Chapter 702 : At the Frontier IV

Chapter 0702 At the Frontier IV

Translator: Jay_Forestieri

Editor: Tseirp

After reaching a consensus, the two of them left the inn while leaving Andalusia and Feiwan behind.

If they went to take a look at the training grounds and ended up disappointed, they could simply return to the inn, complete the formalities there, and leave the fortress right away.

The training grounds had spectator seating built atop the wall.

It seemed one could sit there, observe the training, and watch mock exercises.

The two of them moved to a section of those stands.

From there, they watched what kind of training was being carried out.

They watched, but...

“They’re just running laps...”

“Looks like young men. About fifty of them?”

“Then are those the kids we were asked to train?”

“Maybe so, but... why are they running instead of swinging swords?”

Abel tilted his head.

At that moment, a voice came from the opposite side of the stands.

“Run, run, run! On the battlefield, if your stamina runs out, you die! If you run out of stamina, even the most skilled first-rate swordsman will die! So run and build your stamina!”

The one shouting so loudly seemed to be an old man sitting in the stands.

“What he’s saying is very reasonable.”

“Sounds a lot like Ryo’s way of thinking.”

“Yes, indeed. The person who can keep moving until the end can stand until the end. The person who stands until the end survives.”

Ryo stated it flatly.

Several decades had passed since he came to ‘Phi’.

Even now, his view had not wavered.

Rather, the longer time passed, and the more people he interacted with, the more convinced he became.

“Is the one shouting the instructor?”

“Probably. Even from a distance, he has the stance of a swordsman.”

With a wooden training sword in hand and long white hair tied back, there was no doubt at all that he was a swordsmanship master.

While the two were watching for a while, someone called out to them.

“Oh, you came!”

It was Molga, the commander of the guard corps.

“If it helps avoid war.”

“Well, Abel is a swordsman, after all.”

Abel and Ryo replied, each for their own reasons.

One of them was being a little contrarian.

“Let me introduce you to Elder Masuda.”

With that, Molga turned toward the old man and shouted,

“Master!”

At the sound, the long-white-haired elder looked over.

He must have understood the situation, because he quickly walked over to the three of them.

“Molga, are these the people you mentioned?”

“Yes. This is the C-rank adventurer Ryo-dono, and this is his pack carrier, Abel-dono.”

Molga introduced them exactly as he had heard.

“I see. Ryo-dono, I ask that you assist with the training. And as for... a pack carrier?”

Master Masuda shook hands with Ryo, then turned his gaze to Abel and looked him over from head to toe.

“Was it Abel-dono? You are clearly a swordsman, are you not? That stance, that bearing... no, and that sword itself is a magic sword, is it not? Someone like that is a pack carrier?”

“Since Ryo said I’m his pack carrier, there is nothing to be done. As long as I do not have an adventurer guild card, I am a pack carrier.”

“I-I see.”

With Abel’s almost brazen explanation, Master Masuda accepted it, though his expression still looked unconvinced.

“He may be a pack carrier, but as you can see, he is quite skilled.”

“I agree.”

Master Masuda nodded in agreement with Molga’s words.

Those who could see, understood.

That was how extraordinary the swordsman Abel was.

“Do not mind it. I am just a pack carrier.”

Abel’s answer did not change.

By this point, there was naturally one person who began to feel awkward.

He had half-jokingly said, “Abel is my pack carrier”, and never imagined it would be rubbed in this much.

Ryo became unable to bear it.

He resolved to use his words more carefully from now on.

“If we are teaching from the basics, Abel is the right choice.”

“Me? Why?”

Abel tilted his head at Ryo’s words.

“Because you really did learn that Hume-style or whatever properly, right?”

“Oh! The famed orthodox Hume-style swordsmanship. That is reassuring.”

Master Masuda nodded deeply.

Even in this remote frontier, Hume-style swordsmanship was known.

“I learned properly a long time ago. After that, as an adventurer, I was more or less self-taught... ah...”

“So you were indeed a former adventurer.”

“Then you must have been a high-ranking adventurer.”

Abel slipped up, Molga nodded, and Master Masuda inferred it from the atmosphere Abel gave off.

“Well, yes, I was a former adventurer, certainly... but rather than me, you want Ryo here.”

“Me? I’m exactly what I look like, a magician.”

“I thought as much from the robe, but...”

Master Masuda nodded.

“Do not be fooled by appearances. Ryo is a magician, and yet he used to serve as an instructor in swordsmanship for a knight order.”

“For a knight order, not a magic order?”

“That’s right, a knight order.”

At Master Masuda’s question, Abel nodded.

“D-Don’t drag me into this! I’m just an utterly harmless water-attribute magician, just like you see!”

Ryo protested to Abel.

“Well, in any case, we would appreciate your help with the training.”

“Indeed. Come to think of it, Molga, weren’t you talking with Chairman Pisek just now?”

“Yes. They said that if the two were going to help, they wanted payment for both. He agreed.”

Molga nodded with a smile.

“That Chairman Pisek person, is he the top person in charge this time?”

“Hmm, he is the man coordinating the merchants this term.”

“So he is someone who also attends meetings with the Marquis.”

“Yes, he is the one responsible for negotiations as well.”

To Ryo’s innocent question, Molga answered; to Abel’s confirmation, Master Masuda nodded.

To put it plainly, he seemed to be the most important person in this fortress right now.

If such a person had taken the matter upon himself, then the request fee would properly be paid for both of them.

“Good for you, Ryo.”

“Good for you, Abel.”

And so, the two of them ended up helping train fifty newcomers.

“I should probably be the one to teach the basics to the thirty who have only just picked up swords.”

“That sounds reasonable. I’m the one who’s unusual in lots of ways.”

“Even the way you hold a sword is different.”

“That’s how I was taught. It’s a difference in the principles of swordsmanship.”

Ryo objected to Abel’s remark.

It was only a difference of whether the fists were kept together or separated, but each had its own purpose and its own aim.

Keeping both fists together increased power and speed.

Separating both fists increased control.

Which to emphasize... even a single sword grip changed the outcome.

Master Masuda introduced the two of them, and training began with each of them using swords.

Of course, they were not real swords, but wooden swords.

Not even iron swords with blunted edges, but wooden swords.

The thirty people Abel instructed were, overall, quite young.

There were none in their twenties, and many of them looked like they might not even have reached the age of adulthood at eighteen.

Even so, their expressions were completely serious.

They had not been forcibly drafted into the guard unit; everyone had volunteered.

That was why they were learning earnestly and with all their strength.

Even in Master Masuda’s running-centered training, no one gave up; they all kept up.

They also took Abel’s instruction, centered on forms and practice swings, with great seriousness.

First, they learned the movements of the sword.

Then they learned the movements of the body that accompanied those motions.

Facing an opponent was a matter for later.

First, the sword and oneself.

That was Abel’s instruction.

By contrast, the twenty assigned to Ryo were completely different.

They had already mastered the basics, but Molga and Master Masuda judged them still too early to send to the battlefield.

Their swords were also wooden, but compared with the raw beginners Abel was teaching, they were clearly already accustomed to swinging a blade.

As far as Ryo was concerned, it would have been a problem if they were not.

Ryo did not know Hume-style swordsmanship, of course.

In the first place, he did not know the swordsmanship of this world, ‘Phi’, at all.

He had served as a swordsmanship instructor in the Rune Knight Order, but back then, he had beaten people into shape.

This time...

He would not beat them into shape.

“Right, left, right, good. Do not take a breath! The enemy will not wait for you!”

“Up, up, your footing is slipping! Keep your focus, but still watch your opponent as a whole! If you get trapped by one point, you’ll lose sight of the rest!”

“Here I come! Dodge, dodge, dodge! Good! Now counterattack! Oh, that’s it!”

Without beating them down, he praised and corrected them... compared to when he had been an instructor for the Rune Knight Order, it was gentle training.

In Rune, the opponents were the knight order.

They had the awareness and resolve of knights. Their will was strong.

In the first place, he had inherited Sera’s training method and was being asked to “beat them into shape”, so he had done so... but things were different here.

He chose the proper method so that the other side could accept it.

That was the basis of education.

Training is a part of education.

If that was the case, then it was only natural for the instructor to change the method according to the learner’s level of mastery.

Instruction that the other side cannot accept is meaningless.

Both of them took breaks at appropriate intervals.

“Ryo, you’re gentler than when you were with Rune.”

“That was only because the training demanded by the Rune Knight Order was abnormal.”

Abel said with a smile, and Ryo answered with a slight frown.

He could not accept that the beat-them-into-shape style in Rune was considered normal.

“Your tone and manner of speaking are different too. It feels more like proper swordsmanship instruction than usual.”

“Really?”

For Ryo, he was just doing what he remembered from the kendo dojo he attended three times a week back when he lived on Earth.

“Even with wooden swords, if you let your guard down, you’ll get hurt. But if you’re too harsh, it does not really sink in... finding the right balance is the hard part.”

“You really think this through.”

Abel admired Ryo’s thinking.

“Isn’t this normal? Rather, what did you think I was?”

“A battle maniac.”

“...”

Of course, that was a joke.

Abel had seen not only the instruction for the Rune Knight Order, but also the instruction given to the disciples of the water-attribute magicians from the Gecko Company.

There, Ryo had truly taught by ‘praise and encouragement’.

He remembered the children happily using water-attribute magic.

At that moment, Master Masuda, the ‘instructor’, came over to them.

“I watched the two of you instruct them, and it was splendid.”

They had been praised.

“Well, not really.”

“I was just remembering what I learned long ago.”

Both Ryo and Abel felt embarrassed.

The two of them were bashful.

Even so, there were things that needed to be said.

“Everyone is honest and trying very hard, but...”

“No, I understand exactly what you mean.”

Without Abel needing to say it, Master Masuda understood as well.

“To make them ready for the battlefield, it will take months, no, years.”

“Yeah.”

“I know that, but it can’t be helped. If no one ever takes the first step, no one can move forward from there. Of course, I also understand that it is the adults’ job to create a situation in which those children never have to go to the battlefield...”

“In that case, that’s fine.”

Master Masuda answered with a bitter expression, and Abel had no wish to press the matter further, so he dropped the matter.

“The meeting with the marquis’s camp was the day after tomorrow, correct?”

“Yes. Both sides want to avoid armed conflict... that is one point on which they should agree. But...”

“Do you have concerns?”

“Whether the mediators truly feel the same way is the problem.”

“The Union...”

Abel also frowned.

“Is the Union hoping for a clash?”

Ryo asked the two of them.

“To be honest, I don’t know. During the era of the Go royal family, the merchants in this fortress... rather, most merchants in the kingdom... had the Union as their trading partner. Because of that, they were able to bring the Union into the role of mediator this time.”

“The Union, with its large population and huge market, would naturally be a trading partner. But the Union moves according to the Union’s own logic.”

“The Union’s own logic?”

Master Masuda spoke of the past, Abel nodded, and Ryo asked.

“Ryo, do you know the official name of the Union?”

“I think it was... the Handal Union.”

“That is right. As the name suggests, it originally was an alliance of several dozen countries. The union government is run by the ten countries at the center of the Union, but it is indeed an association of many nations. As for how those nations entered the Union...”

“Oh... The Union kept expanding?”

“Of course, there were a few countries that could no longer survive on their own and applied voluntarily for membership in the Union... but even then, the reasons they ‘could no longer survive’ had some suspicious aspects to them. As for the other countries, there were many instances of armed invasion.”

“Every world ends up solving things through force, in the end...”

Abel spoke of the Union’s history, and Ryo sighed.

Certainly, compared with long and complicated diplomatic negotiations, war, a means by which everything is resolved if you win, might be easier for a country’s ruling class to understand.

But the people become unhappy.

If they are put at a disadvantage and their own country becomes a battlefield, that goes without saying; even if they are winning, sending supplies to the front lines means the supplies inside the country decrease.

In particular, because adult men are taken to the battlefield, many departments within the country begin to suffer labor shortages.

The act of war places far too much strain on the very foundations of a nation...

“I would like the ruling class of every country to make more thoughtful decisions and take more prudent actions.”

“R-Right.”

Abel, for form’s sake, agreed with Ryo’s argument.

After all, Abel was a central figure among the ‘ruling class’ as His Majesty the King.

“The best outcome for the Union may be for both sides to collapse together.”

“Indeed, there may be people in the Union government who think that way.”

Master Masuda’s words drew a nod from Abel as well.

The former Kingdom of Go, including this fortress, was a neighboring state to the Union.

As a basic principle of governing a nation, it was troublesome for neighboring states to become too chaotic, but it was also troublesome for them to become too strong.

If they became too chaotic, refugees would flow in, and public order would deteriorate.

If they became too strong, there would be a risk of armed invasion or pressure diplomacy backed by that threat.

The ideal was a split that never fully consolidated and never led to armed conflict.

“Thinking about it that way, this situation right now...”

“Might be ideal for the Union.”

Abel nodded in agreement with Ryo’s words.