After finishing his conversation with Adelia, Ron settled into a corner of the campsite and continued thinking.
‘May I continue to seek your counsel in the future?’
‘Would I be of any help?’
-Progress: -81%
‘The reality is that we need every hand we can get.’
‘I may be lacking, but I will do my best.’
-Progress: -79%
The difference between refusal and acceptance appeared in the Progress, making the cause and effect unmistakable.
‘So the young lady was the root cause.’
She had brought the tutorial to its conclusion. From now on, the Progress would rise and fall according to her actions.
‘Should I call this a high degree of freedom?’
The notification told him only the objective. The method was left entirely up to him.
If it was going to be like this, it could at least have given him a customization feature.
It had thrown him into a wasteland and told him to survive on his own.
Even if it did not give him a Status Window or Skills, it should at least tell him the Mission.
‘In novels like this, push-ups and running should normally be enough to clear it.’
Honestly, most growth-fantasy and martial-arts novels about overpowered protagonists were shamelessly easy and convenient. How could running, doing push-ups, and performing sit-ups immediately raise one's Stats? It was nothing more than granting the protagonist excessive omnipotence.
Even so, Ron envied that sort of omniscient protagonist viewpoint.
‘I'm jealous.’
This went beyond charging headfirst into bare ground. The tutorial alone was practically set to the worst possible difficulty.
Of course, it was not the absolute worst, since the direction was clear. All he had to do was raise the count's house.
‘There wasn't a deadline.’
Judging by how things were going, it still seemed likely that a time limit would eventually appear.
And there was another problem—one even greater than that.
‘Why me?’
Not once, but twice. He had burned himself white until not even ash remained.
Two exhausting lives spent as though something were constantly chasing him were enough. The sense that someone kept forcing this upon him filled him with aversion.
His current life was a period of rest meant to cure his burnout.
Ten steps back for one step forward, perhaps.
Given his true feelings, he was seriously considering taking a hundred steps back.
People were not machines. They needed as much rest as possible if they wanted the road ahead to remain smooth. Fatigue tangled every situation and inevitably led to repeated mistakes.
‘There's no need to be proactive.’
He did not care deeply enough about House Leonard to speak of loyalty as a knight. The count had a good reputation, but Ron had not accumulated enough loyalty to risk his life for him.
Of course, he did not show it. A knight who betrayed his master could not expect his life to proceed smoothly. Nobles might tolerate anything else, but they never let betrayal pass.
If they overlooked one case, they would have to overlook ten, a hundred, and a thousand more. Only by making a clear example could they reduce the danger of betrayal.
‘If things truly go wrong, I should at least look after the old man.’
It was said that a person who forgot a debt of gratitude was worse than a beast.
Before Ron remembered his previous life, he might have lived a harsh life—or failed to survive at all—without the old man. The welfare policies of this era were unspeakably cruel to a child living alone. Yet reality was also too barren for people to care for others easily.
Given the old man's personality, the chance that he would abandon the count's house and follow Ron was slim. Still, survival came first.
He would obviously start preaching about chivalry, but if Ron put his wife and Eshula front and center, even the old man would have no choice.
People—fathers in particular—were weak when it came to family.
If Ron kept needling him by saying he had never seen anyone abandon his family and come to a good end, it would work one hundred percent.
‘That's rather underhanded.’
Simply staying alive and breathing was not everything. If the purpose of his life disappeared, the old man's existence would become no different from death.
He would leave running away as the final option.
Then he looked at reality coldly.
He had never cared enough to learn much about how the count's house operated. It was not his house, so showing interest would have been strange. A probationary knight who showed excessive interest in the house's internal and external affairs might also attract suspicion.
Based on the information currently available, he examined the greatest problem first.
‘So the count's sons are fucking idiots.’
The evaluations of First Young Master Resius, Second Young Master Tailon, and Third Young Master Alex were not actually important. Since the tutorial had not ended when Ron met any of them, they were all worthless bastards compared with Adelia.
In that case, the title should naturally pass to the wisest child, but sexism was rampant in this era.
Adelia would receive respect as the daughter of a noble house, but becoming the head of the house was another matter. Everywhere, people said that a daughter married out and became an outsider to her birth family. A man was required to continue the family bloodline. The curse, “If you resent it, you should have been born a man,” had not arisen for nothing.
‘Even when his child is a fucking idiot, a father still wants to pass down the family fortune.’
The belief that one finger hurt more than the others when bitten and the preference for the eldest son were eternal truths.
Even in history, the emperor who founded an empire might have been exceptional, but the succession was always unstable. When an empire later collapsed, it was because a fucking idiot had taken the throne.
No matter how talented Adelia was, she had little chance of becoming the head of the count's house under the normal order. However, if the trash mobs beneath Adelia became its head, the house's destruction would only accelerate.
‘What a headache.’
He felt no particular motivation, but he had been settled in the count's territory for a long time. There was no guarantee that moving somewhere else would be comfortable.
Was there not a saying that leaving home meant suffering like a dog? It would also be a waste to abandon the house he had built with so much effort. If someone told him to build another one, he could not bear to do it.
His house was the product of painstaking effort, completed one stitch at a time.
The count's house could fall, but his own house could not.
‘And I doubt it will let me go quietly.’
Not the count's house, but whoever had initiated this scenario bothered him. It might have been needless suspicion, but he had to consider the possibility. Ignoring it would change nothing, and he still needed to prepare. He had no desire to sit there blankly until someone struck him in the back of the head.
[Reward]
-1 Coin
-Shop Unlocked
The 1 Coin he had received when the tutorial ended was inside his Inventory. He did not know what the assigned Mission had been, but clearing one seemed to grant a reward.
‘I can't open it here.’
He still did not know the value of 1 Coin, and he needed to find out what would happen when he opened the Shop.
The Inventory did not allow him to inspect an item's information while it remained inside. If he opened it where others could see and was mistaken for a mage, that would be troublesome. Subspace Magic was known to require at least the Sixth Circle.
An Aura Expert and a Sixth-Circle mage.
They would think he was desperate to stand out.
He did not need to go out of his way to hide it, but he had no interest in becoming an attention seeker. If circumstances forced it into the open, that was another matter. It was far more effective to elevate and praise someone else instead.
‘I should open this carefully.’
As with all things, hasty action invited disaster. Caution was essential if he did not want to regret it later.
That did not mean he wanted to take everything in life seriously.
Two exhausting lives were enough.
Ron stopped thinking.
The back of his head prickled.
‘What's with that look in his eyes?’
He was a perfect example of how fickle humans could be. Only a short while ago, the man had been unable to meet Ron's eyes and had floundered in panic. Now, he wore the look of brazen hypocrisy. Ron had seen it so often that such looks were all much the same.
Dane Barut.
The son of a baron, he stood at the center of a faction among the Dawn Knight Order's probationary knights. He had not been selected for this journey, but had volunteered.
Every trace of his earlier panic during the unexpected attack had vanished, leaving him to display human fickleness in all its naked ugliness.
‘So he only cared about the offerings, not the rite.’
A man should look at the tree before trying to climb it. Not all nobles were equal. A whelp from a minor noble house was aiming for the daughter of a count. The gap in their weight classes was so vast that it was almost absurd. Did he perhaps believe he was different from everyone else?
‘And with skills like those.’
Even the swordsmanship talent of a crane among chickens would scarcely have been enough.
The claim that effort could change everything was nothing more than cruel torture disguised as hope. Ability was, in truth, largely determined by heredity. The spoon one was born with foretold the future. Denying bloodline rarely changed reality.
Only someone with the perseverance to push forward without ever surrendering, an indomitable spirit, and the favor of heavenly fortune might have the slightest chance of changing his life.
Wasting one's life on an impossible dream was even worse.
SWISH.
Ron let it pass.
Dane only acted that way because he did not know Ron yet.
Had he known, he would have shut his mouth and avoided him.
‘Living in solitude isn't easy.’
A person needed the corresponding stubbornness and ability to live an isolated life alone. Anyone who assumed no one had ever tried to interfere with Ron was mistaken. When the time came, he might need to update the probationary knights' unwritten rules and establish discipline.
‘Still, he won't be able to give up.’
Here or elsewhere—
People like that were always exactly the same.
What were they, rulers?
Not even an inch of deviation between them. Fucking ridiculous.
GRIND—!
Dane scowled.
According to the plan, he should have been the center of this journey. Through flawless execution of the mission, he had wanted to create an opportunity to approach Lady Adelia. Instead, Ron had become the center of the group. Worse, while Dane had been reduced to doing menial chores, that bastard had been summoned by the young lady.
‘How dare someone like you!’
Dane possessed a sense of superiority that told him he was different from Ron. Until now, he had paid no attention to such an insignificant man, but that had changed. He could not tolerate a mere commoner receiving the young lady's attention.
Even so, he could not act rashly because the image of Ron cutting down the attackers lingered in his mind.
Ron had cut through his enemies like rotten trees without the slightest hesitation.
Dane did not want to acknowledge it.
Perfect even though it was his first time.
A born genius.
That performance should have belonged to him, not some lowborn commoner orphan.
He refused to believe it.
If Ron could stand out like that, he should have done so long ago.
‘He must've used a magic tool for some sinister trick! How could suddenly displaying that kind of ability possibly make sense?!’
Ron had neither an exceptional status nor a remarkable teacher. He had never distinguished himself within the knight order either. The sudden revelation of hidden ability was strange in itself.
Dane's rationalizations, steeped in jealousy and envy, gradually rejected reality altogether.
‘This is a scheme targeting the young lady! I'll expose that bastard's loathsome mask and protect her myself!’
If he succeeded, it would more than make up for his failure to distinguish himself during the attack. It would also be an act for House Leonard, not merely the young lady.
If it went well, he could earn merit.
However, the afterimage of the attack remained, making it difficult to act alone. Fortunately, Rotan and Zenon supported his noble cause. They too seemed unable to believe Ron's performance.
Envy and jealousy were their strength.
They joined forces.
Their sordid gazes crossed, and they quietly nodded to one another.
SWISH.
FLINCH!
Ron had approached until he was right beside them and leaned his face close, staring openly. His eyes said that he knew exactly what they were thinking.
TREMBLE.
The pupils of Dane, Rotan, and Zenon quivered with anxiety that he might have seen through them. Resolve was one thing, but reality was another.
They had concluded that Ron had used some trick, but it was also true that he had cut down the attackers without hesitation.
“You three. Come with me for a moment.”
“…What for?”
“There seems to be a misunderstanding. Let's go somewhere cozy, out of everyone else's sight.”
“…Why should we?”
Ron whispered softly in response to the prey's survival instincts upon facing a predator.
Though the content sounded like something from a neighborhood thug.
“Do you want me to beat the shit out of you here? I don't care either way. You'd better follow while I'm still asking nicely.”
“……You!”
“If you make noise, everyone will discover that you were plotting something. Besides, dragging your feet will only hurt you.”
“……You're insane!”
“Scared?”
“……How dare you!”