The Laughing Swordsman

Talon's steps slowed down to a crawl.

The door in front of him was rather unassuming. Other than being pure white, it looked just like any other door.

However, there was some sort of illusory pressure Talon felt just by looking at it. This was because he knew what that door represented, and the power of the person behind it.

Talon walked forward with trembling steps. He walked forward as though he were wading through murky waters.

There was a strange custom in the empire. The people that resided in this empire would train their daughters to be obedient maids and the sons to become strong and healthy.

This was because of the offer that the empire provided.

Every month, there would be an assessment where young children would compete with each other. For the girls, it would be whoever could follow orders the best. As for the boys, it would be their strength and ability to endure pain.

The assessment was rather cruel, but the empire justified this by saying that was the only way to truly test them.

...So why were they being tested?

It was because a certain quota of the children would be accepted into the center of the empire.

To the masses, this was seen as the best way for their children to go. It even gave them the opportunity to become a noble!

The girls would get far better lives, with plenty of expensive food and a grand room. They still had the responsibilities of a maid, but they would be small. It would be a far greater life than one that involved farming every day.

The boys would get similar treatment, just more rare foods. Ones that would greatly increase their strength. From there, their responsibility became guarding a certain noble in shifts. Although their shifts would be longer, they would slowly gain strength with the food provided, making it a worthy tradeoff.

In the center of the empire, there were perhaps three or so maids for each noble. On top of that, there would only be roughly one hundred guards patrolling around for the sake of surveillance.

This number hardly changed in the years that passed.

...Yet, nearly one hundred children would be accepted every month.

By now, the streets should be filled to the brim with guards, while the nobles would have a maid tending to each corner of the palace at the same time.

The masses could not go to the center of the empire, so it was hard for them to know this fact. However, they should have been suspicious about how many people were sent into the center of the empire.

Somehow or another, that logic slipped past them.

As for most children, they were quite resistant to becoming maids or personal guards. That was because it was well known that children sent into the center of the empire would never see their parents again.

However, there were countless children. Enough of them were convinced by their parents that they should try their hardest for this assessment as that was the 'best' thing for them.

Talon stopped. He was only a few steps away from the white door.

As for Talon, he was one of those children that took part in these assessments. Talon was fully convinced that becoming a guard for the nobles would be the peak of life.

And so, he trained hard.

Once the time for assessments came, Talon won by a landslide. He was the very top of all the boys. As for his sister, she also believed being a maid would be the peak of life. She worked hard and also performed quite well, but only reached the top five.

Not that it wasn't a stunning achievement, but it was simply overshadowed by Talon's success.

Since Talon was at the top of his group, he was invited to meet with Oddryl, along with the top maid of the girls.

Oddryl explained all the processes they would have to go through to become a maid and a guard. After that, they were dismissed.

Talon found it quite strange that only the top of each group was invited to meet with Oddryl. After all, so many people were accepted to be maids and guards.

As promised, he was given the life of a guard. However, he was unable to find any of the other kids that supposedly joined the corps with him.

Talon was a sharp kid. He wouldn't let peculiarities slip by him, and thus pondered on the possible reasons every day.

Talon examined the other guards and tried to strike up a conversation with them, but they weren't the most talkative. He had little to work off of, but came to a realization.

The stronger the guard was, the quieter they would become. Talon determined the strength of a guard by their aura and posture, since he could see those kinds of things.

And so, Talon decided to spend all of his free time training and trying to find out the secrets of this place. As he expected, his efforts did not go unnoticed.

In just a few days, he participated in a contest and was promoted. In the meeting, he was told various miscellaneous pieces of info and had his duties changed. Talon continued training, doing his best to rise further.

He got promoted once more, despite only training for less than two weeks in total. From there, Talon was told only the best of each group would actually be picked to become maids and guards.

He couldn't help but ask about what happened to the others. After all, his sister was one of those people.

However, he was not given an answer.

Within less than a month, his position skyrocketed, as did his knowledge of the empire. Even he was surprised by how strong he had become.

That was when Talon was offered a spot among the rank of giants. He accepted it immediately. After all, that was his goal in the first place.

He was invited to a meeting.

And from there, he learned the truth of the empire.