Chapter 24 : Chapter 24
Chapter 024
At Vesper’s single remark, silence fell.
But I could hear it. The sound of every eye turning in one direction.
The star of the moment was, of course, Beron.
Just as expected, Beron flashed that same insolent grin and shot his hand high into the air.
“I will do it!”
“Good. Apprentice Beron, step forward.”
“Hehehe!”
Grinning as though a wonderful opportunity had dropped into his lap, Beron sprang out to the front. One of the butlers beside him handed over a Wooden Sword for sparring.
Then an unexpected statement came out of his mouth.
“I will not be using a weapon.”
“What? Are you truly sure about that?”
“If I am going to deal with weaklings like these, I ought to have at least that much of a handicap, should I not? Hahaha!”
What an unbelievably irritating bastard. That was supposed to be my line....
“So confident.”
The butler who had offered him the Wooden Sword laughed awkwardly. When he looked back toward Training Officer Vesper, the man gave a nod of interest.
He had permitted it.
That only made things more entertaining.
Beron was famous for being strong. That was why no one laughed at him. If anything, everyone looked as though they were afraid of being singled out.
The sparring matches were supposed to proceed by volunteers, but when no one stepped forward, Beron would apparently just choose someone at random and beat them senseless.
The bastard really is like a cancer.
Personally, he was exactly the sort of creature I despised most. The kind who cowered before the strong and threw his weight around only against the weak.
“Now then, who will face Apprentice Beron? Raise your hand confidently!”
“......”
Someone could have stepped forward boldly to impress the new Training Officer, but as the saying went, a fist was often closer than the law. Everyone merely swallowed hard. No one dared move.
As a result, the expression on Beron’s face, one hand planted against his side, was growing more and more arrogant by the second.
Training Officer Vesper frowned and raised his voice.
“Is there truly no one? The Training Officer is disappointed in you! If you have so little courage, how are you supposed to serve as butlers?”
That last line carried enough threat all on its own.
But the reaction did not change. Countless apprentices merely blinked, frozen in place.
Since no one seemed about to step up, I supposed it was about time I raised my hand. The path of proper discipline was a difficult one, but if someone had to walk it, it might as well be me.
Slowly, I raised my hand.
The moment I did, Training Officer Vesper’s eyes flashed.
“Oh! You are... Dilen, was it?”
“Yes, sir.”
At the same time, the crowd began buzzing.
Here and there, I could hear my name. The bastards who had all been so quiet until now were muttering that my challenge was sheer madness.
Then why not raise your own hands and say it to my face?
“Has he gone insane?”
“Not just insane. Completely insane. He thinks he can take on Beron? He is definitely about to get beaten half to death!”
“Hey! Dilen! What are you doing!”
And amid all that, I heard Rohan shouting.
As expected, you really are the only one who worries about me. Everyone else wore contemptuous expressions, but he was mouthing at me to stop immediately.
It is all right, my friend.
In just a moment, I will give you a wonderfully refreshing show.
Come to think of it, I had never shown my Martial Prowess to anyone, had I?
My basic intention had been to hide my strength. That way I could lure enemies into lowering their guard and avoid unnecessary attention.
But if I hid it too completely, that would only become troublesome in another way.
What I needed was a moderate display. Enough to leave the impression that I could fight well, and that among the apprentices at least, I had no equal.
This stage was just about perfect.
“Good. I like that very much. Apprentice Dilen, splendid courage. Step forward!”
At Training Officer Vesper’s call, I walked out to the center. This time too, the senior butler holding the Wooden Sword for sparring offered it to me.
I flashed a grin.
“That will not be necessary.”
“What? You mean to go bare-handed as well?”
“It ought to be fair.”
With that, I turned to face Beron.
My audacity made him flinch. He had clearly remembered the time I slapped him around in that basement.
But that memory quickly turned into fury. He smacked his fist into his palm and glared at me as though he meant to crush me on the spot.
“You crazy bastard. What the hell did you just say? Something about tools?”
“Were you not planning to call me out anyway? You still have that score to settle from the basement, after all. It only makes sense you would want your revenge.”
I emphasized the words basement and revenge.
As a result, the murmuring around us grew even louder. Countless suspicions were flying about now, all of them asking the same thing: what exactly happened in that basement?
“Shut up! I only let my guard down for a moment back then. Today, I am going to grind you into the dirt.”
“Thank you for saying what I was about to say.”
“You son of a bitch!”
He came charging at me.
The momentum was impressive. He had always been large and powerful, so when he rushed in in earnest, he really was somewhat threatening. The distance between us vanished in an instant.
His fist came flying at me, carrying heavy weight behind it.
Unfortunately for him, I had already finished all my preparations. I had sent the mana writhing inside my heart throughout my entire body, and had infused my left hand in particular with even more mana.
I opened my left hand as though spreading a glove.
THUD!
His fist stopped dead in my palm for all to see. That stunned expression of his was rather amusing.
“Is that all?”
The dumber a man was, the more easily he fell for provocation. Just as expected, the taunt made him flare up at once.
He reset his stance.
Breathing hard, he prepared to attack again. Of course, if I had truly wanted to, I could have stopped him from ever drawing his fist back. But ending it in a single blow would have been no fun.
I shifted my weight lazily onto one leg. That too was part of the provocation. There were this many spectators watching. The least I could do was make it entertaining.
“You bastard! Clench your teeth!”
Even his attitude changed.
No, seriously, are these butlers really just going to watch while someone comes at his opponent as though trying to kill him? Then again, perhaps because no weapons were involved, they thought it acceptable.
Whoosh!
For the briefest instant, while my mind wandered, his fist shot straight for my jaw.
But even that was ridiculous.
Unless he too could handle mana as I did, there was no way he would ever overcome my strength while fighting with a bare body.
To prove that point, I raised my left hand lightly.
THUD!
Once again, his attack was blocked.
Effortlessly.
“Hmph! Did you think I would fall for the same thing twice?”
But this time Beron did not let his guard down. As if he had expected his first strike to fail, he immediately fired an uppercut with his other arm.
Whooom!
It was actually a fairly decent attack.
I would have liked to give him a passing grade.
But instead, I floated aside as lightly as a butterfly and avoided it with ease.
The bewilderment on his face as two all-out attacks came to nothing was priceless.
“Frustrating when things do not go the way you imagined, is it?”
This time, I took a large step forward.
Because I had loaded mana into my legs as well, I surged in at tremendous speed. Caught off guard, he thrust both hands out to block my attack.
Whirl!
It was a feint, idiot.
I pretended to throw a punch, then spun around and turned my back to him. As a result, he exposed his side completely.
And I drove my elbow straight into his ribs.
WHAM!
“Guhhhh!”
Something felt as though it broke. A rib, perhaps? I did not know.
And I did not care.
He collapsed right there on the spot.
His injuries looked bad enough that he was gasping for breath, so the butlers who had been watching from the side ran in.
“Stop! End it here!”
At the order from a butler whose name I did not know, I relaxed my stance.
There was no point in fighting further.
But Beron showed unexpected stubbornness. He shook off the butlers’ hands and forced himself back to his feet.
“I... huff... I am fine! I can still fight!”
“Are you truly all right?”
“No... problem!”
If nothing else, I could at least respect that spirit.
The butlers stepped back, eyeing him suspiciously. Training Officer Vesper did not seem inclined to stop the match either.
Smiling, I said,
“I mean this sincerely. Would it not be better if you stopped now?”
“Shut up!”
“You really do have nothing in that head of yours, do you? Fine, then. Come at me. Let us finish this quickly.”
I crooked a finger at him, and Beron, breathing hard, charged again.
Having taken one proper hit already, he did not rush in blindly this time. He held some distance and raised his arms like a bear. It looked like he was trying to set up a grapple.
Cute bastard.
I had no desire for the spectators to start feeling bored. So I darted straight into his reach.
Grab!
Just as I expected, he seized my shoulder.
A frightening amount of force. There was a reason he was called a monster among the apprentices.
But that only applied to other people.
I shot both of my arms out, seized his left hand where it gripped my shoulder, and twisted without the slightest mercy.
CRAAACK!
“AAAAAGH!”
Screaming, he collapsed on the spot. The fight was over at that very instant. Already he was wailing from the pain and terror of his arm being twisted out of shape.
Dusting off my hands, I looked around.
Everyone was staring back and forth between Beron and me with faces full of disbelief.
In the middle of it all, Rohan was clapping like a fool.
With just this one match, I could feel the entire perception of me had changed.
Even the thuggish bastards who used to run with Beron could no longer properly meet my eyes. It looked like, for a while at least, I would not need to use force again.
At that moment, I heard Training Officer Vesper laughing beside me.
“Hahaha! Remarkable! Apprentice Dilen, where in the world did you learn Unarmed Combat like that?”
“I studied mostly from manuals.”
I answered him with a slightly altered version of something I had once heard a student with a perfect entrance-exam score say on television.
The way the Training Officer was looking at me was no longer ordinary.
“I will grant you a special Overnight Leave Pass as a reward. Continue striving with even greater diligence in the future!”
“Thank you!”
It felt as though I had just taken one step closer to becoming a full butler.
Not bad at all.
***
The spar with Beron created a bigger stir than I had expected.
To begin with, apprentices who had once ignored me or had never had any reason to be friendly toward me started showing excessive interest in me.
Most of it was positive interest, naturally. They praised the Martial Prowess I had displayed and said they wanted to get along with me from now on.
Of course, I had no intention of rejecting their goodwill.
In the broadest sense, the world of apprentices was also a kind of political arena. There was nothing particularly bad about having a group of people around who followed me.
More than anything, what pleased me most was that Beron’s gang no longer dared provoke me. The way they looked at me had been irritating for quite some time, so this worked out nicely.
And Beron himself, you ask?
Beron suffered broken ribs and a twisted elbow from our spar.
According to what Rohan told me, he would need more than a month to recover fully, and in the meantime, he was destined to lie useless in a sickroom without being able to do a thing.
In other words, the lesson had landed perfectly.
Still, not everything had gone exactly as I wanted.
There was one thing that did not sit well with me.
The fact that Beron was allowed to keep his status as a Butler Apprentice.
If he had come from an ordinary family, his apprenticeship would have ended on the spot. That much was obvious if I thought back to when I was injured from falling off the balcony, and Head Butler Yanrof said I would work only one more month before being sent away.
More than anything, the Arkain Merchant Company was now firmly marked by the Adeline Marquis House for playing games with Training Officer Cornel.
And yet, strangely enough, Beron had not been thrown out. On the contrary, he was receiving such careful treatment that the House doctor had been called in for him.
“Why are they still maintaining ties with the Arkain Merchant Company? It feels as though the merchant company bastards are definitely working some scheme....”
I heard the corruption affair ended with disciplinary action against the merchant company’s working-level staff. On top of that, the delivery and contract terms were adjusted to be slightly more favorable to House Adeline.
A slap-on-the-wrist punishment.
In other words, the merchant company had simply cut off its tail.
But was that really a problem belonging only to the merchant company?
“There is definitely some power I do not know about hiding behind them. I can smell it. Something suspicious.”
Otherwise, there would never have been a document about kidnapping Young Lady Sapiela hidden inside a secret box belonging to the Arkain Merchant Company.
My thoughts sank deeper and deeper.