Future Knight [EN]: Chapter 13

Elradion, leaning against the window and watching Kang Chan’s listless back, felt equally heavy-hearted.

He felt a pang of sympathy for Kang Chan’s eagerness to learn.

It wasn’t just because he felt sorry for not being able to teach Kang Chan swordsmanship.

It was because Kang Chan’s eagerness stood in such stark contrast to the young elves.

Elves, with their lifespans nearing a thousand years, never felt rushed or impatient.

In contrast, humans, who lived for less than a hundred years, were often perceived as greedy, hasty, and impatient, mirroring their short lives.

Their lives, from an elf’s perspective, were undeniably dynamic.

If elves possessed the same ambition and drive as humans and dedicated themselves to swordsmanship for hundreds of years, they would undoubtedly dominate the ranks of the continent’s best swordsmen.

However, in reality, Elradion was the only elf swordsman widely known on the continent, recognized as one of the Five Great Martial Gods.

No other elf besides him had achieved such renown.

The reason was simple.

They lacked the burning desire or unwavering will to learn anything with such intensity.

They were inherently strong enough without needing to master swordsmanship.

Upon reaching adulthood, they could effortlessly form contracts with spirits and wield their powers, and they possessed a natural talent for archery.

Such a life, for an elf, often lacked a certain dynamism.

The reason Keremion stood out among his peers was that he was consumed by hatred for humans and relentlessly sharpened his sword for revenge.

But at 97 years old, he was practically in his coffin, much like Jeina would be in human terms.

Yet, his achievement only reached the beginner stage of Sword Expert. [Sword Expert is a level of swordsmanship proficiency.]

Compared to humans, it wasn’t particularly remarkable, but Keremion was undoubtedly the most talented swordsman in the village.

However, Elradion couldn’t shake the feeling that it was all fueled by his obsession with avenging his sister.

Elradion consistently advised his disciple to abandon the darkness lurking within him, fearing it might one day consume him.

But his disciple was already too deeply entrenched in resentment, making it like talking to a brick wall.

He even suggested that Keremion take up archery instead of the sword if revenge was his sole motivation, but his disciple’s answer was so chilling that Elradion had once felt a shiver run down his spine.

The only reason his disciple wielded a sword was:

“It’s not enough to kill them from afar with arrows. I need to cut their bodies with my own sword to relieve my resentment and my sister’s.”

Judging from the look in his disciple’s eyes as he casually spoke of cutting people, he seemed ready to completely mutilate them.

Thinking of such a disciple, Elradion could only let out a long sigh.

* * *

When Kang Chan returned home, Jeina jumped down from a tree branch in front of his house.

She seemed to have been waiting for Kang Chan since morning.

“Hey! How did it go? Is he going to teach you?”

Jeina wasn’t trying to mock or look down on him; she was genuinely curious about what happened.

But Kang Chan only perceived it as Jeina making fun of him.

Kang Chan stared at Jeina and then sighed, saying listlessly,

“Just go home. I want to be alone.”

“…….”

At Kang Chan’s cold words, tears suddenly welled up in Jeina’s eyes.

She had been waiting and worrying about Kang Chan, but all she got in return was his coldness and dismissal.

She burst into tears out of sadness.

“Waaaaah! Aaaah!”

Jeina suddenly started crying, and her tears wouldn’t stop. Kang Chan was flustered and tried to soothe her.

“Jeina, don’t cry. I wasn’t angry at you.”

Kang Chan, who had no experience in comforting girls, didn’t know how to comfort Jeina.

“Sniffle, sniffle…….”

‘Sigh, has Jeina always been this tearful?’

Looking at the sobbing Jeina, he suddenly remembered a young girl he had met on the battlefield.

The girl was sitting next to the corpses of her parents, who only had their upper bodies left, crying so sorrowfully.

All he could do for her was to hand her a portable combat ration. [A pre-packaged meal for soldiers.]

But she didn’t seem to want to eat it either.

As if she wanted to follow her dead parents.

While Kang Chan was lost in such thoughts, Jeina’s eyelids, swollen from her continued crying, were so puffy that they could barely open.

“Let’s go inside. I’ll make you something delicious as an apology.”

Kang Chan reached out and lifted the squatting, crying Jeina by her armpits and took her inside.

Then Jeina’s sobbing subsided slightly.

Kang Chan’s accommodation was very different from when he had first arrived.

He spent all his free time hunting and eating, so his house now resembled a hunter’s home.

Smoked meat hung from the walls, and a blanket was made by weaving together hundreds of soft fur hides of Tiemes [Small, rabbit-like creatures] he had caught and eaten. The hunter’s bow he had obtained from the elves was also hanging on the wall.

Now, no one but Jeina dared to enter his room.

Perhaps his room, with smoked meats hanging all over, looked too gruesome for the elves, who mainly ate vegetarian food.

In particular, the blanket made of the fur hides of Tiemes, small and cute rabbits, was his masterpiece that even made Arteon, who was always calm, faint.

To comfort Jeina, he took out his favorite food, wild boar marinated in kiwi, and started grilling it over the fire.

This dish, which was his special recipe with a touch of lemon sprinkled on after grilling, was also very popular with Jeina.

In the elven village, where the concept of seasoning was almost nonexistent, this was considered a very excellent dish.

As the meat he was grilling became perfectly cooked, Jeina, who had stopped crying without anyone knowing when, took a seat next to Kang Chan and began to devour the meat that Kang Chan was cutting.

“Hey! How, how, how can a guy cook so well?”

Watching Jeina, whose words kept slurring because of the hot meat, Kang Chan couldn’t help but smile at her cuteness.

“Finish eating and then talk. A woman shouldn’t be so unrefined.”

“Hmph!”

Suddenly, Kang Chan looked around, and Jeina also turned her head to look around with a puzzled expression.

“Why? What’s wrong suddenly?”

Kang Chan said very carefully to Jeina.

“Shall we have a glass of fruit wine?”

“Fruit wine?”

Jeina’s eyes widened in surprise and embarrassment.

She looked so cute that he really wanted to poke her cheeks.

In their elven village, it was a very, very serious transgression for an elf who was not an adult to drink alcohol without the adults’ knowledge.

Of course, adulthood meant being over 100 years old.

“Are you crazy! Crazy! How can you drink alcohol without the adults’ knowledge! But, do you have alcohol?”

Watching Jeina, who wouldn’t admit she wanted it even if she died, Kang Chan pulled on Jeina’s cheek and said.

“Shall I say that water is alcohol?”

Kang Chan started digging the ground in front of his house and soon took out small barrels of alcohol.

“It’s not really alcohol yet, it’s more like fruit juice. Let’s just get in the mood. How about it, do you like it?”

“I like it!”

Watching Jeina nod her head enthusiastically, he thought he had done a good job making fruit wine.

Among his fruit wines, which were quite diverse by type, Jeina suggested drinking raspberry wine.

When Kang Chan opened the bottle labeled raspberry, the sweet scent of raspberries spread, stimulating their sense of smell.

“Here, take it.”

“Okay!”

Pouring the fruit wine into a cup made of fruit peel looked quite elegant.

“Wow! The color looks plausible?”

“I made it diligently.”

Jeina smiled with a flushed face, looking at Kang Chan, who confidently patted his chest.

“Let’s toast.”

“Toast? What’s a toast?”

“It’s something like that. Just say toast too.”

“Okay, I got it. Toast!”

As he drank the fruit wine, he was reminded of the last drinking session he had with his colleagues at the space station before departing for this place, because of its slightly bitter taste.

It was a day when they drank synthetic artificial alcohol with bland snacks until they vomited, using the intoxication as a form of release.

Drinking alcohol outside the station was strictly prohibited by space law, so they didn’t know when they would return to the station.

They all drank until they passed out that day.

“Kyaa! Hey, you made this properly! Give me another glass!”

Kang Chan filled Jeina’s glass only halfway as Jeina’s face was already red.

“Drink in moderation.”

“Heehee, this is really good! Hehehe.”

As expected, the atmosphere was different where there was alcohol.

The two of them started drinking fruit wine with grilled wild boar as a snack, and they laughed and chatted without knowing how time was passing, as their appetites flared up again.

Fortunately, Kang Chan’s accommodation was a bit far from the village, so they could drink more comfortably.

He really wanted to get drunk today.

As time passed, the dim sky gradually turned into a dark night, and the two of them sat in front of a bonfire, eating fruit desserts and discussing what had happened today.

“I see.”

Jeina said, burying her flushed face between her knees.

“But I’m not going to give up anyway.”

Kang Chan’s eyes flickered as if they were burning because of the bonfire. Jeina, who was looking at Kang Chan, came closer to Kang Chan and whispered in his ear.

“Then, how about this?”

“……?”

“I’ll stop learning magic and learn swordsmanship, and then I’ll teach you exactly what I learn.”

At Jeina’s words, Kang Chan stopped eating fruit and said.

“What?”

“I’ll teach you. How about it?”

“Absolutely not.”

At Kang Chan’s firm refusal, Jeina leaned in even closer and tried to persuade Kang Chan.

“We can hide it from others. Huh? I don’t have any talent for magic anyway, so I’m going to switch to another subject. So, if possible, I’d like it to be swordsmanship, which can help my friend.”

“Still, no. I can’t make my friend do bad things.”

“Why is that a bad thing? You’re my friend. My only friend.”

Jeina hugged Kang Chan’s head tightly, and Kang Chan smelled very good from Jeina.

“I’m going to visit Elradion every day. And I’m going to ask until he says yes. So Jeina, don’t do such dangerous things.”

“Okay. But no matter what anyone says, I’m going to learn swordsmanship. So if there’s anything you don’t know, ask me anytime, I’ll help you.”

“Thank you. I’ll gratefully accept your heart. I’m really lucky to have met a friend like you.”

Jeina’s face was full of smiles at Kang Chan’s sincere words.

“Yeah! Me too.”

* * *

The next day, Elradion, who had stepped out of his house, frowned at the sight of someone kneeling in front of his house. His shoulders were wet with the morning dew, as if he had been sitting there since early dawn.

“It’s a futile effort.”

Elradion threw out a cold word and hurried on his way.

Kang Chan didn’t think of getting up from his seat for a long time after he left. Then he slowly raised his head and smiled with satisfaction.

‘I have my own plans, elder.’

The day Jeina decided to learn swordsmanship and become Elradion’s disciple, Kang Chan’s swordsmanship lessons also began.

Although he was not in a position to receive instruction alongside Jeina, Kang Chan did not give up and secretly visited the training ground the night before and installed a camcorder he had brought from the warship on a nearby tree.

This ultra-small camcorder used by the Space Force was a state-of-the-art model that, despite its small size of about a thumb, could take tens of millions of ultra-high-resolution photos even in solar winds, and could record videos in 64K quality for two consecutive weeks.

In addition to the night ultraviolet shooting function, it also had X-ray transmission shooting capabilities, which were mainly used for inspecting the belongings of prisoners or civilians.

In that small, thumb-sized camcorder were stored some of the few photos and videos that could be said to be the entirety of his life.

That’s why he had brought it with him when he went to the warship before, but he never thought it would be so useful.

‘It’s underhanded, but it can’t be helped for the mission.’

He was a little ashamed of the fact that he had to learn by secretly stealing, but he just blamed it on the mission and silently installed the camcorder.

That’s how the next day came, and he was able to participate in the swordsmanship training with Jeina through the video of the camcorder transmitted wirelessly.

Even after the scheduled swordsmanship training was over, he pondered over Elradion’s words stored in his head and devoted himself to training all day long.

Then, if an unfamiliar term came up, he remembered it and had no choice but to carefully ask Jeina.

Every time, Jeina was very surprised, asking how he knew that.

Then she taught Kang Chan as much as she knew.

As time went by, he, who was learning by secretly observing, gradually began to establish his own foundation for the sword.

Because he has a very reliable helper named Jeina by his side.