The Legend of Sun Knight Side Stories 4: “You May Only Use a Sword, Unless No One Sees You”

The Legend of Sun Knight Side Stories

Original novel in Chinese by: 御我 (Yu Wo)


“You May Only Use a Sword, Unless No One Sees You”1 – translated by Lucathia

He recalled how his teacher had once left him the task of swinging his sword one thousand times, and then announced that he was leaving to go look for the prince (or the princess). But while he was gone, all Grisia had done was goof off instead. When his teacher returned and found out…

At the time, Grisia had thought he would get beaten, yet his teacher merely chuckled coldly and grabbed Grisia by the collar and threw him on his horse before galloping out of town…

He would soon discover that the reason his teacher didn’t hit him…was that even one casual strike of his would be enough to hurl Grisia right at the God of Light!

Neo brought him to a notorious land of darkness, got off his horse, and grabbed Grisia by the collar once more. Devoid of all fear, he walked into the land of darkness, not even bothering to take his sword out of its sheath. Instead, he used his fists to beat up the various groups of hideous-looking undead creatures that appeared along the way.

He walked until they reached the deepest area of the forest before he finally let go of Grisia.

“Do you know where this is?” Neo asked coldly.

“The Forest of the Concealed Moon…” Grisia timidly answered.

“…this isn’t the Keiran Forest?”

“Teacher, that’s in the opposite direction. When you left the Holy Temple, you needed to turn left, not right.”

“Oh, no wonder. I thought it was strange… I didn’t recall the Keiran Forest having so many undead creatures.” Neo cocked his head. In the end, he shrugged and said, “Oh well, it doesn’t matter where. This place might be even better.”

What’s better? Grisia still didn’t fully comprehend the situation.

Neo coldly said, “If you dare to violate my orders, then you need to be prepared to accept the punishment, but I don’t want to hit you. You’re still too little… I would need to control my power so that I wouldn’t accidentally kill you. What a pain!”

Does this mean that when I grow up more, you’ll hit me? The message that his teacher’s words implied was far from reassuring.

“That’s why I’m going to let others beat you up in my stead. Conveniently, you can also practice your extremely rotten swordsmanship… Oh! There’s quite a good number of undead creatures here, so you can even train your ability to handle undead creatures. Killing multiple birds with one stone! Not bad, not bad!”

“Thoroughly enjoy your journey of punishment!” Once Neo finished talking, he leaped up a tree and disappeared without a trace, leaving Grisia behind.

“Teacher!”

Grisia was completely shocked, but he could not prevent Neo from leaving. Even if he could, he knew his teacher’s personality. Once he declared something, he wouldn’t allow anyone to say anything different.

With no other choice, Grisia could only take a look at his surroundings. Huge trees that reached the skies soared from all directions, with vines of all kinds covering them densely. He didn’t know whether he was seeing things, but he thought those oddly shaped and strangely colored vines looked as though they were moving from time to time. The entire forest was gloomy and damp. The gusts of cold wind that blew around brought along the scent of rot, and it sounded as if something was slowly crawling along from within the weeds.

A normal thirteen year old child would most likely be scared out of his wits already.

Luckily, if nothing else, Grisia had plenty of guts. On top of that, he had been trained (tortured) by his teacher for more than a year, so even though his swordsmanship hadn’t improved at all, he had gradually gained more courage than before.

Even though Neo had claimed this journey to be for the sake of punishment and for training his ability to deal with undead creatures, whenever Grisia was suffering and was being chased all over the place by a variety of things that were in various stages of rotting, loud guffaws would always drift over from somewhere close by…

Teacher must simply think this is all very entertaining? This was what Grisia believed deep down inside, but he did relax a little. His teacher was still nearby after all and hadn’t truly abandoned him without a care.

When it was time to eat at night, Grisia hunted down a rabbit that looked edible, albeit with a lot of difficulty. He roasted it until it gleamed with oil and overflowed with a delicious smell, not at all afraid that he might draw the attention of large beasts. This forest mostly only had undead creatures and trees, and the noses of undead creatures were either already rotten or in the process of rotting.

I give my thanks to the God of Light… After saying his prayers, Grisia lifted the rabbit. Just as he was about to bite down with an “ahhh,” a black shadow flashed by, his hand suddenly became lighter, and the rabbit vanished. Grisia lifted his head and threw a resentful gaze to the left.

“What are you looking at?”

Neo had the rabbit lifted in his hand as he boldly and confidently said, “A student cooking for his teacher is as it should be! Shoo, shoo. This rabbit is mine now. You go and hunt another one.”

Grisia was somewhat at a loss for words. He was wrong. The forest still had a large beast called “Teacher”…

Looking at his teacher biting down on the rabbit without remorse, Grisia pouted and indignantly said, “Teacher, I suddenly have an irresistible urge to practice my swordsmanship.”

“Oh?” Neo glanced over and mockingly said, “You want to use a sword to take revenge on me? With your talent with the sword? If you can use a sword to strike me without missing, your teacher will happily die without any regrets, even if you cut me down and send me on my way to see the God of Light!”

“Teacher, your words are so ruthless…”

When he woke up the next morning, his teacher had long since disappeared, but this wasn’t something to be scared about. Generally, the majority of the time “Teacher’s not here” was always better than “Teacher’s here.”

However, he had to admit, when he opened his eyes and found that he was surrounded by undead creatures, he still missed his teacher a lot.

“Boo hoo…”

As Grisia fled, he sobbed out loud, “Teacher, where are you? It can’t be that you’re not around? You must have hidden yourself to laugh at me, right? Boo hoo, Teacher, laugh already! Teacher!”

Pow!

The result of running and crying at the same time was blurry eyesight, causing him to trip over a branch. His entire body became intimately familiar with the earth at that moment.

It hurts…

Even though it hurt, he still remembered that a pack of undead creatures was chasing him from behind, so he quickly climbed back to his feet and looked back… A half-rotten face—so rotten that even if it hadn’t opened its mouth, he would still see half a row of teeth—was right in front of him. At that moment the owner of the ugly face grabbed his shoulders with both hands, and the rest of the undead creatures in hot pursuit had long since had him tightly surrounded.

He froze.

Am I going to die?

“No…”

Grisia covered his head and screamed, “Don’t come near me!”

“Grisia?”

He didn’t know how much time had passed before a shout drifted over from faraway. The boy who was still clutching his head in the same position as before twitched and lifted his head, softly calling out, “Teacher?”

From faraway another call drifted over, the voice containing some anxiety, “Grisia, where are you? Answer me!”

“Teacher, I’m here! Here!”

Grisia immediately jumped up and yelled loudly. In no time at all, a familiar figure appeared.

Seeing that familiar white figure, for the first time in his life Grisia threw himself into his teacher’s embrace and began bawling his eyes out.

At this, even Neo became somewhat flustered. Even though Grisia looked weak, he was actually incredibly stubborn. During this past year, no matter what kind of difficult training he faced, even when he oftentimes had tears in his eyes, those tears had never flowed down.

This time, Grisia was actually crying. Neo knew he had taken it too far, but he really didn’t know how to comfort his student. He could only lightly pat Grisia’s back and continuously say, “It’s okay, it’s okay. No need to be afraid. Your teacher is here. There’s nothing that can even think about harming you!”

But Grisia still continued crying for a long time before he finally halted his sobs with difficulty, complaining in broken spurts, “Teacher, where did you go, I thought I was really going to die, boo hoo…”

“Sorry, sorry, I went to do my morning exercises. Before I knew it, you had run off and disappeared. I spent so much time before I managed to find you. You truly had me worried to death…”

“Teacher was actually worried about me?” Grisia mumbled somewhat disbelievingly. He thought his teacher didn’t like him, and that he regretted picking him. After all, every time they had sword lessons, his teacher would always shout things like, “Even without a backup knight, I could still find any random person who would be stronger than you!”

Seeing Grisia’s shocked expression, Neo immediately changed his tone. He slapped himself on the chest and said, “I mean, thankfully you hadn’t died. Otherwise, otherwise the Pope and Judgment would scold me to death, and I probably wouldn’t even find the path out of the forest. What bad luck that would be…”

At this time, Grisia thoroughly understood something.

The scariest thing about the strongest Sun Knight in history wasn’t his strength. Rather, it was his unpredictability, how you could never know whether he might bring you to some frightening place. Even worse, not only were his memory and his sense of responsibility inversely proportional to his strength, he was also hugely directionally-challenged!

After he calmed down somewhat, Neo finally had time to look around at the current situation of his surroundings… where everything within at least twenty meters around him was frozen by ice elemental magic. The scene was practically like an undead creature ice sculpture exhibit.

Upon observing this scene and noticing that only Grisia alone had not been turned into an ice sculpture, it was obvious that the person who had caused this sight could only be him.

Neo furrowed his brows and asked, “How do you know large area of effect ice magic? Did you see another old mage performing magic on the streets?”

“No, Ecilan taught me.”

“Ecilan?”

“…the young Ice Knight.”

The Ice Knight, no wonder. Ice elemental magic was indeed the Ice Knight’s trademark skill. He wrinkled his forehead and asked, “Grisia, how old are you this year?”

“Teacher, have you forgotten again? I’m thirteen.”

Neo hesitated a little before he asked again, “And how long has it been since you used magic for the first time?”

Grisia tilted his head, thinking a bit before he answered, “One year, six months, and thirteen days.”

Hearing this, Neo creased his brows. Even though he didn’t understand mages much, Grisia had only learned for a year and a half, and it was disjointed learning through pilfering without any guidance; in addition to that, he was only thirteen this year… Even with actual students of magic, what kind of child would be capable of performing such a strong magic attack?

Impossible! Neo immediately refuted this to himself. If all mages were this strong, then this world would have long forsaken all other professions.

But if things continued like this, then by the time Grisia took on the Sun Knight’s position at age twenty, his magic might even be strong enough to battle it out with Neo. At that time, Grisia would be the Sun Knight, yet Neo will have lost the favor of the God of Light… Grisia wouldn’t come and find him for revenge, would he?

Thinking back on the manner he had been treating Grisia… Ah! No matter how shameless he was, he could not say he was a good teacher. Basically, whatever he thought of, he taught, and a lot of that was experimental lessons he had come up with for fun, such as training in elegance where he had forced Grisia to fall down constantly until he could fall down gracefully beyond comparison.

If he were to tell Judgment about his teaching methods, Judgment would roll his eyes at him for eight out of ten of his methods. One method he would even angrily say, “This is maltreatment, not teaching. If you still dare, go ahead and try! Even if I can’t win against you, I can still make you pay.” Only for one method would he hesitantly say, “Maybe it’s worth a try.”

However, of the above ten teaching methods, he had used at least five of them on Grisia, including even the one that would incur “payment”… In any case, he was safe as long as Judgment didn’t find out!

Did this mean he was going to have to treat Grisia better now?

Forget it! Even if he resolved to treat Grisia better right now, he might forget it altogether by the time tomorrow came. Or, when it was time for sword lessons, he might also completely forget his resolve, full of thoughts about killing this idiot of a swordsman!

Neo turned his thoughts over. Finally, under his student’s puzzled gaze, he solemnly said, “Grisia, you must know, as a holy knight, especially the leader of the holy knights, the Sun Knight, you must not use magic! That completely violates the basic principles of a holy knight. Holy knights must use weapons. Above all, the Sun Knight who wields the Divine Sun Sword may only use a sword…”

After saying this, Neo suddenly considered how terrible his student’s swordsmanship was. If he told him he may only use a sword, he might not even survive to the age of twenty. Neo hurriedly added, “And holy light! At most, you may only use magic when there is no one around to see you. In short, never let anyone see you use magic! Do you understand?”

Grisia stumbled over his words, saying, “But Teacher, my, my swordsmanship…”

“You may only use a sword. You must not let anyone see you use magic!” Neo coldly said, “Or do you want to experience where exactly the strongest Sun Knight in history can take you? Do you want to see what the dragon of legends looks like? Or do you want to observe the silhouette of a death knight? Perhaps you want to find out just how strange the dwelling of an undying lich can be…”

“Understood! I may only use a sword!”

Grisia nodded earnestly and then added the words silently to himself: I may only use a sword…unless no one sees me!

Footnotes

1 This side story is something that Yu Wo wrote but didn’t manage to use in the novels. She shared this tidbit in her blog, thinking that her readers might enjoy reading about Neo and Grisia’s lessons together.

56 Responses

  1. Bored

    lol he chose to use only a sword yet he will STILL see the Dragon, the Death Knight and the undying Lich…

  2. NanoLaughing

    Ha ha ha! I like this story! but, my list of villains has grown by one. Neo, one heck of a funny character, but one heck of an non-important character who made little Grisia cry! Punish is only by death!!

  3. Alyss

    First one! or one of the first, wtvr
    i think it’s becoming clearer why Grisa reacted to Neo the way he did in Vol. 3…
    When it says Neo “leaped up a tree and left” it means he leaped up his horse and left, right?

    • lucathia

      No, he leaped up a tree (and watched Grisia out of sight from time-to-time). I believe they left the horse outside the forest.

  4. starwarrior

    What a wonderful day! New chapter of LSK to read! Thank yous sooooooooooooooooooooo much! (>u<)

  5. beta

    Moral of the story: do not (over)abuse your pupil, for when you are retired they may have the epiphany that they are essentially a physical deity of magic and you are an old swordsman without the backing of a God or a legendary blade.

    It’s a very situation-specific moral, but it’s there.

  6. KuranNita

    Wahahaha! Neo is actually afraid for Grisia’s “Revenge”! That’s the most interesting part here.

    Finally,, I’ll been waiting for a long time for this sidestory to be out since basically I want to read this the most from the list of this month update. Never thought you’ll give us this at the very last one. *Pout*

  7. Triellan

    Eventually he would see the dwelling of a undying Lich anyway… but he would need to bring pink lollipops

  8. kayue

    This explains so much about Grisia… And Neo.
    Neo probably started out adventuring after his retirement looking for a princess to save/seduce, and accidentally ended up in the land of the Dark Elves. ;)

    • D@yw@lker

      @kayue
      Afterwards the Dark Elves probably were really glad to have him leave for their alcohol reserves had been dwindling down to nothing. :D

    • Tamult

      @D@yw@lker
      That, and they couldn’t kill the Strongest Sun Knight even after he retired. So they had to ply free alcohol to him for each failed attempt. (And the worse the attempt, the more the drink)

  9. 15B

    I was grinning at the story, but I was laughing once I read the comments.

    And just how many tens of ideas did Neo think of for lessons for Grisia?

    The falling-down-until-you-fall-down-as-gracefully-as-possible lesson was for fun? I thought it was for revenge! XD I’m overthinking this. Clearly he wanted to do the lesson for both reasons.

    Neo’s memory is terrible! His directionally challenged-ness rivals Feng Lan’s! (Feng Lan’s sense of direction is actually better than Neo’s; she was able to figure out Gui was leading her the wrong way!) Is Neo’s sense of responsibility soley based on whether or not he’ll be beat up by Judgement?
    Meh. Grisia learned how to act like the epitome of perfection because of Neo’s teaching! So I guess it can’t be too ineffective, even if morally flawed.

    • D@yw@lker

      @15B
      I’m totally looking forward to the next Volume because *SPOILER – removed =p* *sort of squeel in anticipation*

    • Kora Lunaris

      @15B
      Well, at least Neo didn’t force Grisia to learn to take a graceful shit… or did he?

    • Gohankuten

      @15B
      Who knows he have actually done it. I doubt it since no one should ever see the Sun Knight shit but he may have given lesson on how to shit without being heard for gracefulness.

    • Aqualens

      @Gohankuten
      Makes me wonder if Grisia would have been alive at the end of his training if he didn’t have such strong holy magic to begin with (imagine if it was just a normal kid!) I’d say that Roland was lucky he didn’t get chosen (though what happened to him in the end kind of offsets that…)

  10. lulumoon

    I wonder if Sun will ever realize how much stronger than his teacher he actually is. If he where to use Elemental magic, Holy magic, Necromancy, and that twisted mind of his against Neo (or anyone), what would actually happen?

    • 15B

      @lulumoon
      That would lead to the God of Light coming down personally, to instruct Lesus to refuse to buy Grisia blueberry pies and to tell Ecilan to stop making sweets for Sun. Either Sun would go completely beserk and the followers would burn Grisia at the stake or Grisia would finally stop out of respect for Lesus and Ecilan’s sweets.

    • D@yw@lker

      @15B
      Maybe the God of Light is running around there somewhere, if even the Shadow God had been walking around as a pink little Girl.
      Hopefully the God of Light is also female and good looking ;) maybe Grisia will find someone the Sun Knight is allowed to love for ‘the Sun Knight loves only the God of Light’ :D

    • kayue

      @lulumoon
      It’s called “imprinting”. Or The “catch ’em young and scare them until they can’t stand up to you later” method of child-rearing.

  11. ushergal

    so neo knew to be afraid of his student, but what are the odds that he remembers any of this

  12. Anonymous

    So horrifying if there’s actually no reason the Sun Knight shouldn’t have been able to publicly use magic…

    (As with the other Neo cases, a wonderful chapter! Thank you very very much for all your translations!)

    • Gohankuten

      @Anonymous
      I bet that Neo made up most of that rule just to keep Grisa in check lol. As Neo said in the prologue for this volume the sword and shield of a knight are the shackles on Grisa.

    • Duncan Idaho

      @X

      not exactly, more like to save the world from grisia not to save grisia from some one, i mean the guy is a master magician nothing can really stand in grisia’s path due to his manipulation skills.

  13. Phantasy

    You guys completely missed it…Grisia actually said Ecilan’s name right!
    It’s a miracle! Pity he forgets by Book 1 and thinks the Ice knight’s name is Eclair or something…

    Aw, Neo, you do have a heart!

    • Gohankuten

      @Phantasy
      That’s cause the sweets make a huge impression on Sun and overrides his memory of Ecilan’s name.

    • theresay

      @Phantasy
      Grisia made up those nick names not because he can’t remember them, he just like to ruffle them a little. It’s also one of his ways of releasing stress I guess.

    • H. Y.

      @theresay
      Good point, I totally forgot that he has great memory so there’s no reason for him to not remember their names haha!

  14. Alyss

    I just realized something…If grisa could cook a rabbit, how come he had so much trouble at the end of Vol. 3?

    • MNeilG

      @Alyss

      perhaps he used magic – such as fire magic – to setup the fire and cook the rabbit

      anyway, thanks to PR! for the awesome chapter >_<

  15. CocoFlower

    I don’t like Neo that much after this chapter- poor Sun, the crying bit really made me sad :(

    • theresay

      @CocoFlower
      Neo cares for Grisia very much, he doesn’t like to show it, but it’s obvious in his actions in later volumes.

    • 15B

      @theresay
      Neo is a tsundere character, isn’t he?

      Orz Then again, if he really cared about Grisia, he wouldn’t use the method that would incur Judgement’s wrath…

  16. AC

    I hope Grisia gets his revenge on Neo… I can never forgive an irresponsible teacher!
    Thanks for the story!!

  17. ~Ren The Witch~

    This is exactly what I need to keep studying… if little Grisia made it out of Neo teachings, i might as well try harder with my own studies lol… Love the chapter : ) Thx so much!

  18. okura

    ahahaha!! so awesome, Neo, you’re such a bastard… no wonder you made Grisia become a despicable bastard! xD

  19. momiji

    been waiting for this! thanks! love LSK ^^
    i do wonder if grisia will actually have the guts to get his revenge on his teacher,the strongest sun knight in history..

  20. na700037

    wonder who is more of a bastard? sun? or his teacher? any vies?

    • Gohankuten

      @na700037
      Grisa is. Neo can’t remember anything long enough to plan stuff out. Grisa will devise a horrible plan that would make you regret ever meeting him if you made him mad that would be worse than getting yourself beaten to a pulp which is what Neo would do to you lol.

    • Andi

      Well, not necessarily… Grisia would devise a horrible plan (or, depending on how angry you made him) a series of horrible plans that would spite you for the rest of your life, but he can’t beat people up in broad daylight, and he can’t do it directly. Take the Earth Knight for example. Sun and Earth probably have the worst relationship out of any of the 12, but Earth is STILL just fine. Sun has tried to have his Sun Knight troops beat him up, but it doesn’t work very well, and its questionable if Judgement ever actually helped Sun beat Earth up, though Sun has really wanted him to. Additionally, Sun never even wants the holy knights to see him use anything that is not holy magic (remember how he came up with horrible lies to Leaf about it?)

      Now, if this was Neo… Neo would just walk in to Earth’s room and beat him up himself. Earth would FEAR Neo (ehh, they’d prolly get into a dispute about women). Additionally, besides just beating him within an inch of his life every time Earth made him mad, Neo has threatened to drag ppl (well Grisia) that make him really angry to who knows where (well, the dwellings of an undying lych, to see a death knight, or to see a dragon… arguably, they would never make it there, but with Neo’s luck you’d probably end up somewhere much worse…. that is just as fine for Neo to be, but infinitely more terrifying for the dragged person). And my last point: Right, Neo has a worse memory.. but what if he keeps forgetting that he already beat you up/already made you regret what you did? I could see him randomly showing up to beat someone up just because he remembered what they did that made him so made, but didn’t remember that he ALREADY beat them up for it… I think Neo is much scarier.

    • Gohankuten

      @Andi
      Earth still lives because while Grisa is a detestable bastard he cares greatly for all his fellow Knight Captains even if their relationship is horrible. And remember Grisa can still have a plan carried out in broad daylight as long as you give him time to plan. And Neo would remember beating someone up. He has a memory for fights if you remember. It’s the only thing he can remember really lol. And if you want to stop Neo all you needed to do was get the Pope and Judgement from Neo’s generation to go confront him. With Grisa nothing will stop him. O sure it may buy some time but Grisa will make sure his plan gets carried out and noone can truly stop him. Even Lesus knows he would have no chance to stop Grisa once he sets his mind to it.

    • Truthfully...

      @Gohankuten
      For the lives of his brother’s he would stop it. Heck, as long as its to save his brothers lives then he’d definitely stop dont forget that he’d also stop if Neo ordered him too. (He fears him immensely for his unpredictability remember?)

  21. RinRin

    i think Sun will still be cute even if he cries. and i must say he also got his teacher’s unpredictability. which i must say is the only thing predictable about him. so if neo’s unpredictability makes him scary, sun’s scarier?

  22. Pfft, are all Sun Knight THIS HILARIOUS!? I’m gonna end up with the God of Light if I continue laughing so hard… XD

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