Paleon, who stepped down as the next opponent, was at a loss for words watching Rohan swing the whip.
Was he really going to take him on with a whip?
Having just watched his classmate go down, he couldn't simply laugh it off. It was just a little absurd.
Were all the Baltrans like this? He had felt a wall back in the beginner course when he met Yohana, too.
'No, this one's cut from a different cloth.'
Yohana had been born with a warrior's aptitude. She had already reached the 3rd Stage the moment she was promoted to the intermediate course.
But even she hadn't been able to handle multiple weapons at a mere eleven, like Rohan in front of him.
"Want to go first?"
Once again Rohan asked Paleon as if to rile him. Paleon shook his head.
"No, I'll yield it."
He meant nothing else by it; he really was fine yielding the first strike. What Rohan had shown in the previous bout was astonishing, but a spear and a whip were very different things.
Plenty of warriors used the spear as their main weapon. But no one used the whip as their main weapon.
The motions needed to attack were too big. Unless the gap in skill was considerable, you had no choice but to let your opponent close in, and once the opponent was up close, there was no way to respond except hand-to-hand.
There was a supplementary method of moving the whip with magic power, but using magic power in a spar was forbidden except in special circumstances.
If not for the previous bout, Paleon would have thought he was being looked down on. Now he was curious. How on earth did Rohan plan to take him on with a whip?
"All right, then I'll attack first."
Rohan swung his arm. The whip came at him in a wave.
Paleon moved before the whip reached him. Magic power couldn't be used. The path of a whip already in flight couldn't be changed midway.
Close the distance. Paleon was responding by the book.
But the distance was closing faster than he'd thought.
'......No!'
Rohan was moving too. The first attack had been.......
'A feint?'
He hastily thrust his sword, but Rohan bent his waist back and lightly dodged it. Having slipped past him, Rohan spun his body around.
Using that momentum, he sent the whip flying at Paleon.
'Oh, damn it!'
It was already too late to dodge. He hurriedly raised his sword to block.
'Ah! I can't use magic power.'
Not being able to use magic power wasn't a disadvantage for Rohan alone. A sword without magic power couldn't cut through a whip.
The whip coiled tightly around the sword. Paleon let go of the sword.
Losing his weapon wasn't the end. Rohan had lost his whip too, caught on the sword. Paleon charged at him at full speed.
The size difference between a fifteen-year-old and an eleven-year-old was huge. The crown of Rohan's head barely reached Paleon's neck.
In a physical fight without magic power, he thought he had the absolute advantage.
Sure enough, Rohan tossed the whip away too and readied himself for hand-to-hand combat. At this point, Paleon was confident of victory.
The moment the distance closed enough for his arm to reach, Paleon threw a punch. Rohan dodged, moving only his upper body slightly.
Undeterred, Paleon kept throwing punches. His reach was far longer. Unless Rohan closed the distance, all he could do was keep dodging.
Paleon was ready in case Rohan did come closer. The moment he ducked and lunged, Paleon meant to kick him away.
At that moment, his outstretched arm was caught. Rohan grabbed his wrist and pulled it toward himself.
Defenseless, Paleon lurched a step forward. That was enough.
WHAM—!
Rohan's fist slammed into Paleon's face. Paleon swung his arm too, trying to hit back.
Rohan dodged his fist and slammed another punch into his face.
THWACK! WHAM!
At close range Paleon couldn't land a single hit, while Rohan's fists kept pounding him.
When did he learn this much hand-to-hand combat?
Orin watched the scene with a shocked face. Then he soon realized his role.
"Enough! Enough! Rohan wins!"
Only when he shouted did Rohan's fists stop. Paleon staggered and threw a punch, but Rohan lightly leaned back to dodge it and stepped away.
"Shall I use a mace next?"
Rohan was heading back to where the weapons were. Orin held his forehead for a moment, then raised his head again and shouted.
"Enough. From now on, Rohan is exempt from warm-ups."
Rohan, in the middle of choosing a weapon, stared blankly at Orin.
"You really don't have to go that far. Oh dear. But I can hardly disobey the instructor's orders."
At Rohan's infuriating expression, Orin wanted to run over and punch him right then. But he had to hold back. He had realized.
Rohan was already a leading candidate for the headship.
The power of the direct line, which he, of the collateral line, could not defy.
***
On entering the intermediate course, they learned the 4th Chapter of the Baltran Sword Style. He had thought he'd wiped it all from his head, but once he actually learned it, what he had learned in his past life came back to him dimly.
The Andelian family's swordsmanship, on the other hand, was vivid in his head. If only he had the magic power to back it, he was confident he could master it up to the 9th Chapter overnight.
The Andelian swordsmanship had been expanded to nine chapters in imitation of the Baltran Sword Style to begin with, so in reality it was only about the level of the 7th Chapter of the Baltran Sword Style.
That didn't mean the Andelian family's swordsmanship was inferior to the Baltrans'. The Andelian family had the Fire Dance Annihilation Sword, which stood shoulder to shoulder with the Baltrans' Snowflower Sword.
In his past life, Rohan had never learned the Snowflower Sword at all, and of the Fire Dance Annihilation Sword's five Forms in total, he had mastered up to the 2nd.
'Getting back to my past-life level will take at least half a year.'
Rohan was only eleven now. Investing half a year could be considered very cheap.
'Too bad I left before learning a bit more of the Fire Dance Annihilation Sword.'
The regret wasn't great. The Fire Dance Annihilation Sword's 2nd Form alone was enough to be called a strong fighter. It had been luck in the first place that he, of all people, had learned swordsmanship only those of Andelian blood could learn. What was more, he now had the chance to learn the Snowflower Sword.
To shake off his idle thoughts, Rohan swung his sword on the empty training ground. After swinging the Baltran swordsmanship for a while, he paused to catch his breath and raised a flame in his hand.
It was magic. The basic fire magic he had learned from Doflamingo.
'Next, ice magic.'
Handling mana of the ice element wasn't that hard. If he knew how to make it coexist with the fire rings right now, he could form two rings.
Rohan tried to draw out ice-element mana. At that moment, he realized the nature of the mana rising between the flames was not what he expected.
A foreign feeling. Mana like black smoke.
'Dark mana!'
He had drawn out dark mana without meaning to. Rohan hadn't yet properly learned black magic from Doflamingo.
He had learned only one trick, the one Doflamingo called the Shadow Art.
He was still clumsy at handling dark mana.
"......Oh no!"
The flame wrapped around the darkness and blazed up. It flared like a spark that had met oil.
The biggest problem was that the dark mana had slipped out of Rohan's hand and was floating.
A blazing ball of fire circled in midair.
'Damn it! Something's going to happen at this rate.'
At a glance, it was clearly not normal. Beyond whatever damage it might do, if anyone caught him, he wouldn't be able to escape interrogation.
'Let's put the fire out first.'
In the darkness, the flame shone far too brightly. This time Rohan properly drew ice mana into his hand.
He flung that mana at the fireball. Rohan thought the blazing flame would go out.
But the fire and ice tangled together and clung to the darkness. The fire didn't go out at all. Yet the ice didn't melt either.
Fire and ice. The two elements of mana pushed and pulled at each other as if fighting over territory, and thanks to that, the large sphere actually stabilized.
'......That's it!'
A single word suddenly popped into Rohan's head.
The veil!
What he had needed to raise a pillar of dark mana. This was exactly what Doflamingo had meant.
'When fire and ice cling together, the darkness keeps its shape.'
He would have to modify the Blue Flame Pillar method he knew a little. Not raising the pillar first and hanging rings on both sides, but building up the pillar at the same time as forming the rings.
'It won't be easy. But it's entirely possible.'
Rohan decided to try it right away. He erased the traces of mana, hurried back to his room, and sat cross-legged.
He separated the two rings settled in his body. Dark mana rose up. Rohan brought the fire rings to it.
Flames blazed up along the darkness. Feeling the pain, Rohan began to form ice rings.
He made two rings and likewise brought them to the blazing darkness. The ice rings and fire rings slipped between each other and fought over territory. Naturally, the dark mana in the very center locked into the shape of a cylinder.
'So now there are two ice rings and two fire rings side by side?'
He had reached the 4th Stage in a single night. Of course, it wasn't an ordinary 4th Stage. To be precise, it was the 2nd Stage of the White Ice Ring and the 2nd Stage of the Red Flame Ring.
As far as Rohan could sense, depending on how he used it, it could be stronger in magic power than an ordinary 4th Stage, or weaker.
'Adding one more ring to each isn't hard.'
Then he would have 6 rings right away. For a moment, Rohan felt a chill.
If he formed five ice rings and five fire rings, would he reach the 10th Stage?
Searching through all the time of his past life, it was a realm only Gion had reached on the continent.
'Then what if I form six of each?'
The 12th Stage? Could that really happen?
In theory, even reaching the 20th Stage was possible.
'What nonsense.'
Rohan shook his head.
The strength of magic power wasn't decided so simply by the number of rings alone.
'At the very best, it'd be a realm equal to two 10th-Stage knights combined.'
Even that alone was a realm impossibly far away.
He thought of Gion, the 10th-Stage knight of his past life.
Even Rohan, called the Mercenary King on the battlefield, had fallen far short of Gion.
'With the Space Sword I think I could have beaten him somehow, though.'
But at the same time, he craved power beyond that.
The giants that had come over the Wall.
Even if Gion hadn't died, the outcome would have been no different. The giants were overwhelmingly stronger than even the 10th-Stage Gion.
And there hadn't been just one giant. And behind them, the beings that could only be heard, never seen.
'I need power that overwhelms even Father, and a mighty army.'
***
Rohan trained through the night and fell asleep right where he was. Men in black came into his room.
Rohan had fallen into a deep sleep after his grueling training. He had assumed no one would dare come here to harm him, a Baltran of the direct line.
The two men in black were approaching Rohan. But someone was standing behind them.
It was true Rohan had let his guard down to some extent, but he wasn't foolish enough to make no preparations at all. In his past life, he had been a mercenary. He had often camped in places where anyone might stab him in the back.
That meant he was always prepared for an ambush.
On the desk lay open a book Rohan had secretly smuggled out of the library. And standing in front of it was a tall man.
Doflamingo looked at the intruders and thought.
Should he get rid of them himself? Or wake Rohan?
Rohan had told him to refrain from using magic as much as possible. Using black magic within the Baltrans was an extremely dangerous act.
'Just one day ago, I'd have stepped in myself.'
Doflamingo let out an incredulous laugh.
To him, the two intruders approaching Rohan, unaware he was standing behind them, were greenhorns. But not to the eleven-year-old boy sleeping on the floor.
Up until last night, that is.
For whatever reason, in just one day, the boy had changed.
'Really, I'm dying to know what this kid is.'
Doflamingo smiled without a sound and lowered his palm. Black smoke poured from his palm, spread across the floor, and crept toward Rohan.