The moment he woke, Ethan headed for the training ground. He did not go straight into hard work, though.
First he ran light cardio, with the sense of simply drawing the sweat out.
His body had grown unrecognizably light, and since the change had come fast over a short span he could feel it to a considerable degree.
The rate at which the weight came off was steep.
Normally, at a rate like this, it would be natural for the body to feel no small strain. But thanks to the body's potential, if anything it felt as though it were being cut sharp like a gem.
It was not a bad feeling.
His breath came short and parts of him ached all over, but Ethan was enjoying the pain, if anything.
It was the pleasure of growth.
A feeling he had forgotten for a good long while, and one he had felt every single day since entering Ethan's body.
Training was no longer dull.
Pain was only a moment.
Nade watched it all without a word.
To enjoy training. It was astonishing even as he watched.
The run is the thing that makes even knights grimace.
It is the base and the root of conditioning, but the fundamentals of anything are the hard part.
Yet since beginning his training Ethan had not skipped the morning run for a single day.
Ethan laid his fingers on his left wrist.
'Heart rate...... stable.'
It was no longer beating so violently that he could not control it, as before.
Which meant the heart was gradually coming into its proper function.
Whoo, whoo—
The breathing was stable too.
The body was unmistakably growing.
His run finished, Ethan washed off lightly and saw to a meal.
Nutrition had to be taken as a matter of course before the main training.
He was taking in a reasonable amount of carbohydrate now as well.
Carbohydrate was essential for improving strength and for instantaneous explosiveness.
'The menu's excellent, which I like.'
A noble is a noble.
And as this was a clan whose prestige rested on the sword, the quality of the food was enough to draw admiration.
Meats, vegetables, and grains were all of the highest grade.
The cooking methods were a little old-fashioned, but you could not call them crude.
Ethan had no complaints. If anything, food this close to nature suited his palate.
After eating he raised the body's function with stretching.
Range of motion and flexibility in muscle and joint reduced the damage the body took, and let him control it more precisely.
'Ngh. Still can't get used to it.'
Stretching only progresses if you take on as much pain as you can bear. Ethan screwed his face up and worked through it.
"Fun, just standing there watching?"
Ethan looked at Nade, who followed him about like a shadow.
"You are diligent."
"......Are you being sarcastic?"
"Hardly. It is because I am moved."
"That's not the face of a man who's moved?"
"Hardly."
Nade smiled a little, and Ethan sighed and finished off the stretch he had been working on.
An hour passed that way, and Ethan headed for the training ground again.
Arriving there, Ethan took up a wooden sword.
"What are you doing? Get over here."
Nade, who had only been standing and staring blankly, came over.
"What is it?"
"What do you mean, what? You're teaching me the sword."
"......The sword, you say?"
"What, is this an ornament?"
Ethan asked it while swinging the sword in his hand. The sound of it splitting the air was considerably vicious.
Nade looked at him and let out a small sigh.
"I had no choice but to partner you before...... but in the end I am nothing more than a butler."
'Black-hearted old man.'
Ethan snorted a laugh at Nade's words.
"Yeah, I know that, but the situation isn't cooperating. I'd like to keep that gimmick of yours going, you know? But right now I've got nobody on my side, so there's no helping it. I can't flag down a passing servant and ask him to partner me, can I."
"......Heh heh."
Nade was left speechless for a moment.
'Since when has he been able to talk like this?'
This was not the headlong bullying of his wastrel days.
The unrestrained speech was the same, but it carried a rationality that had not been there before.
"......There is not much I can teach you."
"I'm not planning to learn much."
Ethan knew well enough that the sword was not so easy a thing.
What Ethan wanted was the fundamentals.
'Getting to know the sword comes first.'
Sense of distance, patterns of attack, variables.
All of them decisive in a contest.
It was dressed up in the guise of a sparring match, but both Ethan and Karon would fight holding a weapon.
In a single instant it would be settled.
In that case it was right to lay in as many answers as possible.
Because he had no intention of coming to grief over a variable he had not foreseen.
"Then I shall show you the basics."
Nade took up a wooden sword.
The look in Nade's eyes as he regarded the sword in his hand was complicated.
Nade shook off the stray thoughts and spoke.
"I will say in advance that I have no talent for teaching."
"That's fine. I learn well enough on my own."
"......"
Nade was silent a moment at the arrogant reply, and then he swung the sword.
Whoosh.
A sword swung vertically.
At a glance it was simple movement that looked like nothing much, but not one small scrap of excess could be found in Nade's action.
Nade's wooden sword drew straight down with no preparatory motion.
"This is the vertical cut."
Ethan closed his eyes. Then he brought Nade's action slowly to mind and chewed it over.
A short while of that, and then Ethan opened his eyes and settled straight into stance.
'Stride about this wide?'
A relatively narrow stance, a little different from his usual in a fight.
Raise the sword, but not too high, and draw it straight down.
In Ethan's head the whole of it was already drawn out.
It was as if a phantom before his eyes were showing him the future.
Ethan drew the sword down slowly, though not at a slow speed.
Swish—
Utterly unlike the vicious air-splitting noise Ethan had been making until a moment ago, a sharp sound of air being cut rang out.
Nade's eyes widened at the movement.
'......What did he just do?'
He could not believe it even having seen it.
To someone who knew nothing of the sword it might have looked like nothing but an ordinary vertical cut.
But Nade could tell.
This was not a simple vertical cut.
It was a completed cut, with not a scrap of excess in it.
Breath, stance, movement, every part of it was perfect.
"Hm. Roughly like this, then."
Ethan looked at the sword.
A strange feeling rose in him.
A feeling quite different from fighting with his bare body.
"......Is it true that you have never learned the sword?"
"You've been glued to me the whole time and you're saying strange things? I told you I learn on my own. Keep going."
Ethan's words were not wrong.
Nade had attended at Ethan's side since he was an infant.
So it would be no exaggeration to say he knew Ethan's every move, and because of that it was hard for Ethan to do anything out of Nade's sight.
Of course Nade did not spend all of his time guarding Ethan's side.
He held a butler's station and had duties to handle, and whenever he stepped away for a while Ethan would promptly cause an incident.
Which made the shock Nade felt all the greater.
"Just get on with it."
"......Very well."
Nade set his doubts aside in the end and swung the sword again.
The blows that followed were not greatly different.
Downward cut, horizontal cut, thrust.
All of them fundamentals learned the first time a man takes up a sword.
Nothing like the clan's own secret sword art, and no flashy combination forms either.
Perfectly ordinary sword strikes, without even a common feint mixed in.
But Ethan repeated the actions slowly, and carefully.
He repeated them to learn every small motion of the body, the preparatory motion that surfaced when attempting it, the direction the sword's point traveled, the sense of distance.
Nade said nothing and only watched what Ethan did.
"Nade."
"Yes, young master."
"Swing a sword at me."
"......Do you mean that?"
"Yeah."
Ethan answered firmly.
Nade stepped up to him as though there were nothing else for it.
Shk—
Nade's sword swung like wind.
A vertical cut falling from high to low.
However sturdy Ethan's body, taking this blow properly would leave him in no sound state.
In the instant the sword fell, Ethan decided how he would act.
Normally he would have slipped the attack with a light step, but that alone would not do.
The plain fact of the difference in reach loomed large.
Evading one attack still meant the opportunity lay with his opponent.
Ethan could spot that opportunity, but he had no weapon worth holding.
Ethan's physical ability was still unimpressive.
His conditioning had come up a great deal, but that was as far as it went.
Against a mana user it was no contest.
For victory, he had to approach it differently.
Ethan stepped toward the swinging sword instead.
Nade's eyes showed puzzlement, but he did not stop the blade.
CLACK!
The sound of wooden swords meeting rang out.
Ethan had raised his own and blocked Nade's.
And then he stepped two paces closer.
The two of them came together along the crossed swords, and when Nade drew his body back the distance opened again.
"Hm. So that's how it works."
Ethan swung the sword through the air, trying to get the feel of it.
Nade, for his part, had taken no small shock.
'Is this...... talent......'
He had not yet demonstrated a counter like that.
And that was not something a beginner who had only just taken up a sword could do.
"Then shall we do this properly?"
He had the feel of it roughly now, so it was time to move in earnest.
Ethan raised the sword and stepped toward Nade.
"Let's focus."
Ethan grinned, and Nade let out a deep sigh and lifted his sword.
"You do put an old man through his paces."
***
Time passed, and the day of the sparring match drew near.
The match would be held at the Grand Training Ground in the clan's main house.
The training ground that boasted the greatest size in the Blante clan.
Normally it was used for training at the scale of a whole knight order, but this time, exceptionally, it was being used for just two men.
Two of them would use it, but the crowd that gathered was not small.
The Blante clan's knights and their attendants were packed in tight.
The match had become quite a large topic within the clan.
The talk was one thing, but part of it was that Karon and Morun had taken the lead in blowing the thing up.
Karon, to wash out the humiliation of the other day.
Morun, to bury Ethan completely.
The two men's intentions gathered together and swelled the affair further.
And since there was no limit on spectators, a great many came to watch it in person, which meant it simply could not be held anywhere ordinary.
"I thought you'd take fright and not show. You came out anyway?"
Karon made a transparent provocation, and Ethan dug at his ear and answered lightly.
"Seems that head I hit still hurts."
At the indifferent reply, Karon's face twisted up.
'A little bastard, all right.'
Every change of feeling showed plainly on his face.
'Not worried about the result, either.'
He had never doubted the victory to begin with.
What Ethan was aiming at, though.
'How to win so as to build my standing.'
That was the main purpose of this match.