by Aneko Yusagi
But I wasn’t living in a manga. If I could really do something like that, then this really was a fantasy world.
Granted, I had been summoned to another world with a magical shield. I’d been making magical barriers out of thin air. It was probably time to get used to living in a fantasy world.
“I understand in theory, but I don’t know how I would go about actually doing it.”
It didn’t seem like the sort of thing that you could just will into being.
This old lady really knew her stuff.
“Alright, you’ve convinced me. Please become our combat advisor.”
“Thank you very much. Then I will focus my efforts on you and the girls here.”
“Good. Just so you know, this woman here, Eclair, is also going to be working with us on swordsmanship. Please teach us all you can.”
I pointed Eclair out, and she saluted the old lady.
“I never would have dreamed I might receive instruction from a master of the legendary Hengen Muso Style. Please include me in your teachings. It would be a great honor.”
“Ha, ha, ha! My training is tough work. I hope you can keep up.”
“I will certainly do my best.”
“You’re supposed to be the teacher here, aren’t you?”
Why was Eclair acting like she was showing up for lessons too? She should be focusing on teaching Raphtalia to use her sword.
And Keel . . . Keel was clearly intimidated by all the strangers. His tail was curled between his legs.
He really was like a dog.
“You want to get stronger, don’t you? I’ll go through the whole thing with you, so buck up and let’s get to it.”
It was a good chance to teach him the basics.
We couldn’t level past 100, but we could still get stronger if we learned how to fight.
I needed Raphtalia to get stronger than she was, and even Rishia seemed like she sincerely wanted to get stronger.
“Then the training is about to get tough!”
“Yes. Understood.”
“Fehhh...”
“The other heroes have yet to arrive.”
I took the opportunity to explain to the old lady just what sort of a situation we were facing.
I told her that while I wanted her to teach Rishia as much as she could, I also wanted to keep Rishia separated from the Bow Hero.
The old lady waited until I was finished talking before agreeing. She didn’t ask any obnoxious questions about it.
“That reminds me, where’s Filo? I wanted her to take Keel out leveling after we finished breakfast.”
He’d probably throw up if he had to go for another ride on Filo’s back.
When he heard me ask about Filo, Keel looked startled and ran behind Raphtalia, shaking in fear. I guess he really didn’t like the idea.
“I think she might be with Melty.”
“Good thinking. Okay, I’m going to go get Filo and have her take Keel out.”
“No! Shield guy! Anything but that!”
Damn, Keel was getting too familiar for my liking.
“You won’t get any stronger if you give up now.”
“You mean I have to make myself sick or I won’t get stronger . . . oh no...”
“Not exactly.”
“Keel, you’re not leveled up enough to make use of the training we’re doing here. You have to go level up first.”
Considering how much he’d leveled yesterday, it probably wouldn’t take very long.
The only way for a lower-level character to get stronger was to start leveling.
Even if he didn’t level enough in time to participate in the training, we could always just teach him the things that we’d learned later.
“When Filo gets back, you need to go out with her. But you can work with us here until then, okay?”
“Okay!”
Keel nodded.
We spent the rest of the time until breakfast was ready, learning the basics of the old lady and Eclair’s techniques.
It started off with a lecture from the old lady.
“The Hengen Muso Style was first developed so that weak fighters could hold their own against enemies far superior to them in strength.”
Apparently, the style relied on the user’s manipulation of life energy, or something like that. It was the sort of concept you came across in older manga from time to time. Now we would have to learn how to use that energy ourselves.
“Energy, hm...”
Was it something different from SP? Probably.
“For example, the Shield Hero’s abilities are enhanced because he is given energy from his legendary weapon.”
“Does that mean that I can’t practice it?”
“Of course not. It does mean that you are unlikely to have much success manipulating your own energy. However, if you learn the techniques of the Hengen Muso Style, then you will be able to apply those techniques to your skills.”
“Huh? What’s that supposed to mean?
“The shield hero may be able to increase the power of his special skills. Or at least there is a legend among practitioners of the Hengen Muso Style to that effect.”
It sounded like there was another power-up system separate from the legendary weapon’s skill system.
I guess that meant I might be able to make air strike shield even more powerful than it was already.
“I see.”
So there was a reason for me to participate in the practice, but I wouldn’t benefit from it as much as Raphtalia and the others.
“The most important aspect of this is that the techniques that make up the Hengen Muso Style can easily be applied to other martial arts.”
“Is that the reason that you don’t specialize in any particular weapon?”
“Yes. The trade-off is that you will have to study your weapon of choice separately. Once you have grasped the fundamentals, you can practice applying them to your preferred fighting style.”
So what she was basically trying to say was that while there are some attacks that are specific to her style, if you want to use a weapon to carry out her techniques, you will have to find a way to apply the energy manipulation skills of her style to your chosen martial art.
Did that mean that other martial arts would necessarily have better and stronger attacks?
I tried to think of it in terms of magic and skills.
A skill would be equivalent to the Hengen Muso Style techniques, while magic would be like another martial art.
It would be like if Raphtalia was chanting a spell like First Hiding, and I was going to use air strike shield.
When we did that, we had the chance to perform a combo skill called hiding shield, which produced an invisible shield.
Or when Filo used Zweite Tornado and I used air strike shield.
Then we would have the chance to use a combo skill that literally blew the enemy away: tornado shield.
In both situations, air strike shield did something and was important.
But it could be used with different types of attacks to produce different combo skills.
I think that the system she was suggesting worked the same way.
I don’t think her style was like a formal school or art but more like a flexible concept that could be applied to any fighting style.
So the beginner user would learn to use Hengen Muso Style techniques, then go on to specialize in a particular martial art as a mid-level user, and finally advanced users would learn how to combine the two to make their attacks even more effective.
“Those are the basics. Now, learning to actually perform these skills is another story.”
“You mentioned that Rishia had a particular aptitude for it. What makes you say that?”
“Good question! That girl has an innate skill for energy manipulation!”
“Rishia does?”
“Fehhh!”
The old lady had reached out and touched Rishia’s arm, which caused Rishia to scream.
“She learns very quickly. Surface! She will understand the system. Depths! She will master those techniques. That is my plan.”
“Surface? Depths?”
“It is a way to express the different capacities we all have. On the surface, anyone can grasp the concepts. But to master them requires a depth of understanding and innate talent.”
So without talent, there wasn’t much point to it all? With an understanding of the surface concepts, anyone could be stronger than they were. But to really implement them would be more difficult.
“Do Raphtalia and I have a talent for it?”
“It is difficult for me to judge in your case, because you are a hero. Raphtalia, on the other hand, has the potential for discipleship.”
It was hard to figure out what she wanted to say. I was starting to get a little irritated by it.
But what I knew for sure was that, after suffering from the attack she’d used against me, I had something to learn from her.
At the very least, if I could learn to defend against defense rating and defense ignoring attacks, I would stand a better chance of surviving my next encounter with L’Arc and Glass.
“Anyway, breakfast is almost ready. Hey, old lady, could I get you to explain all this to the other heroes too?”
“Naturally, that was my intention.”
“Any idea what we are going to need to practice these techniques?”
“To truly understand and master them, some time spent alone training in the mountains is necessary. For a naturally talented individual, a month or so of asceticism should be sufficient.
A month? The next wave would he here in two weeks, so that wasn’t going to work. And that was for someone with a natural talent?”
“What about for a normal person? How long would they need to really learn it?”
“Ten years or so.”
Well, that wasn’t going to work! We couldn’t afford to spend years just learning the basics.
We had other things we had to do. I guess we could go to the mountains and wait for the wave to come, but there was too much else to do.
We could continue the training after the wave had come and gone.
“Got it. Heroes have a pretty convenient means of travel available to them, so I guess we could think about a mountain hermitage. We’ll keep that option on the table.”
We left the training grounds and went to eat breakfast.
Chapter Seven: Impossible Training?
“Is that really what you’re thinking?”
After we finished breakfast, the old lady began to tell us more about her fighting style. She had started acting as our combat advisor in earnest.
Just as we were about start the training for the day, the other three heroes all decided not to participate.
We were in the castle courtyard when they decided to leave. Raphtalia, Eclair, the queen, and I all called for them to stop.
Rishia had agreed to study in the castle library until the old lady called for her.
That was the plan we came up with to keep her from running into Itsuki.
Filo had already left to take Keel leveling. Keel shouted something to me as they ran out through the castle gate, but I couldn’t make out what he was trying to say.
“We are already leveled up, and we already know how to hold our own in a battle. We don’t have enough time to spend training with you.”
Ren told us why they were leaving. Motoyasu stood next to him, spinning his spear in circles.
“Yeah. Is that really how you think we should spend our time? I’d rather try and find a better weapon.”
I guess that meant he thought his weakness was his weapon’s fault?
As for Ren, the way he’d phrased his refusal made it sound like he had something else in mind.
“There’s a problem with your reasoning, too.”
“Oh yeah? And what’s that, Motoyasu?”
“Only boxers can use energy attacks. I’m a spear fighter, so it wouldn’t do me any good anyway.”
“What are you talking about? You mean monks, right? The class that can’t use weapons?”
“You mean ascetics! It’s not that they can’t use weapons. It’s that they don’t specialize in any of them.”
Okay, it was time to explain a few things to these morons.
Games often had job systems that divided up players by the weapons, equipment, and abilities they were able to use.
I guess they were trying to say that their jobs, by which they probably meant the legendary weapon they were assigned, weren’t able to learn the skills that the old lady was teaching.
But what they were really doing was admitting that I was right.
They had all given different answers, but all of their answers admitted that the concept of energy that could be manipulated in battle existed.
That meant that these energy skills really were possible.
Like all the trouble we’d gone through trying to figure out how to power-up a weapon, it was probably safe to assume that all of their explanations held a kernel of truth.
“We’re heroes, aren’t we? Don’t you think the rules might be different for us?”
“No way. It’s not like we can just do whatever we want. What would the point of these weapons be if we could?”
“Yeah. Maybe one of the seven star heroes could learn it. Like the Claw Hero, or the Gauntlet Hero.”
I had to admit that they might have been right.
It’s not like I could just decide to learn the skills that were available to Motoyasu as the Spear Hero. That wouldn’t make sense.
That would be like Motoyasu yelling “shooting star sword!” Would you expect his spear to turn itself into a sword?
And yet the old lady had said that the skills she taught didn’t rely on any particular weapon. She’d said they could be applied to any school of martial arts.
They needed to stop thinking of this world as though it operated by the same rules that the games they were familiar with did.
We had an opportunity to learn a new and powerful attack style here. Why not jump at the chance?
I didn’t know ahead of time whether or not it would work, but I decided it was worth it to try.
“It appears that the other three heroes reason differently than the Shield Hero, does it not?”
Eclair regarded the three heroes with confusion.
“Who the hell are you?”
Ren was glaring at Eclair. He did not look pleased.
It was his fault though. Didn’t he realize that he’d been defeated in one wave after the other?
He probably still thought that the only reason I was successful was because I was cheating.
“Me? I have nothing to do with this Hengen Muso Style. My name is Eclair Seaetto, and I have been summoned to provide instruction in the sword arts.”
“Sword arts? Heh!”
“What’s so funny?”
His little chuckle had hit a nerve. Eclair took a step toward him.
“Your little tricks aren’t going to make w
eak people any stronger. They should focus on leveling.”
“Hm... It seems that the Sword Hero has confidence in his swordplay. I wonder if I may bother you for a lesson?”
“Eclair, calm down.”
“Forgive me, Shield Hero. But I also have confidence in my swordplay. If I have been condescended to, I must stand up for myself.”
Oh jeez. I had a regular samurai on my team. She must have been the sort of person that couldn’t tolerate having their skills brought into question.
“If you want a lesson, I’ll give you one. You’ll regret it though.”
Ren adjusted his grip on the hilt of his sword while his teammates looked on, concerned.
Motoyasu and his team were watching too. Bitch looked thrilled.
Itsuki and his team looked on but yawned. I guess they weren’t so swept up in it.
If they didn’t want to be here, I wished they would just hurry up and leave. I didn�
��t want Raphtalia and the others losing the motivation they had.
“The knight, Eclair of Melromarc, will have a sparring match with Mr. Amaki, the Sword Hero. Is that your desire?”
The queen stepped forward and announced. Even if she hadn’t, they looked like they were about to start fighting anyway.
I hoped there were rules in place. No one could afford to sustain a heavy injury at this point.
“Very well. The duel shall end when one of you has the opportunity to deliver a final blow. The opportunity for the final blow is the deciding factor. So do not make the final attack and do not use more force than necessary.”
“Fine.”
“You truly are a merciful queen.”
Ren drew his sword and adjusted his stance. Eclair did the same.
“Oh, can I add another rule?”
“What?”
“Eclair is unable to use the type of skills that heroes have access to, so those should be forbidden. Also, I don’t know if Eclair can use magic or not, but let’s keep magic out of the duel. This is only to test your skill with the sword, after all. Okay?”
That was the only way the duel could serve as a test of their swordsmanship.
It was also a good chance to see how good Ren was, without using any “tricks” or skills.
“Fine.”
“But we can use other techniques, right?”
Ren nodded.
I guess that meant that he knew about the ways that other people, ones without access to skills, could fight.
“Fine.”
“Very well then...” the queen said, raising her folding fan into the air.
“Begin!”
The moment she dropped the fan, Eclair and Ren rushed each other, their swords clanging.
“Hya!”
“Kya!”
After they were locked in place for a moment, they both jumped back a step before rushing forward again.
Ren was faster. He swiped at Eclair a few times a second.
But Eclair could read the movements of his broadsword easily, and she kept out of the way of his blade without trouble. When she found an opening, she thrust at it.
Ren jumped to the side, avoiding the point of her blade, but he had to jump around so dramatically that it was affecting his footing.
At first he kept his feet planted, like in kendo. But now he was jumping around to avoid her thrusts.