Self-Defense (2)
After Han Seohwa’s afternoon general course ended, I headed to the training grounds for the usual special lesson.
Professor Seres was waiting for me with the same cold, unflinching gaze as always, none of yesterday’s gloom lingering on her face.
"You’re on time again. Here, take this."
Professor Seres reached into subspace and pulled something out.
"This is... a gauntlet?"
Though it was shaped like a glove, every groove in its surface was set with mana.
"You recognized it quickly. Today’s lesson will be conducted with gauntlets."
With that confirmation, Professor Seres also fumbled out her own gauntlets.
Compared to mine, they looked badly stripped down; I couldn’t see any mana stones at all, and I couldn’t feel the slightest trace of mana from them.
Until now, whenever she had given me other weapons, I had used a real weapon while Professor Seres used something similar to match it, but this time there didn’t seem to be any meaningful difference in the weapons at all, so it looked like she’d simply removed the mana entirely.
With that thought in mind, I lifted the gauntlet I’d been handed and frowned.
This is way too big, isn’t it?
The gauntlet was too large and too heavy to fit my tiny hand.
While I was adjusting the angle and studying it from every side, wondering whether Professor Seres had accidentally given me the wrong one, she looked at me standing there blankly and spoke up.
"Surprised by the size? Put your hand inside the gauntlet, then infuse it with mana. From what I’ve heard, you already know how to apply mana properly."
As I tilted my head and stared at the gauntlet, Professor Seres offered the advice.
Who had she heard that from? I hadn’t exactly shown off mana application in front of her all that often, so it was probably Han Seohwa who told her.
Thinking that, I awkwardly slipped my hand into the massive gauntlet.
The thumb alone was bigger than I’d expected, wide enough to fit two of my fingers.
Recognize the core...
I sensed the core where it lay near my heart, then moved the mana packed inside it toward my arm.
After that, I refined the mana from my fingers, or more broadly from my whole hand, and generated my own mana output.
- Whiiing- click.
The blue mana stones flashed brilliantly the instant they came into contact with my mana, accepting it at once.
The sensation was similar to the magic tool I’d used during the mana application lesson with Han Seohwa.
The difference was that the training tool had been made for education, so I had to handle nearly every step myself, whereas this gauntlet started absorbing my mana almost as soon as I fed enough into it, without requiring much more from me.
After soaking up a fair amount of my mana, the gauntlet finally finished adapting. Pieces shifted and moved in the air, then transformed until it fit my hand perfectly and locked into place.
Once it had become a gauntlet tailored exactly to me, the heavy weight I’d felt before was gone, and it had become so light I could swing it around without any strain at all.
"Remember the process you just went through. Most monster-combat magic tools are handled that way."
Even after that, Professor Seres kept explaining.
Magic tools, as the name implied, were weapons used through mana. To provide the user with maximum convenience, they accepted the owner’s mana and transformed themselves into the tool’s best possible state.
"That gauntlet was too large and too heavy for you, so once it accepted your mana, it changed into a size and weight suited to you."
In other words, the gauntlet had been far too large for me, and once it recognized that, it had reshaped itself into a weapon that fit me.
It was more interesting than I expected, so I kept staring at the gauntlet in fascination.
"Then let’s begin sparring."
And just like that, the spar with Professor Seres began as usual.
The only thing that was different was the weapon. But weapons were always the sort of thing that counted as a difference, so I decided not to dwell on it.
"Here I come."
With that simple declaration, Professor Seres charged at me.
She drew her right arm back while thrusting her left hand forward.
- Whoosh!
As before, I made just enough space to react, then slipped away from the attack.
But that had only been the first exchange. As if she had expected it, Professor Seres immediately pulled her arm back and threw a left punch.
Since this time it was a gauntlet and not another kind of weapon, the fight had become an ultra-close exchange.
- Bang!
The distance was too close to evade, so I barely managed to block it by raising both arms.
"Ghk..."
The impact that ran through the gauntlet was bad enough, but with someone other than Han Riae getting this close to me, my anthropophobia started flaring up again.
I clenched my teeth and endured the blurring of my mind, then hurriedly retreated.
If it had been another weapon, I could have kept some distance and harassed her from there, but because a gauntlet demanded close range, the symptoms kept surfacing in my body.
As I felt the successive blows Professor Seres kept launching at me through mana erosion, I kept dodging them.
- Crack!
The moment I saw an opening, I threw a straight punch.
But as if she had anticipated that too, Professor Seres lowered one hand lightly to defend, then twisted her body to find my opening and struck back with frightening speed.
As I felt the mana in her fist, it was a blow that seemed far more deliberate than I’d expected.
I couldn’t raise my arm to block it without taking a vicious hit, and I was too close to evade it.
... Self-defense?
Thinking quickly about what to do, I suddenly remembered the self-defense technique Han Seohwa had taught in the morning general course.
A technique that uses only a tiny amount of mana.
From the very start of our lessons, Professor Seres had told me that I could use whatever means I wanted, as long as it worked.
Of course, I had never intended to use anything as crude as powerful magic or underhanded tricks, but there was no way I could stop the attack coming at me now.
So, just like Han Seohwa had done, I drew out only the smallest amount of mana and tightened my stance while gripping that mana in my hand.
Then I met Professor Seres’s incoming strike head-on.
- KWA-A-A-A-BOOM!
"?! "
It produced an explosion on an entirely different scale from the one Han Seohwa had unleashed on Miel, forcing Professor Seres to step back.
Today as well, I sparred with Lim Paran using yet another different weapon.
Yesterday, I hadn’t really inflicted any pain on him before we finished, and since class had ended quickly, the results hadn’t matched the day before.
"Hmm..."
That didn’t mean he hadn’t grown at all, of course, only that he had grown less than he had the previous day.
He had definitely improved, and even at a glance, his movements now were clearly a step beyond yesterday’s Lim Paran.
Yesterday, he had moved in a manner similar to Friday’s style, creating space for himself, but as if still unable to handle too much, he hadn’t used the entire vast training grounds. Instead, he had carved out his own little domain, moving his feet skillfully to evade my attacks.
Unlike Friday, who met my strikes head-on and traded blows by freely responding to my attacks, Lim Paran had been choosing to evade whenever possible, reading my openings and only answering the attacks he absolutely had to block, waiting for his chance.
And now he had brought a gauntlet, a weapon centered on close combat. At first he looked flustered by how close it forced him to stand, his face tightening, but he adapted quickly and began watching for an opening to attack me.
Still, there were signs of immaturity. After his clumsy attempt to strike me failed, I had been about to point out the flaw in his movement and judgment from that attack, when...
... Hm?
Far from failing to block my blow, Lim Paran seemed to gather his strength as though he intended to answer my attack with a direct clash.
- KWA-A-A-CRACK!
Feeling the intense explosion that erupted in an instant, I hurriedly stepped back.
An unfamiliar blast, completely different from the one I had used yesterday, had just detonated.
"Lim Paran! Just what in the world did you do...?"
"Ghk..."
I had started to scowl and shout at him, but the moment I saw him, the words I’d meant to say had already turned to blank paper in my head.
Bright red blood had been sprayed across the radius of the blast. Lim Paran, apparently caught in the explosion, had been flung far back and slammed into the wall, where he clutched at one hand...
And the hand he was gripping and hiding was already soaked through, mangled into a ruined mass as blood kept pouring from it.
"Gghh..."
I saw Lim Paran trembling in tears, enduring the agony of that ruined hand with all his strength.
Even to my own eyes, it looked as if unimaginable pain must be surging through him, and yet that tiny body was doing everything it could not to scream, only groaning through it. My heart became so heavy I could hardly bear it.
Without time to think, I ran to him and reached out to check the injury, but...
- Swat!
"I-I’m... r-really sorry... b-but... I’ll try to hold on by myself... so p-please don’t come any closer..."
He shoved my hand away swiftly and backed off from me, his face completely drained of color with fear as he forced out a dull, strained voice.
He was covered in cold sweat, his eyes had lost focus, and his whole body was shaking. It was heartbreaking to see.
I had noticed one detail in the information I’d received about Lim Paran before.
Anthropophobia...
The moment another human approached him even slightly or tried to make contact, he would go into a panic attack and tremble with fear.
At first, I’d only thought it was an unusual constitution, but...
"Ggh... ngh..."
Watching him grit his teeth until blood seeped onto his lips while he endured the pain, unable to ask for help even from me standing right in front of him, I was struck hard by just how cruel this must be for a child like him.
He had already entered Sielm Academy burdened with the heavy honor of being a special admission student, and he had started from even worse conditions than others, having lost his memories and been left with physical abilities below even the average superhuman level.
Mana erosion might now function like a unique ability that helped him, but what if his body had never adapted to it, and it was merely a state of death postponed?
He was living with the fear of carrying a ticking time bomb inside his body, never knowing when it might go off.
There was no guarantee that any blood relatives connected to him were even nearby, and if he had anyone to lean on at all, it was only a single classmate.
"Teacher!"
Maybe even more than that child...
"Lim Paran... how far does that fear extend?"
"Hah... contact mostly triggers a panic attack... Even if someone just comes close enough to enter my field of vision, I panic.... Ggh!"
"I see... Lim Paran. Close your eyes for a moment."
"Y-Yes..."
From the information I had been given, contact itself triggered the panic, and the same was true if someone came too close to his field of vision.
Then...
"It’ll sting a little, so bear with it."
Wouldn’t it be solved if I blocked his sight completely and removed the sensation from his hand?
I ordered Lim Paran to close his eyes and wrapped the arm that had been reduced to a ruined mess in mana, pulling it tight with all my strength.
"Can you feel anything?"
"No..."
It was a piece of quick improvisation I had occasionally used in the middle of battle back when I was active in the Demon Front.
With no sensation in the arm, he wouldn’t feel the contact either, so I started treatment quickly before it could trigger another panic attack.
Even with these precautions, he was still trembling, so I needed to finish fast.
I disinfected the mangled hand with mana, poured healing potion over it, wrapped it in bandages, and then finished by winding mana around it.
After that, I ended the temporary treatment and stepped back from Lim Paran, telling him to open his eyes.
"How is it? Does it still hurt that much?"
"... It’s definitely better than before..."
He was breathing hard, but he sounded more composed now.
"By the way, what was that from earlier?"
The explosion from before had been completely different from the one I knew. It had felt alien, unlike mana application; it was more like he had simply compressed the mana and detonated it.
"Ah, that was something I learned in the morning... it’s called self-defense..."
"So you used it with that level of force in mind?"
"N-no... when Han Seohwa used it, it wasn’t this big..."
That Han Seohwa bastard...
Lim Paran explained the rest to me. It was only a matter of gripping a tiny amount of mana and striking with it, and when Han Seohwa used it, the explosion hadn’t been that large, but when he did, it had burst with far too much power.
"Don’t use that technique again. Even if you were to injure yourself and undergo recovery training, the wounds would be too deep. All that would remain are permanent scars."
"... Yes."
After I said that, I watched him for a moment, and then...
"What are you doing now?"
"Sparring... isn’t over yet..."
It isn’t over yet, right?
"..."
As time passed, his figure began to overlap with that of someone else.
That brat, who would foam at the mouth if he didn’t learn something, no matter how little, and throw a fit until he got his way.
Lim Paran was still wearing the bandage that had begun to soak through with blood, and the gauntlet was still on his hand.
"Stop. Today’s lesson is over, so go to the infirmary at once."
"Ah, yes. Thank you for the lesson..."
Stubborn little fool... even after I had told him clearly, he was still staring at the gauntlet as though something were missing.
"Hah... learning things is good, but treating the injuries you get while learning comes first. We’ll do this again tomorrow."
Only then did Lim Paran seem to understand, and he nodded as he looked at me.
"See you tomorrow, Professor..."
See you tomorrow, Teacher!
Though I tried to reject that farewell, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
How could I ignore a child that frail, trembling as he insisted on thanking me anyway?
"Yes. See you tomorrow."
It was a feeling I hadn’t experienced in a very long time.
"La-la-la~~"
After her afternoon major course ended, Han Seohwa hummed lightly to herself as she headed back to the faculty office in a cheerful mood.
"Han Seohwa... just what exactly did you teach Lim Paran...?"
"... Huh?! "
There, she found Professor Seres glaring at her, her killing intent far stronger than usual...