Ankoku Kishi Monogatari (WN)

◆Dark Knight Kuroki

At the outskirts of the freedom city, Teseshia.

The sound of an explosion resounded in the plains that was slightly separated from the highway.

「I DID IT, KUROKI-SAN!」

The one who exclaimed with such a delighted voice right now was Kyouka.

She was currently firing her magic to hit the target.

After many tries, she managed to land a hit on her 36th attempt.

Though this seemed natural for other magicians, it was a huge achievement for her.

Mainly because her magic couldn't even properly activate prior to this.

「E~r… Midou-san. I think you can train by yourself afterwards, just to let your body get used to this sensation.」

I told Kyouka about the plan for her future training.

「You're Kyouka's best teacher, Kuroki-san!!!」

Kyouka grabbed my hand.

「Eh, no… I don't think my little advice is worthy enough for you to call me as your teacher…」

I felt really embarrassed when she called me "Teacher" just now.

I mean, I simply guided her a bit, it wasn’t like I taught her some kind of heaven defying secret art.

The cue that led to all of this happened during last night’s dinner, Kyouka-san suddenly asked me out of the blue to teach her magic.

However, I personally don't think I'm suited for that job.

At first, I turned down her request but I was forced to compromise and limit it to advising her after she sincerely bowed to me.

This led us to our current situation. We departed in the morning towards the outskirts of Teseshia for Kyouka's training.

Kaya and Shirone tagged along with us.

Once Rena returned to Elios, it seemed that she couldn’t remain absent for any longer than this.

At present, Regena and the lizardmen were waiting on standby at Quiche river.

Novis and the others were banned from traveling outside of Teseshia, it was simply to prevent them from creating more trouble for us.

Kyouka looked for a place to practice her magic, but there was no need for that.

I mean, the reason for her failure in activating spells was simply because she injected too much mana in, it caused the magic to explode instead.

This was why I only told her to relax her shoulders when invoking a spell.

Naturally, telling her this and her actually doing it were two completely different matters.

Even when she tried lessening the amount of mana, she would still subconsciously inject too much.

If this was the root of her problem, then the only way to fix it was to let her get used to casting spells. This was a matter of feeling it proper after all. It was something that she had to realize herself.

Thus, she finally got the "feel" on her 36th try.

「Let me to try it once again, FIREBALL!」

With these words, the fireball that came out of Kyouka's cane went in the wrong direction.

「MAGIC ERASER!」

I hurriedly erased her magic that strayed from its supposed orbit. It would be disastrous if a passerby accidentally got hit by that magic.

「Another failure…」

Kyouka slumped down. Her mood swings were basically from one extreme pole to another far end.

「I think failure is a part of the natural process. I mean, not everything goes according to your will in the real world too.  You don’t need to feel down just because you failed.」

I'm consoling Kyouka.

I felt that I needed to inform her that failure was normal in life. Someone who paved their way through hardship would do better than people who never experienced it.

「But… Onii-sama and Chiyuki-san can use magic so easily on their first try. It seems like it’s easy as breathing for them…」

Kyouka complained with a gloomy look on her face.

「It doesn't mean that everyone can achieve such a feat on their first try. I mean, I myself failed so many times in the past…」

According to Kyouka, Reiji seemed to have been able to do everything ever since he was a child.

However, that didn’t mean everyone could be the same. Every human was born with their own gifts after all.

I mean, I wasn’t able to succeed on my first try too. My talents were a tad below Reiji’s.

However, nothing would change if you only kept envying another person.

All you could do was fight back with whatever means you had in your disposal. Any other parts that felt lacking could only be supplemented with training and more training.

This was the conclusion that I came with from my slump after I got miserably defeated by Reiji years ago.

Kyouka was clearly impatient. I mean, she was surrounded by a genius when she alone couldn't do anything, this making her irritated.

Her approach in things was wrong from the very beginning, she should've taken things slowly. The more she got impatient, the more likely would fail in her attempts.

This was the lesson that I learned during my training, never be impatient.

That's simply why I think telling this to Kyouka would make her realize that her perspective on things were wrong.

Suddenly, Kyouka made a surprised look on her face.

「Really? Even though I feel that Kuroki-san seems to be really powerful to the point that you can do anything?」

「I have no intention to become that kind of broken character. The me in the past was even weaker than Shirone… Will you believe me if I say that in the past and even until now, I still train really hard so I wouldn’t experience defeat anymore?」

I laughed as I told her about my true feelings.

I recalled that Shirone used to be stronger than me in the past, I always cried alone in the dojo while mulling over my weak self.

Even now, I still don’t really feel all that strong

After I won the fight against Reiji in front of Demon King's Palace, it felt more like he got defeated by his own carelessness.

「No, I trust you. I mean, all I hear about you from Shirone-san are the moments when you show your uncool sides. That's why I know you're telling the truth.」

Kyouka was smiling this time.

I looked back at Shirone and Kaya, both were standing behind us.

Shirone turned her face to the side, she was clearly avoiding my gaze.

What was with that reaction?

「NO WAY! SHIRONE?! WHAT IN THE HELL ARE YOU TELLING OTHERS WHEN I'M NOT THERE~!」

「Ahahahahaha! My bad, Kuroki!」

Shirone smiled apologetically.

「SHIRONE! WHAT KIND OF STORIES ABOUT MY PAST DID YOU TELL THEM?!」

「Let see~, It's mainly about the type of porn you hid under you bookshelves and bed…」

Shirone did her usual scratch on the cheek while looking away whenever she felt guilty about something.

「W-WAIT A MINUTE! WHERE'S MY PRIVACYYYYYYYY?!」

「AHAHAHA!」

Don't dodge the topic with that wry smile of yours, please.

Ever since a long time ago, Shirone had always turned my bedroom upside-down.

On the other hand, she would always get pissed off whenever I tried entering her room. Isn't that kinda unfair?

Now, look. Your stories made both Kyouka and Kaya think that I’m a pervert, right?

I tried looking at the two women’s expressions…

Kyouka didn’t really seem to be affected by it.

Kaya… was a little bit scary.

「Uhm, may I…. Ask a question for you, Kuroki-sama?」

She suddenly called out to me, I could feel the boiling anger beneath her seemingly calm voice.

「Uhm, is something…. The matter?」

I asked timidly.

「Could it be that you were looking at Milady's certain parts with lewd thoughts in your mind during training a while ago?」

Although she was smiling while saying those words, but damn, her smile was so scary.

「N-No way! I-I definitely wouldn’t look at someone who was doing their best with those kind of lewd thoughts in my mind!」

I gave an honest answer.

I couldn’t deny the fact that Kyouka was an extremely charming woman.

Since the current weather in the western part of the continent was hotter than the eastern part, Kyouka was lightly dressed. For that reason, I couldn't help but keep glancing at her extremely well developed chest.

However, I wasn’t lying about the part where I didn’t want to look at someone who was doing her best with a lewd gaze.

This was why I was definitely saying the truth about the fact that I wasn’t looking at her chest with lewd thoughts!

I looked into Kaya's eyes without darting my gaze around.

「…I see. My apologies, it seems you really are telling the truth.」

Kaya bowed as she apologized to me.

「No, I don't really mind…」

This woman called Kaya was truly caring towards Kyouka.

She kept continuously serving Kyouka even after being summoned to another world.

Their relationship wasn’t merely master and servant, they had something more special in between.

I was rather interested in learning about these two women’s relationship with each other.

「But then, that's really amazing, Kuroki. I mean, not even Chiyuki could teach her magic, and yet, with a single advice from you, she managed to reach this level in just a short while.」

Shirone told me as she started patting my back.

To be honest, I was doing my best in suppressing this urge of mine to interrogate Shirone of her deed in telling the others about my past.

In addition, the one she referred to as Chiyuki just now might be Mizuouji Chiyuki, the one who went to the same high school as us.

She was a well known figure in our school. A woman with long and beautiful black hair.

Mizuouji Chiyuki was known as a prodigy. However, I often heard rumors about her stern personality.

Though I met her before, anyone would lose their willingness to study once they gazed into her cold, piercing eyes.

Maybe the same things happened to Kyouka. Just like becoming a swordmaster doesn't equate to them being a good teacher, this also meant that even if a person was a prodigy, it didn’t mean that they would be good at teaching others.

According to Shirone, in fact, Chiyuki was a truly kind woman. Well, that might be true for the current Chiyuki.

It also doesn't change the fact that she had a rather stern personality. That might be why I was so sure that Chiyuki got too scared of her eyes.

「Well, all I did was just give her some simple advice…」

It was too simple to the point that calling it ‘teaching’ was an overstatement.

All I did was tell her to relax her shoulders. I thought that she was already good enough as she was. As for the next stage of her training, people from the magician association could teach her better than me, right?

Kyouka simply feared failure too much and ended up loading too much mana when invoking her spell

And here I was, wondering why the other girls in their group didn’t teach Kyouka something as simple as this…

Then, I suddenly remembered what kind of people were around her. The women around Kyouka were those who often hung out with Reiji.

In addition, both Reiji and those girls, all of them were prodigies.

Everyone else in their group might be the type who could do anything on their first try.

This might be the reason why they couldn't do anything regarding Kyouka's situation.

In addition, she herself started losing confidence upon seeing what the other girls around her could do.

The reason why she couldn't practice magic properly was because she was constantly under pressure.

In a way, she was kind of unlucky…

「Not at all, the one who helped me use magic is you, Kuroki-san!」

Kyouka took my hands and jumped in joy as she thanked me.

「Er, that is…」

To be honest, I don't think I did something that great which deserved this much gratitude. But I guess I really couldn’t win against a beauty’s smile/

「I'm all fired up now! I mean, even the super-duper useless Kuroki-san can win against my dear brother, this is the result of him always striving to be better than before!」

When Kyouka said these words, I couldn’t tell whether it was praise or not due to the carefree smile on her face.