The week Karl had been given might have seemed like plenty of time, but in reality, it was so short that it might as well have been nothing.
First, an entire day vanished in the process of receiving and inspecting various supplies.
Then he had to spend another full day familiarizing himself with information about the Barony of Hilpin, a place whose location he had not even known, along with reports concerning the monster subjugation. Harmon’s assistance proved invaluable in that regard.
The third day passed as Karl studied the reported information about the monsters and the tactics to be used against them, then gathered the thirty soldiers who would accompany him and at least showed them his face once.
And with the addition of Catherine and Bilford, the fourth day disappeared in the blink of an eye as well.
Before he knew it, the fifth day had arrived, leaving Karl with only two more days before he had to depart for the monster subjugation.
The problem was that he had been so busy that he had not even attempted the things he needed most urgently, such as practicing horseback riding or learning swordsmanship.
Ordinary nobles usually learned at least basic riding and swordsmanship as part of their education before reaching the age of ten. The revelation that a sixteen-year-old imperial prince did not even know how to ride a horse came as an enormous shock to everyone.
Karl spent the entire morning in the Imperial Archives working on his atrocious handwriting and the basic education unacceptable for an imperial prince, then barely managed to free up enough time in the afternoon to seek out Catherine.
Catherine was dissatisfied with having become Karl’s knight, but she was at least pleased with the privileges that came with serving a member of the Imperial Family.
She was training alone without interruption in a spacious room located in a remote part of the Imperial Palace. Under ordinary circumstances, she would have been harried by the highborn nobles and forced to waste her time dealing with various troublesome errands.
“Sir Catherine, I need your assistance.”
Though in the end, Karl had come looking for her, so perhaps things were not all that different.
Catherine sighed inwardly, but her expression did not change as she answered calmly.
“Yes. Give me your command.”
They were departing in two days. What could he possibly need?
Then Karl spoke, and Catherine nearly felt her vision go dark.
“I would like to learn horseback riding and swordsmanship.”
First, she was shocked that he had reached the age of sixteen without knowing either.
Then she was baffled as to why he had come to her instead of learning through the Imperial Family.
“Yes. Let us go immediately.”
But Catherine’s way as a knight was to obey without complaint, so she coolly escorted Karl straight to the training grounds.
“Bilford.”
“Yes, Sir Catherine.”
Bilford, still nothing more than a squire, quickly ran off, while Harmon, Karl’s attendant, perceptively left to handle his own duties as well.
As one of the privileges granted to royalty, Karl was permitted to use the training grounds inside the Imperial Palace reserved exclusively for members of the Imperial Family.
To his horror, imperial children who had not even reached the age of ten were there with their mothers, learning to ride horses and swing swords as part of their basic education.
Karl had quite a few younger siblings.
But they had never even been named in the original story, nor did they possess any real power.
After Aingir became emperor, they would all be purged. Like Karl, they existed merely as narrative devices meant to demonstrate Aingir’s ruthlessness.
The problem was that Karl, a sixteen-year-old adult, was now receiving instruction alongside them—and from Catherine, who was merely a knight.
There was no way that could look good.
The First through Third Princes had all been highly talented and had grown up receiving enough support to begin separate training as soon as they were old enough.
They had hardly ever needed to use this training ground at all.
“…….”
“…….”
While Bilford and Harmon went to bring the horses, Karl fidgeted with his hands, uncomfortable with Catherine standing utterly motionless beside him.
Trying to ease the atmosphere, he finally spoke.
“Sir Catherine, is there anything you are curious about?”
“No.”
“…….”
Karl regretted the question the moment it left his mouth.
That was one of the questions people least wanted to hear from a superior during an awkward silence.
Naturally she had nothing to ask.
She probably had no desire to know anything about him in the first place.
And even if she did have questions, it was hardly easy to ask them honestly.
At Catherine’s firm answer, Karl awkwardly fiddled with his unfamiliar breastplate and the hilt of the sword at his waist.
Catherine’s eyes shifted slightly, as though she too had been caught off guard.
It would actually have been easier if Karl had looked down on her arrogantly and barked orders at her.
Instead, despite being an imperial prince, he treated Catherine, a mere knight, with extraordinary courtesy and caution.
“I know you have grievances against me.”
“…….”
Catherine’s fingertips twitched at Karl’s quiet words.
“I know what you think of me. But I am sorry—no, never mind. …I need you.”
Karl swallowed the apology.
Even feeling sorry was a luxury.
Catherine silently turned his words over in her mind.
After a brief moment filled with far more thought than its length suggested, she finally spoke.
“I do not understand why you chose me.”
Catherine was the sort of woman who had no hesitation once she made up her mind, and the words came out so sharply that they almost sounded like an accusation.
Fortunately, Catherine knew she was poor with words and quickly added an explanation before a misunderstanding could form.
“My family is insignificant, and my skills are unremarkable. You could have chosen a far superior knight, Lord Karl.”
Catherine understood her own shortcomings painfully well.
Karl pressed his lips together and stared at the imperial children playing around the training grounds before speaking.
“I do not currently possess enough power to control a high-ranking noble family. I wanted a knight like you, someone with nowhere else to turn and therefore unable to leave me.”
“…….”
They were cruel words.
But they were honest as well.
“As for your skill…….”
Karl turned his head and looked up at Catherine, who stood slightly behind him on his right.
“…Anyone who becomes an Imperial Knight must possess at least a certain level of ability. I chose you because you were more desperate and more relentless than anyone else there.”
“…….”
“I needed a knight who, when cornered with me, would not run away, would not cut off my head, but would fight to the very end, protect me, and carve open a path to survival. You were the thirstiest person there. ……Just like me.”
Catherine did not answer.
But she had become certain of one thing.
This young, frail Fourth Prince thought far more deeply than the rumors suggested.
And he was desperately cornered.
Someone this desperate would not make a decision without reason.
He must have chosen Catherine for his own purposes after thinking as carefully as he possibly could.
That was enough.
Catherine would simply do everything she could to fulfill the duty entrusted to her.
A brief silence followed.
But unlike before, it was not entirely awkward.
Incidentally, Karl learned horseback riding remarkably quickly.
Within a single day, he became proficient enough to control a horse at an ordinary pace, and he soon learned to manage it while galloping as well.
The fact that the warhorse given to him by the emperor was exceptionally well trained also helped.
Horseback riding was far more physically demanding than it appeared.
Even so, Karl kept up with his unexpected strength and stamina, which greatly surprised Catherine.
There was only one thing that bothered her.
Karl had admired the magnificent white horse, but he had not even bothered to give it a name.
He merely followed Catherine’s instructions, stroking its muzzle and neck with mild curiosity before mounting and riding it.
Despite being given such a magnificent warhorse, Karl felt nothing more for it.
He had been given the horse, so he would use it.
That was all.
His desperation left him no room to become attached to a mere animal.
To Karl, a horse was only a horse and possessed no value beyond that.
Viewed another way, however, it meant that Catherine, whom Karl had chosen personally, held that much greater value to him.
Catherine found this sickly prince, who had supposedly spent his entire life confined to a bedroom, rather strange.
***
“I only need to learn the fundamentals, so I will have Bilford teach me.”
“But Bilford is merely a squire.”
“That is fine. You should spend your time on yourself.”
Karl decided to learn swordsmanship from Bilford.
Part of the reason was that he wanted to build a relationship with Bilford, who would prove extremely useful in the future.
But it was also simply because he only intended to learn the fundamentals, so there was no real need for Catherine herself to teach him.
Bilford suddenly found himself appointed as an imperial prince’s swordsmanship instructor and looked helplessly toward Catherine.
But Karl had already made his decision, and there was no possibility that Catherine would oppose him.
Under Catherine’s stern gaze, Bilford hesitantly picked up a wooden sword and stood before Karl.
Behind Karl, Harmon lowered his head, raised an eyebrow, and stared quietly at Bilford.
He seemed somewhat flustered as well.
Harmon was afraid Bilford might accidentally kill the sickly Karl, thereby placing Harmon’s own position in jeopardy, so he gave the boy a pointed look.
“Do not be nervous. I have to learn eventually, and it would be better to learn from the squire of the diligent Sir Catherine.”
“…Yes, Lord Karl.”
Bilford still looked confused, but apparently decided that obeying Karl, an imperial prince, was wiser than heeding Harmon, an attendant.
He tightened his grip on the wooden sword and assumed his stance.
Karl saw Harmon close his eyes and silently sigh.
……This was right, was it not?
He was supposed to obey the imperial prince.
“Assume the same stance as me.”
Bilford stepped forward with his right foot and held the wooden sword at mid-level, angling its point toward Karl.
Bilford was merely demonstrating the posture for Karl to imitate.
Yet Karl felt such pressure from the tip of that completely blunt wooden sword that it seemed to pierce straight through his throat.
“Lord Karl?”
“……Ah. No, your presence merely startled me. It felt as though my throat had been pierced.”
Flustered, Karl belatedly copied Bilford’s stance.
Bilford raised an eyebrow at Karl’s words, then slightly lowered the point of his sword toward Karl’s chest.
Following him, Karl moved his right foot forward and aimed his own wooden sword from a middle guard toward Bilford.
Bilford was nearly two handspans taller than Karl, so Karl’s sword naturally pointed somewhere around Bilford’s solar plexus.
Unsure whether he was imitating the stance correctly, Karl glanced down at his legs and adjusted the distance between his feet and the angle of his stance.
Then he raised his head.
Seeing that the taller, longer-reaching Bilford had lowered his sword toward Karl’s exposed chest, Karl instinctively whipped his own blade upward from Bilford’s solar plexus and intercepted it.
“……Good. Excellent.”
Bilford looked as though he had many things he wanted to say, but he offered the praise anyway.
“I do not need praise. Give me advice so that I can improve.”
“No, I truly mean that you are doing very well.”
Bilford shook his head at Karl’s words and spoke seriously.
“The foundation of every martial art is protecting yourself. At this moment, Lord Karl, you are protecting yourself very well.”
“…Do you mean I became frightened and curled up defensively?”
“What? No! I mean that you are doing well!”
Bilford recoiled in alarm at Karl’s cautious question and frantically waved his hands.
Karl truly was doing surprisingly well.
One glance at his posture made it obvious that this was the first time he had ever held a sword.
More than anything else, his grip was a complete mess.
And yet, after adjusting his stance on his own only a few times, he had somehow settled into a clean middle guard and intercepted Bilford’s sword.
It was simple.
But countless people spent their entire lives practicing basic stances because they could not accomplish something this simple.
The fundamentals were called fundamentals for a reason.
Once someone picked up a sword as a swordsman, they had to be able to assume the correct basic posture without fail.
If the point of the sword dipped even slightly by mistake, a basic attack could split their head open.
In that sense, Karl was somewhat passive, with his upper body leaning backward, but when it came to protecting himself, he had done so perfectly.
Judging the stance alone, Bilford could give him forty points.
Considering that this was the first time Karl had ever held a sword, even a perfect score of one hundred would not have been excessive.
“Truly? …It does not seem that way.”
Despite having assumed a proper stance, Karl continued questioning Bilford relentlessly.
From Karl’s perspective, Bilford seemed intimidated by him and was trying to smooth things over with empty flattery.
‘There is no possible way I have talent for swordsmanship!’
‘Fourth Prince Karl’ had spent his entire life lying in bed, while Han Changin possessed the mysterious gift of sending any ball that touched his body flying in a completely random direction.
As a result, he had avoided sports his entire life.
Once, during a school athletic festival, there had not been enough players, so he had been forced to join a soccer match as a defender after being told to do nothing except clear the ball away.
He had kicked it with all his strength, only for it to skim along the ground at a bizarre angle and land perfectly at the feet of an opposing striker.
That had effectively made Han Changin the opposing team’s most valuable player.
The pass had been so accurate that the striker had initially assumed it came from his own teammate and even ran toward Han Changin afterward.
Because of experiences like that, Karl was trapped in such deep suspicion that he could not take praise as praise no matter how nicely Bilford phrased it.
‘This bastard! He is insulting me indirectly!’
Eventually, Karl became convinced that Bilford, resentful toward him, was employing an advanced technique of veiled mockery.
Insulting someone through praise.
For such a young boy, he was remarkably devious and sophisticated.
And yet this same brat would grow into such a loyal knight.
The world truly was impossible to understand.
“Ah, well, lean your body slightly farther forward….”
“Like this?”
“Yes, but just a little more…. Yes, that is good. And when holding the sword…….”
“Instead of explaining it, just position me yourself.”
“How could I possibly lay my hands on your body, Lord Karl?”
“Are you saying that you dislike even touching me?”
“No!”
Bilford’s mouth went completely dry at Karl’s sensitive reaction.
Indeed, this was precisely the sort of hysterical temperament one might expect from a sickly imperial prince who had spent his entire life confined to a bed.
The fact that this man would now hold Bilford’s and Catherine’s lives in his hands as their lord was genuinely terrifying.
‘Hmm. He is teaching him well.’
Catherine turned at the raised voices, took one look at Karl’s stance, nodded in satisfaction, then turned away again.
Bilford was a remarkably talented boy.
At the same time, having studied under the steady and disciplined Catherine, he possessed excellent fundamentals and emphasized the unity of offense and defense.
He would teach Karl very well.
“Why are you not teaching me properly? Do you dislike teaching me that much?”
“You are doing well! Please! Sir Catherine!”
Only after Bilford clutched his hair in anguish and screamed for help did Catherine finally realize what was happening.
“For someone holding a sword for the first time, you are doing extremely well.”
“……If you say so, Sir Catherine…….”
Seeing Karl immediately accept Catherine’s single sentence, Bilford was overwhelmed by resentment and injustice.
He secretly pounded his chest behind Karl’s back.
He almost wanted to smack Karl on the head.
But striking him would count as assaulting a member of the Imperial Family, so just this once……. No, in any case, Bilford would endure it.
Besides, if he actually hit the sickly Karl, the prince might die.
After a moment of hesitation, Catherine patted Bilford once on the shoulder.
“You are doing well.”
“…Yes! Sir Catherine!”
Praise from Catherine was exceedingly rare.
Bilford beamed and nodded enthusiastically.
Perhaps teaching Karl would not be so bad after all.