Change (3)
‘Looks like I’ve been getting into sword fights a little too often lately.’
As I stood in the middle of the training ground, having come here at Clamis’s request so I could show her what I could do, that thought drifted through my head without warning.
Until not long ago, I’d only rarely had a reason to draw my sword outside a battlefield. But ever since I’d entered Lutra, I’d somehow ended up dueling someone or other every time I turned around.
Of course, if I was being honest about the root of all this, the reason I kept ending up in these scraps was that bastards like Ricardo and Verdehl had come looking for trouble when I’d been minding my own business. Even so, I couldn’t shake the faint, bitter disgust I felt toward myself.
I really do want to live as civilized a life as possible, but the world doesn’t seem interested in helping me.
I let out a sigh, wondering just how badly I’d lived my life to end up getting dragged through the mud in a place like this, when Clamis—standing across from me—quietly drew the sword at her waist.
“Allow me to offer one piece of advice. If I were in your place, Sir, I would never draw my sword here.”
“...Why not?”
“Because, in your current state, you have no chance of beating me.”
Whoosh!
Mana began to gather around the sword in Clamis’s hand, and in an instant a force like blue flame surged outward from it.
One of the Orphega Duchy’s signature sword arts, Sword Flame Qi.
“I’ll concede this much: you are strong. You had nothing, so you desperately honed the little you did have and forced yourself to reach this level. In that sense, your strength is almost inevitable.”
Watching those flames writhe like living snakes, I swallowed a groan.
At a glance, it might have seemed like nothing more than sword energy shaped like fire, but I knew better than anyone just how terrifying Sword Flame Qi really was.
The sight of those flames scattered by the Orphega Duke—how half a battlefield had gone up in flames because of them—was one of the most horrific memories of my life, and one I would never be able to forget.
“But unfortunately, your strength has no foundation. Cheap mana training, the kind only mercenaries learn, and cheap swordsmanship... No matter how hard you work, there’s always a clear limit to how strong you can become with nothing but that.”
Clamis’s words sounded, at first, like little more than a string of contemptuous remarks aimed at looking down on me, but they were also the plain truth.
And I had no particular desire to deny them.
“So there doesn’t seem to be any reason for us to clash blades here. Rather than wasting time like this, you should learn swordsmanship from me. Father has already given his permission for you to study the Orphega Duchy’s sword arts. If you learn our techniques, I believe you’ll be able to surpass this level in no time at all.”
“...So what you’re saying is that I’m weaker than you are now?”
“Yes.”
Clamis answered without the slightest hesitation. Watching that, I turned my eyes toward Cartesia, who had been standing silently in the back the whole time.
Nod.
Apparently understanding what I was asking without words, Cartesia gave me a small nod.
The permission had been granted. Then there was no reason for me to refuse here.
Shiiing.
Without answering Clamis any further, I raised sword energy around the blade I was holding.
Clamis’s eyebrows twitched at that, but she said nothing more and simply set her stance.
Step.
The moment I took one step forward, Clamis swung her sword.
Ka-boom!
I hurriedly raised my sword to block her strike, but the force drove me back a step all the same.
It was hard to believe that so much destructive power could come from those slender arms.
Whoooosh!
Wild flames surged from Clamis’s blade. Wrapped in fire, her sword lashed out toward my torso like a whip, with no hesitation whatsoever.
Splaaash!
Blood burst from my right shoulder. Just before her blade could pierce my torso, I tried to disturb its trajectory the same way I had against Ricardo, but the force was too overwhelming and the attempt failed.
No, to be exact, I had succeeded. It was just that Clamis’s sword was so monstrously powerful that even a glancing hit left my shoulder in tatters.
Yeah, she really can’t even be compared to that idiot.
Clang!
I swung my sword at Clamis with everything I had, trying to force open some kind of gap, but it was pointless. Completely pointless.
Each of Clamis’s strikes was itself a peerless sword technique, and her fundamentals were so thoroughly drilled that I couldn’t find even the tiniest opening.
Well, if the Orphega Duke himself taught her, her basics wouldn’t be lacking.
I hadn’t been taught swordsmanship by a proper master. I’d honed my blade in real combat, shaping it into something efficient for killing other people.
Put kindly, it was practical. Put bluntly, it was swordsmanship with no roots.
That was exactly why my style was such a poor match for Clamis.
If this had been a real fight to the death, I might have done better than this. But in a duel whose purpose was basically to subdue the other side, beating Clamis was a difficult task.
No matter how many unorthodox attacks I threw out to exploit an enemy’s opening, a target who had trained their fundamentals this thoroughly wasn’t going to expose one easily.
And on top of that, the flames in Clamis’s sword energy... Sword Flame Qi was a brutally difficult art to face.
Even though they were only illusionary flames, not actual ones, they radiated fierce heat and constantly disrupted my stamina and concentration in real time.
I was being pushed back. No matter how much I tried to block, just as Clamis had said, there was a significant gap in our skill.
With everything I had built up until now, defeating Clamis was close to impossible.
“Haze.”
Clamis whispered softly. Then, in the next instant, her sword split into five and rushed at me from every direction.
“...!”
Bang!
I instinctively conjured a protective barrier of sword energy around my body, but Clamis’s strike shattered it like paper and sent me flying backward.
“Ghk!”
Blood spilled from the corner of my mouth. I twisted in midair to bleed off as much of the impact as I could, but the blow she had just landed was too strong—far too strong.
“A technique that uses the heat of the flames to refract the light in the air and instantly multiply the number of slashes... That’s basically cheating.”
It was absurd. That wasn’t swordsmanship so much as something closer to magic.
“And yet you managed to grasp the principle of my technique at a glance and minimize the damage, and you still have the nerve to complain.”
Clamis’s voice was serious. She, too, was treating this match with full seriousness as a warrior.
“Wave of fire.”
Ka-boom!
By instinct, I twisted my body to the left. The next second, a razor-sharp arc of flame swept through the space I’d occupied a moment earlier.
This is insane...
I’d tried to put some distance between us and catch my breath, only for her to send a slash attack at range after me. At this rate, Clamis had no such thing as a blind spot or weakness.
“Let’s end this. I have no hobby of tormenting the weak.”
A gust of wind surged. Clamis closed the distance in an instant and was already swinging her sword at me again.
“Haze.”
The same technique as before. But unlike the five slashes from earlier, this time more than ten streaks of sword light came at me from every direction.
There was nowhere to run. If I let Clamis’s attack land like this, it would be over for me.
...I knew that. Before I’d ever stepped into this duel, I’d already guessed it might end this way.
I already knew that if things went on like this, I was guaranteed to lose.
There was only one way to change that outcome.
Crackle—
I heard the snap of electricity somewhere nearby. Mana surged violently, and with a sudden burst of acceleration, my body shot forward like a bolt of lightning.
“...!”
My movement was too fast for Clamis’s slashes to catch me. They tore through empty air instead.
I couldn’t even fully control my own speed. I still lacked training. But for now, this was enough.
In a split second, I drove deep inside Clamis’s striking range and focused every ounce of mana into the sword in my hand.
“...Snowstorm.”
Ka-boooom!
“Kuhk!”
The storm came crashing down. The sword I swung with all my strength literally obliterated the ground in the area, leaving behind nothing but wreckage.
Clamis leapt backward.
But this wasn’t the retreat she’d taken before, calm and measured. This was a frantic withdrawal made to preserve her own life.
“...What was that just now?”
It seemed she had expended a considerable amount of energy blocking my unexpected strike, because she was breathing hard as she looked at me.
“Your movement suddenly changed. From that disordered, untutored motion to the disciplined movement of someone trained by a proper house... And that technique just now—who taught you something with that much power?”
“Well, isn’t that obvious?”
And then Cartesia, who had been watching our spar without saying a word until now, suddenly opened her mouth.
“Do you really think I wouldn’t have noticed the weakness in Sian that you saw at a glance, senior? And surely you didn’t expect me to just sit back and watch while my lover carried such a weakness around, did you?”
“...Hah.”
Clamis’s expression changed. In one sense, she seemed taken aback; in another, she looked furious that someone else had gotten there before her.
“So you’ve already been shaping Sian in your own image. While pretending otherwise, you were already acting like his swordsmanship teacher.”
“Well, don’t take it too hard. Unlike you, who made such a grand show of trying to teach Sian swordsmanship, I gave him everything I had.”
“...Your everything? Don’t tell me—”
For a moment, as if something had dawned on her, Clamis’s eyes widened.
“That’s exactly right. The name of the sword art I taught Sian is Superb Technique.”
“The greatest swordsmanship in the Empire, one that only members of the imperial family are allowed to learn.”