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“Anyways, what brings you here this late at night?” Davey asked Illyna.
“Just…to talk.”
-She’s lying. She can’t hide her anxiety.
Perserque quietly muttered while staring at Illyna with sleepy eyes.
Since even her status window in front of Davey showed that she was here because of something else, it seemed like Illyna was consumed with that thought.
Bleep.
-Name: Illyna de Pallan.
-Age: 17.
-Title: Master of the Divine Sword; First Flower of the Five Beauties.
-Notes: Contracted to the Divine Sword; apple of the Pallan Empire’s eye; member of the Last Wisp.
-Current Emotion: Confusion; in thought.
It was a perfectly normal status window, but there was one thing that caught Davey’s eye. ‘The Last Wisp…’ He thought that Illyna had brought an interesting story.
“Well, talking isn’t something difficult to do. Sit and wait for a little bit, and I’ll bring out some tea.” After he spoke, only the sound of Davey’s footsteps resonated through the empty and quiet workshop.
* * *
“That golem… The world is going to be flipped upside down if it is revealed,” Illyna said.
Only be flipped upside down? It would be a relief if it wasn’t viewed as a dangerous weapon. A golem that was able to carry out complex orders and execute high-level combat was no different from a bomb.
Illyna smiled bitterly while staring at the Megatron prototype, which was independently moving part of its body on one side of the quiet workshop. She muttered, “I tried so hard… Yet I couldn’t beat one golem.”
“You are not weak. That thing is just monstrously strong,” Davey replied.
Davey wasn’t lying; the Megatron’s nucleus was made of several magic stones, which were on another level compared to mana stones. Furthermore, the main skeleton was made of a unique stone that was seemingly created from an ancient mage. If positioned the right way, enchanted golems could potentially be more powerful than a Master; it was amazing that a swordswoman only at the Expert level was able to hold out against it.
However, Illyna seemed to be quite humiliated by the loss. Unlike humans, who wouldn’t be able to fight properly from the pain if their arm was cut off, the Megatron was a golem that couldn’t feel pain. It was natural that she couldn’t beat it. The Megatron also needed a lot of data, but it seemed like this woman also needed it.
“Experience is what matters. Let’s go out,” Davey said to Illyna.
“To…where?”
Davey wanted to be nosy just this one time, since he saw how Illyna was feeling very down. “The weather is perfect for a night stroll.”
Illyna stood up and followed Davey with a blank expression.
* * *
“Didn’t you say that you weren’t going to teach me swordsmanship?” Illyna asked Davey.
“I’m afraid I’ll lose something important if I just leave it like this. I also feel like I should at least maintain it, since I need to be able to face him without shame,” Davey replied.
Illyna was the one who was known to use the Sword Lord’s swordsmanship, and although the world didn’t know, Davey knew that fact well. As someone who had learned [Longsword] from the Sword Lord, for it to gradually be lost and be regarded as a worthless piece of junk… It didn’t make him happy. Then, it might be a good idea to find someone to take the hit.
“That is…” Illyna mumbled.
“Perhaps you don’t want to?” Davey asked.
“N—No! I want to!” Surprised, Illyna quickly shook her head and looked down at her sword with excitement. Her heart fluttered. Her sword, Divine Sword Caldeiras, was subtly shining in a white silver light.
Compared to Illyna, who was holding a divine sword, Davey had nothing but a wooden sword. It was a significant enough penalty that it wouldn’t be strange if others yelled at him to stop being ridiculous, but it didn’t matter in this case.
“Even if I told you to hold a real sword instead of a wooden one… It would probably just be an absurd amount of arrogance.” Illyna realized the difference between herself and Davey.
-You are unexpectedly friendly. You help her while you pretend not to.
‘I’m just drawing the line before it gets troublesome.’ Since Illyna had helped him once before—although it wasn’t necessary—Davey was just repaying her. Davey chuckled and lightly criticized Perserque.
This novel is available on bit.ly/3iBfjkV.
Then, Davey pointed his wooden sword and quietly said, “I will give you the advantage of having the first attack. Come.”
“Okay. Then… Thank you.” Illyna’s expression turned serious as soon as she stopped talking.
Shshshsh… At the same time, Illyna exuded a blue energy. An ordinary person at the Expert level wouldn’t have been able to breathe as the heavy flow of mana filled the air. Boom!!! Then, she charged toward Davey like a cannonball.
Like flowing water, Davey swiftly moved and rushed straight toward Illyna’s powerful dive. Illyna quickly judged that there was a clear difference between Davey’s extremely weighted strike and his swift, fluid strike, so she channeled an even stronger energy into her sword.
Still, Davey did not dodge the attack; instead, he suddenly accelerated his sword like he had flipped a switch while shooting up from the ground. Clang!!! A loud clashing sound resonated through the surroundings. Illyna bounced off the sword like a ball as she reflexively turned her body and blocked the attack with Caldeiras.
“Your strength…” Then, Illyna flinched slightly and ran her hand down her waist. Although she did have unbelievably fast reflexes, since she was very gifted, she wasn’t able to completely block the additional hit.
“Your [Longsword] is much lighter than I expected,” Davey taunted Illyna, who had a solemn expression.
Illyna’s forceful attacks began as the energy from her body quivered intensely. Like an avalanche, her threatening mana came over Davey every time she swung her sword. Davey could clearly see that if he was going to dodge every attack, Illyna was going to block his path so that he couldn’t avoid them.
Crash!! Boom!! With a series of explosions, which could not be thought to have come from a wooden and a divine sword, the nearby ground was crushed into fragments. Even though it was a collision between an [Aura] that was the most advanced in the Expert level and another of a similar level, the power that came from the collision surpassed any regular battle.
Boom!! Boom!! Davey could feel a great force in each of Illyna’s attacks, which she bombarded him with. Illyna was freely utilizing the weight shift of the Sword Lord’s [Longsword], which meant each slash had great strength. Boom!! The ground Davey stood on was crushed to pieces with one strike from her sword. There was a clear difference between her strength with the divine sword and without.
‘The Megatron wouldn’t have been able to last very long.’
The Megatron had only won because Illyna had used a regular sword. If she had Caldeiras, the golem would’ve already been cut up into pieces.
Davey only showed Illyna one thing from beginning to end; if she was going to attack using [Longsword], the Sword Lord’s sword technique, he had no choice but to counter her with the same move.
[Transcendental Longsword, Rock Split]
Davey swiftly moved his wooden sword and accelerated it with a sudden surge of power just as it was about to touch Illyna’s sword. One of his talents was to evade his opponent’s sword; although she was gifted, it would be difficult for Illyna to react to it since she hadn’t even reached ‘Master’ yet.
At the same time, Davey’s sword hit Caldeiras away, then rotated 360 degrees like it was slashing the ground, and hit Illyna’s waist once again. As he swung, the path of his sword made an imprint on the grass.
“Agh!!” Illyna groaned.
“Give up?” Davey asked.
“I wouldn’t have even come to you if I was going to give up after this much!!” Illyna began attacking again, even harder than before. She was persistent even though the earlier hit would've been pretty painful… The force of her attacks broke everything around her, but she seemed to become more depressed as the sparring continued.
A fluid and swift sword motion would block Illyna’s sword and counterattack her just when she thought she was going to land a hit. Her straightforward and destructive sword technique was constantly blocked by Davey’s flowy sword technique. She grew more anxious as the battle went on to defy her expectations, and it felt like Davey was just teasing her.
Clang!! As Davey tried to put distance between Illyna and himself after hitting away her sword, Illyna bolted like a cannonball and blocked his path. At the same time, she grabbed Caldeiras in the opposite way as it was rotating from the impact of Davey hitting it away. She then charged in without hesitation before attacking with a surprising move.
[Trascendental Longsword, Mountain Split]
‘Wow.’ Davey couldn’t help but be astonished by Illyna’s choice. The attack she used when Davey slightly let down his guard was the same technique he had used when he had slashed Shari, the vampire lady-in-waiting, at the Duchy of Felicity—although Illyna’s attack was much weaker than his.
Illyna breathed hard with Caldeiras planted in the ground. She had caused an explosion that was incomparably larger than the ones before. “This must have…done something…” Illyna wheezed.
“Okay, that’s good.”
However, Illyna’s hopes were completely destroyed as Davey stood behind her while poking her waist with his wooden sword. She frowned terribly as he grinned widely.
-That [Landing Technique of a Thousand Weights]… It was definitely the one you used. Did she learn it by watching it once?
“She’s crazy talented. Unbelievable.”
-Are you one to say that…
‘I am just able to learn a wide variety of things; I can’t just watch a move and use it in a real battle like that,’ Davey thought. It had taken him ten years just to be able to imitate the original form of that sword technique.
Illyna clenched her jaw while crying in fury; perhaps it was because the ultimate attack that she had used her greatest might to execute had been blocked so easily. “I gave my everything for this opportunity… It can’t end with nothing!”
Davey realized the concern and worry Illyna had as she shouted in a fit. Then, he immediately charged toward her as soon as he reached that conclusion. The moment Illyna opened her eyes wide, unable to react in any way, Davey mumbled quietly as he suddenly accelerated his wooden sword, which was moving fluidly like water, in seconds and slashed right above her head. “Watch carefully, and don’t miss it.”
“What? Kyak!”
[Divine Union]
[Transcendental Sword, Giant Tree Slashing]
Crack!! The destructive force of the instantly accelerated sword was beyond imagination. Unlike the impact of other moves, which only destroyed little parts at a time, one strike of this blew away everything and left giant claw marks dozens of meters away.
“Now, what did you learn?” Davey asked Illyna.
“A fluid sword technique… I couldn’t defend against it at all, even when it was the same thing…” Illyna seemed confused because the weaknesses of the swordsmanship she was learning had been explicitly revealed. Although she was feeling that way as well, she was probably denying it because of the title the [Longsword] had.
“Were you…trying to tell me that the [Longsword] was a sword technique full of weak spots?” Illyna’s confused shouting rang throughout the surroundings. Her voice was teary and filled with sorrow and shame. “Were you telling me that the [Longsword] was an old and useless sword technique…”
To others, it could look like Davey had teased Illyna by using a sword technique that was highly effective against the [Longsword] technique she used since she was able to make zero valid hits with her sword.
“Picked the least effective sword technique…”
Tears rolled down Illyna’s face in fury as Davey, who couldn’t help but sigh, approached her. He said, “I told you to watch carefully.”
Thump!!
“Kyak?!” Illyna opened her eyes wide and screamed as Davey suddenly thumped her on the forehead.
“There’s no such thing as a sword technique that fits everyone.”
“What?”
“That also includes the Sword Lord’s swordsmanship.”
How could a sword technique that fit everyone perfectly exist when people, even twins, were so different from each other?