༺ Mentor (2) ༻
Miruam was a princess of the royal family.
She tended to actively participate in risky activities for the last 10 years but was still one of the only two princesses of the Kingdom.
Everyone in the Kingdom would vouch for how valuable and priceless she was to the country.
When hunting outside, she would be surrounded by layers of knights and mages, and maids would cast a large umbrella on top of her on sunny days to keep her away from the intense sunlight.
A drink was always ready when she felt thirsty, and a table full of food was offered whenever she started to feel hungry.
That had been the norm for her life.
“Haak… Haak…!”
Her breath fell short as sweat flowed down her cheeks. The walking stick stepping across the ground became a pillar that supported not only her leg but her entire body.
“Krrrrh…!”
The growling of a hunter going after its prey reverberated through the dark forest.
“Korin Lork…!”
Miruam was being chased by a large dog.
……
…
“We are going to train in the mountains today to simulate a real-life situation.”
On the second week during the mentoring session, Miruam couldn’t help but frown in response to Korin’s words.
“…Why?”
She asked but was met with a response that made this sound like the most natural thing in the world.
“Practice makes perfect.”
There were a lot of things she wanted to say. The reason she had asked him to be her mentor wasn’t to learn anything from him – it was an expression that she wanted to sponsor the promising knight, Korin Lork, and draw him into her faction.
He isn’t stupid enough to not know, right?
Instead of revealing her real thoughts, she replied using a different set of logic.
“I’ve had enough real-life practices already.”
“Of course. Considering how many hunts you’ve been out on.”
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "64ce79d606107d003c23ea27", id: "pf-5140-1"})“…”
She had to contemplate what he meant by that.
Hunting.
It was a widely known hobby of hers, but only a few of her subordinates knew what they actually hunted.
“Looking after villages is the duty of the royal family, after all. I have hunted more than enough demonic beasts.”
“Were they really demonic beasts?”
“…”
Her face crumpled into a venomous frown. She was irritated not because the truth had been revealed, but because of his sarcastic attitude.
“Well, let’s do something more valuable than a hunt like that.”
“No. There’s no need for me to receive this kind of…”
“Do you want me to stop mentoring you then?”
“…”
It was a provocative statement and one that made her severely displeased.
He was practically asking her, ‘Didn’t you want to get closer to me? Don’t you want to forge a connection? Are you going to give up?’…
“You are a lot more annoying than I initially thought, Sir Korin.”
“There is a story about a King who visited a magnificent strategist three times to earn their favor. Maybe you should follow their example and model that kind of behavior, Your Highness.”
“Will you join hands with me after three mentoring sessions?”
“That depends.”
“Tell me what it depends on then.”
Korin shrugged his shoulders in response to her straightforward question.
“Let’s make sure to follow the session properly before anything.”
That marked the beginning of a real-life practice in the mountains.
“Why… am I doing this…”
Her legs were heavy. The dress that she put on to decorate herself was nothing but a nuisance when hiking through the harsh mountain slopes.
“Tell me if you need help. I can carry you up there.”
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "64cc9e79c7059f003e4ad4b0", id: "pf-5109-1"})“No thanks.”
Despite the disability of one of her legs, Miruam gritted her teeth and continued climbing the mountain.
He didn’t mention helping out again. She liked it better that way. Her disability had brought the pity of many others and there were even some people who tried to help her without her consent.
She wasn’t fond of being on the receiving end of pitying gazes and preferred this kind of normal treatment.
Korin was often slightly annoying, but for some reason, she couldn’t bring herself to hate him for it.
In any case, Miruam wasn’t a normal civilian either – she was a Grade 1 mage and knew of several spells that could support her across the mountain.
“Shh.”
That was when Korin called her to stop.
“Can you feel that?” He asked.
“…Not really.”
She gave an honest reply. They were about halfway up the western mountain, and she couldn’t feel anything different.
“Try smelling the air. See what kind of smell this is.”
“…How would I know that?”
It did smell slightly funny. The air felt very fresh, but there was a hint of something that stimulated her nose.
“From now on you should.”
Korin took a few steps forward before rustling through the bush.
“Demonic beasts live in a way that is actually pretty similar to that of normal animals. You know, like the dog family, the pig family, and the cat family of animals.
“Feline demonic beasts are quite clean so they’re hard to track down. They hide their feces and regularly groom their own fur so they don’t smell.
“Pigs have a unique scent to them but these guys actually hide from people quite well. They can even smell the steel in a knight’s equipment and tell whether they would be a threat to them or not.
“Due to that, they tend to think of mages as easy prey, because they carry around staves that smell like wood.”
After at last finding something from the bush, he gestured to Miruam with his hand. She walked towards him and found a large pile of brown that was giving off a strong odor.
“Did you… have to show me this?”
“You’re raising snakes so why are you taken back by poo?”
“They’re very different in size.”
“Anyway, do you know whose poo this is?”
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "663633fa8ebf7442f0652b33", id: "pf-8817-1"})“…A dog.”
Miruam had a long history of hunting. She didn’t personally track animals down due to her status as a royal princess but was experienced enough to tell apart the feces of dogs and pigs.
“Correct. This is one of the habitats of hounds, you see.”
Hounds were demonic beasts that Miruam was very familiar with – they were a low-grade beast who could only reach Grade 4 at best. However, they had the habit of obeying an alpha entity in the group, and she therefore came across several werewolves, whom she hunted frequently, using them like pets.
“Let’s go up a little bit more. We will be at their habitat very soon, and we’ll be able to see roughly how many there are from their footsteps.”
Why were they heading to their habitat in the first place though? Miruam had that question in mind but didn’t linger on that topic because it was hard to imagine them being a threat.
Korin Lork was essentially a semi-Unique Grade knight, and he might truly be acknowledged as a Unique Grade if the power of the Sun was also taken into account.
With someone like that next to her; Miruam didn’t feel threatened in the slightest.
Climbing up the mountain, they came across more footsteps and traces of canine beasts.
“Fuu~. Now, let me give you another tip as your mentor.”
“That’s very sudden.”
“Not really. This is all part of the mentoring process.”
Miruam wasn’t sure how this so-called mentoring could be beneficial to her. What would hiking and researching the habitat of Grade 4 demonic beasts going to do for her?
“So… What is that tip?”
“Question: How do beasts of the dog family hunt their prey?”
It was a rather horrifying question to suddenly ask in the middle of a demonic beast habitat.
That was when Korin kicked off the ground and landed on one of the branches of the tree next to them.
“What are you… doing?”
“Hounds are low-grade demonic beasts at Grade 4 at best, but it’s a different story when they have someone to lead them. DOGGO~!”
As soon as he yelled out loud, a howl echoed back from amidst the mountain.
“Knight Korin… What are you trying to do?”
“One real-life experience is always better than listening to a lecture one hundred times. Try your best to survive.”
Unfortunately, she could not last more than 3 hours.
***
“Thanks for the hard work.”
“…”
Miruam, having been suddenly forced to run away through the mountain, glared daggers at Korin who was looking at her with an annoying pair of eyes. Behind him was Doggo, who had been chasing after her like she was a prey.
That was Vampire Marie Dunareff’s familiar.
From what Miruam heard beforehand, Marie appeared to only suck Korin’s blood which meant that Blood Hound was like the combined monster of Korin and Marie’s blood. The two of them seemed to be treating that dog like it was their son, but it was a laughable concept to the princess, who was also a summoner herself.
“Let’s climb down the mountain first before we have another chat. You lasted much longer than I expected so the sun’s already starting to set, so I think we should go down a bit quicker.”
He didn’t bother explaining how. Sending a gaze to Doggo, he signaled it to carry Miruam.
“No thanks. I don’t like the smell of dogs.”
“Grrrhh…!”
Doggo immediately rebelled in anger but Miruam wasn’t trying to be mean either. She simply hated and detested dogs.
That was when she came up with an idea. Floating a sensuous smile on her face, she grabbed onto Korin’s arm.
“You do it, Sir Korin. You forced a princess to come all the way here and put me through so much trouble, so you can do that much, can you not?”
How would he react? She wondered. Would he refuse her like he did with her seductions, or unwillingly accept her request as a chivalrous knight?
He responded, however, in a different manner.
“Aht?”
Without even the slightest bit of hesitation, he put her in a princess carry. With a leisurely look on his face, he looked down at the real princess, who was mumbling blankly like a goldfish.
“Hold on tight.”
“Uht?!”
Korin then sprinted down the steep slopes of the mountain with his superhuman legs and vision and even though it was her own request, she couldn’t help but gasp at the unexpected speed of his dash.
It was so fast that Miruam unconsciously clenched onto his shoulders.
“Sir Korin—!”
She lifted her face to ask him to slow down a little but… the moment she saw his face, she couldn’t utter another word.
There was a mysteriously blissful smile on his lips – the likes of which she saw for the first time on the face of this crafty knight, and it was therefore difficult for her to grasp the meaning behind it.
‘What a strange man.’
Now that she thought about it, it was her first time having someone treat her like this.
Brazenly telling a princess his desired rewards, he forced her to hike across a rugged mountain and even made a massive Blood Hound go after her for a test.
Knowing fully well that she wouldn’t criminate him for an attempted assassination of a royal princess, he dauntlessly carried out such rather insolent actions but…
『A smile would be more than enough.』
Why… did he make such a weird request?
The princess of the Kingdom was telling him to request anything of her, and yet all he asked for was a smile. Besides, she knew all too well how boring her smile must have appeared, but he called it ‘beautiful’.
‘What is he scheming?’
She belonged in a world full of crafty and cunning people – a world where reading the hidden intentions of others, be it personal benefit, ideals, or authority, had a direct correlation to her likelihood of survival.
Compared to the people of that world, Korin Lork was like a little puppy. Regardless of his personal strength, he was an inexperienced student of the Academy.
Despite that, she just couldn’t see through his true intentions. She had no idea what he was scheming… nor what he wanted to achieve through her.
“By the way, another piece of advice is that dogs heavily rely on their sense of smell to track down their prey. As long as you can do something about that, it shouldn’t be that difficult to escape from them.”
“Why would I… need this information?”
“Just don’t think to yourself that you will always be the hunter.”
“…”
She just couldn’t tell what he was planning.
‘What a… weird man.’
However, her memories of that day were deeply engraved into her brain.
One real-life experience was sometimes all it took to change a lot of things.
***
The reason I took her out for this practice was quite simple. In the upcoming ‘hunt’, her position as the hunter would be fully reversed, and that would mark the start of the arc against Mound.
Stopping the hunt wouldn’t mean anything so I couldn’t rely on that either. Whether she was attacked first or not, the arc would definitely begin, and Miruam would make that happen even if she had to forge a fake event in the process.
『Tell me what it depends on then.』
There was only one condition that had to be fulfilled for me to join her faction, but it was one that she would never let go of.
『…How much about it do you know?』
I know everything.
I know just how strong your convictions are.
Because it was to the point that she would discard me and our child for it – to the point that she would turn into an enemy and cross the line I could not forgive.
“This is it for the day.”
Arriving at the Academy, I escorted her back to the dormitory. Well, even though I called an ‘escort’, we were both living in the Special Dormitory together anyway, but that was my intention, to say the least.
“Enjoy your weekend.”
“…Yeah.”
She was about to turn around so I called her to a stop.
“I believe I haven’t received my reward yet.”
“Uhk…!”
Miruam frowned with a questioning look in her eyes, but a frown of that level was nothing in comparison to all the vicious expressions she could make.
“Do I… really need to?”
“Of course. Every week, at the end of the mentoring session—”
“You want me to smile, right? I know that already.”
To this date, I wasn’t sure why Miruam was so obsessed with me in both the last and the current iteration. However, all that mattered was that I could still remember the words she spoke to me on her deathbed.
『…I love you. Sorry for… saying that so late. I love you. I really love you, Korin.』
I remembered the girl who turned cold along with that bitter smile on her face, so…
“Try smiling. I’m telling you you’d be pretty.”
“But… you’ve never even seen me smile.”
“I’m certain it would be the prettiest smile in the world.”
I simply wanted that heart-rending smile to turn into one of pure joy.
“Haa… Alright. If you really want to see my smile.”
She soon twisted the corners of her lips to give an awkward smile that looked more like a sneer than a smile.
“Hope it’s a little bit better next time.”
“…How rude,” replied Miruam with a faint pout.
After that, she moved on to the same topic as always.
“So, any thoughts of becoming my consort? If you accept my offer, I can give you everything I have.”
“I am afraid of the things that I would be forced to do once I accept that offer.”
“…”
It was only for a short period of time but I enjoyed my short marriage life with the princess until it all crumbled to pieces due to everything that happened afterward.
『You were my destiny. Now it’s already too late though…』
I could have made you happier… I could have helped you smile and yet…
“Be patient and wait. One day, both you and I will be in front of a crossroad.”
It would be impossible to persuade her.
She would never stop and would never give up. In the end, she would achieve her long-cherished desire.
So… now wasn’t the time just yet.
I had to force the choice onto her after overpowering her; trampling and oppressing everything she had.
Only after I destroyed everything she had up her sleeve would we be able to talk on equal grounds. In order to do that—
“Let’s go in. It’s getting cold.”
—I am going to crush you, Miru.
***
I walked into the dormitory with Miru. It was going to be weekends so I had to train hard or complete some missions.
Plus, I had to teach Ren and Ron over the weekends so it was going to be a busy one. And although Ron looked like a fourteen-year-old teenager, Ren was still growing very slowly which was a little bit of concern.
I had to thank Marie for letting me borrow Doggo for the day, practice entering the Domain with Alicia… and train bare-handed martial arts with Hua Ran.
Usually, I spent most of my time training with Master, but the only problem this week was that she wouldn’t be here until Sunday.
It was going to be a very hefty weekend. Normally, Park Sihu was the one planning and taking care of other external matters, while I focused my time on training.
‘It is a little bit daunting that I have to worry about the big picture every time.’
These days, I was starting to understand the amount of weight that Park Sihu had been carrying in the last iteration.
However, that still didn’t justify his actions. Recently, the anger I had against him was starting to fade along with my memories about him but… I still couldn’t accept his way of doing things.
“Korin… you’re back. And Your Highness Elizabeth.”
“Please don’t be so formal, Senior Dunareff.”
Marie took what I was carrying and carried it herself like it was the most natural thing in the world.
I felt a bit sorry but thankful at the same time.
“Oh, right! Korin. The Princess came back!”
“Princess?”
I was wondering which princess she was talking about and saw the Saintess walking down the stairs from the second floor with her usual pink hair fluttering behind her.
“Korin~! Korin-dongsaeng! Oh my. You came with my dearest sister Miru.”
“I told you not to shorten my name…”
Glossing over Miruam’s complaint, Estelle hopped her way towards me, which gathered everyone’s eyes on us.
“Korin-dongsaeng!”
“Umm y, yes? Saintess?”
“Ehem! Like I said, call me Noona.”
“…What’s wrong, Noona?”
It was obvious that she would be pestering me until she got what she desired so I immediately called her the way she wanted me to but… for some reason, the surroundings suddenly started to go cold.
“Let’s go on a date tomorrow!”
“…Pardon?”
This feels like deja vu… But like, why are all the ladies around me so proactive with their sudden attacks?
“I’ve been thinking about you every day, and that’s why I came back as quickly as I could! You can spare some time for me, right?”
“I certainly can but…”
“Then meet me at the plaza with the clock tower tomorrow at noon!”
She immediately returned to the stairs after finishing her sentence. Suddenly, she went, ‘Ah!’ as if she remembered what she forgot to do, and came back to give a sudden kiss on my cheek.
“I will be going to sleep early today to prepare for tomorrow~! A beautiful lady must sleep early and wake up early, you see.”
I am beautiful, right?
Estelle added along with a wink.
Is she… intentionally trying to put me in a rough spot?
“…”
“…”
“…”
It was hard to bear the gazes of the ones around me. Miruam’s eyes were especially colder and were as frosty as a blizzard.
