Chapter 28: Evan D. Sherden, Learning (3)
Evan D. Sherden, Learning (3)
A month passed since Evan began receiving fighting skills training from the Knight Commander.
Evan thought the training would kill him definitely, and this training ground seemed more like his own graveyard to him. He though his death here was inevitable, but his mind and body were much stronger than he had imagined.
“Wow, I can endure this.”
“There are times when you talk as if contemplating yourself from a distance, Master.” Shine tackled his words with a ridiculous expression on his face. He was rubbing Evans’s arms, who was healed by the priest and muttering strangely. Evan thought he had an excellent point, so he decided not to reply to him as he was in an awful mood.
Evan still hadn’t abandoned the mindset of a gamer. There were times when he thought of God as a game character, but he needed to fix this habit as soon as possible.
“Master, I will wipe your sweat off.”
“Thank you, Belois.”
“All done…. Master, here is Honey Lemon Iced Tea. It’ll help loosen your muscles.” At the end of the training session, Belois politely opened a towel and carefully wiped Evan’s sweat off. After that, she served him a cool tea made up of blue lemons soaked in honey.
“Thanks. It’s delicious.” Of course, drinking a single cup of it couldn’t alleviate all of his muscle fatigue, but still, Evan was happy to drink it. Belois was watching him with a satisfied expression. This wasn’t exactly the behavior of a maid.
Surprisingly, Belois was only 8 years old! At the age of 8, Evan had barely escaped the stage where he drew maps on his blanket.
Meanwhile, when Shine asked for something from her, Belois tilted her head away and flicked her finger. Tiny sparks appeared around Shine and forced his sweat to dry.
The two glared at each other, but Belois turned away with a snort. She didn’t want to lose the staring contest but had to accept the empty cup that Evan was handing her after drinking his tea. Shine pouted at this.
“Master, I wish I had a servant too.”
“Sorry, but I can’t do anything about that. You’d have to talk to the butler.”
“Master Evan.” Evan was resting and having a conversation with his servants when Mikail D. Airock, the Knight Commander who wasn’t even sweating a little after making them roll over for hours, approached him and spoke. “From tomorrow, I will not be present for a while as I have to leave. A dungeon backflow is in procession due to which it’s surroundings have to be cleaned. So in the meantime, I expect you will train by yourself.”
“Oh, will you enter the dungeon directly then?” Evan didn’t hide his surprise. He knew that the Knight Commander would have to enter it at some point.
Evan had a rough idea of why he didn’t want to go in the dungeon, so he had planned to talk to the Commander about it, sooner or later. He had thought a lot about how to convince him to go inside.
But now he realized that the Commander had already decided to enter it!
“As I watched Master Evan grow continuously and differently day by day, I also developed a desire to grow. There was a time when I considered strength gained from the dungeons to be not enough. But now I couldn’t escape from my growing desire to get stronger!… It’s a shame to admit it at this age.”
“You shouldn’t not be ashamed. That’s great!” Evan involuntarily shouted. Then he clapped his cheeks to calm down. After lowering his tone, he said, ”As the Knight Commander becomes stronger, it will be even better for us to learn from you. You’ll also be able to make the Marquis safer.”
“….What do you think is the blessing of God rewarded to you when you pass through the dungeon?” The Commander, who was intently listening to Evan’s words up until now, suddenly asked him. It wasn’t something to ask of a 10-year-old, but some impulse made him do it nevertheless.
Evan responded in a heartbeat.
“It’s a revelation.”
“A revelation? A message from God?”
“Yes. God is not mad, so he can’t just go rewarding people all around for doing nothing. The message is revealed every time you go inside the dungeon, and instead of dying, you are blessed with different artifacts and skills. God’s message is this; you are doing well, and I will bless you in the future.”
“A message….” Was it because he considered the dungeon a cursed place, but Evan’s answer was surprising to Mikail D. Airock.
However, when he looked back, there were times when certain nobles argued that they should actively attack the dungeon. It seemed to him that he couldn’t ignore those words any longer.
“But what kind of growth comes without effort? I always had negative thoughts about it for nothing?”
“You should be working hard. Find traps in advance, avoid them, find the right passage, and catch bad monsters in the process. What is this, if not effort?”
“Master, that’s not what I was trying to say… …
“I think that leveling up in the dungeon is simply a result of our efforts in a different direction than we practice daily.”
Is progress possible in the other direction? Mikhail closed his mouth at the thing he had never thought of.
However, it was quite natural for Evan, who had played the Yo-Ma Great War as a game in his previous life and had grasped all the things about dungeon level, level of existence, and skill.
“We train to be strong, right? We risk our lives and fight against monsters, train our skills, and increase our strength by training. If those things grow us slowly, we can die in the dungeon.
The result of our exploration on the stake is to grow us more quickly and in a more visible way.”
“But… …
“It doesn’t matter if the period is long or short. Rather, it is fair enough that no one should be dissatisfied as God directly judges the results and gives blessings.”
Such an idea also did not come to Mikhail before. Evan ended with a small smile when he saw the Knight Commander who had become silent with thought.
“I don’t think the value of the training and dungeon exploration that the former Knight Commander usually does, and also that the ‘effort’ of either side is inferior to the other. They all just get what they deserve for their efforts. If it is insufficient, then it is insufficient if it is enough, then it is enough.”
“An equal amount of achievement for the effort… …
“If you do a great job in the dungeon, great results follow. Have you ever heard of this concept Knight Commander?”
“… … I have.”
“So, do you have the answer now?”
Mikhail’s silence this time was quite long. However, the answer was, in fact.
“I have the answer. Thank you, Master.”
“I was just telling you my thoughts.”
“That’s enough. Thanks to this, my head became clear. Until now, I have been rejecting dungeons, and I feel like a fool. That’s right, it’s just rewarding more prominently. God gave it
to us for our efforts, I don’t need to doubt it.”
It was the moment when the delusion that had always been there for Mikhail since the beginning completely disappeared. At least he will no longer hesitate to enter the dungeon, nor will he hate himself for entering the dungeon now.
And that would make a huge difference in his attacks in the dungeon.
“I’ll be back, sir. I will definitely pay you back for this.”
“I was just saying my thoughts. But nonetheless, if you really need to pay me back, please go to the dungeon and give me the highest intensity of training.”
“Okay. After coming back from the dungeon, I will really teach you fighting skills with all my heart, using all the methods I can for you! Then bye!”
“No, you got it wrong! Listen to me! Why do you pretend you can’t hear all of a sudden after listening to this one thing?”
The Knight Commander exited the training ground with a bright expression. Evan’s voice didn’t seem to reach his ears. As Evan shakes his fists, Shine quietly claps beside him.
“I was also impressed, Master. Well, such wonderful words flow like a scholar from you. Have you practiced? ”
“You didn’t know that the Knight Commander will suddenly ask you something like that… … Yeah? Did you practice?”
Evan conceded. There was no way he could say those words without practice!
The only thing was that sooner or later, he had to face the Knight Commander when he had especially seated him for this purpose, but he himself had come to him for the same thing at this unexpected time. He was so lucky to practice in advance!
‘I am not alone I now have sent Mikhail the hero to a Dungeon quest.
I didn’t know how to convince him before, so I just memorized and spoke the simple answer that Emer gave him about everything he was ever thinking about in his head.’
The Knight Commander was an honest training fanatic who only believed in his own strength, but he believed in God even more than that.
More precisely, he had a strong belief in the transcendental beings who govern human affairs, and he deeply respected and served not only the earth’s mother but also other gods. This is because he miraculously survived a crisis as a child, and that had now become his opportunity for his growth.
There was a possibility to convince him if it was stated that God was actively rewarding those who participated in the dungeons. I’m glad it worked.’
However, in fact, it was not enough. The Knights Commander knew that God was intervening in the dungeon already, he was not a fool.
Above all, he felt the need to become stronger because of the talented children, Evan and Shine.
It wasn’t until he opened the door to his heart that he had been locked tightly. This was something that Evan couldn’t do anything about.
“After all, you are the master of your own heart.”
“Shine, don’t be silly. … … Master, first, let’s wash up and go to the room.”
“Oh yeah. Mana seems to be filling up, and I have to start the slime training.”
By the time they left the training ground after the silly conversation, the Marquis
had received a report from the Knight Commander, that he would go directly to the dungeon.
The news soon spread to the entire Marquis’ men, and thanks to the Knights Commander’s existing status, the people who were reluctant to enter the dungeon saw this as something that made them lose their strength.
The next day, due to the fact that the Commander of the Knight Division was about to go to the dungeon, he gathered all the knights together and laid out the reasons for entering the dungeon (of course, Evan’s words were told them totally same), the topic lit up morale even more.
Only
“So we have to be more active in the dungeon attack. To do God’s will, to use our strength for good! And, as a result, it will also be a great help to protect the Marquis!”
“Ooh-oh-oh-oh-oh!”
The Commander of the Knights, who received respect from all the major characters of the Marquis’ men, told everyone that he wanted to change his position and attack the dungeon overnight.
Those who were reluctant to attack were also forced to turn around.
As a result of this, the abilities of the marquis knights and soldiers grew to a level that was incomparable to before, but Evan, who made all these changes possible, still trained with Shine despite the absence of the Knight Commander.
“Why the hell is my stamina being consumed right away! The butler already praised me for having lots of it!”
“No, you can’t defeat Maybell like this!”
He had been busy with slime training, indoor classes, and martial arts training, and it was the afternoon of Friday, three days after the Knight Commander entered the dungeon, that the head of the slave market contacted him again.