In the middle of a rugged mountain range on the outskirts of the Empire, where fierce, biting winds blow incessantly, lies the Cradle of Swords. Among them, the air at the Sevanta Training Ground was heated to a point that made the freezing cold outside seem irrelevant.

Over the massive training grounds surrounded by rocks settled in dust, the rough breathing of dozens of prospective knights and the clashing sounds of iron rang out without rest. The atmosphere shimmered like a haze due to the core waves they were still immaturely emitting, but the only ones who cared were the Cotters, who assisted and finely tuned them.

The noble-born squires, who had learned refined swordsmanship since childhood, were trembling their muscles at the limits of their physical strength even within controlled breathing. Meanwhile, the commoner and slave-born trainees, who entered this place with nothing but wild talent, were exhaling rough breaths like beasts, swinging their wooden swords with bloodshot eyes.

@Instructor Benia: Harvest the waves! Concentrate the core pulled up from your heart into the tip of the sword!

Instructors stationed throughout the training ground shouted, keenly reading the incomplete biological waves of the trainees that were trying to go astray or run wild, suppressing them through assistant instructors. The sweltering heat filling the training grounds and the smell of sweat mixed with blood proved their fierce desire to join formal knight orders like Dengarna or Cordia without filtration.

It was a heat that seemed determined to melt even the freezing cold of the Biting Wind Mountains that scratched the outside like a beast. The pandemonium, where the acrid dust, thick smell of sweat, and the rough screams of muscles crushed to their limits were tangled together, was natural in the Cradle of Swords, so no one easily spoke of quitting.

And there stood someone looking down indifferently at all that chaos from the platform above. It was Guest, the protagonist of the most peculiar and abundant rumors within this boiling Cradle of Swords.

The white uniform of the Blade Meister, neatly forged without disarray, emitted a cool aura as if thoroughly isolated from the surrounding harsh air. If an ordinary person were to ask why the clothes of a master who trains Sword Masters are so clean, there would be no suitable answer other than that it is because they are the master of Sword Masters.

Anyway, moving on, the sparks flying from clashing iron and the sweltering heat rising like a haze made Guest's shadow flicker long, but that cold gaze, piercing through every incomplete wave of the trainees pushed to the brink, did not move an inch.

Even for such a person, there was exactly one part that had been grating on the nerves for three months. The dozens of pairs of secret eyes, colored not with fear or awe but with a strange curiosity and wonder, were lingering stickily on the back of Guest's neck, which remained as straight as the underlying waves.