Even before I entered the swordsmanship hall, vigorous shouts rang out from within.
It reminded me of the taekwondo academy I attended as a child.
Beyond the walls hidden by a fence, boys who looked to be in their mid-teens were swinging wooden swords at training dummies.
A woman who appeared to be a little over 160 centimeters tall stood before them and instructed the trainees.
She had brown hair tied tightly back, and sturdy-looking arms were exposed beneath her short sleeves.
Something felt wrong.
In my memory, a long-haired middle-aged man had served as the instructor at the swordsmanship hall.
And what was that guy doing here?
A huge young man stood at the very back of the trainees, swinging a wooden sword.
He looked like the kind of man who should be wildly swinging a massive mace or two-handed axe.
If he wore only animal hides, he would look exactly like a Barbarian.
‘There’s no way a Barbarian would train here.’
Like Druids, Barbarians received [Training] from an elder of their own tribe.
He was probably of mixed blood, born between a Barbarian and an ordinary human.
His build belonged to an adult man, but the baby fat still on his face made me think my guess was correct.
“Hello.”
I finished watching from beyond the fence and entered the swordsmanship hall.
The female instructor who had been directing the trainees greeted me.
And then—
“No.”
“What? I said I came to learn swordsmanship.”
“As you can see, we only accept beginners.”
‘I am a beginner.’
The instructor looked me up and down.
The clothes Mary bought were slightly too small for me.
Because of that, the muscles of this body stood out clearly beneath the short-sleeved shirt.
My forearms, which looked like twisted steel cables, were fully exposed below the sleeves.
The shirt front that should have been tied closed wouldn’t fasten, leaving half of my bulging pectorals exposed.
To the instructor, I probably looked like a thug who had come looking for trouble out of boredom.
CRASH—!
Three men kicked open the door I had entered through and stormed inside.
Their speech and swagger announced, ‘We’re thugs, and we came here to start trouble.’
…So you bastards were the cause.
“Teach us the swor—”
The instructor looked back and forth between me and the thug who had kicked down the door.
The thugs looked at me too.
She seemed to have confused me with them.
I took one step backward because I had no desire to become involved in trouble.
“Ahem. Sword…….”
“We only teach beginners. Please leave.”
The instructor cut the thug off sharply.
The man in front turned red because she had interrupted him.
Was that really enough to make him angry?
“Why won’t a swordsmanship hall teach swordsmanship?! If you’re going to act like that, hurry up and get out of this place!”
It was a scene I had seen often in dramas.
Hired thugs were making unreasonable demands to drive out a tenant.
Usually, in a situation like this, a prince on a white horse appeared, or—
SWISH.
The instructor raised her wooden sword and aimed it at the thugs, as though she wouldn’t tolerate them a second time.
“Well, would you look at that? You drew your sword first.”
“Do you fight with your tongue instead of a blade?”
“You bitch!”
The thugs drew a short club, a blackjack, and a jackknife, then charged.
With only two or three quick steps, the instructor closed the distance and struck the forearm of Thug 1 at the front.
“Aaargh!”
“How dare you strike our boss’s arm!”
Thug 2 swung the short club diagonally.
The instructor lightly lowered her body and shifted beside him.
Her wooden sword struck his shin.
“Ghhk.”
The scream alone made my brow tighten.
Thug 3, the last one standing, stared blankly at how quickly the situation had unfolded.
Then he reached toward a nearby boy to take him hostage.
THUNK.
“…Huh?”
Air escaped from Thug 3’s mouth.
The dagger I threw struck the back of his knee, and he dropped to one knee before taking even a single step.
At this rate, I might be better suited to being an Assassin than a Jar Warrior.
“Hyaah!”
The boy who had nearly become a hostage brought his wooden sword down on Thug 3’s crown.
***
The guards in this world were more efficient than I had expected.
Two of them appeared holding the hand of a young trainee.
They tied the wrists of the three thugs who had caused the disturbance with binding rope and arrested them.
The way they spoke with the instructor suggested they knew each other well.
“…I apologize for my discourtesy.”
“No. I think I understand the situation.”
I answered while watching the thugs disappear in the guards’ custody.
“The thing is—”
“You don’t need to explain.”
The circumstances were obvious even without hearing them.
I didn’t want to waste time listening.
What mattered more was the instructor’s skill against the thugs.
Even someone like me, who knew nothing about swordsmanship, could tell that her chained attacks had flowed naturally like water.
“May I learn swordsmanship here?”
“Ah, yes.”
“My name is Kain. I look forward to learning from you.”
The instructor looked at the hand I extended for a handshake, shrugged, and took it.
“My name is Rania. Call me Instructor.”
And so began three weeks of training.
“…Please spare me, Instructor.”
“One thousand more Eight-Direction Slashes!”
Once Rania assessed my actual ability and began teaching me swordsmanship, she became a tiger of a teacher.
Her evaluation of me was that I was a glossy wild apricot—impressive only on the outside.
When she first saw my skill, she seemed to suffer a brief moment of cognitive dissonance upon realizing that, despite my body being trained to its limit, I didn’t even know how to hold a sword properly.
THUD! THUD! THUD!
Her prescription was foundational training.
I began by practicing the Eight-Direction Slash and thrust, the basics of swordsmanship, one thousand times each every day.
Every time I brought the wooden sword down, the training dummy shook as though it might break.
After that came sparring.
“Woooaaah!”
“Whoa, amazing!”
“He lifted Brother Kargon!”
Kargon was the trainee I had assumed was a half-Barbarian.
“Hrraaah!”
The moment one of Kargon’s feet left the ground, he grabbed the clothes on my back and immediately broke my balance.
‘That doesn’t work anymore.’
Kargon was more skilled with a sword than I had expected.
On the first day, I had dodged his attacks and countered using superhuman reflexes.
He blocked everything like a turtle withdrawn into its shell, then struck back with a simultaneous counter that reflexes alone couldn’t evade.
After that, I began charging first, throwing or slamming him to the ground, then thrusting the sword at him.
Now even that no longer worked.
Surprisingly, Rania didn’t criticize my habit of abandoning swordsmanship and turning the spar into a brawl.
Instead—
THWACK.
“Ghk.”
After my spar with Kargon ended, she mercilessly beat my body with her wooden sword during the spar that followed.
“No, damn it. Go a little easier.”
“Are you going to ask your enemies to cut you gently too?”
“Fuck. I’m going to land one good hit on you someday.”
Rubbing the wrist that had blocked Rania’s sword, I charged her.
It was clearly the step I had just learned.
The theory sounded grand: escape the enemy’s attack range while trapping them within your own.
To me, it was simply footwork.
With only two or three steps, Rania positioned herself at my flank and brought down her wooden sword.
I hurriedly bent my elbow and blocked it.
In our previous spar, I had rolled forward in the same situation, only for the pursuing sword to beat me like a dog on the hottest day of summer.
I immediately twisted and swung the buckler in my left hand like a knuckle weapon.
Rania retreated by exactly the length of my punch and knocked my wrist aside with the buckler in her other hand.
My grip loosened, and I dropped my buckler.
Damn it.
“Hngh!”
I inhaled, stepped forward, and thrust my sword.
CLACK.
Rania angled her buckler along the path of the thrust.
My wooden sword stabbed harmlessly into empty air.
TAP. TAP. TAP.
Rania’s wooden sword moved in an instant, striking the leg I had stepped forward with, the arm holding my sword, and my forehead.
“Wooooow.”
“That was amazing!”
The trainees watching our spar applauded and cheered enthusiastically.
Rania turned toward them and continued her lesson.
“You saw that, right? Eighty percent of combat is a battle of distance. If you control the distance, you can defeat an opponent twice your size. That is why you must practice your steps every day.”
““Yes, Instructor!””
Steps—what martial arts novels often called movement techniques.
I didn’t think my steps were the problem, but I agreed with Instructor Rania.
We had already sparred for three weeks, yet my sword had touched her only once.
‘It hasn’t even grazed her since.’
After a feint I mixed in by accident succeeded, she began defeating me before I could even approach with the steps she had just described.
I practiced every day too.
Why couldn’t I touch her?
“Thank you for today, Instructor Rania.”
“Kain, you’ve improved a great deal.”
“After being beaten like that every day, I’d feel wronged if my skill didn’t improve.”
“In a real battle, you might even be stronger than me.”
I agreed with that statement.
Honestly, if I began by throwing several jars, I could start the fight with an overwhelming advantage.
Even so, I could feel how much my ability had improved thanks to her.
‘Rion must have improved a lot too.’
Rion hadn’t simply spent her time playing while I trained at the swordsmanship hall.
She was learning how to use spirits from Paradon, a spirit-focused Druid.
She had also deepened her bond with Mungchi, and they were apparently quite close now.
Meanwhile, Miyu, the black panther, had grown considerably.
She was now about the size of a small dog.
‘Is it normal to grow this quickly?’
I didn’t know whether animals that became Druid familiars were somehow different, but Miyu had grown rapidly.
At this rate, she would become an adult in three or four months.
Or perhaps the levels she gained from killing monsters were gradually being reflected in her body.
Times like this made it inconvenient that I couldn’t check a system window.
***
“It suits you. Custom-making it was worth the effort.”
“You look impressive, Mungchi.”
At our praise, the translucent corners of Mungchi’s mouth stretched almost to his ears.
Wow.
I still couldn’t get used to that face, no matter how often I saw it.
“Ahem. Try moving around.”
“Grrk.”
Mungchi nodded energetically and moved his body.
He was currently wearing armor custom-made by the Emer Trading Company.
In both hands, he carried the two short-handled morningstar maces we had purchased together with the buckler.
When a class other than a Priest or Necromancer obtained a spiritual body, the revived spiritual summon possessed only a certain percentage of its original combat power.
Mungchi’s main attack combination had been to inflict Stun with his unique ‘Charge,’ then finish the enemy with ‘Pounding.’
‘It’s slightly lacking.’
Mungchi’s Pounding was more than enough to turn goblins or Orcs into bloody pulp.
But according to the expedition schedule I had planned, I judged that Mungchi would have difficulty fulfilling the roles I expected of him as both damage dealer and tank.
So I equipped him.
“And while I’m equipping him, I might as well raise his defense.”
After returning from training at the swordsmanship hall, I had sparred with Rion and Mungchi as practical training for them.
Partly to relieve the Stress Rania caused me, I practiced my steps while attacking Mungchi’s openings.
But when I attacked him with a sword, I realized that his body, which was effectively bare, was completely exposed.
‘Unless he’s being hunted as a monster…….’
“A tank can’t fall.”
I couldn’t save money on an expedition where our lives were at stake.
I spent three Gold Coins on armor made using the smithy’s secret art.
Some of that expense had gone toward making armor for me as well.
For mobility, mine consisted of leather reinforced with metal.
It wasn’t a full breastplate and pauldrons, though.
“This should be enough for the next expedition.”
The equipment Mungchi wore became spiritual along with him and was absorbed.
Fortunately, its performance didn’t decrease.
I had worried that every time he was unsummoned, only the equipment would remain behind and we would have to carry it.
Thankfully, nothing so unfortunate happened.
I had equipped monster companions in the game before, but never a spiritual summon.
The only spiritual bodies I had obtained belonged to monsters as large as houses.
Once the mutant was fully armed, my daily schedule settled into a routine.
I woke in the morning and ate breakfast with Rion.
Then we went our separate ways for training.
Rion trained with Paradon, while I went to the swordsmanship hall.
After returning to the inn, I tested the performance of the jars I had made in spare moments.
I determined how much of each ingredient produced what level of power and how strong an effect.
Mungchi served as the test subject for those experiments.
He was the only one who came back after dying.
In that way, I produced every jar that could be made using materials available in the territory of ‘Parque.’
Only three Silver Coins remained in my once-heavy pouch.
“My purse is poor, but my heart feels secure.”
Dozens of magic jars of every kind were stacked throughout the room.
“It’s tomorrow, right?”
“Yeah. Get plenty of sleep tonight.”
“I’m nervous about going back after so long.”
After dinner, we returned to our rooms and went to sleep.
***
“Take care of yourself. Make plenty of money.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you. I’ll see you again in a few days.”
I exchanged greetings with a guard I had become acquainted with after he arrested another thug who came to the swordsmanship hall.
There was no disadvantage to raising affinity with NPCs, so I treated them as warmly as possible.
Rustle. Rustle.
As I walked through the wheat field again, grains pressed beneath my feet.
I was walking that road once more.
A large backpack filled with exploration supplies was strapped to my back, and a crossbody bag hung diagonally across my shoulder.
‘Should I have brought more jars?’
It would have been convenient to have an inventory like in the game, but reality had no such thing.
Bags enchanted with subspace magic existed, but they were still far beyond my reach.
Even so, I had brought as many useful varieties of jars as I could.
Several parties traveling in groups of three or four walked ahead of us.
If we continued, we would reach the four-way split leading to the different regions of the Black Forest.
As Rion and I had discussed, we would take the second path—
[Karema tal kan ta!]
An incantation that seemed to make space itself resonate rang from within the forest.
A milky-white light arced through the air.
Everyone, including me, turned their heads to follow it.
The light struck the city wall.
■■■■■■■■-!
A roar loud enough to tear apart my eardrums rang out.
A faint blue barrier surrounded the wall.
Then it collapsed like shattering glass.
‘Don’t tell me this event is already happening?’
Roughly two hundred Rebels emerged from the forest.