"Your goal is Great Knight! The distant shore beyond the stars!"
Leilin's voice was full of passion, making Willin's blood boil with excitement.
"Although your knight training method was crafted by my hand and its effectiveness is top-tier even among Great Knights, you lack the single most important quality of a true powerhouse!"
"A powerhouse? The most important quality?" Willin's face went blank.
"Exactly! That is bloody battle and confidence! Those knights who don't have a training method as good as yours all grow through constant fighting — they cultivate invincible confidence through blood-soaked combat before they can successfully activate their Life Energy and become Knights! But you skipped that process..."
"Therefore, you must take on higher-difficulty missions to unlock your potential!"
Leilin wore an expression that said *I'm doing this for your own good*. "Well? Do you understand my good intentions now?"
"I don't really get it, but it sounds pretty impressive!" Willin clenched his fists. "I'll work hard, sir!"
And just like that, this kid — thoroughly hoodwinked by Leilin — actually started preparing for tomorrow's adventure.
Watching him bustling about with fervent energy, Leilin smiled and shook his head.
"Ah, youth! Forgetting is one of the most basic traits — to be fooled so quickly, honestly…"
However, in order to catch a ride with that noble girl Jenny into the capital city, Leilin didn't mind lending them a little help.
"Your sword!" Leilin took the refined steel longsword from Willin's hands. The hundred-fold forged steel still gleamed with cold light, but the blade now bore ant-sized nicks along its edge.
Such nicks could only be caused by a Knight unleashing full power in sustained, hacking strikes. This also showed that the crisis Willin had faced on the Crow-Cry Wasteland went far beyond just the pack of explosion wolves.
"What is it, sir?" Willin looked puzzled.
"This sword is too worn — it won't serve you in battle again. I'll swap it for a new one!" Leilin grinned.
"Thank you! Thank you so much, sir!" Willin was so excited he could barely form coherent sentences.
After this battle, he finally understood why Knights were so hard to produce. The secrecy of the Breathing Technique was one factor, but the other was the enormous cost of training and equipment!
A masterwork weapon like this was worth at least a hundred gold feils, yet after just a few full-power bursts of Life Energy, it had already developed nicks. Wouldn't ordinary weapons simply snap in half?
And Knights grew through combat — there was no telling how many weapons would need to be invested along the way.
Willin had originally planned to maintain this longsword and keep using it. After all, he still had his old poor-man's mindset and couldn't bear to waste anything. He never expected Leilin to just hand him a replacement outright.
"No worries! I'll just send the bill to that Miss Jenny later!"
But Leilin's next words shattered every bit of the gratitude swelling in Willin's heart. "She's a marquis's daughter, after all — she's got gold feils to spare. A little extra won't matter, right?"
Leilin tossed a brand-new longsword to Willin.
"Oh, sir! Could you at least let me savor this gratitude a little longer?"
Willin groaned, but his hands didn't hesitate for a moment as he caught the sword.
*Clang!* Willin ran his fingers along the blade. The blue-tinted steel bore intricate damascened patterns, and a faint chill radiated from its surface.
Based on his years of working in the shop, Willin knew this steel sword was absolutely one of the finest pieces in the store.
But what he didn't notice was that just moments earlier, while he'd been lamenting, Leilin's palm had swept across the blade in an instant, leaving behind a faint crimson mark.
The mark was etched directly into the steel, then quickly faded from view — unnoticed by Willin.
...
Jenny's squad had only rested briefly in the town of Bert before setting out once more.
Although most of the adventurers and mercenaries who'd followed her last time had been killed or injured, what wasn't lacking here were all manner of adventurers desperate enough to chase a big score.
Jenny simply scattered another large pile of gold feils and once again assembled a sufficient number of people. As for their actual strength — that was anyone's guess.
She had no choice but to do this. The Ram-Horned Ground Dragon was an exceedingly rare high-energy creature in the Dark Pole Domain, and recently its tracks had only been spotted on the Crow-Cry Wasteland.
If she let this opportunity pass, there was no telling when she might encounter one again.
Even if Jenny could afford to wait, Marquis Augustus — still wracked by the effects of a deadly poison — absolutely could not.
"Willin! I'm counting on you!" There was one more person in the party now — Willin himself, clad in a brand-new set of armor. He'd stayed up through the night maintaining it just to keep it barely serviceable. Strapped to his back was the longsword Leilin had tampered with, which added considerably to his heroic bearing and drew more than a few flirtatious glances from the young women of the town.
But now, at Jenny's brief word, Willin felt himself swelling with pride.
Feeling the awestruck gazes of the adventurers on either side, coupled with the noble girl's earnest entreaty, Willin felt as though he'd downed several bottles of strong spirits in a row — his head was spinning.