Work Text:
Alberu stared at Cale in disbelief.
"No," he said firmly.
Cale crossed his arms and waited. The insulted look on Alberu's face only grew at his silence.
"No," he insisted, horrified. "I am not doing that."
Cale silently gave him a look. Several days had passed since the White Star attacked, and although Alberu seemed fine on the outside, he hadn't let a priest or healer look at his internal wounds due to the fear that they might find out about his mana and Dark Elf blood, so his internal injuries still made him move slowly. Alberu figured out the meaning behind his gaze, and scowled.
"That is ridiculous. You can't make me do that."
"Your highness, this is just another precaution. It will only do you good."
Looking annoyed to the point of outrage, Alberu scowled. "Just because I got hit a little -"
"A little? You call that a little?"
Cale, who had absolutely no idea that Alberu was staring at him while thinking "This bastard thinks it's fine when he goes and coughs up blood and faints for a week after overusing his powers, but I get hit a few times and it's bad?", seemed a little angry at Alberu's response. He had rushed over from the Endable Kingdom in a hurry, and still came too late to stop the future king and his hyung-nim from being beaten to the brink of death by the White Star. Moreover, the White Star had escaped quickly before Cale had a chance to hit back, and this still left a bad taste in his mouth.
"How can it be a little? Your highness, you have no idea how heartbroken your people were at the fact that the bright and shining sun of the Roan Kingdom shed so much blood to protect -"
"Now you're just saying useless things." Alberu frowned. "I'm already a high-grade expert. I don't need any tutors. It's not likely that I'll go up against the White Star by myself so quickly, and I'm able to train on my own."
"Your highness, you're just saying that because you've never had tutors before. Haven't you taken Choi Han as your instructor? I've never seen him teach you once. If you don't train with him at least a couple of times, people are going to think you're both slacking off."
Alberu still had a funny expression on his face.
"... if I spar with him a few times a week, that's enough."
"Training is not just sparring, you're highness. There are many other ways to increase your strength."
Cale didn't back down.
"Choi Han is also a busy person. I also happen to know more swordmasters. Hyung-nim, if I may -"
Looking slightly horrified, Alberu backed away.
"You may not."
"- I think they'll make fine instructors."
Choi Han normally gave off a mix of pure and threatening vibes whenever Alberu met him, so he wasn't sure what to expect of him as an instructor. The annotated diagrams that he had given him that one time were actually very detailed, and Alberu spent a good few days slipping them inside his meeting notes and reading them while pretending to listen to the meaningless babble of the court officials. Choi Han was a very talented swordmaster, and Alberu couldn't help but look forward a little to their training.
Unfortunately, Choi Han was also a merciless instructor. The moment that Alberu stepped onto the training ground, Choi Han smiled brightly and immediately activated his aura.
"Your highness, I'm just going to briefly test your current level. Please attack back with the best of your ability."
Alberu didn't even have time to pick up a sword before Choi Han disappeared and appeared in front of him a second later.
"Briefly"? Alberu snatched up a training sword from the racks on the side of the training grounds and tried to attack, but ended up constantly trying to block each hit instead. There really was no chance to go on the offensive, and even when he tried to sneakily use a bit of magic to catch his instructor off-guard, Choi Han's aura thoughtlessly batted the attack away like it was nothing.
"... isn't this a bit harsh for the first day?"
Choi Han smiled gently while viciously attacking the crown prince from all angles.
"It's just a short test, your highness. Once I determine your level and potential areas for improvement, we can start the proper training."
Alberu, whose arms were already starting to feel the strain from Choi Han's relentless attacks, gaped at him wordlessly.
If this wasn't the proper training, then what was??
He looked to the side of the training grounds, where Cale was sitting leisurely on a chair and eating a slice of apple pie that seemed to have come from nowhere. He looked very pleased. The soldiers training on the other side of the training ground were watching nervously at the crown prince being beaten up by his instructor, unsure of whether to go over or not.
In his mind, Alberu decided that he was definitely going to get Choi Han to train Cale at least once.
The "brief" test went on until sundown, and Alberu dropped his sword and collapsed onto the sand, his body aching too much to even get up.
"Instructor-nim, please have pity on your disciple. I'm still injured."
Choi Han helped him up. He hadn't broken a sweat the entire time, while Alberu felt like his arms had turned to lead. The difference in strength between him and a person who had trained for hundreds of years really was impressive.
"The lessons ... they won't all be like this, will they?"
Choi Han just gave him a silent and slightly gentle smile, and Alberu shivered.
Fortunately, the merciless beating seemed to be a one-time thing. Choi Han patiently repeated the same movements over and over with him, bringing in a mixture of basics and complexity that Alberu still couldn't quite figure out the order of, but it seemed to work. He seemed like a good instructor, but he was also a bit ... unpredictable.
One time, he came with Raon, brought out a large pile of boulders, and asked him to carry the boulders over to the other side of the arena, and back again. His training varied from being forced to do two hundred push-ups without stopping, landing one hit on Choi Han while Choi Han was handicapped in a variety of different ways (all of which irked Alberu's pride, but Cale forced him to go along with it because "A good disciple listens to his instructor, hyung-nim, you're a good disciple, aren't you?"), and at one point Choi Han got curious about the abilities of a sword made out of mana and tried to get Alberu to dual wield using a mana sword and a regular sword.
Needless to say, it didn't go well. The regular sword ended up exploding, and the mana sword went berserk and Alberu had to chase it all over the training grounds before subduing it. Choi Han decided to let Alberu handle the magic part of his training from then on.
"... you got the Mercenary King to be my instructor?"
Cale looked at Alberu with a casual "Why not?" expression. Alberu fought the urge to sigh.
"You know what, I'm not even surprised. How did you convince him?"
"It was quite easy, your highness. He's fine with tutoring you for free, as long as you both go out for drinks afterwards. Of course, you need to pay."
Cale once again said such a ridiculous thing so casually that Alberu almost missed it. He stared.
"... what?"
Bud Illis appeared and and cheerfully dragged the crown prince away to the training grounds before Cale could respond.
Alberu hadn't interacted with the Mercenary King very much, but the person who he had described as a "lunatic" in the information he gave to Cale turned out to be a surprisingly solid instructor. He didn't mercilessly beat him for hours on end like Choi Han did (although Choi Han's aggressive training did end up showing results quite quickly, to which Alberu had mixed feelings about) but started out with a set of drills and other practices, all the while observing carefully and giving tips.
He had a good eye, and Alberu found that under his teaching, identifying and improving his weak points suddenly became a little easier.
Of course, none of his instructors were normal at all, and after every session ended, Bud immediately pounced on him and attempted to bodily drag him to the nearest bar. Alberu, who had a public image to keep up, managed to convince him to have a drink in the (relative) privacy of the palace instead.
Unfortunately, while this method might have stopped the scandal of seeing the crown prince and Mercenary King get drunk in a public bar, it didn't stop the antics of a very drunk and sword-happy Bud Illis, who consequently dragged Alberu into his messes. As expected, a drunk swordmaster was on a different level to a drunk regular person. (The sheer creativity of the pranks he pulled and the plots he made ... Cale wanted to learn a few things from him. It would certainly spice up his plans against the White Star.)
Cale, wanting to check up on the crown prince after his first session with Bud, walked into the room without knocking as he usually did and was about to start talking when he finally processed what was going on in the room. The true form of chaos slapped him in the face. After making sure that they were in no life-threatening danger, Cale calmly walked out, locked the door, asked Raon to cast a sound concealing spell around the entire wing of the palace, and went home and slept until the next morning.
Bud seemed (unsurprisingly) completely fine after a night of heavy drinking, slapping his new disciple cheerfully on the back and talking about sword techniques. Alberu looked as if he had the worst hangover known to mankind, and was still lying motionless on the floor.
A few hours later, once Alberu could finally see in sunlight without being blinded, Cale asked innocently how Bud was as an instructor and a swordmaster.
Alberu thought seriously for a few seconds.
"If we get him drunk on ten pints of beer, I think he might be able to beat the White Star," he replied. Cale snorted.
"You still seem in better shape than you did after your first session with Choi Han."
Alberu raised an eyebrow.
"They're both good, but Bud Illis hasn't lived for hundreds of years. He has a sensible idea of how fast a normal human progresses, unlike Choi Han. How does he expect me to go from a hundred to a hundred thousand push-ups in one week?"
Cale looked at Alberu thoughtfully.
"I think your arms have gotten a little bigger, though," he said jokingly. Alberu, who felt his hangover approaching again, looked at the floor and wondered if it was a good idea to go and lie down on it again.
Cale had since learned not to interfere with Bud's drinking sessions, no matter how imploringly the crown prince looked at him as he was being dragged away by his instructor. He wasn't sure exactly what sort of things the swordmaster and highest grade expert did when they got drunk, but he did remember one time when Alberu woke up after a massive hangover with complete mastery over a complicated sword technique he had no memory of learning.
"Well," he said, after a long period of stunned silence. "At least it works?"
At the very least, though, Bud and Alberu seemed to get along quite well. Bud seemed to enjoy using his aura a lot, and Cale got used to seeing flashes of pale blue every time he walked past the arena to have a peek at the training. One time, he thought he might have seen a flash of gold appear alongside the blue aura, but it disappeared the moment he blinked, so he figured it might have been his imagination.
He smiled. It seemed to be going well.
On the other hand, the first time that Alberu trained with Hannah, the former Holy Maiden, he found her to be absolutely terrifying. He felt a rather extreme sense that there was a lot of bloodlust bottled up inside of her, and Alberu seemed more interested in avoiding her attacks during sparring than actually attacking himself.
It was a little like training with Choi Han, although he felt as if at least Choi Han attacked with less of a bloodthirsty intent than Hannah.
Even though he didn't know all the details, Alberu did know about the sorts of things that Hannah had gone through, and the black spiderweb-like lines that covered her skin due to dead mana. She didn't say anything, but he sometimes wondered about what she might have first thought of him, a person who could freely absorb and use the dead mana that had caused her so much pain. Even so, he knew not to think about it too much. Neither of them were the type of person to get caught up on details of things they couldn't control.
He respected her as a person, and a skilled swordmaster, admired her a little for the persistent and somewhat brutal way she fought all the obstacles in her way.
Cale also thought they had a sort of mutual understanding and respect. He thought that they were actually pretty similar. Alberu and Hannah didn't appear to talk much during their training sessions, but a couple of weeks later, Cale once walked past and heard them both laughing evilly together with rather scary expressions on their faces. He paled and immediately quickened his pace, not wanting to get involved at all.
He silently wondered whether it was a good idea to ask Hannah to be Alberu's instructor.
Well. It wasn't like he could do anything about it now.
He left the two evilly laughing people alone and quickly left the scene.
A couple of months later, Alberu turned up for one of his "casual" visits to the Henituse household. (He always said not to bother preparing too much, and Cale would have been fine with letting the crown prince sleep in an empty cave, but Count Deruth and Countess Violan always looked as if they had a heart attack every time they heard that the crown prince was visiting, and ended up making more preparations than ever.)
Cale had finished chatting with the crown prince for a while, and was wandering around the estate when he heard clashing sounds coming from the training grounds. Normally, he would have expected to hear sounds coming from that area, but the Count had suspended all training today because of the crown prince's visit, so Cale's curiosity was peaked and he headed over quietly.
When he approached, he heard a few familiar voices.
"Your highness, how did you manage to learn that so quickly?"
"Honestly, I got really drunk one time with my instructor and woke up with this. I don't recommend you do that, though. Your older brother might have a heart attack."
Cale instinctively frowned. Why did people find it so easy to talk so casually about him behind his back?
He approached the training grounds and peeked through the slightly open gate. There were two figures standing inside - his younger sister Lily and the crown prince.
... What were they doing together?
Lily was holding a sword that looked like one of the training swords the young knights used. Alberu had his own sword out. He hadn't brought one with him to visit Cale, so the sword in his hand was a light one made out of mana, a little similar to the one he used against the White Star. Alberu was demonstrating something slowly, explaining the motions while Lily watched attentively.
Maybe the three instructors that had been dragging the crown prince into training sessions without letting him take a break for work were rubbing off onto him. Cale suddenly had a thought that Alberu would actually make quite a good teacher. The thought made him happy, for some reason.
He tuned back in to what Alberu and Lily were saying.
"When you become the military commander of the Henituse territory," Alberu was saying, "I will definitely call on you a lot. There might be lots of instances where there are people we need to fight. So you need to grow well and get stronger to protect the important people you want to protect. Understand?"
Cale was too far away to see their expressions, but he could clearly hear the suppressed excitement and admiration in Lily's serious voice.
"Yes, your highness!"
It seemed that Lily had already told Alberu about her dream of becoming the military commander. Since when did she warm up to him that much?
And for someone who complained about having to babysit the kids every time Cale dropped by the palace, Alberu was surprisingly good with children.
Cale walked away with a small smile on his face.