Getting Stronger Together
In truth, there were no lingering wounds left, so discharging me right away wouldn't have been a problem at all. I knew my own body better than anyone, and I wanted out immediately. But the boss's absolute refusal, my friends' insistence, and the academy and city upper ranks—who needed to investigate the demon invasion and calm public opinion—all piled on top of each other. The result was that I was forced to stay put in a hospital room for a full week, unable to move an inch.
At least they gave me a private room, and people came to visit every single day of that week, so boredom never really set in. Still, my body grew stiff and restless no matter what. And no matter how high-quality the academy was, hospital food being bland seemed to be a universal truth across the entire continent. Back in the old days I would have been grateful for even that, but after getting used to the academy cafeteria's menu, this diet was nothing short of torture.
So the moment I was discharged, I felt freer than ever and headed straight for the training grounds to loosen up a body that had been stuck in bed for far too long.
I'd only planned to do a light solo warm-up there. But Celian was already waiting for me—somehow she'd known—and so we ended up training together.
Our session started with a light warm-up and some simple strength work, then, as always, moved into sparring. Up to that point, nothing was wrong. Or rather, nothing was wrong until the sparring actually began.
Swoosh.
?
What just happened? We had faced each other with swords raised, the starting bell had rung—everything looked exactly like every other time.
But the instant the spar began, everything that followed was completely foreign to me. The exchanges of steel. My sword was the same as always, but Celian's was different.
Her blade ended up at my throat the same as usual, yet the path that led there was nothing like before. It was a sword I had never seen from her in all our previous spars.
I had felt this before.
Sparring against the academy's swordsmanship professors. The blade of someone overwhelmingly stronger than me.
Celian's swordsmanship had already reached the same finished level as those masters who were called the best. There was no way this had been completed in the single week I was hospitalized. Her blade carried far too much experience for that.
Only then did I understand just how much she had been holding back every time we sparred.
Of course I already knew she was stronger than me, and I knew she had been matching my level. But the actual gap was far wider than anything I had imagined.
"Alright. Again. Raise your sword."
She withdrew the blade from my throat and clicked back to her starting position with neat little steps.
I stood there blankly, still trying to process what had just happened, while she settled into stance, ready to begin at any moment. She didn't rush me. She simply waited for me to take my own stance.
I couldn't just keep standing there, so I lifted my lowered sword again and aimed it at her.
The spar restarted at once.
This time I was subdued even faster. In only five exchanges my sword went flying into a far corner of the training ground, and Celian's blade was once more resting against my neck.
Once could have been chance. When it repeated, it was no longer chance.
The overwhelming difference between us was unmistakable. And that fact stirred a huge emotion inside me.
It was an emotion that could never be defined as just one thing.
While I still couldn't even name what I was feeling, Celian spoke in her usual gentle tone.
"El. I will always protect you. But the you I've watched all this time will keep risking your own life lightly for the sake of protecting others."
Having subdued me once more, she showed no interest in victory or defeat and simply returned to her original spot the same way as before.
"I can never accept that. I refuse to watch you fall in front of me. So grow stronger, El. Strong enough that no one dares covet what is yours—and if anyone does try to take what you want to protect, strong enough to crush them completely."
She turned back to face me.
"Don't stop at catching up to me. Surpass me. Use me as your nourishment."
She raised her sword again.
"Because this is all I can give you."
The emotion I felt toward Celian right then could have been anger at how thoroughly she had been toying with me, jealousy at her overwhelming talent and skill, or despair at a gap that seemed impossible to close.
"If you don't like that, put down your sword right now and leave. Leave everything to me. You can just live an ordinary, happy life like always."
But I could swear that the thickest root of the emotion settled inside me was none of those cheap things. It was rage at my own weakness, anticipation for how far I could still climb, and the pure drive to stand on the exact same level as her no matter what.
So I answered the Celian who was demanding a choice.
"Yeah. No."
I walked over, picked up the sword lying in the corner of the training ground, and raised it toward her once more.
"You think I'd accept something like 'use me as nourishment' or 'leave it all to me'?"
I aimed the blade at her again.
"I might not be any help to you right now, but still."
And this time I was the one who charged first.
Tak!
My attack was blocked, of course. But I never stopped.
Just like when I had faced Valikan, I kept moving even knowing every single strike would be stopped. When Celian counterattacked I forced myself to dodge; when I couldn't, I clenched my teeth and took it with my body. It was only possible because we were using wooden swords—if they had been real blades, it would have been a different story.
Kang!
Even if my whole body ended up covered in bruises, my sword never stopped. At last it knocked Celian's blade away and pointed straight at her. Anyone could call it reckless and desperate, but I didn't care. This was my will. This was my sincerity.
"Getting stronger... is something we do together."
Whether she found my reckless charge absurd, whether she was startled by the unexpected counter, or whether my answer had simply been outside her expectations—
She stared at me blankly for a moment, then let out a short huff of laughter.
"Yes. That's the El I know."
Thankfully she seemed reasonably satisfied with my answer. She walked over to the corner of the training ground, picked up her own discarded sword the same way I had a moment ago, and aimed it at me.
"Then you're ready, I assume?"
"Of course."
"I won't go easy on you later even if you start whining."
Celian grinned.
...After that I got thoroughly beaten for a long while before we finally finished training.
Personal training was personal training, but the moment I attended my first class after discharge I realized something important.
Just how badly that one week in the hospital had wrecked my grades.
On the surface there wasn't any major problem. Because my absence was the school's fault, they made sure my attendance record took no hit, and the assignments that had been due were given extensions so I wouldn't lose points. Even the ones that couldn't be extended still guaranteed me a base score.
The real issue was that while I lost no points, I also gained none of the extra credit.
My blueprint had been to keep top-tier grades through the first semester so I could start receiving scholarships from the second semester onward. Of course I already knew full scholarships were impossible in the first year with Celian sitting there as the overwhelming top scholarship candidate, so I had been aiming for the partial scholarships given to the next few students down the list.
Naturally I wasn't the only one hunting those scholarships. Some students simply wanted the absolute top ranks, and others, like me, were commoners chasing the money.
And after missing just one week's worth of extra credit in every subject, I was now so close to the edge that I couldn't even guarantee a partial scholarship anymore. The people I'd been competing with had already pulled a step ahead. On top of that I still had to catch up on the material I'd missed that week by studying it separately.
An alarm started ringing inside me.
If this keeps up, I'm completely screwed.
No joke—my second semester was genuinely about to go to hell.
The only remaining hope was how much compensation money Boss Presia managed to squeeze out of them, but there was no guarantee of the amount, so I had to set that aside for now. My situation wasn't comfortable enough to sit around clinging to hope.
No choice. In times like these the answer was actually simple.
Starting today, it was full-throttle hardcore studying.