[The next morning, Father brings home a nutritious breakfast he bought outside.
Looking at the dark circles beneath his eyes and his haggard face, you smile and remind him not to work himself too hard.] [Mom didn’t want you to be sad.] [So you won’t be sad.] [You absolutely cannot be sad.] [Today’s combat training is canceled because Uncle Schnitz has been sent out on a mission.
As a result, your Originium Arts instructor spends the entire day teaching you and Margaret, caught somewhere between agony and delight.] [Teaching geniuses while getting paid for it should have been an incredibly enjoyable experience.] [Yet by the time the day’s lessons are over, the instructor’s legs are trembling when he leaves.] [Time passes quickly.] [Two months later, Father takes you to a funeral.] [It is a strange funeral.
The deceased’s name is not carved upon the gravestone, nor is there any portrait displayed.
The ceremony begins just like that, almost carelessly.] [You understand what it means.] [And so you stand in the very front row with your head held high and your back straight, never allowing a single tear to fall upon the flowers before the grave.] [The days that follow are uneventful.
Every day, you go to the Nearl estate to train, then return home.
The same cycle repeats itself over and over.] [You continue answering Margaret and Zofia with a smile.] [Until one weekend, when you secretly sneak into the cemetery and discover Father there, clutching a bottle of alcohol and completely drunk.] [All you remember is that the liquor tasted incredibly harsh.] [The next day, Schnitz waits and waits for you to arrive for training.
Eventually losing patience, he brings Margaret out to search for you, only to discover an utterly unreliable father-and-son duo asleep in the cemetery, using each other as pillows and snoring away.] [Quiet, ordinary days.] [And little by little, you continue to grow.] [Terran Year 1082.] [Training Day.] “Excellent!
Clarus, your Originium Arts are becoming harder and harder to predict!” Schnitz praised him while wielding the wooden sword in his hand.
Clarus didn’t answer.
His eyes remained fixed on every movement Schnitz made as he launched attack after attack.
Spikes formed from darkness erupted from every imaginable angle, yet Schnitz always managed to deflect them through one almost impossibly skillful maneuver after another.
Without warning, three black spikes burst from Schnitz’s own shadow beneath his feet, attacking from different directions in an attempt to disrupt his footing.
Schnitz suddenly lunged forward, escaping their range entirely and instead closing the distance with Clarus.
Clarus didn’t panic when Schnitz abruptly entered close range.
He repeatedly thrust with the rapier in his hand, forcing Schnitz to halt his advance.
But Schnitz parried once again, adding some subtle application of force that knocked Clarus’s thrust away from its intended path.
His wrist turned.
The wooden sword swept sideways.
Clarus immediately activated his Arts again.
A black spike knocked Schnitz’s slash off course while Clarus ducked low, narrowly avoiding what would have been a devastating blow.
What followed was a continuous exchange of offense and defense.
Margaret was resting nearby, wiping away the sweat that kept dripping from her face with a towel while loosening parts of her knight armor to let some of the trapped heat escape.
Her clothes beneath were already soaked through from training.
She frowned slightly, untied her boots, and tugged their tongues outward as well, allowing some air into the unbearably stuffy interiors.
Unexpectedly, Margaret was still wearing little white socks.
Yolanta had even sewn a tiny foal onto them on a whim.
At least, Yolanta insisted it was supposed to be a foal.
If she hadn’t said so, Schnitz would’ve assumed it was a Sarkaz Wendigo.
Margaret sat down on a nearby bench, raised her water bottle, and tilted her head back to drink while blinking repeatedly as she watched the two people fighting in the center of the training ground.
Glug, glug, glug…
Margaret stared so intently that she accidentally drank too quickly and immediately choked, coughing several times.
Schnitz glanced sideways at his daughter before turning his attention back toward Clarus, who continued attacking with absolute concentration.
Looking at Clarus’s face, Schnitz quietly sighed inside.
An Infected…
Margaret knew that he was Infected too.
Clarus immediately seized upon the brief instant Schnitz became distracted.
He attacked.
A shadow spike intercepted Schnitz’s wooden sword while Clarus’s rapier shot directly toward his wrist, attempting to disarm him in a single move.
Schnitz snapped back to attention and immediately reversed the situation.
He rolled his wrist through an elegant flourish and knocked Clarus’s attack aside.
Clarus refused to give up the initiative.
He pressed the offensive relentlessly, launching attack after attack so quickly that even Schnitz was forced into continuous defense.
But this time, Clarus seemed to grow impatient.
He violently knocked aside a sword strike Schnitz had attempted to use as a counterattack.
There was considerable force behind the parry, but because of the angle, Schnitz’s sword wasn’t knocked very far away.
Instead, Clarus’s own arm swung outward in a wide arc.
His centerline was completely exposed.
Schnitz immediately counterattacked.
The wooden sword thrust straight toward Clarus’s chest.
Clarus hurriedly defended.
After blocking the strike, however, Clarus suddenly drove forward for some inexplicable reason, throwing his entire body straight toward Schnitz.
Schnitz was surprised.
Closing the distance this completely…
It was practically an all-or-nothing gamble.
All Schnitz had to do was follow Clarus’s momentum and bring his sword diagonally downward with the slightest amount of force.
Something blocked Schnitz’s sword again.
One of Clarus’s shadow spikes.
Clarus was already practically face-to-face with Schnitz, but even at this distance, Schnitz still had plenty of ways to deal with him.
An upward elbow from his free arm would do it.
A headbutt would work just as well.
But at that exact moment, a thought suddenly crossed Schnitz’s mind.
This boy isn’t usually this reckless.
Clarus immediately leapt backward, opened the distance, lowered his sword, and bowed to Schnitz.
“Uncle Schnitz, thank you for the match!” Schnitz smiled bitterly and withdrew his Originium Arts.
The warm light surrounding him immediately faded.
At the same time, the shadow spike pointing directly at the back of his head began crumbling beneath the influence of his Arts before disappearing completely.
“You’ve improved tremendously.
Even Uncle can’t beat you anymore.” Schnitz gave Clarus an approving nod.
“Ooh~!” Margaret exclaimed and immediately began clapping enthusiastically.
“All right, Margaret.
You’re next.” Schnitz watched his daughter hurry over to Clarus, hand him a towel, give him his bottled water, and then even reach down as though she intended to help loosen his boots.
At last, he couldn’t take it anymore.
“Margaret.” Margaret instantly withdrew her little hands and stood up.
The armor she’d loosened earlier rattled noisily around her.
Clarus sat behind her and reached forward to fasten the armor securely again.
“Do your best.
You can do it.” “Mm!
I can do it!” Margaret’s eyes immediately blazed with determination.
“HURRY UP!!!” Watching his daughter suddenly become so fired up that she looked as though someone had injected her with pure horse adrenaline, the normally mature and composed Schnitz raised his voice in an actual roar for the first time.
Margaret gathered herself and marched onto the training ground, fully prepared for battle.
Clarus sat on the sidelines.
A short while later, Zofia arrived carrying a basket of pastries and sat down beside him.
“That was amazing.
You can actually beat Uncle Schnitz now.” Zofia smiled at him.
“Thanks.” Clarus shifted slightly closer to her, lifted the cover of the pastry basket, and began choosing his share of the sweets.
Zofia tilted her head and looked at him.
“Margaret’s improving really quickly too.
It probably won’t be long before both of you can become campaign knights like Uncle Schnitz, right?” Clarus’s hand paused.
He picked up a pastry and stuffed it into his mouth.
“Mm.” His answer came out slightly muffled.
“Yeah.”