A Prize Called a Duel
Simon stood at the head of the training course. He steadied his breathing and emptied his mind, then filled the cleared space with nothing but cold, thorough combat logic.
Good.
He opened his eyes and, before setting off, checked the course one more time with careful deliberation. A path ran between the rails on either side. Wooden puppets slid up and down those rails, torsos rotating, their attached wooden arms swinging at whoever dared the challenge. The arms were built so that a challenger had to knock them aside with fists or feet to fold their joints — take one on bare skin without deflecting it, and it was going to hurt.
"Simon! You've got this~!"
"Well, do your best or don't, see if I care!"
At some point Camibarez and Meilin had wandered over to cheer him on.
"All right then, ready—"
At Hong Peng's signal, Simon slowly bent his knees.
"GO!"
He kicked off the ground and shot forward. The murmuring of the students blurred into a hum at the edge of his hearing.
First, a wooden puppet slid in from the right rail. Its torso began to rotate, and the wooden arm hanging from it became an 'enemy offensive.' Simon flicked his hand-knife out and tapped the incoming arm.
Clack!
The moment the shock landed, the arm's joint folded and hugged itself against the torso. The crisp little clack of the joint collapsing was oddly satisfying.
That's the feel of it. Get used to this.
The arms came from below, too. He lifted his knee and knocked the next one upward, and again the joint folded with a clack. Simon passed his first puppet unscathed.
Just as it seemed manageable, the difficulty spiked. This time a puppet came from the left and the right at once — two of them, simultaneous.
Don't force it. Slow and steady.
Simon's arms moved fast. A straight punch swatted one aside; immediately he dipped his elbow to knock out the low attack; walking backward, he raised his left hand and batted away another.
Don't get locked into patterns. Don't be dazzled by the spinning. Move your limbs honestly — toward what you see, toward what comes.
Clack! Clack! Clack! Clack!
Both of Simon's arms whipped back and forth at blistering speed, striking down every wooden arm that came for him, and cheers erupted from all sides.
"That's it!"
"...What the— since when does he look that cool?"
The wooden puppets kept coming, but Simon, momentum fully ignited, did not slow. He bent at the waist to slip a strike aimed at his head, hopped lightly and spread both legs to kick two wooden arms away at once.
"Simon! Watch out!"
Thoom! Rrrrumble!
He was batting puppets aside in a blur when, out of nowhere, an enormous ball of compacted straw came rolling toward him. It looked heavy — enchanted, most likely.
But he'd already marked the timing.
Simon drove his drawn-back fist out in a dead-straight line.
CRACK!
His jet-black-wrapped fist met the straw ball head-on. A great hole tore open in it and the enchantment shattered, wisps of straw like strands of hair fluttering through the air — and the sight of Simon striding out through the middle of it all was worthy of a master painter's canvas.
Next!
The puppets riding the rails came faster now, and bristling with more arms. Simon advanced calmly, deflecting the onrushing wooden strikes one after another.
Ngh!
He was working himself to the taste of blood in his mouth when a tremor suddenly rose through the ground beneath his feet.
Front!
Three skeletons were charging him head-on, pushing massive shields. In the distance he could see a teaching assistant controlling them.
The student who went first flunked out right here, too.
An unavoidable charge, timed to land while he was struggling to deflect the puppet arms. A setup built to make anyone panic — but Simon calmly gathered jet-black into his left hand.
Nothing said he had to keep going forward. He had plenty of distance banked, so he retreated while swatting the arms away. The skeletons pressed in with their shields in step with his withdrawal — and Simon, at his leisure, lured them into his own domain. Then he punched the middle of the three shields.
Crash!
Shield and fist collided — but it wasn't the shield that buckled. The skeleton holding it simply collapsed. The other two kept driving their shields forward, and Simon ran on, stamping across the abandoned one.
"You're almost there!"
"Just a little more!"
But the course's cruelty only climbed from there. Beyond the spinning puppets, ropes stretched taut across his path. Simon had to duck low and clear the ropes while still knocking away the puppet arms — and his arms accelerated, moving faster and faster.
Clack! Clack! Clack! Clack! Clack!
"Hyaa!"
"How is he deflecting them that fast?"
Simon's eyes gleamed with razor focus.
What waited at the very end was a row of scarecrows woven from straw bundles. Five of them stood at different heights — the front one smallest, the back one tallest. A slide, in shape. Every part but the necks was sheathed in metal armor.
Then—!
Simon dropped into a near-crouch, threading under the ropes, and jet-black coiled around his right hand, honed at its tip into a sharp dagger of a blade.
"Hngh!"
Angle measured, distance measured, he sprang forward as if launched and swept his right hand along a rising diagonal.
Shraaaaaak!
The black blade lanced out diagonally, climbing from below, and sheared through the necks of all five scarecrows in a single stroke.
Thud. Tok.
Scarecrow heads tumbled across the ground. With a clatter of metal, the course ground to a halt, and Simon wiped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve.
Professor Hong Peng shouted in satisfaction.
"Shimon Polentia! Flawless. That's a perfect score — you pass!"
WAAAAAH!
The students burst into excited cheering. Camibarez and Meilin clapped like a pair of seals, and Dick whistled, thoroughly entertained. Meanwhile Hector, watching from a distance with his arms crossed, clicked his tongue.
"Well, if he couldn't even manage this much, it'd hardly be worth watching."
"Hector."
The teaching assistant said with a smile,
"You missed one neck at the end, remember? No perfect score for you."
"......"
FWOOSH! Fire blazed up in Hector's eyes.
"I'm going again."
Simon, meanwhile, came back with a drink the assistant had ready for him and a towel around his neck. He was dabbing at the sweat when Hong Peng approached.
"Congratulations, Shimon."
"Thank you! It's all thanks to your guidance, Professor."
She wiggled her fingers, smiling.
"Care to come with me for a minute?"
Hong Peng led Simon to a tranquil house a short distance from the training grounds — a place with an exotic air, set on a spacious yard, with a small waterfall murmuring beside it.
"Is this your house too, Professor?"
She shook her head.
"It's where one of Kizen's old department heads used to live. The head of the Cursed Sword department, they say."
Simon's eyes went wide.
"I've never heard of that! There used to be an actual Cursed Sword major?"
"There sure was!"
In Kizen's earliest days, she explained, they had taught the cursed sword instead of Magic Combat. But in time Matu developed further — and above all, necromancers simply didn't favor swords. These were people who found even a staff cumbersome; clamp a blade into your hand and every other branch of dark magic became that much harder to wield.
"Still, it never vanished entirely. All martial arts are, in the end, one. It was simply absorbed into Magic Combat."
Hong Peng's eyes sparkled as she went on.
"Second-year Matu lets you train with weapons of every kind, so you've got something to look forward to."
"Yes, ma'am! I can't wait!"
"Now, enough idle chatter. Since Shimon showed such marvelous flair this week—"
She rested her index finger against her lips and pronounced it with flawless enunciation.
"—he's earned himself a prize, hasn't he?"
Cheok!
She raised one hand, the back of it facing him — a distinctive combat stance.
"I'm going to give you a chance to spar with me."
"Yes... yes?"
Simon's face went blank. Isn't this a punishment, not a prize?
"A spar... with you, Professor?"
"Yes! Won't that be fun?"
It threw him off, sure — but when he cooled his head and thought it through, he realized an opportunity like this didn't come around every day. Simon dropped into his stance at once.
"Then I'm in your hands."
"Same rules as the practical. Magic Combat and nothing else. Treat it like the real assessment and come at me with everything."
A practical exam, then.
Hong Peng was trying to hand him a hint. Understanding her intent, Simon gratefully pulled jet-black up through his right foot.
"Then I won't hold back — here I come!"
Simon stamped off the ground and charged at terrifying speed, his jet-black-wrapped fist forming Chwita in a single breath.
BOOM!
Hong Peng tilted her body lightly to the side and slipped past it. Simon slammed the brakes, spun on his heel, and lashed out a roundhouse kick.
Thwip!
She raised her arm without effort and caught the kick. Wind gusted; her hair swayed.
"Hup!"
Recovering his leg, Simon closed in at once and unleashed a flurry of blows.
Pop! Tak. Tok! Tok!
She deflected them all, moving a single hand with airy ease, not a gram of strain in it. Simon had the strange sensation that he'd become one of those wooden puppets from the course. He cut his punch short and fired a spinning kick — even that she evaded with a slight turn of her head.
Figures.
But she wasn't dismantling him through sheer physical superiority. The power she used, the speed she put out — she was matching all of it precisely to his own.
Between the two of them now, only experience and mastery remained as the difference.
Then—!
Simon planted his right foot and slipped deep into her guard as if falling into her embrace. She raised both arms into a joined guard — and Simon smiled as he swung his right fist. Coiled around it was Cheonhyung, the strike that pierced straight through an enemy's defense.
The guard was a mistake, Professor!
The instant his Cheonhyung-wrapped fist came shooting forward —
Swwip.
The gap between her guarding arms opened, just a sliver, creating a pocket of space.
"!"
It happened in far too small a fraction of a second to react to. Simon's fist was sucked into that gap as if drawn in, and she closed her arms again, seizing his wrist.
Robbed of anything to pierce, the Cheonhyung never activated and dissipated miserably into the empty air.
"Ngh!"
Crushing pressure. His right arm ached and burned as if paralyzed; his mouth hung open involuntarily.
M-my wrist is going to tear off!
Hong Peng knew perfectly well what technique Simon was about to use — and that was exactly why a counter like this was possible.
Simon hammered her guard again and again with his left fist, but it wouldn't break, and the blows wouldn't carry any weight either. Deciding punches were a dead end, he raised his right leg to kick her off her feet — and in that instant—
"!"
She released her grip, closed the distance instead, and grabbed his shoulder. Simon, caught mid-leg-lift, toppled backward. And finally—
Whump!
He hit the ground.
"Hmm—"
She tilted her head all the way down until their eyes met.
Close. He could feel her breath. Her hair brushed against Simon's face.
"Shimon just died once there, you know?"
She withdrew with a bright smile. Simon clenched his teeth, pushed off the ground, and — rising straight out of the fall — snapped a kick up at her.
Thwang!
She took the kick on her forearm.
"That kind of fighting jpirit! Very, very good!"
Internal Jet-Black Eruption!!
Simon yanked his leg back instantly and set his whole body spinning.
The Professor is matching my specs! Then—!
With his explosively heightened physical abilities, he hammered roundhouse after roundhouse, driving her back — until at last he succeeded in pinning her body up against a tree.
"Hmm~"
Her back touched the trunk, and she glanced behind her.
She knows every technique I have.
Which meant he absolutely had to mix in a feint.
Make it look like a roundhouse!
He let the jet-black on his leg ripple visibly, then spun his body one more rotation.
The real one's over here!
His right arm thrust forward as the pivot, while the leg everyone expected to kick drove downward instead.
Shraaaaaak!
The black blade sheared straight through the tree, splitting it in two. But Hong Peng, as if she'd predicted even this, leapt into the air to evade.
Simon, hips and shoulders fully committed to the enormous motion, had no way to dodge.
Her two legs slammed into his chest.
Shraaaak!
Simon skidded backward across the ground, carving a long gouge behind him.
Ngh — the Eruption's still active! Stay calm!
Hong Peng landed and came at him again. Simon had barely settled into his stance when her charging arm moved.
"?!"
A curve impossible for a human arm. Her arm bent like a whip.
WHAM!
Impact bloomed across Simon's face. And as she retracted her fist, his body wobbled and pitched forward.
What—?!'
His center of gravity was wrecked. And her fist was already launching from her hip. Simon threw up a joined two-arm guard — and with a tsap! the fist simply vanished from in front of him.
Crack! Bam!
Pain erupted from his head and his leg at the same instant.
She's striking points that far apart — simultaneously!
Reeling, Simon ground his teeth and still thrust out a fist.
"!!"
At some point she had climbed on top of him. Hong Peng's legs, coiled like a serpent around Simon's neck and face, came crashing down with her entire weight.
Crack. Crrrack.
A faint pain pulsed in his neck.
Cold sweat poured down Simon's back.
If this were real, I'd be dead with a broken neck.
One more.
She dismounted. And the instant Simon turned to look behind him—
BOOOOOOM!
A fist the size of a mountain came hurtling at him. Simon felt his thoughts and his senses freeze solid all at once.
Her fist stopped just in front of his face. That alone was enough to scour the surrounding ground into flying dust and send the trees groaning and swaying dangerously.
"I... I lost."
Simon said, trembling.
"I lost, Professor."
Three times. I died three times.
Simon panted, his face drained white.
"Well done."
She lowered her fist. Simon was still breathing hard, his whole body slick with sweat as if he'd taken a shower in it.
"Now — what did you take away from that spar just now?"
"......"
Even through the daze, Simon chose his words.
As expected, you're incredible, Professor.
As expected, the gap between us is heaven and earth.
That was the last thing Hong Peng wanted — flattery smeared across a mouth. She wasn't the type to show off her strength, and even less the type to fish for compliments after beating a student.
She had fought him from beginning to end at specs identical to his own.
What could be gained from a spar that one-sided?
It was—
"Newness."
Simon's jaw went slack.
"I have no newness."
A crescent-moon smile curled across her lips.