8 Foresight

"Are you prepared?" the one to ask this was Anya. Right now we were standing in a training room inside the coliseum. The ground was of dirt and the walls were made out of stone, the overall size of the room wasn't too big, but it wasn't small either.

In short, it was the perfect amount of space for a duel; and a duel is exactly what was gonna happen here, and that was my graduation exam.

We were going to duel with real swords, and if I won then it'll prove that she has nothing else left to teach me in the realm of sword arts, and from now on I'll have to train on my own if I want to improve in this field.

However, if by chance I lost then it'll mean that all the work she did and the time she spent training me has gone to waste and, she will have to train me more until I'm able to pass this duel. That was the way things work in this world—at least on paper.

Though, at this moment, this duel wasn't important to me for the reason I stated above. It was due to something else, something that'll come after this duel.

There was something that was bugging Anya. Ron and Ainge knew about it but weren't willing to tell me. So, I figured that there is a possibility she'll tell me about it if I won this duel and came out as a great student.

At least this was the hypothesis. I didn't know for sure if it'll work or not, but it won't hurt to give it a try.

"I'm ready whenever you are," I announced as I refined my posture and looked into her eyes with confidence.

"I see. Then here I go," she said and sprinted toward me, holding the sword in her hands.

I also increased the grip on my sword and went for her. Our swords clashed and with the sound of scrapping metal, several sparks were released into the air.

We stood on our grounds and applied pressure, both trying to push the other back. At first, the forces were equally balanced, but a few seconds later Anya's feet began sliding backward, and she started losing balance.

I was pushing her back, and the fact is, I was not even feeling that much stress on my muscles. Maybe this was the difference in ranks.

She finally leaped back and balanced her body again, though without wasting any more time, she raised her sword again and dashed in my direction.

I did the same and yet again we clashed, our swords blocked each other off, and our bodies move closed and stopped at about a hand's distance. We both were staring daggers into each other's eyes.

I could tell that she was serious; in fact, I kinda felt that she was struggling desperately to win this fight. I don't know why but, probably, it was because of her expressions.

Our swords were scraping against each, and I could hear a crushing sound but in a more metallic field.

All of a sudden she took a side-step and threw a slash at me from the side, this movement of hers was fast I admit; after all, there is a reason she is called the strongest in the city.

However, to me, I was able to see her clearly and track her movements due to my rank being higher than hers; no matter how much she tried she won't be able to catch me off guard.

I handled my sword only with my right hand, swung it to the side, and blocked off Anya. At the same time, I heard her click her tongue.

I fully turned in her direction and after fending off her sword I went for the aggressive and launched myself at her at an intense speed.

With a swish of air, I hurled toward her, raised my sword high and held it with both my hands, and then slashed it down toward her.

She held her toward in front of her head horizontally from the handle and the tip of the blade; it was clear she was going for the defensive. I was almost in midair when I unleashed the power of my sword combined with my C-rank strength on her.

The sword descended onto her with intense pressure, it collided with her blade and a shock wave was released with a loud sound and a gust of wind. Her feet got planted into the soil as the ground below her sunk deep.

After transferring the full force of my attack onto her sword, I landed on the ground and took a deep breath to calm my blood flow, and then quickly dashed backward.

Anya stood in the same position for a while, and then a few seconds later she bought her sword down and pulled out her feet from the ground. She stepped forward and looked at me. "You've gotten better," she said.

With that statement done, she slid her left leg backward and bent forward, and held her sword at a specific angle near her waist with its blade pointing toward the back. Her head was facing the ground, but she glanced up at me as if giving me a message.

'So she's going to use that, huh?' I knew exactly what attack she was going to use now. Hence, I also changed my form and gripped the hilt of my sword tightly with my hands and held it toward her as I straightened my back.

She took a deep breath, relaxing her body and tensing it up again. A booming sound resounded in the training as she hurled herself in the air. And, she was not coming at me, instead, she was flanking at me and going to the side.

Her speed was fast, too fast in fact. She would've been invisible to a normal person or someone at her level but since I had a rank higher than her and so was my agility attribute, I was able to see her clearly.

However, she didn't know this. So, thinking that I can't see her, she came to my back. I turned around and faced her. She stopped at a hand's distance from me and started moving her sword rapidly in multiple patterns.

I also let my blade dance and blocked all her attacks. Her attacks were so fast-paced that she herself was having trouble controlling her sword; it showed on her face.

I was able to fend her off, but, 'Here we go!'

I would've won without this, but I wanted to do it anyway. 

Thus, there was no more thinking over that matter. I concentrated and focused on activating the skill; imagining to activate it is all that I had to do to actually activate it.

The same happened and [Foresight] activated and my ability to look 0.1 seconds into the future was now enabled.

The view before me changed, and now I saw multiple Anya's launching multiple attacks at me. One would say that this made things more difficult, but it was not true; the other Anya's I was seeing were all the possible attacks she could do.

After all, [Foresight] didn't show me the future, rather it shows me all the possible futures that can come true in the next 0.1 seconds. The time difference was very small, but it was enough to change the flow of a fight in my favor.

Also, my sense of time got disturbed with the skill too, so I was able to track her pretty easily.

Now I was able to block her attacks more easily, after facing her for a few seconds and using [Foresight], my body had become so accustomed to it that I knew what I had to do, and my hands moved on their own.

"Agggghhhh!" Anya let out a scream; maybe the pressure on her arms was getting too much.

The attack Anya was using right now was her specialty, a series of fifty non-stop sword strikes all dealt at an almost impossible speed. This was an attack Anya was practicing for the past four years, one year after she started teaching me.

But I never thought she'll use it in this fight, I mean from her point of view using an attack like this against me, who's supposed to have average stats and does not excel in anything, would mean her complete win won't it?

And this fight was my graduation in which I have to win or that'll mean I learned nothing, and she will have to keep on teaching me-Wait!

'Keep on teaching me?' when that thought surfaced, I felt like this connected with the situation that happened during dinner last night.

'Could it be that she wants me to lose?'

If this was somehow connected with the thing troubling her, then I had no real reason to win. No, in the first place, the reason I wanted to win this fight was, so I can know what was troubling her.

'I should give it a try, and it's not like I'll lose anything if all this turned out to be my imagination,' I decided to gamble on this IMAGINATION of mine.

I disabled [Foresight] at the moment her sword clashed with mine. At this point, her attacks didn't carry much force; she was probably at her wit's end.

Even so, I released my sword from the grip of my hands intentionally in a way that made it look like she was the one to disarm me.

The moment I had no sword in my hands, she stopped, came too close to me, and whispered into my ears, "You…lost."

Her voice depicted how tired and exhausted she was after this duel, if this had gone on for a little longer and there were chances that she might've very well fainted.

But it isn't important right now. Most of all, I was to test my theory; she wanted me to lose, and I just did that, now I want to know for what reason she tried that.

"Yeah, I guess I lost," I said as I showed a little troubled expression on my face.

"Shit! I slacked off because I thought you will go easy on me," I said as I walked to my sword and pick it up.

"There was no meaning to this exam if I was going easy on you. If you lost, it just means you haven't trained hard enough," Anya said while putting her sword back in its sheath.

"Yeah, figures. By the way…will you now tell me?" I asked, carefully bringing up the topic I wanted to know about.

"Tell you about what?" she asked, giving me a somewhat confused expression, though she was trying to keep a poker face.

I can tell because I have done that many times and am quite good at it.

"About what's troubling you, about why you're not acting like yourself for a few weeks," I appealed as I looked straight into her eyes.

She didn't reply and averted her gaze from me, but after a moment she spoke, "Sight! Okay, I'll tell you, or you're going to keep asking me forever."

"Well, you got that right," I replied with an innocent smile.

So it wasn't my imagination, finally, I'll know what was troubling her. I've been in this world for only five years, but I have accepted Ron, Ainge, and Anya as my family.

If something was going on behind the scenes that is causing them trouble, then I'll make sure to get rid of it.

After all, I have a great advantage in this world…as an author who's reincarnated in a fantasy setting!