Duel #4
"Is everything all right? Nothing uncomfortable, I hope?"
After persuading Helena, I went straight to the annex where the dark elves were staying and put the question to them. They were guests I had brought in myself, so looking after them was my responsibility — and even if I had nothing else to do, it was still the proper thing. The host showing his face to his guests was, in a sense, only natural.
"No, not at all. The beds are generous, the furniture and the baths are excellent… It's like a whole other heaven."
Ellen and the other dark elves seemed thoroughly taken with Krauser Manor. Their faces lit up like children's, and their voices ran high with excitement; that was all the proof I needed. They were not the sort of women who normally wore their feelings on their sleeves, but the good treatment had apparently taken some of the edge off their nerves.
They were especially fond of the bathroom, packed as it was with magic items. Unlike a battlefield or an ordinary household, there was no need to worry about prying eyes — and that, more than anything, seemed to appeal to them. Above all, they were simply glad to have a place where they could wash properly. Like me, they seemed to prefer keeping their bodies clean. If they hadn't, they would never have looked so tidy.
"I'm glad to hear it. Ah — about the land you received under the contract. When do you plan to visit? I was thinking of showing you around myself…"
"A mercenary can be mercenary, but the job isn't finished yet. So once the work is done, I'll take you up on that."
True to a woman who had built a solid reputation as a mercenary, Ellen put completing the commission ahead of the reward. She seemed determined to leave the impression that she wasn't blinded by payment — and that, in turn, inspired trust in anyone who dealt with her. Whether it was her natural disposition or a skill honed over years of living, I couldn't say. What I could say was that either way, it made a good impression. At least, it did on me.
"Of course. Thank you."
"You're too soft when you drive in from the left. You twist your waist and try to cover with the right side of your body, and it leaves a huge opening."
"Hah…! Hah…! Is… that so?"
"By my standards, yes. It's fine under ordinary circumstances, but every time things get urgent you fall back into it — and your opponent will notice."
With a week left until the duel, I was, as usual, buried in even harsher training with Helena. More precisely, I was pouring out sweat by the bucketful trying to raise my own capability even a fraction. I knew full well it wasn't a hot day, but with sweat running like this I might as well have been standing under midsummer sun.
Helena, by contrast, showed not the faintest bead of sweat on her brow. Her breathing stayed measured from start to finish, and even the tip of the wooden sword in her hand never wavered. She looked so at ease that I almost wondered whether we were truly moving under the same sky.
"I don't know how much you'll be able to fix in the time we have left. But it's better than doing nothing, right?"
"Well… of course it is."
Helena forced a cool, clipped tone and gave the tip of her wooden sword a little flick. The gesture itself recalled a sturdy old tree — but her eyes told a different story, flickering with an anxious emotion so violent it felt like the ground itself might be shaking.
I dragged in a ragged breath and forced myself back to my feet. My side, where her wooden sword had caught me, throbbed — but it was bearable. Or rather, even if it wasn't, I had to bear it. If it raised my odds of winning even a little, that was what I had to do.
"All right. Then let's start again."
She stared at me for a moment after I pressed her, then swung her wooden sword without a word. The blade came for my still-aching left side without the slightest mercy. Even so, it wasn't an attack I couldn't react to. If Helena had swung without holding back, I would have been covered in bruises within seconds — which meant this was a strike carefully aimed at the upper limit of what I could handle.
"Ugh?!"
I had trained primarily in unarmed combat, but I had also learned how to face someone with a weapon. It was the product of long thought on how to dodge and how to block an opponent's blade — not merely how to throw a sword of my own. When someone came at me swinging a sword or other weapon, I usually preferred to slap the flat of the blade and twist its path. In particular, I liked striking upward from below, as if lifting the opponent's chin. It was a personal preference, but it felt easier than chopping down from above.
That only worked, however, against people of roughly my level or lower. A master like Helena would simply ignore the fist flying at her sword and swing faster, or casually alter the line of her cut. And the simplest, fastest of those changes was flipping the edge of the blade — not swapping the sword for another, but reversing which way the edge faced.
"You'll hurt your hand if you're not careful."
"I know…!"
Helena turned the edge she had been swinging horizontally upright, setting it at a right angle. In other words, the fist I had meant for the flat of her blade was now driving straight at the edge. It was as good as asking her to split my hand in two. With Helena's kindly warning and the fact that she held a wooden sword rather than steel, the odds of my hand being wrecked outright were high. If I reacted and pulled away, fine — but if I didn't, I would have lost the use of that fist.
"Yes. That's how you block!"
Helena laughed with real pleasure even as her sword was knocked aside. She seemed delighted that I had twisted my body hard enough to slap the flat away.
"But you can't be satisfied with just that!"
Joy fed her momentum, and the sword she swung with that rising heat was markedly faster than before. Rather than fight the force of the rebound, she rode it like a wave. Before I knew it, the blade that had spun full circle was already at my throat — aimed at my shoulder, or more precisely, set to carve a diagonal line from shoulder through arm. For someone whose balance was already broken by twisting away, it was an almost impossible blow to avoid. Trying to recover my stance would only get me hit for certain.
I felt that truth in my bones, so I threw my already-ruined posture even further off-kilter. If I was going to lose my balance anyway, it was smarter to abandon it completely and use the fall to escape. And in practice, it worked rather well.
"Huh…?"
In the blink of an eye my body collapsed onto the dirt. Helena's wooden sword carved a line through empty air, and I seized the opening to lash out with everything I had. My target was the bone of her ankle. The kick was simple. I hadn't even loaded it with mana. Even so, it was nothing to ignore. A clean hit would have broken the ankle or dealt serious damage — and that held even for a Swordmaster, whose bones and muscle outstripped ordinary people. It might have seemed too vicious for a mere spar. But soon enough we would be fighting with our lives on the line. And Helena was not a woman I could afford to take lightly, even if I wanted to half-heart myself through it.
Look. Even now she was already reacting, moving out of the path of my swinging leg.
"That motion just now was smooth. A usable surprise attack."
Helena praised me in the calmest of tones while sweeping the wooden sword she had already swung all the way down into the earth, driving it deep into the ground. Then she put more power into the hand gripping the hilt and rose into something like a handstand on the planted sword. My now-aimless leg flailed uselessly through empty air. Factoring in the speed of the motions, it was obvious she was simply faster. Even while I was falling, her wooden sword had kept driving downward, and adding force only made it plant faster. But the time she took to make that decision was far too short. I almost wondered whether she had thought at all. I couldn't be sure without having been inside her head, but I suspected she had moved on pure instinct. Otherwise that kind of motion wouldn't have been possible.
"Damn it!"
I rolled with everything I had, desperate to get outside the wooden sword's reach for even a single second. I shoved both hands hard against the ground for extra force. There was no time to care that dust and dirt were plastering my clothes and face into a wretched mess. If I had spared even a glance for something that trivial, the Helena who had already righted her stance would have hit me for certain.
"Hooo…!"
Using the force of the roll and its rebound, I pushed myself up and once more caught my ragged breath, eyes locked on Helena. I was half-kneeling on the ground, but that was no real problem. I could spring up this instant, or kick off the earth and fall back.
"Want to stop here for now? Or keep going?"
"We… keep going."
I put power into my legs and stood straight. I knew full well how vast the gap in skill between us was, but I was seized by the vicious determination to land at least one clean hit. Of course it wasn't enough to cloud my reason — that was the effect of Steel Mental. Thanks to it, every nerve I had was drawn as tight as it could go. Within the limits of my ability, yes — but I was not leaving any margin unused inside those limits.
Just one. Just take one hit…!
I was neither a domestic abuser nor a man who hated his fiancée. Even so, for this moment alone I treated her as nothing less than an enemy. If I didn't, the fist I had clenched so hard would go soft.
"Don't get hit!"
I shouted it as boldly as I could and kicked off the ground into a run. I knew perfectly well I wouldn't land anything, and I shouted it anyway. In a way it was pure empty bravado — but it didn't feel entirely meaningless. At the very least, it could fire me up.
And she really didn't take a single hit.
I lay sprawled on the ground like a starfish and grumbled inwardly. The woman sitting beside me, smiling sweetly, was still immaculate — not a speck of dust on her — and the sight of it was enough to make me sigh.
"This is hopeless."
"It isn't. You've improved so much it's obvious just looking at you."
Helena answered my muttered complaint with a straight face. The seriousness thick in her eyes made it hard to believe she was inventing praise out of thin air.
"Really?"
"Mm. Unlike the way you used to train so mechanically, these days you're full of drive and initiative. When your attitude changes, of course the way skill settles into your body changes with it, right?"
When I asked, the answer that came back was something I couldn't help but accept. More than that, she had read my psychology so precisely that my mouth wouldn't even open. I had never thought of myself as slacking in training, but apparently Helena's eyes had seen something different.
"You… knew it was mechanical?"
"I could feel it. That doesn't mean I'm saying you half-assed the training, though. I know better than anyone how earnest you are, Zion. It's just that until today, I never saw that kind of raw desperation."
"Ah… yeah. That makes sense."
Desperation. I couldn't argue with the word at all; I simply nodded. I could feel the back of my head scraping against the rough ground as I did.
The sky looks nice.
Helena and I fell silent and simply looked ahead — I at the sky, she at the small forest beyond the training grounds, the decorative stand of trees planted in place of a formal garden. Even a silence that might have felt awkward put me at ease. Perhaps because I had moved with that desperation she mentioned, I felt strangely clear-headed as well. The tangled thread in my chest seemed to be coming loose.
"I took you for an ordinary fiancé… but your way of moving is rather something."
But of course peaceful moments never last. Holding onto the same regret as a school recess cut short, I turned my gaze toward the voice that had broken our quiet.