Chapter 292: Webtoon Special Edition – Extra 4 Transfer Student With Experience (4)

The Royal Academy was already on its fourth day.

Even though the bodies had been swapped, as usual I woke up early and forced this stiff body to move.

“Shia, damn it… I told you to exercise.”

Even having trained a little over these past few days, the physical condition did not improve at all.

I never imagined that I would experience again the misery of a teenager with a chronic lack of exercise.

Of course, I was a special case. Since childhood I followed Sangwoo into the baseball club and ended up walking the path of a professional athlete.

After becoming Corin Loch, I spent all that time training at the Guardian Academy to prevent the collapse of the world.

For normal boys and girls, what they were doing now must have been the correct thing.

‘It looks like there’s another guy like me around here.’

Whoosh!

Boom!

A secluded place, away from the walking path.

Deep in the forest, where people’s eyes barely reached, a familiar sound echoed.

There, a black-haired boy was swinging a wooden sword without rest.

‘Oh… nice abs.’

The boy’s body was well built. The scars scattered across his skin showed the extreme situations he had overcome.

Having repeated that kind of training and combat from such a young age resembled me quite a lot.

Well, compared to someone with a mental age of forty, maybe he’s better than me.

Calcion Helgmund. The young man who became the leader of the North at an early age.

They said Brunhilde had set her sights on him as a warrior.

Though having a valkyrie take interest in you, I don’t know if that’s necessarily a good thing.

Staring blatantly at someone while they train isn’t good manners.

Just as I was about to leave, a strange group approached Calcion.

“And who’s this? Isn’t he the stinky barbarian duke?”

Popcorn.

Where’s the popcorn?

***

Calcion is a warrior.

Though young, he is the son of a clan with the right to become the leader of the North.

For the northerners, real experience is naturally gained by hunting magical beasts.

The North itself is a cruel battlefield. If you are weak, you get hunted; if you hunt, you survive. An extreme land.

There, Calcion learned to sleep in short bursts, prepared for wolf packs that could attack at any moment.

He learned to fight against enemy tribes and to butcher prey.

‘Too peaceful.’

That was why the abundance of this warm kingdom seemed to make him lazy.

In order not to dull the beast’s instinct, Calcion continued training.

‘If it was going to be like this, maybe it would have been better to go to the Guardian Academy.’

He knew why Brunhilde, the leader of the shieldmaidens, had chosen the Royal Academy as their place of study.

The Sun God, Corin Loch, had ascended to the throne of the gods, marking the return of the mythical era.

The curses that the gods imposed on humanity, the demonic existences, would gradually disappear, and soon the age of civilization would arrive.

The North also had to adapt to that flow of time.

A kingdom where gods exist, where new divine generations are born.

It was necessary to interact with that kingdom and become an allied group in order to share the grace of the gods.

Even among the shieldmaidens there was a rumor that one of them might marry the new Sun God. As the leader of the North, building ties with the kingdom was his duty.

But—

“And who’s this? Isn’t he the stinky barbarian duke?”

The kingdom’s prejudices against the northerners would not be resolved so easily.

“What do you want?”

The group that appeared were children of influential figures in the kingdom.

He remembered them—they were the ones who had caused trouble since the first day of classes.

They started chattering nonstop, but Calcion decided to ignore them.

“This bastard! Is he ignoring us?”

“Barbarians who worship snow gods!”

But… those words were hard to tolerate.

“Ha… do barbarians even have a religion? So what? Unlike our kingdom, where there are real gods, you only have some half-baked old women, right?”

“How dare you…?”

To insult the shieldmaidens, whom the northerners venerated as sacred spirits? To dare profane the spiritual pillars that had protected the North for a thousand years?

“Come.”

“What?”

“You insulted the shieldmaidens. As a northerner, I cannot overlook it. If you don’t have a sword, fight with your fists. I’ll use my fists too.”

“You insolent barbarian…!”

“We’re knights! If it weren’t for social society, we’d be at the Guardian Academy!”

“Do the kingdom’s knights only know how to fight with their mouths?”

In the end, the group and Calcion came to blows.

It was five against one, but they were no match for Calcion, who had survived countless real battles in the North.

The result was an overwhelming victory.

Just as he was about to stomp on the guy who was bleeding from the nose—

“That’s enough, right?”

At the moment Calcion lowered his foot, something struck his ankle with a sharp tap.

A fleeting technique. Calcion’s foot dug into the ground beside the face of the one who had insulted the shieldmaidens.

“……Who are you?”

“The sister of the Sun God.”

A girl smiling with her lips slightly twisted.

An ordinary girl, from whom no power or mana could be felt, yet who radiated an overwhelming ferocity that was impossible to ignore.

Like a wolf. No—like the alpha of a pack.

‘I didn’t even notice her approach.’

She had entered precisely into the gap in his awareness, in an instantaneous interval.

Her strength was nothing special. If he had recognized her in time, he wouldn’t have moved an inch. And yet, his leg had been deflected.

“It looks like a boys’ fight is getting out of hand. I understand that you’re angry, but let’s not make this bigger.”

“No. That man blasphemed the gods. He insulted our gods and our guardians. That is a profanation.”

“It’s the age of youthful impulse. They say men mature by fighting.”

“A pathetic line of reasoning. In the North, if a man loses a fight, he dies.”

“This isn’t the North.”

Shia Loch did not take a single step back. Calcion tried to retort, but upon realizing that she was Shia Loch, he had no choice but to retreat.

“……I don’t like it.”

Neither this situation, nor the fact that the North, in the end, was nothing more than the loser in a competition of systems.

***

“Wow… you’re really angry.”

Well, knowing the position Brunhilde and the shieldmaidens hold for the northerners, it’s understandable.

For a devout believer, it was a direct offense against their gods and against their saints.

“Th-thank you, Miss Loch.”

The troublemakers stood up while their noses were still bleeding.

I took out a handkerchief and a sports towel and tossed them to them.

“Wipe the blood. Whew, they really messed up your eye.”

“Ah, y-yes… thank you.”

“Thank you……”

The troublemakers wiped their noses with the handkerchief and towel I gave them, looking embarrassed.

“Are you ashamed that just one person crushed all of you?”

“Kgh…!”

“If that guy hadn’t used dirty and cowardly tricks…!”

“You fought bare-handed and now you’re talking about strange arts—what kind of story is that?”

“He’s a barbarian, he must’ve used some trick! They’re all cowards!”

“That’s right!”

As soon as one of them opened his mouth, the others started nodding. That they had lost because Calcion, savage and evil, had used some kind of trick.

That otherwise, they wouldn’t have lost.

“How pathetic!”

With a single sentence from me, the murmuring stopped cold.

“As men, all of you ganged up on one person and still lost, and you can’t even acknowledge it? Aren’t you ashamed?”

“W-why are you defending that barbarian? Miss Loch, you’re from the kingdom…”

“Does it bother you that I’m not on your side?”

“Ugh……”

I handed one of the troublemakers, the one whose nose was still bleeding, a rolled piece of the handkerchief.

“Cover your nose.”

“Ah… y-yes……”

“This is what my brother said.”

My brother—meaning me, Corin Loch.

When I mentioned Corin Loch, the Sun of the kingdom and the one who occupies the throne of the gods, all eyes focused on me.

After all, to many men I was an object of admiration.

“My brother fought against the Demon King in the North, and against his army. There, he received help from the northerners.”

We fought together. We were comrades.

In that fierce battle, there were no distinctions between people of the kingdom and northerners.

“But half of the barbarians joined the Demon King’s army!”

“If we’re going to say that, there were also traitors in the kingdom, among both the old faith and the new faith. The Pope blew their heads off, remember?”

“T-that is……”

“See? You’re at a loss for words. That’s how people are. Depending on the environment and the land, we’re a little different, but sometimes we’re foolish and sometimes we do stupid things.”

Even so, we’re people. All the same.

“……My grandfather died fighting the barbarians.”

“My great-grandfather too.”

Perhaps it wasn’t hatred or discrimination without reason.

The North and the kingdom have been washing blood with blood for generations.

“And didn’t the same thing happen on the other side?”

“……Even so, miss, you should have supported us. You’re from the kingdom, and your brother was born here too.”

“Of course, if there were a war, I would support the kingdom. Both my brother and I have more loved ones here.”

As I brushed the dust off those boys, I continued.

“But we are students. We are the future of the kingdom. And Calcion is too.”

“Even if the adults clashed, I believe there can be another path for us.”

“So even if you don’t like the other’s origins, even if there were bad things in the past, at least once try talking. Just like Corin Loch talked with the northerners.”

I hope that first step someday becomes a step toward a better kingdom and a better world.

That beginning will surely come someday.

“I hope you will be that beginning.”

I smiled, wishing it from the bottom of my heart.

***

Classes ended, and it was already night. Seeing that Josephine still hadn’t arrived, it seemed she had completely left the south.

“Marie or Erin must be rushing over right now.”

There’s quite a distance from the south to the capital.

Even riding wyverns or Hresvelgr, it would take several more days.

Shia… she must have gotten used to it a little by now?

I still feel uncomfortable in my sister’s body, in a woman’s body.

Thinking about it like that, Park Sirin is my senior. Sirin reincarnated into this world inside Park Sihoo’s body.

For a college student to suddenly find herself in a man’s body must have been a truly complicated situation.

‘Wait… if you do a TS and go out with someone of that gender, does that count as homosexuality or heterosexuality?’

It’s confusing. If, with a man’s body, you go out with a man, physically it’s homosexual, but mentally heterosexual—and the reverse applies too.

What a problem.

With those philosophical reflections, I went out for a walk.

When there’s nothing to do, I usually go for a walk, and at times like these I feel like installing the internet or founding a TV station in this world.

Though I also wonder if it would be a good idea to accelerate the development of civilization so much.

Rustle!

Rustle! Rustle!

A strange sound reached my ears. As if someone were scraping the ground. I approached where it came from.

“Is someone there—?”

“Kyaah…!”

A girl jumped in surprise. She looked like an academy student.

“Sorry for scaring you. I heard noises at night and thought it was someone… Sinia Helgmund?”

“Ah, Shia Loch?”

In the morning I met the brother, and at night the sister. What a coincidence.

***

“Oh, were you planting flowers?”

“……They’re medicinal herbs, actually.”

Sinia Helgmund.

The younger sister of the Grand Duke of the North, Calcion Helgmund.

Like him, she had come to study at the Royal Academy to take advantage of this learning opportunity, and it turned out she was a druid.

“What flower is this?”

“Night Vision Flower. In my land, the leaves are crushed and used to treat external wounds.”

“But there are plenty of medicines here too, right?”

“……They might refuse to treat us for being barbarians.”

Ah, of course. From her perspective, suffering such open discrimination, it’s natural to fear that they wouldn’t even treat them when injured.

“That won’t happen. Since His Holiness the Pope carried out the great religious unification, discrimination is prohibited in principle.”

“…….”

Sinia looked at me with distrust.

Facing her doubt-filled expression, I replied with a broad smile.

“Well, it will gradually get better. You two are the first, that’s why you’re not used to it yet.”

“Really?”

“Yes. It will be so.”

Because I will make it so.

“But anyway… Miss Sinia, you are a good person.”

“Huh?”

“You worry about your brother getting hurt and even prepare medicinal herbs. If it were my sister—well, I’d tell her that saliva heals it.”

“……We grew up together.”

She didn’t just mean living under the same roof.

The North is a harsh land, and both of them lost their parents in the war.

For them, each was the other’s only family.

“By the way, it’s fascinating. Those secret techniques to make plants grow.”

Of course, I had already met druids before.

I fought alongside Yuel, who is now the Sage of the Forest, so I knew their arts well.

“I heard that herbs grown with secret techniques have less effect.”

“The ones I grow don’t. I… improved them.”

“I see.”

“Thanks to that, when there were no medicines to heal my brother and the tribe’s warriors, it was a great help. Thankfully.”

Calcion Helgmund crossed battlefields with a sword to survive in the North and protect his sister.

Sinia Helgmund perfected druidic arts to heal her brother and the tribe’s warriors.

They are admirable siblings.

And also tragic siblings.

“In winter food is scarce too, so for them to grow better… Ah. I’m sorry, Miss Loch. This topic must be boring to you……”

“Call me Shia. And you’re called Sinia too. Can I call you Sinia?”

“Eh? A-ah… is that okay?”

“If we’re in the same class, we’re friends, right?”

I took Sinia’s hand.

It wasn’t a white, delicate hand like those of the capital’s nobles, but that dirt-stained hand was, without a doubt—

“It’s a beautiful hand.”

“Huh? It isn’t. It’s rough… and full of calluses……”

“That’s why it’s beautiful. It’s the hand that digs into the cold soil of the North and makes flowers bloom that heal people.”

As if kissing the hand of a noble lady, I kissed that dirt-stained hand with the utmost respect.

“What hand could be more beautiful than this?”

Sinia’s face turned red like a tomato.