This school took a dual-pronged approach to education, valuing the literary and military arts in equal measure. Students’ time was evenly divided between sit-down lectures and practical study, and right now a group of several dozen B- and C-ranked junior students were seated in a circle on the Proving Ground, the school’s main training arena. A military instructor stood in the middle, staging a little performance.
Thwap!
With a satisfying sound, a sword sliced a suit of armor in two. A round of applause and cheering erupted from the students as the instructor sheathed his weapon with an equally satisfying shiiing.
“Put in the right training, and in no time at all, you will be doing this, too.”
“Whaaat?” came the students’ dubious reply.
“Now get out there!”
He pointed an arm toward a row of neatly arranged, identical suits of armor. Each one was placed on a pedestal, waiting to be cleaved apart. The students gingerly approached the weapon racks, then picked out their swords and headed over to the armor.
Looking at how they held their blades, they weren’t complete amateurs. Each of them appeared to have a decent amount of experience. But when faced with the suits of armor, they all seemed hesitant to make any bold moves. They furtively looked around, checking to see if anyone would step up first…
“I’ll do it.”
The speaker was one of Blade’s friends—Clayde, that good-looking swordsman. He glared hard at the armor, expertly maintaining his battle stance. He stayed still for a few moments, and then—
“Haaah!”
—shouting, he slashed at his target. With a sharp claaang, his sword dug about halfway through the armor, then stopped cold.
“Ugh… It’s too solid…” he muttered to himself as he pried his blade out. It had clear nicks up and down the length of it.
“Hey, Blade! You gonna try, or…?”
“Hmm?”
Blade turned toward the voice and found Claire. She had a sword in her hands, but her grip seemed strange.
“I, um, I’m not very good with, with swords,” she said, fidgeting. “I’m good at bludgeoning things to death, but…”
Aha, thought Blade. Her grip and stance were the right approach if she was wielding a mace. But unlike with a weapon that relied mainly on heft, with a sword, it was important to keep the alignment of the blade in mind, or else it’d be tough to hew much of anything.
“So you gonna try?” she said again.
“Hmm…”
At the look of anticipation on Claire’s face, Blade hesitated. He thought for a bit, tapping his shoulder with the sword he normally carried on his back. He wasn’t trying to work out a way to slice through the armor, however. He was pondering how not to slice.
They want me to cut through only the armor, right? That’s gonna be kinda hard…
Indeed, doing exactly as the instructor demonstrated would be a little difficult. He had slashed through only the armor; the pedestal hadn’t been torn to splinters. That struck Blade as pretty—well, extremely—tough to duplicate. In actual battle, after all, there was no need for showy, nimble moves like slicing through only a suit of armor. Blade, at least, had never tried it. In his line of work, as long as he bisected the occupant of the armor as well, nobody had any complaints.
“Well, guess I’ll give it a try,” he said at last.
“Yeah! You really should!”
Cheered on by Claire, Blade turned toward the armor. Keep it small, he whispered to himself. Small.
“Oof.”
With a light, easy motion, he swung his sword.
“Ahhhh!”
Screams were followed by a roaring noise. Then came the shock wave.
The pedestal supporting the armor was completely subsumed. Claire’s skirt was blown upward, flapping in the intense wind, revealing the full, brazen glory of her lily-white undergarments.
When the wind died down at last, the armor was unrecognizable. The pedestal had been split in two by the shock wave. Even the ground had been gouged out beneath it.
“Right! There we go!”
Blade nodded to himself, satisfied with his work. He had kept the local damage to a minimum. He had sliced only the armor…or rather, he’d destroyed only the armor. “Cutting” didn’t really do justice to what had happened… Still, a decent effort. Eight out of ten, maybe.
“I did it!”
He turned toward Claire in triumph. She was still holding her skirt down, and next to her stood everyone else, looking on in blank amazement. Even the instructor had his mouth half-open as he stared at Blade.
Huh…? Wait, did I…mess up, maybe?
A single streak of cold sweat ran down Blade’s forehead.
✦ ✦ ✦
A few days later, Blade was walking down the hall toward his next afternoon class. He had been ordered during lunch break that day to begin reporting to the senior class, and he was headed for his first lecture.
He was wearing a necklace with a little plate reading RANK A on it. Flipping it over, he saw that it contained a grid of small squares, meant to be stamped by his teachers. Once a student earned enough stamps, they’d receive a class upgrade.
He’d risen through the ranks with unprecedented speed, but to Blade, this was neither an honor nor a privilege. His only thought was Gee, it sucks that I’m being separated from the friends I just made…
“The senior class, huh?” He fiddled with the plate dangling from his neck as he muttered to himself.
Ranks B and C, the junior class, shared some lectures, but the seniors in Rank A had a wholly independent curriculum. He recalled the faces of his four friends as they saw him off. Claire and the others all smiled and waved, promising to join him soon.
Could he make friends in the senior class, too? He kept walking, filled with anticipation and just a little bit of anxiety.