[Unlike Merlin's teachings, where he demanded Artoria abandon emotion and forever maintain absolute reason,]
[your education for the girl adhered far more to reality. You had never been 'king', yet you had, more than once, held dominion over the governance of a nation. You had never truly stepped into the highest seat, yet you were no stranger to wielding the power of the highest position. Thus you understood: for a supreme ruler, what is most needed is not absolute rationality, not mere calculation of gain and loss. Constantly weighing which side of the scale is heavier may indeed let one climb to high office—yet never allows them to endure.]
[Every person hopes to remain rational at all times. Yet every person fears the absolute, ice-cold monster known as 'reason'.]
[—Unless one could forever guarantee one's own absolute correctness, never falling, never faltering.]
[Otherwise, a king of reason is by no means the first choice.]
[Even so-called 'reason' has never represented absolute correctness. To govern a nation is not to rely upon mere numbers, but upon one living, breathing human being after another.]
[In this age, for a country to never decline is nearly impossible.]
[Thus the first lesson you taught Artoria was also to discard that so-called rationality, to pursue what she truly desired. To not heed the words of others, but to find her own principle, her own ideal—to find her own emotion.]
[Merlin, standing at the side as you ruthlessly denounced his own methods of teaching, could only smile helplessly with a look of resignation.]
[From that point on, each day within the dreams Merlin wove, you would intrude, cutting off his education of Artoria.]
[Under your careful guidance, only then did Artoria truly set foot upon the road known as 'knight'. 'King' and 'knight' were not the same, still less equivalent to 'Knight King'. Originally, Merlin had merely pinned his hopes upon the future sovereign possessing both. He had never considered that they might actually be fused into one.]
[And that was precisely what you desired—]
[For one who bore the title of 'king' to yet remain bound by the knight's precepts. For the forging of your 'Precepts', and for the unification of your arsenal of martial arts through them, this was decisively advantageous.]
[There was no true contradiction between the two.]
[In the knightly precepts you devised, there were no pedantic articles, only actions that followed the heart. No mandatory sacrifice, only actions that remained above the 'bottom line'.]
[And that bottom line was neither law nor morality—]
[But the consequences that followed after one's actions.]
[A true knight was never one who merely obeyed transient morals or legal codes, but one who acted out of spirit: to knowingly undertake what could not be done.]
[This too was the model that a king ought to embody.]
[As in the ancient era when the Conqueror King crossed mountains and seas to achieve an impossible campaign.]
[As with the unending stream of heroes who acted in pursuit of dreams deemed impossible and illusory.]
[So long as it came from one's own will, it should never give rise to regret.]
[…]
The king had always understood that the nation of Camelot could not endure.That kingdom, like the setting sun, would inevitably sink.But that was by no means reason to abandon the struggle.Such was the teaching you gave from the very beginning, Subutai.
T. H. White, "The Once and Future King" (20th century)
…
[Artoria was growing.]
[By day she farmed, herded, and trained with the sword. By night she continued her studies. In this process, you could not help but marvel—her year-round, day-and-night labor exceeded even the harshest toil of beasts of burden. Even with Merlin before, and now you, using magecraft to aid her body's recovery, her spiritual tenacity was still terrifying.]
[This was the perfect 'creation', the Red Dragon of the Celts fused with the blood of the kings of Britain—surpassing even Vortigern's 'dragon'.]
[So Merlin said.]
[The girl named Artoria was indeed the masterpiece he and King Uther had created. She was their hope for the future of Camelot.]
[Yet under your instruction, her growth far surpassed what she had achieved under Merlin.]
[Even though she had yet to awaken the dragon's blood that symbolized her people. Even though she had not yet taken the throne nor received the divine right of the King of Britain.]
[Her talent was already extraordinary.]
[Swordsmanship, governance, horsemanship, strategy—under the influence of you, a true master who blossomed comprehensively rather than a half-baked dabbler like Merlin, she advanced at a speed visible to the naked eye.]
[You could feel it: as the girl grew, as the knightly precepts engraved themselves deeper upon this destined 'Artoria', the 'arsenal' in your mind grew ever more condensed into one.]
[The 'Knightly Precepts' shone brilliantly, exerting accelerating pressure upon that condensation.]
[That year, you were seventeen; Artoria was ten.]
[In that year, beyond your teaching within dreams and your influence upon Artoria, you also often discussed with Morgan, who visited Windmill City regularly, about the future matter of the 'choosing of a king'. And after such discussions of state, the two of you would move on to matters of affection.]
[That year, Morgan was nineteen. The girl's beauty grew ever more radiant, yet due to her own strength and your existence, none dared covet her.]
[That year, the population of Windmill City surpassed fifty thousand. The number of knights emerging from the city exceeded two thousand.]
[You had become the true progenitor of the knightly class.]
[The knightly precepts had sunk deep into human hearts.]
[And with Artoria's existence—]
[Your inexhaustible arsenal of martial refinement was but one step from completion.]
[This 'precept' had even, without your awareness, begun to take shape as a binding force upon the minds of others.]
[At eighteen, with Artoria now eleven, her swordsmanship had reached small accomplishment. She attained the level of 'hero's' deeds—surpassing her foster father, Sir Ector. In that same year, Morgan too reached mastery in magecraft, developing not only her 'Garden' and 'Mirror of Water', but also a new offensive system: the 'Tower of Light'.]
[That year, aside from your normal engravings of the Age's mysteries, you gained no great breakthrough. That final step of condensation eluded your arsenal, yet you felt no impatience.]
[You heard that Vortigern once more stirred in the north. Though he did not march south, he gathered more Anglo-Saxons, assembling an army of over a hundred thousand, their eyes fixed upon Hadrian's Wall. The despicable king seemed to have recovered his wounds, growing stronger than before.]
[You heard that King Uther's body grew weaker still. Where once he could on occasion handle affairs of state, now he was utterly unable to rise. All power had fallen completely into Merlin's hands.]
[At nineteen, under your instruction, the twelve-year-old girl unleashed her first true heroic strike. For the first time, she repelled the 'Sword Saint' Merlin in direct combat. She also completed many tasks as the 'Knight King', establishing her own philosophy of the Knight King: fighting for Britain's prosperity, not at Merlin's orders, but from her own heart. It was the action of a King of Knights born from fervent emotion and will, not from rational calculation.]
[At twenty, though you no longer deliberately sought to collect them, your arsenal once again rose to an even higher level. Within martial refinement, you now stood firmly among the upper strata. You knew this was because you had gathered the sword techniques of the future King Arthur.]
[If one divided the highest level of martial refinements once more, the lowest grade of inexhaustible refinements could only be called 'divine works'—barely able to compare with the deeds of gods, but not fully stepping into the divine realm. The initial grade of refinements were targeted techniques, not all-encompassing; facing the highest-tier all-round heroic techniques, they might yet be suppressed. Your arsenal, from the very beginning, had belonged to the mid-tier: the 'comprehensive inexhaustible'. And now it had nearly fused into one, shifting from 'comprehensive' toward 'singular'—cutting away the excess, piercing through the whole with a single point.]
[At twenty-one—]
[By then, you had already lived within Camelot for nearly eight years.]
[That year, all Camelot shook.]
[For King Uther, bedridden with illness for so many years, could no longer hold on.]
[The death of the king triggered immense chain reactions throughout the kingdom of Camelot.]
[Though the people had long been prepared.]
[Though every person knew this day had never been far.]
[On the third day after King Uther's passing—]
[In Windmill City, as the kingdom's now undisputed foremost 'duke', you were invited to the royal court.]
[There, you would cast the most decisive vote—]
[In the matter of the 'choosing of the king'.]