Chapter 18: Training

Ianna returned flawlessly to her everyday life after successfully making it through her debut a week prior. And then, she started learning how to control divine power.

“You need to get accustomed to the rhythm of pulling the divine power clustered around your heart outside your body, putting to work, and absorbing it back inside. I’m sure you’ll be able to master it soon enough with training, since you already know how to pull your divine power outside your body. But there’s a critical issue that you need to be aware of before you start controlling divine power.”

Arhad laid out the issue before Ianna in a lengthy explanation.

“You can use the rest of the divine power in your body so long as you keep the requisite amount you need to function inside. So the first thing you need to do to train is to analyze how divine power circulates throughout your body right down to the smallest detail whenever you get the chance and familiarize yourself with its route. Next, you need to get a good grasp on how much divine power you have inside your heart and how much of it you consume every second.”

There was no way for another to see or feel the divine power that was held inside someone’s heart. Divine power only became visible to others when it was forcibly ripped out from the heart and pulled outside. In other words, only the owner of the heart could feel their heart’s divine power. Arhad could not help her with this, and Ianna had to figure this part out for herself.

“Don’t you dare try to control divine power until you’ve completed your homework.”

Any divine power she lost control over before she learned how to recover it would simply vanish. Divine power possessed the trait of life, unlike mana, which meant that her lifespan would decrease should that happen.

And so, Ianna had posed a question out of curiosity. She didn’t intend on losing her divine power, but couldn’t she simply steal more from other living creatures like he had if she did? Arhad stared back at her in silence for a moment before he shook his head no.

Anyone who took to the idea of stealing divine power from others could not be called human. It was only right that all living beings only lived through the course of their allotted lifespans, and it was for the best that they accomplished everything they could possibly accomplish within the constraints of that time.

Moreover, divine power was colored by the unique color of an individual’s soul, and it was for the best that she didn’t steal divine power because she could be influenced by the divine power’s original owner if she couldn’t dye divine power she had stolen in her own color……or so Arhad had said.

“What does it mean to be influenced?”

“You might end up acting like the whoever originally colored that divine power. If you steal divine power from an orc, you might end up subconsciously acting out an orc’s habits. Though there’s no problem if you dye the divine power completely in your own color, of course.”

Ianna shuddered as she imagined herself acting like an orc.

Ianna took some time to observe the flow of her divine power and became very well-acquainted with it. She had barely been aware of its presence before, but now she was conscious of it constantly as she lived her life, and she was now so familiar with the flow of her divine power that she could probably chart its course on an anatomical diagram with her eyes closed. Then, she began studying how much of it she consumed.

Her crimson blood broke off and carried away a tiny amount of her crimson divine power every time it penetrated and passed through her heart. Then, it proceeded to circulate all throughout her body and transfer the divine power and vitality to her flesh. This was the divine power that was used to maintain her body. And another tiny amount of divine power from her heart was also consumed apart from what was being transferred to her body. This was the amount of divine power that was needed to keep her soul awake.

Then, Ianna checked for the precise volume of the slivers of divine power that was used up every second as she carried out a variety of different activities —like when she was going about her day as normal, when she was running, when she was training in her sword, or when she was fortifying her blade.

She carried out her homework faithfully, but there was just one problem she couldn’t solve no matter how she tried. She could not determine how much divine power she had amassed around her heart. She could not grasp exactly how much of it there was.

The spirits had once told her that her heart was strange. Her divine power, which should have been wrapped naturally around her heart, was being obstructed by something like a wall, and it was leaking out from the cracks. She finally understood what they had meant by that. Her divine power was clumped around her heart, but it was being blocked by a transparent membrane of sorts and could not escape. It was like her divine power was trapped inside a space surrounded by something that was akin to the thin membrane of a soap bubble.

No —she could not call it a membrane because she felt nothing of the sort. It felt like there was a layer of divine power blocking her divine power. Should she say that it felt like she was blocking out herself?

Ianna could not assess how much divine power she had behind that membrane. Her divine power felt like a steel ball. It leaked out from the many cracks in the membrane, and it stopped leaking out once there was a sufficient amount of it around her heart.

Ianna had gingerly told Arhad that she hadn’t been able to grasp how much divine power she had when Arhad had asked her how much progress she had made as spring began.

“For now, it’s enough that you know how much divine power you consume. You just need to determine how much divine power you need to maintain your body and leave that amount untouched, and you can use the rest. But keep trying to figure out how much divine power you have in total, since it’s an integral part of understanding how strong you are. Let’s have you start practicing how to control divine power today.”

And Ianna was still unable to control divine power properly even now as spring was ending.

~~*~~

Crunch.

A red apple was whittled away by Ianna’s lips. Fatigue was apparent on her face as she stood by the sink. She quickly finished off her apple, which she had brought to replenish her stamina with, and tossed away the core that remained when Herrace came into her view from afar as he stumbled while running over to her. It fell cleanly into the garbage can even though she hadn’t so much as looked at it. Another student whistled and applauded her.

The warm breeze carried a humidity about it. The muggy air filled up her lungs and escaped. Her crimson hair danced as it was pulled along by the wind. Herrace finally reached Ianna as an unspecified number of eyes turned to the billowing flames of her hair.

“Cough, hack…….”

“Your waist.”

A merciless command fell upon Herrace as sweat poured down his face like heavy rain. Herrace reflexively laid down on his back even as he was panting for breath and arched his waist up so only his head and his feet touched the ground. Ianna put her full weight on his stomach as if he was a chair.

“Ugh!”

Herrace tensed his abdominal muscles with everything he had, but he had already been exhausted even before he had started running, and he failed to hold up Ianna’s weight and collapsed. Ianna didn’t feel much of the impact because she was cushioned by Herrace, but Herrace quickly covered his mouth before he threw up when his stomach was suddenly crushed and squeezed.

He blushed red in embarrassment as Ianna clicked her tongue and got up, and he quickly stood up after her. Ianna hadn’t instructed him to do it in particular, but he then started doing a hundred push-ups as if he had always been doing them every day.

Ianna began doing push-ups right next to him. Ianna had decided that she would carry out Herrace’s penalties alongside him —she was also guilty by association— when she decided to train with him.

“Haah!”

Herrace would have rested in between exercises had he been training alone. But he grit his teeth and pushed through now that Ianna was training with him. Their training was hellish in every sense of the word, and it not only pushed him beyond his body’s physical limits but also required every last ounce of his willpower.

“We’ll take a ten-minute break.”

“Phew!”

Herrace threw away his dignity as a noble and sprawled out in the dirt like it was the greatest bed in the world as soon as the sweet words reached his ears. His peers looked to him in pity, or perhaps in horror, as he lay there out of breath.

Ianna’s training regimen was so harsh that the number of people who trained as much as she did in the entirely of the Swordsmanship Department could probably be counted on the fingers of just one hand. That was, at least, what people said so the upperclassmen could save face —but it was still an undeniable fact. And yet Herrace, who was on the skinnier side in the Swordsmanship Department, had started training with Ianna in mid-January.

At first, Herrace had started throwing up before he could complete even half of Ianna’s training. He had used to hurl before even completing Ianna’s basic running exercises, and when he barely managed to keep his stomach down and finish running, he would not only vomit when he got to the next exercise but he also occasionally passed out with his eyes rolling back. It had gotten to the point where he had been saddled with the unfortunate nickname ‘Vomit Boy’ because so few people hadn’t seen him throwing up by now.

But humans were adaptable creatures, and they were also psychological creatures who could accomplish greater things the loftier their goals were. They were also social creatures who could persevere for longer stretches of time when someone else worked with them.

Herrace trained like someone cornered at the edge of a cliff because his role model, Ianna, was beside him. He had been training with her without missing a day for four months straight, and now, toward the end of May, there were even some days where he managed to get through training without throwing up.

Shaaaa!

Ianna poured cold water of Herrace’s head to bring him back down to earth, and crouched down beside him and began massaging his stiff calf muscles.

“Thank you…….”

Initially, he had been at a loss about the fact that a girl was touching him even if it was Ianna. But he felt like he was in heaven when he finally had a sweet moment of rest and received Ianna’s refreshing massages after his dreadful training, which rendered him unable to dare ask her to stop. By now, he only felt grateful for them.

“Repeat to yourself that you’re dead.”

That was what Ianna had told him while looking beautiful at her debut.

‘I’m dead.’

Herrace had told himself that he was dead dozens and hundreds of times by now. He even seriously thought that he might die from time to time. He had wanted to give up several times too. There were even times when he had let his inner distress show and had said, “This is so hard I might actually die.”

But Ianna had killed off his feeble defiance every time by indifferently asking back, “Then do you want to quit?” He didn’t want to betray her goodwill and her trust when she was training right there next to him.

In addition, pain wasn’t the only thing he felt now. His heart pounded pleasantly now that it was beating with vitality because he had pushed his body to the limit, instead of screaming as mana flooded into it. The sputtered breaths he spat out from his lips sounded pleasant to his ears.

Herrace shielded his eyes with his hand as the sunlight, which grew hotter by the day, fell unto his lids. He saw the road that stretched out before him in the shade of his hand. Was this how someone felt when they were possessed by a ghost? He felt like he could finally make out the hazy path leading to the sword which he had not been able to find no matter how much he wandered now that he had finally let go of mana, which had never fallen into his grasp to matter how many times he had reached out for it.

“Thank you for everything.”

“Work harder if you’re grateful.”

“I will. I won’t let your help go to waste, Little Ianna.”

People’s gazes grew softer as Ianna sat next to Herrace and took care of him.

“Hack.”

“Uggh.”

A few people started gasping and fell over next to where Herrace was. Ianna clicked her tongue and poured cold water on them using the bucket that had been installed next to the sink. The students who had fallen over shouted loudly as the cool water hit their face.

“Thank you, Miss!”

Ianna had first-year juniors of her own now. Occasionally, there were a few who asked if they could train with her. They were all either people who grew competitive upon seeing how much she had been able to accomplish last year or those who were envious of her. Ianna let them do as they pleased, as she didn’t particularly care if they wanted to train with her.

Days, weeks, and months had passed……. Those who would drop out had dropped out by now, and only eight or nine students remained. Ianna’s juniors had learned to be meek before her, as she normally spent her days occasionally beating the crap out of those juniors who grew arrogant with her and still carried out her training as normal even after that.

At seventeen, she was of the age to experience a romance as sweet and fluffy as cotton candy and take interest in whatever gossip tickled her ears. But there was no greater exception to the norm than Ianna.

Waking up, training, eating, studying, and going to bed. Hers was a very boring life from others’ point of view. Ianna seemed truly boring, as she had hardly any social life, formed only a few personal relationships, and generally lived while only looking at her sword.

But she was also remarkable because of how boring her life was. No ordinary person could have achieved her lifestyle. Everyone now knew where Ianna’s mysterious strength had stemmed from. Her blinding talent, the effort she put in to supplement her talent, and her passion, which allowed her to enjoy the fruits of both her talent and her effort. Ianna’s strength was the result of every element of her person coming together in harmony, like how multiple instruments came together to form a beautiful tune.

It was said that men looked the coolest when they focused on their work, and Ianna’s peers knew best that the saying didn’t apply only to men. Anyone was cool when they devoted themselves to something.

‘She’ll definitely become someone great in the future.’

‘Is there any way I can get closer to her?’

Her achievements from last year were one thing, but news that Prince Schneider had personally bestowed her with royal roses and a dwarven sword on Founding Day had exploded within the capital. She was purported to be friends with two archmages, and she was also known to be favored by Marquis Chaipan and the former Count Ashltondt, Professor Filliger.

Those who were desperate to get ahead in life wanted to forge a relationship with Ianna. Or else, they would have no reason to talk to her once she had graduated. But there was no way for them to break into her shell. Ianna only spent time with the friends she had made at the start of her school career, and she showed absolutely no interest in getting friendly with anyone else. She was not in any clubs, and neither did she take any electives. She gained her knowledge from her major classes and from books, and she looked to her professors, not her peers, when there was something she didn’t understand.

She was a soulless girl who had tossed dozens of love letters straight into the incinerator without writing even a single line back in reply. Any love letters that were delivered to her after that were immediately thrown away, and anyone who confessed to her in person was flatly turned down.

Some people started to curse her for treating people like trash, but Ianna ignored them. It remained an absolute fact that she had nothing to regret because she never sought anything from others in the first place. Eventually, people grew tired of cursing her.

‘I envy him.’

Mixed into the looks of pity that people gave Herrace, Ianna’s friend, was an unjustifiable envy.

“P-p-please train me well.”

He was to spar against Ianna after their break was over. Herrace had tanned as of late, but he still looked pale as the blood drained from his face.

“Ack!”

Herrace would have died several times over had Ianna been using a real sword. Pow pow. Herrace bitterly realized how accurate the onomatopoeia was as he was beaten up. The outpour of her sword strokes mercilessly pushed through his openings and make him scream and wail. He ended up making all sorts of sounds that he had never made before in his life as he screamed while training with Ianna.

But his openings slowly began closing up as the months passed. Herrace hadn’t noticed, but his sloppiness was tidying up as he wielded his sword frantically in an effort to not get hit by Ianna’s sword. Moreover, sparring against a superior and Ianna’s advice had made him realize many important things. Herrace was maturing rapidly as his violent training pushed him to his very limits.

But he still had so far to go. His head, neck, shoulders, stomach, waist, legs…… Herrace, who had only just recovered from his muscle training, collapsed yet again as he was beaten black and blue.

“Bleeech.”

He ended up throwing up again today too. Ianna put away her sword and said, “Good work,” as she placed a water bottle next to Herrace while he was retching before she swiftly left the scene.

“Man, that junior of ours just gets scarier by the day.”

“Don’t you think she’s gotten sharper as of late?”

As he heard people exclaim in wonder around him, Herrace thought,

‘Has she been in a bad mood?’

The power she put behind her wooden sword had recently started feeling like a heavy rock. His entire body ached as she beat him up with it.

Crack.

Ianna loosened herself out as she stretched. And then, she gently closed her eyes. She used the entirety of her mind to imagine separating herself like she was using a knife to debone meat —she stripped off her skin, she stripped off her muscles, she stripped off her fat, she pulled out her innards, and she tore out her bones. Then, once she had stripped herself down to only her heart and her blood vessels, she could vividly feel her divine power, which left her heart with every beat and melted into her blood, coursing through her veins.

Ianna guided her divine power to the tips of her finger. Her divine power leisurely flowed down the path and drew to her finger like it had been drawn there by a magnet before a stream of blood spurted out from it.

Bzzzzz.

She started lacking sufficient divine power inside her body once that happened, and divine power began to be pried outside of her heart from the cracks in the wall. Ianna kept her eyes closed because the process made her heart throb quite a bit, and she straightened out her thoughts until her body returned to normal.

“Siiigh.”

She let out a quiet sigh as she stared at the crimson sphere at her fingertip. Just how long would it be until she could turn it into fortification? It was a problem she could solve with consistent effort, but she grew irritated when it took longer than she had expected.

This was all because of mana.

It required incredible focus to pull away divine power from the heart, but Ianna had come to be able to pull her divine power outside of her body as naturally as breathing now that she had trained for a few months. The problem lay in what came next. Mana swarmed her divine power like a horde of hungry demons even when the divine power she brought out was the size of a pea. Divine power, with additional mana attached to it, was such an enormous power that it was difficult to control. Moreover, her divine power would be snatched away by the mana and dispersed into the air if her concentration faltered in even the slightest.

The damned mana just stopped listening to her altogether as soon as divine power came into the picture. It normally obeyed her like a faithful dog without much effort on her part as soon as she thought even the simplest commands, like come here or go there, but it simply wouldn’t work if divine power was involved. The mana was horribly persistent and stubborn as it clung to her and clung to her and clung to her. It would drag itself away like a person with a limp if she strongly willed it to leave her, but it still felt sticky and awkward nonetheless.

Ianna wanted to beat the crap out of the mana, had it been a living creature with a physical body. She could personally experience what Herrace’s curse of mana was like.

[Whom will you Judge?]

Her vision suddenly flashed white. She always felt a strange impulse from her heart whenever she tried to control divine power. This time was of no exception.

The impulse spread across her entire body like a powerful wave, just like it had on the day when she had ignorantly tried to control divine power and ended up seriously injuring herself. It was like there was a large bell hanging from her heart that sounded all the way to her head when it rang.

Still, it was possible for her to remain conscious despite the resulting shock if she took precautions against it from the very get go. And she was accustomed to being wary about it by now.

And once she had the leeway for it, she grew curious. What was this impulse? Did it have something to do with Roberstein, the ‘Arbiter’?

But in any event, she didn’t feel inclined to answer it. Something horrible that she could never undo could result if she answered it out of curiosity without even knowing what it really was. Her own safety was one thing, but the fact that it asked her whom she wanted to ‘Judge’ made it seem dangerous.

Her vision was restored after she ignored the impulse. Ianna drew back the crimson divine power at her fingertips.

“Urp.”

Ianna looked like she was about to hurl. She had only recently discovered that more divine power pooled around her heart whenever she pulled her divine power outside her body to control it.

No matter how much divine power she tried to draw out, the maximum amount of divine power she could control was capped by how much of it was pooled around her heart. But more divine power leaked out from the walls, in exactly the same amount she pulled outside of her body, and pooled around her heart again as if the amount of divine power she had inside her maintained an equilibrium. So the total amount of divine power inside her body increased whenever she reabsorbed her divine power again. This happened because the walls were like a shell, and divine power could not go back inside them once it had leaked out. It was like a bakery that had baked another loaf bread once the first had been sold, but the total number of loaves they had increased to two when the first loaf was returned. They couldn’t turn the second piece of loaf back into flour once it had been baked, after all.

In any event, her heart pounded furiously whenever the amount of divine power she had inside her increased, as if the additional amount placed a burden on it. Her body grew feverish and she felt like she might explode, and her head hurt so much she thought it might split open. If she gave herself enough rest, however, and allowed her divine power to naturally circulate around her body, then her body would acclimate to the new amount of divine power she carried and set it as the new standard for homeostasis. In other words, if she drew as much divine power outside of her body as her limits allowed and put it back, then the total amount she could use next time would increase.

She hadn’t noticed this at first because her divine power only increased marginally, but she realized the truth when she confirmed that the amount of divine power she could handle had definitely increased. But there was surely a limit to how much she could make out of this. After all, her divine power would stop increasing once the divine power stored behind the walls of her heart were emptied out.

Ianna practiced pulling out her divine power and reabsorbing it whenever she had the time to spare. But, while she was happy for it on one hand, on the other she grew sordid that she did not know how much divine power she had clumped inside her heart.

Ianna leaned against a wall to recollect herself, and she slowly walked away once her body had more or less returned to normal.

Ianna’s daily schedule was as follows. She woke up early, stretched, trained furiously, and ate lunch with her friends. She would train for a while after her meal as well and conclude her training by sparring with Arhad. After dinner, she either studied in the library with her friends or did some reading, and then she would either research more swordplay or learn how to control divine power from Arhad.

Ianna also helped Arhad out when he was so busy that he didn’t have the time to help her train. Arhad was always busy, but there were times when he even skipped classes because he had to work. And there were also times that he was so busy he didn’t have the time to look after Ianna either.

Ianna had once trailed after him after having grown curious about what he did when he missed class. He would put on a mask and make his way to a manor in an area where upper-class commoners resided, sit down at a desk piled up with a mountain of documents, and begin furiously stamping them as he worked through the stacks. Ianna had known that he was involved in a lot of businesses, but this had exceeded her every imagination.

There were three aides who assisted Arhad in that manor, and all three were just as obedient to Arhad as the woman Ianna had met in his noble’s manor on her debut had been.

“I’ve distinguished myself in the Kingdom of Woodruff in the North and earned the peerage of a count in the Semastair territory. These people are from those lands.”

The Semastair lands, located in the southeast of the Kingdom of Woodruff, was Arhad’s military headquarters. The Kingdom of Woodruff had originally been a land where a lot of people had married a member of the mythical races, but the mythical blood had dwindled and the people weren’t very different from other humans because it had been a while since the mythical races had withdrawn into the four corners. Still, the people had inherited their forefathers’ hatred for the persecution they had received and hated Bahamut for oppressing them even to this day. The people of Semastair were particularly defiant against Bahamut, and most of them supported Arhad’s cause.

“The people of Woodruff hate the empire, but they also can’t do anything about it out in the open because they’re also afraid of it. They followed me without question when I took the lead and pulled them out of that situation. The people here are my retainers. They’re all highly intelligent.”

“How did you make them your retainers?”

“They vowed a secret oath to me in exchange for a guaranteed life of comfort for their families. And I have a lot of subordinates elsewhere, too.”

Ianna had grown curious about how much influence and power Arhad had in general and had once asked him, “Would it be possible for you to tell me your other identities and how much influence you have under each one?” to which he responded by handing her a document containing everything she had been curious about a few days later without the slightest hesitation whatsoever.

Ianna was overwhelmed as she carefully read through the document while Arhad worked. It was one thing that he had a peerage or a noble representative in every country that existed in the world, but he even meddled in the political affairs of each country by having either official business relationships with the nobility or by being on friendly or hostile terms with them.

When put together, the total area of territory Arhad possessed was large enough to make up an entire country. He used his surprising business acumen and investment plans to reinvest the food and resources that poured out from his lands right back into them, and in doing so he garnered the support of the people who lived in them and also gained the ability to nurture talent as he pleased.

Wars broke out frequently in the South, whether it be between countries or between territories. Arhad would order his representatives to start a war, proceed to fight in it while posing as his representative’s subordinate, carry out the military strategies he learned by the book, and accumulate experience in warfare. Other nobles drooled over his affluent lands and tried to invade them frequently, but matters were settled quickly if Arhad took the battlefield and lead his soldiers personally.

The people of his lands respected their lieges for managing their territory so well and paid their taxes readily. The sturdy public safety in Arhad’s lands gave his people a chance to live in affluence instead of impoverishment, and they repaid their lieges by blossoming in culture. And those lieges were Arhad’s subordinates who were obedient to him. In other words, everything belonged to Arhad.

And that wasn’t all —Arhad owned several famous companies, of course, and, while they weren’t as good as the Black Fox’s intelligence operatives, Arhad also owned several cream-of-the-crop intelligence guilds and used them to seemingly exist in multiple places at once.

“If you’d like, I can take you on a tour of the territories I possess over break or whenever you have time.”

Ianna realized just how truly remarkable Arhad was as she watched over him. She wanted to looked into his head and see how his brain worked as he stamped his documents with a quick hand while wearing an expressionless look on his face. When she asked him if it was a chore to do so much work, he had replied,

“I hate being bored. And I have a lot of greed for learning new things. So I find it rather entertaining to do work that allows me to gain more knowledge and experience. Besides, I also have a clear goal in becoming the emperor…….”

Arhad had been polishing his foundation ever since he was young. He had secured a steady stream of funds so he could eliminate the Bahamut imperial family and usurp the imperial throne and so he could upturn the world, and he had gathered people under his banner one by one.

“We revere our Master.”

After speaking with the aides from Semastair, she learned that, while they were working with Arhad for their families, they were also moved by his incredible talent and had honestly sworn their fealty to him as his faithful servants, and they also felt that serving him was truly worth it.

It was not only the aides in the manor who felt this way. Arhad teleported often to take care of business elsewhere, and he had aides in all of those places too. They were almost like parrots in how they said the same exact things as the aides from the first manor Ianna visited had.

Arhad could not be a kind liege to everyone who served him. But he also knew to be generous to those who swore him their absolute loyalty —so much so that they could not possibly even begin to think they were lacking anything they could need or want. Moreover, he had faith in those he personally chose and entrusted them with work. His subordinates had been impressed and had willingly become his faithful retainers.

Ianna could not help but think just one thing as she continued to read through the documents pertaining to Arhad and as she met more people who revered him.

‘At this rate, he would have no problem establishing a whole new country of his own instead of usurping the Bahamut imperial throne.’

Bahamut and the Black Fox were closer to evil than they were to good. Bahamut was cruel to other countries and turned any people whom they defeated but didn’t kill into slaves. There were a lot of people in the world who hated Bahamut, and there were multiple problems with the empire. Wouldn’t it be better to simply establish a kingdom of his own? There was no need to take the trouble of winning over the Bahamut nobility that way. Just looking at Arhad’s documents told her that he had more than enough bureaucrats and military personnel to make it happen.

Still, Bahamut was unique in that she ignored the pressure she received from other countries and called herself an empire. That was more than enough reason to usurp her throne. In addition, it would be easier to conquer the world if Arhad had Bahamut’s vast military might in his grasp. Besides, he could not establish a new country in Bahamut’s place when he hadn’t even set foot into the empire yet.

In any event, Arhad was a very busy man. Starting from his sword training to the wide berth of his many fields of study, in addition to his businesses from all across the world that he had to take care of —Ianna felt like she could finally see just how much inconvenience Arhad had brought upon himself when he agreed to accompany her on their journey to the South. He had said that he had to leave because he was busy, but he had pushed everything else aside to accompany her just because she had asked him to —and her request hadn’t even been that urgent. Moreover, even now, he still put down anything he had been working on to have a leisurely cup of tea with her if she visited.

Ianna’s heart squeezed a little when she realized that Arhad was purposefully letting some of his work go to waste just so he could spend some time with her.

On one hand, it hurt her pride that Arhad continued to draw against her while they sparred even though he wasn’t putting all of his time into sword training. And so, she had insisted that she would help him organize documents and information whenever she had the time. He had been extremely happy for it.

Ianna was Arhad’s knight, so all she really had to do was to be a military asset to him. But Ianna wanted to know more about Arhad, so she arbitrarily decided to work hard and memorize all there was to know about him. Moreover, she took rigorous notes on the specialties and topography of the territories that Arhad owned and zealously committed her notes to memory. Arhad would glance at Ianna as she worked and smile in great satisfaction.

Ianna grew closer to Arhad as time passed. She was melting into his daily life.

Stomp stomp.

Ianna entered Heinrich’s magic tower and descended down the stone stairway that stretched endlessly into the basement one step at a time.

“You’re here?”

Arhad had been waiting for her in the training room at the basement of the magic tower. He had been training as he waited for her to arrive, and he straightened himself out. He poured himself a cup of water from the teapot that had been sitting on top of the table to the side of the room and drank it. Ianna watched silently as Arhad’s Adam’s apple moved up and down and smirked.

“You’re the teacher here, but it seems that I’ve made you wait for my arrival. I’ll be sure to correct that.”

“It’s fine —I don’t mind waiting for you since I rather enjoy it.”

Arhad readjusted his clothes and walked up to her. Ianna stared back at him with a faint smile on her lips. He always looked like he was in a good mood. Perhaps work was going well for him these days.

“Let’s do a quick brush-up today and move on to practicing how to control divine power for real. Have you figured out how much divine power you have inside your heart yet?”

“Hmmm……I have an idea, but I haven’t grasped it precisely yet.”

Ianna was agonizing over this issue. She was certain that the issues with her heart had something to do with the gods of the Holy Age. But she could not decide whether she should tell Arhad about the gods. She would have to tell him everything about herself once she brought it up. She would have to start with the problems that she became entangled with because of her mother, Lebony, and she might even have to talk about the Holy Age in the long distant past.

It was only recently that Ianna realized that she and Arhad shared another relationship besides liege and knight. Arhad, who carried the soul of the ancient Demon, and Ianna, who carried the soul of the god who had killed the Demon, were bound by a peculiar twist of fate.

“I love you.”

“……But I’m so exhausted.”

And the strange memory she had seen when Arhad had extorted life from the orc.

“I’m sorry for breaking my promise.”

Her stinging heart. The guilt and shame that seemed to devour her heart whole. The memory of tears pouring out from her eyes like gushing water.

“Why……?”

The shadow of the person who had asked her why was still vivid in her eyes. Ianna was certain that this someone was none other than the Demon. Ianna was hesitant to speak up because she didn’t know how telling Arhad about this would influence her relationship with him.

“All right. Keep looking into that —and how are you doing with controlling it?”

“It’s easy enough to pull my divine power outside, but the problem lies in what comes next. Mana clings to my divine power and won’t let it go. It keeps trying to break free of my control and scatter my divine power into the air.”

“……You mean that the mana isn’t listening to you?”

Arhad put his hand over his mouth and fell into thought for a moment before putting his hand back down and looking to Ianna, who was staring blankly back at him. Then, he broke out in a short peal of laugher, as if he had found his answer.

“Mana roams the world unconsciously and on instinct because the Demon is in a state of unconsciousness. It will be bewitched by and fixate onto divine power frantically. But there’s probably another reason why the mana isn’t listening to you. And a very simple one, at that.”

“Pardon? And what would that be?”

Arhad simply laughed in resignation and shrugged when Ianna’s eyes began glistening with intrigue.

“Who could say? I can tell you if you can’t figure it out yourself, but I think it’d be better for you if you managed it on your own. Try and see if you can figure out what state of mind you’re in when mana listens to you best next time. There isn’t a time limit on this assignment.”

Arhad unfolded his index and middle fingers when Ianna nodded with an ambivalent look on her face. He continued,

“There are two ways to control divine power that you can choose between, assuming that you’ve reached the point where you can control both divine power and mana. You can either take away the mana and control only pure divine power, or, while it’ll lessen the purity of the divine power you’re controlling, you can incorporate the mana into your divine power and control a colossal amount of power. You’ll need to learn how to do both.”

“It isn’t possible for me to use both divine power and mana at the same time yet. And the first method seems difficult enough on its own…….”

“I can help you with the first method. Draw out your divine power.”

Ianna obediently drew her divine power to her fingertips and pulled it out. A wind of mana began circling around her divine power, which flared up like a blaze. Ianna looked to Arhad.

The wind had disheveled his black hair a little. Arhad reached out as a peculiar light entered his golden eyes. He gestured with his finger, and all the mana surrounding them immediately drew away and coiled around them. Only her own divine power clung to Ianna now. Ianna felt dejected and a little betrayed as she watched it happen.

“Mana won’t bother you anymore. Draw out as much divine power as you can.”

“Oh…….”

The maximum amount that she could draw out. Things became tumultuous enough already when she was handling only a fraction of her divine power, so what would happen when she drew out all of it? Ianna hesitated because she wasn’t sure if she could take responsibility for the consequences. She didn’t want Arhad to see her writhing in agony. That being said, she also didn’t want for him to tell her to stop if she told him about the Holy Age. It was awkward, and she also felt powerless.

“What’s the matter? Is something wrong?”

Ianna, who hadn’t been able to come to a decision to begin with, closed her eyes when she saw Arhad worrying about her and ended up making a mess out of things. She had drawn out her divine power recklessly the first time she had tried to control divine power too, and she hadn’t died. The amount of divine power she had in her body hadn’t increased back then because her divine power had scattered into the air, of course……but in any event, Ianna was confident that she wouldn’t drop dead. All she had to do was make sure she didn’t show how much pain she was in.

Shaaaa!

Crimson divine power blazed up from Ianna’s entire being. She had pulled out quite a lot of divine power from inside the walls of her heart while training, and there was more than enough of it to envelop her entire body and then some. Even Arhad was alarmed.

“……I remember you saying that you still had more than enough life even after letting the spirits eat away at your lifespan. You truly do have a lot. Very well. Try creating a fortification now. It’s the same process as creating a fortification with mana. You can change the density and length of your fortification as you wish.”

Ianna couldn’t reply. Divine power was gushing out from her heart like a deluge. Its flow was so strong that she felt like she would vomit as soon as she opened her mouth —blood, gastric acid, organs, everything. But she didn’t let it show and, once her mind had settled down somewhat, she drew her sword and began spreading her divine power over the blade.

Bzzzzz…….

While the methods were the same, it was actually easier to fortify her sword with divine power than it was to use mana, perhaps because divine power was wholly her own power. Moreover, her fortification was denser and felt stronger than when she was using mana. Ianna was experiencing firsthand what Arhad had meant when he said that divine power was stronger than mana.

Arhad applauded.

“Looks like you won’t even need to practice controlling divine power as long as mana isn’t getting in your way. But you should probably train periodically anyway, at least until the end of the year, since you aren’t used to controlling divine power yet. You can absorb it back now.”

Ianna grew nervous. Divine power had only just finished flowing through the membrane of her heart and settling into her body. And there was just as much filling her heart again as she had taken outside her body. And there was no way that she would be able to pretend that nothing was wrong because she had brought so much of it out.

She would had preferred not to cause him worry, but there was no way that he wouldn’t.

‘I should’ve just told him.’

Why did she only realize this now? She would have had to tell Arhad about the Holy Age and about her heart at some point anyway if was truly thinking about sharing a future with him. But she had pushed things back just because she felt awkward about it…… Ianna chastised herself.

“Arhad.”

“Hmm?”

“There’s a problem. I, well……I was thoughtless and I think I’ve made a mistake, and I’d rather tell you about it up front before you’re taken by surprise.”

Arhad’s visage, which had been a little flush with warmth, immediately stiffened up when Ianna said there was a problem. He grabbed Ianna by the arm as she hesitated.

“What problem? Don’t hide things from me.”

“You told me that divine power is clumped around the heart like mist.”

“Yes.”

“Is there something like a wall blocking it that prevents the mist-like divine power from leaking outside?”

“No? The heart just holds onto it. It’s like a ball of oil-soaked cloth that’s been set afire. There’s nothing there that you would call a wall…….”

“This is something I’ve known for a while now……but my heart is a bit different from others’.”

“How so?”

“It’s more accurate to say that my divine power has been plugged inside my heart than to say that it’s clumped around it.”

“Plugged inside your heart?”

“The spirits have told me about it before too. They said that my heart isn’t holding onto my divine power —instead, there’s some kind of membrane around my heart that blocks my divine power from escaping my heart. And divine power leaks out from that membrane……and it’s only then that my heart can take hold of it, and that’s the only divine power I’m capable of using. I can’t use the divine power that’s still inside the membrane.”

Arhad furrowed his brows as he listened to what Ianna was saying.

“There was something like that……? That’s strange…….”

“Is something wrong?”

“……No, I was just talking to myself. And?”

First, Ianna explained her situation without referencing the Holy Age. It was only natural that Arhad’s countenance had grown stiff.

“Ianna. I’m sure you know better than I do that you messed up. I know I said that I enjoyed it when you make mistakes, but that depends on the type of mistake you made. I won’t tolerate any mistakes that put your safety at risk.”

“Yes, I understand.”

Arhad’s stiff expression melted into one of worry when he saw how uncharacteristically depressed Ianna looked. He continued,

“There’s nothing else we can do at this point. Just reabsorb it a little at a time. Keep your head on straight and start.”

“Ugh…….”

Her heart went on a rampage like a bomb about to explode when she began reabsorbing her divine power. Her heart jumped around furiously and hit against her organs and ribcage. She felt like her blood was flowing in reverse, and she felt like someone was boiling every last drop of blood there was in her body. She felt a feverish heat when she brought the back of her hand to her forehead. Her head hurt so much she thought it might shatter. But she never dropped her focus and slowly, ever so slowly, sent more divine power to her heart as soon as her body adjusted to the increased volume.

Arhad took hold of Ianna as she staggered and sat her down on the sofa. He watched over her carefully and he moved around mana to slow her down whenever she suddenly grew pale and he thought she might be reabsorbing her divine power too quickly. Several hours passed……and Ianna was stretched out on the sofa.

“Siiiigh……”

Her face was flushed red, as if she was a patient with the flu, and her body was drenched in sweat. She looked utterly exhausted, but she had made it out of the woods. Arhad sat down next to the sofa and nagged at Ianna as he wiped away the sweat pouring down her face with a cloth dipped in cold water.

“Are you stupid? You could have avoided this altogether if you’d just explained the situation to me first. You don’t do things like this all the time, do you?”

“No, I’ve never done anything like this before. I’ve only been controlling as much divine power as I knew I could manage, and I’ve been increasing the total amount of divine power I had that way little by little. And more importantly, there’s still more about my heart that I have to tell you about. I always get this strange impulse whenever I handle divine power.”

Ianna pressed down at her head —it still felt like it might shatter— as she rambled. She hurt all over, and she was exhausted and wanted to sleep, but she through she would feel better if she told him everything now that she had already started.

“It asks me whom I want to Judge.”

Ianna recalled the firm voice that echoed out from her heart whenever she handled divine power. The voice asking her whom she would Judge spread out from her heart like a ripple every time she tried to control her divine power. She never replied to it, as she felt that she shouldn’t recklessly answer or even acknowledge it, but the voice always goaded her.

“I see.”

Arhad poured some water into the cup on the table. He continued,

“Don’t ever answer that voice. It’s a type of ‘ability’, but your heart won’t be able to withstand it and you might drop dead if things go wrong. Don’t ever take an interest in it. Just ignore it completely.”

“But what is it?”

Arhad didn’t reply. But even still, Ianna suddenly realized what it was —she had vaguely found her answer in the stories that the spirits had once told her. She looked directly at Arhad as her crimson lips parted.

“Is it my power?”

Arhad paused for a moment while he was drinking his water. His reaction was more than enough to tell Ianna that she was right.

“Did the spirits tell you about that?”

“They did, but…….”

Ianna hesitated for a moment before she continued,

“I don’t know if you’ll believe me, but my mother claimed to be the only god other than Laos who had survived the Holy Age. And she told me about it first.”

Ianna snuck a glance at Arhad once she had said that. He did not seem to be treating her like a crazy wench who had lost her mind. He simply looked deep in thought, and he sipped away at his water with his cup still at his lips.

“And Arhad… I think I might be related to the god who killed the Demon in the ancient past.”

Arhad’s throat stopped moving as he stopped drinking his water.

“……The god who killed the Demon?”

And so, Ianna began reciting her story, which she had never before told to another.

“My mother said that she was sealed away after receiving that god’s divine power and that she was only freed from her seal about twenty years ago, and she met my father five years later. She said that she felt that god’s aura from the Roberstein lineage. I was born with blood from both of them running through my veins, and……while I don’t know exactly how, I’m somehow related to that god.”

Ianna continued to sneak glances at Arhad even as she continued her tale.

“That’s why I want to know more about my body. If there’s a way for me to learn more about who that god was, then I have the right to use it. Though I don’t know if you believe me or not…….”

“The Demon exists, so it’s entirely possible for the gods to exist too.”

Ianna, who had been looking gaunt because of her accumulated fatigue and anxiety, brightened up. She felt like her burdens had been lessened now that she had told someone about the things she had been shouldering alone.

“But Ianna…,”

Arhad said with his voice trailing off.

“You said this was the god who killed the Demon? How do you know this? Did your mother tell you?”

“No, she didn’t. I’m only telling you this because you’re you, but I saw an illusion back when we traveled to the South —that is, when you were acting strange and you burst open the monster’s heart.”

Ianna recollected the memory that still remained fresh in her mind.

“There was someone standing before me……and they were holding something that was thumping in their hand, and I was shouting at them. It was a very bizarre illusion —no, a memory.”

Ianna then pondered over whether she should tell Arhad about the second illusion she had seen when she had confronted the relic. She decided to tell him, since she was already telling him everything else anyway.

“And there was a relic of that god in the dwarves’ holy land. And I saw yet another illusion when I visited. I was killing someone. I was piercing through someone’s heart with a sword…….”

Shatter!

The glass Arhad was holding broke in his hands. Ianna was shocked awake as she looked to where his hand was.

“What……?”

Arhad looked down on the wounds on his hand.

“I guess there must have been a fault in the glass.”

Fresh blood spilled down the curves of his hand. Ianna tried to get up, thinking that she shouldn’t be lying down, but Arhad pushed her back down with his unwounded hand. He stopped the bleeding with the cloth he had been using to wipe down Ianna’s face as he slowly said,

“I know a bit about the Holy Age because of the Demon’s fragments.”

Ianna was about to say something, but Arhad continued on in a withdrawn voice as if to stop her from speaking.

“But I’ve found no benefit to knowing about the Holy Age.”

Ianna decided to stay quiet and listen because there was something sorrowful in his face.

“Personally, I don’t think you need to be concerned about the Holy Age other than how it pertains to divine power. The only information from the Holy Age that we need to know are how to collect the Demon’s fragments and how to control divine power —that’s it.”

“But I want to learn.”

“……If you learn more about the Holy Age, then you…”

Hesitantly, Arhad continued,

“…Will surely come to hate me.”

“I would hate you?”

Ianna immediately denied the notion. She continued,

“I would never. Aren’t they just stories from the past? How could such stories ever possibly have an effect on us?”

“The flow of the world is continuous. The world always maintains its equilibrium, and everything that happens is subject to the laws of causality. In other words, you learning more about the Holy Age will become as cause that will bring about some manner of effect.”

Ianna closed her mouth. What was so important about a past that had happened so long ago it could no longer influence the present day? But Arhad was being too sober for her to believe that he was simply joking.

“It’s possible to predict the consequences of a general cause, but we can’t predict the outcomes of matters that concern the gods because we have no precedent for them. But even still, I expect that the consequences will be negative. If you have the god who killed the Demon inside you, then I……I have the Demon who harbors hatred for that god inside me.”

Hatred. The two syllables of that word caused Ianna to forget everything she had been about to say.

“I would prefer it if you focused only on us as we are now and on matters that pertain to us.”

The look on Arhad’s face as he looked back at her was so desperate that it was almost odd. Slowly, he lowered his hands. He carefully brushed back the tangled hair that was covering her face. He was acting like he was handling something that would break at even the slightest impact. But then, a moment later, he grasped her hair tightly in his hand.

“I like you just as you are now.”

Ianna’s gaze dropped to the hand that Arhad was using to grasp her hair with. His hand seemed to slide down the length of her hair as he brought it up. Ianna’s gaze followed it as he moved. He slowly picked up the ends of her hair when his fingers reached it. And he brought the ends of her hair up to his dry lips.

“……I really, truly like you.”

Arhad’s lips pressed against Ianna’s hair. He had been closing his eyes, but he opened them again and their eyes locked together. His golden eyes dyed crimson and glowed darkly as they reflected Ianna’s figure.

Ianna felt herself freeze up stiffly just then. Something was strange. She didn’t know what it was, but there was something different about Arhad than before. The heat in his lips was contaminated by the madness in his eyes, and the contaminated heat throbbed as it enveloped her entire being. Her heart lost its rhythm as she was confronted directly with an emotion that was alien to her.

“And so, I’m hoping that you won’t ever change.”

Slowly, Arhad let go of her hair. Ianna turned away from the suspicious sense she had that something was off and turned around to avoid his gaze.

The Demon hated Roberstein. This fact suddenly made it hard for her to breathe. And so, she promised herself that she would never talk to Arhad about the Holy Age again. She was certain that her heart would never change even if she learned about the Holy Age’s secrets, but if the laws of causality he had mentioned truly existed…

‘Then I don’t know if Arhad might change.’

Ianna clamped her mouth shut. Her lips quivered as she held them between her teeth. It was unsightly. Ianna covered her eyes with the back of her hand. It wasn’t like her to be so heavily influenced by another’s every word and action. It also wasn’t like her to be so afraid of being abandoned by someone. But then, who was the ‘her’ who was here right now?

The present was undeniably here.

It had been easier to be the lone wolf she had been in the past than it was to be as unsightly as she was being in the present. But she didn’t want to return to the past either.

Arhad’s large hand fell gently on her head. Her exhaustion rapidly returned beneath his hand as he stroked at her head. She said,

“I will never change. There is no way that stories from a past so long ago could change me. Will you?”

“Never.”

Ianna’s heart relaxed a little at the firmness of his reply.

“Me too. So I don’t think there’s any reason for us to be afraid of a distant past that has nothing to do with us……is what I would have normally said to convince you otherwise, but I’ll do my best not to speak with you about this topic again moving forward. I……changed because of you.”

The hand that had been tenderly stroking her head suddenly stopped moving.

“I acted stupidly and made a mistake today because I didn’t want to see you worry. I was planning to pretend that I was okay because it was so obvious that you would. And, I know you told me that you didn’t mind if I was incompetent, but I want to be more able than any other when I’m in front of you. I want to look good in your eyes.”

“…….”

“It’s also because it was you that I told you something that I’ve never told to anyone else. But if it’s something that might disrupt the relationship that we share now then I won’t……oh……there was more that I needed to say…….”

Ianna’s words became incoherent as she trailed off. She was no longer able to carry out a normal conversation. Arhad covered Ianna’s eyes with his hand.

“For now, just sleep.”

Ianna felt his warmth through his hand. She helplessly succumbed to the sleep’s call. Arhad slowly brought his hand off Ianna’s eyes when her breathing slowed and steadied. He could see her entire face now. The arcs of her lashes and the swift lines of her nose. The slight part of her restless lips. The lovely words that had spilled out alongside her warm breaths.

Arhad stared down at Ianna, who was so deeply asleep that he didn’t think she would wake even if he shook her.

You’re so defenseless.

It’s actually rather cruel.

He raised his hand to caress her cheek, and he ran his thumb across her crimson lips only to be startled by their heat and pull away. He forced himself to look away. He felt like there would be no going back if he took another step, if he gave into his greed even just a little more, so he brought over a blanket to cover her with and closed his eyes and he sat down next to her.

Roygen, the Golden Demon, desperately loved Roberstein, the Crimson God. And, as if fate itself had dictated it, Arhad, who had forgotten everything, had fallen crazily in love with Ianna, who had also forgotten everything.

Which was why he didn’t want Ianna, or more specifically, he didn’t want Ianna, who was Roberstein’s soul, to remember why she had come to detest the Demon and kill him. Ianna was perfect and complete in and of herself.

I don’t need Roberstein.

How nice would it be if everything about that woman could go extinct?

I want to erase her, as if she never existed in this world to begin with.

Ianna, Ianna, Ianna.

He didn’t need to be loved if Ianna loathed the concept of love itself. He was satisfied with the way things were now. He liked it so much that he almost wished that time would stop.

And so, the clock lurking inside him had stopped.

—“Training” End