Rosetta gripped the hem of her skirt and didn’t finish her thought. She fell into silence and stood with her lips pursed. The way Rosetta often acted made Alan think that she must put a lot of trust in him, yet he never once thought of that weight as a burden.
“Thank you for getting angry on my behalf, Rosetta.”
“It’s not like I did it for you or anything...”
Even the way she pouted when she was upset was adorable. Alan thought back to a female knight he had fought alongside in the past.
She reminds me a bit of her.
“But you know, even if we put their poor manners aside, peace has made those two far too complacent,” Rosetta said, still clearly displeased.
“Complacent, huh?” Alan stood up from his chair and looked out the window behind him. “Back in my day, because of the final war and the chaos that followed, every line of work was a struggle for survival.”
A serene townscape was visible through the window. The people lived their lives full of smiles; children played and laughed, adults worked hard with few worries, and the minstrels sang tales not of valor but of harmony and love.
“We finally have peace; what’s wrong with a little complacency? It’s proof that our hard work led to everyone having a peaceful life.”
Alan laughed proudly at the thought.
“The future era belongs to the people who will live in it! Us old folk shouldn’t meddle.”
Yes, matters of the tranquil time to come should be decided by those who inherited it. New endeavors were sure to have their fair share of failure, but even so, overcoming those trials step-by-step was how people would grow. Old soldiers’ one job was to watch over and protect them.
That was what Alan felt from the bottom of his heart.
✦ ✦ ✦
In no time at all, it was one year after Marquess Ginger’s proposed “Fresh Recruit Training Program” was implemented. On that day, Alan was inspecting the Knight Training Academy—the facility where new knight recruits conducted their training—while accompanied by Rosetta.
“How are the new recruits of this term doing?” Alan asked their guide, Marquess Ginger.
“Oho ho ho, they are naturally doing excellent,” Ginger replied in his usual excessively shrill voice, the back of his hand pressed against his dainty mouth.
The recruits who had enlisted one month ago were practicing their magic in the academy training grounds.
“Water Element, Third Magic!” one of the new recruits chanted with their hand raised toward a target. Water forcefully swelled from their hand, and the ensuing burst of pressure blew the target away.
“Fire Element, Tenth Magic!” another recruit chanted from a different location. A ball of fire erupted from their fingertips accompanied by a fierce roar. The straw training dummy didn’t stand a chance.
“We start off magic training at a high grade, so most recruits are at this level a month after enlisting. Such efficiency would be unheard of in your time, right?” Ginger said, his unpleasant voice full of pride.
“You’re right. In my day, you’d need ten months to use magic of this level,” Alan answered.
“So, this is what they call Template Magic. We’re living in convenient times, aren’t we?” he murmured to himself, full of emotion.
The curriculum adopted by Ginger trimmed the fat from the previous procedures and prioritized learning magic with clear combat applications. Now, that alone wasn’t enough to shorten the time it took to learn magic by nine months; what made it possible was Template Magic.
Template Magic was powerful magic that anyone could use, built using the magic of Champions who excelled in the era of the Titanomachy as its foundation. The spells were split into six elements, and each was called by its element and a number instead of a unique name. That way, the magic the Champions had each developed over arduous years of the war could now be learned with a short amount of training.
These are good times, Alan thought.
The recruits might have only enlisted a month ago, but at this level, they could easily manage the monsters in the surrounding area.
“I admit I had my doubts, but I am glad we implemented your suggestion, Lord Ginger,” Alan said honestly. It had turned out to be true that the previous curriculum had superfluous parts since it was created based on the training they taught before the development of Template Magic. Not that the old training was without merit, but from an efficiency standpoint, Alan found the brand-new curriculum had plenty of worth as an initiative.
Well, we have the leeway to try it out because we live in peaceful times.
Ginger laughed proudly, seeming genuinely pleased to hear his plan complimented.
“Oho ho ho ho, yes, see? Dear William only graduated last year and he’s already proving himself on the front line. Now, do go on, feel free to heap more praise upon my intellect!”
The face of that blond boy surfaced in Alan’s memory.
“William, you say?”
✦ ✦ ✦
Around that same time, in the monster emergence zone of the Uniland domain, William Rayfield raised his sword overhead toward a large, monstrous beowulf.
“Blaze Element, Twelfth Magic!”
Fwoosh!
The sword William was holding burst into flames.
“Haah!”
He slammed the flaming sword down on the beowulf, easily cutting through its thick fur to deliver a fatal wound.
“Phew! I’m always so flawless I might get sick of it,” William said as he pushed his awfully smooth blond hair—his pride and joy—back from his forehead.
At only sixteen years old, William Rayfield was now the captain of the Fourteenth Unit of the Anti-Monster Corps, a group of forty young recruits. To the others, the youthful and successful William was an unparalleled object of admiration.
“That was insane, Captain!”
“The youngest ever captain is something else!”
William’s every action was showered with endless praise.
“Ha ha ha! I know it’s the truth, but say it too much and you’re gonna make me blush.”
Despite William’s words, he brazenly basked in the glory. In fact, his tone suggested he wanted them to keep it coming.
“Though, you know, my age’s got nothing to do with it. The talented generation has to step up and win big in place of the dried-up, crusty dinosaurs like the commander!”
“Captain, we’ve already finished patrolling the area assigned to us today,” the vice-captain, a man a little more sensible than the rest, told William.
“Really now? And here we still have time to kill.”
“It’s all because you’re so damn efficient, Captain!”
“Your skill is unrivaled!”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” William said with a peal of laughter. He showed no hint of shame no matter how much he was praised. It was actually impressive, in a certain way.
“But if we go back now, those pigheaded fossils won’t let us hear the end of it. Since we’re already out here, how about we run down the clock while we survey the area assigned to us tomorrow? You guys up for it?”
“Hell yeah!”
“Let’s freaking go!”
William’s men enthusiastically agreed with his suggestion.
“Heh, I like your attitude! Let’s do it!” William said before springing onto his horse. He was about to dig his heels into his horse’s sides when his vice-captain raised his voice.
“One moment, Captain! There is someone headed our way from that hill.”
William squinted. “Huh? Is that a knight from a different unit?”
Indeed, a knight from a unit other than William’s was staggering over to them. His armor and other equipment were battered, making it clear a fight had taken place. One of William’s men ran up to him.
“Hey, hey, what happened?”
“M... Mon...sters...” the other knight croaked faintly.
“What about them, what kind of monsters?” he pressed.
“No...it was...dem...”
The knight suddenly collapsed, revealing to all of them that an arrow was embedded deep in his back.
“What the—Hey, are you okay?!” William shouted.
When William’s squad member took a closer look, he found that the injured knight had already drawn his last breath. “It’s no use. He’s dead,” he told William.
“What could have possibly...”
The monsters in the area weren’t supposed to be particularly dangerous. Besides, the man had been killed by an arrow. With their low intelligence, it was unthinkable for monsters to use complex tools like bows and arrows. As William was searching his mind for an explanation, his vice-captain raised his voice once more.
“Captain William! Take heed!”
When William turned toward the hill the vice-captain had pointed at, he saw a band of more than seventy monsters. And as if that weren’t enough, the monsters were brandishing weapons while sitting astride horses.
Most shocking of all, one of the creatures spoke.
“Humans spotted ahead. Assault unit, forward! Slaughter them all!”
The other monsters let out a raucous war cry in response.
“Monsters wielding weapons, riding horses, and communicating? No, this can’t be...!” the vice-captain spluttered.