Vol 3 Chapter 49.1 – Boyhood – Spring at Age 13

The weight in my hands—what is it? Steel, wood, a sword? Or is it someone’s life, my family’s future, or perhaps my very self?

It had become a habit of mine to fall deep into thought whenever faced with a difficult question. I’m the type of person who’s always either brute-forced the unreasonable challenges a GM throws at me—not with the power of science, of course—or blindsided them with some crafty exploit. It might as well be called instinct at this point, since I’ve always taken the utmost pleasure in pondering the problem before me and finding the most efficient solution, or a solution that would make the GM go “Huh…?” and stare at their rulebook for a while.

Is it good to fight, or is it evil? It’s a philosophical question humanity has been wrestling with since its inception, but even after thinking on it for a whole winter, I couldn’t find an answer.

And why would I? How am I supposed to single-handedly solve a problem that countless great minds, far more brilliant than I, have failed to answer over thousands of years, piling up tens of thousands of books and scattering hundreds of millions of wise words along the way?

It really was a difficult problem.

For example, let’s say I cut down a man. Without a second thought, the act would be condemned as murder, as evil.

But what if the man I cut down was a great bandit leader, commanding dozens of henchmen, who had murdered an untold number of caravans and travelers?

No, no, he doesn’t have to be such an outrageous villain. He could be a fugitive who accidentally killed someone, or just a petty thief. Or maybe he was a complete stranger just passing by, or even a charitable soul who made a habit of giving alms.

The single act of cutting someone down has different consequences attached to it. And if you consider the circumstances of those I cut down, or what might have happened if I hadn’t, it’s truly endless. Even the most self-evident ethic of not killing people could potentially fall into evil.

It’s a truly difficult subject. Fighting, killing, whatever it is. Why are people born with these unsolvable conflicts and propositions stored inside their skulls? Who was it that said hell is, in the end, packed inside the thin confines of our bones?

The only one who could solve this problem would have to be a true god. A god who could overcome even the petty wordplay that mortals like us come up with, like the omnipotence paradox. Yes, a divine being of a higher dimension than the gods of “this world,” one who could lift a stone that cannot be lifted without overturning the premise that it cannot be lifted, perhaps…

For a moment, I was struck by a chilling sensation. It wasn’t like the gaze of Margit, which held a certain kind of comfort.

Something incomprehensible. As if I was being peered at by it, and our eyes met. Like when the dice make a bad roll…

The indescribable fear vanished in an instant, and the disturbance to my mind was just as brief. And I had to admire my own skill.

My <Battlefield Sword Arts>, having surpassed <Adept> to reach <Master>, and my <Dexterity>, now at <Prime> with only <Prodigy> remaining above it, works in harmony with <Exquisite Grace>. With this, I can make a cup dance on my sword even when I’m lost in thought.

“Phew…”

I exhaled the warm morning air, flicked up “Okuri-okami,” and sent the wooden cup that had been resting on its tip flying. Catching it as it flew to my hand, I moistened my throat with the water that half-filled it.

I can’t believe I actually pulled it off. Juggling a cup on the flat of my blade. I’m pretty sure I read it in some manga or something, though my memory’s getting hazy, but at the time I just laughed and thought, “Yeah, right.”

Thinking about good and evil makes it hard to cut a person down, but just cutting things is simple. And if you can cut things well, you can also choose not to cut them.

To explain the mechanics of how a sword cuts things would be a long story, so I’ll skip it, but the gist is that you can’t cut something without properly aligning the blade’s edge. And by extension, by deliberately not aligning the edge, you can strike something with the blade and not cut it at all.

Hmm, I’ve had a glimpse into the secret arts of my sword… I suppose.

The thin but incessant and annoying carpet of snow has receded, and spring has arrived, carried on the blessings of the fertility god. Around this time, every estate is probably bustling with celebrations for the end of winter and the start of the busy farming season, and the highways are likely teeming with caravans like blood flowing through veins. It’s the season of the fun spring festival, the second most lively time for the estates after autumn.

Ah, has it really been a year since Eliza and I left the beautiful Königsstuhl estate? Time truly flies.

In any case, with the arrival of the new season, I had made a decision.

I decided to drop the act.

Eliza asked me, “Why do you proactively do scary things?” And so, uncharacteristically, I spent a whole winter agonizing over the meaning of carrying a weapon.

But after thinking for a whole winter, I realized something. In the end, have any of the people who’ve attacked me so far been open to reason? And if I didn’t have my sword skills, I wouldn’t have had the luxury of having such thoughts; I’d have long since returned to the earth.

In this era, cozy 20th-century concepts and systems like “national security” or “basic human rights” don’t exist, and even the sense of ethics is a vague “it’s fine as long as no one sees.” The actual existence of God makes things somewhat better, but you can’t wipe away the Mappo and Violence-filled atmosphere.

If that’s the case, then to borrow a line from a certain association, the logic that “the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” becomes a kind of truth.

Thinking about it from a 21st-century perspective, that’s a pretty terrible thing to say. Though it is the basic principle behind the existence of an adventurer’s party in a TRPG.

Eliza is innocent. For better or worse, she doesn’t know the malice of the world, because our family has shielded her from it all. She’s a child, turning nine this year, so what else would you expect? At nine years old, no one thinks deeply about the significance of armies or violence. Her thoughts are nothing more than what is perfectly natural for a little girl.

That’s why Eliza questioned me with a logic that would only hold up if human beings were creatures truly worthy of salvation. And I, as an adult—I’ll be of age here soon enough, anyway—must prepare and wait, based on the logic that human beings are irredeemable.

Until she becomes an adult and understands the diversity of human nature—in the bad sense of the word—and the meaning of protecting someone.

Until then, to become a gentle wall that protects her, I decided after much deliberation to spend the proficiency points I’d accumulated from tackling the magic labyrinth on raising my <Battlefield Sword Arts> and <Dexterity> by one level each.

Hey, it’ll be fine. People grow even without dramatic events. Even I, who never got into a single fistfight in my past life, understood the logic that the only way to stop someone coming at you on the spot is to punch them back or kick them down.

If individuals couldn’t grow without life-or-death events worthy of a whole campaign, humanity would have gone extinct long ago.

So it’s fine. I’m sure it’s fine.

I wiped the sweat from my daily morning workout, before my… morning duties. Wait, did I just raise an unnecessary flag? I vaguely wondered.

Suddenly, a pulse of magical energy reached me. I looked over to see what was happening, and the empty air unraveled to form a hole. It was the spatial transition formula of Ms. Agrippina, a sight I’d grown all too used to. An origami butterfly flew out.

Hmm? If she’s within the imperial capital, her thoughts should reach me via the relay talismans. Why would she send a letter, and so early in the morning?

“…No morning duties today. Do not approach the Magisterium?”

Just a single, hastily written line. The ink wasn’t fully dry, and the penmanship favored readability over elegance. It was clear it had been written in a great hurry.

…Did I really just step on some kind of unnecessary flag…?