His bath finished, Ethan returned to his room.
'Obscenely big.'
And this was only an annex?
How much money did a clan have to be rotting in for an annex this size to serve as nothing but a place for confinement?
It was absurd, but for Ethan the situation was a stroke of luck.
Whatever he did drew no suspicion and no glares.
So for Ethan at least, it was the ideal place.
Ethan sat on the bed for a while and began putting his thoughts in order.
He had sorted out the broad strokes on the way to the annex, but that did not mean the sorting was done.
He had been pulled into a novel.
And as a bit-part villain, at that.
It was a reality hard to believe, which made it hard to organize.
'Do I need to get outside the clan first?'
The knowledge Ethan held had little application inside the clan.
The novel had been built, always, from the protagonist's point of view.
But it was not a matter to decide in haste. Blante was a giant. Not merely a clan of high renown. As a force of arms with few rivals to be found on the continent, it was a lion commanding the whole region. Ryu Tae-sin knew how great an advantage power carried.
Which made leaving the clan as though fleeing hard to call a good choice.
'Though it's true a lot of the information isn't usable right away.'
He knew the knowledge the protagonist came to acquire, and the incidents that unfolded wherever the protagonist intervened, but of what went on inside the Blante clan on its own he knew very little.
'The fact that the clan is destroyed, and a few small things besides......'
But the extinction of the Blante clan happens after the story's midpoint.
He knew who stood behind it, but it was not an opponent he could lay a hand on now. Until then he had to move on his own judgment.
'I don't need to worry about how to leave the clan.'
In the story, Ethan ends up meeting the protagonist regardless.
The place of that meeting is the continent's Academy.
Before going to the Academy he runs into the protagonist for the first time in a city and picks a fight, and at the Academy he gets properly broken.
And when the protagonist is assigned a mission in another region, he tries some worthless scheme and ends up losing his life to him.
In a sense, it was the protagonist's first killing.
Up to then the protagonist had been a character heavy on dithering and hesitation.
'I've got no plans to croak like that.'
He had no intention of dying like a dumbass in that fashion.
That did not mean Ethan wanted to become the protagonist.
Ethan knew very well what a nuisance it was to draw great attention.
'No need to hog it all.'
Exactly as much as he needed.
It was enough to hold just the cards that would protect his own safety and keep him from ever having to grovel.
The flow was in Ethan's hands anyway.
He did not know what variables might arise, but the original's larger current would not change.
"Pardon me a moment."
Before Ethan could so much as answer, the old gentleman opened the door and came in.
"......I haven't even answered yet?"
"I was rude. I was worried, as the young master has not yet eaten."
At the unruffled reply, Ethan gave a hollow laugh.
"Then let us begin with the meal."
A laden table rested on one of Nade's hands, and two chairs hung from the other.
"So you're not even hiding your strength now?"
In the story as written, Nade played the part of an ordinary butler.
Nade's strength becoming known to the world comes around the midpoint of the original novel as well.
And yet, looking at Nade now, he did not seem to have the slightest intention of hiding it.
"Strength? What strength would a mere old man such as myself have?"
Nade said it with a bright little smile, and Ethan was left speechless.
So that was how he wanted to play it?
"Fair enough, that's true. So why two chairs?"
"Because I have not eaten yet either."
"......No, isn't that going a bit far?"
***
The meal Nade laid out was remarkably good.
To Ryu Tae-sin, Korean by nature, it tasted foreign, but he was not fussy about what he ate.
Having pushed his body hard from the first day, he had to take in proper nutrition.
In that sense, the table Nade had set was nutritionally excellent.
The balance of meat and vegetables was right, and it was not excessively greasy.
"How long does the isolation last?"
"No answer was given on that. The clan head appears to be considerably angry over this affair."
"Should I figure on a month or two?"
That length of time would be just right.
For Ethan to build a bare-minimum body.
"Who can say. I am merely a butler, so I have no way of knowing the clan head's mind."
Nade said it with a smile, and Ethan cut him off flatly.
"It doesn't matter anyway. Whoever calls for me, I'm staying holed up here for two months."
At that, Nade tilted his head.
"Might I ask the reason?"
"Got to lose the weight."
Right now, getting rid of this sloshing flesh came first.
***
From then on Ethan's way of living became extremely simple.
He ate a light breakfast, went out for morning training, and did not come back in until evening.
The attendants worried at the sight of him skipping lunch, but he paid it no mind.
A body carrying this much fat was not going to run into trouble over one missed meal.
That did not mean he took his meals lightly.
When training was done, he made certain of proper nutrition.
He was working at considerable intensity, and only matching nourishment would keep the body from breaking down.
Ethan's body had considerable talent for training.
Once he began moving it properly, the fat shrank away in no time and muscle came on fast.
Not even a month had passed since he began, and Ethan's massive body had visibly shrunk.
'So the body isn't trash as well.'
Ethan's body was not, in itself, a frail constitution.
He had simply been letting an excellent one rot. Reflexes, moving-object vision, muscular strength and elasticity, every last one of them stood above ordinary.
And given that less than a month had passed since he started building it, the room for growth was boundless.
Nade had half doubted it at first too, but once Ethan was pouring sweat like broth on the training ground every single day without missing one, he set his doubt aside entirely.
'I shall have to tell the clan head.'
That the clan's wastrel had changed.
A smile hung at the corner of Nade's mouth.
***
"......Is what you say true?"
Vincent Blante, clan head of Blante, asked again.
He was an iron-blooded knight famous for never losing his composure.
And the content was hard enough to believe that even he was thrown by it.
"Yes. I am certain. Master Ethan has changed."
"Heh heh......"
Vincent let the words trail off.
Ethan, changed......
How much grief had Ethan given him all this time as the clan's wastrel?
He had not even hoped for talent with the sword.
He had only been harsh in order to kill that arrogant, vicious temper, and Ethan had veered further off course for it.
Lately it had grown bad enough that complaints poured in from the domain's people, so he had ordered Ethan into confinement.
He had not thought a punishment of that scale would change Ethan.
He had handed down punishments of that scale countless times before.
But Nade was telling him Ethan had changed.
Nade was one of the men Vincent trusted most.
"I may believe what you say, I take it?"
"You need not doubt it."
Nade gave a small smile and spoke with assurance, and Vincent set his doubt aside.
"Even so, I must see it for myself. Bring Ethan to me."
"I shall."
"I would like very much not to be disappointed."
Vincent held Nade in a heavy gaze.
Nade did not look away from Vincent's eyes; he met them.
"You will not be disappointed."
Nade bowed lightly and left the room.
Once outside, Nade murmured to himself.
'Because I was surprised myself.'
***
Training finished as on any other day, Ethan returned to his room and lay down on the bed.
"Complicated."
Ethan murmured it, looking up at the ceiling.
He was growing.
Impatience was a luxury, and yet in one corner of him it was piling up a little at a time.
No, come to think of it, it was a little different from impatience.
'Is this excitement?'
He felt a flutter he had never felt even when he strapped the championship belt around his waist.
'And Nade, too.'
These were people who roused the fighting spirit he had lost.
He did not think he would win if he fought right now.
'Even in my own body I wouldn't win.'
The foundation was different to begin with.
However far Ryu Tae-sin had trained himself as a champion, he was a human being.
But this was inside a novel.
And a fantasy world at that.
Here, 'ordinary' was not enough to survive on.
Paradoxically, that was exactly why Ethan was feeling that flutter now.
"I shall come in for a moment."
A presence at the door, and with it a familiar voice.
"Come in."
At his answer, Nade came into the room wearing a lined smile.
"Empty-handed today?"
"I came because I have something to say ahead of the meal."
"Say what?"
"A question has arisen."
"Curious about what?"
"At some point, no, from the very day you were sentenced to confinement in the annex, the young master seems to have changed. As though you were another person entirely. Might you tell me the reason?"
At the question, Ethan closed his mouth for a moment.
It was a sharp question. In a sense, a delicate one too.
Because a person called 'Ryu Tae-sin,' nothing at all like Ethan, was seated in Ethan's body now.
After a moment's thought, Ethan spoke.
"I can't live like this forever, can I."
He had not told a lie.
For some reason it felt as if a lie told to this old man would be seen through in an instant.
Nade's years were not something to take lightly.
At the answer, the lined corners of Nade's eyes widened a little.
"......I see."
"So is that all you wanted to ask?"
"Hardly. The clan head is asking for you. I came only to deliver that fact."
"......The clan head, no, Father?"
It threw him.
He's asking for me already?
This isn't what I expected.
***
The next day, when the sun rose, Ethan got himself ready. Not the clothes he usually trained in, but formal dress with some measure of propriety to it.
"Huh? This cannot be right? I am sorry......"
The attendant fitting the clothes to him could not hide his bewilderment.
Because the garment tailored for Ethan did not fit.
It was not a matter of being a little loose. It was slack enough to slide right off him.
No wonder the attendant was flustered.
"You have indeed lost a great deal of weight."
Nade said it with admiration on his face.
'It had better have come off. After all that carrying on.'
He had no memory of doing anything but running, all day, every day.
If the body had stayed the same after running like that, it would have been an injustice.
The attendant scrambled off and before long brought back something Ethan could actually wear.
'Still a long way to go.'
Ethan ran his eyes up and down the figure in the mirror.
Set against the start, the loss was beyond comparison, but there was still a long way to go.
He had no intention of settling here.
'Might not even need two months.'
Judging by the way his condition was coming up, if he raised the intensity further he could burn off all the body fat in another month or so.
Normally, dropping body fat that fast took no small toll, but this frame was sturdy enough that he did not have to worry about trifles like that.
As far as Ethan was concerned, it was a blessed body.
Which was why Ethan meant to work this soft frame mercilessly, without rest.
'What a nuisance.'
And then the clan head had summoned him out of nowhere.
For Ethan, who did not have days to spare, time squandered like this was maddeningly precious.
'Can't be helped.'
Here, at least, he had to bend once.
There was everything he had already set in motion.
'And everything I'm going to set in motion.'
For now, he still needed the aegis that the name Blante carried.