Bang! Bang! Crack!
A dreadful series of impacts rang through a clearing in the forest.
What struck the solid granite boulder was neither a hammer nor a mace.
It was the small, fragile fist of a child who had only just turned five, still soft with baby fat.
"Ghk...! Haa, haa... One more time!"
Pain lanced through my entire body as my skin tore and my bones creaked, but I did not stop.
I kept throwing punches until red blood stained the rock’s surface and my knuckles swelled into grotesque lumps.
I wrapped my body in the immense Mana pouring from the Dragon Heart, then converted it into physical force to shatter the stone.
A simple, primitive, and brutally stupid method of training strength and endurance. It had become part of my daily routine the moment I turned five.
"Good grief, this is unbearable to watch. Arthur, isn’t that a little too barbaric?"
Merlin, floating beside me, sighed as though she were thoroughly sick of it. Twirling her ornate staff, she drifted closer.
"I’ll admit that coating your body in Mana and pushing it to its limit is effective training. The blood of the Red Dragon running through you also grows stronger when you’re driven to the brink. But it comes with horrible pain, doesn’t it? Why are you training so hard that you’re destroying yourself?"
Breathing heavily, I held out both of my bloodied hands.
"Less complaining, more healing. You don’t carry healing magecraft around for decoration."
"Honestly, does this little king think I’m his personal physician?"
Though she puffed out her cheeks, Merlin brought her staff over my hands.
Soft, warm pink Mana drifted down like flower petals and wrapped around them. My torn skin closed in an instant, and bones on the verge of breaking settled back into place.
Where the wounds had been, tougher, stronger skin and muscle formed.
This was Saiyan-style training, the shortcut to obtaining the strongest body in Britain.
"Because I need to become stronger. If I’m going to become overwhelmingly powerful, shouldn’t the vessel itself—my body—become absurdly tough first?"
"Hmm~ You can already use Mana Burst as naturally as breathing at five years old, despite it being a level ordinary knights could train their whole lives and never reach, and you still want more. From where I stand, Arthur, you’re already an extraordinary genius who will be remembered in history."
I snorted at Merlin’s praise.
A genius? What a joke.
When I considered the real monsters and geniuses crawling all over this world of Fate, I was nothing more than an ordinary man with a flashy outer shell.
Take my archenemy Vortigern. Wasn’t he a monster among monsters who had absorbed the will of the island itself?
Even among humans, I was ordinary. This age had a genius named Lancelot.
A prodigy who could cut down enemies with nothing but a tree branch, the strongest knight capable of wielding every weapon through [Eternal Arms Mastery].
And what about Gawain? He had the Blessing of the Sun, and even without it he was ridiculously strong, with skill comparable to Lancelot’s.
Then there was Tristan, who used a special bow to bind an enemy to an entire pasture, restraining them beneath the pasture’s weight.
And Percival, the second Grail Knight, said to be no inferior to Lancelot or Gawain?
Not to mention Galahad, the true strongest knight—a deus ex machina.
Then there was Mordred, a homunculus with far less experience, not even ten years old, who still managed to perish alongside King Arthur.
Britain alone was full of insane geniuses.
Among my contemporaries, Rome had Lucius as well.
The strongest human of this era, who overwhelmed Gawain head-on, sent Bedivere flying with a single blow, and whom even King Arthur acknowledged as surpassing him in every respect except the Holy Sword.
Going back one generation, there was Altera, from Vortigern’s generation—roughly my father Uther’s generation, or more accurately, his older brother’s—who crushed Rome.
Well, calling Altera human was questionable when her true origin was Sefar, but she was still a genius.
And me, a genius? Before genuine geniuses, I was merely an ordinary man called a genius in an age that lacked them.
Compared to true sword prodigies, King Arthur’s swordsmanship was nothing extraordinary.
Musashi, who entered the [Void] and cut through dimensions; Okita, whose [Three-Stage Thrust] ignored defenses and pierced straight through them; Kojiro, who achieved dimensional refraction—the domain of the Second Magic—through swordsmanship.
There was also Fuyuki’s farmer, who succeeded the real Kojiro and reproduced that swordsmanship, as well as Iori, a disciple of both Musashi and the true Kojiro who used [Tsubame Gaeshi] with two swords.
Compared to real geniuses, it was laughable.
Artoria had even been overwhelmed in swordsmanship by Fuyuki’s farmer. If her sword had not broken, she would have lost to him.
What about the spear? There was Scathach, and Cu Chulainn, whom even Scathach acknowledged could kill her. There was Li Shuwen, who wielded Bajiquan like a spear.
And Li Shuwen was originally a human who had reached the pinnacle of martial arts through sheer training.
Archery? Arash was a monster who could loose ten thousand arrows in an instant, sending an iron rain that blackened Tokyo’s sky. He could even fire an Arash Flight.
Explaining Chiron, Heracles, or Orion would be exhausting.
And then there were the fastest heroes, Atalanta and Achilles.
What about great heroes like Siegfried and Karna, Servants said to stand at the pinnacle not only in strength but in skill?
Honestly, was King Arthur ever classified as a Heroic Spirit who was strong because of sheer skill? Absolutely not.
Rather, in every Holy Grail War, other Servants surpassed him in skill.
His Noble Phantasms were simply absurdly powerful. In a sense, perhaps he was a lucky Gilgamesh.
That was precisely the problem. Maybe he had never honed his own skill because his Noble Phantasms were so overwhelmingly strong. He had broken Noble Phantasms like Excalibur, Avalon, and Rhongomyniad.
Compared to true geniuses, King Arthur was ordinary.
That was why I needed to become a real genius. A genius who worked.
I had to work hard enough to enter the realm of those monsters. That was the first gate, the path beyond its threshold. I had to do so if I wished to become the strongest king of this era.
I may have inherited the Dragon Heart, but that was not so impressive. Heracles, who strangled Hera’s snakes to death as a newborn, would laugh at me.
If I wanted to protect Artoria and satisfy every one of my ambitions, I had no time to settle for shallow praise calling me a genius. I could only swallow bone-grinding pain and keep moving forward.
"Healing complete! Now, let’s stop training here and take a rest."
Merlin handed me a cool fruit drink and a nicely baked tart that she had pulled from somewhere.
I dropped down onto the ground and gulped the drink. Its sweet fruity scent moistened my burning throat.
Merlin sat beside me, propped her chin on her hand, and looked at me with interest as she spoke.
"Come to think of it, Arthur, you’ve boasted endlessly about building a harem. Why are you still being so well-behaved?"
"Pfft! Cough, cough! What?"
"Well, you may only be five, but you’re destined to become a king. Great heroes like that are usually surrounded by women from childhood. Why not go down to Tintagel village now, spend time with pretty little girls, buy them tasty things, and gently raise them into the kind of women you want? It’ll be much easier to recruit them into your harem later. The importance of early education!"
At Merlin’s characteristically inhuman, somewhat unhinged advice, I nearly sprayed out the drink I was having.
"Are you insane? You want me to groom little kids?"
"My, isn’t that what people in power like?"
"Don’t be ridiculous. I have no intention of gathering every woman I come across."
Drawing a firm line, I took a large bite of the tart.
"Wanting a harem doesn’t mean I want to become some lecherous womanizer. I will only keep women by my side if I can truly love them, if they are attractive, and above all, if they are strong women with pride of their own."
"Hee... Those are rather strict requirements. So you refuse relationships without love?"
"Of course. I may look like a greedy libertine on the surface, but I will never share a bed with someone without respect and sincere affection for her. That is my conviction."
A certain knight’s face suddenly crossed my mind—the face of one of the chief culprits behind the future collapse of the Round Table.
Lancelot.
The lower-body Berserker who spent one loveless night with Elaine, ran away without taking responsibility, and ended up being hated by Galahad.
I knew all too well how horrific a butterfly effect the typical irresponsible act of sleeping with someone and running away could cause.
Tristan had died over love troubles, too.
"Sleeping together out of impulse or mistake without even loving each other, having children you cannot take responsibility for, then running all over the place. As a king and as a man, I will never do something so disgusting. I’ll give limitless affection and take full responsibility for anyone who becomes my woman. That is what qualifies a man to lead a true harem."
At my answer, Merlin’s eyes widened into circles.
Such depth of thought should not have come from a child’s body. Her usual teasing expression vanished, and she stared at me for a moment. Then a strange smile spread across her lips.
"Really... You surprise me every time I see you. I see. Arthur’s harem won’t be a simple orgy, but a sacred king’s bedchamber overflowing with love and responsibility? Hehe, then shall I make you a tempting offer?"
Merlin leaned her upper body toward me. Her faint floral fragrance tickled my nose, and her clear, transparent eyes shone as if they could see through me.
"Would big sister Merlin meet the standards for that demanding harem? Would you let me join it too?"
Any ordinary child would have blushed or angrily told her not to joke around. Merlin, too, seemed to expect me to fluster and lose my temper.
But without the slightest hesitation, I calmly took a sip of my fruit drink and answered indifferently.
"You’re already confirmed for my harem."
"...What?"
For an instant, the relaxed air Merlin had commanded throughout the forest came to a dead stop.
Clear bewilderment crossed the incubus’s face, a face that always teased others with unhurried ease. A faint blush swiftly bloomed across her pale cheeks.
"Y-you... Are you saying that seriously? You’re joking, right?"
"Joking? Why would I reject you? How many beautiful women like you exist in this world?"
Stuffing the rest of the tart into my mouth, I calmly listed the facts.
"Objectively speaking, you have a perfect figure and a lovely voice. You don’t even age. Based on looks alone, you rank at the very top not just in Britain, but anywhere in the world. Do you think I’m an idiot? Why would I kick away fortune that rolled right into my lap?"
"N-no... I mean, that may be true, but...!"
It was a remarkable sight: Merlin was stammering in panic for the first time I had ever seen. She waved her hands frantically in protest.
"I-I’m an incubus, you know? I’m not even human, and my emotions are different from yours! And my personality is strange too. I’m always playing pranks and causing trouble—I’m a troublemaker! If you keep me by your side, you’ll be exhausted to death before your time!"
She was right. This woman bore the grand title of kingmaker, but in truth, she was also the worst kind of troublemaker, overturning the board for her own amusement and running away.
Wasn’t the original Merlin the sort who gave out the Holy Sword, made someone king, and then, unable to clean up the mess at the end, shut herself away in Avalon?
But.
"That’s exactly why I need to keep you close."
I stood up, brushed the dirt from myself, and looked down at Merlin.
"If I let you wander around alone, who knows what troublesome prank you’ll pull in some corner of Britain and what enormous disaster you’ll cause? So I’ll put you in my harem, keep you right beside me, and hold your leash tight for the rest of your life as my woman."
"...!"
"Your inhuman incubus nature? Do whatever you want. The accidents caused by your mischievousness? I’ll grow strong enough to clean them all up and crush them. You just need to stay beside me, watch the world I build from closer than anyone else, and be showered with love."
Grinning, I ruffled Merlin’s silver hair.
"Prepare yourself, Merlin. The day I become the strongest king, you won’t be able to run away. You’ll be locked in my bedchamber."
A five-year-old child’s declaration, so bold it bordered on arrogance.
Merlin could only stare blankly up at me, unable to offer even a single one of her usual irritating retorts.
Instead, she covered her flushed face with both hands, fidgeting as her gaze darted everywhere but at me.
Even an incubus who did not properly understand human emotions had clearly felt a powerful flutter in her heart as a woman before this outrageous declaration.
"R-really... What an impossible child... Who says you’re the one holding the leash...?"
Leaving Merlin muttering in a shrinking voice behind me, I began walking lightly toward the cottage.
Today’s training, and my recruitment attempt, had both been a great success.
Love, power, and my little sister’s happiness—I would seize them all with my own hands.
That was the way of Arthur Pendragon, Britain’s true ruler.
Still, I wonder when I’ll get to meet my older sister?
My desired happiness included my sister’s happiness, after all. Maybe I should ask Merlin to arrange an introduction later.
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