Blante, the great sword clan.
In the novel it is a clan that appears as the villain.
Villain though it was, it was not as if the Blante clan were hatching a conspiracy to threaten the continent or anything of the sort.
It was simply that the arrogance and the haughtiness of the clan's people became the problem.
Blante's authority did not work on the protagonist, and their fate had been decided from the beginning.
Decided as a fate of taking the iron hammer of justice from the protagonist.
And yet it was not quite the case that the protagonist destroyed them either.
'The problem is they got hit from both sides.'
The protagonist, and the genuine mastermind.
Beaten by the protagonist and used by the mastermind, Blante collapses pointlessly, never living up to its name.
Lisa, the third child and one of the protagonist's heroines, does come through it well, of course.
'And what of it.'
It was none of Ethan's concern.
The clan called Blante held a large standing on the continent, but within the original's story it carried no great weight.
Rated generously, the position of a third-rate villain.
In the setting it certainly boasted high standing as one of the continent's few great sword clans, but the children were the problem.
Ethan at the head of them, then Morun, and Karon besides.
Not one character with a normal way of thinking.
Quite apart from the protagonist, the clan's destruction could in a sense be called the natural order of things.
Even when Ethan, no, Ryu Tae-sin, had been reading the novel, he had never felt Blante carried any particular weight.
'Dumbass bastards.'
That was about the sum of his impression.
But now Ethan had to make his way through the middle of that situation.
Which is why he was using every piece of information he had, and now......
— Why do you not speak?
A setting this unheard-of, this out of nowhere, gets unpacked here?
It was absurd.
This was a place the protagonist's party had passed through once, to begin with.
One of the footing stones of the protagonist's growth, where he reached the cave's deep layer without any great difficulty and carried off the reward.
But no description like this had come up then.
It had ended with the scene of obtaining the Dead Tree, and that was enough.
Because to Ethan's mind the utility the Dead Tree held had been tremendous in itself.
— ......Are you ignoring my words now?
At the anger in the voice, Ethan shook off his stray thoughts and lifted his head.
Sure enough, nothing could be seen in the depths of the cave.
Hoo.
Ethan let out a small breath and spoke.
"Did you say you were my ancestor?"
— That is so.
Ethan considered it.
The odds that it was a lie?
Not impossible. This world was one where monsters and magical beasts existed, a setting where strange powers and strange things were commonplace.
Something along the lines of a wraith might be playing games to beguile him.
The voice rang out again, as though it had caught Ethan's suspicion.
— It is not a lie.
Ethan's eyebrows twitched. It was hard to be rid of the feeling of a thief with a guilty conscience.
"On what grounds?"
Ethan's speech grew short.
He knew it instinctively. That here, he could afford to come on strong.
— W-wait, hear me out a moment.
Feeling Ethan's manner turn, the voice grew hurried.
Ethan's own air softened a little to match.
'It's hard to believe easily, though.'
There were more than one or two suspicious corners to it.
'Still, there's no harm in being careful.'
Ethan spoke carefully.
"Forgive me, but may I ask your name?"
— A-ahem. My name is Pheon. Pheon Blante. That goddamn Layla is my younger sister.
"Layla, you say......"
— Yes, you would know her. I do not know how much time has passed, but she was the clan head of Blante, so......
"No idea."
— What?!
Bewilderment came through in Pheon's tone.
But there was nothing for it.
Ethan's knowledge was grounded entirely in the original.
To say it again, the Blante clan's standing in the novel was not large.
Inside, it breaks apart because of halfwit children; outside, it is beaten by the protagonist's crowd, who monopolize every windfall and privilege there is, and meets its ending being used by the mastermind.
There was no particular setting there to be unpacked, nor anything else.
So naturally Ethan's knowledge did not reach as far as the Blante clan's ancestors.
Catching on that Ethan's words were not a simple feeler, Pheon's voice turned gloomy.
— This is why the young these days......
"So what is it you want?"
Ethan's voice turned indifferent.
An ancestor of Blante.
Quite an unexpected setting, certainly.
But that was all. A mere wraith of the past was no gain to Ethan.
And Ethan had no intention of pouring mental strength into anything with nothing in it for him.
— W-wait!
"Your reason?"
Ethan's words grew markedly short. But Pheon had no capacity to spare for taking him up on it.
— I shall give you power! From the way you move, you are no fellow who uses a sword, are you?
"......Do go on."
Ethan began to put a measure of courtesy back into it.
— Hoo. At last you have a mind to listen. Let me begin, yes...... in the past I possessed a brilliant talent, and yet......
Ethan's brow drew together.
That this was going to be a long speech was clear from the preamble alone.
Ethan turned without regret, and an earnest voice caught him by the ankle.
— W-wait!
At the cry with that much longing packed into it, Ethan's foot, which had set down without hesitation, stopped short.
"Have you something left to say?"
It was a cold voice.
— ......Have you nothing in you of what people call feeling......?
"It would appear not."
— W-wait! This time I shall tell you something that genuinely helps you!
Ethan's foot stopped again. Doubt was drawn across Ethan's face.
— ......How did I come to such a state as this......
Ethan started to move again and Pheon hurried on.
— I shall teach you a fighting art!
"A fighting art...... you say?"
That was an answer wholly out of the blue. Something strange stirred in him.
Expectation could be called nonexistent. It was an unforeseen windfall, and the Blante clan carried no great weight in the novel to begin with.
The talkative dead man of the past had drawn out a little interest, but Ethan had no mind to be beguiled.
Nor any thought that there would be a harvest.
He intended to take everything he needed in any case.
He had assumed the man calling himself an ancestor would say something about the clan's secret arts, or treasures.
But what Pheon had said was wholly outside his expectation.
Sensing Ethan's reaction was no ordinary one, Pheon spoke in a triumphant voice.
— Quite tempting, is it not. I caught it from the way you put down the monsters. You are no fellow who uses a sword, are you?
"Is that so?"
Ethan tilted his head. A dagger was in Ethan's hand.
Not a large thing, and lethal enough. Ethan had killed most of his enemies with this dagger.
He had not fought long enough for anyone to infer his character from his conduct.
Ethan's actions had been quick and spare.
He had killed the monsters with the minimum of motion, so inferring anything from the sequence should have been hard.
— Your handling of the dagger was not a beginner's, but I can tell at a glance. Fellows who use a sword show their reliance on the sword in every action. You were not like that. You behaved as though the dagger in your hand were nothing but a tool.
"Hardly the speech and conduct of a man I would believe to be my ancestor."
— Hmph! Is there some law that a sword clan must train the sword? Every sword art, in the end, is trained toward the one purpose of strength. I simply did not choose the sword as the process toward that purpose.
"I see."
Ethan assented quietly with a snort of a smile.
An interesting answer.
A man born into a sword clan who chose a path outside the sword......
Fairly entertaining.
Pheon appeared to feel a kinship with Ethan, but the truth was otherwise.
Ethan did not shun the sword.
It was simply that the weapon familiar to him was combat sports.
However a man flew and crawled with his bare body, in lethality he was no match for a blade.
This was an unchanging truth.
Which is why Ethan intended to train the sword. He had no mind to be bound to one thing, and no aversion to learning something new.
Having thought that far, Ethan narrowed his eyes.
They were the eyes of a man who had registered that he held the stronger hand.
Pheon caught his meaning under the surface. Shame surged up, but this was no position for weighing a thing like that.
"It is not an especially attractive offer to me."
He was not feeling him out.
He had taken up combat sports in the first place because he enjoyed the act of struggle.
Ethan's unexpected reaction left it to Pheon, rather, to grow hurried.
— N-nngh! Have you no backbone whatsoever! A man ought, from of old, to dig one road......!
"Well, I wonder. I find it hard to agree."
In MMA, a fighter who had picked up many things evenly across a fully filled-out stat hexagon was stronger than one with a single outstanding strength.
Having a weapon of your own was good, but if that was all you had, in the end your opponent tears into you.
What Ethan had built up were things of that kind.
'Still, I'm interested.'
Ryu Tae-sin had trained combat sports developed along modern lines.
In combat sports it would not be wrong to say he had nearly seen the end of the road.
Because in his competing days Ryu Tae-sin had been close to invincible.
But the essence of it, in the end, was sport.
This world, by contrast, was one where spears and blades ran riot. Combat was killing, and it was a place where if you did not kill you died.
He could kill an enemy with combat-sport technique too, of course. But it did not compare with a weapon.
And the being calling itself his ancestor was telling him it would teach him a fighting art.
Interest stirred.
What would a combat technique created for killing by a man who inherited the blood of a great sword clan be like?
But he had not the faintest intention of clinging to it.
To Ethan, Pheon's offer drew his interest, and it was not something he absolutely had to have.
— ......Hooo. I am beaten.
Pheon acknowledged his own defeat in the end. The longer he kept talking with Ethan, the more he felt himself being drawn in.
— Let me speak honestly of my circumstances.
"Time is short. Briefly, if you please."
— ......Odious to the very end.
Pheon's sigh echoed through the cave.
— Everything I have said is true. I was born into the Blante clan and still I shunned the sword. Combat with bare fists set my blood boiling the more. But naturally I did not receive kind looks for it. It was an act that denied the road our ancestors had been laying.
Ethan, who had been listening to Pheon in silence, screwed up his face.
— At last you feel something for my story?
"No. The preamble is so long I was thinking of simply leaving."
— ......
With Ethan looking ready to turn and walk out at any second, Pheon had no choice but to condense his position as far as he could and state it.
Having heard all of it, Ethan presently spoke.
"So the conclusion is that you have to parasitize me or you will be extinguished?"
— ......The word parasitize sits a little badly on the ear. To put it precisely it is not parasitism but a relationship of mutual flourishing......
"Because it does not look likely to do me much good."
Ethan had already laid out his course from here to a certain degree.
Even the most urgent matter, the matter of mana, had been resolved to a degree through the 'Dead Tree'.
Using the Dead Tree, the time he would have had to spend on mana training could be cut down enormously.
— No. You will have need of me. You intend to lean on that unpleasant thing you have just pulled up, do you not? That is a poor stratagem. It may win you power at once, but it is not a good choice. Mana absorbed through death energy will in the end cause trouble from the inside.
"Is that so?"
Ethan tilted his head.
No description like that had appeared in the novel.
But Pheon's words were not entirely without persuasive force.
The ability the Dead Tree held was the power to absorb the mana of the dead.
The protagonist was certainly described as using it with no penalty, but whether that would apply identically to Ethan, nobody knew.