Family Business 52 (Patreon)

Family Business

Chapter 52

-VB-

“HA!” I yelled as I brought the practice sword down upon the training dummy.

Without my magic and bereft of any enchanted equipment, I was physically average. What that did was put me into coma and a long recovery since my last battle, and I found that to be unacceptable.

So now, I trained.

“HA!”

I mean, sure, I had abs and more that I would have loved to have in my previous life, but compared to the people who lived on Runeterra, that was … average. Okay, saying six-packs, no matter how ill-defined and barely there, was average was an understatement, but the fact of the matter was that my own brother, Garen, could literally split a plate armored man in half if he so needed to.

Compared to that, I was nothing but a squishy … DPS.

I never liked to play DPS. I was a tank!

… Oh well. I knew that I couldn’t do anything too much about that.

What I could do was train myself so that I have less chance of being injured, less chance of dying, and less chance of leaving my wives and children without a husband and father.

“HA!”

“Faster! Harder! And in form!” Garen, my brother, shouted at me in a normal attire instead of his heavy plate armor.

And if that meant using my little brother and ducal status to get my big brother Garen Crownguard to teach me, then that’s what I was going to fucking do.

“HA!”

“FASTER!”

“HA!”

“HARDER!”

“HA!”

“STRIKE TRUE!”

“HA!”

“DEMACIA!”

… Did I just imagine that?

“Umm, what?” I asked, having lost my steam and focus with that one word alone.

“Demacia,” Garen grunted. “You ready yourself at ‘de,’ observe your target at ‘ma,’ and slice your sword at them at ‘cia’!” he lectured. “Swordfighting is not just about how hard and fast you can do. It is about form! It is about maximizing how effortlessly you can translate your strength into your strikes, parries, and dodges!”

Then he proceeded to demonstrate why he was the Might of Demacia by cutting through my courtyard ground with just a practice sword in his hand.

“You strike hard! You strike clearly! You do not deviate when you strike! And when you do, then nothing shall stand in your path! DEMACIA!”

…

Oh, I knew what this was. It’s like 1-2-3 used by golfers. 1 is pulling back, 2 is the downward swing, and 3 is the upward finishing swing. Instead of using numbers or fancy phrases like most people would have done, my brother just went with the three syllables of our country’s name.

“Alright, let’s stop here,” Garen declared. “You’ve been at it for two hours already, and you’re not fully recovered yet.”

I frowned even as I lowered the practice sword. “I am recovered.”

He snorted. “You are not. Listen to the warrior who had to see many of his friends have to recover from battle wounds.”

I nodded slowly. He wasn’t wrong. Sure, I may know a lot more medical stuff, but he probably had more experience with this.

“Sure.” And then I let out a sigh of relief as my body relaxed. “Hey, Garen?”

“Hmm?”

“... I know I did pull a lot of strings to get you to teach me, but is that alright with you?”

“You already asked me this,” he huffed as he set his practice sword off to the side. “I said it’s alright.”

“But how is it alright?” I asked him as we walked out together.

“... Because I want to spend time with my brother and sister. I realized that I hadn’t spent a lot of time with my family for a long time. IF you died, then I would have let you die and remain a bad brother. I decided to change that, so I petitioned the king for a brief vacation. It’s the least I could do when you are literally right here in the same city as me.”

“... Thanks.”

“No problem. How are the girls and kids?”

“Lux is doing well. She’s asking if you want to visit.”

“Sure.”

“Sona is also doing well. Her chest got bigger from the milk again.”

He stumbled a little at that, and I chuckled. He glared at me for a second before sighing. “Since when did you become such a lecherous man? Last I saw you, you were into numbers.”

“I don’t know. Maybe being cooped up with paper fermented my boyish fantasies about girls and made them transcend into depravity.”

He scrunched his nose at me. “You’ve become far more vulgar in public, too.”

I shrugged. “I almost died. I think I want to be more open and honest so that when I do die, people will all remember the real me and not some mask I put up.”

Garen gave me those pitying look he’s been giving me over the last month or so, but I ignored it easily.

My near-death had changed me. This new vulgar joke thing was part of that.

“What will you do for the rest of the day?” he asked me.

“Oh, you know me,” I said as we entered the manor. “I got research to do, Sona and Lux to make love to, and Darren and Emma to coo over.”

“You make your life sound so simple.”

“It is simple!”

“Your research involves two dozen assistants, a lab that would make a Piltovan think they dropped into Zaun, and more reagents and minerals spent in a week than most foreign alchemists will see in a month.”

And so on and so on, we talked, bickered, and just enjoyed being brothers.

We never knew when the next Harrowing might see one or both of us buried in the ground.