Hell Training (2)
There are times when a person just wants to turn their back on reality. The stock you bought yesterday craters. You confess in public and get rejected so hard it echoes. Hit with a shock that big, the mind simply looks away from the world and drifts into something like enlightenment.
Much like me, right now.
God, my life is absolute dogshit.
I spat the curse out in my head. Why here, of all places, and why at this exact moment, did I have to run into Sylvia? No matter how I turned it over, it didn't fit any logic of cause and effect. It was a coincidence so absurd it had no business existing.
Right. I knew she trained in the private rooms.
Even in the game Arcasal, Sylvia spent most of her time in the training rooms, so if you needed her mid-playthrough, checking there first was the efficient move. I had just never imagined it would be this room.
I came in after checking the indicator. How the hell did this happen...
I turned my head just enough to glance at the light outside the door. The lamp that had definitely gone green was red again, and after about five seconds it crackled as the colors bled together. The indicator was broken, by the look of it. Sylvia just happened to be in the one room with a dead light, and I just happened to walk straight in?
You son of a bitch, developer! At least keep the rigging within reason!
Yes, my Luck stat was F-rank. But that only raised the odds of junk spilling out of treasure chests and of equipment enhancements going wrong. It wasn't supposed to bleed into everyday life. Which meant this had to be the developer's meddling.
Don't tell me my luck is genuinely this bad on its own. If it is, I'm sitting down and crying for real.
"I asked what you are. Why'd you just walk into a training room someone's already using?"
"..."
I was still clutching at my fraying sanity when Sylvia spoke, her face twisted in a scowl. She'd been deep in her training, and I'd shattered that focus. She was in a foul mood. Even so, something in her reaction lit a single spark of hope. This... she hadn't recognized me, had she?
Did the glasses actually do their job?
I was wearing the Outsider's Glasses. The artifact blurred my presence and made it hard for anyone to register my face. A genius on Sylvia's level could see through that sort of thing from body structure and bearing alone, of course. Here, though, her particular personality came to my rescue. Would a Sylvia who believed herself the only one under heaven ever bother taking a close look at some Rank 1 piece of trash?
"I'm sorry. The indicator had turned green, so I came in, and someone was already here. I'll leave right away."
"..."
The moment I understood, I folded at the waist into a perfect right angle and apologized with everything I had. It wasn't an apology between classmates. It was the feeling of slamming your head to the floor before a superior. And it wasn't excessive, either. There wasn't a student at Arbel Academy who didn't know Sylvia, and there wasn't one who didn't know her infamy. Any other student standing here would have done the same.
"Something about just letting you go feels off..."
"...?"
"Hey! Stop right there. Get over here."
I was about to step out when Sylvia called after me and stopped me cold. She normally couldn't care less about lower-ranked students, yet today of all days she was clinging with unusual persistence. A chill ran through me at the sight, and the bad feeling became reality almost at once.
"Spar with me. One round."
"..."
"From the way you're built, you're a swordsman. Grab a wooden sword and come over here."
With that, she took her place in the center of the training room, sword drawn, watching me with a still, quiet gaze. I nearly grabbed the back of my neck. Last time she'd swung at me out of nowhere. This time she wanted a spar?
What do I do?
The first idea was running. I discarded it on the grounds that there was no way I could outrun Sylvia. Next was talking her down, but given her stubbornness, that was just as impossible.
So I have to spar.
A brain that had been on break jolted awake and started spinning faster than ever. How was I supposed to shake her suspicion and get her interest off me? I obviously couldn't use Sword Manipulation, and I couldn't show her the curse either.
"..."
"..."
I hadn't finished thinking, but I couldn't just stand there. Sylvia was already glaring, impatient that I hadn't come up. With no other choice, I hung a wooden sword at my waist and walked to the center of the room.
Balanced on a knife's edge. One slip and I'm done.
Sylvia set her stance with a one-handed sword, and I matched her. My stance, though, was anything but ordinary. Sword left in the scabbard, ready to draw at any moment. The classic quick-draw.
"Pretty confident, huh? You'll be cut before you even draw."
"..."
Her brow creased a little at the sight. A slow draw, in front of the Fiorenza blade—the very peak of the flash sword and the swift sword. From her perspective, it would feel like nothing short of an insult. But I had no other option. If I'd come this far with the sword already drawn, it would have snapped before the spar even began.
If it's come to this, it's all or nothing.
No matter how I thought about it, there was only one way. Using it, though, required two conditions. Sylvia's opening attack had to be faster than I could imagine, and my acting had to put a Hollywood star to shame.
Please, Sylvia! I'm counting on you!!
I'm saying I believe in you—the strongest in this entire setting, first-years only! I shouted it inwardly. Sylvia glared back, ready to lunge at any moment. A little over ten seconds passed. The timer she had set went off, and in the same instant her figure vanished.
Not yet.
A monstrous speed, hard to follow even with a gravity bracelet on. Golden aura traced a line of gold through the air. In a blink she had crossed half the training room and was right in front of me.
Now!!
I held the sword back until the very last instant, then drew with everything I had. My target was her shoulder. The blade ripped free of the scabbard and rose to strike her from below, and Sylvia answered by swinging hers across. Two swords met in the shape of a cross. They locked in the air for a breath, aura from both sides biting into the other—and then—
"Ghk—!"
My sword blew apart with a splintering crack, and her attack landed square. Thank every god it was a wooden sword and not live steel, or I'd have been cut. I bounced like a baseball off a bat, rolled five full turns, and only then came to a stop.
"Huh?"
Sylvia froze in the follow-through of her swing, thrown by a level of skill even worse than she'd imagined. She stayed confused even after she sheathed the blade, then belatedly snapped out of it and came running. Shameless as she was, she at least knew that someone dying in the middle of a spar was a serious problem.
"You alive? Hey! Wake up!"
"..."
"Ugh. I mean, you dying would be a real problem, you know?"
Eyes shut, breath held, I lay there while she fretted. Then she grabbed me by the collar and started shaking me. Do that to someone who's actually critical and you can kill them even if they were going to live. I was thinking exactly that when she suddenly said something bizarre.
"Should I start with first aid? Mouth-to-mouth?"
"Cough—cough!"
I didn't even drown, you lunatic—why the hell would you do mouth-to-mouth? I hacked and coughed and came to in a hurry, and only then did Sylvia let out a sigh of relief.
"I wasn't planning to hit you that hard. You were just way weaker than I thought. Sorry."
"It's all right, Lady Sylvia. Then... may I go now?"
"Hurry up and get out. I've got training to do."
With that, she shut her mouth and went back to training as if I weren't there. I lay on the floor a moment longer, and once her interest had thinned, I slipped quietly out of the room.
"Fuck. I really thought I was dead."
The moment the door closed, I collapsed where I stood. No exaggeration—it felt like I'd sunk shoulder-deep into the river of the dead and only just clawed my way back out. Relief unwound the tension from my whole body, and once I'd calmed down, a sharp thrill burned hot in my skull. I'd fooled Sylvia, the sword genius! It was an achievement worthy of a lifetime of drinking stories, and I let out a silent cheer.
Looking back, it was a perfect plan.
Short and simple. Take a quick-draw stance, trigger the curse at the right moment to snap the sword, then eat her attack and go down in one hit. Success. Of course, it only sounded easy when you said it out loud. In practice it had been anything but, because I'd had to match the exact instant she reached me with the exact instant the sword broke.
But it worked.
I'd triggered the curse on time, shattered the blade, and slipped the worst of her strike so it hurt less when it landed. What mattered was that Sylvia never noticed any of it.
"..."
Anyway. I left the flickering training room behind and stepped outside. Using one of those rooms after what I'd just been through would make me a lunatic.
"Training... I'll do it in an empty lot."
No facilities, and I'd have to worry about other people's eyes. Still, that was a hundred times better than having an unleashed predator right beside me. For a while, I wasn't even going to glance in the direction of the training hall. I swore it, deep down.