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The boy had been someone who held a sword from the day he was born. It was partly his nature, but the greatest reason was simply that he had no parents to raise him.
Of course, he had not been abandoned as a newborn. Once he had grown old enough to fend for himself, perhaps because the cost of raising him had become a burden, his parents abandoned the boy.
At first, he cried a little—no, a lot. But after a year had passed, the boy had forgotten even his parents’ faces.
If they could be buried by merely one year and forgotten, the boy thought, then they probably had not been very good parents.
Still, if there was one thing he was grateful to them for, it was that they had left him with a sword.
The boy truly liked that sword.
Since no one protected him from the world, the boy had to raise his sword, if only to protect himself.
The sword was the boy’s closest friend and his guardian.
The boy always carried it with him, and perhaps because of that, it was fortunate amid his misfortune that he had managed to grow up without any major trouble for nearly a year after being abandoned.
Rather than being abandoned in a forest and raised by beasts like some heroic tale, the boy survived by rummaging through trash in a corner of a frontier city, stealing from thugs and travelers. Tenaciously.
But as the saying went, a fox’s tail grows long enough to be caught. Before he knew it, there were many people in the city pursuing the boy.
They were far too numerous for the still-fragile boy to handle.
And so, the boy became a swordsman.
As a swordsman, he sold himself directly to a nearby slave trader.
The slave trader stared at the boy with a strange look for a moment, then readily accepted his offer.
The boy received his price, and the slave trader became his master.
The price the boy received upon becoming a slave was twenty valis.
According to the slave seated beside him, it was less than the price of a cheap snack in some famous city.
Of course, it was quite rare for a slave to possess money, so at least among the slaves in the wagon, the boy was the richest slave.
Quietly proud of that fact, the boy kept fiddling with his small coin pouch as he rode in the wagon.
Whenever the wagon jolted, the coins struck each other with a jingle. He loved that sound so much that, for the first time in his life, the boy wore the purest smile.
Young as he was, the boy was a swordsman, so it was only natural that he would be sold to an arena.
The boy had not even reached ten years of age, but his talent for the sword was so exceptional that none could rival it. Even at such a young age, he was able to survive in the arena for a long time.
Sadly, however, the boy was only able to live in the arena for nine years.
War broke out in a nearby region.
It had begun as nothing more than an argument between lords, so it was not a large-scale war. Still, it was more than enough to shut down a crumbling arena nearby.
He had liked it there.
Regretfully, the boy left the home where he had spent half his life.
The boy became a wanderer once more.
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