Martin de Hierro. The man who had sent the monster flying was the Marquis of Hierro’s illegitimate son—and Adria’s half brother.

When Martin asked to join us, the knight commander sought my brother Simon’s permission, if only as a formality. Knight Commander Alonso was in charge of the party, but Simon’s position as heir to the ducal house warranted that much respect. Properly raised as he was, Simon left the decision to the knight commander. Naturally, the commander didn’t ask me.

As House Hierro’s illegitimate son had said, he was a noble, but an illegitimate son’s standing only went so far. Then again, I wasn’t even ten years old yet. In any case, Alonso allowed Martin to travel with us.

Martin was lively and sociable. Before half a day had passed, he was on friendly terms with everyone. He spoke freely with the soldiers and chatted happily with the knights. The soldiers were delighted that a noble, illegitimate son or not, treated them so easily, and the knights had taken a liking to him after seeing him defeat a monster on his own. Simon tried not to take an interest, while the knight commander and the head butler kept their dealings with him businesslike. With everyone else, he quickly became familiar.

I seemed to be the only one who felt uneasy around him. After what I’d experienced in my previous life, no amount of kindness from him could make me like him. But he took an interest in me because someone had told him I was an illegitimate son too.

“Throwing your sword to knock a flying monster aside... Even most knights couldn’t do that easily. I said it earlier, but that was truly impressive.” After talking with the knights for a while, he came over and struck up a conversation without hesitation.

“Thank you. You don’t have to speak so formally to me. But what you did was even more impressive. I didn’t know you could send a monster flying like that with a sword.” I relaxed my stiffening face and thanked him for the compliment. I didn’t like him, but I couldn’t let it show. An opportunity had come to me on its own; I couldn’t let it slip away.

There was a lot I needed to learn: how an illegitimate son cast out of his family had gathered people and seized power, who was backing him, and where the people who had killed us in my previous life were. I also needed to learn his abilities and weaknesses. If I was going to kill him.

“Would it be all right if I spoke casually to you...?”

“Of course. There’s an age difference, and we’re both in the same position.”

“That’s true. We are. All right, let’s be comfortable with each other.”

He really was friendliness personified.

“Besides, everything I can do is thanks to my inherited ability. My actual swordsmanship is nowhere near a knight’s. It’s thanks to that ability that I can travel around on my own like this...” His expression darkened as he spoke. It seemed there was more to the story.

“Oh, right. Mine is thanks to my inherited ability, but what you showed was swordsmanship, Alex! Swordsmanship so advanced that even knights would struggle with it!” I glanced around. Everyone was busy clearing up after dinner or tending to their equipment; no one was paying attention to us. The others had been too busy fighting to notice, but the man who had sent the monster flying had apparently seen what I could do.

“You look ten at most, if not younger. How is that possible?”

“I gained a related ability, so I’ve been training since my awakening.”

“Ah... So that’s what your inherited ability does... But would that be enough to make you so skilled?” Martin tilted his head, then murmured with a somewhat gloomy look, “Training. Does House Gresia raise even its illegitimate children properly?”

Mindful of our surroundings, I answered him. “I suppose it’s because I’m useful for something. This is a secret, but why do you think I came along?”

“Ah, I see. So this isn’t a trip for two brothers.”

If I wanted information from him, I needed him to feel we had something in common. Everything I’d said was true, so I had no reason to hesitate. And officially, as long as Simon didn’t find out why I’d come, there was no problem. Hmm. Could it become a problem? Nah. No one had heard us, so I could just deny saying anything.

“So noble houses are all the same after all...”

“Come to think of it, you said you’d left home. What happened?” I asked him, making my face look as innocent as I could. He gazed at me, lost in thought for a moment. Come on. Time to tell me.

Night insects were chirping, and the campfire cast a soft glow. It felt a little early, but the mood was perfect for opening up. I kept my expression as innocent and pitiable as I could and continued looking at him. After a moment, he seemed to make up his mind. He glanced around and lowered his voice.

“No one’s listening, are they?”

No one is. I checked.

“Will you keep it a secret too, Alex?”

I had no intention of keeping it a secret, but I nodded eagerly for him.

“Well, as I said before, I didn’t leave home. I was thrown out.” A bitter smile touched his lips as he spoke. “I gained an ability that could be useful, so I worked hard to help the family. But that only made other people resent me. They claimed I was after the house. As if any noble family would hand itself over to an illegitimate son.”

He was right. Even among those who had awakened, the number of illegitimate children who had inherited a noble house in the kingdom’s history could be counted on one hand. But I’d once been killed over an equally absurd misunderstanding, so his story didn’t sound strange to me at all.

“I suppose I should be grateful they didn’t kill me. But what they did to my sister...” A chilling gleam passed through his eyes. It vanished at once, but the air around him remained charged with anger. “I may be like this now, but someday I’ll pay them back.”

After that last quiet murmur, he looked straight at me. “I’m telling you this because I want you to be careful too, Alex. You seem smart for your age, so I’m sure you understand what I mean.” I understood all too well. No, death had already engraved the lesson deep in me.

Unfortunately, Martin didn’t look like a villain as he watched me with concern. Of course, he saw me as a child, but he seemed like a genuinely good person, someone who could worry about another even after being hurt himself. It was just that what he wanted—and what he had done in the future—had harmed me. Harm on the scale of Adria’s death, Hugo’s, Bianca’s, and my own. That changed nothing. Once death stood between us and made us enemies, his sense of justice meant nothing to me.

Seeing that I seemed to understand, he spoke with a hint of regret. “It’s a shame. If you were just a little older, Alex, we could have worked together.”

Huh? What was that supposed to mean? Should I probe a little?

“You mean as mercenaries?”

“Haha. Is that what I look like?”

“You don’t look like a knight.”

“Hmm. I suppose you could call me a mercenary. I’m not officially registered, but I work with some good mercenaries, so perhaps it fits.”

“Wow, you work with mercenaries? What do you do?”

“Haha. Trade secret. I can tell you when you’re a little older.”

Damn. He’d backed off right at the end. Still, if those mercenaries were the ones I knew, I might find them more easily than I’d expected.

I’d been thinking of killing him if I found an opening on the road, but it looked as though I’d have to put that off. If I killed Martin too soon, I might lose track of the others. Not that secretly killing him during the journey would have been easy. The sparring matches we fit in whenever we had time only made me more certain of that.

THWACK!

With a resounding blow, I found myself looking down at soldiers gazing up at me from below. From their point of view, I was probably soaring through the air. Tch. So much for being good with a sword. The masters would come after me with swords if they heard me say that, but when the difference in strength and stamina was this great, technique counted for nothing. Even with swordsmanship approaching a knight’s level—far beyond anyone my age—I was no match for him.

In truth, our swordsmanship wasn’t that far apart. I needed to slip inside his guard without letting our swords meet, but I wasn’t skilled enough compared with him to pull that off. So every time we sparred, I was struck by his sword and sent flying. If I channeled mana into my sword, I wouldn’t be pushed back this badly, but I had to keep that hidden for when I faced him in earnest. And by diligently losing, I’d managed to get a rough measure of his swordsmanship and strength. I was beginning to get a sense of how to fight him.

THUD.

“Ouch!” After flying a good distance, I tumbled onto the ground, and laughter broke out all around me.

“Haha, you lasted longer this time, at least.”

“But you flew even farther!”

The knights laughed and teased me as I got up. The soldiers didn’t dare join in, but I could see them turning their heads away to hide their snickers.

It was nothing like our first sparring match. The knights and soldiers had quickly warmed to Martin and his boundless friendliness, but they’d been distinctly uncomfortable around me at first. I was the duke’s child and an illegitimate son at that—one who was useful in his own way. It was understandable that they hadn’t known how to treat me. But after watching me spar and get beaten in front of them again and again, they’d grown much less distant.

I was still young, had a fairly cute face, and even had charm to spare. Seeing me take their teasing in stride had brought down their guard too. Fortunately, the knight commander said nothing, and the head butler didn’t take me aside to criticize my behavior. Simon alone frowned, but perhaps mindful of my position as an illegitimate son, he said nothing.

And so, traveling and sparring along the way, we eventually reached the marquis’s domain. It had been a long journey through four other domains. Envoys had sometimes come to ask us to stop at their lords’ castles, but we’d used the excuse that it wasn’t the duke himself traveling and headed straight for the marquis’s estate.

We encountered monsters several times during the journey. All of them looked like corpses, but none was as strong as the monsters we’d first encountered. A single knight could deal with them, and sometimes the soldiers could manage on their own.

“If undead wolves appeared every time, trade between domains would be impossible. Merchants can’t bring knight-caliber mercenaries along on every trip.” Martin kindly explained when I asked about it in puzzlement.

Martin and I grew quite close during the journey. Sparring every day and talking often, we could hardly have avoided it. But he gave nothing else away before we parted. Of course, I didn’t say anything unnecessary either. We parted company in front of the outer wall of the city where the marquis’s estate stood.

“See you in about a year. I’ll be back in fine form.” After saying goodbye to everyone in turn, he waved to me last and called out. I waved back. “No need to wait a whole year. We’ll meet again soon.” He’d shouted, but I whispered so quietly he couldn’t hear me.

“Come now, everyone will be waiting. Let’s hurry inside.” At the head butler’s urging, we passed through the outer gate, crossed the city, and headed for the lord’s castle. Unlike the Gresia ducal family, which lived in a mansion, House Hierro lived in a castle. We parted from the soldiers at the inner gate, then crossed the inner courtyard with the knights and reached the castle entrance.

Against a backdrop of flowers blooming in profusion, elegantly dressed nobles waited for us by the doors. Every face was unfamiliar but one. A girl who looked a little younger than she had when I’d last seen her. Adria was watching us with a prim expression.