Even so, Eris still didn't take in a single thing Rudeus taught her.
Faced with those dull letters and numbers, the future mad-dog swordswoman displayed a remarkable "immunity."
She sat in her chair, squirming wildly as though she had lice. The light vanished from her once-bright eyes in an instant, leaving them as lifeless as a dead fish's.
She perfectly embodied what it meant when people said:
Knowledge blew in one ear and out the other like the wind, meeting no resistance along the way and leaving only hollow echoes behind.
Whenever Rudeus tried to tap the blackboard and repeat the important points, he was sure to be met with an angry roar:
"Shut up! This mushy stuff doesn't help me cut people at all!"
"Sigh..." Rudeus rubbed his temples helplessly.
For now, he had no solution to that problem.
He couldn't hit her, and she didn't understand scolding, so he could only set it aside for the time being.
As long as her swordsmanship and basic mana control kept improving steadily, he would take the academic lessons one step at a time. They weren't a major, life-or-death problem anyway.
And so, teaching Eris basic magic and swordsmanship during the day and making a halfhearted effort at her academic lessons in the evening, they soon reached their first holiday.
The sun shone brightly on the morning of the holiday.
Delighted that she didn't have to face those headache-inducing numbers for once, Eris grabbed Ghislaine by the arm early that morning and went to the busiest shopping street in Roа.
Rudeus, meanwhile, naturally chose to stay in the mansion's large study.
He took out stack after stack of thick paper and devoted himself to writing down his insights into the magic, magic circles, and swordsmanship he had studied over the years.
He considered them priceless treasures that might give him something to build on in the future.
An unknown amount of time passed...
Bang!!
Suddenly, the study's heavy oak door was violently flung open from outside.
The tremendous force made the hinges creak shrilly.
He looked up in surprise to see Ghislaine, the "Sword King" who ordinarily wouldn't have flinched if a mountain collapsed in front of her, rushing back in a panic.
"Rudeus! Something's happened! Eris has been kidnapped!!"
Ghislaine shouted at the top of her lungs, her voice filled with unprecedented panic and self-reproach.
"Calm down, Ghislaine. What happened?"
Alarmed, Rudeus put his book into his Magic Pocket and stood up.
With Ghislaine's Sword King-level strength, how could anyone in Roа possibly have kidnapped Eris right under her nose without her noticing?
From Ghislaine's incoherent account, punctuated by animalistic growls, he finally pieced together what had happened:
Ghislaine had been accompanying the young lady as she picked out dresses on the street.
As the two passed the entrance to a relatively quiet alley, a man in the uniform of Lord Philip's private soldiers came rushing over.
The man carried a document bearing the Greyrat family seal. Looking panicked, he reported that an urgent emergency had occurred at the mansion and that Lady Eris needed to be secretly recalled at once.
At the same time, the soldier relayed "Philip's strict orders"-Ghislaine, as a top-tier fighter, was to be dispatched immediately to a designated location on the outskirts of Roа and stand by there.
Though Ghislaine's combat prowess was off the charts, when it came to the complicated political intrigues and social dealings of humans, she was still, at heart, a simple beastfolk warrior.
Seeing the familiar uniform and the sealed official document, she agreed at once without the slightest suspicion.
However, after racing to the designated desolate spot on the outskirts, she waited a full half a quarter hour and found nothing but gusts of cold wind.
At that moment, her beastly instincts finally brought her to her senses-she had been tricked!
When she tore through the air back to the shopping street, she found the front of the shop where the young lady had been choosing dresses deserted. The young lady was nowhere to be seen.
She had raced all the way back to the mansion, nearly in tears, and reported the matter to the current head of the family, Eris's grandfather Sauros.
"Bang! Damn bastards! How dare they lay a hand on my granddaughter in Boreas territory!!"
In the lord's hall, old Sauros was now in a full-blown rage.
His thunderous voice nearly blew the roof off, and his raging Touki shattered the priceless ebony table in the center of the hall.
The old man immediately ordered more than eighty percent of the mansion's elite personnel mobilized to conduct a sweeping search throughout Roа and the surrounding area.
"Rudeus! The search parties... the search parties have all assembled and are about to set out! You need to hurry too!"
Ghislaine urged him on anxiously. Her sharp nails had dug into her palms from the force of her grip, and blood dripped between her fingers.
Watching Ghislaine pace like an ant on a hot pan, Rudeus nodded gravely, but deep inside, a plan quietly came to him.
He had been worrying all along about how to make the stubborn, untamable Eris listen to him during her academic lessons.
After all, ordinary lectures went in one ear and out the other with her.
Since this damned kidnapping had happened at just this moment...
He would turn it to his advantage.
"Don't worry, Ghislaine. Leave the young lady to me."
With that, Rudeus turned around without even going through the front door. His whole body became a blur of light as he leaped out of the study's enormous floor-to-ceiling window.
The instant before his body entered free fall, the mana within him began circulating wildly at a terrifying speed.
Whoosh-!
Like a meteor shooting upstream, Rudeus flew hundreds of meters into the sky above Roа in an instant.
Looking down, he saw the entire sprawling city reduced to an intricate chessboard, with densely packed crowds crawling about like ants.
"This still isn't high enough for a wide view..."
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes slightly.
The mana core within him began to vibrate wildly, and then-
Using his own vast mana as a foundation, he tore open dozens of mana clones in the sky in an instant, each emitting a faint blue glow.
These clones did not possess much attack power, but shared his five senses.
At the same time, he spread his mental power along with the free-floating mana particles in the wind, covering every inch of land for dozens of kilometers around.
No intense fluctuation of mana, nor even a particular heartbeat, could escape this net.
"Go!"
At his low command, the dozens of clones turned into streaks of light and shot off in every direction.
Against this almost overwhelmingly superior method of searching, the kidnappers' crude attempts at concealment were utterly meaningless.
In less than two minutes, a clone to the northwest, on a secluded main road leading out of the city, sent back an exceptionally strong signal.
"Found her!"