A gray cloak.
It was the same gift she had given Rohan in his past life.
Which meant that even if Rohan hadn't held a Succession Ceremony, Tina would have given him the cloak.
"Thank you, Elder Sister."
Rohan's eyes reddened. Why hadn't he understood her heart in his last life?
In the family, the only one who had truly cared for him was his fourth sister.
The Rohan of his past life had tossed this cloak carelessly into a corner of his room. The first time he used it was when he ran away from the family, throwing it over his head just to keep off the rain.
'But when I found out what it could do, I nearly fell over.'
If not for this cloak, Rohan would have been swallowed by flames and died before he ever reached the Andelian family.
"I-It'll be too big for you now."
Seeing Rohan's eyes redden, Tina looked flustered. She unfolded part of the cloak and held it up against Rohan's body.
"Once you've grown a little, it'll look great on you."
Rohan looked at Tina and smiled. Just great?
'It's a cloak that raises resistance to every kind of magic.'
She wouldn't know what the cloak could do either. The engagement gifts sent from the kingdom were mostly jewelry and accessories. Picking out something Rohan could use, she had chosen the cloak.
'The kingdom wouldn't know either.'
Otherwise they would never have tucked such a precious item into a bundle of gifts like this. What was more, Rohan also knew the secret of the fabric the cloak was made from.
"I'll treasure it, and when I'm grown I won't forget to wear it."
Tina smiled and stroked his hair.
Watching her smile, Rohan thought.
'This time, I'll bring her back even if I have to turn the kingdom upside down.'
Come to think of it, if he wasn't even strong enough to turn the Deren Kingdom upside down, he was doomed to be stomped to death by a giant anyway.
***
Children of the Baltran direct line were each assigned a nanny when they were young.
The lady of the house had a great deal to do. She was not free enough to look after each child personally. Above all, since the heirs had to leave the main castle for their training, they spent little time with their parents.
Rohan had a nanny too. A woman named Jane, with long black hair.
Though she was always at his side, Rohan and she had never been close in his past life. It was because Rohan had rejected her care.
'And then we drifted apart for good.'
A nanny stayed at an heir's side until the age of fifteen. After that, the nanny was separated from them to foster independence.
In his past life, the nannies of his siblings had lived fairly peaceful lives thanks to serving such fine young masters, but Rohan's nanny had not.
When Rohan ran away from the family, Jane had to face interrogation. Naturally, since they had never been close, she had no information to give the family.
In the end, she was driven out of the family for the crime of failing to raise a direct heir properly. What became of her after that, even Rohan didn't know.
Maybe she had done fine.
That was the kind of excuse the Rohan of his past life always made for himself.
But he knew she couldn't have. He didn't need to see it to know what happened to a powerless woman wandering the outside world with no one to turn to.
'That's my sin. In this life, I'll have to make it up to her.'
Rohan, who had been training his mana, quietly opened one eye.
Jane was wiping the Spirit Beast egg on the shelf with a cloth. Her face was pale, in contrast to her long black hair. To Rohan now, she still looked young.
Twenty-seven years old. She had started caring for Rohan at just eighteen, and she was fated to give him all her youth, be thrown out of this family, and live out an unhappy life.
"Jane!"
"Yes! Young master."
"In 3 years, let's leave this place together."
"Pardon?"
She turned her head to look at Rohan. She looked as if she had no idea what he meant.
"In 3 years, I'll be able to finish my training. Then we'll go to the fief I'm being granted, for a start."
Heirs of the Baltran family were required to complete the training process without exception. Rohan was in the beginner stage now. That left the intermediate and advanced stages.
He was ten years old now. The sibling who had finished training fastest, Rohas, had done so at sixteen.
And yet Rohan had just declared he would finish all of his training at twelve.
Jane came closer and laid a hand on his forehead.
"I'm fine, so put your hand down."
"Yes. You don't have a fever."
It was hard for her to believe. Something unbelievable had happened recently with the Succession Ceremony, but the rumor had already spread, thanks to someone (Leon), that it had all been luck.
Even before starting his training, Rohan had been judged to have no aptitude. So Jane had given up on any ambitions and only wished for Rohan to grow up healthy.
"That's what I wanted, and yet......."
She looked at Rohan with pity. With one hand she held Rohan's hand where it rested on his knee, and with the other she wiped her eyes.
In the end, Rohan gave up and closed his eyes again.
'Let's just focus on training.'
Apart from sword lessons, Rohan didn't set aside any extra time to swing a sword. It was a waste of time. The swordsmanship he could draw out of his current body was already at its maximum. Building mana, on the other hand, still gave him a lot of trouble.
Because unlike in his past life, two, no, now three elements of mana were churning inside his body.
Until he could raise the black pillar Doflamingo had talked about, Rohan had temporarily stopped making rings.
So Freon believed Rohan's progress had stalled. He seemed to think Rohan had been too hasty, but in fact it was the exact opposite.
'This isn't easy.'
If anything, Rohan was more careful than ever. He was pouring his heart into making ice mana and fire mana coexist without fail.
Dark mana. Thanks to Doflamingo's teaching, he had succeeded in forming it. The problem was building the pillar.
He had tried applying the Blue Flame Pillar's method to dark mana, but its nature was different from blue flame.
'It has no viscosity.'
Fire mana could form a pillar, but dark mana had trouble holding any shape.
It felt like trying to grasp black smoke.
Doflamingo had stepped back, saying he didn't know the details of the Blue Flame Pillar. He had only hinted, in passing, that the dark mana needed to be wrapped in something like a veil.
'What on earth is this veil supposed to be?'
He still had no idea where to even begin.
'Let's just go to class first.'
The other children would already be out on the training ground warming up. Rohan had chosen to spend their warm-up time in meditation for his mana training.
He had even held a Succession Ceremony, so no one was going to say anything about him skipping a beginner-course warm-up.
'Though they must be grumbling on the inside.'
Rohan wasn't free enough to soothe the brats' feelings. At night he had nightmares of the giants coming over the Wall.
'Someday there'll be a time to tell someone.'
Not yet. He hadn't yet met anyone he could plan the future with.
When he reached the training ground, the chicks growing up so nicely all turned to look at Rohan at once. From their eyes alone, he could tell what they wanted to say.
He pretended not to notice and walked on calmly. As usual, he picked up a wooden sword for training.
But today, the reaction around him was a little different. As Rohan turned to train with his wooden sword in hand, several older trainees blocked his way.
"Pretty cocky for a young one. Skipping warm-ups as you please."
"Don't you know that during training, even the Baltran direct line is equal to us?"
It was Leon's gang. Now that it was nearly time for them to move up to the intermediate class, they seemed to want to stomp Rohan down before they left.
Rohan snorted.
In a way, mercenaries were people who roamed around in gangs, getting into fights. Rohan was the one who had risen to the throne of that gang culture.
Seeing mere twelve-year-olds act like this, he could only find it laughable. Even if he was in a ten-year-old's body now.
"Is that so?"
Rohan took a step forward. The one standing in front flinched and leaned back.
"Wh-What is?"
"That I'm your equal. You really think so?"
Rohan took another step. The boy consciously tried to hold his ground. But without meaning to, he stepped back.
"Rohan Baltran. A pure-blooded Baltran who has finished his Succession Ceremony. You know what that means, right?"
A candidate for the headship.
The one who would inherit the title of Northern Grand Duke, ruler of the North, whom not even the Emperor of the Empire dared touch lightly.
"If you plan to keep your feet planted in the North, you'd better not get on a Baltran's bad side. Even more so a direct heir who finished his Succession Ceremony at ten, wouldn't you say?"
It was a dangerous statement. What he had just said was as good as a declaration that he was entering the contest for the headship. If Tiok had heard it, it would have sounded to him like a plea to be killed on the spot.
On the other hand, it sounded as threatening to the trainees from other families as it was dangerous. These were people who eliminated even their own siblings to win. Couldn't they make the young child of some other family, who didn't even come up to a Baltran's toes, vanish without a trace?
What was Leon doing?
The gang looked around. He was standing a little way off, staring blankly.
He was a Baltran too, but Leon was still far too young to stand against Rohan.
"Well... still, I don't intend to just crush you with the family name."
Rohan relaxed the force in his eyes. Then he muttered as if to himself, looking elsewhere.
"About time the sweetness of the Succession Ceremony wore off anyway."
The boy in front of Rohan didn't understand what he meant. But soon he met Rohan's eyes again and shivered without realizing it.
"I'll give you a chance to challenge me."
The trainee in front of him had already been confirmed for promotion to the intermediate course. It was only right that Rohan be the one to challenge him.
But before anyone could weigh whether that was right, Rohan went on.
"To move up to the intermediate course, you have to beat 3 of the ones already confirmed for promotion, right?"
Is that right? At Rohan's question, the boy in front of him unconsciously nodded.
"Then you, you. And you."
Rohan pointed out three of them. They were the trainees who were usually closest to Leon. They were also the three best in the beginner course, apart from Leon.
"Fight me. I'm moving up to the intermediate course next year too."
At Rohan's declaration, the boys were at a loss for words for a moment and just stared at him. Even while picking fights with Rohan, they had privately felt uneasy about him.
For one thing, his name ended in Baltran. That much they had managed to cover by borrowing Leon's name, but once Rohan held his Succession Ceremony, even Leon had started quietly avoiding him.
What was more, Rohan had an air about him that was hard to ignore. In front of Rohan, they felt like herbivores in front of a carnivore.
If Rohan had known, he would have praised their good instincts. But the young children simply dismissed their instincts as a mistake.
So far, apart from the Succession Ceremony, Rohan had never really stood out. He ran the laps easily and showed a surprisingly quick grasp during sword training.... Their eyes deliberately looked away from that.
"You got lucky with your Succession Ceremony, and now you don't know your place."
The first one he'd pointed out shouted. It was the boy who had been standing right in front of Rohan. He was tall enough that Rohan's head only came up to his chest.
Rohan was a full two years younger than them. On top of that, he was much smaller. It never occurred to them that they could lose.
"Fine, we accept. No holding a grudge when you get beaten up. Youngest young master."
The second one he'd pointed out shouted. He was a trainee with blue hair. Compared to the deep blue hair of the Baltrans, it was a much brighter blue.
The trainees squared the shoulders they had hunched and found their nerve again. In a fair sword spar, there was no need to cower before the Baltran name.
Rohan smiled as he watched them.
'That's it. You need at least this much spirit to make hitting you worthwhile.'
He missed the feel of landing a blow. The feel he'd had when he'd just been thrown out of the Andelian family and wandered the wilds, catching wild boars for food.
'And it's about time I got myself a proper sword.'
Rohan meant to knock these three flat and earn the right to be promoted. A direct heir who earned promotion was given the chance to take an heirloom from the family's treasure vault.
Promotion within 1 year. Then, claiming one of the family's famous swords.
Everything was going exactly according to Rohan's plan.