“Crap, crap, crap. This is seriously bad. I’ve got like no stamina.”
I went for a jog before my training started, and it didn’t take long before I was panting as I desperately tried to keep my body moving. I was learning that malnutrition was no joke.
I’m seriously about to die!
“Lord Weiss, you don’t have to push yourself so hard right out of the gate.”
“No, I do,” I managed to say. “You need stamina in order to get most anything done.”
“Hee hee, I’m glad you’ve become so positive.”
I didn’t know whether it was because I was pushing my body too hard or what, but my legs were so wobbly that I was on the verge of falling over. Weiss had even less strength than I expected because he hadn’t eaten much of anything since his parents died, but there was nothing I could do. I had to coexist with all of my negative status effects for now.
“I’d like to learn swordplay, but I’m not even sure I can swing a sword…”
“True. Let us focus on building your stamina and practicing magic for the time being. We can leave the sword for when you’ve gotten stronger. The one problem with that is that I can only really teach you the basics of swordplay. Eventually, you will need a proper teacher,” Rosalia said.
Her tone dropped at the end. It seemed like she was hesitant to say anything more on the topic. Swordplay was one of Weiss’s skills, so he must’ve had a teacher at some point. Perhaps he’d chased him away?
Regardless, I would have to look into it.
“Let us first go over how to use magic. I have heard that when someone has a particularly shocking or traumatizing experience, they can forget how. This is because magic is deeply tied to one’s mental state. Today, we will start by going over the fundamentals.”
I had told her I didn’t know anything about magic, so she began to teach me the basics with a puzzled look on her face. The fact that I had level-one magic in my stats meant that Weiss could use magic before I occupied his body, which would explain why she was befuddled by my sudden lack of knowledge.
Despite being perplexed, she didn’t look at all annoyed or frustrated as she started teaching me from the beginning.
“You have an affinity for dark magic, so let’s use your shadow to begin with. It’s something you will always have near you. Close your eyes and focus. Imagine your shadow as a part of your body. I know it has been some time since you last used magic, but your body should still remember the sensation. Then, recite the spell that surfaces in your mind.”
“A spell, huh? Is there any way you can just teach me the spell?”
“That would be rather difficult. My specialty is ice magic, but more importantly, when you recite the spell, its results are visualized in your mind. If you don’t have that mental image, reciting the spell won’t do anything.”
“So there’s no shortcuts…”
I closed my eyes just as Rosalia instructed.
It’s kind of hard to imagine my shadow as a part of me. After all, a shadow’s just a shadow. I’m not even seeing any spell incantations in my mind.
The more I focused, the more I began to panic, but just as my mind started to slip into chaos…
“I’ll help you just this once. You’re only getting the one time, so make sure you memorize it.”
“Heed my words, shadow hand!”
The second the words left my mouth, my feelings became one with my shadow, which took the shape of a swinging arm in my mind. This was the feeling I was searching for!
“Eeek!”
“How’s that, Rosalia—ah.”
The first thing that entered my line of sight was Rosalia’s skirt, which had flipped upward, revealing the light-blue lace fabric beneath it. My shadow hand had raised her skirt.
“Lord Weiss!”
“Okay, so, I didn’t do that on purpose! Um, though, are they light blue because you have an affinity for ice magic?”
“My word, you are quite the lewd lord, aren’t you?” She sighed exasperatedly as she brushed her skirt down, her cheeks burning with embarrassment. “You’d better not say that kind of thing to any other women.”
But if saying that sort of thing to other women was a bad idea, wasn’t it also a bad idea to say it to her?
“In any case, I see you have gotten a feel for it again. Let us practice so that you can freely control your magic. Ah,” she added, “but if you try to touch my skirt again, I will cut down your shadow.”
“I-I get it. Sorry.”
“Once you have better control of your magic, you’ll be able to do a lot more things. For now, let’s have you practice using your magic for a full hour.”
Just like that, my training began while Rosalia watched with a small but happy smile. I wasn’t used to any of this, but wielding magic was actually a ton of fun, and the time went by without me even realizing. How could I not enjoy myself when I was getting to use my fave’s very own magic? It was awesome.
The end result of this training was that I could now, to an extent, summon and command a single shadow hand. There was just one thing—what was that voice I heard earlier?