The sound of a thick folder closing cut through the dry air.
Professor Kairon rested his chin on his interlaced fingers and looked ahead.
Aron stood neatly at the end of his gaze.
It was just after the Free Challenge against Bran Kessler.
"Care to explain?"
Kairon's voice was low and even, but it carried weight.
"Overcoming a gap of more than sixty places in the rankings is remarkable, but that is not what I want to ask. How did you see through your opponent's attacking habits so accurately in such a short time?"
It was a pointed question.
This was beyond something that could be dismissed as luck or a chance strike at an opening. In Kairon's eyes, Aron's movements had been the very picture of careful calculation and certainty.
He had seemed to know his opponent's weaknesses precisely, waiting for them to appear before striking.
It was far too practiced for a student who had been called the perennial last-place student until moments ago.
Aron spoke calmly, his expression unchanged.
"I was fortunate."
"Fortunate?"
"I often stayed at the training ground to watch my classmates spar and train. Everyone has movements they repeat or patterns in the way their weight shifts. I simply remembered them."
He could not tell Kairon that he had awakened an ability that displayed his opponents' weaknesses as text before his eyes.
But his answer was not a lie, either. Using the hints the information window provided, he really had observed and analyzed his opponents without cease.
Kairon's dark brows twitched.
He searched Aron's face for signs of a lie or inflated bravado, but the student's gaze was too calm.
Staying behind every day to watch others train and run through simulations in his head, was it?
"……You are relentless."
Kairon let out a quiet, incredulous laugh.
"Simply watching would not make those insights come out at once in a real match. You must have pictured it hundreds, thousands of times in your mind."
"I still have many shortcomings."
"There is no need to be modest. Observing another person's habits and calculating the openings they create—that relentless eye is itself a fine kind of combat instinct."
Kairon rose and tapped his desk lightly.
"But as you know, understanding something in your head and making your body follow are different matters. To use that instinct properly in combat, you will need to improve your fundamentals further. Do you understand?"
"I will keep that in mind, Professor."
"Go on. It would be wrong of me to take any more of your training time."
Aron gave a brief bow and left the office.
Only after the door closed behind him did he let out a quiet breath. He was relieved Kairon had not pressed him with more questions, but the professor's words had gone straight to the heart of the matter.
No matter how plainly he could see an opponent's weakness, it was useless without the skill to break through it.
***
Back at the private training ground, Aron turned toward a harsh scraping sound coming from a corner.
It was Bran Kessler.
Still unable to swallow the bitterness of his defeat, he swung his wooden sword furiously at a wooden dummy, his shirt soaked with sweat.
"Damn it! Faster, faster!"
Bran's wooden sword cut through the air as he breathed hard.
Aron stood at the entrance and watched him quietly. It was a view of Bran training in earnest that he had not seen during their match.
Aron's vision focused on Bran's movements once again.
He expected the usual red text pointing out a fatal flaw or an opening created during training.
But that was not what appeared.
[Strength: Instantaneous explosive power through strong wrist and waist rotation.]
The faint text over Bran's body was blue, a color Aron had never seen before.
Aron narrowed his eyes.
The information window, which had identified only weaknesses until now, was detecting his opponent's strengths and technical advantages as well. His ability had plainly expanded another step.
Keeping his gaze fixed, Aron studied the path of Bran's sword.
Just as the information window indicated, Bran did not swing with arm strength alone. Force rose from the twist at the tips of his feet, traveled through his waist to his wrist, and burst out at the tip.
In raw destructive power, the blow could have ranked among the best in the first year.
Aron quietly crossed to a secluded spot on the opposite side of the training ground. He adjusted his grip on his wooden sword, closed his eyes, and pictured the movement he had just seen Bran make.
Then he snapped his eyes open and turned his waist hard.
WHOOF—!
"Urgh."
The clumsy swing hit nothing, and Aron's upper body lurched badly.
His feet tangled when he forced strength into the turn, and his lower-body balance collapsed awkwardly. He nearly landed on his backside.
'That's not it.'
Aron rolled his ankle lightly and straightened his stance.
Seeing a strength in the blue window did not mean he could copy it perfectly the moment he watched it.
Bran was broad-boned and strongly built. For Aron, with his lighter frame and lesser strength, blindly imitating that heavy swing produced nothing but a violent recoil.
With his ordinary physique, he could not simply take another person's technique and reproduce its outward form.
Had he made such a mess of his stance in real combat, he would have lost his head on the spot.
'I need to take the principle behind it, not copy the way it looks.'
The principle was to use waist rotation and a shift in weight to create an instant of explosive force.
He needed to absorb that essential idea and rebuild it to suit his lighter frame.
Aron lowered his sword instead of repeating more pointless swings. Learning the principle properly came before making a poor imitation of it on his own.
***
During afternoon training, Kairon was walking through the training ground and checking the students' stances when he saw Aron approaching and stopped.
"What is it? Why are you not training?"
"Professor, I have a question."
Aron stood straight.
"I would like to ask about the basic principle of putting waist rotation behind a sword strike."
Kairon looked Aron over in surprise.
After beating someone ranked far above them in a Free Challenge, most students would be flushed with excitement and ask about flashy skills or advanced variations. Yet Aron was asking about a principle at the very foundation of the fundamentals.
"So you want more force behind your sword. Well, your thrusts are fast and accurate, but they do lack power when they land."
Kairon clasped his hands behind his back as he spoke.
"Listen carefully. Power does not originate in the arms or shoulders. It begins with the force rebounding from the ground when you push off with your feet. When that force travels through the knees to the pelvis, you turn your waist like a spinning top and pass it into the upper body."
Kairon demonstrated the movement himself, very slowly.
"The important thing is the radius of that turn. If you swing your whole body around because you have strength to spare, you create a larger opening and lose your stance. Someone built like you, in particular, lacks the strength to sustain a heavy rotation."
"You mean I should reduce the radius?"
"Exactly. Snap your pelvis through a short, forceful turn. Compress the power for an instant within a very narrow radius, and release it only when the tip of your sword touches the target. That is the heart of shifting your weight."
Kairon's explanation was concise and clear.
Aron nodded as he turned the words over in his mind. He felt the strength the blue information window had shown him in Bran and the fundamentals Kairon had explained fit together into one idea.
"Thank you, Professor."
Aron bowed politely and turned away. Kairon clicked his tongue.
"Being told how will not make it work at once. You will have to stumble through it hundreds, thousands of times before you get a feel for it."
***
Before a wooden dummy in a corner of the training ground.
Aron exhaled slowly and lowered his stance.
His right foot was planted firmly on the floor. In his mind, he repeatedly overlaid Bran's powerful waist rotation with Kairon's advice.
'Don't turn too far. Keep it short and clean.'
He pared away every unnecessary part of the movement to suit his light frame.
Instead of twisting his whole body, he held the force rising from his foot in his pelvis.
And then, in the next instant.
HUP!
As Aron's foot pushed off the ground, his pelvis turned with a short snap. The rotational force from his waist traveled through his shoulder and shot into the tip of his wooden sword.
His characteristic short, efficient thrust.
But the weight behind it was unmistakably different from before.
THWAAAACK—!
The dull, splitting sound of wood that seemed ready to break shook the surrounding air.
The center of the wooden dummy's torso caved in under the impact, and the dummy was driven roughly backward.
"……."
Aron stopped with his sword still extended.
The tingling sensation traveling up his wrist was unfamiliar but unmistakable. It had been a deep, heavy blow he could never have produced with his usual arm strength.
He was neither simply envying another person's strength nor forcing himself to copy it.
He had understood the principle, pared it down to fit his body, and made it entirely his own.
Aron's gaze settled on the faint vibration still lingering at the tip of his sword.
"I can pare it down a little more."
With that quiet murmur, he drew his sword back once again.