been asleep from the sunlight tickling his eyelids. Also, that he was lying in bed. Then, he remembered the previous night when he looked at the night sky with the girl. Startled by the sudden sense of incongruity, Asher shot up. He remembered looking at the night sky with the girl, but he had no memory of returning to his room afterward. Looking around, it was the room where he had reluctantly slept with Rogi yesterday.

“Was that also a dream?”

The warm sunlight shining through the window, the breeze blowing from beyond, and the chirping of birds seemed to say so, and he blinked. But the sensations were too vivid for it to be a dream. The night sky he had looked at with the girl was so beautiful that he could accept it was a dream. Anyway, after waking up, he first looked at the seat next to him. The boy who should have been sleeping there seemed to have woken up first, as the blanket was neatly folded.

Clicking his tongue at the sight, he got out of bed. He thought Donar would call him early in the morning for training, but he was puzzled that he had slept soundly until late morning, then he remembered that the man had decided to check Donar’s skills. Thinking that it was today, he could understand why he hadn’t woken him up. Still, as he was walking down the hallway, thinking of at least watching, he heard a voice from somewhere.

“Isn’t that maybe him?”

“Ah! I think you’re right?”

Glancing over, maids, different from yesterday, were whispering and gossiping as if they were having a fun conversation. Thinking it was a good opportunity, he spoke to them.

“Excuse me.”

“Ah!? Why, what’s wrong?”

He didn’t seem to have startled them that much, but their flustered appearance was strange, but he didn’t care and asked for Donar’s location.

“Do you know where Mister Donar is?”

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to meet Velka first, but he had resolved to become stronger, even if it was in a dream.

“I don’t know his name, but if you mean the knights from another country, they are probably still having a meal.”

Thanking the maids for their kind reply, he headed to the banquet hall. But is it just his imagination that every maid he passed seemed to whisper when they encountered him today? Feeling uneasy about something, he arrived at the banquet hall and, sure enough, he saw the members of the company eating. He approached Donar, who was talking with Sif next to him.

“Why didn’t you wake me up?”

He vaguely knew the reason, but he was still upset that he had left him behind and come to eat first.

“Oh, you’re up? If you wake up late, I would have had your meal brought to you.”

“Tsk, I should have just slept longer.”

He felt like he had missed out, thinking that he could have had a more comfortable breakfast if he had woken up later. Just as he was about to sit next to him and start eating, there was the sound of footsteps approaching him quickly. Turning around at the sound, there was Velka, as expected.

“Asher, good morning.”

“Did you sleep well too, Velka?”

She nodded and sat next to him. Just that alone made this unfamiliar place feel comfortable, and as he moistened his parched throat with soup, she put a plate of salad that was nearby and pushed it towards him.

“Here, this too.”

Asher felt troubled by Velka, who kept pushing things she thought he would like, but he couldn’t eat that much, so he accepted everything she gave him. The girl always tried to take care of him. Still, it always seemed like she ate very little, so he picked up a salad with a fork and held it out to Velka.

“Here, Velka too. You’ve only been watching me eat.”

It wasn’t that the girl wasn’t eating at all, but she ate so little compared to him that he was worried. He knew she originally ate little, but he wished she would eat a little more. Still, he was glad that she would eat it without much resistance when he offered it to her like this. After confirming that she was munching on the salad, he was eating his share of the food when he heard.

“You two are dating, aren’t you?”

“Ptoo!”

He choked on the words he heard in front of him. As he coughed and looked for water, the girl filled a cup with water and handed it to him. After drinking the water and finally calming down, he saw Media, who had been resting her chin on her hand and watching them from across the table for some time.

“You, you! Why are you here?!”

“Oh my, is there a reason I shouldn’t be here?”

“Your seat was up there!”

She said it so nonchalantly, but she should have been sitting at the head of the table at least. Thanks to her, he had been eating with Velka without being disturbed.

“I’ve been here with Velka since she came to you? But you didn’t even notice, so I thought I was being ignored?”

But Media’s face was smiling brightly as she said that.

“Ah! What do you call it when you can only see one person? Right?”

Her saying that as if she had just thought of it, even though she knew everything, was truly hypocritical.

“And if you’re going to blame someone, blame yourself for being late for breakfast. I’ve already finished eating, but Velka didn’t eat a single bite until you came.”

He didn’t know that either. He thought she had just arrived when the girl came.

“So, are you two dating?”

“Ugh! Not that story again.”

He was annoyed by Media, who kept asking persistently, but he didn’t deny it because he didn’t have any intention or reason to hide it.

“…But how do you know that?”

He was amazed that she had noticed and asked about that, even though they had only met recently. Then, Media looked even more surprised.

“Was it a secret? It was so obvious?”

“Ugh, it’s not a secret, but how did you know?”

“You can tell at a glance without being told. Everyone already knows you two are dating, right?”

Reacting to those words, he turned to look around, and everyone was nodding their heads. It was quite late for breakfast, so there weren’t many people, but everyone who was listening to their conversation was doing that, so he was even more embarrassed. He didn’t intend to hide it, but everyone already knew.

“Besides, even the most insensitive person would know if they saw you two this morning, right?”

“This morning? This morning, I was in my room…”

“Oh my! Who doesn’t know that you two were leaning against each other in the central hallway, asleep?”

“…It wasn’t a dream?”

Asher belatedly grasped the situation. Was it because he was too out of it yesterday that he thought everything was a dream? The shock was like a blow to the back of his head.

“Wait a minute! Then why did I wake up in my room?”

“I thought you would catch a cold if you stayed there. I took you there.”

It was Donar who resolved his question.

“Hehe, the news that you two are dating has probably spread throughout this entire castle.”

Then all the uneasy feelings he had been feeling until now were understood. The fact that he had no memory of returning to his room, and that the maids were whispering when they saw him. Now that he realized the identity of the lukewarm gazes directed at the girl and himself, he couldn’t be more embarrassed. After breakfast ended, in the still cool morning air, people flocked to the wide training grounds.

“It seems like everyone has gathered.”

There, a silver-haired man was sitting on a chair, looking at the training grounds. Next to him, a fussy dwarf nodded and muttered, and the man nodded in response.

“Then let’s start without further ado. Weapons will mainly be swords. Based on the knight’s test, we’ll keep it simple with 1:1 sparring. It’s not that I don’t want to test other things, but we don’t have much time.”

The conditions presented by the man were literally simple. It was about Donar and the company’s escorts competing against the man’s knights and winning. As Donar stood facing the knight who was going to be his opponent, Asher swallowed hard. Originally, he wasn’t going to attend this match in order to train even by himself, but he had heard that he could learn by watching Donar’s sparring with a superior, so he attended with the girl.

There was no guarantee that Donar would win, but he still hoped that he would win, as he had become friendly with him while sharing meals on the way here, and he waited for the sparring to begin. First, according to the fussy dwarf’s signal, Donar and the opposing knight drew their swords and took their stances. Donar stood with his feet wide apart, holding his sword as if he were hugging it, with the tip of the sword pointed at the opponent, and the opposing knight held his sword above his shoulder, pointing the tip of the sword at Donar.

A dangerous and precarious state with both pointing sharp sword tips at each other. Even though they were practice swords made without blades, they were still made of steel, and the weight of experience emanating from their stances made it meaningless. Is this what knights facing each other on the battlefield would look like? As the tension rose, the fussy dwarf’s start signal was given and the swords flashed. It was so fast that they could only be called that, and the speed could not be followed with the eyes.

The swords didn’t fall away once they collided. The swords didn’t fall away and rubbed against each other along the sword blades, as if they had been glued together. In that sight, Asher vaguely saw Rogi, whom he had faced yesterday. But the speed and reaction were different. That guy’s sword moved slowly with formalized movements that could be followed with the eyes, but the movements of the two were so fleeting that he couldn’t even tell what kind of stance they had taken.

In the end, the match was already decided the moment Asher lost sight of the swords’ movements. Donar’s sword tip was stopped in front of the opponent’s helmet slit, and the opponent’s sword was blocked by the cross guard. Donar was the victor of the tense battle that lasted less than 10 seconds. He couldn’t see the middle process at all, but the result resembled Asher’s defeat to Rogi. It was the first time the man, who had been cold and detached throughout, showed a surprised expression.

“So, do you think you learned something?”

“It was too fast, I couldn’t see anything.”

He replied sullenly to him, who had returned after the sparring. He had to see something properly to offer his impressions, but the two’s sparring was too fast and ended in an instant, so he didn’t have time to notice anything.

“Oh, I deliberately grabbed a longsword, but you didn’t see anything?”

“No, nothing.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Nothing at all.”

Was it because of Asher’s firm answer? Donar scratched his head and was troubled. Then he sighed and said.

“This is my first time teaching, so I don’t know how to teach you. I’ll teach you the basic stances, but you’ll have to learn the rest by instinct.”

Asher couldn’t help but grimace at his words that the only answer was to spar with Rogi steadily. He didn’t know the details, but he knew that swordsmanship wasn’t as flashy as he thought, but rather subtle and more complicated than he thought. To learn such swordsmanship, he had to gain experience, which meant that he had to be beaten by Rogi until he gained experience. Still, he asked with a hopeful heart.

“Then how did you learn, Mister?”

“…I don’t recommend it. But once you get beaten up, you desperately learn the stance and instinct so you don’t want to get hit.”

“….”

Asher decided to learn obediently as he taught. It was true that he wanted to become stronger, but he didn’t want to train with a training method that Donar was so afraid of that he trembled. It was the same as getting beaten, but at least he could read Rogi’s movements, right? The other knights’ sparring matches that followed were also similar to Donar’s case. But what was even more amazing was that, despite the difference in time, the winners were all from the same group as Donar.

The one-sided result was so surprising that the knights who had been the opponents were whispering, saying they didn’t know what had happened, and even the man was amazed and said.

“I have to admit that the story that the knights of Pasipenia are excellent is not an empty boast. Let’s finish for now and see each other again at the luncheon.”

The sparring, which was said to be a test of skill, ended in the morning because most of the matches lasted for a short 5 seconds to a long 30 seconds.