Ryuu Kusari no Ori -Kokoro no Uchi no 'Kokoro'-

[LN] Volume 1: Chapter 2.1

This chapter was brought to you by the collaboration between PolterGlast and Saekano Translations.

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Volume 1 Chapter 2.1

The Encounter with the Forest Hermit and Its Beginnings Part 1

Translator : PolterGlast

The Academic City of Arcazam is a relatively new city, built about ten years ago.

The city was built with funds and technology donated by various countries on the Arcmel continent, with Solminati Academy as its center, with each district built around it.

The Solminati Academy, its affiliated organizations, and research facilities are built in the central part of the city, while the political institutions, including the administrative offices that govern the politics of the city, and the wealthy nobles of various countries that organize these political institutions live in the northern part of the city.

The eastern part of the city is the residential district, where student dormitories belonging to the academies and many ordinary citizens live.

The southern part of the city is the commercial district, where merchants and goods gather from all over the world, forming the center of the city's economy.

There is also an adventurers' guild, where students can get jobs depending on their rank.

The western part of the city is the craftsman district, where many craftsmen gather. Blacksmiths, artisans, seamstresses, and other craftsmen who utilize the skills of their respective countries are engaged in a daily struggle for their success.

Outside the city, a large highway runs through the southern part of the city, and narrow roads continue to the north, east, and west.

However, beyond the roads, dense forests spread out, preventing people from entering the city.

Spasim Forest.

Also known as the Void Forest, this forest was originally a buffer zone between two great powers, the Cremazzone Empire and the Forsina Kingdom.

Although neither country claimed ownership of the land, due to the fact that powerful demonic beasts inhabit the dense forest, the area was once cleared and a pathway cut through the forest was made for the construction of Arcazam.

The forest is inhabited by various types of demonic beasts, ranging from those that can be defeated by ordinary people to those so powerful that even veteran adventurers have difficulty keeping up with them.

However, powerful beasts are generally found deep in the forest and do not appear around the town and roads.

Deep in such a forest. In a remote corner of the forest, surrounded by tall trees like giants, there stood a hut that seemed to be hidden from the public eye.

Normally, such a place would be quiet, with only the rustling of leaves and the chattering of animals being heard.

However, right now, there was a loud, high-pitched sound of metal striking against metal.

The source of the sound was two shadows that clashed against each other in front of the hut.

One of them was a bottom-of-the-barrel student, Nozomu Bountis.

The other one was an old woman who, like Nozomu, carried a katana in her hand.

Her hair had completely lost its color and turned gray, and wrinkles were etched across her face.

Her name was Shino, and she had clearly reached old age.

Both of them were wielding the same weapon.

Both were wielding genuine, unsheathed katanas, not the dummy swords used at school. Both wielded their katanas without hesitation, weapons that would definitely inflict serious injuries on their opponents if they made a wrong move.

*Clang!* The blades collided with each other, and Nozomu's body was flung backward by the impact.

"Ugh…...”

"Hmm, that wasn't enough, huh..."

The old woman quickly stepped forward and swung her fist mercilessly at Nozomu's bare cheek, whereupon Nozomu stumbled from the impact.

"Gah…!”

Nozomu's vision went blank as his head was shaken by the blow. His upper body then swayed to the side.

Nozomu reflexively retracted his arms over his body as his vision darkened and twisted his body to prepare for the impact.

At the moment of impact when half of his body hit the ground, Nozomu rolled on the ground without killing his momentum and tried to stand up immediately.

But before Nozomu could get up, the old woman pursued and swung down her katana without hesitation.

"Kuh!"

Nozomu gave up trying to regain his posture. He focused his Qi on his legs and released them all at once.

Qi-jutsu [Flash Step]

A Qi-jutsu in which the Qi concentrated in the legs is released and powerful acceleration is instantaneously achieved.

Accelerated in an instant, Nozomu rushed towards Shino's side and tried to escape.

However, Shino also immediately activated her [Flash Step] in the same way as Nozomu. With an acceleration that far exceeded Nozomu's, she went further ahead of him, and by the time he realized it, she was already lowered her hips and was in position for drawing her katana.

"You're slow."

While voicing such words, Shino's sheathed katana, which was at her waist, was pulled in a flash... A strong chill ran down Nozomu's spine, and in the next moment, Shino's katana was unsheathed.

"~ ! "

Nozomu quickly relaxed his legs and threw his body down.

The flash of Shino's katana passed over Nozomu's head by a hair's breadth, slicing off a few strands of his hair.

Following that, blade of Qi flew along the trajectory of the slash, cutting down several large trees in a straight line.

Qi-jutsu [Phantom].

A technique in which the katana is covered with extremely compressed Qi and released with a quick draw slash.

Its concept is simple, but the extremely compressed Qi is hard to perceive, and since it flies at a very high speed, it can land almost instantly after the katana is drawn within a dozen meters.

As one can see, the highly compressed Qi has enough cutting power to even cut down a large tree, and if a human were to receive such a blow, it would definitely be fatal.

As the trees rattled and collapsed, Shino swung her katana down from above Nozomu's head in pursuit. The katana, like the [Phantom] released earlier, emitted a radiance of extremely compressed Qi.

Facing the swung katana, Nozomu also put all his strength into his own katana, for an instant tensing the muscles of his legs, which had been relaxed, to take Shino's slash head-on.

*Clang!* A deafening sound of impact rang out as Nozomu and Shino were engaged in close-range crossed swords, competing against each other.

"Shisho! Are you trying to kill me!?"

"If I wanted to kill you, I would have done it the moment you tried to escape. I deliberately went around your evasive maneuver and readied my next attack for you to see, so it's only natural that you should be able to parry it."

Nozomu was angered by the clearly excessive use of the techniques.

Shino, on the other hand, stated without being offended that if she had intended to kill him, she would have done so already.

The old woman was Nozomu's master in the art of katana-jutsu, a vagrant who wandered into this forest before the construction of Arcazam.

Her skill was exceptional, and despite her old age, she was more skilled than anyone else Nozomu had ever known.

Under the old woman's guidance, Nozomu was thoroughly trained in katana-jutsu.

Quite literally, by putting his life on the line.

As a result, Nozomu had come to be regarded by Shino as [a reasonably good swordsman].

But even so, the difference in ability between Shino and Nozomu was apparent.

"Hmph! "

In the middle of their banter, Shino momentarily put strength into her arms and made a move to try to push through.

Nozomu, judging that it was useless to resist the momentary increased pressure by force, shifted his body and tried to break away, but at that moment, Shino had instead relaxed the strength she had put into her arms and went inside Nozomu's attack range.

"Ah, Shi-…… -gah!”

Before Nozomu could regain his posture after being caught in a feint, Shino mercilessly slashed Nozomu's legs.

"Guh…!"

Shino raised her katana in front of Nozomu, who was about to fall to the ground.

However, Nozomu quickly took a defensive stance and quickly regained his posture. From his kneeling position, he quickly retracted his katana, assumed a thrusting stance, and activated his [Flash Step]. He then raised his katana and launched a horizontal attack toward Shino's now exposed abdomen.

"Mu…!"

Facing her disciple's counterattack, Shino's face contorted for a moment.

The next moment, Shino's body disappeared from Nozomu's vision, and at the same time, a strong weight fell on both of his hands.

The weight, as if a boulder had been placed on top of them, forced the katana he had thrust to fall from Nozomu's hands, pushed it down, and it pierced the ground.

"Wha!"

"It’s over…"

As he heard Shino's voice, he saw his master pointing the tip of her katana at his neck.

She had sensed the attack that was about to be made against her, so she immediately moved her body to the side in time with Nozomu's attack with her [Flash Step], and then with her raised foot, she stomped on the oncoming katana.

"It's my loss..."

Nozomu was annoyed by his master's eccentric behavior, but he honestly admitted defeat once the katana was pressed against his neck.

After confirming her disciple's surrender, Shino slowly returned the katana to the scabbard at her waist.

"You still have a long way to go. It's good that you saw an opening in your opponent and acted immediately, but you were a little too hasty."

"Shisho is just too strong. Only Shisho can react in such close range..."

Nozomu stood up slowly, flicking the dry leaves off his body.

"What are you talking about? You were desperate in your last attack, weren't you? Your whole body shows obvious signs of it. It was only natural for me to counter it."

Nozomu fell silent in response to Shino's precise words

Actually, Nozomu didn't think he would make it in time either, but his reflective actions made him choose to attack.

"Nozomu, it's almost dinner time. While you're jogging, go and get some food for dinner."

That was the end of the instruction. As if to say so, Shino put her hands on her hips and pointed at the forest with her index finger.

Nozomu's routine at the end of the training session was to do a light jog to loosen up his body.

"Sure, sure. Only if I can find it tho..."

"What the heck? When your master told you to go and get it. You have to get it."

"So unreasonable..."

There was no guarantee that one would find the desired food in hunting and gathering.

But the glare in Shino's eyes as she looked at Nozomu was serious.

If you couldn't get any food, I would give you a beating, she declared so while raising her eyebrow and releasing a silent pressure with a frightening smile on her face.

Nozomu sighed at such unreasonableness from his master and sprinted off into the forest.

Upon seeing Nozomu's back, Shino's raised eyebrows turned into a melancholy expression.

"He still has a long way to go, but he's a little better now..."

Thinking of her disciple which was already out of sight, Shino muttered to herself quietly.

In her mind, she recalled the first time she met Nozomu.

It was about a year and a half ago.

It all started when Shino was scouting in the forest and heard the sound of swords swinging from afar.

The area around Shino's hut was close to Arcazam, but it was an area inhabited by relatively powerful demonic beasts, and ordinary people rarely came around that area.

In order to find out who came to such a place, she headed toward the source of the sound, and there she found Nozomu swinging his sword in frustration.

What was this youngster doing in such a dangerous forest?

Slightly intrigued, Shino watched him for a while, but Nozomu at that time was in a terrible state, to say the least.

His complexion was lifeless, his muscles were skinny and dry, and his cheeks were sunken and hollowed as if he was starving.

The skin on his hands was torn and peeled off, and his joints were inflamed. With every swing of his sword, his body would convulse and he would lose his footing.

He was extremely fatigued and malnourished, clearly the result of excessive training.

His condition was so bad that Shino decided to interrupt him, telling him that there was no point in continuing his training, but he ignored Shino's warnings and showed no signs of stopping.

He was so skinny that he almost looked like a mummy. However, the black negative emotions emanating from his eyes were the only thing driving the boy's body.

He was dumped by his girlfriend, blatantly ostracized at school, and ridiculed by others. The reality that he could not return to his hometown and the fact that his future was completely shattered due to the manifestation of [Ability Suppression].

The extremely stressful environment caused by multiple factors had led him act out of desperation enough to have his reasoning impaired, accumulating meaningless training, and self-harming behaviors. Meanwhile, in her cloudy eyes, Shino could see herself inside him, having been shunned from her hometown, and she could not help but feel a terrible discomfort.

And then, "Hmph!" She spat and immediately left the place.

After that, she decided to ignore him and not to go near his training place, but as time passed, instead of disappearing, her discomfort intensified and turned into a sense of restlessness, as if she was being strangled with a cotton ball.

Nozomu's eyes, which kept appearing in her mind even when she tried not to think about it, made her think, "Oh, gosh! That stupid brat!". She went to check on Nozomu and found that he was being attacked by demonic beasts.

The beasts that attacked Nozomu were dog-type demon beasts called Wild Dogs. They harm humans and could be found all over the continent.

Wild Dogs are low-ranked demonic beasts, and although a single Wild Dog can be defeated by an ordinary person, they are usually found in packs of several to a dozen or more, making them as great of a threat as dragons to Nozomu, who was at the peak of his exhaustion at that time.

Due to extreme fatigue and blood loss from wounds all over his body, Nozomu's movements became sluggish in the blink of an eye.

The Wild Dogs then bit down on Nozomu's limbs in an attempt to finish off their slow-moving prey. His was in a hopeless situation. Both of his limbs were severely injured, he was pinned to the ground, and there was no one around to help him.

Amidst all this, he surrendered himself to the fact that the beast was about to tear him to shreds.

With dark resignation and despair glinting in his eyes.

The moment she saw this, Shino immediately moved into the Wild Dogs hunting grounds and cut off the heads of every demonic beast that had attacked Nozomu.

"Haa...... good grief. How insane would it be for me to help such a death-hungry person?"

Shino confronted Nozomu with a hateful tone of voice, out of frustration at being moved by such an unacceptably immature person.

"Now then, You, the inexperienced fellow over there. Your sword skills are so terrible that I can't bear to look at them. If you want to die, I'll let you die after you can swing your sword a little better."

"Well, there's a chance you'll die before you can swing it properly though....", Shino added while smiling provocatively.

A week later, in front of a small hut deep in the forest, there was a boy wielding a katana instead of a sword.

A slight spark of life returned to those eyes that had been seeking death.

"I've been training him for a year and a half since then, just for convenience, and he's... turned into one hell of a monster."

Even from Shino's point of view, Nozomu was getting stronger. It was far beyond her expectations.

"Does he even know what he's doing? What does it mean to be able to confront my sword head-on? ......"

In the previous combat training, when Shino was fighting against Nozomu, what was enveloping her katana was an extremely-compressed Qi blade that was on par with [Phantom]. It was a blade that could easily slice through steel just by touching it.

[Phantom・Clad]

A Qi-jutsu (Qi technique) in which Qi that is originally released as a flying blade of Qi, is instead held inside the blade to maintain its sharpness.

The technique of enveloping Qi in the weapon itself is a basic technique in Qi-jutsu, but since it is basic, there is plenty of room for improvement.

The fact that Nozomu's blade of Qi could compete with Shino's blade of Qi meant that his blade of Qi also had the same level of sharpness and density as Shino's blade.

If the effects of [Ability Suppression] were taken into account, his other techniques had correspondingly reached a level not much different from Shino's.

This was quite remarkable considering it had only been a year and a half.

Of course, due to Nozomu's initial physical quirks, he was more suited to using curved swords than the straight swords originally used on the continent.

However, she believed that what made him strong was his own effort and, above all, his consistency, which kept him committed to the task at hand with everything he had.

"He might soon give up or lose the will to live again under such rigorous training. Or so I thought, but that idiot disciple went through with my hellish training."

At first, he only did simple movements throughout the day and jogged through the forest.

Naturally, he was attacked by demonic beasts.

She secretly took care of the ones that were too difficult for him to handle, but for most of the monsters that attacked him, he was able to handle them on his own.

After the basic training was completed, the next step was real combat training.

Naturally, Shino threw all the skills she possessed into Nozomu to the extent that he was on the verge of dying. Broken bones, vomiting, and fainting were the usual occurrence. Even so, Shino never reduced the intensity of the training, but rather made him continue to train harder.

An ordinary person would have given up in less than a week. But Nozomu persevered.

"But that didn't solve the main issue which was in his mind. He was simply able to avoid looking at it because he continued to focus all his attention on the training in front of him."

He ignored all his problems and immersed himself solely in training to the point that he even forgot that he was seeking death.

As a result, Nozomu's mastery of the katana techniques improved tremendously.

He no longer suffered serious injuries, such as broken bones, even when he fought with Shino.

However, the reason why his performance at the academy did not improve despite his skills was largely due to his [Ability Suppression].

His physical and magical abilities were severely restricted, and he had almost no magic power, such that he couldn't even use basic magic.

Even when he was able to use Qi-jutsu to strengthen his abilities, it had little effect, and even when he was able to do so, it was only by a hair's breadth.

To compensate for this drawback, he had improved his katana techniques and Qi control, but the techniques he mastered were inevitably too deadly, and their extremely high killing power meant that they could not be easily used in the school's combat training.

Fortunately, his overall physique and footwork were not affected by his [Ability Suppression], and he was able to thoroughly train his body and footwork.

However, due to his low efficiency of Qi-jutsu and other enhancements of magic, his overall abilities still didn't seem to be sufficient, and if his opponents were to strengthen their own abilities with magic or Qi, his opponents would completely outperform him.

It simply wouldn't work. Moreover, the problem wasn't just his [Ability Suppression]. On top of everything else, there was the matter of the mind.

Another problem that Shino feared was that Nozomu was unaware of his own "escapism".

He only focused on training and didn't demonstrate or show off the skills he had acquired.

He completely ignored the problems that he really needed to face, pushing the problems to the edge of his mind and not even trying to pay attention to them.

It was a kind of escape from reality.

"The techniques I taught him to have high killing power, but there are still many ways to use them if he just wants to demonstrate his skills. But the reason he's still hiding it is because he has his own problems...."

It's fine if he wields the katana just to distract himself from the problems he has. But there will come a time when Nozomu will have to face the problems he has.

[What are you living for? What makes you strive to be strong?]

In other words, his "driving force" will be brought into question.

If one were to develop strength without a driving force, one would eventually be swept away by that strength.

And Nozomu's driving force had been destroyed once. He escaped from reality by repeating rigorous training and even turned away from his escapism itself.

It wasn't hard for Shino to imagine that this was precisely the reason why he had an instinctive fear of human interaction and was isolated even at school.

"I'm not saying that running away is bad. But if one were to turn away even from the fact that one is running away, in the end, one will not be able to recover..."

As those words came out of her mouth, Shino felt a bitter thought burst out of her chest.

The dark past that she had been hiding inside.

The reason why she decided to hide in this forest also started with the so-called "escapism".

"I wasn't qualified to scold my disciple. That's why..."

Being reminded of the thorn in her chest, Shino resisted the urge to scratch her chest by clenching her fist.

"All I have is this Mikagura style of katana-jutsu. I will pass it on to him. I will leave it behind so that my last disciple can break free from his chains someday..."

Thinking back to the past that would never be turned back, Shino looked deep into the forest where Nozomu had run off to.

"Ah. Well then, let's see how my ungrateful disciple is doing. If he were to get entangled with a strange demonic beast on his way, it would be troublesome later. Good grief, what a very troublesome disciple..."

Letting out a helpless swear, Shino jumped from where she was standing. Leaping over the branches of the forest trees, she chased after Nozomu.

A self-mocking smile flashed across her lips as she ran, unbeknownst to her disciple.

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