Novice Knight

When I was two, my father found me a magic teacher. I heard he was some kind of Water Saint Tier, probably an instructor for Loman City's magic corps. My luck was terrible; I didn't run into any blue-haired Migurd girl. I'd actually been hoping I might.

My teacher's name was Roy, and his official position was commander of the First Regiment of Loman City's magic corps. He was a middle-aged uncle, but he looked very fit and sturdy, not much like the mages I'd imagined.

The mages I pictured ought to have been wrapped in robes, wearing floppy pointed hats, leaning on extra-long staffs, with either bloated or very slender builds. They felt like the sort who only dared stand at the back of the party and cast skills from range. But seeing one in person was different. The first impression my teacher gave me was that he was a real macho man. He was tall and powerfully built, dressed head to toe in crisp military uniform, and he wasn't carrying a staff.

Unlike other mages, what he carried was a sword inlaid with deep-blue gemstones. The blade was four feet long, the hilt wrapped in gold thread, and an East Sea sapphire was set into the pommel. Carved cloud-dragons coiled over it, their eyes dotted with rubies, glaring as if alive. He seemed to love this treasured sword of his, and had even named it Qinggang. From what he said, it was some kind of magic tool, and it looked expensive.

Back to the point. On the first day of formal lessons, Teacher Roy drilled his views on mana into me, and they left a deep impression.

He said, "Magic is broadly divided into two types: attack magic and support magic. Attack magic is mainly divided into the four major categories of wind, fire, earth, and water. Support magic includes summoning magic, healing magic, detoxification magic, barrier magic, and divine strike magic. At the same time, these five types of magic can't be completely counted as support magic either. Take divine strike magic, for example. You can use holy light to buff your companions, stabilize their minds, and heal mental damage, but you can also use divine strike magic to attack spiritual monsters like specters and ghosts.

"But no matter what magic system it is, in actual combat, it is essentially auxiliary.

"Outside of large battlefields, where mages can cast spells to cause mass casualties, in small-scale combat, whether the enemy uses the Sword God Style, the North God Style, or the Water God Style, they can very easily use footwork to dodge a mage's attacks, then cut that mage down with one sword.

"So no matter what type of mage you are, in small-scale battles, you exist as support. You support the swordsmen at the front by restricting the enemy's movement, or you use attacks to inflict damage while your own swordsmen have the enemy tied down.

"Of course, when the enemy also has mages, canceling out the other side's magic is also one of a mage's duties."

In his view, if you wanted to become a mage who could stand on his own, you couldn't neglect swordsmanship and physical aptitude.

You couldn't be a useless waste who could do nothing besides magic. His theory was that magic was used for support, while you yourself also had to possess the ability to resist after the enemy closed in.

In addition, my teacher also explained this world's ranking system to me, though I already knew all of it. Still, I listened to his lecture seriously. This world's ranks were divided into Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, Saint, King, Emperor, and God. The main swordsmanship schools were the Sword God Style, Water God Style, and North God Style.

As for other weapons, it wasn't that they didn't exist, but in the eyes of martial artists, they were all unorthodox paths. Spears in particular, despite being the king of all weapons, were treated as taboo here. If you carried a spear and stood on the street, you'd probably get beaten to death by a mob.

The specific reason seemed to be that there was a race among the demons that was especially good with spears. It looked like the people of this world didn't understand the logic of learning the barbarians' superior techniques to defeat the barbarians. They use it, so we can't use it? Then getting stabbed to death was only fair.

I got off track. Once your rank reached Saint Tier, you could use your rank as a title. For example, if my Water God Style swordsmanship reached Saint Tier, then when I went out, I could call myself a Water Saint. It sounded a bit cool, but didn't that immediately tell the other person both your strength and your school? Wasn't that a little overconfident? So I had no intention of calling myself that. When the time came, I could just come up with a cool nickname. At least something that sounded better than Quagmire.

After listening to his explanation, I fell into deep thought. Though several points of his theory didn't apply to me. For example, at my current training speed, by the time I reached adulthood, my mana would basically never run out. It would be very hard for me to end up in a situation where all the mana in my body was completely exhausted. But at the same time, his theory that mages were very weak in close combat really was true.

I didn't want to spend years finally learning magic, only to step outside and have some Sword Saint get close and cut me down in one slash. That would be way too much of a loss. In my memories, Rudeus never beat Eris, whether in his previous life or this one. Especially in the timeline from his diary, where an Earth Emperor Tier mage was chased and hacked at for several decades by a King Tier swordswoman of the Sword God Style, and only won after researching gravity magic and the complete Magic Armor.

How humiliating. I didn't want to follow in that old senior's footsteps. Mages were cool, and they had plenty of advantages with support skills, but I didn't want to think about what to take and what to give up. I wanted all of it.

And so, I began learning magic and swordsmanship under Teacher Roy. We started with physical training. Every day, I had to run around the castle walls. At least ten kilometers a day, even though I was only a little over two years old.

But my soul was already twenty-three. I'd experienced jogging in middle school and high school PE classes too. They weren't kidding when they said children's bodies were the most adaptable. After the first day's run, my whole body ached, but after one night's sleep, I barely felt anything the next day.

If that had been back in high school, after my first long-distance run, I'd have felt like my calves didn't belong to me the next day. They'd be so sore I wouldn't be able to walk normally. Though I guessed this also had something to do with my teacher casting an Intermediate Healing spell, ExHealing, on my body after I finished running, right?

Of course, my magic training didn't fall behind either. Intermediate water magic, Torrent; intermediate earth magic, Earth Fortress; intermediate wind magic, Vacuum Wave; intermediate fire magic, Fire Sever, and so on. Naturally, I also kept up my own research: using wind magic to create faster wind speed above my body and slower wind speed beneath it, making myself fly.

However, this kind of operation still required a certain initial speed. For now, I didn't have a good solution, but I had already tested the feasibility of the operation on paper airplanes I folded myself. At the very least, it proved that the physical principles of this world and Earth were shared. Bernoulli's principle, Newton's three laws, the law of universal gravitation, and so on were all workable. In that case, there wasn't much of a problem.

Although I had already spent three years in university before being reincarnated here, I still remembered the physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics knowledge from my three years of high school. Now that I had been reincarnated here without a cheat ability, this knowledge was my greatest cheat.

Whether I could apply it flexibly would be my greatest reliance for surviving in this world of other races, magic, and swords. At least in my impression, Rudeus never applied this knowledge flexibly. He only liked using earth magic to make little figures. What a waste.

When I was four, Teacher Roy took me to the place where he officially worked: the garrison of the magic corps' First Regiment. You say wasn't his job teaching me? Wrong. Being my teacher was merely a task my father, Xerxes Prodia Greyrat, had assigned to him in the name of the city lord. His position was still commander of the magic corps' First Regiment.

We had to pass through the outer city, but that was fine. My father had sent many knights along as escorts. My family seemed to have an extremely poor reputation among the commoners. It seemed many outrageous and immoral things had happened in the past, causing commoners to hide far away whenever they saw a carriage bearing our family crest. Occasionally, some people stared at the carriage with malicious eyes, and without exception, those people were carrying weapons. No wonder my parents had never taken me shopping in the outer city, and why we needed so many knightly guards whenever we went out.

This was really awkward. I was clearly a kind young man, yet I was being treated like some great villain. I was truly innocent. But this was also a negative effect brought about by my status. I thought to myself that the commoners only hated the family crest over my head, not me as a person. Thinking of it that way made me feel a little better.

Faced with such malice, there was no way I could say something stupid like wanting to get out and look around. I didn't want to be stabbed in the street by a stranger. After arriving at the magic corps' garrison, my teacher took me to meet his subordinates. As expected of people trained by my teacher, every mage was different from the mages in my imagination. You could say they had the feel of an official military corps.

As the lord's son, I might one day become the kind of person this corps pledged loyalty to.

I received a very warm welcome at the garrison. I also put on an act and, like a school leader speaking from the podium in my previous life, said some empty words that seemed very morale-boosting. Maybe it was because of my age, but although I felt I said them very poorly, every member of the magic corps below looked at me as if they had seen a ghost.

They probably hadn't expected a four-year-old child like me to be able to say such formal words of encouragement. Then they deceived themselves with thoughts like, "As expected of the young master of House Prodia, his insight is truly different," and glossed it over.

After I saw their eyes, I also realized how inappropriate it was. After all, I was supposed to act like a four-year-old child, not a twenty-three-year-old young man. If I acted too mature, and later someone discovered the truth that my soul had crossed over here, I would be finished. I decisively ended my speech, and my teacher stepped onto the podium and explained the true purpose of this visit: to grant me the title of apprentice knight.

Although normally, to become an apprentice knight, you needed to be a knight trainee and study in a knight training class before earning that achievement, who told me to be the lord's child? Pulling a few strings and granting me the title of apprentice knight at the age of four wasn't too serious a violation.

That way, I could officially wear a weapon in the Asura Kingdom. Though even without a knight's title, carrying weapons in the commoner districts wouldn't get you arrested. After all, there were far too many adventurers like that. But in the strictly managed noble districts, if you carried a weapon and wandered around the streets, you would definitely be breaking the law and get arrested and imprisoned.