"......I have intruded."
Gato went to turn, and Ethan muttered.
"Show me, if you like."
"......What is it you mean?"
"You said you trained ready to die. Then prove it. Try keeping up with the training Hugo does. Do that and I'll grant it to you."
Gato set his teeth. Where his pride had been, there was nothing left but the wound and sheer spite.
"Understood."
Gato's eyes blazed up.
***
"Huff, huff."
Gato was running the training ground, hauling for breath.
Hugo, running alongside him, was watching him with a pained look.
"There is really no need for you to put yourself through this......"
"B-be quiet."
For all the blaze in his eyes, Gato's limit showed itself fast.
He had been confident enough about his conditioning.
Gato had never lost the lead in the morning run, and he had sparred until the moon came up.
But in this conditioning work his limit surfaced in less than 30 minutes.
'Th-this is insane.'
His heart felt ready to burst.
The grotesque motion of dropping flat and standing up again, and the all-out sprint.
The motion of hoisting a heavy boulder overhead.
Mix that sequence together and the limit arrived in an instant.
His heart hammered like something gone mad and nausea surged up.
His body shook like an aspen.
And beside him, Hugo was getting through this extremity of conditioning as though it were nothing.
'If he can do it......!'
Gato set his teeth. He would rather have died than give up here.
Then Ethan, who had been quietly watching the two of them, spoke.
"Right. 50 more sets."
"What manner of nonsense is......"
Gato opened his mouth, dumbfounded, and beside him Hugo answered at a bellow.
"Understood!"
For an instant, Gato looked at Hugo with a blank face.
'A funny fellow.'
Ethan was swallowing a sneer.
However excellent a man's conditioning, keeping up with this method was an entirely different matter.
Because it was an exercise that drove your conditioning to its limit.
'And that fellow is simply a monster.'
Ethan looked at Hugo with an expression of having had enough.
Hugo's conditioning had not been at an ordinary level to begin with, and even that limit stretched further by the day.
Which is why Ethan had known the result before it started.
Whatever training Gato had done, he could not be Hugo's match.
Gato was in a state where collapsing on the spot would have been no surprise.
And still he held.
What was carrying Gato now was a strength of mind called spite.
Burpee test, all-out sprint, snatch.
There were no barbells or dumbbells here, so he substituted large boulders.
And a boulder is bulky and has no settled center of gravity, so the intensity doubled.
There was no rest between sets, either.
A method of training insane in the truest sense.
But Hugo had followed the work in silence, and Gato's conditioning began to bottom out at five sets.
'And what can be done?'
Ethan smiled, looking at Gato hauling for air.
'We're only starting.'
***
The training did not end until evening.
Gato left the annex without a word, wearing the look of a man whose soul had gone out of him.
He could barely walk straight; his body wove as he went.
"......Young master."
"What is it?"
"......Will it be all right?"
"What do you mean?"
"That was chance. If we fight again I will lose."
"Probably. What's this, you start the business and now you're afraid of the consequences?"
"......"
"I told you. Don't waste energy worrying. In the real thing there's no second chance. Had that been real he'd be a dead man. Isn't that the basis of sparring?"
"......I am not a knight."
"That's true. But you have to become a warrior now. The subjugation is no joke, is it?"
Hugo fell silent at that. Ethan snorted a laugh and spoke.
"And don't worry. That fellow, for all he looks the way he does, will be back tomorrow? He's not the sort to hold a grudge over losing to you once."
There was certainty in Ethan's face.
***
Just as Ethan said, when the next morning came Gato came back.
From the way he wove it seemed his physical state was a good deal worse than the day before, but there was resolve on Gato's face.
Hugo shut his mouth at the sight, and Ethan whistled.
"Right. Yesterday was your loss, wasn't it? You couldn't keep up with Hugo or with me in the end."
"......I shall acknowledge it."
"Acknowledging it looks well on you. Then shall we start today as well?"
"I came prepared."
"Don't put on a disgraceful display like yesterday's."
"Yes."
But it took Gato less than ten minutes to be hauling for breath.
***
The rumor went around. The rumor that Gato, after his defeat, was going to Ethan.
People doubted it.
That an apprentice knight as promising as Gato would go to Ethan, who was as good as a rotten rope, was not easy to believe.
But before long the rumor was proved true.
Gato, who had always beaten back every punishing session, had been unable to hold himself together since he started going to Ethan.
When the apprentice knights around him asked, Gato would answer only that he was 'receiving training from Young Master Ethan'.
His fellow apprentice knights were curious.
What on earth kind of training reduced Gato to this state?
And as the rumor swelled and put on flesh, the apprentice knights began to take an interest in Ethan's training method.
All of it, of course, was a situation Ethan had steered. Once the conditions were roughly in place, Ethan had let the rumor slip.
'Send the instructor who trains the apprentice knights off on leave for a while. And don't keep the boys tied down either.'
In a sense it could be called an overreach of authority, but those men were still only apprentice knights.
Wastrel or not, Ethan was a trueborn of the clan, and his authority was enough to control that much.
'Thirty-seven, is it?'
With the situation flowing to plan, Ethan looked around with a satisfied expression.
'And picking the usable ones out of this lot is my job.'
These men were not the plan's central axis in any case.
Good to have, but no particular problem without.
What Ethan wanted was a result.
A result produced through men who were still only apprentice knights.
And the reputation gained through that.
'Shall I weed the nobodies out of this lot first?'
If they were going to be at least not a hindrance, he had to sift them, roughly at least.
"Huff, huff!"
The apprentice knights sifted more easily than expected.
There was no need for interval training or heavy-load work.
When the head count is this high, one plain run is enough.
Hugo was running the training ground with an easy expression, and Gato was keeping up with him, calmly measuring his breathing.
'His conditioning has come up a great deal.'
On the first day Gato had clung to Hugo by force, and the gap between them had been considerable.
They had trained together only a few days, and already Gato was staying with Hugo fairly well.
Hugo was still overwhelmingly out in front, of course, with Gato and the apprentice knights trailing behind.
Gato's face still had room in it, while the other apprentice knights' faces were a picture of death.
'An hour like this.'
Time to put them to the test.
***
Those who lasted the remaining hour came to six men in all.
More than he had expected.
Ethan looked at them and spoke.
"Well, I hear rumors are going around the clan these days. You know roughly what they say?"
The apprentice knights nodded faintly, their faces drained.
"Right. Then I may take it you have all come to receive training from me?"
The apprentice knights swallowed.
"But there's a price. I'm no volunteer either, so I need something out of it in return. Fair enough?"
"If it is a matter of money, I am afraid......"
"Nothing like that. What am I, mad, shaking you lot down? My direct-command subjugation party. Joining it is my condition."
The apprentice knights broke into murmuring.
Joining the subjugation party was an opportunity, but it was not a matter to be thought about that simply.
The Blante clan had various factions.
And the prevailing one was Morun, the eldest son.
Ethan might be producing anomalies lately, but it made no particular difference to the tide.
'The heir is Morun after all' was still the dominant verdict.
Some said this regular subjugation was Morun's last act of settling his standing before he succeeded to the title.
They were not wrong.
'In the original, Morun seizes nearly all real power after this subjugation.'
The difference in authority was very great indeed.
Apart from Ethan's direct-command ten-man unit, Morun controlled almost every soldier and knight.
Which naturally meant a structure in which Morun monopolized nearly every result from the subjugation.
A structure in which it was very hard for Ethan to produce one.
Apprentice knights were men who had beaten back punishing training on one longing alone, the longing to become knights.
And they could end up branded for having gone into Ethan's party for nothing.
If that happened, it put an apprentice knight in a considerably awkward position.
As the apprentice knights showed signs of deliberating, Ethan spoke.
"Let me promise you something. Train under me and you'll grow beyond any comparison with where you stand now. As proof of that, myself and Hugo here should be enough. I can't handle mana yet and I put down Karon, who is a mana user, and Hugo, who was minding a stable until a few days ago, won against Gato, the most promising of all the apprentice knights."
Gato bowed his head at that, and the other apprentice knights shut their mouths.
Because it was a fact that left nothing to say against it.
"Doubting me is your right, but so is seizing an opportunity. Let me state it flatly. When this regular subjugation is over, I intend to have every member under me appointed a full knight."
At Ethan's declaration, the apprentice knights fell silent as one.
'Knighting.'
The dream and the goal every apprentice knight longed for.
To an apprentice knight who had run his whole course looking at one goal, no fruit sweeter than this existed.
The faces of the exhausted apprentice knights changed.
But among them were men who could not wipe the doubt from their eyes.
It was not strange to have misgivings.
The appointment of knights was the clan head's authority alone.
Ethan was a trueborn of Blante, but it was hard to call him a proper noble yet.
Would a man like that have that much authority?
'Who can't talk a good line?'
If Ethan meant to use them for the sake of his own result, they would pass.
"I have no intention of going out of my way to persuade you, so believing it or not is each man's own business. But I don't speak empty words."
Ethan's manner was grave.
The apprentice knights were silent at the sight of it, and then, one by one, began to respond.
"Palon, apprentice knight. I will take part in the subjugation party."
"Hansen, apprentice knight. I will take part as well."
Once the channel was open, what followed went in a moment.
Every apprentice knight Ethan had selected became a member of the subjugation party.
'To plan.'
It was hard to call a complete fighting force, but considering Ethan's standing, even this much had to be received with gratitude.
Because no knight or soldier with his head screwed on had any thought of going under Ethan.
"Then let's start the training in earnest."
There was not much time left.
He had no intention of going the long way round as he had with Gato and Hugo. The real thing was right in front of them now.
"Nade."
"You called?"
"I'm leaving it to you."
"......To me, you say?"
"What do I know about teaching these boys?"
Ethan blinked at Nade.
Nade seemed to be left speechless, and looked back at him blankly.
"What are you waiting for? Teach them."
The ten were filled.
Because the last man was Nade.
***
The training went on boasting the same high intensity.
But Hugo and Gato wore faintly peculiar expressions.
They were certainly doing high-intensity work, and still they had the feeling something was missing.
It was because they had adapted to the burning in the throat and the choking off of breath.
The training sword was heavy and their shoulders ached, but that was all it was.
Already used to a hellish grade of pain, the two of them wore the look of men not quite satisfied.
"Don't worry. We'll train the same way in the evening."
Ethan came over as though he had caught the look on them.
"There is really no need for that."
"I concur. I believe it is already training of sufficient intensity."
Ethan snorted at the belated excuses.
"It doesn't satisfy me, so keep your mouths shut."
Even as he said it, Ethan ran a fresh eye over the apprentice knights.
The intensity of the training was high enough.
In truth, high-intensity interval training like HIT was sufficient at two sessions a week at most.
More than that strained the body.
Training is for growth; it must not be allowed to damage the body.
But these fellows were different.
Train them daily and they grow for all to see.
Watching it, Ethan was revising his training plan.
'And time I thought about myself too.'
Not that Ethan had been slack in his own training, of course.
Inheriting the blood of Blante, Ethan was growing at a still more tremendous rate than they were.