Chapter 2 - Damn Reincarnation

Hamel the Fool

Demon King Slayer. God of War. All-Master.

Vermouth the Great had many titles, but the most representative of them was this:

Hero.

["The Hero, Vermouth the Great, set out on an adventure with his companions three hundred years ago."]

It was an old tale he had heard since he was crawling around on all fours.

Vermouth the Great.

Senya the Wise.

Anise the Faithful.

Moron the Brave.

Hamel the Fool.

'The others are great, wise, faithful, and brave. Why am I the only fool?'

Every time his nurse read him the storybook, a fire blazed in Eugene Lionheart's chest. If only he could say something besides baby babble! If only he could at least move his body properly!

'Even that dumbass Moron got dressed up as brave. Why am I the fool? Didn't they get us mixed up?'

No matter how he thought about it, he couldn't make sense of calling Moron brave.

'Brave, my ass. Moron the Dumbass, more like.'

["Hamel the Fool was always jealous of Vermouth. Hamel called Vermouth, who was greater than he was, his rival. No one else thought so, of course."]

"The bastard who wrote this must be someone I beat the shit out of three hundred years ago."

Eugene spat the words through gritted teeth. It wasn't as though he couldn't understand the reasoning at all. A storybook like this was aimed at young children, so it had to be easy to read, entertaining, and instructive.

["Hamel always went ahead of Vermouth. He did the same at a fork in the road leading to the Demon King's castle. Vermouth said they should go right, but Hamel stubbornly insisted they had to go left."]

"Bullshit."

["In the end, Vermouth gave in to Hamel. But a trap laid by the Demon King awaited them there... Hamel the Fool! He shouted that the Demon King had set the trap out of fear of him. Silly Hamel!"]

Ten-year-old Eugene clenched his fists. He had already read the storybook hundreds of times, easily, but this part always made his anger flare.

["Hamel was a troublemaker. His fiery temper made him quarrel with his companions all the time."]

"... That part's true."

["After many adventures, Vermouth and his companions entered the Demon King's castle. Even there, Hamel the Fool would not listen to Vermouth. Always going ahead, Hamel failed to avoid the traps, and because of him, Vermouth and his companions had to face many dangers."]

"This bastard doesn't know a damn thing."

Eugene spat the words through gritted teeth. That hellish Demon King's castle. The traps there weren't things you could avoid just because you wanted to. They had to break through even when they knew a trap lay ahead.

["... Hamel, who always quarreled with his companions. Hamel the Fool. Hamel the Violent. But Hamel loved his companions. Covered in wounds, Hamel did not run away. Instead, he sacrificed himself for his companions."]

"..."

["In his final moments, cradled in the arms of his beloved companions, Hamel regretted that he had not been honest with them. Senya, I had feelings for you."]

"No, I didn't."

["Anise, pray for me."]

"I never said that."

["Moron. You are braver than any other warrior."]

"That bastard's a dumbass."

["Vermouth. Please, make sure you defeat the Demon King. Seeing Hamel's tears, Vermouth swore an oath. I will defeat the Demon King, no matter what. At those words, Hamel closed his eyes in peace..."]

There was no point reading any further. Eugene snapped the book shut, his face twisting into a scowl.

'They sacrificed me for a fairy tale for little brats.'

Dear children. Even Hamel the Fool had a righteous heart. He sacrificed himself for his companions. He regretted not having been honest with them...

"Fuck, you're selling my name for some cheap-ass moral like this?"

It made him just as angry every time he read it. Eugene hurled the storybook away and vented his outrage. He wanted to track down whoever had written it and beat them to a bloody pulp, but the author of this storybook, handed down for three hundred years, was anonymous.

"Vermouth, Senya, Anise, Moron. Those four are bastards too. Why did they leave a storybook like this alone? Damn you, Senya. You cried so much when I was dying...! Didn't you ever think to protect your companion's honor?"

Then again, that was understandable.

After venting his outrage, Eugene steadied his breathing and thought it over. They could never have imagined that the dead Hamel would reincarnate with all his memories intact.

Reincarnation!

Eugene recalled the days when he had wailed in his cradle. To him, that infancy had been every bit as horrifying as the Demon King's castle. His mind was wide awake, but his body wouldn't move properly, and he couldn't speak well either. A dreadful, tedious time spent chewing on a pacifier and glaring at the toys overhead for most of the day.

There was a reason his eyes had developed such a nasty look for a ten-year-old. He had been killing time by glaring wide-eyed ever since that tender age... Eugene sighed heavily, over and over, and rubbed the space between his eyebrows.

'... Reincarnation is all well and good. But why did I have to be born as Vermouth's descendant?'

Lionheart was Vermouth's surname.

'Seriously, if I was going to reincarnate, there were plenty of other places. Why Vermouth, of all people?'

Someone else might have cheered at such a background, but Eugene, who remembered his past life, simply couldn't.

He had spent his entire life trying to surpass Vermouth. He hadn't openly gone around calling him his rival like in the storybook, but it was true that he had been conscious of the man throughout their travels together.

In the end, he had never surpassed him. No matter how hard he worked or trained, the distance between him and Vermouth never narrowed.

'Vermouth the Great.'

Eugene raised his head and looked up at the large portrait hanging on the wall. The Vermouth in it looked exactly as he remembered from his past life.

'Hamel the Fool.'

He took a mirror from inside his clothes and looked at his face. The face of a ten-year-old child. A face that didn't resemble Vermouth's. Yet his surname was Lionheart, and he was a descendant of Vermouth the Hero.

At first... he had thought it was a long, illusory dream after death. But he had recognized reality long ago.

Hamel the Fool had reincarnated as a descendant of Vermouth the Great.

* * *

During his lifetime, Vermouth had taken several concubines in addition to his principal wife.

'He wasn't the womanizing type. Did he change his mind as he got older?'

The Vermouth Eugene remembered hadn't merely lacked human warmth; he had been utterly dried up inside. And that Vermouth had taken as many as ten concubines and fathered descendants.

'He was human too, I suppose. I can understand it.'

Only the descendants of his principal wife belonged to the main family, recognized as the direct line. Eugene's family bore the same Lionheart surname, but theirs was a collateral branch.

That didn't mean they lived in hardship. It couldn't compare to the main family's home in the capital, but the mansion Eugene lived in was luxurious enough to boast about in this rural backwater. Even a collateral branch received a certain measure of respect.

What most impressively displayed the grandeur of this sprawling estate was its enormous training ground. The Hero, the God of War, the All-Master. Vermouth the Great. Descendants who inherited his blood must never neglect their training. Eugene had heard those words so often since childhood that he was sick of them.

"Again..."

Gerhard Lionheart looked at his ten-year-old son with weary eyes. He, too, had never neglected his training from an early age, but his past had been marred by guilt over the blood he had inherited.

His ancestor was Vermouth the Great. Yet Gerhard had little talent for the martial arts.

"... You've broken it."

Every time he looked at his son, he felt a complicated mix of emotions. Words and behavior unlike a child's. Fierce eyes without a trace of innocence. Though he had lost his mother at an early age, his son had never once whined for her.

And that wasn't all. His son's talent was... so extraordinary that it was hard to believe they were related by blood.

'A monster.'

It was an ugly thought to have about his only son, but Gerhard sometimes felt afraid. Ten years old. A young child who hadn't even begun learning to use mana. How well could a child like that possibly swing a wooden sword?

"It broke while I was using it."

Eugene smacked his lips and set down the wooden sword. With an iron core embedded in it, the wooden sword was too heavy for a child's strength to handle. Even so, Eugene had insisted on using that sort of sword since he was seven.

At first, Gerhard had thought it was childish stubbornness. The sight of him struggling and grunting as he swung it had even been cute.

That was already three years ago. Now Eugene handled that heavy wooden sword freely, and, as if even that weren't enough, he wore sandbags as well.

Gerhard swallowed hard and looked at the ground. A broken wooden sword. A practice dummy smashed to pieces. How long had it been since he'd replaced it? Three days? It was nothing to be surprised about. The dummies on the training ground had all been smashed and replaced for some time now.

"The village blacksmith's work is garbage."

Eugene spat the words out. They were harsh coming from a child, but Gerhard didn't bother pointing that out. This was his innate disposition. He had tried to correct it since his son was little, but it hadn't changed.

"Charging money for shoddy junk like that. He ought to be dragged here and given a thrashing, but you're far too merciful, Father."

"Well... ahem... I'll have a word with him. Next time, something a little sturdier..."

"Instead of a dummy, just bring me a solid block of high-purity iron. I'm only swinging a wooden sword at it anyway. There's no point giving it a fancy shape, is there?"

Unable to answer, Gerhard stared at his son. His body was so well trained that it was hard to believe he was only ten. Frankly, Gerhard thought he would lose if they fought barehanded...

'He's a born warrior...'

Gerhard couldn't feel unalloyed joy at his son's talent. Was it because his son seemed like a monster? No, that wasn't the reason. Among the many emotions he felt toward his son was pride. Unlike his father, the boy had been born with brilliant talent.

But alongside that pride came guilt. As an inadequate father, he couldn't escape that reality. Not all Lionhearts were equal. Gerhard's family had been pushed out of the main family centuries ago, and even the other collateral branches looked down on them.

Did his son know that reality? Surely not. It was far too difficult a matter for a child to understand.

"Can't I use a real sword?"

Even now, that was plain to see. With a bitter expression, Gerhard shook his head.

"Not yet."

"Because of the Bloodline Succession Ceremony?"

"Yes. Three years from now, once you've undergone the Bloodline Succession Ceremony, you'll be able to wield a real sword."

"We could just keep it a secret between the two of us, Father."

"We... cannot. I'm a Lionheart too. I can't disregard our family's traditions."

The Bloodline Succession Ceremony. It was a Lionheart family tradition held once every ten years. Every child aged ten to fifteen who bore the Lionheart name, from both the direct line and the collateral branches, gathered at the main family's estate for it.

The ceremony they performed there was simple. Who was most worthy of the Lionheart name? Could they claim to be a descendant of the Hero without shame? Only after the Bloodline Succession Ceremony could they carry sharpened, "real" weapons.

'What a fucking stupid tradition.'

Eugene didn't say what he was thinking aloud. But every time he heard talk of the Bloodline Succession Ceremony or tradition, he was dumbfounded and sick with resentment.

The Bloodline Succession Ceremony restricted only the collateral branches.

Children of those branches were not allowed to wield real weapons before undergoing the ceremony. They were not allowed to train in mana. Yet the direct descendants of the main family in the capital could handle any weapon they pleased, regardless of age, and began learning mana the moment they took their first steps.

'That's what it comes down to. Beating the collateral branches down from childhood so they can never surpass the direct line.'

It was blatant suppression that even a child could understand. And Eugene was young only in body, not in mind.

Gerhard couldn't read his son's mind clearly. But the sullen face stirred a number of emotions in him.

He did find his sulking son cute, but his guilt was far greater.

'If only he had been born into the main family...'

His son's talent was brilliant. But the Lionheart collateral branches faced definite limits. The Bloodline Succession Ceremony three years from now... His son was so gifted that it was hard to believe he was a child, but how could he possibly compete with the genuine heirs raised in the main family?

That reality tormented Gerhard. If only the boy had taken after his father and lacked talent... Then he wouldn't have to feel the gulf between his innate gifts and his circumstances.

"Father, why are you making that face?"

"No... it's nothing."

'Nothing, my ass. It's obvious he's beating himself up for being inadequate again.'

Eugene smacked his lips and stared at Gerhard. With his memories of his past life so clear, it was difficult to think of Gerhard as his father. But the fact remained that he had been born as Gerhard's son.

"Father. It's been a while. Let's play at sword fighting."

"H... huh?"

"Sword fighting. Just for fun."

Eugene hadn't used the word "spar." In his own way, he was being considerate of how a father might feel about his ten-year-old son asking him to spar. That was why he had deliberately called it play, but Gerhard's expression stiffened with unease.

Gerhard felt the weight of his thickening belly.

He looked at his son's arms, which swung an iron-cored wooden sword as though it were a toy.

"L... let's do it another time."

If even playing with his ten-year-old son proved too much for his strength...

Gerhard backed away, sweat beading on his skin.

Watching his father retreat, Eugene chuckled.