There'll Be Another Chance to Show It
The lecture went smoothly and wrapped up without any major issues. At the end, I watched the city guard archers practice, and it seemed like they’d be fine even in this state. Of course, “smoothly” was entirely according to my standards. To the person standing next to me, it was probably nothing more than an utterly pointless and boring waste of time.
“Wow. You’re pretty lucky, huh? I ditched my own stuff thinking I’d finally get to watch something fun after so long.”
“Glad it worked out.”
Karena clicked her tongue in clear disappointment. She said it loud enough that it was obviously meant for me to hear. The two of us were retracing our steps back the way we came, and after that sharp “tsk,” silence stretched between us for a while. Then Karena broke it first.
“What were you talking about with the captain at the end? You two chatted for quite a while.”
“Nothing much. I just gave him some advice—told him he should hire a scroll manager. They’re not mages, so you can hire them pretty cheap.”
Karena didn’t seem particularly interested. She let out a vague “Hmm…” that sounded like both a response and not.
“More importantly, how did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“The scroll malfunction earlier. You said you suppressed it, right? But didn’t you tell me you can’t use magic anymore?”
I paused for a moment, trying to figure out how to explain it. Nothing good came to mind. No matter how I thought about it, there was no simple way to make it easy to understand.
“Umm… it’d take too long to explain. Anyway. Even though I can’t use magic right now, I can still manage something like that.”
“…Right. Never mind how you did it. But did you really have to do it right there? Couldn’t you have stopped the malfunction before it happened?”
“The captain was watching. He needed to see exactly how dangerous a malfunction can be, so I showed him on purpose.”
We had reached the city guard building. But instead of opening the door, Karena just stood there in front of it.
“What’s wrong? Is the door stuck?”
At that moment, Karena spun around. Her expression looked… off. The second that thought crossed my mind, she kicked me hard in the shin.
“Gah… aaagh…”
“Quit whining.”
“Why? What did I do this time?”
Suddenly Karena declared in a solemn voice, “Guild party rule number one.”
“All plans must be shared with party members in advance.”
“Pretty sure that’s rule three.”
Karena brushed off my protest with a sharp “Whatever!” and continued.
“If you were thinking of doing something like that, you should’ve told me ahead of time. What the hell was I supposed to do if you suddenly started fiddling with something and it blew up?”
“Look, it wasn’t even that dangerous to begin with—”
The moment those words left my mouth, Karena’s face twisted. Sometimes when I looked at her, I’d think, She’s angry, but that was only seeing the tip of the iceberg. Her rage was so vast and red that my shallow insight could only glimpse a fraction of it. In any case, yeah. That was how it was.
Right after that, we went straight inside the building. Without needing any guidance, we quickly found Jian. The training was happening not far from the entrance.
“So you guys…”
When Jian noticed us sneaking closer, he waved. But once he lowered his hand, his gaze wasn’t on “us”—it was on me. As I got closer, the city guards who were training began to murmur among themselves.
“What were you doing?”
“They asked me to teach them how to use scrolls. I gave them a quick lesson and came back.”
“…Did you get scolded?”
I ran a hand through my hair. I didn’t bother asking if I looked okay on the outside. I could already tell just by the way he was looking at me.
“Just… had a bit of an incident.”
Jian glanced over my shoulder at Karena. Then he looked back at me with clear understanding in his eyes and nodded.
“Sorry, but since you’re already here, could you do me one more favor?”
“What is it?”
Jian handed me the training staff he’d been holding and turned to the orcs.
“Alright! You guys like resting the most, right? I’ll give you a chance. This guy right here is our party’s mage. A mage. If any of you can land a single hit on him during a spar, we’ll end today’s lesson right here!”
My bewilderment immediately turned into action. Before I even realized it, I was already whispering to Jian.
“Hey? Why me? Wouldn’t Karena be better for this?”
The bold suggestion came out in a whisper.
“If it were Karena, she’d beat them for real. And they need to experience losing to a mage to really feel the shock.”
“…Can I even pull this off? They’re still city guards.”
“You’ll be fine.”
“Sigh… okay. I don’t actually have to hit them, right?”
“One minute per person. All you have to do is dodge.”
The orcs stood up with hopeful eyes and picked up the training staffs.
“For real?”
Their green skin glistened with sweat and eagerness.
“If you manage to hit our mage within one minute, we’re done for the day. But only three of you at a time, one after another. I can’t exactly disarm you all neatly like I did earlier.”
After a brief huddle and some whispering, three orcs stepped forward. Karena and Jian moved back a few steps to watch me.
“Alright… begin!”
The moment Jian’s voice faded, the first guard orc charged at me like a green wolf. He was pretty fast. But maybe his mind was exhausted from training with Jian, because his movements were way too predictable. He raised his elbow high, tension running from shoulder to elbow, clearly planning to slam down diagonally from the right—and that’s exactly what he did.
Even though I knew nothing about martial techniques, my battle experience let me see exactly what they were lacking. It was psychological warfare. Normally, when an attack is read, the basic response is to switch to a different move or buy time to reassess. But this orc kept repeating the same readable attack, draining his own strength. If he kept throwing exhausted strikes like that, there was no way they’d land. Physically he was clearly superior to me, but I could dodge him without too much trouble.
“Okay. That’s enough for you. Next!”
The next two orcs were even worse than the first. Their strategies were all similar, but slower, so there was no chance of them hitting me. Thanks to that, I managed to hold out without expending much effort.
“Huff… huff…”
“See? It’s not because it’s me dodging. Once you build up some experience, you’ll all be able to avoid stuff like that.”
Jian walked over to the panting orcs and spoke.
“Then what should we do?”
When the question came, Jian looked at me.
“Henry. What do you think?”
I thought for a second about how to phrase it, but since Jian said, “You can be honest,” I just said what came to mind.
“First of all, the attacks are too monotonous. No matter how fast an attack is, without at least some psychological warfare, it’s bound to miss. Since that’s completely missing, it’s easy to dodge.”
“Good. Well said.”
Jian took the staff from my hand and demonstrated the movements the orcs had used. He also explained that if he were fighting, he would have added a feint.
“The problem you all share is that your attacks are too rushed. You’re trying to hit more and faster, which makes your attacks monotonous and easy to avoid.”
Jian planted the staff in the ground and rested his chin on it.
“Still, I get it. Multiple slashes—‘chain strikes’—are like the dream of every warrior. But in reality, there are a lot of drawbacks. People think chain strikes will make techniques more accurate, faster, and harder to dodge, but it’s actually the opposite. If you don’t put enough power into each individual strike, chain attacks just become a bunch of shallow, weak hits that aren’t lethal at all.”
“Then do you not use it often either, Instructor Jian?”
“Not much in one-on-one fights. Multiple slashes also means the power that should go into a single strike is being split. But it changes a bit when you have allies around. There are more situations where every strike can land cleanly, and sometimes you have no choice but to use it. I use it from time to time too.”
One of the orcs grinned and asked,
“Could you show us once?”
“Well, I don’t see why not.”
Suddenly the orcs’ eyes sparkled, and cheers erupted from all around. The orc who had asked clearly hadn’t expected things to go this way—his grin stretched from ear to ear.
Jian smiled warmly and picked one of the guards, positioning him opposite himself. He told the orc not to worry since he wasn’t actually going to hit him, then gripped the staff.
“Watch carefully.”
The orcs were so focused they even forgot to reply as they stared at Jian. Then Jian’s short shout rang out like the final gasp of the wind. In an instant, his figure vanished, leaving only a blurry afterimage and a swirl of sand.
A moment later, Jian reappeared when a voice called out to him from somewhere and he stopped.
“Hyung-nim!”
“…Yeah?”
“Over here! I made everything exactly as you asked!”
Archimon appeared from far away, waving a sword wrapped in cloth. Jian clicked his tongue and lowered the staff he’d been holding high.
It had been an incredibly short time. For an ordinary warrior, that would have been just enough to draw a sword and get into stance. But Jian had gone from a killing stance all the way to right in front of the orc.
The orcs forgot their disappointment. Their mouths hung open in pure awe and admiration.
“Let’s call it here for today. There’ll be another chance to show chain strikes later.”