Chapter 5
It was because my aura couldn’t keep up, and I had no mana.
Sir Brown looked a bit disappointed.
Even a low-tier spirit would’ve been immediately useful.
But the lowest tier? That meant poor firepower from the spirit, and very limited spiritual energy from the summoner—hard to maintain in battle for long.
“Still, congratulations. Spirit swordsmen are rare. If you continue training, you’ll surely bring glory to Hebron.”
“Don’t cling to glory. Don’t live for other people’s approval. Live for yourself. Just be happy. That’s enough... Or so my father and grandfather always said.”
“Indeed.”
Sir Brown didn’t look pleased.
The current state of Hebron—its poverty—was the result of barons who had prioritized personal happiness.
The barony’s decline was the fault of its incapable lords.
I chuckled dryly and replied.
“It’s not like I have the strength to summon and command a spirit anyway. I barely have any aura stored.”
“Still, it’s impressive. But… the swordsmanship you used against the wolves—it was different from what I taught you.”
“You know I’ve always been mediocre with a sword. I started to wonder—maybe I’ve been learning a style that doesn’t suit me.”
“I apologize.”
Sir Brown had been my swordsmanship teacher.
He had poured heart and soul into training Louis de Hebron, but I just didn’t have the talent to absorb it all.
“No, there’s nothing to apologize for. It’s not your fault I lacked talent. Anyway, I had that thought… so I came up with something that suits my body.”
“Excuse me?”
“I tried it, and it worked.”
Total nonsense.
No one in history had just whipped up a sword style on the spot.
Since aura and swordsmanship became closely linked, creating a new style took an entire lifetime, and that’s also only if you were lucky.
The most renowned sword techniques often took multiple generations to refine.
“If… if I may—could we spar sometime?”
Sir Brown couldn’t deny my skills.
After all, I had taken down over twenty ash-gray wolves on my own.
Even he couldn’t have done that.
“Can we do it tomorrow? As you can see, I’m a bit worn out today.”
“I heard you were just doing physical training.”
“Yeah, and now I’m tired. My stamina’s tapped out. What, you don’t believe me?”
“N-no, of course not. I’ll return tomorrow.”
Sir Brown hurriedly stood up.
Just as he reached the door, he turned back and bowed deeply.
“Thank you, truly.”
“For what?”
“For saving Tom.”
“Tom… was he your relative?”
“No, but I’ve known him since he was small. If he’d died, it would’ve really hurt.”
That kind of sentiment didn’t exist in the Breio family.
In a sea of people, no one mourned the death of a single child, or even remembered them.
Strangely, Sir Brown’s gaze toward me was more intense than ever.
Before I could dwell on what it meant, another visitor arrived.
“Son!”
“M-Mother, is the Baron here too?”
My parents had come to see me.
They had been inspecting the western wall with Sir Brown when they heard about the ash-gray wolf attack and rushed back to the estate.
The Baron and Baroness of Hebron had gentle, comforting faces.
They were nothing like the sharp, perpetually tense Duke and Duchess of Breio.
Incompetent, perhaps—but warm.
And that warmth… felt unfamiliar to me.
It made me wary.
There must be something behind it.
The memories of Louis de Hebron were still vivid within me.
Even just from that, I could tell that the Baron and Baroness had no hidden agenda.
Or perhaps they were overflowing with love.
They truly loved me.
‘So this is what a normal parent-child relationship feels like?’
Their affection felt foreign to me.
“My son’s all grown up now—calls me Mother and his father Baron.”
My mother gently stroked my arm.
At Breio, no one ever touched me like this.
Wounds were instantly healed with potions. That was it.
And in the end, I’d been assassinated by some unknown killer. That life had been a walk on thin ice.
“It’s just proper etiquette training, that’s all. Don’t take it to heart.”
Despite his words, Father looked genuinely hurt that I had called him Baron.
My father kept glancing at me over my mother’s shoulder, his eyes scanning over my wounds.
I felt burdened by his gaze and by my mother’s touch.
Though their gestures were innocent and free of deceit, the life and death I’d experienced in Breio made me wary of them.
My mother asked softly.
“You didn’t get hurt, did you? Are you really okay?”
“I’m fine. Not in pain.”
She handed me a leather pouch, filled with green herbs.
‘Using too many herbs, even ones good for wounds, can cause side effects. They don’t even know the basics here. Typical countryside nobles.’
Herbology was my area of expertise.
There were no proper physicians in the Barony of Hebron.
Treatments were passed down orally by elderly villagers familiar with folk remedies, and even the Hebron Barony relied on such methods.
“You’ve done well. I never imagined you’d achieve this much. If our finances had allowed, we would’ve sent you to the Royal Academy…”
My father let out a sigh.
Surprisingly, he had once attended the Royal Academy himself.
He’d dropped out after one semester due to the family's financial troubles, but I’d seen the certificate from the entrance ceremony in his study.
“That’s quite alright. Sir Brown is a fine teacher. Even a paid tutor wouldn’t have taught me with such care.”
To be honest, for the old Louis de Hebron, Sir Brown had been more than he deserved.
I remembered his teachings vividly.
Though my skills had been mediocre, no knight at House Breio had ever cared for a noble child the way Sir Brown had.
He gave not only his skill, but his heart. He treated me as his own. Most people are harsher even to their real children.
My mother gently examined my body, checking every corner for injuries.
The warmth of that touch seeped into the depths of my heart—something I had never felt in my past life.
That unfamiliar warmth made my muscles tense involuntarily.
“Let’s stop now. Louis needs to rest.”
Had Father not spoken up, I might’ve had to pretend to fall asleep in Mother’s arms.
She reluctantly released me, speaking with deep concern.
“If it hurts, call Mariam. Or call me. Even if it’s the middle of the night. You understand?”
“Yes, Mother. But I won’t need to call anyone. I’ll be healed by the time I wake up.”
When I answered, she turned to Father and said with a smile.
“Look at him—our boy’s all grown up. So formal, even with his own mother.”
“He really is. When did that happen? Haha!”
Hebron’s standards of etiquette were nowhere near the obsessive rigidity of the House Breio.
Even though I’d tried to relax, my parents still saw me as being overly formal.
After they left, I sat down on the firm mattress.
The priority is increasing the aura in my dantian.
The lie I told Sir Brown earlier was seventy percent true.
There really was a sword style that suited my body.
More precisely, I needed a combination of swordsmanship and aura cultivation technique that matched me in order to reach peak performance.
No knight was unaware of this.
Once you trained enough, you naturally began to realize it.
Most ignored the truth out of resignation.
There were only a handful of people in a century crazy enough to adapt sword styles and aura cultivation methods specifically to their own body.
And even if they reached that level, their bodies had already become so used to the techniques they learned first that adapting to a new one was nearly impossible.
So the best most could do was slightly adjust the style to fit themselves.
‘But I can do it now.’
I had countless sword techniques stored in my mind.
Even the Royal Swordsmanship techniques.
Since kings rarely fought on battlefields themselves, the royal sword style prioritized stability and health.
‘Unfortunately, the Breio sword style doesn’t suit me.’
The technique I’d used to hunt the ash-gray wolves had been from Breio. Its movements were simple, but each strike was lethal.
‘The sword style that suits me now is…..’
I had lived two lives.
The old Louis had become the mentor of the current Louis.
He was the most knowledgeable, meticulous teacher in the world.
Among countless sword styles, I searched my memory for the one best suited to me.
‘It all starts with the aura cultivation technique.’
If that doesn’t match me, the swordsmanship won’t reach its full potential, no matter how skilled I become.
‘Antaria Swordsmanship.’
It was the signature style of the now-fallen Kingdom of Antaria, which had perished a century ago.
Once the counter-techniques to Antaria swordsmanship were made public, interest in it had died out.
‘No need to think twice. Only knights know those counters. When fighting monsters or soldiers, there’s no better style. Besides, once you reach a certain level, those counter-techniques become useless. Even the Breio Swordmanship can’t compete. And I know how to improve it further.’
The Kingdom of Antaria had been a Holy Kingdom.
It valued priests more highly than mages or knights.
There were a few exceptions—knights who stood shoulder to shoulder with priests.
The Holy Knights.
Antaria’s swordsmanship was reserved solely for the Holy Knights, and at the time of its downfall, only the Knight Commander had surpassed the limits to reach true mastery.
When he defeated a swordsman of the House Breio, the arrogant Breio’s were enraged and developed a counter technique to break Antaria’s sword style.
Then, they published it throughout the Kingdom.
“Hoooo..…”
The foundation of aura cultivation lay in breathing.
The general method involved drawing in the dispersed energy of the atmosphere and accumulating it in the dantian.
While humans breathe through the nose and mouth, the Breio family had tried to surpass this limit with a more advanced method:
[Skin respiration.]
‘I wasn’t just used by the Breio family for ten years. They didn’t even grasp half of what I had researched.’
The Breio’s breathing method was unstable.
While practicing aura cultivation through skin respiration, even a slight shock could cause crippling injury. If energy surged nearby, the method could even backfire.
Attempting to absorb too much magical could cause the dantian to overload and go out of control.
‘My theory goes beyond Breio’s. I simply lacked the talent to store mana in my body before. But now, I have that talent too.’
My pores opened wide.
The magical energy in the atmosphere was absorbed through every inch of my skin and funneled directly into my dantian.
This atmospheric energy was known as magical energy.
Depending on how it was transformed after being absorbed into the body, it would manifest as aura, mana, divine power, spirit energy, and so on.
[TL/N: Mages use mana, spirit summoners use spirit power, holy mages use Divine energy, Knights use Aura, but in truth, they all stem from the same source.]
Magical energy, or simply magi,c was the root of all these forces.
KRARARARANG!
It felt as though I was standing beneath a waterfall crashing over my entire body.
A scorching heat enveloped me like a vise.
‘So this is aura…!’
It was an entirely different sensation from cultivating aura using the method used in House Hebron.
I was receiving the world’s energy through my entire body.
It felt like the entire universe had taken root inside me.
I shivered.
I felt truly alive.
I stood on a level I had never reached in my previous life.
And crushing that level beneath my feet, I gazed toward the next.
Just knowing that a future of achievement was within reach filled me with awe.
‘The Duke of Breio was right.’
Regrettably, I had to admit it.
