How to Live as a Martial Arts Writer in a Fantasy World

17 – No More Mischief for the Young Master

17.

The martial arts ground was vast.

In particular, the one dedicated for the knight department, which the knight department’s students used, was enormous. It was natural, considering that the knight department, along with the magic department, boasted the most numbers in the Berusa Academy.

Allen walked with Albert towards the martial arts ground.

“There’s a vast difference in scale compared to the public martial arts ground, isn’t it?”

“It’s a small difference.”

“But the scale difference is too much.”

Alan glanced at the training field.

The grand hall was not small in scale, but the fencing room of the knight’s academy had the size of two soccer fields combined.

The size of the public training field was ridiculously huge, and Alan thought to himself that it must be because it’s a royal road, the land is overly fertile.

“Master, watch out…!”

He heard the sound of something piercing through the air.

Almost as soon as Alan turned his gaze to the source of the noise, the hem of a maid uniform fluttered grandly in front of his eyes. As if it was the most natural thing, Maya, who caught the ball that came flying from afar in her left hand, plunged the ball into the ground.

The embedded ball broke with a bang.

Maya, who casually shook her hand, looked back at Alan.

“Are you okay, Master?”

“Maya, is your hand okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Let me see, give me your hand.”

Alan promptly grabbed Maya’s hand.

Knowing his stubbornness, Maya obediently showed her hand. She had protected her hand with mana from the moment she caught the ball, so there was no injury at all.

Alan breathed a sigh of relief after examining her hand for a while.

“I’m glad you’re fine.”

“It’s natural if you can handle mana.”

“What if there was mana in that ball just now?”

“I would have been alright.”

Watching the bickering between Maya and Alan, Albert chuckled.

It seemed like worrying about Maya was something only Alan did, whether when they were young or now.

Alan’s gaze turned in the direction the ball had come from.

“Who threw the ball?”

“Ah, I’m sorry. I didn’t think that it would fly that way.”

Few cadets from the knight’s academy were approaching, throwing and catching another leather ball.

Alan looked at them, his face showing apparent irritation.

“I didn’t think it would go that way, huh. That’s a fun thing to say.”

When Albert, who had been standing behind Maya, stepped forward, the faces of the trainees who were walking towards Alan turned pale.

“Who dared to throw a ball at my brother? And did so ‘deliberately’.”

“Albert Elling Von Mueller…?!”

“I don’t recall giving permission for you to call my name so casually.”

A suffocating aura of hostility emanated from Albert.

The cold light flickering in his eyes swiftly pervaded the arena with hostility.

“I came to give my younger brother a bit of exposure. Care to explain what’s going on here?”

“That is…”

“It seems they are the ones from the Pabel family who dislike you, young master.”

At Meia’s words, Albert laughed.

“Is that so?”

“I recognized their faces. They are the students who slandered you behind your back. They’re nobles from the southern region.”

“Hmm, I see.”

As if amused, Albert chuckled and looked at the three students, who were nobles from the south and looked pale.

Confident, Albert struck his waist-bound sword and said:

“Come on up to the arena. For the sake of showing my younger brother a good spectacle, I’ll present you with the opportunity to cross swords with me.”

The three students, knight-school cadets from a southern noble family, were speechless.

Albert added:

“For your information, you don’t have the right to refuse.”

***

‘Damn it, how did it end up like this…?!’

Every school had its share of troublesome nobles.

The nobles, especially from the southern region who entered the academy, had a strong tendency to stick together, and many of them had a major impact on the literary sphere of the empire.

McKellan, a professor who was recently dismissed, was from the south, and he had a tendency to dote particularly on students from southern noble families.

Naturally, the three noblemen students were infused with prejudice against Shuren machines as well.

“We were wrong! So no need for the duel…!”

“Ye, yeah. We were just messing about, you are the Sword King’s son! You can surely handle this much!”

But despite their desperate excuses, Albert didn’t give the appearance of listening.

“I am certain you know what kind of reputation my brother has. Unless your ears are merely for decoration.”

The three students fell silent.

They strongly realized their words had rubbed Albert the wrong way. The look in Albert’s eyes as he gazed at them was cold.

“The Sword King’s son? And what exactly do you know about my brother that you feel free to speak so loosely?”

“Young master, I have brought the wooden swords.”

“Thank you. Meia.”

The wooden sword that Meia aims at Albert who is on the training field comes flying.

Albert, who catches it lightly, laughed.

Allen yelled from the audience.

“Brother! You can’t kill just because you’re angry!”

“I won’t kill you, Allen.”

Albert, who answered laughing to Allen, turns around.

“But I will incapacitate them for some time.”

“Crikey….”

“Why are you doing this to us! We just taught a lesson to the guy who wrote a novel that’s not Imperial!”

“Hey, you stupid guy!”

Seeing the aristocratic student who seems to have lost his sanity halfway due to Albert’s spurious anger, Albert took a short step.

In an instant, Albert appeared in front of the three students and swung his wooden sword.

The sound of cutting through the air was chilling, even though it wasn’t loaded with mana.

The faces of the three students who stepped back were white.

Albert was approaching them with a ghostly cold face holding the wooden sword.

“Draw your swords. Unless you want to be useless meat.”

The eldest son of the Sword King, who protects the empire, was raging with terrifying hatred.

***

“Such an idiot, vomiting nonsense in real-time. Goodness.”

Allen scoffed as he watched Albert single-handedly punishing three students.

Even with Albert using a wooden sword against metal swords clearly showed that he was not taking them seriously, the students could do nothing against him.

The evidence was the sound of iron clashing whenever the real and wooden swords met.

“Has brother always been like that…?”

The Albert Allen remembered was definitely a promising swordsman and a knight candidate, but he felt that he had improved further than what he knew.

The trajectory of the moving sword was splendid.

It was a trajectory that showed a big difference from the swordsmanship he had seen at the duel between the previous Albert and his father, Duke Müller.

Allen faintly smelled the scent of Shuren’s combat style in that trajectory.

‘Oh dear, don’t tell me….’

It’s not perfect, yet.

But strangely, Allen read hints of Eastern swordsmanship faintly traceable in the arch of the sword Albert was swinging.

‘How can this be?’

Being a son of a Swordsman King and someone who had swung a sword his entire life, he could not be mistaken.

There were previously unseen feints mixed in Albert’s swordplay.

“Meia?”

“Yes, My Lord?”

“Am I seeing things incorrectly? It appears that my brother’s swordplay is a bit different than before?”

“I feel the same way.”

Meia responds immediately.

The three students pushed back by Albert’s blade.

A cold light flashes in Meia’s eyes as she witnesses this.

‘…How dare those scoundrels against My Lord.’

She could only imagine the damage Allen would have sustained if she hadn’t intervened.

Given Albert was by his side, the chances were high that what Meia feared might not happen, but that was merely conjecture if anything.

Would these men have come forward so boldly if something had actually happened?

Meia’s eyes harden with cold determination.

‘I cannot kill them.’

She wants to get rid of them right now, but her opponent is also a noble. As long as they do not disappear, there is a certain way to deal with them.

Instilling fear in them, so they can never pull such a stunt with Allen again.

‘The elder lord may have intervened once, but that is not enough. I must use my own methods to keep them from troubling My Lord ever again.’

Allen sneezes as he feels an eerie chill.

“Achoo!!”

***

“Damn, damn…! Albert Muller, that damn bastard! He beat the living daylights out of me!”

“You approached him the wrong way. You should have been more careful. Only then can you take revenge for the professor.”

Their chat mirrored as if they had forgotten that although Professor McKillan got fired, he hadn’t died.

From the start, the pupils who had indulged themselves in liberal arts class with good grades, owed Professor McKillan’s favor. He was literally their benefactor.

“I didn’t know Albert would be accompanying him. Damn it. I should’ve noticed when a guy who’s not even in knight school entered the knight school’s exclusive training field!”

“Damn it. We were stupid.”

“Next time, let’s target him when Albert is not around. Allen Muller will take the swordsmanship class anyway, right?”

The three students who took a serious beating from Albert to the point of incoherence were limping back, gritting their teeth.

“Damn it, should we get in touch with Kunlung? I’ve heard there are people who don’t really like Alan Muller.”

“I heard that the princess’s guardian hates Alan Muller. Shall we put in a request?”

“We need to be careful. It’s a gamble to deal with the people of Kunlung. Moreover, since the princess is overly friendly with Alan Muller….”

A shadow fell in front of them.

As the three students lifted their heads faintly, they saw a maid with white hair and clear blue eyes standing in the shadows.

“A maid?”

“You, of Alan Muller’s…”

“What?”

Facing them, Meia spoke with an expressionless face.

“My name is Meia.”

Meia lifted a corner of her maid outfit slightly, revealing her thigh.

Just as the students swallowed at the sight of her thigh, Meia smiled. Her stark, emotionless smile matched her cold eyes, lingering on the lips of the white-haired maid.

“I’ll teach you a lesson you won’t forget.”

As the dim sunset painted a shadow over the evening sky, her pure white hair waved in the approaching twilight just like a dragon’s tail.

In the thickening shadow, Meia’s blue eyes gleam like a gem.

“So you can’t ever misbehave before my master again.”