Editing Tales of Leo Attiel:Volume1 Chapter1 (section)

===Part 3===


It was clear from the affair on the mountain that Claude Anglatt was adored by the local people. This was a territory which had only just fallen into Allion’s hands, and apparently unexpectedly at that, but this land which lay deep in the mountains had originally been criss-crossed by several national borders, and bands of outlaws had frequently laid waste to its villages. No sooner had he been granted the domain than Claude personally drove the horses forward and led his soldiers to annihilate the outlaw strongholds one after another. Moreover, he had put a network of soldiers and swift horses in place in the villages, and he kept the roads in order so that if anything happened, reinforcements could immediately be dispatched from the castle. He employed scores of locals for those engineering works, and although the wages they received were not high, during the slack season for farmers, the people – and especially the inhabitants of the poorer villages that had little livestock or pastures – were glad to have the money.

Walter and Jack often told Leo tall stories about how “I also rode with Father and drove my spear bang through those bandits,” when they boasted about their father.

After the night when Claude Anglatt had found him in the mountains, Leo Attiel gradually began to change.

For a start, he threw himself into his studies. From back when he had been in Atall, he had never disliked learning. He had a brother who was two years older then him, Branton, who was known for his love of scholarship and who provided an objective for Leo. At seven, he started on the books that his brother had finished reading when he was ten. When his brother was thirteen, he presented his own original analysis on a topic found in old documents; Leo poured over them, and wrote an essay offering a different interpretation from his brother’s when he was ten. He did not show it to anybody, which meant that nobody assessed it and it was no more than for his own self-satisfaction, but he had originally had an extraordinary passion for learning.

He regained it. During class, he spoke up more actively than anyone, he gave more accurate answers than anyone, and when the monk set an assignment, he wrote essays with opinions that no one else would have come up with. 

The monk in charge of their education was deeply impressed, and even went so far as to compliment him by saying that “You could already be recommended to Allion’s university right now.”

Walter and Jack did not find this amusing. After the events on the mountain, the brothers had been quiet for a while, but once Leo started standing out, their antagonism flared up once more with the desire to bring him down a peg or two. However, their father, Claude, was often in the fief lately, so they could not openly torment Leo.

Thus it was only during combat training that they could show off their strength. There, the brothers struck Leo even more violently than before. Studies were one thing, but he could not overturn the difference in physical strength and physique simply by becoming a bit more motivated.

Moreover, from back when he had been in Atall, Leo had been poor at martial arts as a whole. He had a slender build, and not much strength. Let alone his older brother, this was the one thing he could not compete in even with boys of his own age. At eleven years old, he himself realised that ''I’m not cut out for this''.

Naturally, Walter and Jack could no longer thoughtlessly designate him as a sparring partner. Allion had a unique form of wrestling called kabat. Opponents stripped naked to the waist and grappled with each other in a circular ring. Victory was obtained by pushing the opponent out of the ring, or by toppling him backwards to the ground. You could jab or kick anywhere beneath the neck except for the crotch. It was a popular competition in Allion, that was both held in large-scale tournaments and often used for hand-to-hand training.

Walter, who was proud of his own strength, easily hurled Leo away. Compared to his brother, Jack gave a somewhat weaker impression, and when the instructor wasn’t looking, he would hit Leo in the face with his shoulder or elbow. 

However –

Leo started to take martial arts seriously. He didn’t give up from the start just because he couldn’t win. Even when he was thrown to the side, even when his mouth and nose were filled with blood, he stood back up, kicking himself off the ground. 

His energy sometimes created a chance at victory. At the very least, compared to when he had given up right away, he had a better chance of winning. At most, he would come out triumphant in one out of every ten challenges, but as it continued on, the Anglatt brothers could no longer comfortably designate Leo to spar with. Previously, they had easily dealt with him, and had treated him as being beneath contempt, so losing even once in ten thousand times would be embarrassing. 

They became afraid that they might even lose in public, and so in the end –

“I don’t want Leo.”

“He’s violent at kabat.”

– They complained with sullen expressions.



Thus, Leo continued to work hard at his studies and at combat, but even though it was true that he had acquired an awareness as a prince of the Principality of Atall, it was not in order to one day get revenge that he was absorbing Allion’s civilian and military knowledge.

In fact, it was the opposite.

“Lean mentally on your family name, ‘Attiel’.” The words that Claude had thrown at him that night had left Leo astounded.

They also implied that there was a possibility for him to live as someone other than an Attiel. Not being an Attiel meant that on that night when he had been thrown into the mountains, he would not have been met by crowds of people and lit fires, and he would not have been wrapped up in a blanket. He would have had no choice but to obtain the fires and the blanket for himself.

Leo was fully aware that was currently impossible for him. In other words –

''When I lose my family name, I’ll die.''

It was an absolutely terrifying thought but, at the same time, it was also a thought that Leo found extremely pleasant. He only had to decide to throw his life to the four winds, and then, at any time, he could cast himself into the vast horizon. Whenever he thought of it, Leo Attiel felt moved to tears. It was the same as when he had first become aware of ‘death’. 

And so, Leo worked hard at his daily training. He was all but in a trance. When he thought about a life other than as an Attiel, he got caught up in dreams. When he was studying, he imagined a future surrounded by countless books and fellow scholars; when he was training, he imagined himself as a soldier, armed with a single spear, standing on the battle front.

However… almost without fail, in those times, a feeling appeared in a specific part of his chest to block his happy daydreams. Those feelings, that were like a stagnant black ''sludge'', were directly related to what had happened just before he had left the Principality of Atall. The warm blood that flowed throughout his body all at once ran so cold that it almost felt like it had coagulated. Leo consciously expelled those feelings from him. That was something which required more hardship and effort than forging his physique or than chasing tiny letters across a page – in other words, it was something that needed its own form of training. 

There is no field in which daily practice would fail to produce its effect. Little by little, Leo grew better at driving out that ''sludge''. He was able to put more effort into studying and military training. Still, the stagnant ''sludge'' did not completely disappear. He was aware of it, and it felt as though, with time, those feelings that had forcefully been torn from him acquired their own face and their own limbs, taking the shape of another Leo Attiel who stared at him intently from afar with emotionless eyes.

''I know'', it whispered soundlessly to him, ''I know, I know it well, Leo Attiel. I know you…''