In the afternoon of a day with a quiet, pleasant breeze. I was facing my dad at the training area within the grounds.
“I sorta know what kind of training you’ve been doing in the backdoor mountain. I also can tell to some extent that you’re strangely strong for a ten year old. But I still can’t lose either. Come at me with all you’ve got.”
“You too, you’re not young forever so don’t get injured, okay.”
“Oh, you said it. I’m still 33 here.”
“And I’m still ten.”
“Hahaha.”
No more chatter. The next moment: whoosh… tense air flowed around us.
As for what we were doing now, it was martial arts training as part of my noble education. The House of Margrave Fahrenheit was a militaristic noble who bore the responsibility for the defense of the northern part of the Empire as the North General. And me, who would succeed to be the next head, would also have to excel in martial arts. This was what this training was for.
“Come,” dad urged me.
So you’re giving up the initiative, huh. Then let’s train with him not as his son, but simply as his disciple.
“Haah!”
By generating Shock on the soles of my feet, I approached dad with explosive acceleration. But dad saw through that as well; with superhuman Physical Ability, he dodged it and launched a counter with the wooden sword in both his hands.
In order to dodge that, I shot out a shock wave from my left palm and forcibly changed my stance, then immediately rotated and swung down the wooden sword in my right hand to cleave it out down his feet.
“Not bad!”
Seeing that, dad raised an impressed voice; but, he easily caught my attack by stepping down on my wooden sword with his right leg, and swung down his wooden sword in one breath straight from above.
“Kuh!”
I immediately let go of the wooden sword I was holding; while using the recoil of the shock wave I shot out from my feet and left hand to get away from dad’s attack, I shot out several Shock Bullets, my personal medium-long distance attack technique that converged Shock.
“…Mmhg!!”
Those were tremendously powerful shock bullets approaching at high speed, but dad calmly readied his wooden sword and, amazingly, cut off all of the Shock Bullets that were about to hit him.
“No, way…”
No matter what a stupidly strong dad he was, I wasn’t expecting him to slice through the Shock Bullets with a wooden sword at all. Taking advantage of the gap after the attack, I had shot out the fastest shots I could. Seeing how this didn’t work, probably, I wouldn’t be able to defeat my dad with a Shock Bullet no matter how many I shot.
“That’s a good move,” dad said to me, but I wasn’t happy at all. I couldn’t even graze him. This was totally useless.
Losing my wooden sword, I began to think what I could do in a barehanded state.
Shock Bullet is no good. Even if I shoot it seriously, it’ll just get cut with the wooden sword. Close-quarter combat is also no good. I can’t surpass dad’s abnormal Physical Ability with the non-attribute magic Body Strengthening I use. In the first place, my non-attribute magic’s ability is not enough to deal any damage to dad. As expected, the only way to deal an effective blow is with my very own magic: Shock.
Then what to do. How do I use Shock.
………….In short, I just have to hit him with Shock from a short distance, without it being cut or dodged.
Then how about this.
After finishing my strategy, I put both my hands on the ground, facing my dad who was dutifully lying in wait for me.
“So you’re trying to shake the ground. Great thinking! But it won’t work if I just move faster than that!”
So just attacking before it was shaken if the ground was going to be shaken, huh. What a muscle-brain way of thinking, but it was frightening just to think about his overpowered Physical Ability that would allow him to do that.
…But, looks like that muscle-brain backfired this time. I am Eberhard, a kid on the outside but an adult tactician on the inside.
Dad rushed at me at an unseen speed. Of course, unavoidable with my ability. However, I looked at that with a smile on my face.
The next moment dad wore a suspicious expression in response, he seemed to notice something. His face turned into panic. But too late, you couldn’t stop at that speed.
I pulled my hands away from the ground and held them in front of me. Then, I converted the mana that I had worked up beforehand into my Inherent Magic and shot it all out.
⸻Booommmm!!
“Guwah!!”
I could hear my dad’s muffled voice. But, that voice was soon blown away to a distant place.
There were a lot of clouds of dust. I released a weak shock wave to disperse the clouds of dust, revealing a trace in front of me that looked like the ground had been gouged out for about ten meters.
“It’s my win!” I declared my victory.
“Looks like it, huh…”
But just as the clouds of dust cleared, I saw dad from dozens of meters away totally unharmed, making me feel like total crap.
“Really, that’s nice thinking. So shaking the ground was a bluff, huh.”
“How you’re not hurt!?”
“Well, I can’t afford to lose to my son yet after all. But I say the victory is yours. Actually, you would’ve fatally injured someone if it wasn’t me.”
“Nnng, I don’t feel like I won at all…”
“Nuh-uh, instead you did well putting up a fight this far without even using body strengthening magic. Are you really ten years old? You really got strong,” dad said, stroking my head and already right in front of me before I knew it.
Being wrapped with indescribable emotions—happy, but frustrated, but embarrassed—I could do nothing but make an awkward expression.
“At this rate, I might not have to worry anymore.”
“…? What do you mean?”
Then dad showed a pompous smile and said, “so, you keep yammering about wanting to go outside the grounds, right?”
“Can it be!?”
“Yeah. There’s already nothing to worry about when you’re this strong. I give you the permission to go out freely, as long as it’s within the territory of our Margrave Fahrenheit.”
“Hooray!!”
“But, don’t go to others’ territories no matter what, okay? Setting aside ordinary people, if the eldest son of a noble family enters another territory without permission, it will cause disputes between houses after all.”
“I know that. Our territory is already vast anyway, so I don’t have to go out of my way to go that far to be able to enjoy myself.”
“It’s good you understand. Say it beforehand if you’re gonna be late, alright?”
“Yep.”
“Practice how to shop before you go, alright?”
“Got it.” The talk stopped here, and dad looked over the training area.
“…But well, you also destroyed an awful lot, huh.”
“I guess…”
This was not the garden but the training area after all. I wasn’t told not to destroy it, so I’d given my all and this is how it ended up.
“No choice, let’s fix it. It’s also not good to unnecessarily add more workload to the servants. …O’ spirits dwelling in earth, O’ Mother Earth Goddess governing the spirits, restore the soil, the rocks, and the ground to their original form with my mana. Terrain manipulation!”
Dad put his hands on the ground and chanted a spell. And then, the ground of the training area, which had been full of holes, was rapidly returning to its former clean and leveled state.
“Wooow… so cool…!”
For some reason, this was the first time I saw the attribute magic dad used. Since mom would usually be the one in charge of magic, I was just under the impression that dad was surely a muscle-brain soldier who would only throw himself into enemies.
“Well, even with the same earth magic, Teresia uses it more skilfully, though.”
“I mean, mom’s magic is just amazing.”
Saint of the New Green, one who supported the daring and resolute North General. My mother, Teresia Sally von Flensburg Fahrenheit, was a pretty well known A+ rank, brilliant mage in the Empire. Although not S rank because not especially suited for combat, the rumor of the Saint of the New Green, who could control two attributes of earth and water, and even control the life attribute magic derivative from earth and water magic as her inherent magic, was famous among the people of the Empire with the Heroic Saga of the North General as a set.
Life magic was said to be the synonym of recovery magic; an extremely rare attribute, which extremely rarely manifested as inherent magic only in those who had an aptitude for the two attributes of water and earth. It was such an incredible attribute, life magic; not only could it heal the injured and sick, it could also recover the tired, strengthen the healthy, and even manipulate plants and animals by giving them power.
My mother, Teresia, seemed to be called as the Saint of the New Green, especially because she assisted her allies in battle by encouraging the growth of plants to make restorative medicines toy with the enemy.
By the way, dad’s nickname before he became North General was War Demon. It sounded awfully cool, but to say whether it fit my dad who got no equal in close combat, I suppose it would.
It seemed that in their younger days, they were very well known as the duo party of ‘War Demon’ and ‘Saint of the New Green.’
In this time’s mock battle, I was strongly reminded that I had a long way to go. Even if my mana was superior in terms of quantity, I couldn’t beat the two of them in actual combat. I wanted to surpass them one day, and become a strong and splendid person worthy of the name of North General capable of protecting everyone in my family including Lily.
I also got permission to go outside this time, so tomorrow I would immediately head out to the castle town. To see the big world, know and learn many things, and become even stronger.
＊
TL notes:
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