083

“Teacher?!”

A startled Rozalin quickly ran to Cassian.

He was in that bad of a shape.

“……”

On his small body, which looked to be about 10 years old, it was hard to find a spot without a wound.

But the biggest problem wasn't his appearance.

Cassian, who had been rolling on the ground, got up with a blank expression, dusting himself off as if this sort of thing was a given.

“Hmm, this is about it.”

He even spoke in a feignedly strong tone and exaggeratedly swung his arms around.

That much was fine.

“This level of pain and hardship cannot break me. For I have already received the divine punishment of birth from the heavens. Ah, why is the life of an illegitimate child so arduous?”

Rozalin, who had been running towards Cassian, stopped in her tracks.

'Is this right?'

Her mind went blank.

The unbelievable, that, uh, umm.

Was that thing, whose words were so impious it was blasphemous to even form a sentence to evaluate them, truly the past of the Teacher Cassian she knew?

'No, with a past like that, he was making a big deal about a single textbook being his dark history?!'

Ulf had looked at Cassian's body and said that the severed Mana Roads were the result of his past life and trajectory.

If he was a 10-year-old who went around spouting that kind of nonsense, wouldn't it be more accurate to say that his severed Mana Roads were a result of self-harm?

“……Uncouth beings.”

Hmph, Cassian snorted and, with an exaggeratedly noble gait, entered the main gate of the House of Defnos.

No, he tried to enter.

“Didn't I tell you not to come in?”

“Did I not say? This body is the illegitimate son of the master of this manor, whom you all revere like the heavens! I could not call my father 'father' and lived with respect in my heart for my mother of low rank and status, but now that such a mother has passed on, I have come to entrust my livelihood to you!”

“This crazy bastard!”

A guard shouted.

'That crazy teacher!'

Rozalin was inwardly horrified.

When she first saw the scenery here, no, when she heard Cassian's grim monologue, she had imagined the image of a boy being unjustly persecuted.

But instead, he was proudly barging in, claiming to be the illegitimate son of a noble whose mother had died, and demanding they raise him?

It was an act believable enough to be a new form of suicide.

“Why! Are you! So reckless!”

Rozalin, having come to her senses, quickly approached.

The guard was bringing down his spear to deal with this nuisance.

Thud.

The guard's spear thrust was caught in Rozalin's hand.

Everyone's attention focused on Rozalin.

“What are you!”

Should she have expected this from the House of Defnos?

She had only grabbed the spear shaft, yet the guards scattered in all directions with nimble movements, as if an enemy had invaded.

Five guards aimed their spears at her, their aura that of quasi-knights.

“This is a family matter!”

“Bullshit, you said he's not your family.”

However, Rozalin was in a state where she could lightly handle not just quasi-knights, but even knights.

With a humming sound, the spear shaft vibrated and then shattered.

It was a technique using Sword Aura.

“What!”

Rozalin, having drawn their attention, grabbed the back of Cassian's neck and ran towards the opposite direction of the main gate.

Her physical strength was so incredible that her speed was no different than if Cassian wasn't there.

“S-stop!”

“Try and catch us!”

Their speed was so fast it was difficult to even follow with the eyes, so the soldiers just stared blankly at their retreating figures like a dog that had been chasing a chicken.

After running for a long while, Rozalin put the junior Cassian down on the ground.

“Oo, oogh, ugh… trials that don't kill me… are for making me stronger.”

Junior Cassian, whose body had been shaken by the speed he had never experienced before, repeatedly dry-heaved on the ground.

No, it was more like half-retching, as he was drooling, so it was closer to half-vomiting.

Rozalin stared blankly at Cassian, then bent down to meet his eyes.

And she asked gently.

“Did you decide you wanted to follow your dead mother?”

It was a patricidal remark strong enough to stop Cassian's retching.

“You're smart. You don't seem like you don't know what your actions mean right now.”

“They are the ones who do not know!”

Cassian shot up.

He was not much taller than Rozalin's sitting height.

“They, just because I am an illegitimate child, did not try to find out who I am or what I can do! Therefore, they will regret it, pounding the ground! This body is a genius that even the world will fear, and a light that will make even the brilliant achievements of the House of Defnos up until now fade!”

No matter how many times she heard it, she couldn't get used to his way of speaking.

Rozalin forcibly ignored the encroaching shame and pondered only the content of his words.

In fact, he wasn't wrong.

'Top admission and graduation from the Imperial Royal Academy. And the invention of Sword Aura. A person who understood all swordsmanship just by looking at it, and pioneered the path of the sword, from basic to intermediate swordsmanship manuals.'

No matter how great the House of Defnos was, if you put all those achievements together, their light would fade.

It was a matter of finding a great person in the history of the entire continent, not just at the level of a single family.

“Yeah. I get it, so stop with that reckless struggle for recognition.”

Rozalin grumbled and got up from her spot.

Now what.

She had found Teacher Cassian, but she had no idea what she was supposed to do here to escape Ulf's spell and create the Mana Roads.

As she irritably scratched the back of her head, her heightened senses caught a sniffling sound.

“Do you believe me?”

“Eh?”

“How can you believe my words so readily when you have only just met me?”

Cassian was whimpering.

His face was scrunched up, the arrogant ego that had been spouting unbelievable nonsense just moments before was gone, and in its place was a child of his age with tears welling in his eyes.

Rozalin was flustered.

It was understandable, as she had never imagined, not even in her dreams, a situation where her teacher, her respected teacher's junior, would burst into tears, and she would have to desperately console him.

Screw it.

Rozalin decided to just go for it, since this situation was all a dream and nothing more than reading past memories.

“Uh, umm, because I saw it?”

“You saw it?”

“Yes, well! I'm from the future.”

It seemed she had said something similar to Cassian before.

“I saw it in the future, and you were awesome, Teacher.”

“I-I'm a teacher?”

“Yes. You're my teacher. A teacher who is kind to the villagers, kind to the students, and kind to his fellow instructors.”

“Kind……”

She tells him things he doesn't know.

“Teacher is, uh, really smart and amazing. Sometimes he's so amazing that he acts on his own and makes people worry. Well, it's tolerable, though.”

She supports him when he's down.

A strange sense of déjà vu tickled her heart.

“Is, is that so.”

Even the way Cassian lifted his head and whimpered, as if he had gained courage from a few small words.

A simple person who silently walks his own path while being shunned by everyone, yet is happy with just one person's acknowledgment.

She felt as if she had experienced all of this scenery once before.

It felt as if this wasn't a memory of the past, but as if it were overwriting a real event.

“If that is the case, then it is settled.”

The moment Cassian's eyes looked at her, as if he had realized something.

'Ah.'

Rozalin realized that this was not simply peeking into a fabricated, virtual memory.

It was something more primal, more bizarre.

'Come to think of it, Teacher sometimes showed unbelievable intuition.'

Just how much was he seeing, and from where?

With just a small observation, the teacher would produce results as if he were collecting information by traveling through time.

He had guessed the 10 years of her life just by looking at the swordsmanship she wielded right after returning to the past.

One arm missing, her efforts to change her swordsmanship, and the small habits ingrained from numerous battle experiences.

'That is seeing the past, but.'

And the teacher had a way of identifying students' potential in an unbelievable way.

He had approached a student whom everyone had given up on and paid no attention to, and awakened their Aura with just a few words.

It was as if he knew what would happen if that student wielded the most ideal sword path.

“Then I shall believe what I have ‘seen’ and go forth! O glorious future, your brilliance is destined to be beautiful because it is preordained that I shall reach it!”

Cassian threw his arms up, leaving Rozalin, who was lost in thought, behind.

The red sunset light deepened at the perfect moment, covering Cassian's entire body.

Rozalin tried to say something, but her body wouldn't move.

To be precise, her body was disappearing.

As if to this place.

Just as she had first

en

tered.

* * *

As soon as Rozalin opened her eyes, she shot up using only her core muscles.

All around was quiet.

When Ulf had first visited, the sun had been high in the sky, but now it was the quiet dawn.

“You wake up in a clamorous way. What did you see?”

Ulf, who saw her wake up, asked.

“……I see why the old hag was talking about peeking into memories.”

That was her first impression.

“I think the teacher's mental age is probably similar to the old hag's. When I first heard him speak after waking up, I thought I was still dreaming.”

This was her second impression.

“……Other than that, why can't I remember anything? My head hurts.”

This was her final impression.

It felt as if her memories were being erased in real time.

Her head was splitting, and the words of the sentences floating in my mind were cracking and scattering in an invisible realm.

“I think I saw something important.”

“The path has been well connected. Past, present, and future. The haphazardly entangled time has become one, so the broken path will now find its place.”

“……Huh?”

Rozalin felt something strange in Ulf's words.

Wasn't she talking as if the teacher's body had been completely healed?

“Is he all better?”

Ulf held up three fingers.

“Three roads have been connected.”

It was an unexpected triumph.

He had only been fed three of the five-potion set, yet they had pierced and connected one more path than the expected two.

“He should be healthier than his original body. Of course, since there are still remaining paths, he should not overexert himself. He will need to rest for at least four more days. Ah. And do not feed him the remaining herbs. Any more elixir or energy will be poison until the mana rampaging inside his body stabilizes.”

“By any chance, do you know how much the teacher's lifespan has increased?”

Ganemia had been able to guess that kind of thing.

At Rozalin's question, Ulf hesitated for a moment, saying, “Lifespan,” before speaking.

“He will live for another 3 years.”

3 years.

There was still a long way to go, but it was a much better situation.

And one more thing.

'How much stronger has he become?'

He was a teacher who had shown that level of performance with just one Mana Road.

But how freely could he wield his sword with three roads?

Perhaps now he could be free from the pain caused by swinging his sword a few times and be able to give true swordsmanship instruction.

Perhaps she could even have a duel with the teacher.

Just making various assumptions made her heart flutter.

“Gramps, thanks.”

Rozalin said her thanks with a sincere heart.

“Keep it. He is to be my master anyway, so I just took a look while I was here in person.”

“Has the old hag gone senile?”

How old was she to suddenly be talking about a master?

Besides, wasn't Ulf a mage, not a swordsman?

It made no sense for a 6th-circle mage, let alone Ulf, to learn the sword from a swordsmanship instructor at a third-rate academy.

It shouldn't.

It really shouldn't.

“Hahahaha. A mage's challenge in swordsmanship! Excellent! The learning of an elderly student shines in and of itself! Just like my head! Hahahaha!”

Today, as always, the Chairman's mental state was bright.

It was summer.