The Cartel Academy.
An academy run by the Valheim Kingdom, it was an educational institution where all the talent in the kingdom gathered.
Since it judged solely on ability rather than status, quite a few commoners got in as well.
As a place where much talent gathered, many royals and nobles enrolled too, making it practically the kingdom's arena of opportunity.
Above all, the Cartel Academy's greatest strength was that it held a neutral position, making no distinction between the Royalist Faction and the Noble Faction.
Looking at that fact alone, it wasn't such a bad thing.
Kalios had the memories of his past life, but his sword couldn't be called the best even in the current era.
As the eras passed, swordsmanship had been continually refined and kept developing in far better directions.
The Leon family itself was a case in point.
They hadn't been able to fully interpret and use the swordsmanship Kalios left behind, but they had improved it in their own way and found much better directions.
Their sword couldn't be said to be inferior to the swordsmanship Kalios had left behind.
Every swordsmanship had potential, and how far one could take it depended on effort and talent.
Hadn't Kalios himself created a swordsmanship?
The world was full of all kinds of people, and among them, there could be geniuses who surpassed Kalios.
To him, the Academy felt like a place of exchange where he could catch glimpses of new swordsmanship.
There was no reason to refuse the offer.
Above all, he couldn't ignore the look Luhaman had given him.
A look mixed with every kind of emotion: love for his son, guilt, coldness.
That look held a power that couldn't be put into words.
Kalios accepted the Academy's invitation and would leave for the Academy in two months.
“You are going to the Academy?”
“Yeah. I'm leaving in two months.”
“Hmm...”
Kalios didn't hide it.
Everyone would know in two months anyway, so why hide it?
There was no reason to hide it, and upon hearing he was going to the Academy, Deon looked greatly surprised.
“Until then, I'll be at the training grounds the whole time. Just so you know.”
“...Yes.”
Deon nodded at Kalios's words.
His face as he nodded looked as though he had resolved something.
Kalios glanced at him, then turned and walked off.
Two months.
In that time, he planned to bring his body as close to normal as possible.
***
WHOOSH!
A corner of the training grounds.
The sound of Kalios swinging his wooden sword rang out across the training grounds.
Deon stood a short distance away, quietly watching Kalios.
Kalios was panting and dripping with sweat.
The hands gripping the wooden sword trembled as if they might drop it at any moment, and his arms and legs wobbled like a newborn calf's.
He was in a state where collapsing on the spot wouldn't have been strange at all, but Kalios never dropped the wooden sword.
WHOOSH!
“Haah...! Haah...!”
He might gasp for breath with every swing, but he never stopped.
Tenacity that went beyond stubbornness.
In the way Kalios swung the wooden sword, one could glimpse a tenacity that made even knights who had swung swords all their lives wag their tongues in amazement.
“Deon. Shouldn't you stop him?”
“He's going to collapse at this rate.”
Deon wasn't the only one watching Kalios.
Like Deon, the knights of the Leon family also used the training grounds, and every time they came in, they showed concern at the sight of Kalios panting as if he were about to die.
Kalios might be an incompetent good-for-nothing, but he was still their liege's son and a superior they would one day have to serve.
And such a person looked like he might stop breathing at any moment.
Who could just stand by in a situation like that?
They couldn't approach Kalios directly, but they could at least talk to Deon, who lived in the same quarters as them.
The knights were saying they didn't want to be holding a funeral for their liege's son.
Despite their words, Deon kept quietly watching Kalios.
‘Stop that?’
Deon couldn't heed their words.
It wasn't that he wasn't worried about Kalios himself.
He was worried, and at first, he had even said something a few times.
Kalios had simply laughed off his words and continued to show a fierce fixation on the sword.
In that, Deon could glimpse Kalios's tenacity.
Kalios had an iron will that no one could stop.
It was as if he would not quit until he died.
“...Fine. I guess you'll handle it yourself.”
“Come to think of it, that Deon isn't normal either.”
“If the Young Master collapses like that, it's not on me, got it?”
Despite his colleagues' voices, Deon stayed still with his arms crossed.
Deon watched Kalios and watched his sword.
To others, it might look like Kalios was swinging his sword aimlessly.
Unsystematic, just swinging from top to bottom.
It would have been better if he received some instruction, but Kalios was swinging his sword alone without anyone's help.
At first, Deon had thought something similar watching Kalios.
But as he kept watching him swing the sword, he came to think differently.
Kalios's sword, which he had thought was unsystematic and aimless, grew sharper as time went on.
His top-down strikes were extremely clean.
The more he saw Kalios change, the more his thinking had to change too.
‘What I felt during the spar with Lanius wasn't my imagination.’
Deon's eyes sparkled as he looked at Kalios.
When Kalios sparred with Lanius, and when he sparred with the squire too, others said he had been lucky, but that wasn't how Deon saw it.
Kalios had seen both their swords and aimed for the opening between them.
Something impossible without both talent and effort.
That was why Deon had questions.
‘Why has he hidden such talent until now?’
The Kalios he saw was a talented person.
He had talent with the sword and an eye that saw situations coolly.
If he had shown this side of himself earlier—or at the very least, had he not lived as a good-for-nothing—people's opinion of Kalios would be different now.
Seeing him like this, who could call him incompetent?
Deon thought about why Kalios had to hide his talent.
The reason Kalios had to hide his talent.
Pondering what it could be, he arrived at a hypothesis.
The Cartel Academy.
That Kalios had been waiting until he could go to the Academy.
That he had deliberately acted like a good-for-nothing and made himself look pathetic.
Considering the Leon family's position, Kalios's actions made sense.
A family of traitors.
In the eyes of the world, the Leon Ducal House was known as the traitor ducal house.
The first family head had been accused of colluding with a foreign nation and died during a war.
The Leon family swore an oath of loyalty to the royal family, and thanks to that, they survived.
An oath spanning five generations.
It was an oath to remain loyal for 200 years, and since the Leon family was powerful at the time, the royal family, fearing war, accepted it.
Now, with 200 years having passed, the oath between the Leon family and the royal family would end with Luhaman as the last.
Naturally, the royal family could not help but be wary of the Leon family.
It was a family that had produced a Sword Master, and even now it steadily produced high-caliber knights.
Luhaman himself was a High-Grade Knight.
And a High-Grade Knight whose power rivaled Special Grade, at that.
Considering that Master came right after Special Grade, the Leon family's potential was at a level the royal family couldn't ignore.
Moreover, the oath would end the moment Kalios became duke.
Kalios had known this and hidden himself.
Because revealing himself could put him in danger.
He had waited in order to survive and to bide his time for the future, and now that he was old enough to enter the Academy, where his safety was guaranteed, and had received an invitation, Kalios no longer had any reason to hide his talent.
‘So he's of the lion's bloodline after all?’
Having reached that point in his thinking, Deon marveled at Kalios's foresight.
That he had thought that far at such a young age seemed remarkable.
Could he have done the same?
He strongly felt that he couldn't have.
After all, as a child, he had gone around bragging to everyone that he seemed to have talent with the sword.
That was what being young was.
Acting while drunk on the mood of the moment, without thinking of the consequences.
However brilliant a prodigy might be, in the end, they were still a child.
A child lacking life experience, prone to mistakes, and short on thought.
But then what on earth was Kalios?
Judgment, and even the ability to act on that judgment.
‘Come to think of it. I've never heard of the Young Master actually harming anyone.’
Deon had heard the rumors about Kalios and had watched him from right beside him for the past two or three years.
In his eyes, Kalios had never harmed anyone.
He might splash water on people or curse at them, but he had never used physical force directly.
People had merely called him a good-for-nothing based on his words and actions; the truth was that not a single person had actually been harmed.
Then everything could be explained.
To avoid the royal family's wariness, he had deliberately become an incompetent good-for-nothing and given up everything he should rightfully have enjoyed as a young lord of a ducal house.
Considering that Kalios had been acting like a good-for-nothing since he was six or seven, it was even more impressive.
Patience, and the drive to carry out his plans.
Kalios had all of it.
He was someone who restrained himself, a person who thought about the future.
Realizing this, Deon couldn't help but be deeply moved.
The fact that his liege's son possessed such remarkable talent made him proud.
“Young Master. Please at least drink this before you continue. It is an evening primrose decoction that invigorates the body.”
“...Thanks. I'll drink it.”
Glancing at Deon, Kalios took the cup from him and gulped it down.
Watching Kalios drink every last drop, Deon smiled contentedly.
The thought that serving Kalios would be more rewarding from now on already put him in a good mood.
‘You are my future liege, Young Master. I will always support you.’
Looking at Kalios, Deon clenched his fist tightly.
He had come to know Kalios's true character and was convinced he was a man fully worthy of his service.
‘There's no way a lion wouldn't be born of a lion.’