Joanne’s training, which was already little more than sanctioned bullying, showed its true face from the second day onward.
In the end, the only time I managed to score a single clean hit on her was that very first day. Up through the fifth, I wasn’t even allowed to brush the hem of her clothes.
The hellish drills ran from early morning until sundown, and more than once she pushed me to a point where I would have died without the use of healing magic. Because clean fractures and severed limbs could apparently be fixed on the spot with no lasting strain on the body, she made me taste that particular brand of agony again and again.
But the pain and the fear sharpened my movements with ruthless precision. Maybe it was because this body had been artificially accelerated to maturity with drugs, but my learning speed felt wildly out of the ordinary. The muscle mass had been there from the start. Now it was just a matter of beating the proper technique into my brain.
By the time our special training reached day six, I’d started to grow accustomed to fighting Joanne and her green dragon saber, and the number of times I needed healing magic dropped dramatically.
Naturally, the moment she saw that, Joanne ramped up both speed and power, tossing aside any pretense of holding back. If I let my guard slip for even a heartbeat, she really would carve chunks out of my body. Blocking her head-on was simply not an option; my flesh wouldn’t survive it. So, I improved my last-second evasions, slipping out of danger by razor-thin margins.
Joanne was a practitioner of a soft, flexible style of swordplay. Her blade work and body control, reminiscent of her days before she’d been promoted to executive, were honed to the point that anyone could see, at a glance, that she was operating on a master’s level. The boisterous, overwhelming style she’d shown before faded away. She stood before me as a pure swordswoman, an unyielding wall I had to overcome.
Today again, Joanne swung her green dragon saber.
From a low, coiled stance, she launched a barrage of diagonal slashes. The blade seemed to split into several afterimages, and I kept dodging them by the skin of my teeth, relying on ducking and swaying to stay alive.
The ground beneath our feet was a field of snow, but I was used to the instability by now. I even used the sliding momentum to my advantage, stepping out toward the side opposite Joanne’s dominant hand.
“Hmm…”
Apparently tired of my endless evasion, I decided it was time to take a risk and drove in with a bold thrust, aiming straight for the girl’s eye.
Of course, she wasn’t the kind of opponent to let an attack like that land. With the slightest twist of her neck, she let my longsword skim past her face, evading it with the barest minimum of movement.
Immediately afterward, her blade snapped upward from below, a vicious strike that traced a line straight from my Adam’s apple to the crown of my skull.
I knocked the green dragon saber aside with the pommel of my sword and, in the same motion, slashed at her fully extended right arm.
“That’s my move,” Joanne murmured, her voice husky with ecstasy, as if she were both entranced and savoring the moment.
Once upon a time, Joanne had specialized in turning her opponent’s superior strength and reach against them, seizing the initiative after their attack and wringing the maximum effect out of a single opening.
In the six days since training began, I’d copied that very sword style and answered her counter with a counter of my own.
The girl’s eyes followed her severed right arm as it spun away. Far behind her, the green dragon saber stood buried in the ground, and her arm, trailing a red ribbon of blood, tumbled across the snowfield.
Joanne dipped her chin in a deep nod, then curved her well-shaped lips into a bow.
“Oakley… you pass. You’ve gotten strong.”
At those words, Alex, who’d been watching our training, let out a shout of admiration. “That was insane! I didn’t understand a thing that just happened!”
“You’re strong enough now that I don’t have to be ashamed to call you my partner,” Joanne said.
With her newly regrown right arm, she thumped me on the back. There wasn’t a speck of flattery in her tone.
“But… how about one versus many?” She jerked her chin toward a group of men training a little ways off. There were five of them in total.
So that’s it. Time to get thrown into the rough seas, huh?
Thanks to all the rumors from Karatena, I’d built up a nice stockpile of resentment among the troops. It was a dangerous gamble, but if I poked at them a little, they’d almost certainly bite.
Sure enough, when I approached the men, they pulled openly sour faces. I’d never harmed any of them, and yet the atmosphere was so hostile it felt like even exchanging a single word would be a struggle.
We were all destined to try and kill each other sooner or later anyway.
Putting on a gentle smile the way Alex always did, I walked up to them. Unlike with him, though, my attempt just seemed to creep them out.
“Um… would you be willing to train with me?”
The man who’d been sparring with Joanne only moments ago suddenly speaking to them clearly caught them off guard.
“What the hell’s with you all of a sudden?”
“I’d like to train for combat against multiple opponents.”
The moment I indirectly told them, “All of you, come at me,” the men’s faces flushed a deep, angry red.
“You makin’ fun of us?” a man asked.
Imitating Alex, who never let his smile falter, I silently raised my sword. Maybe the rumors flickered through their minds, because they drew their blades without a moment’s hesitation and moved to surround me.
“Don’t screw with us.”
“We’re gonna break you, oh esteemed executive candidate.”
The bloodshot rage in their eyes said it all. Every last one of them had clearly been fed a healthy dose of Karatena’s poison.
“Oh! I love the enthusiasm, guys!” Off in the distance, Whip called out cheerfully.
Joanne, arms folded, simply watched from on high like a spectator at an arena match.
“Die!”
Blades came screaming in from every direction of my vision and from true blind spots—my flanks, directly behind me.
I slid between the gaps in their attacks, but the instant my balance shifted after a dodge, one of them delayed his swing and went straight for my compromised posture.
Snapping my trained back muscles tight, I yanked my upper body upright in a full-powered sit-up. The edge of his sword sliced across the tip of my nose, but I avoided being bisected. There was no time to breathe; the next attack was already crashing down.
This is the logic of one-versus-many.
Outnumbered like this, I wasn’t meant to counter at all. Only hunted down and butchered.
But Joanne was watching me with eyes full of expectation. She smiled in that loose, relaxed way of hers, her expression making it clear she hadn’t considered my defeat even for a second.
“Hah!”
I kicked up a spray of packed snow, blasting it into one man’s eyes.
As he reeled, the two on either side of him flinched, instincts screaming that something was off, and all three of them stopped for a split second to reassess.