The Entrance Exam (5)
The Academy entrance exam was over at last.
Just as I'd expected, I'd failed the written test, and the practical had ended on an ambiguous note. I had won the spar, but whether the professors would actually acknowledge it was another question. I hadn't faced my opponent in an honest sword fight—I'd thrown my blade and ambushed him—and for all I knew they'd mark me down hard for fighting dirty.
Ah, whatever. It'll work out somehow.
I decided not to dwell on it. Passing or failing had already left my hands, and turning it over any longer would only give me a headache without helping in the slightest.
And even if I did fail, I hadn't walked away from that spar empty-handed. Through it, I'd found a way around the curse.
All I had to do was learn Sword Manipulation!
Sword Manipulation—a style that showed up often enough in comics and novels, in which the sword moved on its own and cut the enemy down. In other words, I could use it without ever taking a blade in my own hand. Learn that, and even I could grow stronger the ordinary way.
The problems, though, were just as obvious.
In the game Akasal, learning a sword art required two things: a master to teach it, and a sword manual in which its forms were written. Yet in all my time playing, I had never once seen anyone who used Sword Manipulation, nor a single manual related to it. Which meant that, under the game's system, Sword Manipulation simply could not be learned.
That's fine. I have the Extreme Sword Body.
The Extreme Sword Body had three functions: faster mastery of swordsmanship, the power to create sword arts, and the ability to transcend. Of the three, what I needed in order to learn Sword Manipulation was the power of creation. Invent a new art, then use it in real combat. With that alone, even a sword art that didn't exist in the game could be learned to my heart's content.
It won't be easy, of course...
Still, no chance at all and even a sliver of a chance were as far apart as heaven and earth. The moment I got back to my lodgings, I was going to start practicing.
I left the sparring hall unable to keep the grin off my face—and in the corridor, ran into someone I hadn't expected.
"You there. Let's talk."
"..."
Sylvia Fiorenza. A heroine of Akasal, a genius swordswoman, the girl they called a villainess young lady—and she was calling out to me. From the look of things she'd come for a spar of her own and already drawn a sword from the armory. Wanting a conversation with me instead of walking into her match was deeply out of character.
What's gotten into her all of a sudden? Did she eat something weird?
Sylvia was a woman who found everything outside of combat to be a nuisance. She was also a thorough elitist, as befitted a duke's daughter, and she wouldn't spare so much as a word for anyone whose house amounted to nothing or whose talent was lacking. And yet she had spoken to me? Why?
I turned it over, and the conclusion came quickly enough.
Ah. She called me over so she could beat the hell out of me.
Now that I thought about it, I'd let a sneer slip when I saw her in the waiting room a little while ago. I'd smoothed my expression at once and pretended nothing had happened, of course, but from Sylvia's side that would have been an unmistakable provocation. Chances were high that was exactly why she'd called out to me.
Why did I do that?
All at once I started regretting it. I knew her personality better than anyone. Why had I pulled something that stupid?
Not that I was without an excuse. I hadn't been in this body long, my sense of reality was still shaky, and I'd treated the Sylvia standing in front of me as the Sylvia from the game.
What am I supposed to do? I can't look at her without laughing.
Sylvia was a genuinely funny character—not because her personality was pleasant, but because her concept and her backstory were. The Sylvia who ran wild at the start, with no idea how high the sky sat, faceplanted from the middle of the story onward and spent the rest of it scraping along the bottom. Akasal's players called her by derogatory names like True Mediocre, Problem Child, and Chihuahua. There wasn't a single part of it that wasn't funny.
The problem is that the Sylvia in front of me is at her peak.
The Sylvia of now was peerless under heaven—doted on by her house, possessed of martial power no one around her could match. If a Sylvia like that had made up her mind to destroy me, there was only one way to see it. I was screwed.
I'd better drop to my knees and apologize right now.
Thank every last god, Sylvia didn't beat people to death just because they displeased her. A heroine could be a little short on manners, but killing someone was a bit much, wasn't it? What she did instead was grind anyone who got cocky under her heel and wring a heartfelt apology out of them.
That much... isn't so bad.
Mouthing off to a duke's daughter and walking away alive was already a mercy. She might order me to kneel and lick her shoes, but by noble standards that was practically lenient. Say the wrong thing to some other aristocrat and an assassination attempt could easily follow. I'd take this as a cautionary lesson and watch myself from here on.
"Never mind. This'll be much faster than talking."
What?
I was still working out how to take a beating without it hurting too much when Sylvia abruptly drew the sword at her hip. I couldn't help but panic. What was this? In Akasal, Sylvia had never killed anyone who wasn't a villain.
Whatever the game's setting had been, it didn't matter now. She had drawn, and she had settled into a stance as if she meant to rush me at any moment. That was what mattered.
"Try dodging."
"Ghk—!"
With that, she vanished from in front of my eyes.
Her rank right now was Rank 4. For someone like me, who had only just awakened to mana, failing to dodge—failing even to follow her with my eyes—was the normal outcome. But I was no ordinary Rank 1. I reinforced my eyesight with mana and tracked her movement.
A thrust. She's aiming for my throat.
Sylvia's whole body was little more than a blur. She was set in a thrust, and the point of her sword was aimed dead at my neck. The instant I confirmed it, I moved—one step to the side, slipping past her blade by a hair.
—Shhhk!
She punched through empty air only a few centimeters from my throat. The sound of the tip shearing the wind rang sharp in my ear. I stole a glance at her sword, and I couldn't help but wonder.
What is she after?
By all rights she shouldn't have stopped there. Another thrust in sequence, or a horizontal swing to take my head—she should have done one or the other. Instead Sylvia froze in the posture of her lunge, as if she had never intended to kill me in the first place.
"You actually dodged? A Rank 1 nobody, dodging my strike?"
"..."
So my guess had been right. She was staring at me in pure disbelief, as if my having avoided her attack was something she simply could not accept. The look didn't change even after she sheathed the sword. She swept her eyes over every inch of me, then muttered under her breath.
"Not a glimmer of talent. Look all I want—you're an insect."
"..."
This bitch?
Insect, right to a person's face? Even so. Distaste was one thing; I still understood what she was saying. I didn't have a single degree of talent as a swordsman.
With this curse, I was never fated to be one.
Sylvia was a genius of the sword, and exceptionally good at reading another person's talent. What she was looking at now was almost certainly my curse. The ridiculous trait that was the Extreme Sword Body sat inside it, but until I began using Sword Manipulation in earnest, that talent was never going to shine. Not once.
"Um... if you're finished with me, may I go?"
"Do whatever you want."
She stayed where she was, turning something over. I used the opening to ask, carefully, and Sylvia waved me off as if telling me to hurry up and vanish. Was she really letting me leave like this? Not even a beating—just sending me on my way?
I cheered on the inside and put distance between us, quiet and quick.
"Hey. Hold it."
"Yes? What is it?"
She stopped me out of nowhere. Was she going to thrash me after all? I hauled my guard up at once, but one look at her face said that wasn't it.
"What's your name?"
"Hans, my lady."
Asked for my name, I blurted out a fake one before I could stop myself. I had no choice. A lunatic like Sylvia remembering my real name was no different from a nightmare. If she caught the lie it would be no small disaster—but given her personality, there was no way she would hold onto my name for long. Even if we crossed paths later, it would be that one... who was he? Ivan, was it? and nothing more.
"Hans. Hans, huh. Okay. I'll remember it."
"If that's all you needed..."
"It is, so get lost."
When someone tells you to get lost, getting lost is only human. This time there was no need to be subtle, so I sprinted out of the training hall at full speed. I passed examinees whose tests were finished and faculty hurrying the other way, and reached the city streets where ordinary people came and went.
"Haaah! I really thought I was dead!"
Only then could I stop running and catch my breath. That damned woman, Sylvia—swinging a sword at someone without a single word of warning. Heartless as it was, I fully intended to pay her back for it someday, far in the future, once she had fallen.