2
The taste of sand.
Even the taste of iron.
“You there… Number…”
What was it?
Were they talking to me? Damn it. My head felt like it was splitting open. No, wait. Maybe it really was splitting? That was how much it hurt, at least.
“Stand up, volunteer number 0091!”
“…Huh?!”
Blood trickled down from the wound on my head. I realized it was running into my mouth and opened my eyes while I was still lying face down. That was right. I’d volunteered for astral corps training.
“Failed. Pack your bags and go home.”
What irony.
Those words from the exam instructor made me recall everything.
Right, I was going through the astral corps selection process. I’d always been confident about my physical abilities. I’d passed the fitness selection process without issue. But next came the combat selection.
“I…”
“Good thing this wasn’t a battlefield and that wasn’t an Imperial soldier. Hey, volunteer number 0084, you pass. Continue to the next part of the selection process.”
The tip of my opponent’s shoe made contact with my skull—he’d kicked me.
My vision was blurry as I watched the volunteer who had hit me over the head with an iron bar bow to the instructor and walk away.
……Was I eliminated after one blow?
……Lauzen must have been joking… How did he last four days here?
It all sunk in.
I realized exactly what I had gotten myself into.
I’d been too prideful to think that I could figure this out without having anything to back up my abilities. And I also realized that the others with me were the cream of the crop.
……Damn it. This is no joke.
……So the guy who just beat me in one blow hasn’t even gone through training yet? He’s just an ordinary citizen?
How could these people be so good?
And what kind of monsters would they become once they officially joined the corps?
“Tsk. You, bring a stretcher.”
“…N…no…”
The instructor sucking his teeth was like an alarm clock waking me up.
I held my smarting forehead and clenched my jaw as I stood up.
Hah! What a joke!
And I thought I could find a place by the princess’s side. I thought I could find success by crawling my way to the top. Me…Joheim, a weak young boy with eyes apparently bigger than his stomach.
The true jester wasn’t the princess but me.
And that infuriated me.
That was the moment I felt anger toward myself.
……There’s one more thing.
……Your eyes. Your cold eyes as you look down on me on the ground!
They were disgusted by me.
As though this was a place I didn’t belong, because I didn’t have the elite pedigree that all the others gathered here had.
“Remember…my face…!”
This wasn’t over.
I took one step, then another.
I struggled for breath, exhaled, and turned my back to the instructor who looked down on me.
“Next time I face you…I’ll throw you down on the ground…”
I felt the grit between my teeth as I went to the gate.
That was how my ties with the astral corps began.
“Hey, Joheim, came back alive? Ha-ha! If you made it out only with bandages, they must’ve let you off easy.”
“…”
Someone slapped my back.
I knew that Lauzen had been secretly following me since three streets ago. I couldn’t call his face pretty, even as flattery. He hovered around me, inspecting the bandage wrapped around my forehead.
Told you so.
I could tell what he wanted to say.
However…
I didn’t care anymore.
Before, I probably would have pushed him aside and told him to get his alcohol-tainted breath away from me.
“Hm?”
Just as I expected, he seemed to think it odd that I didn’t respond.
Lauzen walked around me, feigning dramatics.
“Ha-ha! Yer a funny one. Say, Joheim, didja end up getting yer ass handed to you? That why yer so down? Told ya, didn’t I? You’d get shaken out of yer dream before you knew it.”
“………”
“Seems like fate, doesn’t it? Little guys like us haven’t got anything going for them, so our best shot at making a name for ourselves is getting military achievements in the astral corps. But that place is full of monsters. They’re all super geniuses. They’re nothing like us.”
“You’re right.” I didn’t look at him. I just went straight ahead, walking toward the outskirts of the Central State. “I was wrong. Of course the selection process for the astral corps wouldn’t be so easy.”
“R-right… Of course. So—”
“I moved out of the place I was renting.”
“Hm?”
“I’ve woken up from my dream.” The corner of my mouth lifted into a smirk. I’d meant to give him a relaxed smile, but it must have looked ghastlier than I thought based on his surprise. “You were right, Lauzen. They’re all geniuses in the astral corps. I went to the selection process without any idea, and they enjoyed walking all over me.”
“S-sure…”
“It’d probably feel great to beat those geniuses.” I realized something. I hated the upper classes that looked down on me. I couldn’t just crawl up. While clawing my way to the stop, I needed to beat the geniuses. I needed to show I was superior. “Fine then… I’ll train until my body breaks down.”
“What?! W-wait, what are you saying?”
“Wait and see.”
I wasn’t even listening to him anymore.
After that…
I don’t remember much. I chose a training area at the edge of town. During the day, I worked myself to the bone training, and at night, I worked as a watchman in a place that was crawling with ferocious beasts. I built up my body and honed my five senses.
I also went to the astral corps’ training grounds. I would cling to the chain-link fence and with bloodshot eyes, watch their training to learn. I needed to know what methods they used to train and become stronger.
Yes. I would become strong. I would copy them. I planned to go one step beyond them and to train myself to the brink of death.
I didn’t know how long I continued with that, but one day…
When I felt that the training beyond the fence seemed slow, I trembled with joy.
I could do it now.
“Just wait…”
I let go of the fence. I’d been clinging to it for so many hours each day that the chain link had warped into the shape of my hands.
“I’ll beat you all.”
It was time for the selection. The second one I would have.
I was disqualified a second time.
“…”
A cloud of dust hovered in the air.
I was in the maneuvering grounds after all the applicants for the corps and the instructor had all left. I was in a daze as I touched my forehead. I felt my burn—one from an astral attack.
“I…lost…?”
I had gotten a superior score in the fitness selection. Another superior score in the combat selection. But on the fourth day, in other words, the astral power selection, I had nothing.
“Ha…ha-ha-ha…”
Right, I had realized somewhere on the inside. I couldn’t use any astral power. I had astral power deficiency.
I hadn’t been loved by astral power—I had astral power but not the energy to produce any attacks.
That was why there wasn’t much difference between me and Princess Elletear. We were both persecuted within the Nebulis Sovereignty, where astral power was the be-all and end-all.
She had an astral power that made her a laughingstock. Meanwhile, I was less than an astral mage for not being able to use my power.
We were both considered comical.
“I…”
That was why I’d lost.
I couldn’t compete against someone with astral powers.
I’d been burned from a distance I could never reach with my fists. I’d nearly trained to death believing I didn’t have enough combat abilities, but it was as though that was useless once the difference in our abilities was shown.
They had another talent: astral power.
There was a difference between us I would never be able to make up through hard work.
“So what?!” In the deserted space, I howled to the skies. “So…what?!”
I couldn’t give up. Was I supposed to throw in the towel because they were born with talents that let them trample over me?
Never.
Thanks to the anger that motivated me, I finally realized what I truly wanted to achieve.
Did I want to reach the top? Had I trained in order to reach the upper echelons?
No.
I didn’t care for those things. It had all started from my hate for this country and all the astral mages who looked down on me.
To make them all acknowledge me, I wanted to become stronger.
“What am I supposed to do?!”
I got on my hands and knees and stared at the ground below my feet.
I saw the vestiges the flames had left behind.
Then I inspected the scorch marks with my eyes wide open.
“The astral corps is a gathering of monsters. The only way to get them to acknowledge me is to defeat them with something other than astral power… That’s it, I need to become so powerful that they realize they can’t win against me!”
The biggest obstacle was how I could win against genius astral mages when I had no powers of my own.
……I’m an idiot.
……All I have is tenacity.
I couldn’t think of a strategy that could work. Only one possibility flashed within my mind that I liked for its simplicity and straightforwardness.
That was to defeat them before they could use their astral power.
From that time on, I changed the way I trained.
I went from trying to surpass the astral corps’ training to pursuing a path in which I was trying to defeat the corps—in other words, I was on track toward developing a method to kill astral mages.
“Right… I’m trying to develop the ultimate instant knockout…”
There’s a momentary pause before an astral power can be invoked. If I could beat them before they activated their astral powers, then I wouldn’t fall behind in the selection process.
What I needed was for it to happen in a flash.
I needed a technique that would stop them in an instant, before they could use their astral powers.
“This is the Sovereignty. I can get as much information as I want about astral power. I can study about all the kinds of astral attacks there are… Then it just depends on my training…the ultimate first strike…”
Then…
I began training like a devil.
At some point, I’d even forgotten about being by Princess Elletear’s side.
This was the origin of the one who would later be called the “Flash” Knight.
Joheim himself still had no idea that the ideal he searched for—the way to kill astral mages, in other words, his ultimate first strike, would inevitably converge…
…with Iska the Black Steel’s Successor’s method of battle.
The two would only find this out many years later.
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