Clang!
Blocked?
He actually blocked it?
Lynn stared at the Lupo who had materialized in front of him in a fraction of a second.
His eyes darted from Texas’s stoic face to the glowing blade grinding harshly against his own rapier.
A single bead of cold sweat traced a line down his temple.
This was no longer a spar dictated by visual tracking or combat experience; his body was moving entirely on sheer, unadulterated instinct.
Facing the figure framed by reddish-brown hair and the brilliant glare of her Arts-constructed sword, Lynn forgot to breathe.
The displaced air howled around them, carrying a faint, scorching heat that licked at his skin.
“This is just the beginning,” Texas’s voice drifted through the rushing wind, flat and completely devoid of exertion.
Guided by that terrifying intuition, Lynn blindly whipped his rapier behind him.
The steel bit into a jagged shard of glowing light that had been silently angling toward his back, severing the construct before it could embed itself into the floor.
The glowing edges fizzled into golden dust, but the parry forced Lynn to twist his posture and stagger a step back.
The moment his center of gravity shifted, a suffocating, razor-sharp pressure converged on him from all sides.
He scrambled backward, his boots skidding across the floor as he desperately broke out of the attack radius.
His lungs burned, gasping for air as his pitiful stamina reserves plummeted into the red.
Squinting through the glare of the battlefield—now littered with glowing pillars of light that left almost no room to maneuver—Lynn forced his racing heart to steady, straining his senses to catch any shift in the air.
“My combat style…” Texas’s voice echoed, seemingly bouncing off the walls from every direction.
“…generally speaking, is designed to take lives.” “Traps, ambushes, targeting vitals—as long as it efficiently neutralizes the enemy, I will use it.
What you are experiencing now is simply one of my operational techniques.
I can conceal my presence using specific methods, isolating the battlefield to my absolute advantage.” Lynn swallowed hard.
“Then I’d say you and black-ops special forces have a hell of a lot in common.” “I used to do similar work.” “Couldn’t tell.
I pegged you for some runaway rich young lady.” Lynn fired back the trash talk, trying to mask the throbbing headache building behind his eyes as he scanned the fractured mosaic of light and shadow.
He couldn’t see her.
He couldn’t see a damn thing.
It was as if his optical nerves had been hijacked by her Originium Arts.
My stance is completely off…
He shifted his footing, forcing his posture to mimic the sleek, hyper-efficient stances of the swordmasters he had written about in his drafts.
His heart hammered against his ribs, every muscle fiber screaming in tension.
The world around him seemed to bleed into a saturated, burning crimson.
How is she invisible?
His brain spun in overdrive, analyzing the chaotic maze of blinding glare and pitch-black shadows.
That wasn’t true invisibility.
It wasn’t some mythical stealth technique.
It was an optical illusion, a lethal magic trick born from the manipulation of light.
By wielding a radiant blade and scattering chaotic fragments of illumination across the room, the overlapping shadows created blind spots perfectly tailored to hide her movements.
It was an art of assassination executed in broad daylight.
Absolutely brilliant.
But even if his eyes were useless, his body knew.
It felt like divine guidance; Lynn was certain he could fight with his eyes squeezed shut and still know exactly where to place his blade.
She’s coming!
Right there!
He wildly swung his rapier in a sweeping arc to his right, then, with a flick of his wrist, drove a blind thrust over his left shoulder.
The illusion shattered.
Texas materialized from the glare in a split second.
She had been lunging in to drive her glowing blade toward his kidney, but Lynn’s impossibly angled thrust placed his rapier’s point directly in her path.
For a heart-stopping fraction of a second, it looked as though the Lupo was intentionally throwing herself onto his blade.
Texas’s eyes widened a fraction.
She violently wrenched her momentum backward, aborting her strike to parry the cold steel that was inches away from piercing her throat.
The explosive surge of lethal intent made Lynn’s vision flash a violent red.
Texas stood before him, her reddish-brown hair settling around her shoulders, a rare flicker of genuine surprise breaking her usual stoicism.
Lynn’s face was drenched in sweat, his chest heaving.
He didn’t need to overthink it—that fleeting, suffocating spike of bloodlust proved that for a microsecond, Texas had treated him as a real target, not a sparring partner.
By any normal metric, he had survived the crucible.
“How was that?” Lynn wheezed.
“I definitely passed, right?” “…Rather than calling you sensitive, I think your current state borders on precognition.” Texas lowered her blade slightly, the ambient light illuminating her sharp, beautiful features.
“You completely saw through multiple feints and even countered an impromptu lethal strike.
How far ahead can you predict?
Three seconds?
Five?” “Wait, hold on.
Did I pass or not?” “Pass?” Texas tilted her head slightly.
“Is there such a thing as ‘passing’ a life-or-death confrontation?” Unlike the grueling, dramatic climax he had expected, the Lupo girl hadn’t even stopped chewing on her Pocky stick.
She watched him calmly, her golden eyes gleaming with a calculating light as she studied his trembling, exhausted frame.
Then, without warning, she stepped forward and delivered a flurry of casual, unenhanced slashes.
Holy crap, isn’t this supposed to be a basic physical assessment?!
Novels don’t write it like this!
Lynn barely had time to curse before the sheer kinetic force of her casual strikes sent him staggering backward.
His palms went numb, his wrists screaming in agony.
Compared to her earlier phantom-like assassination techniques, these strikes were slow and painfully obvious.
He could see the trajectory perfectly.
But seeing it and stopping it were two entirely different things.
Even when he managed to angle his rapier for a perfect parry, the raw physical power behind Texas’s swings vibrated through the steel, rattling his bones and jarring his teeth.
It was a brutal lesson in pure, unadulterated strength.
After a few more effortless swings, Texas watched Lynn’s knees buckle.
She casually snapped the Pocky in her mouth, shook her head, and pivoted, delivering a solid kick directly to his chest.
The strike was so slow a child could have tracked it, but Lynn’s muscles were locked in lactic acid agony.
His stiff body refused to obey.
He took the kick squarely and flew backward, crashing unceremoniously into a towering pile of discarded cardboard boxes and scrap paper.
“Just as I thought.
Your fatal flaw is an absolute lack of physical conditioning.” Texas sighed, walking toward the wreckage.
“You clearly saw it coming, but your body is too stiff to keep up with your brain.” “I barely used any force to suppress you…
This isn’t just below average.
Your body is pathetically weak.
Did you suffer from severe muscle atrophy and just wake up from a coma?” “You call that…
not using much force?” Lynn groaned from the rubble.
“Of course.
A sparring match isn’t a one-sided beating.” Texas frowned slightly.
She waded into the sea of scrap paper, reached down, and hauled the utterly defeated Lynn out of the cardboard ruins.
As she pulled him upright, the Lupo’s hands lingered.
She deliberately squeezed his bicep, then his wrist, and finally patted his thigh.
Feeling the soft, completely unconditioned flesh, Texas’s expression darkened into a grimace, while Lynn flushed red with embarrassment.
It was the tragic physique of a terminal homebody, shaped by years of sedentary living.
He was fundamentally a sack of soft flesh with zero muscle tone, and the realization made Texas look like she had bitten into a lemon.
“You really have zero muscle mass, and virtually no Originium Arts adaptability…” Texas muttered.
“Ten days.
You will come here every night and train properly.” “Isn’t that what I said from the very beginning?
I wanted to train my body!” Struggling to untangle himself from the last of the scrap paper, Lynn wiped the grime and sweat from his face.
He caught his breath, watching curiously as Texas prepared to extinguish her glowing blade.
“By the way, Texas,” Lynn started, his curiosity getting the better of him.
“I feel like your Originium Arts shouldn’t just be limited to light manipulation and stealth, right?
I get the feeling you have a much stronger, more decisive trump card.
Is it the kind of thing you can’t show me?” Texas paused.
“…You want to see it?” “I want to see it.” “Then watch closely.” Texas stepped into the center of the shattered, glowing arena.
She raised her hand high into the air, looking down at Lynn, who was still half-sprawled in the trash, and snapped her fingers.
“Originium Arts—Sword Rain.” “If you don’t train your body in the future, this is what will happen.” This is literally the Myriad Sword Art!
Lynn stared in absolute horror as countless ethereal, glowing blades materialized from the ground and the air itself, hovering with lethal intent.
The suffocating pressure radiating from the golden armory locked up every joint in his body.
Expressionless, Lynn slowly opened his trembling fingers, letting his rapier clatter to the floor, and raised both hands high in the air in total surrender.
[Rhodes’s Note: Enjoying the operation so far, Doctor?
(This daily grind literally pays the landship’s rent!
to use the links!)