Sparring (2)
Xenia stared blankly at the broken hilt of the wooden sword still clutched in her hand. The cross-section was brutally torn apart. The massive amount of mana she had forcibly poured into it had overwhelmed the blade, causing it to explode from the inside out.
'You're so obsessed with orthodoxy that you're cramming your mana into the rigid frame of a sword.'
The chilling voice of the freshman, Leon, still echoed in her ears. Her face burned with wounded pride. She wanted to grab him by the collar and demand an explanation right then and there. But she was a swordswoman. She wasn't foolish enough to fail to understand what her defeat just now meant as someone who wielded a blade.
He was right.
Xenia's swordsmanship was like the perfect textbook example of the Empire's knightly order, but it was far too narrow and rigid a vessel to contain her overflowing mana.
Ha, this is ridiculous.
Xenia roughly tousled her hair in frustration. She hated to admit it, but that freshman had seen through the painful truth she had ignored for years in a single sparring match. Just how had a new student developed eyes like that?
Unlike her—someone who had blindly clung to a sword style that didn't even suit her simply because she idolized the Imperial Knight Order—his insight was on another level.
"Ugh. Fine. They say there's no hierarchy in learning, after all."
She had clearly lost to Leon and gained some bitter advice in the process. Still, that didn't change her determination to teach him swordsmanship. She wasn't trying to undermine his fierce efforts, but in the worst possible moment, what saved your life wasn't some clever trick—it was the fundamentals drilled into your body through mindless repetition.
She wasn't telling him to memorize the entire Imperial swordsmanship manual like she had after getting thoroughly beaten by her junior in a spar. The point was to build a solid, unshakable foundation that would support you to the very end when you found yourself in a deadly crisis.
Having organized her thoughts, Xenia whispered so quietly that only she could hear.
Xenia nodded to herself with some effort, muttering under her breath. It was definitely not an excuse to follow Leon around. What would she even do with his attention anyway? She was simply fulfilling her duty as a senior by carefully observing and correcting her junior's shortcomings. That was all.
Having finished rationalizing it to herself, a strange emotion began to frost over in Xenia's eyes. In this world or on Earth, that emotion had the same name.
Obsession.
I let out a short sigh while staring at the holographic timetable floating in the air of my dorm room. The academy's official course registration deadline was exactly one week after the entrance ceremony. Until then, every lecture hall door remained open even without formal registration.
In other words, for one week I could freely audit classes based solely on their titles and choose the ones that suited me best.
"No need to decide right away."
I dismissed the hologram with a wave. Originally, I had drawn up a schedule with some free periods like in my college days, one that wouldn't interfere with Aurelia's growth while I quietly collected hidden pieces. But with one senior who seemed likely to keep bothering me and the massive variable named Aris—who had already deviated from the original story—I figured it would be smarter to attend as many different lectures as possible to find the most efficient path forward if I wanted to survive.
The next day, I was sitting in the lecture hall for one of the basic liberal arts courses: Understanding Ancient Myths and Ruins.
It was a class worth taking, as it covered knowledge about the gods and demons of the mythic era and even included actual field research at ruins and sanctuaries later on.
"The topic for today is the three 'World Trees.'"
The old professor's hoarse voice filled the lecture hall. According to his explanation, the gods had created three seeds for the World Trees.
The first was Yggdrasil, rooted deep within Alfheim, the nation of the elves. The gods had used it to breathe life into the surface world, and legend said the first elves were born from its initial fruit.
The second was the tree of life existing not on the ground but in the heavenly realm—Sefirot. The tree of Sefirot was said to have given birth to one archangel from each of its ten sephirot. A rather dry academic explanation followed about how, despite differing environments and characteristics, they shared the same fundamental nature as World Trees, which was why most scholars viewed elves as a subspecies or descendants of angels.
And then there was the third tree: Qliphoth.
Unlike the previous two, Qliphoth had not directly given birth to any living beings. Yet it was called the Demon Tree because during the ancient war between gods and demons, the demons had stolen one of the seeds from the gods and planted it in order to absorb all the mana and nutrients from the surface. That very region was now the nation of the demon race known as Pandemonium.
Records stated that the land touched by Qliphoth's influence had remained a barren wasteland where no life could survive for hundreds of years until the gods purified it. In the end, after the war, Qliphoth was burned and purified by the gods' holy fire. Only fragments of it were said to be kept as mythic-era relics in the Holy Nation of Saint Elysion.
Thus, Qliphoth had vanished from the world, and since Sefirot existed in the heavens rather than on the surface, the term "World Tree" usually referred to Yggdrasil.
As the tedious history lesson caused more and more students to lower their heads across the lecture hall, the professor cleared his throat lightly and changed the subject.
"Beyond its historical value, the timber of the World Trees also makes an excellent material for weapons and armor."
"Fundamentally, World Tree wood has a higher mana conductivity than most metals."
"But its greatest advantage is that, having once been a living, breathing tree, it can endlessly absorb mana no matter how much is poured into it."
The professor continued his explanation while drawing a magic circle on the blackboard.
"Ordinary weapons and armor will break under the strain if they contain too much powerful mana."
"Top-grade materials like orichalcum, mithril, adamantite, or dragonbone can withstand sudden massive mana infusions without issue."
"And compared to other mana-bearing ores, the amount they can hold is on a completely different scale."
"However, even these materials have a clear upper limit to the total amount of mana they can contain. But weapons made from World Tree wood are different."
Listening to the professor's passionate lecture, I unconsciously nodded. For a swordsman like Xenia, whose mana reserves were abnormally high, a World Tree weapon would be the perfect vessel. There would be no more incidents like yesterday, where a wooden sword exploded from mana overload. Even aside from that, if one absorbed ambient mana through the World Tree and used it, it would conserve the user's own mana—making it beneficial whether one had a lot or a little.
Since there were three World Trees in total, each would naturally possess different properties based on the environment in which it had grown.
'Then what about the Qliphoth that's being kept as a relic in the Holy Nation?'
Qliphoth was the World Tree once planted by the demons. Even if the Holy Nation had spent a long time purifying it, its origin was still tied to demonic power. Considering that my own strength was based on the abilities of the Mark of the Seven Sins, there probably wasn't a better medium than a weapon made from Qliphoth to fully accept my power.
'I'll have to think of a way to obtain at least a fragment of Qliphoth when a related event in the Holy Nation occurs later.'
I was in the middle of organizing future plans in my head when I felt an intensely prickling gaze on the back of my head. There was no need to turn around. It was the black-haired female student who had apparently been heading to a different swordsmanship department lecture, only to confirm I had entered this classroom and quietly slip in through the back door.
Xenia.
My sixth sense wasn't some shallow skill that could be fooled by keeping distance. The problem was that this sixth sense was still incomplete.
I slowly closed my eyes and opened them again. During combat, the amount of information my sixth sense took in was so vast that it was difficult for my brain to process. I had tried restricting all visual data except for the flow of mana to black and white, but losing color information in real combat was indeed a painful drawback. It made it easy to miss subtle changes in the environment during a fight.
'Should I increase the size of my vessel—that is, my mana capacity itself?'
'Or should I repeatedly force my brain to adapt to this insane volume of information?'
Either path would be difficult. Since no clear answer came to mind right away, I quietly let out a sigh.
Haa.
For now, I needed to deal with Xenia behind me before worrying about my incomplete sixth sense. Remembering how persistently she had followed Aurelia around in the original story, demanding sparring matches, it was highly likely she would soon latch onto me the same way.
The sparring itself wasn't a big problem, but if I kept her company until that monstrous competitive spirit of hers was satisfied, my training time would clearly vanish entirely. And if I coldly refused her?
It was obvious—she would hover around with every excuse imaginable, being a nuisance, and eventually start openly whining. I could see it like a video playing in my head.
'How can I draw a proper line and shake her off appropriately?'
Between making a timetable, securing Qliphoth, controlling my sixth sense, and now Xenia on top of it all... it was truly a day filled with things to handle and worries to ponder.