Chương 71: Before the Sword, Master the Rope

Sieghart removed his hands from the final grayhorn and watched the last traces of healing magic disappear beneath its coarse hide. The wound along its side had closed completely, leaving only a faint line where torn flesh had been moments earlier. The animal released a low, exhausted sound before pushing itself upright. It remained unsteady for several seconds, but its legs held, and the old woman beside it nearly collapsed with relief.

"That should be enough," Sieghart said.

"The wounds are gone, but it still lost blood. Make sure it rests and drinks plenty of water." The old woman stared at him as though she had forgotten how words worked. Her gaze moved between his youthful face, the healed grayhorn, and the other animals he had treated.

"You healed all of them…"

"Leaving one infected would defeat the purpose." Sieghart stepped away before she could thank him further. He had never been comfortable receiving gratitude, especially when the task had required little effort compared with everything his magic could accomplish. Ronan had watched the entire process from beside the fence, his arms crossed and his expression unusually thoughtful. The grayhorns had allowed Sieghart to approach without struggling, despite the enormous amount of mana contained within his small body.

Animals possessed sharper instincts than most humans. They could often sense bloodlust, corruption, and hostile mana long before a trained warrior noticed anything unusual. The fact that none of them feared Sieghart told Ronan something important. The boy carried anger powerful enough to warm the surrounding air, but that anger had not yet poisoned everything else inside him. Ronan pushed himself away from the fence and called for him.

"Come on, kid. We still have work." Sieghart glanced toward the farmhouse.

"I thought healing the animals was the job."

"That was part of it. We're hunting the beasts that wounded them next." Ronan began walking south without waiting for an answer, following a narrow trail that passed between the fields before disappearing beneath the distant trees. Sieghart stared at his back for a moment before reluctantly following.

"They have been attacking the livestock for food," Ronan explained.

"Three grayhorns were wounded this week, and two others disappeared. We found enough blood to know they weren't stolen."

"Ordinary predators?"

"Probably not. The tracks are too large, and normal beasts don't leave corruption in their bites. They might be remnants abandoned by a monster tamer." Sieghart raised an eyebrow.

"A tamer?" Ronan glanced over his shoulder, apparently surprised that Sieghart had finally asked about something unrelated to magic training.

"There are groups beyond our borders that tame monsters and use them in war. We can train ordinary animals, but their tamers can control monsters as well." Sieghart had read vague references to war beasts, although the books available in the Lunar Arc basement had offered few useful details. Most had described such creatures as dangerous without explaining how they were created or controlled.

Ronan continued while they passed the final cultivated field and approached a stretch of wild grass separating the farm from the forest.

"Some tamers don't begin with monsters. They capture ordinary animals and corrupt them with magic until their bodies change. The ones that survive become stronger, more aggressive, and easier for the tamer to control."

"That sounds unnecessarily complicated."

"It is, but a corrupt beast can sometimes spread that corruption through its bite. If an injured animal dies before the contamination is removed, there's a chance it will rise again as a monster." Sieghart looked back toward the farmhouse. The wounds he had healed had contained faint traces of unfamiliar mana, but he had assumed those traces belonged to whatever creature had caused them.

"So those grayhorns might have transformed?"

"If we had left them untreated, yes. The guild's other healers are handling more urgent work, so the farmers would have been forced to put them down before that happened." Sieghart nodded slowly. First Aid had removed the corruption alongside the physical damage, although he had not consciously directed the spell to do so. That was useful information. Healing magic apparently recognized certain foreign influences as part of an injury, even if the caster did not understand their exact nature.

He could investigate that later. For now, another matter demanded his attention.

"What about the summoning lesson you promised?" Ronan continued walking as though he had not heard him.

"Ronan." The tracker released a long sigh.

"Can you stop thinking about training for five minutes?"

"No."

"You didn't even consider the question."

"I have considered it many times. The answer hasn't changed." Sieghart's annoyance stirred his mana before he consciously restrained it. Heat rolled through the grass around his feet, causing several insects to flee from the sudden increase in temperature. Ronan looked toward the sky with the exhausted expression of a man asking the gods why they had assigned him such an irritating child.

"Not again. It's already hot enough in summer without you trying to cook the countryside whenever someone delays your training."

"You promised."

"Yes, and I was planning to teach you after the hunt."

"That wasn't part of the agreement."

"There was no agreement. You followed me because I waved some knives around and said I knew something you didn't." Sieghart's expression did not improve, and the air around him continued to vibrate with faint waves of heat. Ronan finally clicked his tongue and reached toward his belt. He unfastened a narrow coil of braided rope and tossed it toward Sieghart. The rope was slightly longer than the boy's height, with a small metal weight attached to each end. Sieghart caught it and examined the worn fibers.

"What am I supposed to do with this?"

"Envelop it with your mana." Sieghart waited for a better explanation, but Ronan continued walking.

"That's it?" This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"For now. Spread your mana over the entire rope without letting the coating break. Once you can maintain it, try moving the rope without using your hands." Sieghart looked from the rope to Ronan's back.

"You want me to control it with my mind?"

"That is usually what people mean when they say not to use their hands."

"And once I can do that, I'll be able to summon a proper weapon?"

"You'll understand what your mana is missing. Whether you can actually fix the problem will depend on your talent." Sieghart extended a thread of mana from his palm and allowed it to spread along the rope. The energy covered several centimeters before sinking awkwardly between the braided fibers and losing its shape. He frowned and tried again, this time increasing the amount of mana. The coating traveled farther, but it became uneven, with some sections receiving far more energy than others.

"Isn't this telekinesis?" Sieghart asked.

"How is moving a rope related to summoning?" Ronan stopped so abruptly that Sieghart nearly walked into him. The tracker turned around and studied him with narrowed eyes.

"How do you know about telekinesis?" Sieghart shrugged.

"I read."

"You read about a form of magic that most scholars only mention in restricted research?"

"I read by accident, probably.." Ronan continued staring at him, clearly unconvinced. Sieghart met his gaze without elaborating, and eventually the older man decided that arguing would probably shorten his remaining lifespan.

"What I'm teaching you isn't telekinesis," Ronan explained.

"Not yet, at least. True telekinesis requires you to project mana across a distance, surround an object you aren't touching, and control it without establishing a physical connection first." Sieghart lifted the rope.

"And this?"

"Physical manipulation. You begin by touching the object and covering it with your mana. Once the connection is established, the mana acts like an extension of your body."

"That still sounds like telekinesis with extra steps."

"Walking and jumping both move you away from the ground, but no one mistakes one for the other. The method matters." Sieghart could not argue with that comparison, although he suspected Ronan had been saving it for the moment someone questioned his explanation.

"What about my ice shurikens? I control those without touching them."

"They don't count. You create them from your own mana, so they begin connected to you. Their structure is designed to respond to your will from the moment they form." Ronan pointed at the rope in Sieghart's hands.

"That rope already exists. Its shape changes constantly, and every individual fiber pulls against the others. If you can maintain a stable mana coating across that entire surface while controlling its movement, your precision will improve." Sieghart looked down at the braided rope with renewed interest. He could already see why Ronan had chosen such an inconvenient object instead of something solid. A sword maintained a rigid form.

A rope bent, twisted, tightened, and loosened whenever it moved, forcing the mana covering it to adapt without breaking its structure.

"How does that help my summoned sword?"

"Your sword keeps dissolving because you create it as separate sections. You form the handle, then the guard, and then part of the blade, but the mana inside them isn't behaving like one continuous object." Sieghart's eyes narrowed. Ronan had identified the problem after hearing only a brief explanation, while Sieghart had spent an entire week trying to overpower it with more mana.

"The weapon looks solid," Ronan continued, "but its internal structure is nothing more than mana pressed into several shapes. The moment you extend the blade too far, the strain stops distributing evenly and everything collapses."

"So I need to treat the entire weapon as a single body."

"Exactly. If the handle moves, every part of the blade must understand that movement. If the edge strikes something, the force must pass through the entire construct instead of tearing one section away from another." Sieghart stared at the rope again. The exercise suddenly seemed much less pointless than it had a minute earlier, which was irritating because it meant Ronan knew what he was talking about. He pushed mana through his fingers and attempted to cover the rope once more.

This time, he focused on creating a continuous layer instead of simply pouring power into the material. The coating advanced steadily, following the braided surface and settling between the fibers. It reached almost halfway before one section became too thin and the connection collapsed again.

"You're using too much mana," Ronan said. Sieghart decreased the output and tried once more. The process became more difficult immediately, forcing him to pay attention to every tiny change along the rope. Using overwhelming quantities of mana had allowed him to compensate for poor efficiency in the past. This exercise denied him that advantage because excessive power would destroy the object he needed to control. The realization was unpleasant, but useful.

Infinite mana could solve many problems, yet it had also encouraged habits that would eventually limit his progress. He managed to cover nearly three quarters of the rope before its lower half twisted. His concentration slipped, and the coating vanished for the fourth time. Ronan smiled without looking back.

"Having trouble?"

"No."

"The rope is still on the ground."

"It is resting."

"Of course. Must be exhausted from all the progress you're making." Sieghart glared at him and sent more mana into the rope. The sudden surge caused it to snap upward, and one of the metal weights struck him beneath the chin. Ronan turned away, but the shaking of his shoulders made his silent laughter painfully obvious. Sieghart rubbed his chin. His expression remained calm, although the grass around him began drying beneath another wave of heat.

"Say one word and I'll test Freezing Water Cannon on you."

"I didn't say anything."

"You were thinking almost too loudly." They continued toward the forest while Sieghart practiced. After several more attempts, he managed to maintain the coating across the entire rope for almost two seconds. The moment he tried to lift it, however, one end rose while the other remained on the ground. The uneven tension shattered his mana connection again. Physical manipulation required far more than attaching mana to an object.

He needed to sense the rope's complete shape, anticipate how each movement altered that shape, and adjust the mana coating continuously. The exercise demanded precision, awareness, and dexterity at the same time. It was exactly the kind of training he had neglected while relying on endless reserves and repeated casting. Sieghart silently admitted that Ronan's lesson was valuable. He had no intention of saying so aloud, since the tracker was already difficult enough to tolerate without receiving encouragement.

The cultivated land eventually disappeared behind them, replaced by thick trees and tangled undergrowth. The shade offered some relief from the summer heat, although the forest felt strangely silent. There were no birds calling from the branches and no small animals moving through the bushes. Even the insects seemed unwilling to produce their usual noise. Ronan's careless demeanor vanished the moment they crossed beneath the trees.

His shoulders lowered, his steps became quieter, and his hands drifted closer to the curved knives at his waist. Sieghart noticed several deep tracks pressed into the damp soil beside the trail. The prints resembled those of large wolves, but the claws had cut grooves too long and deep for an ordinary predator. Thin black veins spread through the plants surrounding the tracks. Several leaves had curled inward despite receiving plenty of sunlight and water.

"Corruption?" Sieghart asked. Ronan nodded.

"Fresh, too." He crouched beside one of the tracks and pressed two fingers against the soil. Sieghart sensed a faint pulse of mana leave his hand and travel through the ground. At the same time, Sieghart felt something moving among the trees to their right. Another presence shifted behind them, while a third disturbed the bushes on their left. The creatures had surrounded them without producing more than a few quiet rustles.

Whatever intelligence guided them was greater than that of starving animals hunting whatever crossed their territory. Several low growls emerged from the shadows. Pairs of dim red eyes appeared between the trunks, each positioned far higher above the ground than Sieghart expected. Ronan slowly drew both knives. Threads of mana stretched from his fingers to the weapons, twisting around their handles like nearly invisible cords.

"Looks like you get to practice sooner than expected." Sieghart tightened his grip on the rope and began spreading mana across its entire length again. The unstable coating flickered as the first corrupted beast stepped into view. Its body resembled a wolf stripped of everything that made wolves graceful. Black growths covered its shoulders, its exposed teeth were stained dark red, and smoke escaped between its jaws with every breath.

More creatures emerged behind it, their movements coordinated enough to block every obvious path of retreat. Their corrupted eyes remained fixed on Sieghart, recognizing him as the smaller and presumably easier target. He allowed the rope to fall loosely beside his leg while maintaining the mana connection. If Ronan expected him to master physical manipulation during an ambush, then Sieghart would make the lesson worthwhile. After all, failing an examination in his first life had helped ruin everything.

He had no intention of repeating that particular experience while surrounded by monsters. Ronan shifted one knife into a reverse grip and smiled at the advancing beasts.

"Now shut up and don't burn down the forest." Sieghart's eyes remained fixed on the nearest creature as the rope finally lifted several centimeters from the ground. The corrupted beasts charged, and Sieghart's first lesson in physical manipulation became an examination with teeth.