It was a typical afternoon at the Proving Ground, with Blade and Earnest clashing swords.
“Your swordplay’s been improving lately.”
“Really? You know flattery won’t work on me.”
“I wasn’t trying to flatter you. I’m just stating a fact.”
“Hee-hee…! Glad to hear, then.”
Earnest smiled between swings. Up to now, her sword style could be described as bombastic at best, sloppy at worst. The indestructible nature of her magic sword made her too complacent, driving her to swing it around with sheer brute force. She had already broken Asmodeus once because of it, and after that incident, her fighting style had started to change.
“I just learned by how you use your sword.”
“All I’m doing,” Blade replied, “is holding back.”
He was trying to baby his sword; it was true. If he got serious with it, even a single blow would shatter it. Even now, when he applied the brakes all the way down to 18 percent, there weren’t a lot of swords that could withstand the unbridled force of an ex-Hero in this kingdom. The weapons issued at the academy were probably quite magically powerful by ordinary standards…but he still needed to give them careful handling and attention to ensure they didn’t break so easily. The blades from his Hero days were all legends, or even legends within legends, so he used to whirl them around with abandon, just like Earnest did in her “barbarian” era.
Now, though, Earnest was learning a lot from Blade’s energy-saving techniques. It might come in handy for her someday—for example, if she ever went to a more normal school and took classes using normal swords.
“Hey, lady! Teach me! Hey! Ahhh! Look over here!”
Earnest stopped in her tracks once she heard the shrill voices coming from a corner of the Proving Grounds. Blade thought he heard her click her tongue, but it was probably just his imagination.
“Lunaria sure is popular, huh?”
With the wall she had put up between herself and everyone else now torn down, Lunaria had lost a lot of her prickliness and softened up quite a lot. These days, she was proving rather popular with the junior class. A bunch of the girls were with her now, asking for some instruction.
“Why doesn’t anyone come to me?” muttered Earnest.
“Because if they did, you’d probably say something like ‘go do ten thousand practice swings first,’ wouldn’t you?”
“Well, just because you hang out with a genius doesn’t mean their talent is gonna rub off on you, is it? If an ordinary person wants to surpass a genius, they’d need at least a hundred thousand practice swings under their belt, right?”
“The number’s going up now, huh?” Blade laughed.
Earnest clearly wasn’t a fan of Lunaria’s popularity. She was…what was the word? Jealous. Blade himself didn’t really understand that concept, but still, he could tell that Earnest’s current behavior was what people generally referred to as jealousy.
She wanted to be someone else’s teacher, too. She wanted to be admired and have people fawn over her.
“Hmm… I wonder if there’s anyone out there, though? Someone who’s cute and younger than me, who won’t complain no matter how harsh my training is, and who also has enough guts to be worth teaching.”
And just as Earnest muttered this to herself…
“Hello, milady. Lovely weather we’re having.” Leonard, passing by, quickly crossed in front of them.
“Yes, yes, it’s a great day. Looks like your head is up in the clouds, too, Leonard.”
Earnest quickly shooed him away.
Sheesh. Poor guy.
Here he was. Someone with guts and the willingness to obediently follow even the harshest orders. He wasn’t a cute younger guy, though—more handsome and the same age as her—but still.
“Hey, don’t look away.” Blade thrust forward with his sword, cutting off a strand of Earnest’s hair.
“Hey! You cut it just now, didn’t you? You cut it!”
“Keep looking away like that, and I’ll shave your head.”
“Die!”
Earnest then got serious enough that Blade had to stop talking for a moment.