Despite the duke’s expression, which had left me uneasy, the rest of the day passed without incident. Simon and Duchess Brivia offered dry congratulations, little Manuel ignored me, and my sister and the second duchess gave me genuine praise. Even the head butler and the mansion staff congratulated me, though their expressions were hard to read.

“Don’t be too disappointed. Awakening an ability at all is an incredible thing.”

Back in her room, Mother hugged me tight and tried to comfort me, but I didn’t need comforting. I was delighted with the result.

‘This might be even better than not awakening at all.’

Safety mattered, but being cast out as a commoner in an age like this would make life difficult. An ability modest enough not to encroach on my brothers’ territory would surely help my future while letting me stay safe.

‘Well, to be honest, I’ve already awakened, so I’m just putting a positive spin on it because I have no choice.’

Even a modest ability was still an inherited ability. Now that the duke’s protection had ended, danger might come for me again.

‘Don’t let your guard down. Stay alert. Alert.’

After saying good night to Mother, I returned to my room and sighed. I was staying in the ducal household after all, which meant another stretch of living on edge.

‘New goal: establish my own branch of the family! Drop the genius act and become someone just useful enough to get by!’

As I made that resolution, someone knocked on the door.

‘Flora?’

“Come in.”

But the person who opened the door was not Flora. It was the elderly head maid.

“You’re to come to the training ground behind the mansion early tomorrow morning,” she said as soon as she entered.

“The training ground?”

“Yes.”

I tilted my head. Why the training ground, all of a sudden?

I asked again. “Who gave the order?”

“The head butler, young master.”

The head butler... If he was giving me orders, they had come from the duke. There was only one reason to send me to the training ground.

“I’m supposed to meet a knight there, aren’t I?”

“Yes. He said you were to see Sir Alonso, the knight commander.”

I grimaced at her answer.

‘The knight commander is going to be awkward...’

Alonso. Unlike the other knights, he had been born a commoner, awakened an ability, and become a noble for his own lifetime. He didn’t much like me, the duke’s illegitimate son. Even though I was the duke’s child, he would pretend not to see me when we passed in the corridor.

I couldn’t refuse the duke’s order, and I needed to find out for myself how much use my awakened ability would be.

The next morning, I followed Flora to the training ground behind the mansion. I knew where it was, of course, but no one would let a child who had just turned six wander around alone. We had to walk a short way down a side path behind the mansion to reach it.

The small training ground, surrounded by trees, was empty except for two people. It was a private ground used by nobles who didn’t want others seeing their abilities. My father and half-brothers were its usual users, but none of them was there today. Instead, two knights stood in the middle of the otherwise empty ground: one middle-aged, the other apparently in his early twenties. The sharp-featured older knight was Commander Alonso, who disliked me. I had never seen the younger one before.

‘Who is he?’

I set the question aside, stood before the commander, and greeted him. I straightened my back and placed a hand over the left side of my chest, offering the greeting a noble gave someone he trusted.

“I’m Alex.”

Both knights flinched at the polite but unmistakably noble greeting. It wasn’t the sort of greeting they expected from a child who had just turned six.

“I’m Alonso... the knight commander,” he replied after a slight pause. “On His Grace’s orders, I’ll be assessing your ability, young... Master Alex.”

As I thought, speaking respectfully to me seemed to make him terribly uncomfortable.

I doubted I would ever get along with this commander. Still, my proper greeting had stopped him from looking down on me. Respect for someone began with the words you used. It had put a little distance between us, but I had no desire to be close to him anyway, so that was enough.

In any case, it looked as though they would be testing my awakened ability, just as I’d expected. The duke had looked rather frightening. Was he up to something? I wondered, but for now I had to deal with the stiff-necked knight standing in front of me.

“What should I do, then?”

The commander handed me a wooden sword. It had been sized for me, but the marks all over it suggested it wasn’t new. Had Simon or Manuel used it?

‘Don’t tell me I’m getting hand-me-downs here too.’

After that rather pathetic thought crossed my mind, I moved the hand holding the sword this way and that. As expected, I felt nothing. I had never held a sword or gone to a fencing school in my previous life. There was no reason I should feel anything the moment I picked one up.

Watching me wave the sword around at random, the commander spoke. “He has no fundamentals whatsoever. We’ll start with basic training. Miguel!”

“Yes, sir!”

‘You didn’t have to say it quite so pointedly. Of course I have no fundamentals. It’s my first time holding a sword.’

While I grumbled to myself, the young knight beside him stepped forward.

“I’m Miguel, a full knight.”

He had thick arms and a gentle-looking face. That was a relief. He didn’t seem the sort to torment someone for fun.

The commander stepped aside, folded his arms, and watched. Apparently, he intended to observe rather than train me himself.

“We’ll put you through a trainee knight’s training course today,” Miguel said. “I’ll adjust the pace according to your stamina and physical condition, so please do your best.”

“Understood.”

It was only for one day, and I was curious about my inherited ability. I meant to give it my best effort.

“Then shall we start with a run? This training ground is on the small side, so let’s do just fifty laps.”

Fifty laps? Had I heard him wrong? My mouth fell open. It was much smaller than the training grounds the knights used, but it was still a training ground. One lap was over a hundred meters. Fifty laps meant five kilometers.

What was he thinking, telling an untrained six-year-old to run five kilometers? Was he the assassin?

“Start running. Keep going until you’re exhausted and collapse. We’ve prepared healing elixir, so you needn’t worry about your body.”

They meant to test my limits. I sighed. With all that prepared, I had no choice but to run.

“Run with the sword in your hand. If you drop it, you’ll start over from the beginning.”

At his words, I started running.

‘I should have exercised while I had the chance.’

With the young knight barking at me, I gritted my teeth and kept going. I ran and ran, until, on the thirty-second lap, I lost consciousness.

* * *

“He has perseverance.”

As I came to, I heard a voice I hadn’t expected at all. Cold and hard, it belonged to the duke.

“He certainly does appear to have gained an ability. An ordinary, untrained six-year-old couldn’t have that kind of endurance.”

This time it was the commander speaking. He and the duke seemed to be talking.

Had they carried me back to the mansion? But the scent of the forest drifted past my nose, and my back and limbs could feel the uneven earth beneath them. I was still at the training ground where I’d fainted.

Endurance beyond the ordinary, though... Was it that?

There had been a point during the run when I’d nearly given up. My vision had gone yellow, my limbs were shaking, and stomach acid was rising in my throat. Right then, strength had surged from somewhere deep inside me.

At the time, I’d thought it was the “runner’s high” I’d heard about in my previous life: the physiological effect where exercising to the point of exhaustion releases druglike hormones and gives you a burst of energy. Had it been something else? Come to think of it, this had felt different from the runner’s high I’d heard about. I hadn’t forgotten my fatigue. It was more that the effort felt a little less punishing, or that my limit had grown.

Whatever it was, that feeling had let me keep running beyond what I thought was my limit. Though I had eventually passed out.

“It looks as though he’s awake now. His recovery isn’t bad, either. We’ve confirmed that the ability is there. But... it doesn’t seem particularly impressive to me...”

I heard no answer from the duke. Instead came footsteps, growing fainter. I opened my eyes a crack. The commander stood some distance away, and I could see the duke’s back as he walked toward the mansion.

Did this inherited ability improve my hearing too? The commander was quite far from where I lay. Neither Flora, whose lap my head had been resting on, nor Miguel, the young knight standing beside her, seemed to have heard their conversation. I sat up, watching the duke leave.

“Are you all right? Please lie down a little longer. There might be aftereffects. I was going to call someone, but...”

Flora didn’t need to finish. With the duke there, what could she have said? All she could do was watch.

“I’m fine.”

I really was. Nothing hurt, and my head was clear. My muscles ached from being worked so suddenly and so hard, but I felt strangely well for someone who had just fainted.

But something mattered more than how well my body had recovered: the duke had come here. I hadn’t expected that at all. Had he been passing by? Had some passing whim brought him? No. If he were that sort of person, he would have visited me before now.

There was something about this test, about my seemingly unremarkable awakening, that had caught his attention.

“You don’t seem to have any aftereffects. Can you continue training?”

The commander had come over when I sat up. Perhaps because the duke had visited, he looked less displeased than before. Flora looked worried, but I nodded.

“I’d like to continue.”

I needed to find out why the duke had come. He was unlikely to tell me, so I would have to discover the reason myself. Besides, I’d thought I had given up on hoping for more from my ability, but apparently I hadn’t. A small hope stirred in my chest. I needed to know exactly what kind of weapon I now held.

Miguel stepped in front of me again.

“Normally, we’d continue conditioning your body,” he said, “but assessing your ability takes priority today. We’ll begin swordsmanship lessons.”

Unfortunately, that didn’t mean learning some extraordinary sword technique. I practiced downward strikes over and over. Once my muscles began to tremble, he had me swing from side to side instead. The commander watched for a long while, then left. Apparently, he had seen enough of the remaining tests.

My training, however, was far from over. After eating the lunch Flora had packed, I spent the entire afternoon practicing with the sword. By the end, my arms were so weak that it was hard to tell whether I was training or dancing. The session finally ended as the sun sank beyond the woods behind the mansion.

I didn’t faint this time, but I was so exhausted I wished I would. I was a fool for pushing myself that far, but a knight who worked a child who had just turned six all day was an even greater fool.

“Well done,” Miguel said. “Even with your ability, you’ve overworked your muscles today. Have the maids give you a massage, and rest thoroughly for at least a day.”

He bowed to me where I lay exhausted, then left the training ground.