Training (3)
I put on only enough armor that it wouldn't hinder my movement, then picked up the Holy Relic. Judging by size alone, the thing was a blunt weapon in its own right.
Andreus, by contrast, wore no armor at all and carried nothing more than an ordinary thin, long staff. A handicap, was that it?
If I swung the Holy Relic as it was, I felt I could smash that staff without much trouble. But I couldn't afford to get careless. My opponent was the strongest Holy Knight in history—someone who could toy with me effortlessly even with a stick like that in his hands.
Recall it. The feel of taekwondo from elementary school. The raw aggression of boxing from middle school. What I'd learned in the military…
Let's not recall the military. That would probably do more harm than good.
Still, a little confidence started to take root. Right. It wasn't as if I'd never studied martial arts. Confidence, check!
"Come, Saintess. Approach."
The distance between Andreus and me looked to be about fifty meters. But if I put power into my legs and drove hard off the ground—
Yes. I could close that gap in a single instant. With what I was now, I could do it.
I swung the Holy Relic—now shaped like a massive beam weapon—with everything I had. The target was his waist. With the force of someone determined to smash through even if he blocked with the staff, I brought the blunt instrument in my hands around hard—
"…Huh?"
When I came to my senses, I was flying through the air.
What? I didn't even know what had just been done to me. My arm throbbed. Why? How? It made no sense.
I scrambled to land, and that was when I saw him—Andreus closing the distance at speed, already winding up to swing the staff.
"G-Guard—!"
Somehow I read the body part he was aiming for and tried to interpose the Holy Relic. Thankfully my arm still obeyed, and I managed to get a guard up in time.
The instant his staff met the Holy Relic, though, I understood.
Ah. I can't stop this.
A greater force simply crushed mine. My body was driven straight into the ground—and then the pain hit, hard.
"AAAAAAAGH!!!"
I screamed. It hurt. It hurt so much I wanted to cry. I couldn't even breathe properly.
But—
"M-Move!!!!"
Instinct forced me into motion. Move or die. I wrenched a body that refused to answer through sheer pain, felt something in my bones grind and protest, and ignored it, kicking off the ground again—anything to put distance between myself and Andreus.
Trying to move without even a proper stance, though, produced miserable results. I lost my balance, tumbled several times, and only barely managed something resembling a breakfall. The fact that I'd kept my grip on the Holy Relic through all of it was almost impressive.
"A-Andreus?!"
I whipped my head around, desperate to fix his position. He was standing right beside the crater in the earth. One look was enough—that was where I'd been driven into the ground. He'd put me there and then simply… stopped.
Was he going easy on me? Or was it arrogance? Either way, I couldn't drop my guard. Andreus could close the distance from that posture in a single breath.
"Ugh."
Pain washed over me again. One hit. One hit I'd somehow managed to guard against, and this was the result. I'm actually going to die today—the thought had barely crossed my mind when Andreus's voice reached me.
"Have you, by chance, ever learned close-quarters combat from someone in the past?"
"…Not really, no."
For a second I wondered whether taekwondo and boxing counted, then scrubbed the thought. Compared to what I'd just taken, those were children's games.
Andreus clapped his hands.
"Excellent, Saintess."
"…Excuse me?"
What had I done well? I'd taken one hit and been left gasping.
"Of course, your movement was a mess."
Was he really allowed to say that to a Saintess? A little harsh, even if it was true. Still, some of the tension locked into my body seemed to ease. I suspected he'd said it on purpose.
"However, movement is something you can correct as you learn from me. What matters more is something you already possess."
Color came back into my face the moment I heard that. Praise? Did I have some hidden talent for fighting I didn't know about?
No. Don't count your chickens. I'd drunk that particular cup of optimism before and gotten blindsided more times than I could count. Expect nothing.
"What is it?"
Even so, I couldn't quite keep the hope out of my voice.
"People are weak to pain. The greater the pain, the harder it becomes to move—and that creates a fatal vulnerability in close combat."
Yeah. Fair. I'd just felt that myself, so I could only agree.
"I struck you with the staff hard enough that you should not have been able to move at once. Yet you endured the pain and moved immediately. That is by no means an easy thing to do—especially if, as you say, you have never studied close combat."
"R-Really?"
"Truly. Frankly speaking, Saintess, you have exceeded my expectations."
Well. What was I supposed to say to that?
Getting praised like this was oddly embarrassing. I scratched my head without thinking and said, almost on autopilot:
"It was only possible thanks to the Goddess's aid."
…Ah. Maybe I'd been praying to the Goddess so much lately, or maybe I'd been so conscious of sounding like a proper Saintess, that it had just come out that way. That line had actually sounded saintly.
I was still trying to decide whether to be pleased or depressed about that when Andreus set his staff down.
"Then I believe this sparring match has been sufficient. Come. I will treat you at once."
"Ah—please do."
Only then did I fully let go of the tension and trot over to him. Andreus used holy power to heal me on the spot. The pain drained away quickly. Ah. I might actually live.
My facial muscles had just started to unclench when his voice came again.
"Once treatment is finished, we will begin training at once. It has been some time since I found a raw gem worth teaching. This Andreus is most pleased."
How to describe the smile on his face as he said that?
Right. In that moment, Andreus looked like cosmic horror given human form.
I slowly clasped my hands again and prayed with everything I had.
Goddess. Please just don't let me die.
People do not die easily.
I have no idea who first said that. But if that person ever stood in front of me, I was confident I would slap them a few times on sight. Honestly, I felt like it would even be legal.
These past few days, every time I begged Andreus to let me rest just a little, every time I told him I was going to die, that was the line I got back. Each time, I came close to becoming a pure incarnation of rage and hatred.
I couldn't even get angry, though. In the end, this was the road to hell I had chosen with my eyes open. All I could do was grit my teeth and endure through sheer spite.
I tried to block Andreus's attacks while putting as much distance as I could between us. That choice turned out to be the wrong one. Pushing too hard to open the gap wrecked my stance.
"Saintess. You have far too many openings. Correct your posture."
I forced power into my legs and swung the Holy Relic anyway—only to be knocked clean away. In the next instant, the staff in Andreus's hands drove into my abdomen.
Pain like my stomach being punched through crashed over me. Breathing became difficult. My body curled forward on instinct—and Andreus never missed an opening like that.
"In close combat, a broken stance is the same as death. No matter what happens, your posture must not collapse."
Too late. But I didn't close my eyes. I tracked the direction of the attack to the end. With my stance already ruined, I still forced my arms to move, trying somehow to block.
Too late. A clean strike was about to bury itself in me—
Except it didn't. Andreus stopped the attack before it landed.
"Well done. Do not stop watching your opponent's attack until the very last moment. The instant you abandon that, you have already lost the close-quarters exchange."
"…If I did well, can I rest a little as a reward?"
I put every scrap of desperation I had into the words, even though I already knew they would do nothing to Andreus.
"No. This is the most critical moment. Now that you have begun to grasp the feel of it, this is the ideal time to engrave your own combat style into your body."
"Basically keep the distance, then the moment I see an opening, close in no matter what and put a single artillery shot through them—that kind of style, right?"
Andreus answered with a silent nod.
I was growing. The time I could last against him was stretching, little by little. Of course, I still couldn't hold out for a full minute.
I wiped away the sweat pouring down like rain with a cloth I'd prepared in advance, then took several deep breaths, trying to calm a heart that was racing out of control. My mouth was so dry it almost tasted sweet. I trudged over to where I'd left the water bottle, brought it back, and drank one mouthful, then two.
I felt a little more alive. And because I felt a little more alive, a question naturally rose to the surface.
"I know I'm the one who asked for this, so I don't really have the right—but is it all right for you to be teaching me like this? As Commander, you must have plenty of work of your own."
"It is quite all right. On the contrary, I had been rather bored of late with little to do, so this feels like an unexpected gift. In particular, Saintess, you seem to grasp ten things for every one I teach—which makes the work all the more enjoyable for the instructor."
That was probably just my survival instinct thrashing around to keep me alive, because if I didn't grasp ten things the moment I learned one, I was genuinely going to die.
"Ah—and tomorrow, will your private training grounds not be completed, Saintess? I find myself looking forward to it. We will be able to conduct sparring matches much closer to actual combat."
…Why was it that even if I unloaded artillery fire freely, I still couldn't picture myself winning against Andreus?
"Ahahaha…. Right. Ahahaha……."
That laugh was probably the most soulless one I had ever produced in my life.