The heavy whoosh of a blade cleaving through empty air rang out again and again.
The sound was so regular it carried an actual rhythm, each stroke tracing the exact same arc without the slightest deviation.
Tens of minutes, or perhaps hours.
He'd repeated the same motion for so long that he could no longer even remember when he'd begun.
With every thrust of the blade, a bead of sweat gathered at the tip of Cassian's chin and dripped down.
His gaze fixed on the point of his sword was fierce, and the two sturdy legs bracing his body held firm, unshaken.
There in the back garden of the annex that had been made into a temporary training ground, honing his basic swordsmanship without pause, he looked not merely diligent but downright obsessive.
One might have guessed that the mind housed within so composed a stance would be every bit as free of turmoil.
But that was wrong.
Unlike the other knights, busy shaking off their travel fatigue and the lingering buzz of the banquet, Cassian had thrown himself into training from early in the morning.
And his head, at least, was more of a mess than anyone else's in the whole castle.
"I'd been spending time with a beautiful young lady, and it left me worked up, so I satisfied the urge with you, Priest. Are you satisfied now?"
He hadn't needed to go that far.
He'd never even thought anything close to it.
And yet, unable to speak the truth, he'd ended up spouting an absurd lie.
Last night, standing before Ollia as he asked why Cassian had kissed him, Cassian had thought about it.
Why he'd pressed his lips to the man's.
At first the reason had been something close to anger.
He'd felt a displeasure at the thought that Ollia might have fooled around with Reinon.
The moment he imagined those soft lips might have touched someone else's skin, a sense of obligation rose in him, that he had to confirm it somehow.
So he'd forced the man's mouth open. To check whether any wound had been left behind, the way he had when the man sucked him off.
That in itself had been insane.
But then, when he actually saw that reddish tongue and those neat rows of teeth, a different impulse surged up.
The impulse to fill that space full of himself.
So he'd kissed him.
That was the reason. He'd wanted to kiss him, and it felt good, so he'd kept going.
But why that impulse had arisen, he couldn't say.
The more he turned the question over, trying to reason out the cause, the more a strangely intense revulsion welled up in him.
And when he saw the priest smiling as though he had already grasped every last reason Cassian had kissed him.
He couldn't hold back, and the words came out sharp-edged.
He'd wanted, by any means, to hide what lay inside him from that man, to deny his guess.
The worst.
Ollia might have been hurt.
There's no one who wouldn't be hurt hearing something like that.
Of course, he had no idea whether Ollia was even capable of "human" ways of thinking, but at least that was how Cassian saw it.
He wanted to ease the man's feelings, but an apology in words alone would mean nothing.
The man placed weight on results.
So if he could grow even a little during his stay in the Kingdom of Meibo, and come even one step closer to the hero the man had in mind.
Then he might be able to soothe him.
And that was why he'd risen early and swung his sword without rest.
How many more hours had passed like that?
Someone else came to the temporary training ground.
It was Taylor.
"How long have you been training alone?"
He'd apparently come to train as well; dressed in comfortable clothes, Taylor had a heavy sack in his hand.
Only then did Cassian lower his blade, catch his breath briefly, and answer.
"I don't know."
"Have you eaten breakfast?"
"No."
"Foolish. Here, catch."
Taylor pulled a paper bag out of the sack and tossed it. Cassian snatched it reflexively and checked inside.
A sandwich.
"Swing a sword that long on an empty stomach and you can't put force into the parts that need it. It's inefficient."
"...Thank you."
He had been hungry, but he'd been putting it off, grudging the time it took to eat.
Cassian obediently took out the sandwich and bit off a large mouthful.
Meanwhile Taylor pulled various things out of the heavy sack, most of them sandbags.
He tied sandbags each the size of a child's head to his thighs, ankles, forearms, wrists, and waist in turn, fastening them in place.
Their weight alone had to be a good hundred kilograms.
Having strapped on sandbags roughly equal to his own body weight, Taylor began to loosen up lightly.
His main motion was push-ups. It was impressive that his form didn't collapse in the slightest even with sandbags hung all over his body.
Cassian, who had been intently observing Taylor, crumpled the empty sandwich bag, stuffed it into his pocket, and stepped over to him.
"Do you happen to have any spare sandbags?"
"Dig through it. A few should turn up."
Cassian checked the sack and pulled out all five of the remaining sandbags. Then, following Taylor's example, he tied four to his limbs, one each, and one to his waist.
And when he swung his sword again, Taylor, having finished warming up, exhaled shortly and came over.
"First time doing this with sandbags on?"
"Yes."
"Your strength is already at a sufficient level. Work on thrusts and diagonal swings. Learning to use a variety of angles will help your skill enormously."
"Thank you for the advice."
"If you're thankful, then let's have a light spar."
Sparring with a squad leader was far better than practicing swordsmanship alone.
Gladly accepting the request, Cassian began his spar with Taylor.
Taylor, wearing five more sandbags than his opponent, and Cassian, who had already thrown himself into hours of training beforehand, both poured out their stamina without letting a single sign of strain show.
The spar ended only when Taylor's training sword snapped clean in two.
It had been a spar lasting a full two hours.
"Good strength."
Taylor said, picking up the blade that had flown off and tucking it away.
He looked nothing like a man who had sparred for two hours with sandbags strapped on. His breathing had only turned faintly ragged, as if he'd come back from a light jog.
Cassian, on the other hand, was braced with his hands on his thighs, bent over, exhaling the breath that had climbed all the way up to his chin.
"I couldn't control my strength. As my physical limit closed in I got impatient, and I used too much force."
"True. But it was a good choice. Had you kept going, your strength would have drained, your form would have collapsed, and in the end you'd have exposed a weakness. You spent the right amount of force at the right moment."
It was a rare bit of praise, but Cassian couldn't take it at face value. His own shortcomings were simply too plain to him.
With skill like this I can't ask the Priest for forgiveness.
He needed noticeable growth.
Even knowing it wasn't something that happened in a single moment, his heart kept growing impatient.
Cassian wiped the sweat that had run down to his neck with the back of his hand and straightened up.
The spar was over, so he intended to practice swordsmanship from various angles, just as Taylor had advised.
Catching on to that, Taylor clicked his tongue.
"Pushing yourself won't make your skills grow. You'll only injure your body and slow your progress."
"...I'm fine. It's not enough to hurt me, so I'll do just a little more before I head in."
"Do as I say."
His tone wasn't forceful, and precisely because of that it was all the harder to ignore. Because Cassian could feel that the man was genuinely concerned about his condition.
When he lowered his sword and let out a deep breath, Taylor, who was unstrapping his sandbags and putting them into the sack, spoke up.
"It's good to devote yourself to training, but in your case there's a tendency to fixate on it excessively. Is it because you think you're below the level of the other knights?"
"That I'm below the other knights' level is a fact. And I know that as long as I can't use sword aura, I'll never be able to reach the same level as them."
Lacking even the strength to raise his head, he looked down at the ground and saw beads of sweat falling onto the neatly trimmed grass.
Staring blankly at them, he felt the fatigue he'd been forcing himself to ignore come surging in.
"I joined the expedition on the Priest's introduction. I don't want to smear his name with pathetic skills. And I hope there's never a moment... where I fail to protect him because I lacked the strength at a crucial time."
It wasn't because of Ollia that he'd joined the expedition. If anything, Ollia's share in the matter was so small it might as well have been nothing.
But that didn't mean he wanted Ollia's face to be tarnished by his own incompetence. That would be a disgrace to him too.
Because the man would come to think he'd once again mistaken the wrong person for a "hero."
He had no power to make the man deny that mistake. So he didn't want to create the occasion for it in the first place.
He'd had enough of feeling like an abandoned mutt, one that mistook a fleeting scrap of pity for something eternal.
"You're mistaken about something, Cassian Alahon."
Having unstrapped all his sandbags, the man straightened his back. Then, with an impassive face, he looked at Cassian.
"Your level isn't lacking. No, judging by the pace of your growth, before long you'll come to hold a level surpassing even the veteran swordsmen here."
"..."
"Sword aura? The day you learn to wield it properly, you'll become the one and only strongest swordsman in this expedition. But the you of right now isn't ready to become the strongest."
Slowly stepping closer, he pressed his fist lightly against Cassian's chest.
"The anxiety, the hesitation, the confusion, the weakness inside you. Those don't befit the 'strongest.' Instead of spending your time obsessing over dazzling techniques, temper your inner self, Cassian Alahon. Build a vessel worthy of your talent."
