The High Elf and the Sword Princess (6)

Thus the sword training finally began, and as expected, it was rather unremarkable to watch from the outside.

After all, the basics consisted of nothing but endless practice swings.

But with my master Kaeha practicing the same swings beside me, merely watching her was fairly interesting.

I compared my movements with hers and gradually made corrections.

Kaeha beside me said nothing, merely swinging her sword.

Kaeha had probably never taught swordsmanship to anyone before, so she did not know what to say, especially to a complete beginner.

So she simply swung her sword and had me imitate her.

She remembered the training she had received as a child, agonized over this and that, and arrived at the conclusion that she should have me imitate herself.

As a way of teaching an inexperienced student, that was probably unequivocally wrong.

Without a more detailed explanation and instruction from the ground up, it would be difficult to understand the meaning behind the training.

But this method was well suited to me.

Repeating the movements endlessly, improving their precision, and engraving them into my body until they were refined was the same approach I had used when shooting my bow endlessly in the depths of the forest.

My experience learning smithing had also made me accustomed to finding the differences between my work and my master's and correcting them.

I swung, thought, swung, and corrected, until I gradually became able to think and correct myself while swinging.

Before long, I realized that simply moving the same way as my master Kaeha did not make it possible to swing a sword in the same way.

She was a human woman, while I was a high elf man; the lengths of our limbs differed, as did the shapes of our pelvises, and even the way our elbows and knees bent. Naturally, our muscles were distributed somewhat differently as well.

Swinging a sword the same way obviously would not produce the same result.

In particular, Kaeha had, well, weights attached to her chest.

Thus, before long, I would have to think through and settle on my own way of moving my body, aiming to make my sword produce the same result as hers—or something better.

Yosogi Style swordsmanship was fundamentally a two-handed style, since it had once used katana.

But some of the forms were performed one-handed, and those were quite difficult.

In terms of raw strength, I was probably stronger thanks to the body I had honed through smithing, despite being a high elf; yet Kaeha could swing the sword one-handed without difficulty and bring it to a dead stop.

With one hand, the path of my sword wavered ever so slightly, and it trembled a little when I brought it to a stop.

Thinking there was probably some trick to it, I watched Kaeha swing and thought, then swung myself and thought, repeating the process over and over.

As I spent my days that way, time flew by, and six months after I began training, Clayas came to the royal capital.

...Clayas first came to see me, before visiting the Lodran Greatswordsmanship dojo, and then he saw the devastation left by the destruction of the Yosogi Style dojo and heard Kaeha and her mother's story.

This was probably Clayas's way of showing, in his own way, that he stood with us as an acquaintance of mine rather than on the side of Lodran Greatswordsmanship.

Throughout his stay, Clayas treated Kaeha and her mother with an attitude that showed his respect for Yosogi Style.

To be honest, he was merely a strong adventurer to me, but Kaeha and her mother apparently saw him as a noble warrior.

The two of them had seemed conflicted before meeting him, but by the time their conversation ended, their attitudes had softened considerably.

Kaeha in particular wanted to hear from Clayas, who was clearly a far more skilled swordsman than she was, so when she held him up, he ended up canceling his inn reservation and spending the night in the guest room of their house.

In other words, he was treated the same way I was.

Kaeha probably could not truly have confidence in the swordsmanship she had honed through nothing but forms and practice swings.

The subjects she most wanted to hear Clayas discuss were actual combat and the training needed to prepare for it.

Clayas seemed to realize that partway through their conversation, and rather than teaching Kaeha Lodran Greatswordsmanship, he carefully taught her his own methods of training.

Clayas was certainly a swordsman of Lodran Greatswordsmanship, but he had also spent a long time as an adventurer and apparently had rarely been blessed with training partners, so he had mostly trained alone as well.

However, he had extensive practical experience fighting monsters and bandits, and that experience had naturally made him skilled at looking back on his own techniques and training alone to make up for what was lacking.

The result was a formidable swordsman—the sole vanguard of Seven Stars, an adventurer team of the highest rank.

"So if you feel that your current swordsmanship is lacking something and want to make it more practical... the quickest way is to gain actual combat experience. Of course, that's just based on my own experience, so it won't necessarily apply to everyone."

As he said that to Kaeha, Clayas glanced at me as if checking my reaction.

I understood what that look meant.

I did not find that conclusion particularly appealing, but as the saying went, "More haste, less speed," perhaps it could not be helped.

After all, unless Kaeha's swordsmanship was complete, the swordsmanship I learned from her would not be complete either.

Personally, I had no complaints about Kaeha's beautiful swordsmanship as it was, but if she herself was not satisfied with it, she would not be able to pass it on with confidence.

"I recommend that you work as an adventurer for three years... No, even two years—or one—would do. After all, the strongest person I know is right beside you."

The reason Clayas had called me the strongest person, rather than the most dependable, was obvious.

To him, the most dependable people were Airena and Martena—in other words, his companions from White Lake.

That would not change even if he retired from adventuring.

When Kaeha looked at me in surprise at Clayas's assessment, I felt vaguely embarrassed and looked away.

I was fairly sure I had told her at our first meeting that I could borrow the power of spirits and that archery was my specialty, but apparently she had not imagined that a swordsman of Clayas's caliber would judge me to be the strongest.

Of course, Clayas had never actually adventured with me, so his assessment was not based on an accurate grasp of my abilities.

Even so, sensing that furious water spirit at close range must have been an exceptionally powerful and memorable experience for Clayas.

That said, Clayas's words were probably something of an overestimate.

If Clayas attacked me from this distance, he would probably cut me cleanly in half before I could do anything.

At a distance, the situation would be entirely different, but at least as far as I was concerned, "the strongest" was a label far beyond me.

But leaving that aside, Kaeha had one problem if she was going to work as an adventurer.

If Kaeha became an adventurer and started taking on monster hunts and bandit extermination jobs, particularly in pursuit of actual combat, her mother would be left alone in this house.

No matter how much her lung disease had healed, Kaeha probably could not leave her physically frail mother alone for a long time.

The next day, before Clayas headed to the Lodran Greatswordsmanship dojo, Kaeha begged him to cross swords with her.

Clayas agreed, and the two faced each other with swords in hand... and Kaeha was defeated without being able to do a thing.

The reason was simple: the moment Clayas took up his stance against her, Kaeha no longer knew how to attack him.

Having done nothing but repeat forms and practice swings, Kaeha was decisively lacking both the technique to force an opening in an opponent who had none and the mindset required to do so.

Because she had trained enough to recognize that her opponent had no openings, she paradoxically had no idea what to do and could not move at all.

Truly unable to do anything but hesitate, Kaeha was forced to recognize her own shortcoming and surrendered with an expression of despair.

Clayas looked at Kaeha, then at me, and left the Yosogi Style dojo.

The wound he left her with was deep.

But if she could not heal it, she would never be able to continue as a swordsman.

He had probably made Kaeha confront her own shortcoming because he thought that.

He had probably done so believing that I would somehow handle what came afterward.

What a guy.

Still... ah, I should be grateful to Clayas.

Kaeha's weakness was something only a swordsman more skilled than her could teach her about.

No one but Clayas could have taught her that without inflicting a mortal wound on her heart.

But even so, Clayas was still taking Kaeha a little too lightly.

After all, she was the sword master I had chosen.