Heroes Don't Study!
I spent my days nursing Eric back to health.
He'd said his dream was to become a knight, and aside from that ridiculous speech pattern of his, he wasn't a bad kid... Why on earth did he talk like that, though?
Just as curiosity got the better of me and I was about to ask, a somewhat recovered Eric picked up a long stick and made for the edge of the property.
"Hm? Eric, where are you going?"
"Benefactor! This one is heading to the clearing ahead for a spell of training. Now that there is no longer any issue with moving about, this one shall swiftly reclaim his former skill!"
"I'll clear some of the snow from the yard, so go practice well."
"Ah?! Allow this one to assist as well."
"Oh? That would be great."
Eric and I cleared the snow around the house, then shared a bit of conversation during a short break.
"Benefactor... this one has a request."
"Hm? What is it?"
"Judging by Benefactor's physique, you appear to be quite the formidable martial artist. Would you perhaps grant this one a spar?"
"Didn't you just say you were going to train with your sword?"
"Clashing blades in training is far more effective."
He wasn't wrong... but his body probably wouldn't keep up. Should I talk him out of it?
"Eric... you've been resting a long time. Your muscles will have wasted. You sure you're okay?"
"Benefactor! That is precisely why this one must do it all the more!"
"If that's what you want... hang on a second."
I fetched some wooden training swords from the workshop and showed them to Eric.
"How about these? And since Blanc is here, we can go a little hard without worrying."
"Splendid! A spar that feels like real combat is always valuable experience."
A short while later we arrived at the clearing for our spar, and Blanc drifted a safe distance away.
"Blanc, I'm counting on you."
"Blanc! This one is in your care!"
"Pong~"
Eric and I gripped our wooden swords and faced each other.
"We start when Blanc calls out."
"Understood!"
Whoooooosh—
Only the wind through the deep snowy mountains broke the silence.
This was a spar—a pure swordsmanship spar. I would hold back every bit of strength and every skill, meeting Eric with sword technique alone.
I kept my eyes fixed on Eric's legs and settled into an Alber stance—sword fully lowered into a low guard—dropping the wooden blade toward the ground.
"Pong!!"
Eric's legs moved.
From a high guard he brought his wooden sword crashing down, but—
Crack!!!
—I knocked the descending blade upward.
Eric's stance collapsed badly. I didn't press the attack.
"Apologies, Benefactor... this one let impatience get the better of him."
"It's been a while since you moved. That can happen."
After that, Eric planted his sword upright in front of his body... was that supposed to be a middle guard?
In modern kendo, a middle guard still points the tip at the opponent—a proper centerline threat. If he wanted to defend, an Ox (high-guard thrust) or a Pflug (middle-guard thrust) would have been better.
Still, I'd play along. Swordsmanship here might be a little different, after all.
I shifted into an Ox stance and closed in on Eric.
He tried to do something, but between the feints, cuts, and thrusts I kept cycling through from that high-guard thrust position, he couldn't even get near me.
Pushed back again and again, Eric grew flustered and suddenly charged. The outcome was already decided.
I stabbed him cleanly in the shoulder as he came in.
Thud!!!
"Ghk!!!"
"Mm... you okay?"
"I-I'm... fine..."
Blanc flew over to heal him, and we started the spar again.
"Pong!!!!"
At Blanc's signal Eric fell into the exact same stance as before, and a question stirred in me.
Was that vertical middle-guard some kind of secret technique of the Viscount's house?
Hoping to at least receive an attack this time, I settled into a Pflug—middle-guard thrust.
"I came to you last time, so now you come to me."
"Ghk..."
Eric sprinted in and this time tried a horizontal cut—but the motion was far too big.
I aimed a thrust straight at the wooden sword in his hands.
Wow~
Crack!!!! Clatter...
Eric lost his grip entirely.
"......"
Neither of us had anything to say.
........................
Looking at how he gripped and held the sword, I finally understood.
This guy... didn't know the first thing about swordsmanship.
Think about a "sword." What comes to mind?
Most people picture the cool image of "drawing a blade and cutting something down."
So when a complete beginner picks one up, they do exactly what Eric just did—stand it upright. All they can do is swing and slash, so they get controlled and die.
What about the stance of someone who actually knows the sword?
Across both Eastern and Western traditions, most foundational postures assume thrusting.
Thrusts may not look as flashy, but they're faster than cuts and have far better reach.
The reason basic stances lay the blade more or less horizontal is because they create a unified offense-defense position that lets you thrust to attack, defend, and control the opponent in an instant.
If you're not going to keep the blade level, then a high guard or low guard that lets you swing freely is the correct answer...
And the runaway teen in front of me who wanted to become a knight had left home without knowing any of that?
"Did you... not learn swordsmanship at the Viscount's house?"
"Th-that's..."
"Be honest with me."
Eric avoided my eyes as I delivered the finishing blow and answered in a voice that had shrunk to almost nothing.
"W-well... heroes don't study..."
You've got to be kidding me.
............
Eric scraped at the ground with his foot, mortified, and I had nothing left to say either.
He'd lived longer than I had, yet his mental age was this low. Maybe the mind grew as slowly as the body for his kind.
Come to think of it, Eric was thirty-two... no, sixteen.
In other words, he was a full-blown adolescent in the middle of a storm of puberty.
Dreams, my ass. Had he just impulsively run away from home?
I was starting to understand why he used that archaic speech.
"That way of talking... how did you pick it up?"
"Ah! This one saw the knights of the house using it! It seemed a truly magnificent manner of speech!"
"You just thought it looked cool, so you..."
You were just a tall little brat, weren't you.
"Pong~"
"Yeah... Blanc... thanks."
In the middle of this dizzying situation, Blanc's comfort made things a little better.
Still—if I left Eric like this and we parted ways, wouldn't he be a corpse in a few days?
He'd somehow managed the yetis through beginner's luck, but the same luck was unlikely to find him twice.
While I fretted over this and that, Eric, looking thoroughly awkward, had retreated to a corner of the clearing and was performing a hundred grateful downward cuts.
Watching him bring the blade down identically each time without the tip wavering, I could see his focus was genuinely excellent... and the thought of teaching him martial arts crossed my mind.
Was this the same reason Grandfather Deprim had decided to teach me?
I was worried as hell about his future, and looking at someone who could soar if I just taught him a little, I wanted to pass all sorts of things along.
Teaching him out of nowhere would be meddling, so I'd show him my power and ask for his decision.
"Eric."
"Benefactor? What is it?"
"Watch carefully."
KWAANG!!!!
I wrapped the wooden sword in Sword Force and slashed at the sky. The clouds split apart.
"Wh... wha..."
Eric's jaw dropped at the sight.
"I'll be honest. If you go down the mountain alone like this, you'll die."
"........"
"Think back to the cave. Eric—if you'd been strong, would that situation ever have happened?"
"No..."
"Don't look so down. I've got a proposal. How about learning martial arts from me?"
"!!!!!!"
"It's fine. I studied under a master myself, so..."
"Master!!!"
Eric dropped to the ground in front of me and...
"Please take care of me!!!"
I had finally heard formal speech from this bastard.
.......................
And so Eric's training on the winter mountain began.
"One more."
"Grrrrgh!!!"
"There we go~ Good job~ One more time~"
"Gyaaaaah!!! You! Said!!! That ten times already!!!!!"
"You planning to hit your master, disciple?"
We did hellish weight training.
"For heaven's sake, lay the sword flat... or at least put it on a diagonal."
"Pardon? But..."
"You took that beating and still haven't figured it out?!"
"No, Master!!"
I spent an enormous amount of time correcting my disciple's stance and habits.
"Even if I'm your master, using '~yo' is fine. Stop defaulting to that stiff 'da-na-kka' ending every single time."
"Yes? 'For what reason' is that so?"
"Just don't."
"But..."
"Just don't use it!!"
I banned the speech pattern that brought back nightmares of a certain place.
"Master, the yetis are..."
"Yeah... they're starting to gather near the house."
"Should we not eliminate them?"
"I'll be right back. Hugin! Find them for me!"
"Cawww!"
When yetis showed up near the house, we cleaned the mountain.
"What?! You're a mage?!"
"Yeah. An extremely weak mage..."
"But Master split the clouds..."
"A truly strong mage can drop a house-sized lightning bolt with a flick of a finger."
"......"
"I'm not kidding!! My master is that strong!!"
"Ah... if it's the Grand Master, I suppose that could be so."
I revealed that I was a mage and taught Eric all sorts of things as time rolled on.
.....................
Two months later... deep in the forest at the foot of the mountain.
"Master! I think this is the place!"
"Oh! And there's the sword."
"Haa... we finally found it... Hati! Thanks."
"Woof!! Woof!!!"
Thanks to Hati, we'd managed to recover Eric's sword.
"Good thing tracking the yeti scent from the cave where we found you was the right call."
"I ran so hard when I fled, and it was still near the cave..."
"Thanks to that we found it faster than I expected, so that's enough."
"Yes, sir."
"Here. Take your sword."
"It's really been a long time..."
I handed him the blade we'd pulled from a yeti's corpse. Eric stared at it quietly, as if old memories were surfacing.
"Thinking about when you left home?"
"I was such an idiot back then..."
"Later, make sure you bow your head and apologize properly to your parents and your fiancée."
"Yes... I caused them an enormous amount of trouble."
After a truly exhaustive amount of character education, he had become a fire-attribute filial son who finally understood what he'd done.
"But you said you weren't going back."
"I-if I go back, I can't become a knight!"
"You've still got a long way to go..."
After retrieving both our swords, we returned home and I repaired his blade.
"I thought being lodged in bone might have warped it, but it's fine... just need to hone the edge a little and scrape off the dried blood and frozen flesh..."
"Ohhh!! Does that mean—"
"Yeah, a little work and you'll be able to use it right away. By the way, this sword... it's a two-hander with an excellent balance point and solid quality. Commissioned piece, right?"
"Yes! The blacksmith of my house made it for me!"
"A sword of this caliber—how much would it cost?"
"Around... seventy gold or more, I'd guess."
"That much?!"
"Mass-produced swords, on the other hand, can be had for about ten gold, Master."
They cost that much...?
When we hit a city, I was going to have to grind hard for money.
......................
In a clearing, master and disciple stood facing each other with swords in hand.
"Two months since then."
"Yes. A great deal has happened."
"Yeah... thinking back on that sloppy stance of yours..."
"Please stop teasing me! When I think of myself back then... ugh..."
Eric's face went bright red. I wanted to needle him more, but we had a spar to do, so I let it go.
"By the way, I'm using a real sword. Are you sure a wooden one is fine for you?"
"I won't be clashing blades with you, so it doesn't matter."
"Don't regret it, Master!"
"Sure. Blanc! Same as last time—I'm counting on you!"
Eric, properly trained by me now, settled into a Vom Tag—sword fully raised into a high guard.
Judging by the stance, he meant to press hard from the start.
"Pong!!!"
At Blanc's call Eric closed on me at speed and swung, but dodging was no trouble at all.
"Tch!"
The instant his blade missed, he rushed me again and launched a flurry of continuous cuts.
Whoosh!!! Whoosh!!!! Whoosh!!!!
Just as I'd taught him, he didn't hammer the same line over and over. He varied the angles, mixed in Ox (high-guard thrust) transitions, and worked his swordsmanship with real variety.
"Your form is perfect now!"
"Huff.... huff...."
"Eric, don't freeze—keep moving. Even if it's just shifting your feet a little."
Watch a fighting match and you'll see the fighters working their footwork the entire time.
They do it because standing still makes it impossible to react to the opponent's movement—so you keep moving.
"If you don't move, I will."
I stabbed the wooden sword into the shoulder of the now-stationary Eric. His reaction was too slow; his stance crumbled.
Crack!!!
"Ugh!!!"
He blocked it, but... two months still wasn't enough to completely rewrite a habit, it seemed.
With his posture broken, Eric fell into the beaten man's stance—standing the sword upright again.
Crack!! Crack!!! Crack!!!!
"Ack!! Ugh!!! Eek!!!"
"Stance!! Stance!!! You idiot!!"
If you're going to stand there like someone begging to be hit, then you're going to get the hell beaten out of you.