Elysia stood a few meters in front of Elias, her expression as flat as ever.
She reached down to her hip and drew the white sword she always carried.
*SRING!
The ring of steel sliding free of its sheath cut clean through the quiet training field.
Elias’s brow twitched at the sight.
He’d assumed this was going to be some ordinary sparring match, but watching her draw a real blade told him she had zero intention of going easy.
Who even trains with a live blade in the first place!
He drew his own sword in response.
The one the village elder had given him still looked plain, no fancy decorations to speak of, but it was sturdy enough to hold up in a fight like this.
Elysia, meanwhile, had already settled into a fighting stance.
The motion looked completely natural on her, like her body had done this a thousand times before.
Elias, on the other hand, was still busy scrambling to recall the basics of everything he’d learned.
“Give me everything you’ve got.”
She said it in that same flat tone of hers.
Elias just nodded.
“Yes, my lady.”
Off to the side, Evelyn watched the two of them without a word, apparently content to just see how this would play out.
Elias drew a slow breath and locked his focus onto her.
He still had no real idea how strong she actually was, only whatever he’d picked up from livestreams and forum reviews back in his old life.
But just watching the way she held that sword was more than enough to put him on edge.
There was no countdown, no signal to start.
The moment Elysia stepped forward, Elias snapped his sword up to block the first strike.
*CLANG!
The two blades met, and Elias immediately felt the sheer force behind the blow.
His body staggered back a few steps on pure reflex before he caught his balance and raised his sword again.
‘One hit and I’m already stumbling backward?
This is genuinely embarrassing.
How strong is she, exactly?’
He didn’t get the chance to think much further before she was already attacking again.
One slash came in from the side, followed immediately by another from the opposite direction.
He barely managed to block both, still retreating step by step, but it didn’t take long to realize that just defending like this wasn’t going to get him anywhere.
He tried reading her movements off what he remembered from the game, but seeing it play out in person turned out to be nothing like experiencing it through a VR Capsule.
Every motion came faster, and the force behind each clash hit far more real than anything he’d ever imagined.
Unable to lean fully on what he remembered from the game, Elias fell back on whatever he’d actually managed to learn from a few days of sword training.
She swung her sword again.
He shifted his body to the side to dodge, then used the opening it created to close the distance and swing his own blade toward her shoulder.
Elysia, though, lifted her sword and blocked it with almost no effort at all.
*CLANG!
He felt that same crushing force again, his body pushed back a step.
He quickly adjusted his footing to keep from losing his balance, while Elysia just stood there like the impact hadn’t affected her in the slightest.
“You’re pretty slow.”
She said it flatly. Get faster updates on g.com.
“Sorry, my lady.”
He answered, settling back into his stance.
‘What am I even supposed to do here?
I only just started learning swordsmanship.’
Even so, he had no intention of just giving up.
He might not have had much actual combat experience, but he still had a decent grasp on the basics of this world’s mechanics.
So instead of trying to match her strength head-on, he started paying closer attention to her movements instead.
The way her feet moved, how she raised her sword, where her eyes flicked, every small shift in her stance, he started tracking them one at a time.
There was no way he could pick up on every single detail in just a few seconds, but the longer the fight dragged on, the fewer of her movements actually caught him off guard.
She moved forward again.
This time, Elias didn’t immediately fall back.
He waited until she closed in before tilting his body and slipping past the first strike.
Right after, he swung his blade toward her, but she managed to parry it.
He didn’t stop there.
He pivoted and followed through with a second strike.
*CLANG!
She blocked it again, but this time her feet shifted, just slightly.
‘Got her.’
For the first time since the fight had started, Elias actually felt like he was starting to keep up with her.
He was still nowhere near matching her, sure, but at least he’d started picking up on the pattern behind her attacks.
Off to the side, Evelyn, who’d been quietly watching the whole time, finally let a faint smile cross her face.
Elysia noticed the shift too, but instead of backing off, she only tightened her grip on the sword.
“In that case, let’s see you survive this.”
Before he could even process what she meant by that, she was already closing the distance again, far faster than before.
‘Oh no!.’
He barely got his sword up in time before a sharp crack rang out across the entire field.
*CLANG!
This time, the impact sent him flying backward.
After skidding back a good distance, he dropped to one knee, the force of the hit too much to stay standing through.
Even though it was obvious Elysia hadn’t even used half her actual strength, the sheer speed behind that last clash was enough to leave his right hand completely numb.
‘Damn it…
I really don’t like this…’
She twirled the sword once in her hand before letting it settle behind her body.
“That’s all you’ve got?”
At that, all Elias could manage was a strained smile, a vein starting to show on his forehead, the kind that gave away just how irritated he was starting to feel.
His pride as a man was hanging on by a thread, getting beaten down by a girl younger than he was.
Fair enough, honestly.
He’d only been training with a sword for a few days, and he didn’t have particularly high talent for it either.
Elysia, meanwhile, had grown up with every resource imaginable and a genuine gift for swordsmanship.
And it wasn’t just her, either.
Her sister Evelyn was every bit as talented with a blade.
Still, no matter how much the gap in talent and training explained the difference in skill, his pride as a man simply refused to accept this outcome as-is.
He pushed himself back up, using his sword as a crutch.
“Just as I thought. You really are incredible, Lady Elysia. That’s some serious strength for someone your age.” This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
“If you can still stand, that means you can still keep going, doesn’t it?”
Elias kept that smile plastered on his face.
“…I’d like to show you something too.”
He shifted his stance and tightened his grip on the sword.
He began channeling Arcana into both legs, the energy gathering slowly until his whole body felt lighter.
Elysia watched the change without a word.
In an instant, he shot off to the side, fast enough to close the gap between them in almost no time at all.
Elysia’s eyes snapped toward him and she swung her sword, but he’d already changed direction before it could land.
He darted to another side, then shot forward in a straight line before suddenly changing course again and leaping into the air.
Elysia tracked every movement with her eyes, still able to read most of what he was doing.
He wasn’t actually faster than her.
She could still follow most of his movements without much trouble.
But the way he kept shifting direction made it genuinely hard to predict where his next attack would come from, since he was using Arcana to launch his body in whatever direction he wanted, no longer limited to ordinary footwork.
Once she’d adjusted to his rhythm, and he came shooting in from the side again, Elysia didn’t bother chasing him down.
She simply turned and raised her sword.
An inky black aura began seeping out from the blade.
“Don’t think that trick’s going to keep working.”
She swung her sword, and in an instant, that black aura spread out along the arc of the swing, forming a sweeping slash that cut through the entire area surrounding her.
Elias froze the moment he saw it.
This wasn’t an attack coming from just one direction.
That black aura swept across nearly the entire space around her, leaving him no room to approach from the side or from behind, forcing him to fall back a few steps while he studied the attack.
‘That range is huge.’
He glanced upward.
The attack swept the entire area around her, sure, but it didn’t reach the air directly above her head.
‘In that case…’
Without wasting a second, he channeled Arcana back into his legs and jumped, shooting straight up, clear past the reach of her slash.
Elysia’s head snapped up, but by then he was already directly above her.
‘Now!.’
He gripped his sword with both hands and began pouring Arcana into the blade, remembering that morning’s training, how he’d thrust the sword over and over after his jog and accidentally kicked up a decent gust of air each time.
At the time, he’d just chalked it up to swinging too hard.
But after using Arcana on his legs just now, he was starting to realize that same energy could probably give an extra push to whatever he happened to be using at the moment.
He still didn’t fully understand how Arcana actually worked, but he tried applying the same idea to his sword anyway, pouring a solid amount of it into the blade and slowly feeling the energy grow denser.
As a blue aura wrapped around the blade, he angled the tip downward and released every bit of force he’d gathered.
“Here’s a gift from me, my lady!”
The blade shot downward at full speed, aimed straight at Elysia.
*BOOM
A thunderous explosion rang out as the blade slammed into the ground, dust erupting and blanketing the entire area around them.
Elias landed a few meters from the center of the blast, steadying himself.
Since this was the first time he’d ever pushed out this much Arcana at once, all he could do was stand there catching his breath, one hand pressed to his chest, eyes fixed on where Elysia had been standing.
The dust filling the field made it impossible to see a thing.
‘I wonder if she liked my gift.’