Chapter 2

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Translator: Harry Potta
Chapter: 2
Chapter Title: The Path to the Sword
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#2

The summer she turned twelve.

Every time she stabbed her heart with the dagger, she always returned to this time. And every time, Lucy's foolish choices led her to a disastrous end.

Truly a fool. Despite all the time she'd spent accumulating wisdom and honing her instincts, that was the only life she'd ever managed to live.

…This time. This time for sure.

Lucy, who had been staring at the back of her hand with hazy eyes, shot up, kicked the door open, and rushed into the hallway. In a flurry, she ran to her mother's room.

*Bang.* As she threw the door open, her mother, who was tending to a musical instrument, looked at her with surprised eyes.

“Oh… what is it, Lucy? Why are you sweating so much?”

Hair the same pale sand color as her own and eyes a shade darker met Lucy's gaze, filled with affection.

Seeing her mother alive always stirred an emotion within her that was difficult to describe. Lucy pressed her lips into a thin line, holding back tears, before finally pulling her mother into an embrace.

Her mother, startled at first, soon wrapped her arms around Lucy in return.

“What's wrong? Did you have a bad dream?”

The warmth of her mother's body brought a sense of relief, but also a suffocating obsession to protect her. A lump in her throat kept her silent for a long moment before she pushed her mother away and forced the words out.

“Mother. I have a request.”

Gazing at her mother, who was looking at her with curious eyes, Lucy solidified her resolve.

This time, she would protect her mother and herself. No matter what.

No. Protecting them was a given. She would also strike back at the one who had made her repeat this cursed fate.

To do that, she needed a sword. A sword honed sharper than any other.

Grand General Walter Hyverge.

I have to use him. I have to become his master.

To hell with the royal family and being a princess. None of that mattered. Now was the time to take up the sword.

If she could get her hands on that man, it would be like holding the strongest card in the deck. And, for better or worse, that man was currently within her reach.

Lucy gripped her mother's hands and spoke in a firm tone.

“Send me to the Military Academy. I want to become a soldier to protect you and our country.”

⚜ ⚜ ⚜

Lucy's homeland, Parnas, could hardly be called a powerful nation.

National power stems from capital, and while Parnas was internally stable, it fell short of being considered a wealthy country.

However, thanks to a talent known as the invincible general, its military strength was on par with neighboring countries. The talent Lucy was after was that very man.

To meet him, she had to leave the royal palace.

No matter how she looked at it, choosing the Military Academy over playing princess in her mother's arms was the right decision, a hundred times over.

But at times like this, when she had to run twenty laps around the training ground, she had to admit a sliver of doubt crept in.

“Hah, hah….”

As a stitch in her side made her falter, an instructor rushed over and smacked her hard on the back.

“Arsinoe! What are you going to do if you're already tired!”

His gruff voice, like someone shouting with their head in an oak barrel, assaulted her eardrums as if to tear them apart. At the same time, his vertical pupils, characteristic of wild beasts, stared intently at Lucy, issuing a clear warning.

Instead of saying she was tired, Lucy put more force into her dragging feet and pushed off the ground harder. Soon, the instructor's gaze flashed elsewhere.

“Geronimo! My great-grandmother back home is faster than you! Pick up the pace!”

“Correcting, sir!”

“Badel! At that pace, you'll piss your pants before you even reach the latrine!”

“Sorry, sir!”

Above a face that brought a wolf to mind more than a dog, pointed ears twitched ceaselessly.

“Move it, you sluggish maggots!”

The wolf-man, no, the Lycan instructor, bared his fangs and spurred the cadets on in a fierce tone.

The reprimanded Geronimo, panting heavily, grumbled in a barely audible voice.

“Are Lycans and humans supposed to have the same running speed? Geez….”

It was a small voice, nearly lost in the sound of his breathing.

But Lucy let out a small sigh and took a couple of steps back from Geronimo's side.

Not even a few seconds later, a thunderous sound, less like kicking sand and more like the ground itself being overturned, approached from behind.

“Hey, you!”

The instructor, who had run up in an instant, curled his upper lip and glared at Geronimo.

Below his long snout, sharp canines gleamed menacingly, and his savage expression, as if he could devour his opponent at any moment, was truly beast-like.

All the cadets knew that terrifying expression was how a Lycan smiled, but they couldn't help the shiver that ran down their spines every time they saw it.

The instructor leaned in closer to Geronimo, who had clammed up with a pale face, and bared his upper teeth.

“I'm running on two legs like you, not four! Still gonna call it cheating?”

“No, sir, Instructor!”

“Not running faster? You have a fear of heights, don't you? Finish last, and I'll tie you to my back and crawl all the way up to the school's bell tower! Same goes for the rest of you!”

At the instructor's threat, Geronimo, instead of replying, went pale and started to pick up his pace.

As the one in last place began to speed up, the entire group of stragglers started to push their feet faster. Lucy, too, had no desire to become a spectacle hanging from the school's bell tower, so she summoned every last ounce of her strength and focused on running.

⚜ ⚜ ⚜

The training ended about ten minutes later.

Having finished the final cooldown, Lucy had no energy left to even pull herself together and collapsed onto the dirt ground.

“This is killing me, seriously….”

It had already been four years since she entered the Military Academy.

She'd trained under many instructors, but this was the first time she'd been trained by a Lycan. The instructor, who had introduced himself as Zen, used his mountain-like build and tireless stamina to relentlessly torment the cadets.

“Special training? What's so special about it? This is just hell. Who can win a race against a wolf?!”

Geronimo, still with enough energy to talk, grumbled quietly while lying flat on the ground. At that, Badel, sprawled out beside him, caught his breath and retorted.

“Hey, what are you gonna do if you get chewed out again? Don't you know how good Lycan hearing is?”

“He's all the way over there. No way he can hear me.”

Even as he said it, Geronimo lifted his head to glance warily at the instructor.

His cowed appearance was so amusing that Lucy let out a small laugh. Badel, who had laughed along with her, thumped his chest and continued.

“Still, I heard that instructor is pretty famous. He's supposedly the Grand General's direct adjutant. That's why he was invited to be a special training instructor.”

“The Grand General? *The* Grand General?”

“Yep.”

When the name, spoken of as a legend among the cadets—no, among the entire Royal Army—came up, Geronimo's eyes widened as he shook his head in disbelief.

“Don't lie! The Grand General's subordinate is a junkie wolf like that?”

Badel's face went pale at the words "junkie wolf," and he clamped a hand over Geronimo's mouth.

For a Lycan, the word "junkie" was a taboo term, one that couldn't even be described as merely insulting. Just as he was glancing around, worried the instructor might have heard, Badel saw a long shadow fall over him and gasped.

“You know, Lycans get several times stronger than usual during a full moon.”

At the gruff voice, Geronimo slowly lifted his head, a look of horror on his face.

His vision filled with the face of the instructor, grinning widely and baring his fangs.

“If I lost my mind while I was that strong, huh? I could tear a guy like you to shreds, right? So we inhale herbs to keep from going berserk. Still wanna call me a junkie?”

“I-I, uh, I mean.”

“You think we like using those herbs? We have to inhale them for nearly three days straight, and they make us so dizzy we can't think straight. Isn't that why we can't get proper jobs and get looked down on?”

“Uh... yes, that's right, yes.”

“Calling us junkies... we do this so you humans don't get hurt. So don't look at it with such disdain. Got it?”

Despite his menacing appearance, the sentences he directed at Geronimo were quite calm, devoid of any emotional undercurrent. Geronimo stared at the instructor with a flushed face, then awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck and lowered his head.

“I'm... sorry. I misspoke.”

“Well, there aren't any Lycans at the academy right now, so I guess it's unfamiliar to you. But once you officially start your military life, you'll meet plenty of Lycans like me. So be careful next time.”

The instructor grinned and roughly ruffled the top of his head. Then he straightened up, scanned the sprawled-out cadets, and raised his voice a notch.

“Stop lazing around and go get some damn lunch! There's a special lecture this afternoon, so don't you dare miss it!”

⚜ ⚜ ⚜

“So noisy….”

Lucy sighed softly as she looked around the dining hall. The dining hall, never quiet on a normal day, was as chaotic as a battlefield thanks to the cadets' chatter.

There were two reasons for the uproar in the dining hall.

One was that the lunch menu featured boiled sausages and freshly baked white bread instead of the usual cheap sandwiches. And the other was because of rumors about the famous person who had come to the academy.

Lucy shoved the last of her sausage into her mouth and glanced around the dining hall again with an indifferent expression.

“Hey, hey, looks like what Badel said earlier wasn't just talk.”

Geronimo rubbed his nose with one hand while slamming his wooden tray down with the other.

The tip of his nose was red and swollen, looking like he'd either run into someone or gotten into a fight. Lucy, who was arranging her utensils, looked back at him with a questioning gaze.

“Why?”

“I overheard an administrative officer earlier. That Lycan really is the Grand General's direct adjutant.”

The Grand General's direct adjutant.

…Grand General.

The moment she heard the word, goosebumps rose on the back of her neck without her realizing it.