Swordmeister of Rome

<Rokuum Show>

Rokuum was a small, puppy-sized marine animal that lived by the coast of Margaran. Despite looking cute, they were predators who moved quickly inside the water that were able to subdue any human while swimming.

The Rokuums in the show were different.

They were trained to act appealing and cute in groups, which gained fame from people. It was always packed with people who wanted to see them.

The show, which usually took place two times a day, increased to four times a day during the Lagaope season.

"It's so CUTE!"

"That's adorable!"

Everyone cheered the cute Rokuums doing various tricks. Sian was one of them.

"WOW! That's so COOL!"

"…"

"Miss Stiel, isn't it amazing? Look at them! WOW!"

Stiel barely managed to refrain from making Sian shut up and sit down, so she gave him a skewer to eat.

"Ha…haha. Hey, you know what this skewer is made out of?" Stiel asked.

"Hmm, I don't know. It's good though. What is it?" Sian replied while munching on the meat.

Stiel made an evil smile and answered,

"Rokuum."

"UGH!"

"I'm just joking."

"…"

Sian scowled at Stiel and turned back to watch the show. After Sian fell silent, she smiled and began watching the show. To Stiel, she couldn't find any difference between Rokuums and humans, but it was her first time watching the show, so it was interesting enough for her.

On the stage was a young man who was working hard to make the Rokuums do various tricks.

"Is he the trainer?"

"Looks like it."

"He's an Exer."

"Exer."

They both commented at the same time, but what they said afterward was different.

"So, he knows how to communicate with animals. Seems convenient."

"I guess Exers are out of jobs these days. Doing these kinds of things."

"…"

"…"

"Hmm… but won't it be convenient? I think it might have a lot of uses,"

Sian imagined himself flying around on a cool flying predator as he spoke.

"Haha. Maybe if it's enough to tame Harijans… I guess that's the most you can do if all you can tame is animals. But he looks like he trained hard, he can control almost twenty of them."

Exers with the power to control animals was rare, but it was deemed useless.

Everything that was possible to achieve by using animals was also possible just by using Exar.

The only use that power might have was to control a Harijan, but it was known that Harijans were impossible to tame.

At that moment, they felt a slight tremor through the ground. It was so mild that the ordinary people did not notice it, but Sian and Stiel did.

"That was man-made."

"Hmm… Maybe it was fireworks? I have a bad memory with fireworks, but fireworks for a festival could be different."

Sian frowned as he remembered his Guarran-Tia days, but he became excited as it would be his first time watching fireworks at a festival.

"Fireworks, eh? It's been a long time. What I saw before was really spectacular."

"Where did you see it?"

"When I went hunting down pirates, they were all hiding. So I fired an Artagon from a distance, but they had a huge gunpowder storage. It was one of a kind. Hahaha."

"…Erm… I guess that was spectacular."

Sian considered himself lucky to be stronger than Stiel and began moving towards the opening ceremony of Lagaope as soon as the show was over.

Lagaope, the pioneer of Margaran.

It was a man who had lived hundreds of years but was still veiled in mystery.

It was better that the man was cloaked in mystery to idolize him. The lighthouse shaped like Lagaope located at the northern part of the city was part of such idolization.

"…Light is coming out of that Lagaope man. That's nice."

The Lagaope Lighthouse was over thirty feet tall, and people could enter from the heel to go up to the head. Once they reached the head, they could activate the Talic Stones to shoot lights out from the eyes.

"No. It's missing a bit. I would've made the light come out from the mouth, like the legendary Dragona."

"Oh, that seems like a good idea too."

"Yeah. You know, maybe I should've tried to become an artist. But I was too powerful to do anything else."

"I didn't know I had something in common with you. I couldn't do anything besides sword fighting. Even all the teachers gave up on me. Haha."

"Oh, I'm sorry, Sian. I was a genius at everything else. It's only that I was too good at fighting."

"…You traitor."

As the two of them moved closer to the ceremony, they began feeling uncomfortable because of the large crowd.

"Sian, why don't we watch it from the mansion? We can see it all from there too."

"…I wouldn't travel around if I was going to do that. That's just scanning."

"Yeah but… look at this. I guess it's the fate for a beautiful woman like me, but what would've happened if it wasn't me?"

Stiel spoke as she grabbed the wrist of a male passerby, and snapped it in two.

"ARGH!!!! You b*tch! What are you doing?!"

The man grabbed his broken wrist and rolled on the ground in pain. Sian's eyes were cold; he had seen where that hand was trying to grope.

"You saw what happened right? I'm keeping my promise."

"Yeah. Just don't kill him."

"Hehe, I'm not that savage."

"ARGH!"

'…what a liar.'

If he didn't say it, her kick would have ensured that the man ended up at the head of the lighthouse. He considered it lucky that it ended only with broken bones, but Sian didn't feel sympathetic as it was the consequence for that man's bad behavior.

He felt bad for the man's friends who were now picking a fight with Stiel.

"You mad woman! What have you done to my friend?!"

"Look at this b*tch! She just snapped his wrist!"

'…I don't know.'

If Stiel was a Master or Grand Bander, her energy would have repelled these ruffians. However, Ra-Banders were undetectable.

"I'm going to get some skewers so you can take your time."

"Yeah, go ahead."

Stiel, who had been stressed out while following Sian around, decided to relieve her stress and began walking toward the group.

"Don't worry, kids. I'll go soft on you."

"So, you didn't kill them right?" Sian asked as he munched on the skewer. The two of them were sitting down right in front of the place where the ceremony was going to be held. It was possible for them because people began distancing themselves from Stiel after witnessing her graceful destruction of that group.

At least it allowed them to watch the ceremony from the best possible location.

"Don't worry. They were Bander users. Don't all Bander users need to experience some beating up? I experienced that when I was thirty years old."

"I would never want to experience that, but Bander users?"

"Yeah. They asked me if I knew who they were while they were getting beaten up."

"So?"

"I wasn't interested, but they told me anyway. What was it? Mar… mar…"

"Margaran Peacekeepers."

"Yeah. Sian, how did you know?"

"It wasn't me. I think those people said it."

Sian pointed to the armored men behind them. There was no crowd around them anymore. Stiel, however, looked very excited.

"Hehe…"

"Miss Stiel, a word please?"

Sian held back Stiel, who was about to jump in and whispered, "Miss Stiel."

"Yes, Sian?"

"Call that 'kid' who lent you the mansion. Now."

"…"

"Isn't that what's good about power?"

"…"

Stiel stared at Sian in surprise. A Ra-Bander thinking of alternate methods to resolve the issue rather than a show of force. Power? Nothing was greater than their own power, let alone political power.

'Does he hate using violence?'

Stiel soon realized that she had just been overthinking things again.

"You can beat them up AFTER the ceremony is over. It might get canceled if you fight now."

"Hahaha. Okay, okay. We can do that."

That was a request that she could accept. Stiel became satisfied and walked toward the Peacekeepers.

"Go and call…"

"We are sorry about what happened. It looks like the mercenaries that we hired made a mistake. It is our fault that we couldn't watch over those we hired. We have fired them and fined them as a penalty. I apologize on behalf of the Margaran Peacekeepers."

The man who looked like the captain bowed deeply, and the men behind him followed. Stiel was surprised at the sudden turn of events but decided that it wasn't too bad.

"Hmm… Okay. You can go now."

When she returned to Sian, he handed her a skewer.

"Good job. Violence should be the last resort."

"Did your father teach you that too?"

"No, that's from my mother."

That's when Stiel began to realize,

'So, they chained the monster up well.'

Since Sian was young, he had been trained in the human way of doing things. That was why Stiel wanted to teach him the way of powerful beings. It seemed preposterous for such a powerful being to be chained up like a puppy.

Ra-Banders needed to live different lives, just like how he acted back in Lagran.

Such insolence, such pride, such violence!

Stiel wanted to find those things and show them to Sian. At least that was what she needed for her mate. However, it didn't need to be rushed. She was going to take it slow like his parents did.