MTL NOVEL Chapter 25 - Growth (4)
Eugene was in no position to worry about the other trainees.
Sir Bernard really didn’t let him go until he had performed a total of eight thousand movements.
Including mistakes made in between, he probably had to swing thousands more times, but fortunately, Bernard showed mercy.
As soon as the painful training ended, Eugene sprawled out on the floor, breathing heavily.
“Huff…! Huff…! Kuhup…!”
“You’ll be repeating this kind of training for a while.”
“…Un-Until when, sir?”
“Well… Until the bad habits ingrained in your body disappear, I suppose?”
“…”
“It’s impossible to know whether it will take seven days and nights, a month, or a year until the correction is complete. I can only assure you that this method is the fastest and most efficient.”
Eugene couldn’t find any lies or jokes in Bernard’s words.
‘If this brutal training is really for my benefit…’
Eugene slowly moved his overworked body. His limbs trembled and wouldn’t listen, but he finally stood up and bowed his head before Sir Bernard.
“Then I look forward to your guidance tomorrow as well…”
“Good job. You may go now.”
Eugene walked using the sword on his belt, pulled out with its scabbard, as a cane.
As he went outside the guild building, the sky was already tinged with sunset.
Looking at the orange-colored sky, Eugene revised his hopeful plan.
‘At this rate, I’ll only get home by nightfall… From next time, I should come out at dawn instead of morning…’
On one side of the training ground, exhausted trainees lay collapsed in a row as if they had fainted.
Eugene slowly crossed the training ground, using his sword as a cane.
Only one person quietly watched his retreating figure.
That night, someone visited Bernard, who was reviewing documents in the guild’s office.
At the sound of a light knock on the door, Bernard said to come in.
Then Clea appeared, opening the door.
“Uncle, I saw that black-haired barbarian enter the guild today.”
“Tsk… Clea, I told you not to call me uncle at the guild.”
“It’s just the two of us anyway. So, how was that barbarian? Was he really from the Cunning Steel as we thought?”
Bernard scolded his only niece with a displeased face.
“Barbarian, watch your language. That child is now a member of our Brotherhood of the Sword.”
Clea spoke, unable to believe it.
“You decided to accept that barbar… no, Eugene? Why…”
“No matter how I looked, he didn’t seem to have learned swordsmanship under Sir Silas. He lacked even the basics from the start. It was a complete mess.”
“…Pardon? What do you mean?”
“If he had formally learned under someone, such a stance would be impossible. His precision was poor, and his swordsmanship was like a patchwork.”
“But… his ‘Snake’s Shadow’ was quite complete… It was very fast-”
“Yes, he showed fast speed. But that was all. There was no subtlety in his feints or in the steps of his wrists and feet. It’s the limit of learning by stealing with the eyes. It wasn’t perfect as you said.”
“So you’re saying he really didn’t learn under Sir… Silas?”
“That’s right. He made up for what he lacked in technique purely with his body. Eugene’s sword… it looked like a desperate struggle to survive. It was truly a tragic sword. I didn’t say it, but it was painful for me to watch.”
“…Uncle, can you tell all that just by crossing swords?”
“A knight of my level can. Oh, by the way, didn’t you say you beat Eugene in the previous duel?”
“…It was the eleventh duel, but I’m confident I could win even if we fought at full strength.”
“It’s good to be confident, but train hard. You might be overtaken soon.”
As Bernard smiled and said this, Clea shouted angrily.
“Uncle…! That will never happen! There’s no way I’d lose to such a barbarian-”
“Tsk- I told you not to call him that.”
“I’m sorry… But I definitely won’t lose.”
“If so, you’ll need to hone your sword skills even more diligently than now.”
“Um… Uncle?”
“Speak.”
“In that sense… if we could stop the physical training now and pick up swords again…”
Clea cautiously brought it up, but Bernard firmly cut off his niece’s words.
“No. That’s not possible. If you want to swing swords that badly, you can stay behind after training is over.”
“Ugh… I understand.”
She had no choice but to give up seeing her uncle’s stubborn attitude. She knew well that breaking his stubbornness was not an easy task.
As his niece walked out with puffed cheeks and pouting lips, Bernard chuckled and went back to examining the documents.
Meanwhile, Lorena screamed when she saw Eugene coming in later than expected.
“Kyah-! Eu-Eugene…! Wh-Who reduced you to this state again…?”
He, who had returned looking like a walking corpse, slowly opened his mouth and said.
“I… I did this to myself…”
As his trembling legs soon gave way under his weight and he collapsed, Lorena ran over and supported Eugene.
Eugene, who barely made it to the room Lorena provided and lay down, took a short rest before crawling out again.
“Master… Please teach me magic…”
Seeing his appearance like that of a living corpse, Lorena said worriedly.
“…Wou-Wouldn’t it be better to rest today…? How can you learn magic in that state…”
“No… Since magic training uses the head anyway, it’s fine…”
“Are… Are you really okay…?”
As Eugene crawled to Lorena’s feet and nodded, she sighed as if she had no choice and held out a magic book.
“Th-Then take this… We’ll learn this today…”
She held out a thin book titled
“Th-Then let’s start the lesson… Our poor disciple…”
“I look forward to your guidance today as well… Master…”
Thus, Eugene spent busy and arduous days.
Sir Bernard released the trainees from hell after exactly two months, but Eugene still had to continue one-on-one training with him.
Returning to the mansion with his exhausted body, he had to finish the piled-up housework and then learn magic from Lorena.
The routine of overworking his body during the day and his mind at night repeated, but he was gradually getting used to it.
One day, while learning magic from Lorena, Eugene suddenly became curious and asked:
“Lorena, by the way, when are you going to teach me magic incantations?”
She avoided Eugene’s gaze subtly while explaining.
“Umm… There are many other ways to cast magic besides incantations… You can use formations, artifacts, living sacrifices, gems, and such… Ah, you can also use magic by moving the staff, and um… there’s also a method of tattooing the body…”
“But, here in
“You-You’ve already read that far…? That… that is… umm… haa…”
Lorena hesitated, mumbling, and finally revealed the secret.
“Eugene… Do you know what happens if you fail while reciting an incantation…?”
“According to the book, it says the magic is canceled.”
“You know well… I’ll… I’ll show you…”
She picked up her staff and softly recited an incantation.
In the quiet space with just the two of them, Eugene could hear what she was saying.
“Li-Light… Gather… Shi-Shine brightly…!”
A white light flickered at the tip of her staff. It didn’t last long and soon disappeared.
“That’s the magic you showed me at the inn tavern long ago, isn’t it?”
“Th-That’s right…”
“It doesn’t seem too wrong?”
“If… If I had recited the incantation perfectly, the result would have been much different. Like this…”
This time, Lorena activated the magic just by waving her staff without an incantation.
The staff that started emitting a white light maintained its brightness for a long time.
While maintaining the light-emitting magic, she said:
“Si-Simple magic will just disappear if you fail to recite the incantation… But when you move on to complex and difficult magic… It doesn’t just end with the ma-magic being canceled…”
“…What happens?”
“It might ex-explode on the spot… Or fly off in a strange direction… Or a completely different magic might be cast…”
“It’s more dangerous than I thought? It would be a big problem if you forget the incantation in the middle.”
Lorena shook her head at those words.
“…A magician isn’t stupid enough to fo-forget… What I want to say is… Someone with a stutter like me can’t use incantation magic…”
“Ah…”
Although there were various ways to cast magic, they couldn’t compare to incantations.
There was nothing like incantations for efficiently using mana while strongly imbuing the magician’s will.
Moreover, using other methods along with incantations could create even more powerful magic, so there was no reason not to use incantations if you could recite them.
After telling Eugene all these facts, Lorena confessed to him.
“Ac-Actually… As you think, I’m not such a great magician… Stu-Stutterers like me are treated as cripples among magicians…”
Eugene tried to hide his surprised emotions after hearing such blatant self-deprecation.
He pondered how to comfort Lorena, his lips moving slightly.
Then, she said:
“…So… I’ve been researching something for years…”
“…What?”
“Wait a moment…”
Lorena suddenly stood up and came out of the room with something.
It was a flask containing a solution with a greenish tinge and a flute.
“What’s this?”
“Th-This is a potion made from the mandrake Eugene brought… And this is a flute made from the Ruerhon’s horn Eugene brought. I asked Old Man Malika to make it, and it was only recently completed…”
“What are you going to use these for…?”
As Eugene asked Lorena with a hopeful expectation, she said:
“I’m go-going to cure my stutter with this…!”
“Is it possible with this? That’s great…!”
To the delighted Eugene, Lorena shook her head with a dark expression.
“But… there’s a problem… Since it’s a magic I created independently… Um… It’s perfect in theory, but I don’t know what risks or side effects there might be…”
Lorena paused for a moment and swallowed hard, then cautiously asked Eugene.
“So… Eugene… Could you help me…?”
Eugene opened his mouth immediately without any hesitation.
“Of course I should help. How could this disciple stand idle while curing our master’s condition?”
At his answer, Lorena smiled brightly and hugged Eugene tightly.
“Th-Thank you…! Our dear disciple…!”