Chapter 43
As always, five people gathered in the clearing beneath the warm dawn breeze. Lydia, Aria, and Morgan sat on a rock and watched.
There.
Two wooden swords clashed.
Clack!
The wooden blades crossed and scraped against each other. Then, with a grinding sound, the test of strength began. The two fighters gritted their teeth and pressed their swords together.
“!”
“!”
It was Arti and Mave.
“Hngh!”
Mave gritted her teeth and grabbed the blade with her other hand. Arti grabbed his blade, too. They were now locked in a pure test of strength.
The two wooden swords showered sawdust as they tried to shove each other back.
The black-haired girl muttered in a voice like a wolf’s growl.
“Country bumpkin…! I won’t lose…!”
“Guh…!”
Arti tried to redirect the force carefully. But his wooden sword was slowly inching toward his neck. He was being overpowered.
‘Damn it! If we’re talking pure strength, Mave might be even more ridiculously strong than that holy knight from before…?! Is this for real?’
A man and a woman.
Ignition and Flow.
A holy knight and a girl.
By any measure, they shouldn’t have been comparable….
But Mave was overpowering him. Her strength was like that of a massive bull bearing down on him.
“Hah—!”
Grrrk!
At last, the wooden sword slowly pressed against Arti’s neck. The rough wood thudded heavily against his throat. The sensation felt so real that it sent a chill through him.
“…!”
If it had been a real sword,
it would have cut through the veins in his neck, leaving him thrashing in agony.
It would have been a fatal wound, even with Aria right there.
‘Aria….’
At the thought,
chills crawled up his arms.
Damn Mave.
She gets stronger by the day.
She was strong enough to be terrifying if he ever had to face her as an enemy.
‘We’re both at the Flow stage, so why is Mave so ridiculously strong…? I can barely make my power explode with the Sacred Sword. Is there some other technique?’
At last, Arti admitted defeat.
“…I lost.”
“Hehe…!”
Mave laughed and lowered her wooden sword. Her sweat-soaked black hair swayed, and a mischievous smile spread across her face.
The sparring match was over.
The two of them paid each other the respect due to fellow knights.
Clack!
Arti sighed and thought,
‘Even when I ask Mave to teach me how to use my strength, her explanations are so awful I can’t understand a thing.’
-Put the power in your hips, then BAM! Into your heart, WHAM! Aaaah!
-….
-Get it, country bumpkin?
-I get that you’re an idiot.
After that, he gave up asking Mave.
Watching them,
Lydia said calmly,
“Arti, do you want to learn how to amplify your strength through mana control?”
“!”
It was always like this.
His real teacher was someone else.
Arti nodded vigorously.
“Yes. I only know how to make my strength explode all at once with the Sacred Sword’s power. But afterward, my body feels a little wrecked…. When I see Mave using her strength, she doesn’t seem to be pushing herself that hard. I’m curious how she does it.”
“Hmm.”
Lydia nodded.
Then she immediately diagnosed the problem.
‘Perhaps because he learned the Sacred Sword’s healing ability first, he got used to damaging his body to make his strength explode. It didn’t matter if his muscles tore themselves apart; he could just heal them afterward.’
A self-taught Hero’s approach to abusing his muscles.
To put it in game terms,
Arti had learned a self-damaging buff right from the start. At first it felt like an all-purpose buff, but relying on it too much kept him from learning to use his strength more skillfully.
‘…Because he can just overpower everything with damage.’
Just like now.
‘It’s a weakness he absolutely has to fix if he wants to become a Sword Master.’
Beside them, Aria tilted her head. She was poking the beautiful abs of Mave, who had been tormenting Arti, with her finger.
“Couldn’t you just unleash as much strength as possible and then heal with the Sacred Sword’s power? It doesn’t matter how you kill them, right? If you can turn the monsters into corpses, I think Arti’s method is fine. I can tear them apart with my bare hands, too.”
It was a fairly kind defense, but
Arti and Mave looked devastated by her words.
“Aria…. Monster blood is filthy, you know.”
“What a violent way of thinking. Are all people from the Theocracy like that?”
Morgan frowned and turned a page.
“….”
Lydia chuckled and said,
“You have a point. But… suppose Aria had the Sacred Sword, and Arti were in a situation where he needed tremendous strength. What would you do?”
“Huh? I think I’d stab the Sacred Sword into that bast— that person’s stomach.”
“They are very far apart.”
“Then I’d sweep them away with the Sacred Sword’s holy wave.”
“Your love runs deep. But wouldn’t Arti need time to escape?”
“Ah….”
Aria nodded shyly.
“You’re right…. Arti can’t get caught up in it. I didn’t think it through.”
“That’s true. But your method is also useful when fighting alongside your closest friend, so don’t take it to heart. If need be, you can charge in and snap their neck.”
“Yes!”
Lydia looked back at Arti.
“Then let’s discuss this assuming Aria can’t help.”
“…Yes.”
“Until now, you’ve probably been intuitively pumping mana into your muscles, like scooping water with one hand and splashing it around. Even that let you use far more strength than usual.”
“Yes.”
“Mave’s method goes one step further. She curls her palm slightly to keep the water from spilling everywhere, then tilts it little by little so it doesn’t scatter.”
“!”
Huh.
That makes sense.
Lydia continued,
“In short, what matters is creating a precise ‘path’ and using ‘only as much as you need.’ With your mana heart—the second heart—and your actual heart at the center, you create a ‘path’ that keeps your strength from leaking away.”
“Whoa…!”
“This is the instinct of talented swordsmen. Mave had an exceptional sense for it from birth, so she mastered the method on her own.”
“Whoaaa…!”
Arti was impressed.
The explanation made sense at once.
Lydia calmly finished explaining.
“Since we’ve already finished sparring today, starting tomorrow, let’s add fifteen minutes of focused training before each sparring session. You can also test it little by little while playing around with Aria.”
“Yes!”
From analyzing the cause to finding a solution….
Arti looked at Lydia with admiration.
‘Lydia really is different. She’s a teacher beyond compare to that stupid bear of a woman.’
Beside him, the stupid bear was wiping her nose.
Mave spoke proudly. She seemed pleased that Lydia had interpreted her words so accurately.
“That’s what I meant. As expected, Lady Lydia understands everything.”
“….”
“….”
“….”
Lydia declared, pretending she hadn’t heard.
“That concludes today’s training. Good work, everyone.”
“Good work!”
“Good work!”
*
After swordsmanship class,
Mave walked beside Lydia with her arms folded, laughing.
“Hahaha! Did you see how the Theology Department lot couldn’t even look this way? It was adorable, watching them tremble before the majesty of Gallian royalty.”
“They’re confused because they have no department head to guide them. Rather than being awed by my majesty, they’re simply unused to wandering aimlessly.”
“Y-yes, that’s true….”
Just as Mave had said,
some Theology Department cadets were wandering around the swordsmanship training grounds. After Cardinal Albert’s corruption was exposed, they had followed the Prayer Priest’s instructions as their temporary department head.
-True faith is tested by the unknown. Attend joint classes alongside cadets from other departments.
-W-what did you say…?! W-what about the chapel…?!
-It has long since become a ruin. And faith does not come from a place. Get used to it.
-….
The Theology Department cadets were dejected.
Mave had secretly found it satisfying to see the people of the Theocracy, who had always regarded the people of Gallia as ‘religious lackeys,’ looking so downcast.
Aria complained beside Arti.
“It’s true Lydia is imposing… but, separate from that, I don’t think it’s right to laugh at our brothers and sisters’ confusion.”
“S-sorry.”
Arti shrugged and said,
“Considering how determined you were to beat the nobles’ faction in both swordsmanship and pride, you should reflect on throwing around someone else’s authority….”
“…?!”
Mave was startled by the couple’s consecutive criticisms. She’d forgotten that two of her friends were a couple, bound together as the Saintess and the Hero.
She tried to explain herself again, looking close to tears.
“I-it’s not that… I mean, Lady Lydia….”
“?”
“Well, uh….”
But Mave wasn’t good with words, so she only blushed and floundered. Once again, Lydia came to her rescue.
“Arti, Aria, ease your minds. Mave doesn’t truly hate the Theocracy.”
“!”
Lydia nodded and said,
“My own heart sympathizes with what she meant, too. The expressions of those who looked down on her country and people must have flashed through her mind as fragments of memory. And doesn’t she care for me so much that she sees me as the representative of Gallia?”
“Lady Lydia…!”
“Even so, as Arti and Aria said, being able to consider their circumstances rather than the passing emotions of the moment is also a form of strength. Think of today’s feelings as an opportunity to learn that.”
“…Yes.”
Lydia smiled and clasped Mave’s hand. At the warmth of her touch, Mave’s eyes widened.
“Thank you for being proud of me and Gallia, future knight.”
“…Yes.”
Mave was moved.
‘I’ll… make sure I receive my formal knighthood from Lady Lydia.’
And she would swear
that she would become the first sword protecting Gallian royalty.
The two walked along, swinging their joined hands back and forth, while Arti and Aria followed behind, smiling brightly again. No one dared challenge them.
The cadets murmured enviously.
-The princess, the Saintess, and the Hero… and Mave, too?
-Well, with Mave’s skill, she’s good enough to be with them….
-I’m jealous…. Even a commoner can join them if they have talent.
Mave’s lips curled up. She was proud that what she’d earned through her own skill was the warmth of the hand she felt now.
Not the Hero,
nor the Saintess….
Just as a knight.
She was walking hand in hand with royalty.
As their closest friend.
“…Hehe.”
She smiled brightly, proud of that fact.
-H-hey! Hey—! Y-you, you knight trash! Whose hand are you holding right now—?!
Until the witch, whose face had turned as red as her hair, came chasing after them.