“That’s right!” said Kanata. “It was quick and easy!”
“The guild tried to look for a replacement...” Melissa grumbled.
The letter she had received from the guild had read, “At present, we have no available guild personnel with combat capabilities higher than Melissa Straud. Fight bravely. We are praying for you.”
It called to mind an image of the guildmasters giving her a thumbs-up and a cheesy smile.
“I can’t do this...” Melissa said, crumbling onto the table and sobbing bitterly. “You know,” she told the others once she had recovered herself a little, “I actually tried to join the National Fencing Tournament once myself, when I was just a novice adventurer...”
She’d failed in the second preliminary match. Back then, Melissa had just been made the youngest C-Rank adventurer in the guild, and she had gotten in above her head. Melissa, too, had a period when she was gung ho and full of life. Now she regarded it as another one of her youthful mistakes. She remembered the bitter beer she had drunk that evening in the consolation party put on by her friends, and drifted even deeper into her gloomy despair.
“W-Well, you’re quite a bit stronger than you were back then, aren’t you!” said Lily. “In fact, weren’t you strong enough to beat a former A-Rank adventurer and wanted criminal, plus a bunch of goons? That seems to me like proof positive that you’re stronger than an A-Rank!”
“The National Fencing Tournament is going to be full of people like that...” Melissa moaned. It seemed her loss in the tournament in her youth had left Melissa with a fair bit of trauma. She’d even stopped going to watch the tournaments in the aftermath. But she was right about one thing—the ability of the fighters most likely would be no lower than it had been all those years ago. The National Fencing Tournament was a venerable event that claimed the prestige of determining the strongest sword fighter in the kingdom. It would be a gathering of mighty champions who had overcome their regions’ preliminaries and been selected to take part in this competition. They were not opponents with which a former B-Rank and current receptionist could hope to contend.
“You’ll do great!” said Kanata. “I’m sure you’ll win this time, Miss Melissa!”
“I’m very glad to hear you say that, but...”
“She’s right, Melissa!” Lily interrupted. “I don’t know what things were like when you were young, but now you’ve got my weapon with you! You’re in a completely different league from back then!”
“Please stop using the word ‘young’ like that,” Melissa complained. “It sounds like you’re implying that I’m not young anymore...”
Melissa lay despondent and miserable for some time, but she knew perfectly well she couldn’t lay there forever. She ate the last of the cookies, drained a cup of black tea, and refocused her frame of mind.
“Now, then, I assume we are to continue as planned, with my role and Miss Kanata’s reversed?”
“That’s right!” said Kanata. “Just leave the investigation to me!”
The original plan had been for Kanata to fight while Melissa accompanied her as her second and kept an eye out for any suspicious activity among the contestants. Her habits and manner of speech aside, Kanata was as good as omnipotent. It was probably safe to leave the investigation to her.
“If there’s an issue with the plan, it’s on my end...” Melissa mused.
In order to make it to the main event where the creator of the forbidden drug was rumored to be participating, Melissa would have to make it through the preliminaries. The preliminaries would be held seven days from now, and then it would be another week until the tournament proper. There, too, she would have to do her best to win her matches and stay in the running so as to buy time for the investigation. Hopefully they would be able to sneak into the fighters’ changing rooms and seize some samples of the drug to use as evidence.
“I don’t know how much difference one week will make, but perhaps I should get back to training with this one as well,” Melissa said, touching her hand to the sword on her belt. It was really too fine a weapon for the likes of her, but all she could do was exert every effort for her partner blade. If she could manage to wield the full potential of this extraordinary weapon, maybe, just maybe, a miracle would occur and she would make it through the preliminaries.
“If you ever need repairs, your weapon’s in good hands!” said Lily. “And in exchange, promise me you’ll use her well in the tournament. It’ll be great publicity for my smithy!”
“Lily...” Melissa sighed. She had some respect for Lily’s indefatigable merchant spirit, but she wished her friend would at least refrain from saying things like that in front of the person in question.
“Honestly, I’d be glad to have Kanata in the tournament, but you’re even better, Melissa! If you win, everyone will say it’s because of my sword! And once I’m known as the blacksmith who forged the magic sword used by the winner of the National Fencing Tournament, the orders will come flooding in! Ka-ching!”
“Lily...” Melissa repeated. That one, unfortunately, had been a direct hit.
† † †
“Noooooooooo!”
“Hiya!”
“Eeeeeeeeeek!”
“Fwah!”
“I caaaaaaaaaaaan’t!”
With each scream, Melissa was sent flying high into the air. Kanata had volunteered to be her training partner to help her learn the ins and outs of wielding her magic sword, but the difference in their ability was simply far too great. Kanata was easily able to dodge or parry Melissa’s every attack and return it with many times the force.
“Hey, hey!” said Lily, clanging an ornate pauldron with her hammer like a bell as she strode outside the smithy. “Isn’t this supposed to be training?”
“I-It’s fine,” Melissa insisted. “This sword is too powerful for me to use my full strength against any other training partner. I’m just grateful for the opportunity to train with it at all.” She pulled herself to her unsteady feet and raised her slender sword up to the side, level with the ground like a single wing. “Another round!”
“Go right ahead!” said Kanata, standing at ease with her wooden practice sword.
Melissa summoned a gust of wind to accelerate her movements and lunged straight for Kanata—or so it seemed. In fact, she used another gust to cancel the lunge and move into a quick side step, coming in with a follow-up jab from the flank. Changing the direction of her inertia all of a sudden like that made her body cry out in pain from the strain of the acceleration, but the speed she achieved in that moment was truly beyond human limits. It felt like her body was inside a box, and a giant had suddenly jerked the box to the side, but Melissa still managed to aim an accurate thrust at Kanata’s head.
The power of wind coursed through Melissa’s thrusting blade, accelerating the point to breathtaking speeds, so fast it created a blade of pure vacuum as a secondary attack.
Kanata, however, simply negated the wind energy head-on and sent Melissa flying through the air once again.
“Whyyyyyyyyyy?!” Melissa cried as she flew. She had surpassed the limits of human speed, but Kanata, monster that she was, had surpassed even that.
“All right, Kanata!” Lily cut in. “It’s about time for us to switch out! Melissa, come bring your sword to the smithy for a checkup.”
“Okay-kay!” Kanata sang. “I’ll just fluff-fluff while I wait!”
“Aha,” said Zag’giel. “So it will be time for our training next...”
“Lady Kanata, wait!” pleaded Fenrir.
“Say, Mistress, is this truly training?” Elizavett asked. “It seems rather queer to me. Or, rather, I am delighted to have you treat me so amorously, but would it not be better for me to return to my original form...?”
Even if Kanata had been listening to her question, however, there was no changing her mind. After all, Elizavett’s original form didn’t have nearly such splendid fluff.
“Fluff-fluff! Fluffy fluff!” Kanata sang, fluffing the three fluffballs all at once as Melissa passed by her and into the smithy.
The magic sword of wind Lily had created was made using materials produced by Kanata herself. The power it held was enormous. If Melissa wanted full use of its power, it would take every effort of both the wielder and maker to get each detail just right.
“It looks like the stress it places on your body has gone down by a lot,” Lily observed. “Are you finding it more difficult to move than last time in any way?”
“Not at all,” Melissa said. “I feel like we’re in good form. I get the sense the sword is gradually adapting itself to my hand as well.”
“You’re up against Kanata,” Lily said, “so I can’t tell from watching whether you’ve gotten any stronger or not...”
“How strange,” Melissa concurred. “I feel the same way.” She was certain she had grown adept at wielding the magic sword, but none of her attacks had made the slightest impact on Kanata. Before today, she hadn’t fully grasped how far beyond her that girl was.
“All right,” said Lily. “In that case, you take a break while I make some adjustments.”
“Thank you, Lily.”
Melissa had been practicing every day as well, but she was endlessly grateful to Lily for taking so many long days to make sure the magic sword was being properly maintained. She was charging money for her services, of course, but Melissa was billing it all to the guild as mission expenses. It was her small bit of revenge on the guildmaster.
“I just hope I can make it through the preliminaries...” Melissa said.
There was no denying that she was in a different league from when she was a novice. Her work had changed, as had her friends and colleagues. Her present life was fulfilling in some ways, but she was full of lingering attachments. What were her friends from those days doing now, she wondered...