Abandoned by my Childhood Friend, I Became a War Hero

19 – Battle Practice Class

“Aeon!”

I knew it at a glance.

“Aeon?”

This is a dream.

It is a memory that is deeply engraved in the heart and cannot be forgotten.

With the background of the now-disappeared landscape, the blonde girl in my memory looked at me and smiled kindly.

A smile resembling the sun that once made me dance like a sunflower under the sun, and once made me writhe in agony whenever I thought of it.

“Aeon!”

“Keah-!”

Ella hit me on the forehead as I was lost in thought.

My childhood self woke up from her thoughts clutching my forehead.

“What the hell are you thinking?”

“Ugh… Nothing.”

“Nothing. Were you watching those people again?”

Ella pointed to her inn beneath the ridge of the mountain behind her.

Ella’s mercenaries were staying at her inn for a few days.

The village elders were uneasy about several mercenaries with swords staying in a small rural village for several days, but to me, the village elders’ worries and anxieties were just a different world.

My interest was all in the equipment of the mercenaries. A real sword and armour, unlike my twig sword and brass helmet. If a knight that I had only seen in a storybook illustration appeared in front of me, it would probably look like that… I was just looking at you with envy eyes.

Ella looked at the mercenaries and spoke like a dreaming girl.

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“They say they are leaving for Sangria tomorrow.”

“To Sangria?”

“Yes. Are you saying that something big is going to happen and you’re going to find work in a safe system instead of a dangerous periphery? The reason is that I make a lot of money and go to the system anyway… I envy you.”

Ella has always missed her life at her Sangria. I’d never been through that life, so I couldn’t help but imagine why Ella missed it so much, but she often thought how nice it would be for Ella if I could make her dreams come true with my own hands.

If you try desperately. I thought that if I persevered endlessly, one day I would be able to achieve that dream.

But compared to those people dressed in swords and armor, I looked so shabby now, covered in dust. I felt like I was thrown from a sweet dream into a cold reality.

So I said something I would never normally say.

“If you’re that envious… Can I just follow you?”

“What?”

“If you follow them, you can go to Jedo too, and that’s good…” Noah!”

Suddenly, Ella slapped a beet on my forehead. Having been beaten twice in a short period of time, I held on to my reddened forehead and cried.

She looked at me with a scolding, stern expression.

“Why do you make such weak noises? Not fit.”

“But….”

“Where did the spirit go when you promised to take me to the ball with Hwangseong? Ion is the coolest when he pretends to be strong. So don’t say that again.”

Ella grunted with her arms crossed.

“And those people are too ugly to be knights who assist the princess. You are much better.”

“What? hahahaha!”

At those words, the depressed mood disappeared in an instant.

I didn’t feel good about being handsome or cool. The fact that Ella still remembered the promise she made with me, that she needed me, made me happy more than anything else.

Ella looked up at the sky and muttered quietly.

“It looks like it will rain today… Shall I go back?”

“Yes.”

The sky I looked up at was still clear without a single cloud, but I nodded without hesitation.

Ella was very good at reading the weather. She knew the weather better than the oldest in the village, and the village elders often asked Ella about the day’s weather. It’s sunny now, but when Ella says it’s raining, she says it rains without fail.

It also rained that night.

***

Took! Took!

I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of hitting a wooden window.

At first I thought it was the sound of rain. But the sound of the rain was particularly loud and dull.

Who the hell is this in the middle of the night?

I opened my mouth cautiously, holding onto a wooden sword placed in a corner of the room.

“Who are you?”

“It’s me. Ion.”

“Ella!?”

I hurriedly opened the window at the familiar voice. In the heavy rain, Ella shivered, drenched in her own rain.

“Lee, come in first. Hurry.”

I had Ella come in through her window. No matter how much she had been in the rain, her hair and clothes were soaked. Her heart sank at the sight of the next day, which seemed certain she would catch a cold.

“Why are you doing this? Wake up your parents-

“No. Don’t go.”

Ella grabbed the hem of my clothes.

Her shoulders were shaking. Her pale blue lips seemed to tremble with cold and she seemed terrified.

“Don’t go. Ion.”

“… ….”

First of all, we had to thaw her frozen body. She added her firewood to the stove and put a blanket over Ella’s shoulders. As the two of them bask in the light for a while, I felt the trembling in her shoulders subside.

I looked at her carefully and asked carefully.

“What the hell is going on?”

Ella came silently into my arms.

I felt my breath stop and I froze in place. Not knowing what to do, both arms floated in the air as if they were broken. She thought she had to push her away, but somehow felt like that shouldn’t be the case.

“Black… !”

I could feel Ella’s sobs. Her shoulders, which she thought had calmed down, were shaking again. It seemed that her chest was hotly wet with tears.

“Uh….”

Seeing Ella for the first time, her hair turned white. I want to make you stop crying At a time like this, I didn’t know what to say.

All I could do was hold Ella with my arms so that her shoulders wouldn’t tremble. Like a knight protecting a princess.

I thought as I hugged Ella.

Were Ella’s shoulders so thin?

Your small body trembles in your arms.

Looking at her like that, I got a certain ominous feeling about her. The feeling that Ella will disappear like this after tonight. So I hugged her more carefully and preciously.

“I’m cold….”

Her body was already warm, but Ella said so.

“Can you keep hugging me?”

Tear-soaked blue-green eyes glistened in the light and looked up at me. The uneasy swaying gaze contained an unspoken message as if it wanted something from me.

Ella quietly closed her eyes.

I impulsively kissed her on the lips.

The shadows of each other overlapped little by little and for a very long time.

The next morning.

When I opened her eyes, Ella was not with me.

An ominous feeling never goes wrong.

***

Marian looked up at her cloud-filled sky.

‘The weather is the worst.’

It looks like it will rain soon. On days like this, it was best to sip tea by the fireplace and watch the rain fall outside the window, but unfortunately it was class time and it was outdoors.

A combat practice class taught by Instructor Ion.

There were about 20 students from each class who applied for combat practice.

In Opal Black class, there were three other students besides Marian.

Gwynn, Batar, and Elizabeth.

It was a little surprising to Marian that even the princess, who had grown up as a noble, applied for her combat training. In that sense, it was also funny that Marian, who had grown up with the same respect, took part in her combat practice.

“I will start the combat practice class from now on.”

Instructor Ion spoke in a lower-than-usual voice.

Marian frowned. It was because Ion seemed to be in a much lower mood than usual.

The expression of his face is sunken and colored in gray, as if he had just woken up from a nightmare.

Today, for some reason, I felt like I shouldn’t touch it.

“The word battle can be interpreted in various ways. Not just how to wield a sword well and fight better than others, but to win over the enemy. To accomplish the mission. All of that can be involved in combat.”

At that time, one of the male students gathered opened his mouth with a smirk.

“Instructor. It looks like it will rain today, so can’t we just go in?”

The male student wore a white badge on her chest that certifies her diamond white class.

“I don’t want to go to class in the rain….”

“Just killing time in the classroom, right?”

The other Diamond White class next to me also opened their mouths as if to help.

It was a face that even Marian knew. Cornelius, Lucius, Zaius. They were the ones that Marian secretly named the 3 Orc Brothers because of their ugly faces and the way they got along with each other even in social circles.

I heard that she entered Fillion Academy this year, but it seemed like she was assigned to Diamond White as a matter of course.

Marianne and some of her students frowned at the obvious intent of being sarcastic.

‘Why are they like that?’

I heard rumors that Diamond White’s homeroom instructor had a blast with Instructor Ion in the teachers’ office yesterday. Could it be that because of that, he harbored ill feelings toward her and bought her own students?

I wondered if I was that narrow-minded, but considering the gossip in the social world about Instructor Acheron, it was a reasonable guess.

Instructor Ion did not show any reaction to the apparent interruption of class by the three Orc brothers.

“Combat training is literally a class in which you experience various situations that can happen in actual combat. Of course, classes outdoors are the most reasonable.”

“Ah, but on a day like this, classes aren’t that great. If I catch that cold, will the instructor take care of it?”

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“Right. We are all noble bodies, what will you do if you get hurt in class?”

“The princess is here too, isn’t it a little bit like letting a commoner get wet in the rain?”

The 3 Orc brothers bravely sold the name of the princess who was here.

“Huh….”

Marianne saw one eyebrow of her Elisabeth raise at the mention of it against her will.

However, the three Orc brothers seemed to regard Elisabeth’s silence as a silent affirmation, and stupidly did not stop talking to her.

Cornelius, one of the three Orc brothers, opened his mouth openly with a sarcastic attitude.

“Just walk into the classroom, right? Well, in the spare time, Instructor Wouldn’t it be nice if you could tell me about your first love?”

In an instant, Marian felt the illusion of freezing the air.

Raindrops began to fall from the dark clouds in the sky.

“… A moment ago, you said that battles can be interpreted in various ways.”

Raindrops also fell on the nape of Marian’s neck.

But it was unclear whether the chilling sensation on the nape of her neck was due to the raindrops or the frozen air.

The atmosphere changed in an instant.

“For me, combat is survival.”

Ion spoke calmly with her shadowy face.

“Survive me.”

Golden eyes glowed coolly in the dark.

“That is the content of today’s lesson.”