by Aneko Yusagi
“You’re better than I thought.”
“This is all I’ve done with my life. Now, Sword Hero, come at me!”
“You asked for it! Time to get serious.”
He rushed at her, swinging his sword heavily, then followed up with a quick V-shaped slice.
I don’t know much about sword fighting, but I think it was some sort of reverse cut.
From where I was standing, it looked like children pretending to sword fight. One attack didn’t seem to lead into the next.
Eclair used the broadside of her blade to parry his attacks, then brought the blade around horizontally, to swipe at his face.
“?!”
Ren was clearly surprised, though he was able to get out of the way without ruining his form.
But he left himself open. Eclair saw the opening and sliced down at him, moving the blade overhead.
Ren saw it coming and jumped backwards to avoid it.
“Ha!”
He recovered his footing and charged her.
Eclair rooted her feet to the ground and thrust forward. Ren had to pivot around the blade to avoid its point, and in doing so he exposed his backside. Noticing his mistake, he immediately jumped away.
What kind of a move was that? It didn’t look very cool. Eclair watched him try to recover, apparently rendered speechless by what she was seeing.
From what I could tell, Ren was slowly being put on the defense.
“Ha! I’m impressed that you were able to avoid my attack!”
“What? Excuse me, but Sword Hero, did you dodge my last thrust like that on purpose? Is that how you handle a sword in the world you are from? I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Eclair seemed to be genuinely disappointed in him.
I thought it looked pretty ridiculous too. Why would he show his back and then jump away? Anyone could have just attacked his back.
The two of them kept talking to each other as they traded attacks and blocks.
It looked like Eclair was slowly pushing him back.
She had mostly stopped cutting and parrying. Most of her movements now were thrusts.
Ren had to spend most of his time dodging, jumping to the left and right. It kind of looked like he was just doing whatever he could to keep his distance from her.
“Ha!”
Ren, suddenly decisive, jumped back and kept his distance.
What was that huge back step supposed to mean?
“Not so fast!”
Ren had jumped back to get some distance, but Eclair dashed forward and was right up against him in a heartbeat.
Her sword was ready, and she thrust at his chest. He was wide open.
“No way! Air strike bash!”
“Damn!”
Ren’s sword suddenly flashed a bright light, and Eclair’s sword was knocked from her hand.
“Well. You got me to use a skill. You must really know what you are doing.”
“That means you lost, right?
I know it was just a training drill, but I stepped forward and made sure Ren knew he’d lost.
He could try and be cool if he wanted to, but the rules were the rules.
“I just let her win.”
“Oh yeah? It looked to me like you knew you couldn’t win on your swordsmanship alone, so you cheated.”
Eclair said nothing. She looked irritated that Ren had stooped so low.
“The rule against skills was just something you randomly said.”
“If that’s true, then you would have been alright with Eclair using magic in the middle of your duel, right?”
Obviously he’d known he was going to lose the fight, so he decided to forfeit by breaking a rule. That was the less humiliating way to lose.
Then he said that he admitted she was a strong fighter because he’d had to use a skill.
Didn’t he realize that was the least cool way he could have handled the situation?
“There are no rules in a real battle!”
“Oh, right. Yeah. Got it. Okay.”
Even Motoyasu and Itsuki looked annoyed by Ren’s behavior.
“You’re at a really low level, so anytime I use just a fraction of my real power, this is what happens. You need to be stronger if you want to fight me for real.”
“Sword Hero, is that all you wish to say?”
Eclair was trembling. She must have been really angry.
I understood how she felt. She’d spent her life working on her swordsmanship. Of course she would be irritated if someone condescended to her on those terms.
“What?”
“At first I’d thought you were using a style from another world, but in the end, anyone could see you were being dominated. To be honest, I don’t believe you have anything to teach me about swordsmanship at all.”
“You only think that because you’re so green. Go train for a while and come back.”
“Really, Ren? I think you might be the green one here.”
Ren looked very irritated by what I said. He glared at me.
“I once fought a top player in Brave Star Online. Granted, he was a top player in a different game, but I still beat him! And you call me green?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You said the same thing once, Naofumi. You managed one of the most powerful guilds in an online game once!”
He was right. I had told him about that.
It was when I was trying to convince them that I knew what I was talking about when we were planning a battle formation to take on a coming wave.
“Well, this is just like that. My skills with the sword are first-rate.”
“All I said was that I have experience managing teams. Don’t you think that’s a little different from claiming practical battle experience?”
He seemed to be very proud that he’d once defeated a random player in an online game, but that type of victory was obviously no good for anyone when we were talking about battle skills in the real world.
I was a good example of that too.
Back in my world, I had managed one of the top guilds in a popular online game.
But now I was in another world all together. According to Ren’s theory, I was in Brave Star Online. Even if I knew what the rules were, I could win a battle just by wanting to.
Granted, that didn’t mean I was necessarily going to lose. But it was a different world. Some of the things I’d learned elsewhere might not be applicable.
So even if I had skills from another game, it didn’t mean that I was going to be able to put them to use here.
And that’s exactly what had happened. I’d been stuck with a shield instead of a weapon. That meant that the way I fought in this world had to be completely different from anything I’d already learned.
In a situation like that, who would expect me to just walk on up and win battles?
Even if you knew the controls, the rules were different. A top player in one game might not even be average in another game.
“It’s the same thing to me.”
“No, it’s not. If there are any differences between what you’ve learned and the reality you’re in now, then you’ll lose. Trust me. I know all about it. Did I ever say what I knew from my guild was definitely going to be applicable here?”
“Meh.”
“Meh? I don’t think so. You seem to be pretty satisfied with your victory, but do you think you could win if you stuck to the rules?”
Ren crossed his arms and looked away.
Why was he so haughty? He could only win a battle when it was set up to guarantee him victory!
That confidence of his was full of holes. It would come crumbling down someday.
“What’s the point in being proud of yourself for winning a game you’re already better at anyway?”
“Yeah! I actually agree with Naofumi this time! You’re proud of yourself for beating someone who was good at a different game?”
“I actually agree with him also. It looks like you think highly
of yourself for winning when you’ve forced your opponent to play an RPG they are unfamiliar with.”
Even Motoyasu and Itsuki agreed with me. Ren seemed irritated by their outbursts.
“You’re only saying that because you don’t understand what VR is really like!”
“You’re right. I don’t. But look at how upset you are about it. That makes me think that maybe in your world, this person you beat in Brave Star Online was a top player in a game that wasn’t VR.”
I felt like I was starting to understand what was going on here.
He was thrilled with himself because he’d won a battle against a famous player. That could only mean one thing.
When he saw Motoyasu and Itsuki’s reaction, Ren seemed to understand that he was starting to look pretty bad. He pointed his sword at Eclair and shouted.
“Whatever! You’re weak!”
“You . . . !”
Eclair was about to scream, but the queen stepped between them and shot Eclair a menacing look.
“Do not disgrace the Seaetto name. Calm down.”
“Forgive me.”
“Please understand that we have requested your assistance in our training efforts and that this training is of the upmost importance. You are the country’s combat advisor, and in doing so you must help us prepare for the coming wave. I believe we discussed the necessity of teamwork during the meeting.”
The queen was very forceful in telling Eclair to stand down.
But if we didn’t find someone to make the other heroes understand their own weakness, then it was looking like they weren’t going to participate in the training that we had planned.
“Of course. I understand.”
Our immediate goal was to make the other heroes stronger. We had to do whatever we could to make an environment that would contribute to that goal.
The other heroes and their parties were standing around looking very satisfied with themselves. I hope they didn’t think that they were going to get out of this.
We needed to start working together.
And so we decided to listen to the advice of the old lady about Hengen Muso Style and leave to go begin our ascetic training.
“If we have to be mountain hermits, where are we supposed to go?”
“There is a place in the mountains where you can train, in private, to work with energy. It is a few days’ walk from here, or one day by horse or filolial. Now then, hero, it is time we departed.”
We collected our belongings and left for the mountains.
The castle guards had prepared filolials to take us there. And so we made our way deeper and deeper into the mountains.
We made it to the training spot deep in the mountains. When night fell we would be using teleportation to move, so we didn’t bother to set up a place to sleep.
There were wild dragons roaming about the nearby wilderness. We ran into them from time to time.
With all the heroes together they weren’t too much for us to handle. I took the lead and held the monsters back, while the others dispatched them.
They were dragons, but they were nowhere near as large as the dragon zombie that we had fought a while back. These ones were only about two meters tall. That larger one we found was probably around three meters tall.
The other heroes were weak, sure, but they weren’t so underpowered that they couldn’t defeat a dragon here or there.
Finally, we reached the spot we’d been looking for. It was a shallow mountain pool complete with a waterfall.
It was late in the afternoon, and evening would be on us soon.
“This is the place for you to train with energy. Everyone, please take a deep breath and assume a meditation position.”
Meditation? She clearly didn’t understand the kind of people we were working with here.
Motoyasu clearly didn’t care. He climbed up onto a large boulder and crossed his legs.
They’d been complaining the whole way, so I wasn’t feeling very optimistic about our prospects.
“God, what a PAIN!”
I could hear Bitch whining off in the distance.
A shadow appeared and whispered something in her ear. She made an irritated face before walking over and sitting down next to Motoyasu.
The other parties all did the same thing. They complained a little bit before finally sitting down.
“Mr. Naofumi.”
“Hm...”
Raphtalia did the same. She sat down, closed her eyes, and began to breathe deeply.
I followed her lead. I sat down and tried to concentrate.
We were supposed to focus, but what exactly were we supposed to feel when we were sitting down?
Besides, I wasn’t really sure what “energy” even was.
I guessed that it was different from magic. Eclair had left trails through the air with her sword though, so I guess that this energy stuff was something like that?
I felt like it would be easier to understand how to manipulate energy if I could figure out what it was.
Only heroes had SP. Was it something else?
For heroes, soul-healing water would restore SP. But for normal people, soul-healing water just helped them concentrate or could bring people back to normal if they had been knocked unconscious.
That made me wonder if this “energy” they were talking about really referred to SP.
Although, come to think of it, I didn’t really know what SP was either. Did it stand for “soul points”?
That actually gave me an idea.
I wondered if it felt anything like how it had felt when I first learned how to use magic.
The first time that happened, I had touched a fragment that the accessory dealer had given me. When I did, I was suddenly able to feel the magic power inside of me. Now, whenever I imbued an object with magic, it felt a bit like I was moving another arm that I’d never known I had before.
It felt similar whenever I used magic in battle.
I wonder. If I were to approach energy the same way, maybe I could learn to control it the same way as I learned to control SP.
I decided to try using my SP the same way that I had learned to use magic.
I sat there and spent about 30 minutes trying to manipulate it, but then...
“Good! That is enough meditation for today!”
The old lady clapped her hands loudly, signaling the end of the session.
“This all seems completely useless to me.”
Motoyasu didn’t waste any time getting to his complaints.
I guess you could either choose to see it as a waste of time or as an opportunity to reconnect with yourself.
Ren and Itsuki probably agreed with him, judging from how grumpy they looked.
“Now then, I suggest we move on to sparring work. Is there a hero who would be so kind as to act as my partner?”
The old lady crossed her arms. The other heroes probably thought she was just a little old lady.
The three of them kept looking around, trying to see which one would have to agree to work with her.
Sigh... I assumed it would come down to me. I stepped forward.
“I will.”
“Very well, holy saint. Let us begin.”
“Sure.”
I held my shield forward to defend myself.
The old lady held a stick in her right hand and held her left hand behind her back.
“Hmmm...”
She dropped her weight low and then, in an instant, appeared right in front of me.
I knew she would be coming though. She was fast, but I was ready to stop her attack because I’d expected it.
I caught her attack with my shield.
My real concern was that her attacks were defense rating attacks.
My shield reverberated in my hand. The vibrations moved up my arm and spread out to my chest.
She’d said that I needed to create a softness to let the energy out, right?
I focused my magic power in my chest and tried to guide wha
tever she had put into me back out of my body.
Ugh, it was harder than I’d thought it would be. I kept focusing though and was able to move the thing into my shoulders.
“Excellent work, holy saint. How about this?”
She came thrusting at me with the stick.
I could tell from the feeling I got when blocking her attacks that each thrust was a defense rating attack.
Ugh, I couldn’t keep up.
“Argh!”
I suddenly felt as though I’d been kicked in the stomach. She’d knocked the wind out of me. I doubled over and held my stomach in pain.
I hadn’t been able to stop her.
And I was sure she was holding back. Had she really tried to hurt me, I don’t think I would have been able to stop her first attack.
“You’ve got the right idea, but your execution is incorrect.”
“What do you mean?”
“You think you can do it with magic power, but you are wrong. You need something else as well. You must learn to manipulate your life force.”
Didn’t she realize that I was using magic power because I had no idea what she meant by life force?
The only way I was going to figure it out was by relying on the sensations I’d learned about my magic power, even if this “energy” she spoke of was something else.
The old lady went on to spar with each of the remaining heroes.
None of them were able to defend against her attacks. They all fell at her first strike.
Finally, after coming all the way out into the mountains and sparring with her, the other heroes finally understood how powerful she was.
And yet they just stood around complaining that they’d lost.
Why did they all have such a bad attitude?
They liked leveling up, didn’t they? Why couldn’t they apply that attitude to training?
“The holy saint Shield Hero fights differently than the other heroes here today. Today’s goal is to destroy these boulders using only your energy. Like this.”
The old lady touched her fingertip to a nearby boulder.
It reacted like a piece of soft tofu. Her finger slipped right in, and a massive crack appeared in the stone around it.
“This is performed without using any of the special powers available to you heroes. You can clearly see what I’ve done, so I would like you all to do the same.”
