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Chapter 5
“Yes, my disciple. I’m only asking this now, but what’s your name?”
“Erica.”
“Erica! That’s the name of a flower. There’s a territory in the south where Erica flowers bloom everywhere.”
We should stop there first on our way to see the sea.
Petchenik smiled happily for the first time in a while.
“Erica.”
“Yes?”
“Is there anything you wanted to do after leaving the Count’s mansion?”
“……”
“Something you wanted to eat, perhaps. You must have often seen fancy food from a distance at the mansion.”
“……”
When Erica remained silent, Petchenik began giving the poor child various suggestions.
He explained the kinds of food that had sweet smells and what they looked like. He even told her that he would take her to restaurants so she could try them.
He assumed there probably wasn’t much else she wanted to experience besides eating.
After all, the range of things a young maid could dream about in the Count’s mansion must have been incredibly small.
“I…”
Erica hesitated before speaking.
“Can I grow my hair long?”
“……?”
What did she mean by growing her hair?
Petchenik didn’t understand at first, so he asked again.
“You mean you want to let your hair grow?”
“Yes.”
Was that really what she meant?
Petchenik was slightly taken aback and touched the corner of his mouth.
Was the girl particularly interested in her appearance?
It was an unexpected question, but there was no problem with it.
“You don’t need to ask me about something like that. You’re a cute girl, so you can style your hair however you want.”
Actually, even her current short, uneven hair was quite cute.
Petchenik didn’t know what hairstyles girls were wearing these days, but he gave his honest opinion.
“Yes.”
Erica lightly bit her lip and lowered her head.
“I’ll only grow it as long as it doesn’t get in the way of learning the sword.”
She even bowed her head as she thanked him for allowing her.
Back at the Count’s mansion…
In the corner of Erica’s shabby room, thin scissors had often been thrown down carelessly.
The Countess had constantly cut Erica’s hair short because she didn’t want Erica to look like a noble lady.
To Erica, those scissors moving dangerously close to her eyes had been the very definition of fear.
She would rather be beaten than have to face those scissors.
Now… No.
Erica’s heart pounded.
She had tears in her eyes from everything she had endured until now.
But she simply held them back again.
The scenery unfolded outside the carriage window.
Suddenly, goosebumps covered her arms.
It was a shiver of emotion.
She had really escaped from that hell.
Traveling by carriage took a long time.
When Erica asked where they were going, she was only told that they were heading south.
The south. Where is that?
Erica looked out the window.
The scenery passed by quickly.
It was always the same trees and sky, but because Erica was experiencing the outside world for the first time, everything still seemed amazing to her.
When the sun went down, they sometimes slept outdoors.
Other times, they stopped at an adventurer’s inn and had a meal.
Then, once they got back into the carriage, Erica would once again stare out the window and watch the world go by.
“Erica.”
“Yes?”
Petchenik occasionally spoke to her and asked questions.
Most of them were easy for Erica to answer.
But some were not.
“Did you see Count Heryce often?”
“……”
Erica took a sharp breath.
Whenever the conversation turned to the Count’s mansion, she became covered in a cold sweat.
She was terrified that he might discover she wasn’t actually a maid, but the Count’s daughter.
Even while answering him, it felt as though the sky was turning dark before her eyes.
“No… He was a busy person. I mean, I heard that he was a busy person.”
“That is true. I wonder if there’s another workaholic in the world as busy as him, even though he isn’t doing all the work of Teneuarha by himself.”
Petchenik thought of the dull, stiff-faced Count and asked another question.
“Have you ever seen Count Heryce practicing swordsmanship?”
“……”
Erica rolled her eyes.
She thought carefully, then shook her head.
This was something she really had never seen.
She had secretly watched her older brother Eric practice before, but she had never seen her father holding a sword.
“No. I’ve never seen him.”
“I suppose he isn’t the kind of man who would let the maids of his household watch him train.”
Petchenik took a knife out of his backpack.
“Then you’ve never seen anything like this either, have you?”
The smooth blade glimmered.
Vmmmm.
A faint vibration resonated through the air.
A shimmering blue light suddenly burst from the blade.
It was so dazzling that Erica felt as if she were being hypnotized.
“Wowww!”
When Erica gasped in amazement, Petchenik explained what it was.
“It’s called aura.”
“Aura…?”
“No. Aura.”
“Aura…”
It was beautiful.
Petchenik explained that aura was the concentrated form of the strongest power and a symbol of a Sword Master, but Erica barely listened to those complicated explanations.
She felt as if she were being pulled into the brilliant blue light.
Erica held her breath.
She couldn’t even make the sound of breathing.
It felt as though that tiny light was pressing down on all the air inside the carriage.
How can something like this exist?
For a moment, Erica even wondered if Petchenik had somehow stolen moonlight from the night sky.
“When I first created aura as a child, I felt as if I had gained the entire world. It was only about half a handspan long, but I was so excited that I rolled around on the ground and went wild.”
“……”
Erica became nervous.
This seems incredibly difficult.
Can I really create something like that?
What if I can’t do it even before I die?
What if I don’t have any talent?
What if he becomes disappointed in me?
Even people who trained for decades in hopes of reaching the level of a Sword Master often grew old and died without ever being able to create aura.
Geniuses like Petchenik, who awakened their aura at such a young age, could always be counted on one hand among the people of their generation.
“Can I do it…?”
“Who knows? It would be nice if you can. This is the kind of thing that just happens when it happens.”
Whoosh.
The blue light surrounding the knife disappeared.
It went out in an instant, like a flame being extinguished.
“This isn’t your goal.”
Petchenik withdrew the aura and put the knife back into its sheath.
“From now on, I’ll teach you everything I know. Your job is to learn.”
Thud.
He tossed the knife toward her.
“Ah!”
Erica caught it by reflex and held it with both hands.
“If you live that way, you’ll eventually find something you’re looking for. You need to find the most enjoyable thing in the world for you. That’s your goal from now on.”
“……Something enjoyable?”
“It should be so much fun that your heart pounds, you can barely breathe, and tears come to your eyes from the excitement.”
“Does something like that… really exist in this world?”
“How could it not? There are so many things!”
Petchenik laughed loudly.
There were so many fun things in the world.
So why had he spent so long trapped in the same boring routine?
He was really talking to himself.
At some point, his life in the knight order, endlessly turning like a wheel, had become boring.
The capital was as vast as the sky, but there wasn’t much he could do while carrying the name of Teneuarha on his shoulders.
Looking back, there had certainly been times when he had enjoyed himself.
But there had been far more times when he hadn’t.
That was the problem.
He had spent far too long doing things he didn’t enjoy.
He had given up and lost so much along the way.
The more he thought about it, the more he felt that his life had been one hell of a mess.
Petchenik rested his chin against the carriage window again.
He looked outside.
His eyes followed the clouds floating freely across the sky.
“From now on, I’m going to do things that are fun. I don’t care what they are. I’ll do everything.”
“Yes!”
Even though Petchenik had been talking to himself, Erica answered him.
“You should do it too if you want. You’re my disciple, after all.”
“Yes!”
Erica answered again and smiled so brightly that all her teeth showed.
She wanted to ask:
Why do you make ‘let’s live happily’ sound so complicated?
But she held back.
They would eventually start openly scolding each other once the master and disciple became closer.
“A mercenary group?”
Petchenik created a mercenary group.
“That’s right. It’ll be fun, won’t it?”
Anyone could see that he had made the decision on the spur of the moment, but he pretended that everything had been carefully planned.
The fact that the two of them somehow completed their mercenary registrations and even established their own mercenary group proved it.
“What is a mercenary?”
“It’s an amazing job where you get paid and go on adventures at the same time.”
“Wow!”
And that was how young Erica became one of the founding members of the mercenary group.
