Chapter 4

Lucas was staring at Serpens as he swung his sword.

‘He says he will challenge the impossible.’

Memories of his childhood rose from deep within.
A boy born as a farmer’s son who took up the sword in order to become a knight who protected his village.
Of course, that child had not desired titles such as Sword Master or Sword Saint.
He simply needed the strength to protect his family, and as he wished for that, his talent had bloomed before he knew it.

Could the boy over there do the same?
A boy similar to him, yet different.
The size of the talent hidden inside could not be known accurately until it manifested.
He only hoped it was large enough to achieve the impossible that boy dreamed of.

Whoosh!

Proper strength began to settle into Serpens’s sword.

The time it took for a boy who had never even held a sword to form a perfect stance was half a day.
For Serpens, who had no habits of his own, Lucas’s teachings were like lines drawn on a blank sheet of paper.
That was a small possibility for increasing the size of his talent.
It was the possibility of effectively developing a learned talent called effort, not an innate one.

“Put more power into it. Precision is something you adjust gradually. Trying to seize both from the beginning is greed.”

That was why Lucas drew the lines even more carefully.
Because he was also the one who would leave errors on that blank sheet.

Whoosh-

Whoosh!

“Stop.”

Thud.

Around the time strength left the boy’s arms, Lucas stopped the training.

Five hundred times.
That was the number of times Serpens had swung the sword today.

It sounded easy in words, but it absolutely wasn’t.
Vertical slashes with full strength.
No matter that it was a wooden sword, continuously swinging a sword required considerable stamina.
Moreover, at his age, with a proper stance, even fifty times would be difficult, let alone five hundred.

“The sun will rise soon. We will go eat breakfast. Rest until then.”
“Yes!”

But Serpens had silently swung five hundred times until Lucas told him to stop.

There were various talents needed in the sword.
Stamina, which was the foundation of everything.
The ability to absorb what one learns, for improving one’s skill.
Persistence that did not give up, and adaptability that encompassed all of it.
Only when such talents harmonized could the boy even try to set foot in the realm he wanted.

‘It would be a lie to say I’m not looking forward to it.’

It was still far too early to judge.
This was only the second time Serpens had trained.
His stamina, his persistence, his ability to absorb what he learned.
It was right to say it was too early to judge from how he looked now.
However……

“If he continues like this, it will not be impossible.”

Eyes filled with conviction.
Those eyes would not break easily.
If he could only maintain his current passion, Lucas might be able to raise him to Sword Expert.
If only he maintained his passion.

‘I should set that as the goal.’

For someone who had first held a sword to reach the realm of Expert in one year was practically impossible.
It was a speed that might not even be granted to the rarest geniuses.
Still, it didn’t matter.
He did not care what this boy’s talent was like.

Even if he did not reach Expert, the time and effort spent would never disappear.
So he set the goal high.
Though the boy would be the one to suffer.

“Eutcha!”

Whether he knew Lucas’s thoughts or not,
Serpens, who had been catching his breath, sprang to his feet.
It was the first time his stinging hands felt nothing but proud.

The sky gradually brightened.
Litoret’s gentle sun revealed itself.

Rumble.

In the middle of that, Serpens’s stomach quietly growled.

He was hungry.
But strangely, he did not feel impatient.
Was it because he believed Lucas would take care of his meal?
Whatever it was, it was not a bad feeling.

“I wonder what I’ll eat today.”

Waiting for food.

At the situation he was experiencing for the first time, the corners of the boy’s mouth began to twitch.

---

“Damn it.”

But before long, Serpens’s expectations collapsed miserably.
In front of the restaurant he had come to alone.
Serpens frowned and read Lucas’s letter once again.

‘I have somewhere to go briefly, so buy yourself a meal with this. It should be enough.’

A single silver coin and Lucas’s letter were held in his hand.
It was enough money to try every item on the menu at a fairly decent restaurant.
But what good was having money like that?

Boom!

The restaurant door opened loudly.
Naturally, everyone’s attention focused on him.

“Give me the tastiest thing here.”

Serpens stood at the entrance with the sternest expression he could manage.
The foot he had kicked the door with throbbed, but the boy decided to endure it calmly.

‘I’m grateful he gave me so much money, but who gives someone a trial like this without saying anything?’

That was right.
The twelve-year-old boy had never ordered food at a restaurant before.

Some people quickly turned their heads, thinking he was just some strange fellow.
But others looked sourly at the one who had disturbed their peaceful morning.

“……If you’re looking for the most popular food, it’s chop steak and beer.”

The employee said this while looking Serpens up and down.
Messy brown hair and a grimy face.
Torn clothes closer to scraps of cloth, and hands that looked like they needed to be disinfected first.

‘Was there a young beggar in this town?’

A sneer began to seep into the words directed at the young beggar.
The employee continued.

“Even excluding the beer, the chop steak is one silver coin. Since we follow the recipe made by an imperial chef exactly, surely you understand that it cannot help being expensive?”

Serpens immediately realized that the other party was looking down on him.
Because the employee’s eyes and tone were no different from the ones he had lived with his entire life in Satus.

‘No matter how expensive the food is, one silver coin at a small restaurant like this?’

The employee’s words were a lie.
About two hundred copper coins made one silver coin. About twenty silver coins made one gold coin.
It seemed he had named a high price in order to drive away the young beggar.
But the beggar before him was not an ordinary beggar.
A being who had survived his entire life through quick wits alone. A being mad for money.
He was a genius beggar who had long since mastered things like market prices.

“The best value food is the breakfast fish and chips, and it costs only two copper coins. Should I give you that?”

Contempt was contained in the round eyes that seemed to be offering help sincerely.

“Haa…….”

Serpens let out a sigh.

Would he have been less unhappy if he simply did not know the true meaning of those eyes?
Even if he noticed it, could he avoid being unhappy by pretending not to know and going along with the mood?

“Give me the chop steak.”

Cling.

The silver coin left Serpens’s hand and was thrown to the employee.
It was something he would never normally do. Letting himself be fooled by a money trick.
But Serpens ended up doing the very sucker’s act he hated so much.
There were two reasons.
First, that money belonged to Serpens.
Second, he wanted to screw over the eyes of contempt directed at him.

Slide.

Ignoring the employee staring at him with widened eyes, the boy took a seat by the window.

‘This rotten life.’

If you did not know the hidden meaning in people’s eyes, you became a fool.
Even if you noticed it, if you matched yourself to the other person, you became a sucker.
At least in Serpens’s experience, that was how it was.

“……All right.”

The employee had no choice but to go prepare the food with a blank expression.
Perhaps because he was quite flustered, he glanced at Serpens several times.

“Hey, kid!”

Someone spoke to Serpens, whose mood had been completely ruined.

“Don’t feel too offended. If you enter a shop looking like that, of course you’ll be misunderstood.”

When he turned his head toward the voice, there was a huge man with a thick dark red beard who, for some reason, looked extremely excited.

“You’re not wrong. Thank you for the advice.”
“Cut the empty words. You were offended by what I said too.”
“No.”
“I think you were.”
“No.”
“I said you were.”
“No!”

Serpens’s voice grew louder.
The two fists on his lap were clenched tight.

“Raising your voice makes you less convincing.”

A gentle way of speaking that did not match his bear-like build.
The grinning man drank the remaining beer in his mug in one go.

“Kya! Don’t worry. I said you looked like that, but I wasn’t trying to insult you. One of my comrades is worse than you.”
“I’m not curious.”
“Mm, that’s fine. I didn’t say it because you looked curious.”

Serpens, feeling as if he was being pulled into the man’s pace, decided to ignore him.
A drunkard was as hard to deal with as a hungry beggar.
It was a self-deprecating thing to say, but there was nothing good about dealing with either of them.

Slide.

“Eusha!”
“……?”

But then, the man joined Serpens at his table with an extremely excited expression.
What kind of situation was this now?
The flustered Serpens blinked with widened eyes.

“Want me to tell you something interesting, boy?”

His build and his personality were both beyond what Serpens could handle.
Was this what people meant by raising both hands and feet in surrender?

“Fine. Please tell me.”
“You know that employee from earlier? He just called the guards. You know, that magic tool the guards handed out to press in dangerous or suspicious situations.”

There was such a thing?
In any case, guards were never helpful.
Guards.
Those responsible for the village’s public order were one of the kinds of people Serpens’s body rejected.

“Why?! I didn’t even do anything wrong!”
“Your clothes make you look exactly like a beggar. But then you suddenly had one silver coin. Looks like he thought it was dirty money.”
“Ugh.”

Judging people by what one sees on the outside is not a good thing.
But Serpens himself could not deny that his current state looked like a beggar’s.
And it was not exactly wrong.

In this world these days, even if a beggar shoved their pitifulness in someone’s face, people might or might not throw them a single copper coin.
But if a young-looking brat took out a silver coin……

‘There is definitely enough room for misunderstanding.’

Serpens moved his eyes this way and that while shaking his leg.

The window right in front of him, the unblocked door, and the stairs leading upstairs.
He instinctively checked the possible escape routes in advance.

“……Thank you for telling me.”

It didn’t matter even if the man’s words were a lie.
If it was a lie, he could sit here and enjoy his one-silver-coin meal.
If it was true, he could escape through the route he had checked.

“Are you thinking of running first? If you’re innocent, you can just prove it.”

He was certainly not an ordinary person.
Didn’t that mean he had read Serpens’s eyes while drunk?

“I don’t know about other times, but this time, I feel like getting involved with the guards would cause trouble. Not for me, but for someone else.”

Serpens hardened his resolve.
Even if the man’s words were a lie, he would leave this place for now.

The boy hurriedly rose from his seat.

His judgment was that, as long as he did not know Lucas’s exact identity, there would be nothing good about getting involved with the guards.
At the very least, he had promised that he would not cause trouble, so he had to be careful with his actions.

Slide.

“Wait.”

But at that moment, the man grabbed Serpens’s arm as he rose from his seat.
At the fairly strong grip, his expression crumpled at once.

Click clack. Click clack

And the sound of horse hooves came from beyond the window.
The guards were approaching.
Because of that, Serpens, now in a hurry, was about to shake off the man,

“Have you ever seen someone like this?”

The single sheet of paper the man handed him.
On it was drawn a person Serpens knew.

“……I have never seen him before.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”

He did his best to maintain his composure.
The one drawn on the paper was clearly Lucas.
He looked neater than the Lucas he knew, but the eyes that revealed no emotion and the cold aura that even a drawing couldn’t hide were certainly the Lucas he knew.

‘He’s not a wanted criminal, so what is this……’

For whatever reason, a face drawn on paper was not exactly a good thing.
Serpens knew at least that much.

“Is that so?”
“…….”

Only after they met eyes a while longer did the hand holding Serpens loosen.
The boy slowly rubbed the aching spot and glared at the man.
The man shrugged as if apologizing.

‘Weird bastard.’

He was not even worth sighing over.
Moreover, right now, leaving this place came first.

Clack. Swish.

Serpens climbed through the window with a smooth movement.

Tadak.

And after landing perfectly, the boy ran toward Lucas’s residence without looking back.
Thinking that he had to tell him everything that had just happened.

Bang!

In the meantime, the restaurant door opened.

“We came after receiving a report! Where is the person who reported a thief……?”

Two guards entered with light armament.
The two swept their gazes across the restaurant.

“Ah! It was me! The kid sitting by the window over there!”

The employee hurriedly ran out.

“He was…… over there?”

Where his fingertip pointed, there was only a wide-open window and a drunkard enjoying the cool breeze.

In the current situation, it would become as if he had made a false report.
The employee’s hand trembled.

There was a law made to prevent wasting the guards’ precious manpower.
In the event of a false report, the reporter would receive the punishment of the suspect in the report instead.
Under that law, theft was a crime punished by cutting off a body part depending on its scale.
Since one silver coin could mean his wrist might be cut off, the employee had no choice but to tremble in fear.

“N…… no, it’s true! A beggar definitely came in!”

The employee turned his body to explain.

“……?”

But surprisingly, the guards were not paying attention to him.
Their wavering eyes. Those eyes, trembling as if they had seen something they shouldn’t have, were directed toward the man by the window.

“S…… salute! Patrolman of the Second Guard reporting, sir!”
“Salute!”

Everyone in the restaurant focused their attention on them.

“Oh, what’s this? You recognize me?”

The huge man staggered as he walked toward them.
His face, like a ferocious bear’s, had long since turned red.

“Why are you here, sir?”
“Am I not allowed to be here?”
“Ah! No, sir! It is just that we heard the Guard Captain was away on official business……”
“Yes, I returned and was resting for a bit. I was planning to go in soon.”

People began to whisper.
The man was Litoret’s Guard Captain, whom they had only heard about in rumors.
Seeing his build, they felt a strange sense of relief.

“Did this employee perhaps report you, Captain?”
“No! Guard Captain, I’ve truly been wronged!”
“Enough, enough. It wasn’t a false report. There was a suspicious kid here until just a moment ago.”

The employee let out a sigh of relief.

“But the kid has already run away, so you two will have to do some work.”
“……What work do you mean, sir?”
“Do you see that way?”

The man pointed his hand outside the window.
The direction was the outskirts of the town. The direction Serpens had run in.

“He ran that way, so go catch him properly on your own. I’ll give you two hours.”