Chapter 27
As Tiria suddenly fainted, Elric instinctively caught her in his arms.
“Urgh…!”
The added weight pressed down on his knees, sending a jolt of pain through him.
His face contorted involuntarily. A startled Lytton reached out to help, but Elric shook his head.
“I’ll carry her on my back. Please, lead the way.”
“Captain! But your knees….”
“It’s fine. Let’s go, quickly.”
Lytton grit his teeth, then hurriedly began to lead the way.
Elric hoisted her over one shoulder and moved forward, barely maintaining his balance with his cane.
The snowfall thickened, narrowing their vision. This forced him to pour even more mental energy into spatial detection using mana.
It was then.
“Captain! I found it!”
Lytton, who had been quite a distance ahead, discovered a cabin.
Elric narrowed his eyes and looked toward where he stood.
‘It’s there…!’
The cabin that had existed only in his memories stood there exactly as it had been.
There wasn’t a hint of life about the place, suggesting his Master had never returned even once since the day he left.
Regardless, that wasn’t what was important right now.
Elric walked straight to the cabin and pushed the door open.
Creeeeak—
The interior came into view accompanied by an unpleasant screech.
“Cough! Cough!”
Lytton waved his hand at the scattering dust and coughed.
Just as he reacted, the interior was thick with grey dust, making it difficult to breathe.
“Let’s air it out first. You men, get a fire started over there.”
Elric ordered the hunters to light the hearth and laid Tiria down on the wooden bed.
Even though she was bundled up like this, seeing her body tremble was pitiful.
‘Why on earth….’
What was she thinking, coming out here in this condition?
For a moment, he felt a sense of resentment toward her.
“I’ll head down toward the village for now. I don’t know how long this snow will last, so I should at least ask for help.”
“Please do.”
“Hey, you guys, follow me.”
It was the moment after they had cleared the dust and started a fire in the fireplace.
The inside of the cabin had certainly grown warmer, and accordingly, Tiria began to sleep with a more stable expression than before.
Lytton left the cabin with the hunters to seek help from the outside.
Only then did Elric take a breath and sit down in the now quiet cabin.
‘What a mess this is….’
A hollow laugh escaped him.
Was the problem that he followed the hunt with a broken body?
No, this was an accident.
Why did a sudden blizzard have to fall under such a clear sky?
Elric shook off his idle thoughts and warmed himself by the fire.
His expression was not particularly good.
‘This is troublesome.’
He had long since passed the stage where he was affected by heat or cold, so he didn’t have to worry about falling ill from it, but the problem was, as expected, his knees.
He wondered if he had overexerted himself while his injuries were healing and ended up extending the recovery period.
While that was troublesome, on the other hand, it was fortunate….
‘…Fortunate?’
Why was it fortunate?
Elric let out a low groan and rubbed the back of his neck.
‘Master would have given me hell if he heard that.’
The man had taught him that physical maintenance was a virtue a knight should value above all else.
Sitting in the very cabin where his Master had lived made the thoughts of him surge even more.
Elric looked around the interior of the cabin.
Everything was the same.
The wooden sword hanging on the wall, the quill and yellowish paper on the desk, the fireplace, and even that shabby wooden bed.
Was it natural, considering he was a man who took nothing but a single sword with him when he left?
‘I wonder what he’s doing and where.’
Now that his mind was at ease, his thoughts drifted elsewhere.
Facing the traces of him, Elric suddenly recalled his first meeting with his Master.
It was an event from eighteen years ago.
At the time, Elric was a six-year-old brat who had just made a name for himself as a troublemaker in the village, and that day was a wintry day with snow falling just like today.
Elric, who was completely absorbed in playing knight back then, led the village children toward the mountain behind them.
A monster hunt.
A group of children who knew nothing had set out on a journey that risked their lives.
In fact, because they had frequently played on the mountain under the pretext of monster hunting before, none of the children perceived it as particularly dangerous.
Wasn’t it the age when the words of adults felt like nothing but nagging?
Several friends whose faces were now blurry, along with Lytton and Bart.
Elric had climbed the mountain in a tight line with his friends, and then,
“Grrrrr—”
Of all things, they encountered a monster that day.
A pitch-black body with yellow eyes.
That encounter was the last thing in Elric’s memory.
The events following that were still hazy as if shrouded in mist, and he couldn’t recall them well.
The only thing he could be sure of was that he had encountered a monster that day and received a large wound on his neck, the scar of which remained below his earlobe to this day.
His Master was the person he met that day.
“Are you awake.”
The place where Elric regained consciousness was on the bed in the cabin.
With his white hair disheveled like a bird’s nest, a haphazardly grown beard, and clothes made of animal skins stitched together, he looked like a bandit living in the middle of the mountains.
Nevertheless, he was a mysterious man whose elderly voice carried a strange power.
“Your spirit in facing a monster despite your insignificance was quite good.”
Master was the savior who had rescued Elric as he faced the monster.
According to him, Elric had been holding his ground before the monster with nothing but a tree branch.
It was only later that Elric heard that he would have died instantly if the monster hadn’t been playing with him, and if his Master hadn’t discovered it.
The events after that were still vivid.
With bandages wrapped around his neck and jaw, Elric expressed his gratitude.
To that, his Master had made a proposal.
“Tha—Thank youuu….”
“There is no reason to be thankful. I didn’t save you for free.”
“Huh?”
“Boy, learn the sword from me.”
Thinking back, it was a ridiculous situation.
“Who are you, mister?”
Thinking about how disrespectful he was, Elric felt that his past self was truly a piece of work.
And he felt once again how amazing his Master was for putting up with such behavior.
His Master said just one thing.
With that one word, he captivated Elric.
“A knight.”
Those piercing gold eyes were still vivid.
“I am a knight.”
That was their first meeting.
Crackle, crackle—
The logs in the hearth screamed.
Elric poked at the firewood with a poker and wore a faint smile.
‘He was a truly strange person.’
Thinking back on the times with his Master, there were many oddities he felt now.
First was his identity; Elric still didn’t know what kind of person his Master had been.
He was a man who lived off hunting halfway up this dangerous mountain, without having any relationship whatsoever with the villagers.
When asked once why he didn’t go to the village, the answer he got was, “I only interact with humans.”
That wasn’t the only strange thing.
‘Come to think of it, his training method was very strange too.’
He called himself a knight and was a man with deep knowledge of actual swordsmanship, but looking back now, his training methods had many strange aspects.
Having lived a life wandering battlefields, Elric now knew that a sturdy body and refined mana were essential elements for a knight.
For that, physical training was necessary, and control of mana through mental discipline was also required.
However, his training was different.
“Open the Sword Realm.”
He would throw out only that one phrase and repeat nothing but sparring.
No, even calling it sparring was laughable.
What he did was constantly expose Elric to murderous intent.
“Get up. A human doesn’t die from just that.”
He would repeat those words while swinging a razor-sharp sword.
Of course, he did teach a mana cultivation technique, but it was quite far from the methods of becoming stronger through mental discipline.
Elric still didn’t know the name of the mana cultivation technique he taught.
He simply called it the ‘Sword Realm’ for convenience, borrowing his Master’s words.
If there was something funny about it, it was that the training actually worked.
A swordsmanship focused entirely on offense without a thought for defense. And a bizarre mana cultivation technique that emitted even greater power the thicker the murderous intent became.
Elric himself couldn’t deny that those things played a significant role in him rising to the ranks of the Continent’s Seven Strongest at the age of nineteen.
Continuing his thoughts, Elric came upon a question.
‘Is he even alive?’
He left this cabin on the day Elric turned exactly twelve.
He only left word that it was time for him to leave, so even Elric didn’t know his whereabouts.
Since he was such a strong man, there was no way he died by the sword, but thinking about it, he was already an old man back then.
It was possible he might have passed away from old age.
‘Hmm… surely not.’
Thinking of him dying of old age, Elric couldn’t picture such a scene no matter how hard he tried.
It was the moment he was letting out a hollow laugh.
Twitch—
Elric’s body shuddered.
His head snapped up.
His gaze turned toward the direction of the village.
A presence was being caught in the mana net he had spread wide.
“This is…!”
Elric bolted upright.
What was caught was an entity clad in mana sturdy enough to be a Blade Wolf.
‘It’s not just one!’
They were forming a pack.
Five of them.
And the one in the middle of them, as they spread out to surround him, was—
“Lytton!”
My Wife Waited in the Wheat Field (Serial)
