97: Sword (4)

Jamie slowly opened his eyes. His eyelids were feeling heavy, but he wondered why he was in that place.

‘My room?’

He had just woken up so he wasn’t used to the darkness. He couldn’t see, but it was bad enough that he couldn’t recognize his room.

‘What happened?’

Jamie recalled the last thing he remembered.

Even if it was the last one, Jamie could only remember himself running continuously. His mind being dazed and his legs numb, and him being so exhausted that he couldn’t stand straight.

‘I must have passed out.’

Jamie didn’t know if he passed the training since he passed out.

As a result, he frowned.

Given what he remembered, it seemed like he failed to pass the training, did it mean that his chances to learn the sword were done?

‘I didn’t think my father would be that cold, but… isn’t this granted?’

Seeing Count Welton’s way of handling the sword all this time, he thought his father would be strict.

And now he was worried about what he would do if his father asked him to give up on the sword as he lacks the qualification.

On the other hand, he wondered if he had to run like that.

Jamie didn’t know much about stamina, but he knew that it would be difficult to run for hours considering the young body.

If he didn’t give up and passed out, wouldn’t that be taken into positive consideration?

‘I don’t know.’

The decision would be done by Count Welton.

Jamie took a deep breath and turned to his right.

And met someone’s eyes.

“…”

“…”

Sarah was sitting by the bed, staring at Jamie.

Jamie looked at her without blinking his eyes.

And the two watched each other for a long time.

And it was Jamie who looked away first. And looked at the pink squirrel in her hands.

The half exhausted squirrel, which seemed weary, looked like it suffered for quite some time.

He turned back and looked at Sarah.

Sarah wasn’t saying a single word for some reason.

And it was the same with Jamie, Jamie was silent as he wasn’t sure what to say.

No matter how much he thought about it, it was difficult to understand. Why was his sister, who was just 3 years old, here alone without a maid?

Not even a nanny was close by.

It was then.

“Sa-Sarah?”

Sarah was tightly biting on her lip.

Her chin wrinkled, and her plump cheeks trembled.

Soon tears began to well up in her round eyes.

“Hic!”

And she burst into tears.

Jamie jumped to the sound of her cries.

“Sarah? Sarah? Why are you crying? Sarah?”

“Brothe is… liwe…. Hic!”

Her pronunciation was muffled in the cries, but Jamie could understand it. he could make out that it was because her brother is alive.

So, she thought he was dead and kept watching over him? It was absurd, but on the other hand he had such a unique younger sibling.

But first, he had to do something about her cries.

Jamie moved his hands and feet, and with a bright face tried to soothe her.

“Hic…”

Sarah barely stopped crying.

Jamie sighed as he patted her head.

“Calmed down now?”

“Uhh.”

Sarah wiped her tears and nodded.

Jamie smiled unknowingly.

He wanted to grab her plump cheeks, but he resisted.

“Did you think I was dead?”

“Because you worked…”

“See brother is alive?”

“Huh. Alive. Thank God.”

Where was she learning such stuff? Sarah, who was holding Jamie’s hand, slowly bowed her head.

But Sarah, thanking God in front of your brother isn’t right…

Was what he wanted to say, but didn’t.

He just looked at her and then at Venna.

-Master…

Venna sent a telepathic message in a weak voice.

-Master… I had a hard time. Now I want to rest.

Venna’s pitiful voice.

If it were someone else he would have sympathized, but not with this, because he knew.

It wasn’t hard.

‘I had a harder time. So you can try a little harder.’

-Master!

‘Didn’t you stretch your body and sleep while I was running hard?’

-Master?

‘See, Sarah misses you. Please be with her longer.’

-Master!!

Jamie cut the telepathy and smiled as he patted Sarah’s head.

Sarah was smiling brightly.

Venna was the only one who couldn’t laugh.

“Are you alright?”

At that moment, he heard Count Welton’s voice.

He stood leaning against the half-open door.

Jamie looked at the Count and nodded.

“Better than I thought.”

“Father!”

Sarah jumped up and left Venna on the bed as she ran for the Count.

In the meantime, Venna, who was left alone, ran away to disappear.

‘Poor one.’

And she would definitely do what Jamie just accused her of doing.

The Count held his daughter who was running at him.

“Why is my daughter here?”

“Brother was working today. So I thanked God and prayed.”

She seemed to have omitted the middle part, but she was a child so it was understandable. And Count pretended to understand what she was trying to say.

“You thought that brother died, but fortunately he is alive, so you prayed to God and thanked, didn’t you?”

“Yes!”

“As expected of my daughter. I know you take care of your brother.”

The Count rubbed his bearded face to her plump cheeks.

“It hurts…”

Sarah said at the stinging face of her father.

The Count put Sarah down with a smile.

“Father has something to talk about with brother, so why doesn’t Sarah go down and eat those delicious cookies?”

“Cookies?”

When Sarah’s eyes shone at the word cookie, the Count nodded.

“The nanny made cookies which Sarah likes, why don’t you go down and have them with milk?”

“Wow!”

At those words Sarah began to go.

For her, her brother wasn’t as important as cookies. In that reality, Jamie didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

As the Count confirmed that his daughter had left, he turned on the light in the room.

It seemed to be like evening outside.

“I thought you wouldn’t move because of muscle pains.”

As the Count said, Jamie should be suffering with severe muscle pains.

Jamie thought that it was a lucky thing as he had the Orb of Life with him. Thanks to that, all the pain and fatigue was swept away when he was asleep.

“I heard from Hamilton that you were flustered at not seeing me in the training hall.”

“Naturally, I thought I would be learning from my father.”

“Well. Did you think it would be easy to learn a sword that too from a Sword Master for free?”

“But I am your son.”

“Because you are my son I need to be strict. And Hamilton is an excellent instructor.”

Jamie’s sullen face made the Count smile and put his hand on his son’s head.

“The basics will be taught by Hamilton. Father is too busy to teach everything from scratch.”

“Promise?”

“Of course.”

The count put his finger around his son’s finger.

Sometimes, seeing his son like this, he thought the child was 7 years old.

“But what happened? I was running but when I opened my eyes I was here.”

“Don’t remember?”

“Yes. Not a bit.”

It seemed like Jamie thought he fainted while running past his limits.

In the meantime, he still tried to run?

The Count was proud that his son wasn’t proud of his skills.

“You made it till the end. Did good.”

“Ah.”

“Just like my son.”

Jamie scratched his head at the Count’s praise.

The Count who looked at his son, remembered what Hamilton said.

-There seems to be something with the young master.

-What do you mean?

-He kept running even after being asked to stop, so I approached him to stop him. However, a very vicious force threatened me.

-Vicious force?

-I don’t know for sure, but I took a step back without realizing.

Hamilton was an excellent knight with great skills as a Sword Expert.

And he said he felt some vicious energy from Jamie, so he couldn’t ignore it.

Maybe that was the secret of Jaimie’s overwhelming talent.

And Hamilton separately wrote.

-Aside from that, it seems that the physical potential of a young master is beyond my imagination. As Lord must have seen, he has nonsensical physical and mental strength.

Jamie ran for a total of 5 hours and 17 minutes.

And that was the time even Experts would have difficulty running.

And that wasn’t something a 7 year old could do.

The Count too had run past the limit the previous Lord kept.

The record of the Count was 3 hours 36 minutes. Compared to that, Jamie’s time was extraordinary.

Even then, the former Lord was proud of his son, the Count who was a genius.

‘It must be that he was born not just with magic, but also with a great body.’

Count Welton, who knew Jamie better than anyone, was unaware that his son was a reincarnation and that he was keeping a few things hidden from his family.

Not to mention, Jamie did no sports till today.

And the Count knew that Jamie never involved himself in systematic training.

‘Astonishing.’

Although he wasn’t saying it, the Count was shocked when he heard from Hamilton.

As the Count looked at him, Jamie tilted his head and called.

“Father?”

At his call, the Count opened his mouth.

“You will pick up the sword tomorrow.”

“No more training?”

“You don’t have to.”

Jamie jumped up at the thought that he wouldn’t have to do the boring arduous tasks anymore.

“Really?”

“Do you like this that much?”

“Yes!”

Jamie was worried with the thought that he would have to do this training every day.

Jamie, who didn’t know the reason for the basic training, was purely rejoicing.

“Of course, you will have to run 1 hour a day. You need to maintain stamina and increase your lung capacity.”

“… 1 hour?”

“If you don’t like that, then you shouldn’t learn the sword.”

“I-I will run!”

Jamie pretended to run on his bed.

The Count who saw that asked his son to settle down.

“You will learn the basics from Hamilton for a while. Don’t laze around because I miss teaching. And Hamilton is a scary instructor.”

Jamie already knew that from today’s morning.

“You will be using a wooden sword from tomorrow so he might be more strict.”

“Um…”

“Be patient with him and learn all the basics. From then on, I will pass on the Welton family’s sword technique and my vision ‘Futility Divide’.”

Futility Divide.

A sword which cuts through the void.

A sword technique which made the Welton family one of the best swordsmen in the world.

For the first time, he learned about the family’s swordsmanship’s name.

“It won’t be an easy road.”

They were the words of Count Welton who already walked the path of the Sword.

“But I don’t think you will fail in it.”

Let it be sword or magic, his son would never let go of anything.

The Count smiled and patted his son on the shoulder.

“Get some rest. Since tomorrow will be hard.”

Once the Count left, Jamie erased his childish expression.

“Futility Divide.”

It wasn’t as clear as other techniques, but Beryl told him that the Welton family’s swordsmanship is the best.

And the vision of the Count.

‘If it was the vision of my father, would that technique have evolved from the Futility Divide?’

There was still a long way to go.

Jamie got up.

The Count did tell me to rest more, but he had no intention of doing so.

“Let’s train a little more.”

If he uses Gremia, he can easily create a training round to train his body.

With the Orb of Life with him, he would recover right away.

Jamie headed to the roof.

Venna who was struggling after being caught by Jamie.

-Let me go, master!

“Shut up. You are also going through Hellish training from today.”

-Master!!

Venna’s cries echoed in Jamie’s mind.