Shingu—this was a kind of existence Noah only learned about in Bill's later lessons.
Bill seemed fairly satisfied with him as a student, but Noah could very clearly feel that the man wanted him to walk the same path he had.
Noah could vaguely sense what Bill meant—basically, "Since there's no way to surpass Imperial Arms, don't waste time from the start."
And it was precisely as a negative example that Noah came to learn of the existence of Shingu.
Like Imperial Arms, Shingu were also weapons ordered to be made by an Emperor.
But this Emperor was not the First Emperor.
Rather, it was an Emperor who came four hundred years after the First Emperor had created the forty-eight Imperial Arms.
That Emperor had also wanted to try creating superweapons like Imperial Arms.
And in that Emperor's view, since his era had advanced four hundred years beyond the age of the First Emperor, it should have been easy to create weapons surpassing those of the past.
So he imitated his ancestor, gathered skilled craftsmen and extraordinary talents from across the country, and poured in a staggering amount of funds—enough to shake the very foundations of the Empire.
The result, however, was that the finished products were rather disappointing.
Judging from their performance, these creations that had cost so much manpower and material were nowhere near the level of Imperial Arms.
Thus, this batch of failed Imperial Arms was mockingly referred to as—Shingu.
That Emperor treated them as a humiliation and a stain on his legacy, sealing them all away in the Empire's treasury and ensuring they would never see the light of day.
No one knew the exact number of these weapons.
Others did not know, but Gozuki knew quite a lot.
After all, there was no longer any "true Emperor" now, and whether opening the treasury would slap the faces of past emperors was something Minister Honest simply did not care about.
...
"There really wasn't anything of this type in there."
Gozuki held a pitch-black ring in his hand, examining the smooth metal closely before his eyes.
Besides, even if the Shingu were inferior to the legendary Imperial Arms, they were still extremely precious. How could there possibly be a whole batch of Shingu all serving the exact same function, mass-produced like some cheap wholesale product?
And this kind of sophisticated tool... a mere brat actually made it by himself?
'Way too suspicious,' Gozuki thought.
Still, since even that paranoid old man Bill was willing to vouch for it, it was probably fine.
Before letting the kids use it, though, Gozuki figured he ought to experience it himself first, so he could get a grasp on the proper "degree" of strain it caused.
Gozuki let out a light breath and slipped the black ring onto his wrist.
A faint chill spread from his skin.
Curious, Gozuki looked over his body here and there, but didn't notice anything unusual.
'Hm? Wasn't it supposed to have a weight-loading effect after being worn? So what exactly is this? Could it be a defective product?'
He was just thinking, 'It's not heavy at all,' when the mechanical core inside the ring activated.
Casually swinging his arm to test it, Gozuki suddenly felt his wrist dragged down by an inertia with terrifying mass.
His expression changed instantly.
The exact instant the ring adjusted the gravity, Gozuki felt as though an invisible giant had grabbed him and violently yanked him sideways.
His whole body toppled sharply to one side.
He quickly stepped out with one leg and planted his boot hard to catch himself.
Boom!
Under the weight of that single, desperate step, the heavy wooden floorboards of the cabin shattered, and the surrounding support walls groaned, nearly collapsing.
"S-so heavy!"
'N-no, you've got to be kidding me. I've undergone thorough training—how could mere extra weight make me fall over?! And the kids are watching! I can't lose my authority!'
Gozuki immediately used the internal breathing method he practiced in the Koken Temple, aggressively mobilizing every muscle fiber in his body.
'It's not just the wrist. This damn thing is applying crushing gravity across my whole body!'
He tried moving his fingers.
At first they were somewhat stiff, but he adapted to the crushing pressure almost immediately, altering the shape and structure of his muscles and gradually regaining his flexibility.
Then he snuck a quick look at the instruction manual sitting on the table.
'So after activation, you're supposed to stay as still as possible and adapt little by little. You don't just swing your arm around.'
He had abruptly triggered maximum gravity while his body was unstable and moving, which was why he looked so miserable.
After steadying his breathing, he secretly rejoiced that things hadn't gotten any worse.
He turned with a confident, calm expression toward the seven children, who were now staring at him with pure admiration.
It wasn't that he was narcissistic.
It was simply that he had always controlled the growth of these children through strict "brainwashing," and if that image of strength failed, then keeping them in line would truly become a problem.
"S-so strong!"
"So Father was really this strong?!"
"Amazing! He crushed the floorboards into powder with one step!"
"Uh, so... what do we do about the hole now?"
Gozuki silently removed the heavy ring from his wrist and very carefully set it back into its padded box on the table.
He had wrecked the house.
Logically, as the adult, he should have taken responsibility for that.
But he really didn't want to deal with such a troublesome chore right now.
So inspiration struck him.
"All of you, listen up," Gozuki barked, adopting his strict commander persona. "I have an urgent mission and need to leave immediately. Before I get back, you are ordered to repair the house. Understood?"
"..."
"What kind of nonsense is that, you scummy old man?!"
"That's so shameless!"
Looking at the dark expressions and hearing the tiny acts of rebellion from his "children," Gozuki didn't feel the slightest bit of embarrassment.
And he truly did intend to return to the Imperial Capital!
Because he wanted to personally meet the "genius" kid who actually made this gravity ring.
Given his high-ranking position, everything he thought about placed the survival of the Empire first.
He wasn't just a mindless butcher who knew only how to kill.
He knew quite a lot of things about politics and history, though unfortunately most of that knowledge had never been used to benefit society.
From studying the events of history, he realized one grim fact: whenever an Empire was about to perish, there were always warning signs beforehand.
He had noticed those exact signs popping up recently, which was why he petitioned the Minister to establish this elite Imperial assassination corps.
With localized rebellions breaking out everywhere, neighboring nations growing ambitious, and the northern foreign tribes causing constant border trouble, the Empire had gradually become dangerously unstable.
He didn't even know when the Empire might fall, but he felt that day was probably not far off.
So he had to race against time.
He had to cultivate outstanding talent as quickly as possible to aid the Empire.
At present, things were still only covert battles between spies and rebel agents. They hadn't yet escalated into a full-scale, open civil war.
As long as he could lead the assassins he raised to cleanly eliminate the roots of these problems, then the Empire's destruction would never come to pass.
This gravity weight-training tool was extraordinary.
Used properly, it could make his kids grow stronger very quickly, drastically shortening the time his training plan required.
But there was still one massive problem.
If the Revolutionary Army or foreign enemies obtained this tool, then the Empire's crisis of collapse would be accelerated enormously.
...
At that same time, deep within the Scientific Corps in the Imperial Capital.
Noah was standing in the underground training grounds, recording something on a clipboard.
The page before him was filled with dense physical data and combat measurement results.
And all of that data came from the girl standing before him.
The blue-haired, blue-eyed girl was currently wearing the training weights.
Sleek black rings were fastened to both of her wrists and both of her ankles.
Yet despite the restraints, her movements remained blindingly swift and agile.
No one watching her shadowbox would have guessed she was currently operating under three times her normal gravity.
"Hah!"
Under triple gravity, the girl actually pushed off the ground and unleashed a spinning kick in midair.
That single strike shattered the reinforced head of the heavy test dummy into splinters.
Through Appraisal, Noah had been closely observing Esdeath's physical condition the entire time, witnessing the insane fruits of her training firsthand.
"Passed." He gave her an OK gesture, lowering his clipboard.
The gesture left the girl slightly confused.
Esdeath folded her arms and said with pride, "Hmph. Even if you make it harder, the result will be the same. I adapt to everything!"
"Stop acting tough," Noah teased. "Did you already forget about knocking your own tooth loose when you fell on your face yesterday?"
"I-I told you, I was just losing a baby tooth!"
"..."
Esdeath actually joined the Imperial Army right after that martial arts tournament.
Not only that, she received an astonishing amount of attention from the top brass.
So much attention, in fact, that one of the military higher-ups personally came down to request that the Scientific Corps devise a specialized training plan just for her.
In the end, she alone occupied twenty percent of the Scientific Corps' entire annual budget.
After Noah investigated the files, he found that the things she had done recently were absurd enough to warrant the spending.
First of all, with her overwhelming combat ability, she stood out in the military almost immediately after enlisting.
A corrupt superior officer who tried to take advantage of her through unspoken rules because he coveted her beauty was beaten into literal minced meat by her bare hands in the middle of the barracks.
In just a few days, she turned the entire barracks into her own personal territory.
No grown man dared disobey that little-girl.
And then, deployed alone, she wiped out an entire mountain bandit group hiding in the hills.
Around forty hardened bandits were all cleanly decapitated without exception.
Esdeath was undeniably strong.
Her raw power, her blinding speed, her beast-like instincts—everything about her seemed born for hunting and battle.
She didn't need strict martial arts instruction from old masters.
As long as she saw a technique once in actual combat, she couldn't only reproduce it perfectly, but even figure out exactly how to counter it.
In the past, Esdeath only possessed experience fighting wild Danger Beasts.
The number of times she actually fought other humans could be counted on one hand.
But in these past few months in the military, she eagerly took part in every high-risk combat mission they offered, and the speed of her growth could only be described as terrifying, changing with each passing day.
As the inventor of the weighted gravity equipment, Noah became Esdeath's "assistant."
For the past week, she had been living directly in Noah's office, keeping the gravity rings activated on her limbs at all times.
On the first day, the crushing weight made her stagger a bit.
But by the third day, her muscles evolved, and she already became capable of moving normally.
And today was the seventh day.
Her physical abilities under triple gravity were now comparable to what she had been without restraints just seven days ago.
In simple terms, compared with one week earlier, her base strength and speed had already undergone a terrifying transformation.
"Hey, I'm already sick of hitting wooden targets," Esdeath said excitedly, wiping sweat from her brow.
"Next up, Noah, you fight me!"
To this day, she still hadn't let go of what happened back on the balcony.
It wasn't that she had never lost a fight before.
When she was younger, she lost sparring matches to adults in her tribe and to her father as well.
Because she was raised on the strict doctrine of survival of the fittest, every time she lost, she was forbidden from eating or from playing.
But she never felt ashamed because of those losses.
Because she knew that once she grew up, given enough time, she would definitely become stronger than her father and stronger than her tribesmen.
It was just biology.
But losing to someone her own exact age happened for the very first time.
She always wanted to wash away the humiliation of floating helplessly in the air!
Bang!
Esdeath smacked one fist into her open palm, cracking her knuckles. Her predatory gaze locked onto Noah.
"I'm just a scholar," Noah said, waving a hand. "I have no obligation to spar with a test subjects."
"Tch. Running away again, are you?!" The moment she saw him refuse, Esdeath became displeased.
To someone like her, who lived only for battle and treated hunting as the core of everyday life, Noah's pacifist behavior was nothing but cowardly avoidance!
"You're just like a timid rabbit, aren't you?" The girl's expression carried a hint of contempt when she spoke.
In her eyes, this kind of herbivore-like weakness wasn't something a truly strong person should have.
"So you figured it out," Noah smiled easily. "As expected of you."
"Tch."
'What a spiritless guy,' she thought.
"Hmph. I don't want to be a rabbit. I want to be a wolf—no, I don't even want to be a wolf," Esdeath declared, clenching her fists.
"I am myself. Sooner or later, I'll become a being standing at the very top of the food chain. Every single living thing in this world will become my prey!"
The girl spoke with fiery confidence and a terrifying light shining in her blue eyes.
She was dead serious!
There wasn't the slightest trace of a joke in her voice.
Hearing Esdeath's bold declaration, Noah could not help thinking that this girl might actually be able to do it.
Because…
Judging purely from the results of her ability-value measurements, Esdeath's strength was already no weaker than that of an ordinary Level 3 adventurer.
For her, strangling a lion—or even a bear—with her bare hands would be as easy as turning over her hand.
And she was only in her teens.
Even if she did not train, the natural growth of her body alone was enough to prove that she still had enormous room for development.
With her strength, there would probably be few people in this country capable of matching her in the future.
Whenever Noah encountered someone with such outstanding talent, he could not help sighing.
There was always someone beyond oneself, and a sky beyond the sky.
Just in Orario alone, there were already so many people with insane talent, let alone this vast and boundless universe.
In every world, there were beings loved by the world itself and favored by fate.
"Speaking of which, you haven't told anyone about me," Noah said while helping Esdeath draw up her training plan.
At the same time, he had made one request.
She was not to tell anyone about his true strength.
The girl had agreed.
The two had continued working together until now, and nothing had gone wrong.
In truth, Noah had not expected her to actually keep the secret, yet not only had she said nothing, she had even taken the initiative to help him cover up the parts where flaws might have shown.
"Hmph. A promise is a promise. Although I don't like that part of you, I have also received your help."
Esdeath swept her ice-blue hair back over her shoulder, pointed at him, and said, "Remember this. Once I become a general, I will make you my subordinate! When that time comes, even if you want to slack off, I won't allow it. You'd better prepare yourself early!"