262 – To be called second in command – 3
Mana
Energy that exists everywhere in the world, not necessarily limited to this place.
Of course, mana exists in humans too.
Quality is determined simply by whether or not you can handle it.
Accordingly, knights and wizards learn mana training methods and use the mana in their bodies.
Although Leonardo fought as a mercenary, he did not learn how to practice mana. He didn’t even have the physical qualities to learn in the first place.
Still, what I was able to learn.
‘…It all started when Aria accidentally put the mana contained in the sword into her heart.’
Filled with paranoia and self-loathing, she ran wild and was stabbed in the chest by Aria Spiel’s dagger, which was her first encounter with Reinhardt.
‘…So that aria at that time…’
Black Arya said.
The meeting between Leo and Aria.
It was luck for Aria, and misfortune for Leo.
‘…Did you think you were not destined to fight in the first place?’
Leo looked at the holy sword with a confused expression. He has never once resented Aria like that.
Rather, it gave me the strength to escape from the bondage of my dead parents, and now it gave me the opportunity to approach the truth about those dead parents.
She had no right to be angry. It was his own fault that caused him to be stabbed in the first place, so isn’t blaming him an act of ingratitude and ingratitude?
“Leo?”
“Uh…?!”
Before he could get lost in his thoughts, Baek Aria Spiel brought her face closer to him.
I suddenly remembered the moment we had kissed and, like a fool, I left my mouth speechless.
“Are you okay? “I told you earlier, but there was no answer.”
“Ah… It’s okay. “It just reminds me of the old days.”
At the mention of old times, the faces of people around her, including Aria, darken. Perhaps this word is a shackle and a symbol of sin for ‘everyone now’.
‘Consolation that is not shy will only be poison.’
Leonardo thought so and held out the holy sword to Aria.
“This is your sword. You are taking good care of it. “To a warrior, weapons are the second most important thing after life.”
“…Ah… That’s right.”
Leo Dane was encouraging in his own way, but Aria had no choice but to respond with an awkward smile.
‘…The Holy Sword always goes wild at times like this.’
You can see it with the naked eye. The difference in temperature and touch between the moment you are caught by Leo and the moment you are caught by yourself.
If Leo feels like soft and warm slime, to him, except during battles and training, he feels like sandpaper and reveals his rough inner thoughts as if telling him to catch it if he can.
‘…Ugh… Really… If it wasn’t just Leo…!’
As expected, as soon as she holds her holy sword, Black Aria launches an invisible attack with a dirty black heart.
This time she attacked not with friction, but with a very cold temperature that made her hands tremble. It felt as if she was holding the handle of her cold door in the middle of winter.
‘…It’s not that I don’t understand, but… I’m even more upset because I understand!’
Now that she understands what she is thinking, her disgust actually increases.
Her self-loathing was amplified by all similar people, and for Aria, who had the same spiritual essence, there was no object of self-loathing greater than this.
“…I’ll put it down first.”
The holy sword, a weapon as a warrior and a symbol of the warrior family Reinhardt, was placed on the table as if subtly thrown away.
Then, it was a bonus to openly show that my cold hands were warming up by holding Leo’s hands.
You can’t see it, but there is a fierce battle to keep the two in check, just like warriors of old and new times fight over numbers.
“I will take this opportunity to show you what happened with you in the first episode.”
As he said that, Leonardo grabbed the sheath of his sword. The video being broadcast shows Leo’s dark history, but it was clearly the most lively period of Leo’s life.
* * *
This was the reaction after the video of the duel with Gladio, Marken, Chris, and Ariasviel was played in that order.
[…Sigh…]
No one could even open their mouths properly except for the wise man who opened his mouth again insensibly.
This meant that the memories Leonardo showed were shocking to the people in the second session.
That’s what it meant.
“…Leo.”
It was a shock that was subtly twisted in a different direction than the shock Leo had imagined.
If the first time I saw Leo’s past felt like hell, now it only seemed like chaos due to the feeling of disconnection from him.
“…Huh…? “Is there a problem…?”
Leo also asked questions as naturally as possible for Aria, who had the courage to call him in this delicate and awkward atmosphere.
Even Leo, who tried to deal rationally with any reaction, could not help this awkward atmosphere.
The reason Ariasviel showed that expression was because he never showed it in the first or second round.
“…Are you in any pain? “Is it very difficult?”
With a truly pitiful look
“…What do you mean? “The devil’s erosion has been resolved, even if only temporarily.”
“That’s not it…”
Even thinking about it now, Ariasviel doesn’t really understand it. Summarizing Leo’s explanation so far, the relationship between the first episode and the Reinhardt family was at the level of a ‘master-slave relationship with a slight bond.’
That is why gratitude rose vertically and guilt deeply penetrated my emotions.
“What kind of master-servant relationship do you think this is!?”
Apart from being angry, Ariasviel was truly not convinced and ended up shouting.
No one pointed out the excitement. On the contrary, there were people nodding their heads in agreement, and even the Holy Sword seemed to resonate with Aria’s emotions.
“…Well, isn’t it like that compared to now…?”
Pushed by such momentum and air, Leo suddenly reverted to his ‘exclusive driver’ tone of voice.
“No, that’s true! Even if you think about it with common sense, this is not an ordinary knightly relationship!”
I had to suspect it from the beginning.
If Leo was an ordinary knight, he would never have been allowed to speak informally to Ariasviel, the daughter of the Reinhardt family and a genius knight.
“The relationship is closer than you think!! “More than you think!!”
Even though only the fight scenes have been shown so far, the bond of the relationship has been sufficiently confirmed.
[I thought it was already strange enough at the point where the head of the family got into a fight with a knight.]
Being a head of state has more shackles than you might think.
If I had lost just once in a fight with an inferior knight, my reputation would have been damaged to a small or great extent.
“…Don’t you feel like my disciple…?”
Chris asked a somewhat humble question, squeezing his arm with his other hand as he became angry for some reason.
“…Well… I learned a lot from living as a squire. When Chris brought me here in the first place, he tried to teach me in that direction as a squire, right?”
The position of servant is easy to be ignored due to its connotation, but in many cases, it is a position where one can receive higher rights than a knight.
From the beginning, Chris’s purpose was to teach the talented Leo as a squire for a short time, and then train him personally to develop him into a knight.
Because that’s what we did in the first round.
“…That’s right…Yeah. In the first place, I never brought a squire, so I wanted to raise him as a squire like a disciple…”
“Are you saying there is nothing left to teach and do?”
Eileen nodded her head in response to Chris’s words, and gave a dry exclamation.
In terms of common sense, who would imagine that two people over 100 years old reside in the body of a 13-year-old boy?
“Even apart from mana, my younger brother is strong in other areas!”
After his own defeat, Rios took a close look at Leonardo’s method of victory. Doesn’t it make common sense to simply be defeated by a 1-star knight?
The result.
“What kind of trick are you?! “They’re dominating everything from psychological warfare to numbers!”
When fighting Gladio, he uses mid-range combat to induce the shield to be thrown and throws the shield into the subspace cloak.
He threw it again in the middle of the attack, folded the subspace cloak inside it, created a simple booby trap with daggers scattered around, and defeated the attack by beating it down.
“…He showed even more skill when fighting with me. When using Hwacheong, you throw gunpowder powder disguised as a smoke bomb, and secretly sprinkle water on the ground to electrocute yourself when using Fulgor.”
In addition, the fact that it uses multiple weapons is surprising and the sight of it switching between a fake shield with a mirror and a real mirror shield to reflect the attack and finish it off is both cunning and surprising.
“When he fought me, he used a cloned Alter Blade to block his clone, and intentionally threw a dagger with a 2-star aura to catch me off guard and finish it off. “It would be fair to say that he is truly Ganwoong (姦雄).”
Chris expressed his admiration for the way he won by using his 3-star evolved dagger technique, using the preconceived notion of trying to repel it with an auror.
No one thought they would win that way.
“…Is that so? That may be true, but…”
Leo himself did not seem very happy about the praise.
Isn’t that so?
Ganwoong, ultimately, means a cunning hero.
You can’t be a hero, and it’s not a good thing to have anyway.
“In the end, Aria couldn’t win with her skills back then.”
“…Now…Wait a minute. But how many duels have you had with the warrior Ariasviel?”
Lumine, who was equally embarrassed by the sense of disparity she felt in the video, had no choice but to confirm it.
If you think about it, the number of times was important as colleagues working in the same family, not as enemies or rivals.
“It’s 200 won. And it was 200 losses.”
“200 Losses…?”
Everyone looked at the Holy Sword and Aria alternately, realizing that they had never won.
No matter how much they said 3 stars was the limit, the fact that they never tried to win was a story they couldn’t easily nod their heads over.
I don’t know if it’s just one or two duels, but isn’t it strange that I dueled 200 times and never won?
“…Well, it’s not like we couldn’t win at all, but…”
[What are you talking about? In the first place, wins and losses are divided into black and white except for a draw.]
As the wise man said, that is normal.
If it is normal, that is.
“I couldn’t admit it because I could see that he was trying to lose on purpose.”
“…You’re saying we lost on purpose?”
“Oh, intentionally relaxing your thumb or getting hit by an attack that can be avoided. “It was so obvious that I couldn’t ignore it.”
At those words, all of Leo and Aria looked at them with cold, salty eyes. Somehow, this time it was obvious that Leo was making a huge mistake.
“Furthermore, when he said he would keep his promise and force a duel even though he was physically ill, he was forced to postpone the date. There were a few times when I nursed him, so back then…”
“Wait, nursing? “You even provide nursing care?”
Ariasviel glared at the point of nursing. A sad blue gaze pours from the Holy Sword, not from Leo.
“A few times. “Sometimes he skips meals, so if I prepare him something he can eat, he eats it.”
Rather than a second-in-command, or even a rival.
“…Did you feed him?”
“Huh? “Does it matter?”
“It’s important.”
Aria was looking at Leo with more serious eyes than ever. It was impossible to tell a lie while avoiding her sticky yet passionate eyes.
If it weren’t for the fact that my memory suddenly increased due to the Demon King, I could probably just say I don’t know.
Those pores have already been blocked for a long time.
“Once…About as much?”
“Ah, I see. “You fed me at least once~”
Although she spoke in an understanding tone, Aria held her holy sword so hard that it made a slight sound. No matter how cold she radiated from the blade and her handle, she could not perform the miracle of cooling Baek Aria’s heat.
“…But I couldn’t help it. “At that time, she was injured while chasing a mine outside, and she was accompanying him as an executive knight, so she was eating…”
{Wait a minute. What do you mean by executive knight?}
I’m sure I explained this to her, it was only once, but she clearly remembers it.
“Ah, at the time, when Aria was 19 years old, she received the warrior’s oracle and went to the temple. Until then, she worked with me as an executive engineer and as a team.”
“…The two of you?”
There was murder in Aria’s eyes.
Not only she, but also others were casting slightly disdainful glances at her.
“…Ah…Well, that’s right. “Unless there is a group call or dispatch, a two-person team is effective in defeating demons…”
Wow…!
“…Uh…Aria?”
The sound of something breaking rang out from Aria Spiel’s hand, or more precisely, her hand holding her holy sword.
“Huh? What?”
The friction sound rings continuously. This is the sound that metal usually makes when it is cut.
“Is there a problem with the Holy Sword?”
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“No, it will ‘never’ break anyway, so it won’t matter what you do.”
Ariasviel said that with a smile.
Honestly, it’s scary.
Neither the one who wants to break nor the one who holds on.
[…You are the second in command.]
The wise man looked at Leo and Aria ‘two’ in turns and evaluated them that way.
[They say the right arm is also second in command.]
Either way is fine.