To Lililia

To Eunice

[Common Letter]

How have you been?

Some time has passed since then, and I am now in the Eastern country. My plan to visit a certain optician was thwarted when I found out they were on an extended break, which was disappointing. However, since I have some acquaintances here to check in with, I’ve decided to stay in this area for a while.

The address for my next letter is written on the back. Feel free to refer to it.

I'm glad to hear that the aftermath of the highest-difficulty labyrinth has settled down considerably. I heard that Lililia has already returned to the church headquarters. Eunice, will you be heading back to the Great Library as well? Let me know once your plans are decided.

The extreme temperature shifts have finally calmed down, but traveling across countries can still be exhausting. Take care not to fall ill.

By the way, changing the topic—have either of you ever taken on a disciple?

This is actually my first time taking on a disciple, and I'm struggling quite a bit.

If you have any advice, I would greatly appreciate it.

[Individual Reply — To Lililia]

The difference in tone between my spoken words and my writing is just intentional. It’s not like some mysterious old woman is ghostwriting this letter.

[Individual Reply — To Eunice]

The encryption in your individual section is way too difficult—I haven’t been able to read a single word for an entire week. What’s with those circular symbols? If they’re some kind of magic circle system, I’ll never be able to decipher them.

—Ziel

To Ziel

To Eunice

[Common Letter]

Go all out with the jokes.

[Individual Reply — To Ziel]

Give me back the mysterious old woman.

—Lililia

To Ziel (← The space before “To” is ridiculously large. Does it bother you?)

To Lililia

[Common Letter]

Forget having a disciple—I barely even have friends, so I have no idea!

[Individual Reply — To Ziel]

Think about me more. 24 hours a day...

—Eunice

To Lililia

To Eunice

[Common Letter]

I asked the wrong people.

Goodbye.

—Ziel

A troublesome person has no choice but to be troubled by troublesome things for their entire life.

“A letter?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah.”

It was a bright spring afternoon.

Inside a carriage traveling eastward.

The wheels rolled gently as they headed toward the hinterlands, rattling along the highway. There weren’t many passengers inside, and about half of them had already begun to drift into a drowsy slumber. It was that kind of warm day.

Ziel, a young man with glasses, folded two letters filled with phrases like "Just kidding, kidding, kidding! Don't get mad, okay?" so that the gray-haired girl sitting beside him—Klaha—couldn't see them. He then answered, "Something like that," and began to let his pen glide smoothly over the blank paper of the letter he was about to write.

“‘I will never forget this grudge for the rest of my life. Just you wait.’ …There.”

“W-what kind of exchange is this…?”

Ziel laughed.

Klaha, assuming it was just a joke, let out a relieved sigh and chuckled as well. Incidentally, the actual paper did, in fact, bear the words, "I will never forget this grudge for the rest of my life. Just you wait," written with a firm stroke.

Some time had passed since then.

Since Ziel had conquered the highest-difficulty labyrinth, Abbyss.

Since he had asked Klaha, a member of the S-rank party The Next Apex, to support his journey in exchange for teaching her swordsmanship, and she had accepted.

Since the two of them had set out on their journey.

It had been about two weeks.

“If you’d like, I can take that letter to the courier when we reach the next town.”

“No, that’s okay. It’s personal.”

“But it might be dangerous.”

“…Yeah. Then, I’ll leave it to you. Thanks.”

“Of course!”

Simply put, the journey was going well.

To begin with, the frequent occurrences of ‘getting lost’ or ‘exploring unknown territory’ that had plagued Ziel’s solo travels had almost—no, completely—disappeared.

No more suddenly finding himself in an unfamiliar place, climbing to high ground to get his bearings, following a river downstream to reach the sea, or somehow ending up buried in the earth.

Ziel was a little moved by the fact that such things could actually stop happening.

Back when he traveled with his master, those events wouldn’t occur unless his master started fooling around. But to eliminate them entirely? That was something new.

“Ah, excuse me, Ziel. Do you have a moment?”

“Of course. What’s up?”

“Regarding what you taught me two days ago—should the hilt of the sword be resting against my wrist in this position?”

“Hmm… it depends. Like most things. If you want to commit to a stance, keeping the wrist in contact helps maintain stability and increases power. However—”

“It delays maneuverability by one step…”

“Exactly. So, you adjust based on the situation and your opponent’s toughness. If you’re unsure, it’s safer for you not to keep contact, since you have flexible wrists and good dexterity. But the important part is understanding which stance you naturally fall into during a fight and developing as many follow-up options from that as possible—”

Thus, the swordsmanship training was also progressing exceptionally well.

Even Ziel himself was surprised—his overwhelming knowledge, which had remained locked inside him, was blossoming rapidly as he spoke it aloud. Concepts that had once been vague sensations were now being verbalized and structured, strengthening his understanding even further.

And remarkably, Klaha was keeping up with his intense, long-winded explanations—explanations that Ziel himself thought would usually prompt an exasperated “Shut up!” from any normal person.

She took notes at an incredible speed, creating diagrams to avoid forgetting anything. Even when Ziel went off to perform bizarre training exercises under the guise of personal practice, she sat nearby, diligently reviewing her notes.

Ziel, in turn, felt an odd sense of defeat upon seeing how clear and well-organized her diagrams were. After all, his artistic ability was exactly what people who knew him expected it to be.

Klaha already possessed solid fundamentals and had firsthand experience from the Insto battle.

She had the raw material, and her ability to absorb the necessary theoretical framework was fast.

“—In the end, the key issue is how many segments you divide your body into for control. So, the question of the wrist ultimately ties back to the body as a whole. Naturally, weight distribution changes depending on how you adjust those segments, and—no, ‘feeling it’ isn’t enough. Look, see how the force changes when you swing a belt by its end versus its middle? And if you hold it down here—yes, that movement pattern. So, keep this simplified image in mind and extend it to the body. If you push it further, you’ll realize that joints and bones aren’t even the smallest unit of segmentation. Their mobility, thickness, and properties mean you can’t define segments based on length alone. But let’s leave that for later. This evening, we should physically go through this to deepen our understanding.”

“Yes!”

…Something like that.

For Ziel, whose master had once grumbled, "It’d be easier to teach 190-year-old grandmas seven hours of eternal fitness routines than to get you to learn anything," and "Every time you say ‘I got it!’ you introduce brand-new logic that I’ve never heard before, but when I check, it’s always right, and that pisses me off," Klaha was an ideal disciple.

The journey was going well.

And yet, he felt uneasy.

“By the way, it’s such a nice day today… Ziel, aren’t you hot?”

“Yeah, maybe it’s time to take off my coat—wait, no. It’s fine. You don’t have to fan me. Where did you even get that fan?”

“I saw it at a market stall yesterday and picked it up…”

…Because he was being treated like a king.

He was teaching her swordsmanship in exchange for travel support. Their relationship should have been one of mutual benefit—at least, that’s what he thought—but Klaha was treating him with excessive deference.

He could have let it slide—after all, she was the one who had asked him for training, and she probably felt indebted to him after everything that happened in the labyrinth.

But this obsessive rationalizer could never let such things go.

His brain went into overdrive, running a full-scale, 24-hour philosophical inquiry:

• The inherent imbalance in what should be an equal exchange.
• The risk of a permanently skewed power dynamic.
• The dangers of such an imbalance in a journey between two young people of different genders.
• The concern that she might hesitate to voice her own opinions.
• The fear that his unchecked decisions might go unchallenged.
• The realization that teaching inherently involves reshaping another person.
• The anxiety over whether he should even have such authority.
• …And seventy-seven other points.

Summed up: a troublesome guy was getting troubled over troublesome things.

“Um… please don’t hesitate!”

“No, really, I’m fine. I’m not that hot.”

“…Oh, did I make you feel cold? I’m sorry for being a bother…”

“No! Not at all. It was perfect. Thank you. But—wait, I’m not saying I want you to keep doing it. It was just… those few seconds were exactly right. I swear, it’s not—”

Ziel agonized over this for three days.

Enough to make an ordinary person stress themselves into a stomach ulcer.

But thanks to his resilient organs, he didn’t get one.

In desperation, he wrote to Lililia and Eunice for advice.

It was as useful as clutching at straws.

And as he stared at the sign on the optician’s shop reading, “On extended leave. Might come back someday,” he had a stroke of genius.

Find someone experienced in these matters, go to them, and sort things out until their relationship naturally balanced itself.

And so, they were now headed deep into the eastern lands.

Because he knew of one place.

“Well, that aside—we should be arriving at our destination soon, right?”

“Ah, yes! In about five days…!”

“…I see. Almost there, then!”

“…Yes! Almost there!”

As the other awake passengers chuckled at them, the carriage slowly but surely carried them onward.

To a martial arts dojo, deep in the eastern country.

The sky was a soft blue.

Spring birds chirped in the air.