“Does that mean...you aren’t satisfied with me?” she asked.
“N-No!” Boldow pleaded. “Not at all! I just wanted to get closer with our Kanny’s companions! I thought dirty talk would be the best way to make friends with a couple of guys! Please, Leksi! You gotta believe me!”
† † †
In the afternoon, Kanata and her fluffy companions paid a visit to the training grounds used by Boldow and the local militia, where Alus was facing off against his father. Alus had assumed a low stance, hiding the reach of his blade, while Boldow stood at ease, his wooden practice sword resting on one shoulder.
“Both of you, do your best!” Kanata cheered.
“Here I come, father,” said Alus.
“All right, then!” Boldow beckoned his son forward with his free hand. “Let’s see what you can do!”
Alus launched himself forward so quickly it looked like he might have learned how to teleport himself, striking from below. Boldow met the attack head-on, blocking with his own sword. But instead of clashing with his father’s blade, Alus circled around behind him, aiming to strike across the middle of Boldow’s exposed back using the momentum of his previous slash.
His sword, however, struck nothing but air. Alus’s eyes opened wide—Boldow was behind him. He brought up his sword in time to stop his father’s leisurely overhead strike. The wooden swords clashed together with a terrible cracking sound.
“Oho!” said Boldow, pressing the attack. “Not bad, Alus! You’ve gotten better!”
Alus was holding his sword in both hands, and yet it was taking all of his strength to hold back Boldow’s single-handed blows. Alus’s hefty wooden sword made a precarious creaking sound. He gasped. If his sword broke, Alus’s defeat would be all but assured.
Struggling to overcome his father’s ludicrous strength, Alus changed the angle of his blade, letting Boldow’s sword glance off to the side and saving his own from being cracked in two. He spun around and thrust his sword at Boldow’s unprotected face. Boldow, however, simply tilted his head to the side to avoid the blade, countering with a well-placed side slash. Alus had seen the counterattack coming in time to block, but his guard had done nothing to prevent the blow from driving him back, digging a groove in the ground with his heels from the sheer force and sending him back to where he had started. Alus held his sword on guard, facing Boldow, waiting for his father to attack.
“Don’t just stare!” Boldow told him as he calmly advanced on the boy. “The situation won’t change if you stay still! Move! Move! Attack me!”
“Kh...! Yes, father!” Alus clenched his teeth and launched a series of sharp strikes, slashing high and low and in between in an elegant dance of bladework as Boldow parried each and every strike with his sword in one hand.
“Yes, good!” Boldow said. “You won’t find a decisive opening if you don’t attack! Don’t get all passive just because you took a hit! Attack! Attack!”
“Haaaaah!” Alus shouted, his father’s words spurring him to attack with greater and greater ferocity.
Meanwhile, Kanata’s three fluffy companions were watching the bout attentively.
“Incredible!” Zag’giel rhapsodized. “What splendid prowess!”
“It seems like the son has a clear disadvantage...” Fenrir observed.
“I would say he is putting up a splendid fight, for his age!” Elizavett argued.
In fact, Alus was a superb swordsman. None of his peers—nor even your typical adult swordsman—would have been a match for him. He was so skilled that, if he were to become an adventurer that very day, his swordplay would earn him the coveted A-Rank in no time. However, the ease with which his father parried his every attack was nothing short of unnatural. Moreover, Boldow was fighting one-handed. The difference in their ability couldn’t be more clear.
“Still, it seems Sir Alus has yet to concede...” said Zag’giel. Indeed, the fighting spirit in the young boy’s eyes didn’t seem to have dimmed in the slightest.
Alus delivered a flurry of quick strikes, concealing a single powerful blow that finally managed to deflect Boldow’s sword. Seizing the opening, he stepped forward. “Hah!” he cried, aiming a thrust for Boldow’s throat.
“Whoa!” Boldow bent over backward, narrowly avoiding the blade. “That one was close!”
But Alus wasn’t finished. He had counted on his father dodging that thrust. As he thrust with the sword in his right hand, he had kept his left out of view to hide the pale lightning coursing through his arm.
“Lightning Bolt!!!” he shouted, aiming to finish the match with a close-range lightning spell.
Boldow would have easily defended against any spell Alus could cast. That was why he had attempted this two-stage plan of getting his father off-balance with a desperate thrust before following up with the fastest attack spell he knew.
“Oh crap!” Boldow said, a panicked expression crossing his face as he saw what was happening. There was a flash of light and a clap of thunder. The sand on the floor of the arena was kicked up by the force of the attack.
As the sand cloud settled, the onlookers could see Alus, his left hand held out to cast his spell. A sword was lying on the ground, charred black. And his father Boldow’s fist was jabbed neatly against his jaw.
“And that’s the match!” declared Boldow. “I win!”
“That was unfair, father,” Alus grumbled as he relaxed his guard. “You promised me you would only fight with your one arm.”
“Unfair? Pishposh! I never told you I wouldn’t fight empty-handed! And you’ll notice I punched you with my right arm, just like I said.”
“Ngh!” If only the boys from Alus’s school could see him now. With his face twisted in frustration, he almost looked like an actual child.
“Still!” Boldow said. “You did good! You had me worried there at the end!”
“That was a secret technique I developed to defeat you, you know, father,” Alus said. “But I suppose I am still far from your level...”
“You developed a killer secret technique like that just to use against your own dad?” Boldow reeled. “That’s just cold! Sometimes you scare me, kid.”
“A lightning bolt like that wouldn’t have been enough to kill you, though, would it, father?”
“That’s a whole lotta faith you have in me, I gotta say! At this point, I’m quaking in my boots thinking about what it’s gonna be like when you come home for winter vacation!”
“I wish you wouldn’t speak that way after dispatching me so easily,” Alus grumbled. “It’s quite unsportsmanlike of you.”
After a brief bit of verbal sparring between father and son to follow up the swordplay, the two of them walked over to where Kanata and the others had been watching and cheering them on. Kanata greeted them with a great big smile on her face, but the three furballs were too busy trembling in awe of the match they had just witnessed.
“C-Could you make out what happened at the end, perchance?” asked Elizavett.
Fenrir shook his head. “I couldn’t make out anything, with all the sand in the air...”
Only Zag’giel had been able to make out what had transpired. “Incredible...” he muttered, shivering.
“Wh-What is?” demanded Elizavett. “Could you tell what happened?!”
“I couldn’t see how Lord Boldow avoided that lightning attack,” said Fenrir. “Don’t tell me you were able to follow that, Demon King!”
“We could,” Zag’giel answered. “But only because combining close-range attacks with spellcasting has long been our specialty in combat.”
Boldow had quickly ascertained that he had no time to dodge Alus’s spell, so he threw his sword in the air, sacrificing it to serve as a lightning rod while he countered with a bare-handed punch to Alus’s jaw. It was a feat easier said than done. The reaction time needed to pull off such a maneuver was nothing short of legendary. If he had misjudged the timing even a little, Boldow would have ended up scorched by lightning. He needed to release his grip on the wooden sword just as the lightning struck, so that the electricity wouldn’t travel from the blade down to his arm. It was a window of only a split second. Moreover, Boldow had done this while he was still off-balance from Alus’s attack. How could anyone see such a thing and not be struck by awe?