Chapter 730
Realizing the distrust coming from the junior, Hormasi let out a sigh.
“So it’s because you’re from Blue Dragon Tower that you can’t trust me!”
“It’s not because you’re from Blue Dragon Tower. It’s because I’ve personally gone through—”
“It can’t be helped. I’ll just have to go in first and bring it out myself.”
“Stop!”
Professor Bendozol halted Hormasi with a fierce voice.
“In this weather, you’re going to make a student walk this far through the desert?”
“I’m fine with that, though?”
“That’s only because you don’t even know what ‘fine’ means! Shut up and stay still! I’ll go bring it over!”
Huffing angrily, Professor Bendozol strode out onto the desert sand.
Watching the figure recede, Hormasi muttered gruffly,
“Professor Bendozol always only cares about animals. If even one percent of that affection had been spent on students, Professor Bendozol would be more popular than Professor Garcia.”
“I agree.”
“Wait! Junior. Your year didn’t have Professor Bendozol for Basic Mounts, did it?”
“No. Professor Thunderstep taught it.”
“Damn it!”
Hormasi sounded so frustrated that Hormasi practically stamped a foot.
Noticing Lee Han’s stare a beat late, Hormasi declared boldly,
“What? I only said it because I wish your year had gotten to receive Professor Bendozol’s teachings too.”
“Yes… I see.”
“I mean it. Just looking at this desert brings back memories of first year…”
“Did you have races here?”
“Oh, we did. Except we ran while carrying our mounts.”
“……”
Lee Han resolved that if he ran into Professor Thunderstep this week, he would absolutely offer thanks.
THUD, THUD, THUD—
With a series of fairly heavy footsteps, a monster could be seen walking in from the distant horizon.
It definitely looked like a dog.
But…
Wait. Isn’t it a bit big?
Come to think of it, if it were an ordinary dog, there was no way it would be this visible from here.
The dog currently walking toward them was easily two or three times the size of a lion, and its heads were also two or three times the size of a lion’s…?!
“That’s a cerberus!”
A demonic beast mixed with the bloodline of another dimension, a cerberus!
At the sight of the monster breathing fire from three heads, Lee Han was dumbfounded.
Calling that a puppy.
Then what, did Hormasi call dragons lizards?
“That’s right. It’s a cerberus. Why?”
Hormasi asked back as if wondering what the problem was. Truly an upperclassman with some nerve.
“You called it a puppy, so I thought it would be something smaller and cuter.”
“Hm. Isn’t it cute?”
“In ordinary general opinion, cerberuses are not considered cute.”
“Ha. You’re not one to talk. In ordinary general opinion, people don’t raise griffins or basilisks.”
“……”
For the first time, Lee Han was left speechless.
As expected, this upperclassman really was something else. To stab at someone’s weak point this ruthlessly.
Hormasi took off the outer coat and cloak wrapped tightly around the body. Over the school uniform were flat weights stuck all over like crests or medals.
“??”
“Weight, increase.”
Unbothered, Hormasi wildly increased the weight of the weights attached over the uniform.
Apparently that still was not enough, because Hormasi amplified the weight of the weights attached under the long skirt and even the boots.
“…Uh, what are you doing?”
“Oh. My puppy plays a little rough. It’s easier to endure if I increase the weight beforehand.”
Even before any magic was placed on them, they must already have weighed quite a bit, so watching Hormasi multiply that weight several times over left Lee Han badly flustered.
“Are you all right?”
“I’ve trained enough to endure it. Professor Ingledel… Ah. You wouldn’t know.”
“I take Professor Ingledel’s lecture too.”
“…I-is that so.”
Shuddering at the fact that this junior was taking several more lectures on top of every school already being taken, Hormasi said,
“…Anyway, I’m top of Professor Ingledel’s lecture.”
“Ah. Me too.”
“……”
For the first time, Hormasi thought perhaps some interest should be shown in the White Tiger Tower juniors.
Just what had happened over there?
I see.
When Lee Han heard that this upperclassman was top of the swordsmanship lecture, he felt a flicker of admiration.
The mana control that went with swordsmanship, plus all sorts of enhancement magic.
Just from seeing all those weights being worn, it was easy to tell the upperclassman’s attainment was no trivial thing.
“You’re joining an order of knights after graduation, then.”
“No. I’m joining the Jousting Club.”
“…I see.”
As they spoke, the cerberus drew closer.
Professor Bendozol was summoning clouds into the sky to cast shade so the cerberus could avoid the sun, and cooling the hot sand with frost so it could step comfortably.
Whether the mage did that or not, the cerberus just yawned with all three heads.
“My puppy! Over here! Karnella!”
“Ah. Is Karnella the cerberus’s proper name?”
“Karnella is my name.”
“I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to apologize for. I prefer being called by my house name anyway. I don’t really like my given name.”
Karnella of House Hormasi spoke seriously.
Lee Han grew cautious, wondering if perhaps there was some circumstance that could not be spoken aloud.
“I’ll keep that in mind—”
“It’s the name of the player who made the decisive blunder in the Western Jousting Final sixty-three years ago.”
“…Ah. Yes, Upperclassman.”
Karnella failed to realize that, just now, in Lee Han’s mind, Karnella had dropped to something like Gainando’s level.
As soon as the cerberus spotted its master, it came running over excitedly.
As the three heads fought each other to lick their master, Karnella staggered.
“Don’t let it lick too much! Nutritionally, you’re not a very good prey item, so licking you will only hurt its tongue!”
Karnella ignored that and said,
“This is my mount. I’ve raised it since it was little.”
“I see… Ah, if you raised it since it was little, how did you bring it here?”
“Obviously I smuggled it in! It was hard back then.”
“You went through a lot. I had a really hard time too.”
“Yeah. It really was…”
Karnella, recalling those difficult days, paused at what the junior had just said.
Hadn’t Lee Han just said he had done the same thing?
“It’s a little lean, but there’s no problem with its health. It would be better to get it prey with a bit more meat on it.”
“Professor, it’s already on the fat side now.”
“It looks skinny to me!”
“So it’s healthy, then. Right. Junior, look at this. You get why I wanted to show you first, right? A cerberus is the kind of animal you have to be careful around when running together.”
“That’s certainly true.”
“Of course, that’s a laughable thing to say to someone like you who raises a basilisk and a griffin.”
“…Isn’t the cerberus more threatening? Professor, what do you think?”
“They’re all lovely creatures. The real threat to the Empire is bastards like you lot.”
Lee Han finally understood why the upperclassman ignored Professor Bendozol’s words, and immediately put that understanding into practice.
“So I need to get used to this cerberus.”
“Right.”
“Hmm. Couldn’t I just be a defender instead of a striker?”
“No!”
Karnella shouted urgently, as if this was absolutely non-negotiable.
There was already a shortage of powerful [N O V E L I G H T] strikers, and now a junior who could go into matches on a griffinunicornbasilisk was about to be wasted on defense.
But from Lee Han’s perspective, the cerberus was an extremely dangerous monster.
He was already living with his life on the line enough as it was. He did not want to stake it even more on top of that.
“Of course it’s fierce. But if you get close, it keeps faith!”
“I think I’ll get bitten once or twice before that happens… And monsters aren’t exactly something you can force yourself to become close with.”
Making an uneasy face, Lee Han carefully approached the cerberus.
The cerberus flinched, then immediately lowered its tail and turned all three heads away at once. Then the heads began shoving one another toward Lee Han.
“…What are you doing?”
Lee Han whispered in disbelief.
What did that make everything he had just said, then?
But the cerberus merely blinked its eyes with meek composure and offered no response at all.
Realizing it a moment late, Karnella let out a roar of joy and shouted,
“Exactly! I told you! This Hormasi has been waiting for a junior like you! You were born to be a striker! You’ve got talent for handling monsters!”
“Nonsense! That whole ‘King of Monsters’ thing is nonsense!”
Professor Bendozol snapped back in an irritated voice.
Karnella asked back, baffled.
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s just the superstition of those nameless hunter idiots!”
Professor Bendozol disgruntledly spilled the business from winter break, when the hunters had started praising Lee Han as the King of Monsters.
Those hunters loved superstition so much that they casually spouted even that sort of absurd story.
“That’s even better. I love it. Junior. You might be able to fill the gap completely.”
Karnella was the type to sweet-talk club members easily enough while never actually expecting anything from them, but at this point there was no helping the expectation beginning to rise.
Could it be that a truly incredible striker had joined?
*****
“Senior Hormasi. I have a question.”
“What is it?”
“What did you say the name of this technique was?”
“<Rider Unseating>! You’re joking, right? You don’t know the name of this technique?”
It was an advanced technique, but it was also such a famous one that Karnella was deeply shocked by the fact that the junior did not know it.
“I really haven’t played much jousting.”
“…It’s fine. You can start now!”
“Upperclassman. To speak seriously… a herd of deer led by a lion is stronger than a pride of lions led by a deer, right? Even if I’m close with a griffin, wouldn’t it be better for an upperclassman who’s actually good at jousting to take striker?”
Even after Karnella explained the striker’s various privileges and the bonus share of prize money, Lee Han was gradually starting to want out into a defender role.
Every now and then, there was a kind of madness in the upperclassman’s eyes that felt eerily similar to Gainando when playing mage cards.
There was no knowing what kind of lunacy people with those eyes might commit.
“Hey, junior. Do you know what this club’s goal is?”
“…Jousting?”
“Right. The goal is to play honorable, enjoyable jousting and do some socializing. Winning is nice, but even losing isn’t that huge a loss. So all the members are satisfied.”
“That sounds good. It fits the club’s purpose too—”
“What part of that sounds good!!!”
Karnella shouted, voice boiling with hatred. Stamping the ground hard, the dark elf upperclassman jabbed a finger wildly at the Jousting Club building.
“The other members can all go to hell! I want to win!! All the somewhat usable strikers are already gone, and now you want me to waste the newly arrived King of Monsters on defense?! I won’t watch that kind of thing happen until dirt gets into my eyes! Junior. Just do one person’s worth! Just one person’s worth! If you do that, I’ll do anything for you! I’ll even bring you Senior Perse’s head!”
This is bad. This person’s already insane.
Lee Han belatedly realized the problem.
Seeing Karnella handle the support money, Lee Han had briefly thought perhaps Karnella was a good person, but there was no such thing as something for nothing.
“All right. Here it comes!”
Ahead of them, a practice dummy riding a straw golem came charging in. Lee Han whispered to the griffin.
“Phoneig. Don’t overdo it. Nothing good comes from overdoing it.”
There was no need to push beyond reason just to satisfy the demands of a madman.
The clever griffin nodded as if to say it understood.
“It’s coming!”
CLOP-CLOP-CLOP-CLOP!
The griffin sprinted across the ground in an instant, stepped on the straw golem’s knee, and leaped high into the air.
As the practice dummy came into range in front of him, Lee Han instinctively swung the long jousting mallet and knocked it down.
Originally, <Rider Unseating> was supposed to be one side drawing attention while the other side aimed at the opening and struck, but Lee Han’s griffin had charged in alone and finished the whole thing before the cerberus could even create the distraction.
At that sight, Karnella let out a jubilant shout.
“That’s it!! That’s exactly it!! Junior! You are the striker of the Einroguard Jousting Club!!”
“……”
After landing on the ground, Lee Han stared fixedly at Phoneig. The griffin, seeing its master stare, broke into a cold sweat in confusion.
It definitely had not overdone it, so why??