3 — Chapter 3

“Why are you going this far to follow me?”

Lucas asked.
Serpens’s rough breathing had, before he knew it, found its rhythm again.
The bleeding stopped, and the pain disappeared.
It was an astonishing speed of recovery.
It was thanks to the golden bead Lucas had given him, the seed of the Golden Mandragora, also called a panacea.

‘A promise is a promise, so I must take him with me, but……’

A simple question arose in him.
Money? Honor? What exactly had made the boy risk even his life?

In the meantime, Serpens, who had regained his vitality, sprang to his feet.
Aside from a few wounds, it was to the point where one would not even know he had been injured.
The boy looked over every part of his body with eyes wide open.
When he realized the pain had gone, he smiled.

“I don’t know? I just had a feeling that following you would be good?”
“A feeling? You risked your life for something like that?”
“You could say that.”
“…….”

It was easy to tell that he was hiding something.
If Lucas pressed him, he would probably be able to find out.
However, Lucas was not the kind of person to deliberately pry into such things.

“Reckless brat.”

Tadadada.

Serpens ran across the field without thinking.
The boy closed both eyes, spread his arms, and ran as if he had become one with the slowly brightening field.

“Uhahahaha! I finally escaped! Goodbye, beggar life! Farewell to filthy Satus too!”

With his grimy face, Serpens let out a refreshing shout.
The boy felt the emotions that had piled up for over ten years being released.
He felt so happy that he would have no regrets even if he died like this.

“Uhahahaha!”

Serpens’s laughter rang across the field.

Lucas looked at the boy, who was excited to the fullest.
He knew that he did not have much time given to him.

‘At most, a year……’

The time before he returned to the battlefield.
Even estimating generously, one year was the maximum.
After that, even if he wanted to take the boy with him, it would be realistically impossible.
Not that he had any desire to do so.

‘A promise is a promise…… I should teach him the sword so that he can stand on his own within that time.’

It was not about making him learn simple fighting techniques.
He had to bring this child to a level where he could survive on his own.
Whether that meant the skill to escape the life of a petty thief, or the skill to protect himself amid the unstable situation to come.
That was the best consideration he could give.

“Haa……”

It was a troublesome matter that only made him sigh.
He had suddenly ended up with a disciple.

---

Clatter. Clink-clatter. Clatter.

Litoret, a port city in the western part of the continent.
A carriage entered the beautiful city beneath its unchanging warm sunlight.

“Luca……s. When…… Urk. When do we arrive?”

Serpens kept dry-heaving.
It was because of the ride, something he had never experienced in his life.

“We really are almost there.”
“I feel like I’ve heard that a hundred times.”
“You would. You must have asked a hundred times over the past three days.”
“If I had known I’d be this dizzy, I would have walked.”
“If we had walked, it would have taken about two weeks.”
“What kind of place is so far awa—”

Urk!

Lucas familiarly patted his back.

Litoret was where Lucas’s current residence was located.
Since it was a port town, it was easy to travel to various places, so he had settled there.

“I told you to at least sleep.”

Serpens tried to say something with an angry expression, then closed his mouth again.
Lucas thought it was fortunate that the boy before him was carsick.

“We have arrived!”

Then, the carriage stopped moving, and the coachman’s greeting announcing their arrival was heard.

“Get down. We really are here.”
“Yes……”

Serpens staggered down from the carriage and looked over the scenery of Litoret.

‘Damn it, it’s ridiculously beautiful.’

The warmly shining sunlight, the cool scent of the sea brushing his nose, the neat buildings, and people laughing pleasantly.
Despite feeling like he might collapse at any moment, he could vividly feel the beauty of this place.

Shff.

In the meantime, Lucas silently moved his feet.

“Ah, come on! Let’s go together!”

Tadadak.

The boy stopped admiring the view and hurried after the man.

---

Three days had passed since he had started following the man.
It was short if one called it short, but it was enough time to acquire information about someone.
But Serpens could not understand Lucas at all.

‘He isn’t a spy, right……?’

He had said he was a knight, but there was more than one suspicious thing about him.
Wealth of immense scale, completely disproportionate to his ragged appearance. Power beyond reason, enough to cleave through the clouds.
Even so, he had no recognition at all.
Had there not even been people who recognized some lowly apprentice knight who visited Satus?
When he thought of that person, the left cheek he had been struck on back then still throbbed.

But the man before him……

“Lucas?”
“……?”
“You really are a knight, right?”
“You could say that.”

Dryness seeped into the end of Lucas’s answer.

‘He’s definitely suspicious.’

The words “you could say that.’ If he thought about them carefully, they could also mean he was not an ‘ordinary knight.’
Something similar to a knight, or someone who had been a knight.
Perhaps he was someone like that.

Serpens’s eyebrow twitched.
It was a kind of habit that appeared whenever he thought deeply about something or realized something.
Lucas spoke to Serpens, whose face looked unconvinced.

“Don’t worry. I’m not a spy.”
“I never thought that.”
“I never said you thought that.”
“I said I didn’t think that.”
“Of course.”
“……Tch.”

Serpens didn’t care what kind of person Lucas was.
Even if he was a spy or an atrocious criminal.
He had no aversion toward criminals.
Was the boy himself not a pickpocket, a robber, and a violent offender?
When he could not even count his own prior offenses, who was he to blame?

Swaaaaa.

A cool wind blew in.
Lucas closed his mouth.
Serpens walked and walked beside him.

How much time had passed again?
The people passing by gradually decreased, and the densely packed buildings had also become sparse before he knew it.

“Lucas, I thought about it. You know what?”
“……?”
“Since I met you, I’ve only almost died or walked?”
“I know.”
“……?”
“……?”

Haa.

Serpens let out a sigh.
Even though he kept walking, since they were together, he was neither hungry nor lonely.
If the price was the blisters on his feet, it should be considered cheap.
He looked around.
There were only trees on the left and right, but if they kept walking, something would……

‘What is that?’

At that moment, a single enormous building came into view far in the distance.
A black house even larger than the village hall of Satus stood alone.
A house? No, at that size, it was a palace.
And when they walked a little farther and approached that building, Lucas opened his mouth.

“Let us go in.”
“Go…… in?”

Bewilderment settled on Serpens’s face.
What kind of person was he that he could casually come and go from a place like this?

They entered through the front gate, and an enormous building faced them before their eyes.
But when Lucas passed by the building’s door, a pure question arose in the boy.

“Aren’t we going inside?”
“Why would we go inside? The training ground is outside.”
“……Training ground? The place where you train to fight?”
“Yes.”
“Why there? No, more than that, why is something like that here?”
“In the end, I have come to take you with me, so one way or another, I must take responsibility as an adult. I will train you enough that you can protect yourself wherever you go. And there is no law that says a house cannot have a training ground.”

‘A house?’

Serpens’s mouth shut tight.
His eyebrows crumpled, and his eyes repeatedly moved from side to side.

‘What kind of person is he, really?’

Serpens’s suspicions only continued to grow.

---

“Hup!”

Whoosh.

“Huuup!”

Whoosh.

“Hap!”

Whoosh.

Serpens’s wooden sword cut through the air.
A slash from top to bottom.
It was a simple movement, but even something simple became difficult when repeated several hundred times.

“Heuaaa!”

Whoosh. Thunk.

“Haa……. Haa…….”

Teolsseok.

Serpens collapsed weakly to the ground.
He breathed roughly and looked down at his hands.

Blisters formed here and there.
Wounds where the blisters had been torn.
Fluid seeping from the wounds.
Because of the throbbing pain, he couldn’t even clench his hands the way he wanted.

“Stand up. You will rest after you complete your quota.”

Lucas lifted him up regardless.

‘Crazy bastard. He doesn’t know how to do things in moderation……!’

Having no choice, the boy lifted the wooden sword while desperately ignoring the screams of his arms.
He even gave himself a suggestion that the stinging was bearable.

‘Damn it, I can’t even complain when he’s training me.’

Whoosh.

Though it was difficult, it was rather fun in its own way.
He had never learned anything in his life.
Even his pickpocketing methods came from repeated experience through glancing sideways.
Taking someone as a teacher and learning his skill was quite an alluring act.
That was why he couldn’t give up.

Whoosh!

The unstable trajectory of the wooden sword.
That was Serpens’s best.
He stubbornly gathered the strength of his trembling arms.
Even if he squeezed out more than this, there was nothing left to squeeze out.

Whoosh.

He had not planned to follow Lucas and just laze around.
A reversal of his life through crumbs falling to him while doing nothing?
He wished for it, but there was no way it would be possible.
So if Lucas, a person who could even cut clouds, was teaching him the sword for free as a stepping stone for changing his life, should he not say, ‘Thank you!’ and work his ass off?

And if he reached that level……
If he became someone who could split the sky……

“That would be changing my life.”

Whoosh!

Serpens’s heart began to pound.
It was not the feeling of his whole body being crushed down like when he ran from the merchants.
It was a feeling as if his whole body, led by his heart, was being forced to move.
Lucas’s sword, which filled his mind, was forcing the boy to move.

Whoosh!

How long had he swung it?
Serpens’s hands were damaged as much as they could be.
Even so, Serpens didn’t lose focus.

‘Not bad.’

Lucas watched him without change.
Even when blood fell from his hands,
even when Serpens began to stagger.

‘Despite his physical limits, he has a strong ability to absorb what he learns. He may grow twice as fast as others.’

Thud.

Even until Serpens lost consciousness and collapsed, Lucas only continued watching.

The sky he looked up at was especially blue.
How had he ended up raising a disciple he had never planned on?
Was the problem that he had told the boy to try killing a Horn Wolf?
Was the problem that he had spent money to buy him food?
Or perhaps the problem was that he had saved his life……

“No, that is not it.”

The knight’s oath.
A rule that knights were required to swear in exchange for the empire’s support.
As the Sword Saint, he did not need support, but he had sworn that oath solely for the empire.

Oath Article 1, Clause 2.
A knight has the duty to protect the weak.

No matter how much of a petty thief he was, a child was still a child.
He could not let a child die.
Though he would have saved him even without the oath.

Whatever the case, the boy collapsed before him had to be taken along by him.
He could not guarantee until when.
Perhaps they would travel together until Serpens grew sick of him and left.

Tenacity to achieve a goal. Recklessness for survival. Passion that endured pain.
Even if one trained someone by force, at that age, it was not easy for such a stubborn one to appear.
Considering that……

‘If only his talent keeps up, he may be able to reach quite a high level.’

Smoothly.

Lucas rose from his seat.
He raised his hand and stroked the handle of the sword carried on his back.

A sword he had swung tens of thousands, hundreds of millions of times.
Even without looking, it came into his grip as if wrapping itself around his hand.

‘I swung it to protect.’

He had cut down the pack of Horn Wolves to protect Serpens.
A sword carrying his will.
It was the first time since he had refused the position of Imperial Knight Commander.
Even when he sparred, even when he killed monsters, he had only swung as things flowed.
It had truly been a long time since he had taken a stance for a purpose and swung his sword to protect someone.

Grab.

Lucas lifted the collapsed Serpens.

‘Has he fallen asleep?’

Of course he was tired.
He had barely slept, yet had trained enough to abuse his body.
Since it was training Lucas had ordered, and training he had done himself, he knew well how grueling it was.

Creak-.

The huge closed door opened.
Lucas carried Serpens into the house.

The corners of his stiff mouth rose faintly,
very faintly.

---

Rustle.

Serpens opened his eyes at a softness he was feeling for the first time.
Had he slept on top of a cloud?
Everything his hands touched was soft, and more than anything, he felt no pain in his waist.

“Where……”

So this was a bed.
Serpens lay back down, not wanting to part from the bed.
A softness he could feel even as he rolled this way and that.
It couldn’t even be compared to the sleeping places he had made from discarded boxes until now.

“You’re awake.”

At the familiar voice, Serpens came to his senses.
Inside an antique room.
Lucas, leaning against one wall, was looking at him.

“Yes. Thanks to you, I had a good sleep.”

It was probably thanks to Lucas that he could feel such refreshment.

“Your complexion has improved a lot.”
“I had a pleasant dream.”
“A dream?”
“Yes. A dream where I became someone strong like you and made a peaceful world.”

Serpens smiled bashfully.

Outside the window, it had already grown dark before he knew it.
It seemed he had slept for quite a long time.

Lucas spoke firmly, as usual.

“A dream is only a dream. Especially an absurd dream.”
“What part of it is absurd?”
“This is neither boasting nor disparaging, but realistically, it is impossible for you to reach the same level as me.”

The boy didn’t know it, but the level he dreamed of was Sword Saint.
It was a tree difficult to climb even if one died and came back.

‘Considering that there are only three Sword Masters among the empire’s population of two hundred million……’

It was true that it was impossible for Serpens to reach that level.
Lucas was not the type to plant pointless hope.

“It’s a dream because it’s absurd and impossible. Challenging the impossible is the process of making a dream come true.”

Though Lucas had cut off his hope sharply, Serpens was not discouraged at all.
Because it was a fact he already recognized.
He was in a situation where he struggled to cut down even a demonic beast placed before him.
For someone like him to split the sky? It was a dream that even a passing dog would snort at.

But the boy made that his dream.
Because, as he said, a dream was absurd by nature.
And because it was the fruit that formed for those who worked hard.

“In a beggar’s life, waking up in a bed is something like a dream. And I just did that. It means even if something seems absurd and impossible, it can eventually be achieved.”

Serpens smiled.
If he lived tenaciously, he could achieve it.
Even if he couldn’t achieve it, if he pursued the goal, would he not at least reach somewhere similar?

“Come to think of it, you asked me why I followed you, right?”

Serpens stretched.
The sounds of bones coming from all over his body spoke for how refreshed he felt.

“I guess I wanted to challenge the impossible called a dream.”

Lucas’s eyes blinked quietly.
After thinking for a moment, he finally picked up his greatsword.
Then he gave the best answer he could.

“Follow me outside. We will resume training.”