A mage’s rank was determined by the number of times their mana could circulate.
If the mana in their mana core could complete one full revolution around its own axis within twenty-four hours, they were a 1st-Circle mage. If it could complete two revolutions, they were a 2nd-Circle mage, and so on.
Generally, a difference of one Circle was considered to represent a tenfold difference in power. Thus, each improvement in one’s ability to control mana resulted in an enormous increase in strength.
For example, it would take roughly ten 9th-Circle mages to contend with me when I was at the 10th Circle.
Warriors, however, did not manipulate mana by circulating it in this manner.
Their ranks were divided according to destructive power and physical ability.
Only after becoming capable of using Sword Mana did someone qualify as a 1st-Class warrior. From the 7th Class onward, they were called a Sword Master. And upon reaching the 10th Class, they earned the glorious title of Grand Sword Master.
The reason I was suddenly explaining all this miscellaneous knowledge was simple.
In my previous life, I had been a 10th-Circle Archmage.
And right now, I was getting absolutely thrashed by a Training Instructor who was only a 4th-Class warrior.
Damn it!
“Young Master. If you cannot even swing a wooden sword properly, a real sword will weigh you down and kill you someday.”
“Haa… haa… don’t… talk… to me….”
I had been given the mission of defeating Tyr within the short span of two months.
There simply was not enough time.
The moment I finished breakfast, I had gone straight to the estate’s Training Instructor and ordered him to teach me swordsmanship.
The Training Instructor had been flustered and tried to dissuade me, but in the end, he was now faithfully carrying out his assigned duty.
And I was faithfully dying in real time.
“Aaaaaagh!”
With a furious yell, I battered the training dummy planted in front of me.
Why had I chosen to learn magic in the first place?
Thinking back on it, the answer was simple.
Ever since I was young, my body had been pathetically frail.
My father, Lucian Seirin, had three sons, and I was the youngest.
Fortunately, I had been born with extraordinary talent for magic.
Perhaps this was the price I had paid for it.
My body was simply too weak.
Illness plagued me almost every other day, and whenever I rode a horse, I had a habit of falling off.
Until I was ten, Mother had even slept in the same room as me.
She had been afraid I might die during the night.
* POF, POF
No, why did hitting this thing with a wooden sword make a soft poffing sound instead of a proper smack?!
Damn it, was this thing some kind of stuffed doll?!
I was so irritated that I wanted to split the dummy in half with all my strength, but I could not even put any strength into my grip.
My stamina was the problem.
My stamina.
“Argh, I can’t do this.”
Eventually, I collapsed.
Should I change my mind even now?
Was the path of a warrior simply impossible for me?
Should I give up on all of this and start the second season of my life as an Archmage?
“Damn it.”
But the helplessness and guilt I had felt just before dying after our defeat in the war against the Otherworld would not allow me to give up.
I could still vividly see Locke and Sepia after they had been reduced to bloody corpses.
If I gave up here and failed to prevent that catastrophe again, I would never be able to forgive myself.
That said, I did not particularly want to spend all my time beating up a training dummy, only to get beaten senseless by Tyr and sent packing to the Magic Academy.
“Haa… haa… I need to use my head…. My head….”
Whenever I had encountered an impassable obstacle like this, it had always been my intellect that saved me.
Sprawled flat on my back beside the training dummy, I glared up at the sky.
I only needed to create the slightest possibility of defeating Tyr.
Turning that possibility into victory would be up to me.
How could I win?
How could a weaker warrior defeat a stronger one?
“Ah, Locke told me something about that once.”
Come to think of it, the undefeated swordsman had been my best friend.
I recalled a conversation we had shared while camping one night.
‘Mages have it easy. You mumble a few words and suddenly there’s fire and ice everywhere.’
‘Do you have any idea how much thinking it takes to make that fire and ice appear, you idiot?’
‘Still, it’s convenient. Look, when swordsmen like us fight someone, you know? Even if the other guy is weaker than me, I can never afford to let my guard down.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you never know. You can’t fight while knowing every move your opponent might make. In other words, combat is won by whoever is better at responding to variables.’
‘Isn’t that just skill?’
‘Exactly. That’s why mages are frightening. They can create an endless number of variables.’
Hmph.
If I remembered correctly, Locke had slaughtered fifty Skeleton Mages that very day.
Mages were frightening, my ass.
Still, what he had said about the side that created the variables winning the battle was meaningful to me.
According to Locke, unless Tyr could predict my trump card, even I had a chance.
“Good. Then I just need to create a trump card.”
I sprang to my feet and approached the Training Instructor.
He gave me a kindly smile, as though he had already expected me to give up.
Unfortunately for him, I had no intention of doing so.
“Training Instructor. You can teach me about two techniques within two months, right?”
“Pardon?”
“One offensive technique a beginner can use and one defensive technique. Just teach me those two. And tell me what kind of training I need to do to use them. That’s all.”
“Y-Young Master. That is impossible. Of course, perhaps if you trained hard enough to nearly kill yourself….”
“That’s fine.”
The Training Instructor looked as though he had thirty or forty different concerns racing through his mind at once.
I tried to give him an enlightened smile.
“I’ve already died once. It’s not as if I can die twice, right?”
“Oh my, that child is doing it again today….”
Sena Seirin, Countess of the Seirin family, stood on the second floor and anxiously shuffled her feet as she stared out the window.
A boy was sprinting with a small log tied around his waist.
It was Ruben, her beloved youngest son, whom she treasured more than anything in the world.
It had already been a month since that small, frail child began combat training.
At first, she had thought it was merely adolescent rebellion.
Children around his age tended to rebel, after all.
But Ruben refused to give up and continued endlessly pursuing what seemed like an impossible goal.
“I cannot understand what has gotten into such an intelligent child.”
Lucian watched him with an equally perplexed expression.
Ruben was undoubtedly the child among his sons with the greatest potential for greatness.
He was intelligent, and his natural sensitivity to mana was exceptional.
Yet he had suddenly decided to throw all of that away and begin anew.
Worse still, he had chosen something for which he possessed absolutely no aptitude.
“There are things that cannot be overcome through stubbornness alone….”
In any case, Lucian did not believe Ruben could defeat Tyr no matter how hard he trained.
Moreover, the mana counter-formula he had prepared was difficult enough that only someone at the level of an Academy professor should have been capable of solving it.
“He will end up attending the Magic Academy regardless.”
And while Lucian Seirin reassured and comforted his wife with those words, his son Ruben Seirin was undergoing absolute hell.
“Aaaaaagh!”
Forward momentum.
Explosive charging power.
I had lost count of how many shuttle runs I had already completed to develop them.
My waist felt as though it were about to snap, and I was fairly certain the muscles in my calves had already torn apart.
Still, I had no choice.
First, I needed to build a body capable of wielding a sword and using techniques.
“Huff… huff….”
Fortunately, even my weak body seemed to be changing little by little in the face of this repetitive, murderous training.
Compared to the first day, it took considerably longer for me to become exhausted.
“Ah, damn it.”
But the moment I looked at the wooden sword lying beside me, curses automatically rose in my throat.
Five hundred shuttle runs with a log tied to my waist.
Then five hundred strikes against a tree with a wooden sword.
And I was supposed to repeat that cycle until the thought of continuing became unbearable.
Now I understood why most of the great warriors I had met had been excessively simple-minded.
The method of becoming stronger was so brutally straightforward that there was no room left in their heads for complicated thoughts.
Thinking that death might actually be preferable, I picked up the wooden sword.
Then I felt someone staring intently at me.
“Tyr.”
Tyr was watching me with an expression that looked close to tears.
He had been like this for an entire month, unable to decide what to do with himself and constantly fidgeting even while attending to me.
What a kindhearted fellow.
I understood.
He had always been extremely loyal, and he was the sort of person who would brave fire and water alike for my sake.
His master was pushing himself through brutal training every single day for the sole purpose of defeating him, of all people.
Watching that must have been painful for him.
“Young Master. Please stop now. Your body is already frail, and you have been doing this for an entire month…. I am afraid you will collapse from overexertion.”
“Tyr. That’s exactly why I’m going through all this. My body is weak. Unless I work hard enough to practically kill myself, there’s no way I can beat you.”
“How could I possibly dare to oppose you, Young Master? My sword belongs to you!”
Tyr drew the sword at his waist, dropped to one knee, and presented it to me.
It was a bow of loyalty.
If I had truly been an adolescent boy, the sheer romanticism of the sight might have brought tears to my eyes.
Unfortunately, I was mentally an old man pushing fifty.
I accepted the sword with an indifferent expression, handed it back to him, and spoke.
“I appreciate the sentiment. But my father is the sort of man who will make sure you fight me properly no matter what it takes. So don’t even think about taking it easy on me. For my sake, if nothing else.”
“Young Master….”
“When I said I would abandon magic and walk the path of a warrior, I wasn’t speaking on a whim. I have to enter the Warrior Academy.”
I gripped the wooden sword and resumed striking the tree.
One of the good things about repetitive training was that it drove unnecessary thoughts from my mind.
Before long, I forgot even the pain and lost myself completely in the training.
Time passed quickly, and the promised day arrived before I knew it.
“Whew, finally.”
I repeatedly clenched and relaxed my callused hands, trying to rid myself of my nerves.
My sparring match with Tyr would begin soon.
The light armor I was wearing for the first time in my life constricted my body.
“This is incredibly uncomfortable.”
Even though the light armor was made mostly of leather, I had almost no experience wearing armor of any kind, so there were still countless places where it felt uncomfortable.
But that was fine.
After spending two months enduring training that tested the limits of the human body—or, more accurately, the limits of my body specifically—I had changed considerably.
The excess flesh had vanished, replaced by muscle, and my strength, agility, and stamina had all improved to a remarkable degree.
Of course, that did not mean I could match Tyr, who had trained for years and possessed exceptional natural talent as a warrior on top of that.
Still, I had improved enough to reveal my trump card.
That was all I needed.
“Good. Shall we?”
I finished preparing by tying the laces of my combat boots, then slowly headed toward the sparring arena set up in the courtyard.
Father, Mother, and almost everyone belonging to the Seirin family had already gathered and taken their places.
On the platform, I saw Tyr waiting for me with a somewhat nervous expression.
I gave him an awkward smile, climbed onto the sparring arena, and stood facing him.
After confirming that we were both in position, Father stood atop the raised dais and began addressing everyone present with a voice infused with magical power.
“I, Lucian Seirin, head of the Seirin family, address all who serve this house. My son, Ruben Seirin, has chosen the path he wishes to follow upon reaching adulthood, and in exchange, he was given two tasks. Today, he will attempt the first.”
Murmurs spread throughout the crowd.
The retainers in particular were busy talking among themselves about this shocking turn of events.
After all, they had only ever known me as Ruben Seirin, the genius of magic.
“My son has requested permission to enter the Warrior Academy as the reward for completing these tasks. I swear that if he fulfills the challenges given to him, I will grant his request. His first task is to defeat Tyr in a sparring match. Are you prepared?”
“Yes!”
I placed my left foot forward and shifted my center of gravity onto it.
I lowered my chin slightly and positioned my wooden sword in the most basic middle guard.
The tip of my sword pointed directly at my opponent, Tyr.
He still looked stiff and uncertain about what to do.
Perhaps Father noticed that hesitation as well.
His expression hardened slightly.
“Before we begin, I have something to say to you as well, Tyr. If you lose today, you will no longer be permitted to remain with the Seirin family. Do you understand?”
“H-Head of the Family! But…!”
Tyr’s voice trembled in shock.
He probably had not expected Father to impose a condition this severe.
But if there was one thing I knew about my great father, it was that he was perfectly capable of driving Tyr into an even crueler corner than this.
“Do you intend to disobey the order of the head of the family?”
“Urgh….”
Perhaps because of the anguish tearing at him, Tyr squeezed his eyes shut.
Then, as though coming to a decision, he drew his wooden sword.
The resolve written across his face revealed the depth of his determination.
As expected, facing Tyr as a fellow warrior when he wore the expression of a warrior was rather frightening.
“I obey the command of the head of the family!”
Tyr’s voice rang out with tremendous force, and I saw fighting spirit ignite in his eyes.
Yes.
That was the kind of person you were.
Simple-minded and devoted to no one but me.
“Good. Begin the match!”