The Villainous Noble’s Father - Chapter 6

“So. You’re ready to go through with the duel, right?”

I waited for Leonard to calm down before continuing the conversation. He seemed motivated now. He nodded with a serious look.

“To make this work, I’ll need you to put on a spectacular performance during the duel.”

After all, our goal is to make the other noble kids watching recognize the value of commoners. It needs to make an impact.

In short, we’re aiming for a dramatic, eye-opening moment, a “hammer session,” if you will. I don’t care who wins or loses. But a boring, sloppy fight won’t do us any good. Still, something’s been bothering me…

“Leonard, why aren’t you using body-enhancement magic? Even for training, it’d be more effective if you used it, wouldn’t it?”

Some nobles do prefer to train without magical boosts, thinking it builds more genuine skill. But that’s outdated thinking. Nowadays, it’s widely accepted that body-enhancement magic significantly increases the quality and intensity of training.

“Wait, no… I am using it,” Leonard said, puzzled, showing me his arm.

…Sure enough, his body was faintly surrounded by magical energy.

“Hm. True, you’ve got magic around you, but that’s just a mana-cloaked state, isn’t it? That’s not the same as body-enhancement magic…”

That’s when it hit me, Leonard didn’t know the real kind. The military version.

“Ah… I see. You don’t know about military-grade body-enhancement magic, do you?”

“M-Military-grade body-enhancement magic…?”

During the last great war, countless new types of magic were developed. To be specific… I developed them. That’s the benefit of having memories from a past life.

Armed with knowledge of weapons, tactics, even flashy moves from manga and games, I used my ducal authority to shamelessly pour that information into the battlefield.

Military-grade body-enhancement magic was one of those inventions.

“The old version of body-enhancement magic just cloaks your body in mana, like what you’re doing now.”

Zwoom! A wave of energy surged around my body. To make it easy to understand, I covered myself in a large, visible amount of mana.

Honestly, it looked like Super Saiyan.

Even this provides some enhancement enough that a kid could toss a pro fighter around like a toy. But it’s inefficient and wastes a lot of mana. 

Military-grade enhancement is on a whole different level. It was inspired by manga and anime involving “chi” and “chakra” especially from that one famous ninja series.

“You start by rotating your mana at a point below the navel, called the dantian.”

The mana surrounding me began to move.

By the way, whether you spin it clockwise or counterclockwise doesn’t seem to matter here unlike the many theories in my previous world. The rotation started slow, then gradually picked up speed.

KIIIIIIIIIIIIIN!! GWOOSH!

Once the mana passed a certain threshold, it stabilized and exploded with power. The burst of pressure pushed outward, and the mana that had been covering my body disappeared entirely.

“Your magic vanished…? No, wait. It’s circulating…! Inside your body?! At insane speed!” Leonard gasped from where he’d fallen on his butt in shock.

“Good eye. You’ve got decent magic-sensing ability,” I said, impressed.

I bent down, picked up a small rock at my feet, and crushed it to dust using only the strength in my fingers. Because the mana now circulates inside the body at high speed, none is visible on the surface.

It looks like nothing’s changed, but the physical power it gives is on another level.

“There’s one external sign though, your eyes. Like the legendary high-ranking demons, your eyes glow red when you enter this state.”

I saw Leonard visibly shiver when he saw my eyes flare up bright red.

“This is military-grade body-enhancement magic, also known as Red Eye. It doesn’t just increase your physical ability, it boosts all magic output, too.”

I conjured a fireball in my hand to demonstrate. Normally, this is a basic spell from the household magic category, just a little flame for lighting things.

“Torchlight.”

FWOOOSH! What I summoned instead was a massive fireball, several meters wide, big enough to swallow a person whole.

“!?”

“This is what happens when you use what I call critical mana, generated through high-speed internal circulation.”

It’s just a theory of mine, but I believe magic power is like momentum. Force equals mass times speed. So magic = mana amount × speed.

I let the fireball vanish and turned to Leonard.

“All of the kingdom’s knights fought in the great war using this technique, this Red Eye magic.”

That war was pure hell. We were constantly outnumbered ten to one by the demon army. To break even, each soldier had to fight ten enemies alone. That’s the kind of power we needed.

“Leonard, as the next head of our ducal house… as the future pinnacle of the kingdom’s knights, I’ll teach you everything I know.”

Logically, a duke shouldn’t need personal combat strength, but this world doesn’t work that way. Here, this is a land where one warrior can take on a thousand. Nobles are expected to be fighters, pure muscle and magic.

As your father, I don’t want you to ever go to war. I want you to live a peaceful life, far away from bloodshed. But… in this world, you still need the strength to fight.

I swallowed that contradiction.

“Can you handle this?”

“Yes, Father!”

Leonard answered with eyes full of determination. And all I could do… was hope his resolve would never be tested.

A hope that, in a way, felt painfully cruel.