A Mesugaki Never Rests (5)
Right now, Carl had one big problem.
It went without saying that the problem wasn't about his skill. What flaw could there possibly be in the abilities of a monster of a swordsman who, even months later, still overwhelmed me completely?
It was something else entirely. If you had to pin it down, the problem lay in the mental — or disciplinary — side of things.
At this very moment, Carl was pressing me harder than usual.
Thanks to the Mesugaki skill, his blade burned with fevered intensity, a faint thread of mana riding each sword strike — enough power to rattle my shield in my grip.
I was holding out by reading his strikes and getting comfortable with parrying. If I weren't, I'd already be flat on the ground, don't you think?
Think about it. What would happen if an ordinary person got hit by that sword?
Yes, the wooden sword Carl was wielding had no edge — it was effectively just a stick. But even a stick, swung carelessly enough, can break bones. In the worst case, it can send you to the grave.
And the wooden sword Carl was swinging was more dangerous than most real blades! If any student at the Academy took one of those hits, they'd be hovering between life and death on the spot?!
No one knew this better than Carl. A swordsman skilled enough to earn Grandpa's approval couldn't possibly be ignorant of the weight of his own blade.
So the only reason he swung that sword at all was his absolute conviction that I would block it.
Which means, you see — if. If a moment ever came when Carl's wooden sword might deal me a serious wound, how would he react?
Sounds like fun, doesn't it?
I hid behind my shield and waited for my moment.
Block. Block. And block again.
Then, at last, the opening appeared.
That strike — I could parry that one for sure.
Certain of it the instant I saw the blow coming, I stepped forward without a shred of hesitation.
Ting!
The parry fired, and Carl's swordstroke was knocked aside, leaving a gap in his guard.
Bewildered by the phenomenon at first, he'd since grown accustomed to it through our sparring — now he simply furrowed his brow slightly and adjusted.
He had to bring the deflected blade back before swinging again, so the return stroke came even fiercer than before.
As the trajectory took shape, the Iron Wall skill whispered its counsel to me.
That sword was aiming for my head.
Perfect. The more dangerous the attack, the greater the shock Carl would feel when it landed.
Even now, Carl would be certain I'd block that sword. It had always been that way.
I hadn't allowed a single clean hit so far.
But this time was different. I didn't move my shield.
Instead, I took a step forward.
As if to say — if you're going to knock me down, do it properly, just this once.
In that instant, the haze cleared from Carl's eyes and reason returned.
So. What will you do now?
It's already too late to pull the sword back.
Even for you, there's no way out of this one.
Carl's judgment was swift.
Gritting his teeth, he fought to slow his own blade.
Not to stop the attack entirely — but to keep it from wounding me.
I knew you would. Watching him, I smiled and took yet another step forward.
And at the same time, I poured divinity into the head of my mace.
Not ordinary divinity — the scorching heat of Divine Pugilism.
In the same breath, the stroke Carl had finally brought under control grazed my forehead.
There was an impact, but not much of one.
Partly because Carl had thrown everything into halting his sword, and partly because the divinity I'd wrapped around myself absorbed a good portion of the shock.
From the sting spreading out from my forehead, a bruise was certain to form — but so what?
What mattered more was that, thanks to him straining to stop his own blade, I now had my opening to attack.
The technique I'd used when throwing my punch applied just as well to swinging the mace.
Not a mere swing of the arm — a forward strike driven by the force of my entire body.
Carl's eyes tracked my movement, but it was already too late to answer with his sword.
So instead of forcing a desperate swing, he chose to take my mace head-on.
Up to that point, everything was going exactly as I'd scripted it in my head.
All that remained was to land the ending.
Now then, Carl. If you can block my attack here without taking a scratch, the win is yours.
Not that that's remotely possible!
A while ago — back when I first resolved to land a single hit on you — I was weak.
Nothing more than an arrogant little brat who didn't even know how to swing a mace properly.
I'm still weak now. But not the way I was then.
I can't say how powerful you're imagining my attack to be, but one thing I can tell you for certain.
It's going to hit harder than whatever you're picturing right now.
My mace came down over the top of the wooden sword Carl had raised as a shield.
Wow. This guy really is a monster.
You're trying to hold back my attack with raw muscle strength alone?
This attack, carrying every last drop of the divinity I had left?
His response was so far beyond common sense that laughter bubbled out of me in sheer disbelief.
A genuine monster, through and through.
But hey — even if you're that strong, the wooden sword in your hands isn't, is it?
Even with mana layered over it, a wooden sword is a wooden sword.
There's a limit to the force it can endure.
Across a standoff that lasted an eternity yet passed in an instant, a crack began to spiderweb through the center of the wooden sword — and then it split clean in two.
The mace, having obliterated the obstacle in its path, drove onward toward its original target.
My aim: Carl's abdomen.
THWACK!
The mace connected, and Carl's body was driven backward before lifting clean off the ground.
Feeling the sensation travel down into my hands, I knew for certain.
My attack had landed, exactly as intended.
Having confirmed Carl go flying from the mace, I let out a satisfied laugh — and then collapsed flat onto the floor.
<Was that a strike that gave your all, then?>
'Yessir.'
I'd already burned through half my divinity testing Divine Pugilism in the real world, after all.
To land a proper strike, I had to pour in everything I had.
Thanks to that, none of my limbs are moving right now.
I'll probably be lying here like this for a while.
Weeell. But I landed a hit on Carl, so I'm satisfied.
Now I get to call that guy the noob — the noob who took a hit from his own master. The noobest noob of all noobs.
Just seeing the lines welling up in my head, brimming to overflowing, told me I'd been looking forward to this moment an awful, awful lot.
As I lay there snickering uselessly up at the impossibly blue sky, a thought suddenly crossed my mind, and I went dead serious.
Skills like Divine Pugilism and Iron Wall — their proficiency climbs little by little every time you use them, right?
Then doesn't the Mesugaki skill have proficiency too?
The instant I started thinking about how to tease Carl, all those different mesugaki turns of phrase came flooding in — was that because the Mesugaki skill's proficiency had gone up?
Emergency!
Code. Reddddd!
Actually, come to think of it, there was more than one thing that didn't add up.
The way words like "noob" and "trash-tier" had practically glued themselves to my mouth.
The way I caught myself muttering "noob" even in my own head more and more often.
The way my vocabulary of taunts kept growing richer by itself whenever I provoked the others.
...Am I being slowly devoured by the Mesugaki skill? Is that what's happening?!
As I shivered at the shocking realization, footsteps sounded right beside me.
I didn't have the strength left to turn my neck and see who it was with my own eyes, but I knew exactly who it was.
"My lady. That was magnificent."
It was Carl. The guy was smiling with perfect ease, as if my full-power strike had dealt him nothing at all.
"It hurt just as much as our sparring back at the Alrn estate. To think you've grown this strong without my noticing. Truly, you are one who carries the blood of House Alrn."
I'd thrown that attack in the faith that even if it hurt him badly, the Academy would treat him.
I'm sorry — what? It hurt? That's all it did?!?!
Carl had surely brought out those words as his own clumsy way of praising me, but to me they felt like pure provocation.
It was exactly like a cartoon villain going, Ohh? To wound me — how truly impressive.
Grrr. Carl. Just you wait. You can laugh and say that now, but with every passing day, it's going to get harder and harder for you.
Because I am Soul Academy's ultimate veteran.
One of these days, I'll make those words come out of your very mouth: This Incompetent Dog simply cannot hope to defeat my lady.
Even as I thought it, I realized I'd just hurled "noob" around in my head again, and I let out a silent scream.
After that, I spent the entire day agonizing over the Mesugaki skill's proficiency — and in the end, reached absolutely no conclusion.
I mean, even if I didn't want to build the Mesugaki skill's proficiency, was there any way to stop it from building?
Every time I opened my mouth, my words got auto-converted into Mesugaki-speak.
Short of keeping my mouth shut for the rest of my life, there was simply nothing to be done — as long as I lived, the Mesugaki skill's proficiency would climb whether I liked it or not.
And even setting aside its compulsive nature, I was in a position where I had to make use of the Mesugaki skill anyway.
Strip away the fact that I was forced to talk like a brat, and this skill's performance was overwhelming.
Absolute provocation capability. A rage debuff forcibly inflicted on the target. And on top of that, stats that climbed the angrier my enemies got.
Countless crises far worse than anything I'd faced so far were bound to come crashing down on me — and there was no way I could survive them all without the Mesugaki skill, was there?
So yes — the Mesugaki skill's proficiency piling up, and words like "noob" and "trash-tier" sticking to my mouth, were simply unavoidable facts of life.
It does terrify me a little that even after the Mesugaki skill vanishes someday, I might still go around bleating "noob, noob" forever. But hey, what can you do?
Who knows — maybe in a little while I'll catch myself calling Grandpa a rusty old antique relic even in my head.
Actually, that might be kind of funny.
Maybe I'll try calling him that as a joke, next time we train together in Practice Mode.
After agonizing over it forever, I finally concluded that more thought would produce nothing but sighs — so, needing a change of mood, I headed to the dining hall.
When you're feeling down, the answer is always good food.
When you're blue, meat and sweets are the cure!
<And so you dine alone yet again, do you?>
'...Grandfather. Did you really have to point that out?'
Asking someone eating alone, "Why are you eating alone?" is an egregious breach of etiquette, you know.
Why would a man who knows so much about high society and its niceties do this to me?!?
<Ah, no — I only wonder whether there is truly a reason you must eat alone still. You no longer stand surrounded by enemies on all sides, as you did when you first came here.>
'That's true, I suppose.'
The reason I'd eaten alone at the Academy in the beginning was simply that there was no one willing to share a meal with me.
But things were different now.
These days, if I wanted company, there were people who would eat with me.
Girls like Vishy and Avery would have no choice but to tag along if I ordered them to.
Joy and Phoebe would gladly abandon whoever they were originally eating with and come running at a single request.
Arthur was a bit of an ambiguous case.
Frey? She doesn't listen to a word I say to begin with, so who knows if she'd come.
The Face-Connoisseur Fox... I hate her. Watching her eat would genuinely make me lose my appetite — I can feel it in my bones.
Anyway, to sum up: these days, if I wanted to escape eating alone, I could.
And yet the reason I was eating alone came down to one thing.
'What if it backfires and they start hating me?'
I threw my whole body into raising their favorability, and then the Mesugaki skill opens its useless mouth and knocks it right back down — how am I supposed to live with that?!
'I know that too.'
But still, you see.
If "noob" this and "loser" that comes out of my mouth at the dinner table, then even if they're fine with it, I'm the one who's uncomfortable.
I learned that during the field trip, eating together with everyone last time.
Rather than eat while pointlessly tiptoeing around everyone's feelings, I'd rather just eat alone!
<So gallant in battle, yet so hopelessly clumsy in matters of human hearts. How can this be?>
'Shut up, Grandfather.'
After tossing off that light retort to Grandpa, I was waiting for my order to arrive when, off in the distance, a single figure started making their way toward me.