Chapter 16

Chapter : 16

Meanwhile, I maintained my relationship with Ian, whose point of contact with Bishot had already been cut off.

Objectively speaking, that wager of ours had been an obvious victory for me, yet Ian had thrown a fit and taken the information from me anyway.

I remember thinking he was no better than a thug, but after giving it some thought, I decided it might not be so bad to keep the Master of the Magic Tower close, so I told him willingly enough.

And just as I had expected, even if Ian did not show it openly, he must have felt guilty about that deep down.

“When you handle mana, you are too conscious of it. To explain it simply, even when lifting a cup, you think, ‘Now I am going to flex my triceps and biceps, tense my forearm, and lift the cup with my thumb and index finger,’ and then move.”

“What are you talking about?”

In short, it was idiotic.

Ian formed a sphere of mana in his palm, then rotated his hand as one might when rolling a stiff wrist. The mana sphere moved along with the motion.

“Not like that. Like this. Just use it naturally, the way you would use your body.”

He explained the use of mana and several minor spells to me.

And he did so with surprising care.

I had not even gone out of my way to beg him to teach me, yet he volunteered and talked on his own. He said it was payment for the information about Dimagen that I had given him.

In any case, there was no harm in listening when the mage officially acknowledged by the author as having the greatest talent of all was willing to teach me. So I opened my ears. I moved mana the way he instructed and memorized the habits mages had when they used it.

In that process, I gained a small realization.

Up until now, I had always spread mana through my entire body and used it to enhance every part of it by tiny amounts. But it seemed I could also focus or compress it into a single area, like my arm, or make it burst all at once to produce greater force.

Jefrin’s absurdly fast sword strikes had probably been based on that as well.

Ian called it “Amplification,” and I vaguely remembered the concept from the original. It was a technique that burst mana in an instant to produce greater force than usual. When used for magic, it was called “Amplification.” When used while swinging a sword, it was called “Force Release.”

“Yes. That is better.”

Following Ian’s guidance, I moved my mana and concentrated on the sensation.

I closed my eyes, steadied my breathing, shut out my five senses, and focused only on mana. It pulsed faintly, like when I had sleep paralysis and could move only my fingers by the slightest amount.

I felt it.

And I moved it.

The mana flowed according to my will.

Wow. This actually works.

Before I knew it, I could feel the corners of my mouth climbing toward my cheekbones.

It was fun.

I had vaguely assumed that I would never be able to handle a sword properly, and that I would remain clumsy with mana.

How could I not?

I was a stranger from another world. All I had done was take possession of Raphael’s body.

If I were to compare it to something, it was like suddenly growing a tail one day. There was no way I would know how to use it properly.

And then, on top of that, being told to fight people who had been born with tails from the beginning.

It was insane.

That was exactly what swordsmanship and mana had felt like to me.

I had concluded that someone like me, who had lived in the modern world, could never perform at the level of the natives here.

That had seemed only natural.

But that was not necessarily true.

I had learned from Katarina and Ian, each in their own field of expertise. I might have been ordinary, but my teachers were anything but.

Even if I was only an extra character, I had still monopolized enough strokes of fortune to let me shine at least once in a crisis someday.

Yes.

This was how it ought to be.

---

After receiving instruction for about two more hours, I went to the training hall of my department. I intended to put what I had learned from Ian into practice by actually drawing a sword and swinging it.

There were roughly ten students in the hall, each doing weights, practicing swordsmanship, or sparring. Keeping my distance from them, I drew my sword.

Vertical Slash.

A sword strike aimed at the head, one of the most common vital points. Instead of using mana, I relied only on muscle, just as I always had.

Up until now, whenever I used the same sword strike, I had always tried to use the exact same muscles every time. It had been foolish.

No matter how hard I practiced a technique, when it came to a real fight, the position of my feet and the angle of impact would inevitably change which muscles were involved, and how much.

If that was the case, then it seemed better to adjust myself to the situation as it came.

Force Release.

It consumed a great deal of mana, but in exchange, it produced greater force than usual in a single instant.

Even by eye, the strike was far faster than the ones I had thrown before. As the blade cut through the air, it let out a low whoom.

Hm.

I was savoring the sense of accomplishment, pleased with the results, when someone who had stopped training beside me spoke.

“You are incredible.”

He had curly blond hair, short stature, and a thick frame that contrasted sharply with it. His muscles were unusual.

The students here tended to have broad deltoids and large lats, but their trapezius muscles, especially the upper portion, were all small.

He alone had a thick neck and shoulders, so he stood out.

Who was he?

Though I recognized his face from always seeing him training in the hall, he was not a character I knew.

Which meant he had never appeared in the original.

When I merely stared at him, he bent deeply at the waist and greeted me.

“My name is Leo Grass. I am a second-year student of the Swordsmanship Department. It is a pleasure to meet you. Ah, please feel free to speak comfortably.”

“Nice to meet you. I am Raphael.”

“Yes, haha… actually, I already knew. I saw you from afar at the entrance ceremony and thought you were astonishing. There was that incredible freshman there too, was there not? The one named Jefrin?”

Leo clenched his fist and drew in a deep breath.

“When I saw him fight, I was speechless. I thought, How can he possibly be that strong? He is only a freshman.”

A laugh slipped from me at his words.

Perhaps taking that as encouragement, Leo continued in an even stronger tone,

“But when I saw you defeat him so easily, I truly felt envious.”

“Of my swordsmanship?”

“Haha, of your talent. I worked hard too. I worked so hard, painfully hard, enough that I thought I would lose to no one. And yet I still found myself wondering why I am like this.”

“That must be frustrating.”

“Well, what can I do? All I can do is work harder. I am sorry for complaining. The truth is, what I wanted to ask was whether you would spar with me just once.”

Looking around, I saw several students sparring with blunted training swords. It made sense. Competing against one another and deciding a winner was bound to be more motivating and more fun than merely grinding the basics.

“Shall we?”

“Thank you. Then I will be in your care.”

Leo straightened at once, ran over to the wall, took two training swords, and held one out to me.

The blade of the training sword was dull, so even if it struck directly, it would not cut flesh, but it was more than capable of leaving bruises or even causing a fracture.

Just as I was examining the blade, Leo spoke.

“I will begin first.”

Naturally, I had assumed I would win.

After all, Leo was an extra among extras, someone whose name had never even appeared in passing in the original.

If I had beaten Jefrin, then losing to an extra would have made no sense.

That optimistic expectation was completely overturned from the very start.

Inside, I smacked my knee.

He was short, a little over 170 centimeters, with a narrow frame.

But thick muscles wrapped around that frame. Even the slow-twitch areas that were difficult to train, like his trapezius and forearms, had been developed well.

The moment Leo lifted his heel, his calf tightened and he kicked off the ground. Using his low center of gravity, he burst forward in an instant.

Oh.

I found myself inwardly admiring him.

Compared to Jefrin, he was slow enough that I could have blocked him with a yawn, but his movements were exact, as though some machine were demonstrating the swordsmanship manual.

Until not too long after I first picked up a sword, that was exactly how I had tried to swing it.

Always the same posture.

Always the same muscles.

Always trying to produce a perfect stroke.

I lightly knocked aside his attack and marveled.

How much time had he spent carving out that path of the blade?

I felt fear at the mastery in Leo’s strikes. The blood and sweat melted into his swordsmanship sent chills down my spine.

But the power of his swordsmanship was a separate matter.

Leo’s body meshed together like gears made solely for swordsmanship, producing perfect sword strikes, yet they were slow.

And light.

It was obvious.

Like an archer aiming at a target, he was going for my vital points. So obvious that I could have guessed his next strike with my eyes closed.

The place closest to his sword that could disable an opponent in a single blow.

This time, the artery in my thigh.

As though welcoming a guest, I thrust my sword out in advance and struck hard. Then I drove my blade into the opening left wide in his chest and secured the win.

Leo dropped his sword. It hit the floor with a metallic clang.

“I win.”

“I lost.”

Leo was frustrated, yet calm.

I tried to read his expression.

His fists trembled. His teeth were clenched.

He had wanted to beat me.

It was as though he had defined me as talent and himself as effort, and wanted to prove that effort could crush talent.

Foolish.

And yet, at the same time, he had known his defeat inwardly from the start. Because he had felt the gap between us for himself, he regained his composure quickly even after losing.

That was not it.

I could already tell what he would think—that this had been the inevitable outcome, that no matter how much one worked, there was a clear limit when one’s physical specifications fell short.

So I spoke.

“Why do you think you lost?”

“What?”

“Why do you think you lost?”

Instead of answering immediately, Leo first looked around. He cast a glance at the other students who had been watching our spar and watched their reactions.

Then he bit down hard on his lip, swallowed, and widened his eyes.

He seemed to think I was mocking him.

“Because I am weaker than you, Lord Raphael.”

As expected.

I withdrew the sword I had pointed at him and said,

“But then why did you fight like that? You wanted to win, did you not?”

“What?”

“If you were weaker than me and still wanted to win, then you should not have fought like that.”

When it came to swordsmanship, I was an outsider.

Because I had taken possession of Raphael’s body, all I could do was use a few basic sword strikes.

Even so, I still knew that Leo’s approach to the match had been wrong.

“If you want to beat someone stronger than you, then you have to do something other than fight head-on. Ignore my sword and drive your own through anyway, or do something. Anything.”

“Yes…”

“If that irritates you, then ignore it. I am only saying what I think. Even when the strong fight the weak, the weak still win one time out of ten. But the way you fought was as though, if you fought someone stronger than you ten times, you intended to lose all ten.”

Leo picked up the fallen sword again and pointed it at me.

“Then would you spar with me once more?”

I won after swinging my sword seven times.

After that, Leo asked for three more spars, and I beat him all three times.

It was not as though I could just throw the match.