"Hey. Halfwit."
No sooner had he left the lord's study than a voice came out of nowhere, scraping at his nerves.
'Didn't I just go through this?'
Feeling a strange sense of deja vu, Ethan looked behind him.
A man of considerably sturdy bulk stood there.
Ethan narrowed his brow and worked at pulling up the memory, but it would not come easily.
Tap, tap.
Ethan signaled Nade with a look.
Nade let out a small sigh and whispered close to Ethan's ear.
"That is the first young master, Master Morun."
"Ah. I see."
Only after the prompt did Ethan nod slightly, as though he had grasped the man's identity.
Morun Blante.
This one was likewise a weightless bit-part villain.
As the eldest he stood at an advantage in the line of succession, but he grows far too complacent on that one fact, and in the end his enemies take every scrap of real power from him.
It would be no exaggeration to say Morun led the fall of the Blante clan, the great sword clan.
Morun had a great deal of greed.
But no ability to match it.
He carried envy and jealousy about with him always, and his nature was to belittle other people.
There was no one around him worth trusting, and when the crisis comes he receives no proper help from anyone, and in the end he brings down the great castle that was Blante.
'Absurd, when you think about it.'
That the Blante clan, one of the continent's few great sword clans, should shake and collapse over that one halfwit.
It was dumbfounding.
'Though it wasn't just the one.'
The problem was that besides Morun there were two more stupid bastards scattered about.
'This bastard and the little brother.'
Ethan thought of the brother he had met on the way here, Karon Blante.
Sheesh.
His head shook on its own.
However badly a man farmed his children, how could the harvest be this lean?
'Not that it was a novel with especially tight worldbuilding to begin with.'
In truth, once you got down to it, the original itself was not a story with much plausibility.
A time-killer in which events flowed strictly around the protagonist.
There was no point in calling it contrived, or anything else.
'The problem is that right now I'm the one in the extra's position.'
Ethan shook his head and looked at Morun, who was still blocking the way.
Morun had one corner of his mouth hooked up, and he looked down at Ethan.
"What trick did you pull?"
"What are you talking about?"
"You still mean to deny it?"
What is this bastard on about.
Irritation surged, but he could not openly commit insubordination here.
The lord's study was not far off, and above all this was inside the main house.
Ethan quietly swallowed his anger for now.
"I truly am asking because I do not know. A trick, you say. What does that mean?"
"Hah. I knew it already, but you are a shameless wretch indeed. There is no way a halfwit like you beats Karon."
'Ah, so that's it.'
Only now did he feel he roughly understood what the halfwit in front of him was saying.
'Seems he's got damn all to do.'
A fellow who was supposedly the clan's eldest son, meddling in a trivial incident between his younger brothers.
"Are you saying I used some cowardly trick?"
"That is right. Now your true intentions show."
Morun grinned and fixed his eyes on Ethan.
"Haa......"
Ethan let out a sigh and swept his hair back.
What to do here.
He had no wish to burn mental strength here for nothing.
Morun was fated to destroy himself anyway.
Which meant he was the sort who would collapse on his own if left alone.
He did run a piece of the clan into the ground along the way, but what did that matter?
'Though I'll have to change that part a little.'
Now that he was Ethan, he meant to use every element he could use.
'And for that, I'll need to build up my standing.'
Ethan looked at Morun.
The fat made it hard to tell, but Ethan was not short himself.
Morun, though, had a frame large enough that Ethan had to look up at him.
"Got proof?"
Yet Ethan's spirit did not sink in the slightest.
Ethan glared at Morun with burning eyes.
"Wh-what did you say......?"
Morun could not hide how flustered he was.
With reason.
Ethan was a wastrel, true, but before anyone in a higher position or stronger than himself, he turned more servile than anybody.
Morun was the clan's eldest son.
By power or by standing, he stood above Ethan.
Because of that, Ethan had never once defied Morun.
Morun knew it too.
"Have you...... lost your mind?"
"No, I'm perfectly fine. More to the point, I'm the one asking. I said, got proof?"
Ethan took a step toward Morun, and Morun flinched and backed away.
'Chickening out.'
It was pathetic.
The eldest son, of all people, and he could not hold his composure because the other man showed a little backbone.
If you meant to keep discipline and maintain a hierarchy, you needed consistency at the very least.
But Morun was short of everything.
"We don't need proof!"
A loud voice came from the far end.
Karon was walking toward them.
Seeing it, Morun laughed with a triumphant air.
"Karon seems to be grinding his teeth over it?"
'Truly pathetic.'
The way his attitude flipped over the arrival of one little brother was revolting, but Ethan did not let it show.
Because Karon was coming at him with a thoroughly worked-up expression.
"You, you punk!"
Karon's hand came out with the momentum to seize him by the collar then and there, and Ethan avoided it by drawing his upper body back a little.
"......You dodged?"
"What, should I let you grab me like a dumbass?"
At Ethan's words, delivered with a dumbfounded expression, Karon's face flushed hot and red.
"You insulted me."
"Not an insult. A lesson in manners."
"What?! You knocked me down with a cowardly trick, and......"
"Where's the cowardly in that? You picked the fight yourself."
Karon was left speechless, and shut his mouth.
"You...... duel me."
After a brief silence, Karon spoke.
"Why would I?"
"Why...... you ask?"
"Why should I spend my valuable time on you?"
"No. You must duel Karon."
Morun, who had been watching in silence, stepped forward.
"I can no longer stand by and watch the clan's disgrace put on airs."
Karon's face took on the look of a man who had met his savior.
"By what authority?"
"I am as good as the next clan head. Are you saying you will defy my order?"
"Young master......!"
A knight at Morun's side moved to stop him, but Morun raised a hand and held the knight back.
"My word is as good as the will of the Blante clan."
"Hah. You're even more of a halfwit bastard than I thought."
"......What did you say?"
"Nade."
Ethan turned his head to look at Nade.
Nade stepped forward.
"That statement just now. Is there no problem with it?"
"Hardly."
Nade answered with a cold smile.
"How dare a mere butler......!"
Taking it as an insult, Morun's face flushed red.
'This is genuinely serious.'
Reading it in the novel he had passed over it without much thought, but seeing it in person, it was a spectacle like no other.
"Still can't read the situation?"
"......What do you mean?"
Sensing the mood turn strange, Morun asked again.
"You just insulted the clan head."
"Nonsense! When did I ever commit such a thing?"
"You said a moment ago that your word was the clan head's word."
"What is wrong with that...... th-the clan head?!"
"You are up to something entertaining."
Footsteps came down the corridor.
For that one moment the commotion turned to dead stillness.
An overwhelming pressure came down, enough to make what he had felt earlier seem like a joke.
It felt as though gravity had doubled.
The urge to drop to his knees and bow his head swept through him.
'More impressive than I thought.'
But Ethan did not bow his head in the slightest.
He held it stiffly up instead and looked at Vincent.
Vincent looked at Ethan meeting his eyes squarely, and felt a small admiration.
Energy at this level was not easily borne even by a mana user.
And yet Ethan, who had not awakened mana at all, was bearing it.
'He has certainly changed.'
He had felt it in the conversation a short while ago, and now the fact was clearer still.
Ethan had changed.
This was not the thoughtless wastrel he had shown until now.
He gave off the air of a seasoned knight, if anything.
Morun and Karon, by contrast, could not hide their alarm in the slightest.
As the two of them floundered at Vincent's sudden arrival, Vincent spoke first.
"Is what I heard true?"
"Wh-what......"
"The claim that your word is as good as my own."
"Th-that is......"
Morun belatedly tried to begin on an excuse, but the thing was already spilled.
"I do not need excuses. As the eldest son of the Blante clan, you will answer for what you have said."
At the firm tone, Morun shut his mouth.
Vincent's gaze turned next to Karon and Ethan.
"A competitive spirit is good. We are a sword clan, and it is true that we pursue strength. But the two of you have gone past the line."
"......I am sorry."
Karon bowed his head.
"Enough. That I should have to step in over a matter this small, my dignity is in tatters. Ethan."
"Yes."
Ethan lifted his head.
"Your brother's grievance does not appear to be small. But I cannot permit a duel between brothers...... yes. How would a sparring match suit you?"
At Vincent's words, Ethan let out a long sigh.
"Hoo...... Very well. On one condition."
Vincent's eyes curved.
"A condition?"
"There is nothing in this for me, so grant me that much. It is not a difficult request."
"I will hear the condition first and then consider it."
"I will take part in the regular subjugation."
"Unexpected. You wish to go out on a subjugation, all of a sudden?"
"Of course I do not merely mean to join one. Grant me the authority to raise a subjugation party of my own."
"Your reason?"
"That I cannot tell you yet."
At Ethan's words, Vincent showed a moment's deliberation.
A subjugation party.
A hard request if you called it hard, an easy one if you called it easy.
The other brothers were building forces of their own anyway, if not officially.
But Ethan had no one except Nade.
And officially Nade was nothing more than a butler.
Because the knights shunned Ethan, and loathed him.
If he gained the authority through this affair, there was a chance it would become a foothold for building his standing within the clan again.
"Good. I grant it."
Morun and Karon kept their mouths shut, but the discontent sat plain on their faces.
"On condition, however, that you win the sparring match."
At Vincent's addition, the faces of Morun and Karon brightened.
Ethan's expression, by contrast, barely changed at all.
Because it fell within what he had predicted.
'Then I win.'
He had confidence.
Ethan, no, Ryu Tae-sin, had never yet experienced defeat.
'Though the situation is against me.'
The body was not finished, and he had not awakened mana.
Even if he rushed into mana training now, he could not become more adept than Karon, who could already handle it.
'Either way, all I have to do is win.'
And in that case, he had methods to spare.