The Duel Arena, a Lazy Lesson, and the Sword Maiden Takes the Field
One inch.
That was all the distance left between the tip of the wooden sword and Hermann's throat. Not a single grain of mana rode upon it. And yet the frost-blue killing aura pouring from that wooden tip was cruel enough to flay skin at the slightest twitch.
The air had sunk, heavy and still, as though frozen solid. Through the morning mist, a chill bloodlust coiled and uncoiled, stealing the warmth from everything around it.
"...E-eep?!"
An ugly, wheezing sound leaked from Hermann's throat. His jaw rattled, teeth clacking together.
This was the girl who had been groveling at his feet mere moments ago—the repeating student they'd sneered at as a failure, cast out by her own family for being unable to so much as handle mana. Yet he hadn't seen when she'd stepped forward. He hadn't even seen her draw the sword. He had blinked, and death's edge had simply sunk into the nape of his neck.
H-how...?
If his reaction had been a heartbeat slower—if the blade had carried a handspan further—his throat would have been skewered, blood fountaining. Primal terror shot up his spine. Every hair on his body stood on end as cold sweat rained down.
Scrape. Stumble.
Hermann staggered backward in a graceless scramble. His legs gave out, his heel caught the dirt, and he swayed like a drunkard.
The Class A assistant instructors who had trailed him stood frozen as statues. Their fingertips, white-knuckled around the hilts of their swords, trembled violently. Not one of them dared step forward.
These were the eyes of a battle-hardened veteran who had rolled across hundreds of battlefields and waded out of seas of blood. What dwelled in the girl's crimson gaze was nothing but the absolute, single-minded obsession of a killer: to cut down her enemy in one stroke.
"H-how is this possible... a washed-up girl without even mana..."
Hermann wheezed out the words. The arrogance of the elite class's head professor had been bleached away to a pallid white; only the frost-blue terror of annihilation ruled his mind.
Elena did not stir. The tip of her wooden sword, steady to the hair's breadth, aimed at the space between Hermann's brows. Between curtains of jet-black hair, a pale ruby light flashed in her eyes.
A voice drained of all emotion, cold beyond measure, cut across the courtyard.
"That is the price of speaking my master's name with that filthy mouth."
The girl's grip tightened around the hilt.
"Take one more step, and I will take your head. I will leave not a shred of flesh behind."
Just as the blood-soaked bloodlust threatened to swallow the annex courtyard whole, what shattered the ice-sheet silence was, absurdly, a lazy yawn.
Haaam—
Ethan, who had been leaning against the doorsill, unleashed a yawn long enough to split his mouth. He wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes with the back of his hand and shuffled out, slippers dragging.
Shuffle, shuffle.
He walked up beside Elena, who was drawn taut as a bowstring, and tapped the frozen girl's shoulder with his palm.
"Hey, kiddo."
A slow voice, dripping with annoyance.
"If a student takes a head professor's head on academy grounds, it's instant expulsion. Get dragged off by the guards for murder, and the cleanup is a real headache."
The moment that flat voice brushed their ears, something impossible happened.
The ferocious bloodlust that had been crushing down on Hermann and the instructors' necks guttered out without a trace—in a single second.
Shff.
The strength drained from Elena's hand, and the wooden sword sank gently down. The crimson eyes that had flashed with promises of decapitation were gone entirely. Like a docile lamb heeling at its master's one word, the girl obediently bowed her head.
Ethan propped his chin lazily on one hand and looked down at Hermann, who was still half-collapsed on the dirt.
"Professor Hermann, was it? Don't go screaming your head off in front of someone's home first thing in the morning. If your business is done, kindly see yourself out."
Ethan waved a hand, the very picture of inconvenience.
"Some of us are trying to sleep. My body aches bad enough as it is."
At that aloof, languid attitude, Hermann—finally recovering his senses—flushed crimson with shame.
He had flinched before that washed-up girl. Stumbled backward, in front of a third-rate instructor, no less. His professorial dignity and his noble pride alike had been face-planted into muddy water.
The veins stood out thick on Hermann's neck.
"Y-you gutter trash... you dare mock me?!"
Hermann yanked a thick parchment stamped with a crimson imperial wax seal from inside his coat and hurled it viciously at Ethan's feet.
Thwack—!
What landed in a puff of dust was an Official Duel Challenge — Regular Promotion Mock Battle.
"One week from now, I'll tear those arrogant mouths of yours to ribbons! In the regular mock battle, I'll field Class A's top prospect and have Class E permanently expelled!"
Hermann glared at the pair with bloodshot eyes.
"Let's see just how far that mana-less girl can strut! In one week, you'll be weeping tears of blood in the Grand Arena!"
Perhaps his back still felt cold—Hermann kept stealing nervous glances at Elena as he kicked the frozen instructors into motion.
"What are you doing?! We're leaving. Now!"
The retreating backs of Hermann's party, staggering away with their tails between their legs, looked for all the world like routed soldiers.
The moment the uninvited guests' clamor faded beyond the trees, silence settled over the courtyard once more. And in that instant, Elena's demeanor flipped like a turned palm.
Thud.
Elena dropped to her knees and prostrated herself deep before Ethan. Through her neatly pressed uniform, her slender shoulders trembled faintly.
"Master..."
Her cracked voice was steeped in desperate self-reproach.
"I failed to strike down the wretch who sullied your honored name where he stood... My blade was inadequate. It disturbed your ears, Master."
It was not rage at her own humiliation. It was purely the guilt of a disciple blaming her own incompetence—her failure to butcher the man who had insulted her master.
At that blind devotion, Ethan scratched at his throbbing temple.
"Honor? What damn honor? I don't have any of that."
Ethan sighed and nudged the red challenge form lying on the ground with the toe of his slipper.
"Please stop cooking up pointless trouble. If you get expelled for murder on campus, my instructor pay gets docked too."
He added, weariness etched into his face:
"I'm planning to sleep quietly for one year, retire without incident, and live off my pension. So do me a favor and behave."
It was an utterly practical, mercenary grumble.
But to Elena, prostrate on the ground, it sounded like something else entirely.
...Ahh.
An indescribable awe, a sublime emotion, spread through the girl's crimson eyes.
Master does not cling so much as a speck to worldly honor or pride. He lets the nobles' childish provocations drift past like a breeze, lowering himself for one reason alone—to shield his disciple.
Even using his docked salary as an excuse...
Elena clutched her chest with trembling hands. Her eyes burned hot, tears welling.
To shelter a failure cast out by her own family, he had willingly shouldered a collision with the academy's powerbroker—the head professor himself. Fearing she might be thrown away, he had deliberately played the miser, wrapping her in the guise of his own selfishness. A holy consideration.
Such depth... such merciful nobility of spirit...!
She felt she could give him her life—this whole world, if he asked for it.
Elena swallowed her tears and bowed her head low.
"Your deep and sublime will, Master... I shall engrave it upon my very soul."
"...Stop engraving things, it's creepy. You don't understand a word I say."
Ethan shook his head. The conversation had gone careening off somewhere entirely beyond him.
Just then, Elena reverently lifted a porcelain bowl in both hands.
"Your medicine has gone cold. I cannot allow harm to come to your precious body—I shall brew a fresh batch at once."
"No, forget it. Just put some warm tea on. My head aches."
Ethan clicked his tongue and turned back toward the annex. In the eyes of the girl following him, a reverence bordering on madness burned bright.
After that day, the week flew past like an arrow.
Seven days remained until the regular promotion mock battle against Class A. In the outdoor training ground behind the annex, the cool whistle of cleaved air rang out day and night.
Swish, swish—!
Elena, her training clothes drenched in sweat, swung her wooden sword without pause. It was nothing like the old days, when she had thrashed desperately to escape her family's contempt. This was to repay the master who had taken her in—and to protect Class E, so that her master could collect his pension in peace.
Ethan, meanwhile, lay in a battered rocking chair beneath the shade of a great old tree, a navy coat draped over him, creaking lazily through his afternoon nap.
Creak, creak.
His body—a vessel on a timer, its soul circuits burning away—ached to the bone at even a passing chill. Stretching out beneath warm sunlight was the one pleasure he had left. But the sound of Elena's swordwork kept drilling into his ears, and it grated.
"Hey, kiddo."
Ethan muttered without opening his eyes.
"Drop your ankle angle three degrees. Your weight's tipping onto your heel, so your thrust keeps slicing empty air."
At that offhand remark, Elena's movement froze as if struck by lightning. The moment she grasped where her sword path had gone astray, she twisted her rear foot's angle.
Hyah!
The change was startling. The resistance that had been pressing down on her shoulder vanished, and the wooden sword shot out like flowing water.
"Don't tense the tip. Hold your breath for three counts. Ragged breathing makes the sword path waver."
Ethan pulled the coat up higher and rolled over.
"Don't try to muscle through it—ride the grain. A cut comes from the blade's angle and your weight shift, not your muscles."
It was nothing more than a grumble tossed out by a man who didn't want his nap interrupted. And yet it was the essence of the sword itself, pinpointed by the eyes of an absolute existence—the continent's youngest Sword Master, a man who had crossed the line between life and death thousands of times.
Elena absorbed each lesson like parched earth drinking rain.
Having no mana made no difference. When the organic rotation of her joints, the recoil from the ground, and the Pure Sword Principle—honed to perfect angles—wove together, a miracle happened.
One day. Two days. Three.
As time passed, the trajectory of Elena's wooden sword grew sharp to the point of grotesquerie, and even the whistle of parting air faded away. A blade with no sound was the deadliest law of all.
At last, on the seventh day—the eve of the mock battle—as the sun bled into dusk, Elena quietly lowered her wooden sword.
Shhh—
A silent arc. Not even the wind stirred.
And yet the massive oak target three meters ahead slid apart along a diagonal, soundlessly, as if a block of soft tofu had been shaved clean away.
THUD—!
The great log slammed into the ground, kicking up dust. The cut face was smooth as a mirror. A realm where a giant tree fell to a single stroke—no grain of mana, nothing but the pure grain of the blade.
Ethan cracked one eye open from the rocking chair and clicked his tongue.
...A genuinely monstrous talent. She takes everything I toss out half-asleep and runs that far with it?
And then, at last, the day of the decisive battle dawned.
The Central Grand Arena of Thera Imperial Academy.
From the early morning, crowds by the thousands had poured like clouds into the colossal circular arena, a colosseum in all but name. The entire student body, the faculty, even high nobility packed the stands shoulder to shoulder.
Amid the murmur of the crowd, open mockery rained down.
"Is that Class E washout girl seriously fighting today?"
"I heard Sir Leonardo, Class A's top prospect, called her out himself. To think she'd run wild without knowing her place."
"Her crime was daring to grip a sword while a cripple without mana. By tonight, that nuisance Class E will be gone for good."
Sneers and jeers rolled across the arena like waves.
Then a boy clad in silver armor strode arrogantly to the center of the arena floor.
Class A's top prospect—Leonardo von Lentz.
As he drew his sword, a blue mana aura shimmered along the blade.
Vmmm—
The brilliant sword aura of one at the threshold of Sword Expert. Gasps of admiration burst from every corner of the stands.
Leonardo lifted his chin and leveled his blade at Class E's waiting bench.
"Elena, failure of House Arden! Quit stinking up this place with Class E's sewer reek and crawl out here this instant!"
The arrogant provocation rang through the arena.
"In a single exchange of my blade, I'll shatter that wooden sword of yours—and your worthless life along with it!"
The crowd's howling laughter and cheers shook the colosseum.
Just as that humiliating insult burrowed into the shadows of the waiting bench, a figure rose slowly from within the dark passage.
Jet-black hair bound up neatly. A lean, honed swordsman's frame. And draped across her shoulders like a cloak hung a loose, rumpled navy coat.
The old instructor's coat Ethan had tossed to her without a second thought, right before she left the waiting room.
It's cold out. Throw it on and go. If you catch a cold and forfeit, my instructor pay gets docked.
The garment he'd handed over with that one curt remark.
Elena quietly drew the collar close. Her master's warmth was soaked deep into the coat's lining, and the faintly bitter scent of medicinal herbs wrapped around her nose.
Every one of those sensations stoked Elena's heart like a great furnace.
The girl's cold eyes blazed like red rubies.
This is my master's garment.
The coat of a holy benefactor who, even as he coughed blood, shared his warmth with his unworthy disciple.
And before this cloth, carrying that noble man's warmth, that piece of trash dared to wag his filthy mouth?
Elena's hand closed around the old wooden sword at her waist. From between her parched lips seeped a killing intent as though dredged up from the very floor of hell.
"...Before my master's very garment."
A whisper of cold, merciless doom that froze the air itself.
"You will pay—bone-deep—for daring to run that mouth."
Gripping the old wooden sword without a wisp of mana, Elena began to climb the arena steps, one at a time.
Behind her shoulders, her master's worn navy coat billowed like a great battle banner.