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“Hoo!”
It was an act of forgetting dignity, but no one could blame them. It was such an amazing sight.
Next was water. Yuder changed the energy around the sword. Then the fire melted down and a swirling stream of water wrapped around the entire blade. The sound of a whirlwind reverberated in the room.
Yuder grabbed the sword and swung it a few times before slowly moving forward.
“That is all I will be showing you, and I’m going to prove that it’s real water. Would anyone like to touch it?”
Yuder watched as examiners agonized between curiosity and fear. Everyone was afraid of what they had never seen.
They had seen a Swordmaster covering a sword with aura and an archmage dealing with attribute magic, but when the two were combined, even what they thought they knew, suddenly became unfamiliar to them.
The examiners were all speechless. No one was willing to do so. Yuder waited. Eventually, when he tried to withdraw the sword, the examiner sitting on the far right opened his mouth for the first time. It was the man with a fake face.
“If there is no one, then I shall do it.”
“No, you cannot. Your……!”
At that moment, the deputy commander of the Imperial Knights shouted with a frightened face and immediately shut up.
‘Hmm. I guess my prediction is right.’
The deputy commander seemed to have barely held back his words because he thought he should not let others find out the identity of the rightmost examiner, but it only added confidence to Yuder.
“It’s okay, it’s okay. Relax. I am not ‘that’ one.”
The examiner sitting on the far right smiled in a relaxed manner at the one who stopped me.
If anyone other than Yuder were here, they would never have guessed why he seemed the most relaxed out of the rest examiners.
Hearing his words, the deputy commander of the Imperial Knights opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something, but eventually, he sighed and shook his head.
“Do as you please.”
“I think so. Something interesting came in after a while, isn’t that the case?”
Who would fearlessly touch a sword wrapped in the stream of water and who would stop him? If he didn’t know that one side was the deputy commander of the Imperial Knights, Yuder would ignore it without thinking much. But the meaning was different for those who knew.
The Imperial Knights were mostly composed of high-ranking nobles. Born in an unmanned family that had served the imperial family for generations, it was the best place where only those who practiced hard holding a sword even before holding a spoon could barely come up through difficult tests.
Of course, promotion could only be achieved when one was deemed to have both skills and family influence, meaning that a person who rose to the position of deputy commander of the Imperial Knights was from a family who could at least be a Count.
Who would be the only one they bowed down to and stepped down to? The answer was simple.
They were the royal blood, the royal family, born with the power of light that belonged to the Sun God.
The royal family was all born with a striking appearance, with light-like blond hair and red eyes. The examiner in front of him would have used magic to change his appearance to be ordinary to hide it right away.
In this world, there was magic called metamorphosis that was created to be used at times like this. Of course, it was very difficult magic, so he mostly never saw anyone who changed their appearance by using it. But Yuder knew a member of the royal family who used it as he wanted before.
A weird royal family member who frequently changed his appearance. Yuder didn’t know all of his appearances when in disguise, but he knew a few for sure. One of them looked just like the examiner in front of him now.
‘If I haven’t seen it, it would be difficult for me to guess. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it, but it’s still very sophisticated magic.’
He was Yuder’s predecessor, Kishiar la Orr, the Duke of Peletta, the first commander of the Cavalry.
Among the numerous crimes Yuder heard just before his death penalty was that he had killed him. The murder of Duke Peletta was one of the biggest suspicions that followed Yuder for a long time. It was also the only incident that remained a burden on his mind.
Because it really was Yuder himself who took his life. It was the first mission under the order of the emperor…….
He never thought he would meet a man he killed with his own hands so soon. He thought he was the first person Yuder should meet when he joined the Cavalry, but he didn’t expect him to be in the examiner’s office.
Yuder tried to calm down his complicated mood and held out his sword to the man rising from his seat.
“Please just touch the water around it, not the blade.”
He was polite, but his voice held no emotions, which made him sound a bit arrogant. The examiners thought so and looked at the commoner, saying, ‘How crazy’. But Yuder remained there with no change in expression.
If the man Yuder suspected was indeed correct, he would never be angry. He’d rather find it fun…
“Hahaha, it’s fun.”
Yes, just like that.
The man reached out without hesitation while Yuder felt somehow strange. When he was sitting, Yuder didn’t know, but when he stood upright, he was taller than anyone else here.
It was hard to change one’s physique even though one could change their face with transformation magic. Yuder added more confidence in his identity than he had suspected.
Yuder’s sword was big enough to look like a toy sword, but his movements were not dull at all and were surprisingly laid back and elegant.
The moment the man’s fingers touched the spinning stream of water wrapping around the sword, the examiners flinched their shoulders in unison.
“…”
And the water in his hands jolted like ordinary water and splashed vigorously everywhere.
In an instant, there was water on Yuder’s face, as well as on that man’s hands and clothes.
“That is real water.”
“I told you so.”
“How dare you..!”
One of the men couldn’t bear listening Yuder’s words and made a loud noise, but the man in front of him just raised one hand and squinted to shut him up. Yuder made eye contact with the man who looked down at him interestingly.
The only real jewel-like red eyes in the mask under the guise of mediocrity.
It was strange to see those red eyes shining vividly in front of him. He thought he had removed them forever with his own hands. Did he feel this way for the first time he had seen him in the past? He didn’t know. He didn’t remember.
“That’s interesting, such a great ability. You’re not as scared as I thought.”
“Is it a failure if I’m not scared?”
Yuder ignored him and said only what he had to say. The man listened to Yuder and smiled softly with the corners of his mouth up.
“No, of course, you are accepted. We cannot miss a talent like this, can we?”
“Thank you.”
Yuder took his energy from the sword. All that was left was to go out and head to the accommodation where the successful candidates would stay.
“Number 423.”
But just before leaving through the door, someone from behind called Yuder. The man with red eyes was smiling.
“I will remember you. I’ll see you again.”
Of course, we will see each other again. You’re the commander now.
Yuder pushed the door out, feeling sorry that he couldn’t answer like that.
* * *
A total of 330 Awakeners for the first recruitment since the establishment of the Cavalry. It was a huge number, but only natural because it was the first recruitment.
The first recruitment was a time when they didn’t know how to classify those Awakeners and what kind of people they needed in the Cavalry. Information about the Awakeners themselves was also ridiculously scarce.
However, the number of successful applicants had decreased significantly since the second round of recruitment after such information accumulated as well as trial and error.
Later, even though professional workers were allowed to recruit and take exams at all times, the number had decreased to the point where no one passed the exam in a month.
But that was all about the distant future. The first successful applicants gathered at a huge indoor training ground with a mixture of joy and bewilderment.
It was the only place where 330 people could gather in one place.
“The commander will be here any minute. Keep your eyes on the heat.”
It was not some fellow Awakeners, but the Imperial Knights who managed them. The organization was just built and there was no system, so there was nothing they could do.
The knights could not get a look of disgust at the huddled Cavalry members. The Awakeners in their eyes were nothing but unidentified, vulgar, dirty lepers.
Most of the Cavalry members who had just passed were intimidated by those gazes, but some of them were brave enough to turn over with a snort.
“Look at those eyes. If I swing my hand, they will die right away.”
“I know right, that’s what I’m talking about. If they put their sword against me, they will die without getting to swing it five times. But they are a nobleman and cannot be condescending.”
“Weak but ugly.”
“They don’t even know my specialty.”
The knight’s face standing solemnly guarding with a spear heard the whispers of a blue-haired man and woman who talked openly as if for him to listen. His face turned red. He gritted his teeth but couldn’t answer at all because it was not the place.
The new members who were intimidated by the appearance also cheered up to some extent. All of those were the same scenes Yuder had seen in the past.
‘Hinn and Finn siblings. They used to be famous.’
The twin siblings, characterized by their blue hair, came from a family rumored to have mixed fairy blood among their ancestors and were hated by their superiors for their outstanding appearance and excellent ability but overly outspoken personality.
However, Yuder heard that eventually within a few years, they would quit the Cavalry and return to their hometown.
Unlike their innocent appearance, they were impressive with their unbelievable physical strengthening ability, so they remained in Yuder’s memory.