Five years ago, it was the day Laszlo returned home after the debut party. The moment he returned, his father gave him a severe beating. His crime was disobeying the order to stay buried out of sight and speaking with Young Lord Iden.
Count Avaro shouted that his son had a choice: manifest an Awakened Ability that very instant, or disappear forever from before his eyes.
Laszlo clasped his hands and earnestly begged for Solitas’s grace, but as always, the god turned away from him.
He failed to manifest an Awakened Ability and was dragged all the way to the stable by the collar.
“From this day forth, you are not my son. You are a horse. Crawl out without permission, and you will be whipped until you die!”
From that day on, Laszlo became a horse of Avaro House.
At first, he resented Iden. If Iden had not started a conversation with him, his life would have remained unchanged.
But blaming someone else did not change reality. It was all his own fault for failing to live up to his father’s expectations. Even once would have been enough. He wanted to become a son who could stand tall before his father.
“Have you considered learning swordsmanship?”
One day, a knight who could no longer bear to watch suggested that he learn swordsmanship. Laszlo silently took the wooden sword the knight held out to him.
Even without an Awakened Ability, he thought he might be of help to his father if he learned something.
Swordsmanship learned bit by bit in a cramped stable could not possibly be proper swordsmanship. Even so, Laszlo did his best. With horse dung staining his hands, he practised the sword forms the knight had taught him day and night.
“Young Master is a diligent person.”
When he heard the knight’s praise, he was so happy he could have leapt for joy. To have one’s efforts recognized was truly fulfilling. If he kept this up, he felt that one day he might be able to hold his own before his father as well.
Then, one day, he saw his father standing before the stable.
“What foolishness is this?”
“Um, I was just learning a little swordsmanship…”
His father did not wait for his answer. He took off his belt and wrapped it once around his right hand.
“Since when did a horse like you start swinging a sword?!”
His father struck Laszlo wildly from head to toe. In that moment, Laszlo felt something inside him shatter.
The one-sided love he had held for his father vanished, and an unfamiliar emotion called anger filled the empty space.
Before long, he turned twelve.
“I hear Young Lord Iden is forming a knight order.”
“I read the notice. Apparently, even people without Awakened Abilities can apply.”
“That is because Lord Mabel and Lord Chris took every useful Awakened Ability User. He must be trying to fill the numbers somehow, but can you really call that a proper knight order?”
Laszlo secretly overheard the soldiers talking. Young Lord Iden was founding a knight order, and even those without Awakened Abilities could join.
An absurd thought suddenly seized him.
The thought that the notice seemed to have been written just for him.
‘If things become too difficult, contact me anytime. I will help somehow.’
Perhaps what Iden had said five years ago had been for this very moment.
‘I have to go to Lord Iden.’
Laszlo’s gaunt body was consumed by fiery longing. Never in his life had he wanted something so desperately.
He crawled from the stable, dragged his legs along, and passed through the manor gates. Countless servants watched him turn his back on the estate, but not one of them stepped forward to stop him.
Laszlo began walking without any sort of plan.
Finding the direction was not difficult. Countless people consumed by the desire to become knights formed a human ribbon along the road.
When he was thirsty, Laszlo drank from streams. When he was hungry, he picked fruit from the roadside to eat. When even that was not enough, he did not hesitate to beg. No one could have imagined that this filthy, ragged, foul-smelling boy was the eldest son of Count Avaro.
Whenever he stopped to rest, he would snap off a branch and practise swordsmanship. Sweating profusely, he swung the branch with an utterly serious expression, earning the laughter of passersby.
Laszlo arrived in Esterji Holy City only on the Feast Day of Saint Boros, the day of the interview. An enormous crowd had gathered from beyond the city walls.
Every one of these people had come to become Young Lord Iden’s knights.
Laszlo’s chest swelled as though it might burst.
He wanted to prove as quickly as possible that he was not useless. He wanted to proclaim that he was a better existence than a horse.
It would have been all right even if he failed to become a knight.
If he could gain even the slightest recognition from Iden, Laszlo was confident he could use it as fuel to live out the rest of his life.
“Do not push!”
“I said, do not push!”
Laszlo was swept along by the crowd as though being shoved from behind. To avoid being trampled to death, he matched his steps to those around him. At that moment, he was a single leaf caught in a vast current.
When he came to his senses, he had entered the headquarters where the admission test was being held.
“Welcome, you bastards!”
A large man with red hair tied back shouted loudly.
“I am Viten, First Squad Leader of the knight order. Whether you become knights today rests entirely on me, so keep your ears open!”
“That is ‘Red Wolf’ Viten.”
“I never thought I would see the Red Wolf with my own eyes…”
“At least I have something to brag about to my friends back home.”
People whispered among themselves. Laszlo stood on tiptoe and craned his neck.
The man known as the Red Wolf stood on the platform. He looked like the very incarnation of the “true knight” Laszlo had dreamed of.
The spirit of a beast and a body honed to its limit.
By his appearance alone, Viten made every applicant gathered there seem as insignificant as sorghum stalks. Laszlo stared at him in a daze.
“The Awakened Track is on the left, and the Non-Awakened Track is on the right! Think carefully about which side you belong on!”
“…A Non-Awakened Track. To think I would live to hear such a thing.”
“It looks like they really intend to recruit idiots without Awakened Abilities.”
“He must mean to hire them as menial laborers. There is no way he is serious.”
When mocking laughter leaked from the line for the Awakened Track,
“Do not make me laugh, you bastards.”
The Non-Awakened applicants immediately pushed back.
“You are strutting around just because you were lucky enough to gain Awakened Abilities. Do you think experience counts for nothing?”
“That is right. Lord Iden is personally testing the Non-Awakened Track. Does that not mean he has high expectations for us?”
‘Lord Iden is personally testing the Non-Awakened Track?’
Laszlo’s ears perked up. A fierce fire was kindled in his small chest.
A short while later, he entered a spacious testing hall within the knight order headquarters with around thirty other people.
“What is that smell…?”
People frowned and pinched their noses.
“What is that smell?”
“Is that horse dung?”
“Which crazy bastard came here covered in horse dung?”
Laszlo’s face reddened. There was nothing he could do now about the smell that had soaked into his only set of clothes over several years.
“What kind of fool comes before His Highness seeking knighthood with horse dung on his clothes?!”
“Should someone like this not have been screened out at the entrance?”
Cold sweat ran down Laszlo’s back. He repeatedly apologized to the applicants.
“I am sorry. I am sorry!”
Then—
“Everyone, line up!”
The examiner shouted sharply. At that instant, the twenty-nine other applicants all fell silent and straightened their posture.
Soon afterward, a boy entered the testing hall under the escort of attendants.
Laszlo froze halfway through bowing, locked in an awkward posture.
It was Young Lord Iden Esterji.
Iden looked several times more dignified than the image Laszlo had replayed in his mind hundreds of times. Laszlo could clearly feel Solitas’s grace shining down upon him.
“Greetings. I am Iden Esterji.”
Iden’s clear voice filled the testing hall.
“I will briefly explain the testing method.”
At Iden’s gesture, a hulking man in steel armor stepped forward with two wooden swords.
“You can see the wooden swords brought by my guard. Take one each and spar until I tell you to stop.”
Iden gave the examiner an order with a tilt of his chin.
“The test begins!”
At last, the test began. Two applicants were called forward to the center of the hall. Laszlo watched them fight with his hands damp with sweat.
Because he had practised in secret to avoid his father’s eyes, he had never once been able to compare his skills with anyone else’s.
Yet, upon seeing the way the others moved, he began to think that he might have a chance. They were not especially quick, and their movements seemed clumsy.
‘I can do it. I can do it.’
Laszlo repeated the words like a spell, so that none of the negative thoughts his father had planted in him would remain.
“Next!”
The test progressed quickly. The applicants were declared failures one after another after only a few exchanges.
“Next!”
The examiner’s expression twisted into a fierce frown.
“Hey, kid! Did you not hear your name being called?!”
Laszlo jumped up from the waiting area.
“I am sorry!”
He hurried to the center of the testing hall. His opponent was an experienced-looking adventurer three times his size.
“What, it is that stinking brat from earlier.”
The man snickered.
“This will not be a match at all.”
“Is the difference in size not too great?”
Pessimistic predictions spread through the waiting area.
“Salute His Highness Young Lord Iden Esterji!”
The man dropped to one knee toward Iden. Laszlo bowed along with him. Iden merely watched them without saying anything.
At that moment, Laszlo became certain that Iden had forgotten him.
It was only natural that he would not recognize him. Five years ago, Laszlo had been nothing but a ragged child. After five years had passed, he had become an even more pitiful and shabby boy.
But Laszlo was not disappointed. He could begin writing his future anew from this moment onward.
“Begin!”
At the examiner’s shout, Laszlo bent down and picked up the wooden sword lying on the ground. When both his palms wrapped around it, the familiar sensation brought peace to his heart.
‘I can do it.’
Laszlo repeated the spell once more and raised his head. But there was something strange about his opponent.
“This sword is too heavy.”
The man could not even hold a single wooden sword upright. He was straining so hard that his veins looked ready to burst.
“Examiner, something is wrong with this! The sword is too heavy!”
‘What does he mean, heavy?’
The sword in the man’s hand was the same wooden sword as Laszlo’s. Even if it had been made of metal instead, Laszlo could not imagine how something that size could possibly be so heavy.
“Start already!”
When the examiner urged him on,
“Yaaahhh!”
The man swung his sword with all his strength. Laszlo easily avoided the attack. Like the other applicants, the man’s movements were slow and clumsy. He was being dragged around by the weight of the wooden sword.
Laszlo began his counterattack. Unlike the man, his feet felt light. It was as though the wind had come to support his legs.
“Follow the flow.”
Someone’s voice rang out. It was kind and warm, entirely unlike his father’s voice. Laszlo surrendered himself to the flow of his consciousness. Like dancing, like dreaming, he followed the voice’s guidance.
“Please, let this hit!”
The man swung wildly and missed. Laszlo saw his opponent’s open flank. The longing dwelling in his heart cried out to him in the form of a voice.
“Thrust!”
Laszlo stepped forward and drove the wooden sword out with force. With an impact that felt as though his wrist might snap, his opponent’s body lifted into the air and sailed backward.
The applicants stared in shock, their eyes nearly popping out. Laszlo himself could not believe what he had done.
Then something even harder to believe happened.
“Your Highness…!”
Iden, who had not moved from his seat throughout the entire test, rose and began walking toward him.
Laszlo gasped for breath like a fish left out of water. The brief time it took Iden to reach him felt as long as a thousand years.
What should I say? Should I tell him I was glad to see him again, or should I pretend not to know him and simply offer a greeting? Or perhaps…
“Laszlo Avaro.”
The moment Iden called his name, Laszlo’s mind turned completely blank.
“Welcome to the knight order.”
Laszlo doubted his ears. So many unreal things had continued to happen that it would have been difficult to believe even if someone told him it was all a dream.
The applicants watched Iden’s every move without breathing. No one had expected that the first successful applicant from the Non-Awakened Track would be such a small boy.
“I passed?”
“Yes.”
Iden smiled and placed a hand on Laszlo’s shoulder.
“Why did you only come now?”
Laszlo felt his emotions burst out beyond his control. He could not stop crying.