Melee Combat (2)
The basic melee combat class, true to its name, was a lesson in sparring between people rather than fighting monsters.
Up until now, the class had covered things like the basic principles of dueling, the rules, and the different kinds there were. Even for someone like me, a complete outsider with almost no knowledge at all, it had all been the sort of information that was easy to grasp at a glance.
And today, based on everything we’d learned so far, each cadet was supposed to spar with whomever they wanted.
"All right, everyone, take your seats. Today, you’ll be sparring one another based on the theories we’ve covered so far."
Just as I’d expected, the instructor drew the cadets’ attention with a deep, booming voice.
A massive build, sharp scars visible through the skin in places, a tall man with a hard, intimidating face.
I’d heard this professor had also been a hunter who had worked in the Abyss, just like Professors Han Seohwa and Seres.
But the difference between him and those two was that, unlike the pair of relatively new professors, he was a veteran who had been active at Sielm for years.
Maybe that was why, despite his fearsome appearance, he was one of the more popular professors, with excellent evaluations to his name.
I’d never felt it firsthand, since I didn’t have any one-on-one special lessons with Professor Seres, but I’d heard this professor’s specialty lectures filled up almost immediately.
The professor specializing in melee combat: Blackwin Tenax.
A 1st Class Hunter (Low Rank).
Rank 12.
He was retired now. From what I’d heard, he’d stepped away because of the mental strain of the Abyss, taken a temporary break as a guest professor at Sielm, and then been invited to stay after the students rated him so highly that the headmaster personally paid an enormous fee to secure him.
It was hard to imagine that the same man could have hunted monsters with that enormous greatsword, the one he’d likely once slammed into the ground with one hand.
"Choose someone who matches your level, or someone you want to challenge, and ask them for a spar. Of course, the person who receives the request has the right to refuse."
After Professor Blackwin finished speaking, he turned his back to the class and headed for his seat.
At those words, most of the cadets began moving around to find opponents who suited them.
"Hmm... who should I spar with..."
Han Riae, sitting beside me with her arms crossed, murmured softly. If anything, she seemed to have such a high level that there wasn’t anyone nearby she felt was worth sparring with.
"Riae, why don’t you spar with Yoon Hwayeon?"
"Hmm? Hwayeon? I already sparred with her before, and I’m just not really feeling it."
"I see..."
Riae was avoiding a spar with Yoon Hwayeon, saying she’d already fought her in an afternoon specialty class and knew her too well to feel excited about it.
"Um... Paran, I’m going to go see the professor for a moment, okay?"
"Ah, yes. All right."
After fidgeting for a bit, Riae apparently made up her mind and left me with a quick word that she’d be right back after seeing the professor.
With Riae gone, I drifted a little away from the cluster of cadets and thought about who I might spar with next.
- thud, thud, thud
While I was thinking, a shadow fell across me, and with it came that unpleasant tremor I had never gotten used to, no matter how many times I felt it.
"U-um... who are you...?"
"Hm, that’s right."
The combat-major cadet, apparently convinced by the way I flinched and trembled, nodded to himself and continued.
"Lim Paran, was it? Spar with me."
A combat-major cadet, lean muscles visible beneath his uniform, had asked me for a spar.
Even though I’d moved away from the other cadets and found a corner to stand in, the moment my name and the word sparring were said in the same sentence, most of the cadets’ attention snapped in this direction.
My trembling grew worse, but I did my best to force my mind to work.
Did I know him, or had he ever known me? No. He was just another cadet in my class—someone I’d never spoken to, and who had never spoken to me. Truly a stranger.
If I had to put the feeling into a single word, maybe it was confusion.
"Well? Are you going to do it?"
As Professor Blackwin had said earlier, the recipient of a sparring request had the right to refuse or accept it.
And I...
There’s someone I want to try fighting...
"...I’ll decline."
"Heh, well, I figured as much."
The cadet who’d just challenged me sneered, as if he’d expected my answer all along.
"Too much for a brat who awakened out of nowhere, huh? Sorry~ I guess I overestimated your le—"
"I’d like to ask Miel Norison for a spar."
"Wha, what?!"
The cadet who’d been badmouthing me looked utterly blindsided, as if he’d just heard something he’d never imagined in a thousand years.
"Hold on, did I hear that wrong? Miel Norison? You don’t know enough to be scared of the tiger, do you?"
"I want to spar with Cadet Miel."
"You’re not underestimating the top ranks just because you’ve been hanging around with Han Riae, are you? Miel Norison is ranked 48th—he’s in the top ten percent."
"I know."
"Hah... what the hell..."
Unable to make sense of my reaction, the cadet who’d asked me for a spar turned away with a look of disbelief and walked off.
And so I passed him by and headed toward Miel.
"Huh? Paran? You want to spar with me?"
"Yes. I’ve wanted to try fighting you for a while now."
Miel looked at me with an expression that said he couldn’t understand me at all, yet somehow still seemed surprised.
"Reaally? Well, if you’re asking, I can’t exactly refuse."
Miel gave me a quick once-over and then readily accepted my challenge.
"But I’ve got one question. Why do you want to spar with me?"
He still seemed baffled, and he asked me the reason I’d requested him.
The answer was surprisingly simple, and yet complicated at the same time.
During my one-on-one sparring time with Professor Seres, the two people whose movements I’d studied most were Han Riae and Miel.
Among them, Riae’s movements had been full of flexibility and softness, as if they wrapped gracefully around the stage itself.
Then what had I been most strongly inspired by in Miel Norison?
In basic terms, melee combat was two people fighting while pressing their weapons against each other.
Riae’s movements had certainly been helpful in melee combat, but she wasn’t especially specialized for it, nor did she make the best use of a weapon.
Her style was built around free-spirited movement, fast footwork, strange trajectories, and powerful heavy strikes—motions made mostly for fighting monsters.
But with Miel Norison, I had been able to learn something completely different from Riae.
Unlike Riae, who kept moving and pressing in on her opponent, Miel preferred a style of combat that read the other person’s movements, adapted to them, and found the right countermeasure before fighting accordingly.
Riae was good with a weapon, but she didn’t truly exploit it to its fullest. In that respect, Miel’s weapon mastery far surpassed hers.
Even when using a wooden practice sword that didn’t suit him at all, he had blocked Riae’s relentless assault and kept the fight going with patient precision.
"I guess I didn’t really have a reason."
"Huh?"
Since I didn’t give him a clear reason, Miel stood there with a dazed look and a brief loss of posture.
It was obvious at a glance that he was the type of person who was simply easy to like.
Unlike Riae, even being close to him brought that faint trembling, but for some reason it felt less oppressive than it did with other people, a tingling unease that merely brushed lightly against me.
* * *
"Sigh..."
After just finishing her talk with the professor, Han Riae had received permission not to spar today, but instead to watch the cadets’ matches and learn from what she lacked, and now she was heading toward Lim Paran.
She had already entered Sielm with second-place admission, and word had spread that she’d already sparred with Yoon Hwayeon, one of the few opponents available to her in the afternoon specialty class, so Professor Blackwin had accepted her request without much comment.
"Hey, seriously, why did you fight so desperately? Aren’t you still tired?"
"Ah... I dunno~!"
Lee Seona, who was close with Riae along with Yoon Hwayeon, was walking beside her while talking to her.
She was an annoying but oddly likable girl, and also the mood-maker of Wolchun Class.
Her unique ability was high-grade enchantment—she could reinforce weapons on the spot, and even create armaments that wouldn’t break for a short period of time.
Even though she majored in support, she had a surprising talent for combat too.
While most support-major cadets helped the combat majors from a safe distance, Lee Seona was the type of person who reinforced the combat majors’ weapons and then, if anything even slightly annoyed her, would grab the very weapon she’d enhanced and head straight into battle herself.
"Hey, are you going to spar with another combat-major cadet again this time too?"
"Isn’t that obvious? Honestly, if they’re weaker than me, why are they even in combat major? Heh."
She was the kind of crazy woman who, even back at the middle academy, fought alongside combat majors despite being a support major, and even after coming to Sielm, she still hadn’t broken the habit and was ready to throw herself into a fight with them again.
"Hey, this isn’t the academy from a year ago. It’s Sielm. What if you get your ass beaten flat?"
"Come on, support getting beaten by combat is basically how it’s supposed to go~? ...Huh? Isn’t that Lim Paran?"
"Huh? What?!"
"And he’s over there with Miel, too?"
Not far from where Seona had pointed, Lim Paran and Miel were talking.
And the content of that conversation was...
- Huh? Paran? You want to spar with me?
"....."
"Hey, Riae, are you and Lim Paran close...? W-wait, what?!"
For a moment, a misunderstanding piled on top of another misunderstanding, and Lim Paran would have to spend several minutes clearing it all up.
