The Duel (1)

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We arrived at the mission area without much trouble. Yae didn't even offer a peep of fear as she rode me through our controlled crash and rebounds jump-jetting all over the place. She only complained that moving so fast and so high felt cold. She said understood now why I tried to cover myself up so completely. Somewhat disappointing that her placid acceptable was all the emotion all that violent action could provoke from her.

By comparison, Linze clung to a solid unmoving tree with her knees shaking and glared at her twin sister. Elze gave a helpless little guilty laugh. Umm. Linze was kinda fun to bully, wasn't she? Sorry, Linze.

The mountain area was a veritable sea of hostile red dots. But we couldn't just walk around randomly triggering encounters until we met the Tiger Bears. Monika's [Search] managed to identify the targets and path us a route that avoided other beasties.

In the end however, it seemed the Tiger Bears decided to meet us halfway and ambushed us, leaping from the cliffs. "What the heck, Monika! Are they attracted by your magic radar?!"

/"Possibly? Or just high magic in general. Magic beasts happen in areas of high magic concentrations. Maybe they like eating other creatures high magic to further grow?"/

We scattered as the Tiger Bears landed smoothly on all four feet. Then they stood up on their hind legs and roared.

They were massive beasts that looked like bears with striped tiger fur and large saber teeth, which as usual had me wondering about whatever adaptational pressures lead to these monster forms. For all that bears thick fur that gave then a deceptively cute roundness to them, that was a thickness that protected against attacks of fang and claws and blunt damage. The saber fangs were more puzzling, since they were meant to stab and hang onto the necks of things that were bigger than the smilodons in our world. Long enough to reach past a protective mat of thick fur or scales. So... did that mean there were even bigger things that these already effhuge Tiger Bears?!

The Tiger Bears had orange and black stripes rather than the spotted fur of saber-toothed tigers. However I did note that the stripes did actually blend well with the rocks and crevices of the mountain terrain. There were three of them.

"Allow me!" Yae spoke up suddenly and moved to stand in front.

"… um. Okay, I guess?"

And with only that, Yae ran out to fight all three Tiger Bears at once. They were twice as tall a man and weighed close to half a ton. Their reach was about the same as Yae and her sword. Their fur was thick and resistant to bites and strikes. I could see in their eyes a certain hateful cunning.

This world might have convenient magic, but also clearing land for use was much harder. Unlike Earth's forests where the wild animals, even predators, were skittish and would flee from pursuit… this world's beasts would attack whoever dared enter their territory.

Yae slit open their bellies with a perfect cross cut and spilled their entrails out onto the ground. Standing with their arms out like that was just asking for it. The third Tiger Bear that dropped back down to bite at her instead of clawing found her foot meeting its snout. As the monster yelped more in surprise than in pain, Yae flipped over to its back and stabbed down. The point of her sword went into its spine. Then Yae put all her weight onto the hilt and pushed her blade deeper into its neck and though the gap into the back of its skull.

The monster beast collapsed like a puppet with all its strings cut. Yae stood up and turned around, her long ponytail trailing an elegant arc behind her from the strong mountain breeze. The whole fight took less than ten seconds.

"Impressive."

Elze, wide-eyed, could only clap.

"Amazing, Miss Yae!" Linze cried out.

Then Yae looked towards me and said sweetly, with blood still dripping off her sword, "And now… we can sate our swords with no interruptions… Playa-dono."

Ahahaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh…. sure, I guess.

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So after snapping off the saber fangs of the Tiger Bears as proof of our mission success, and rolling the corpses off a ravine because while monster bear meat could actually be made palatable we had no time to let it naturally ferment.

It felt so wasteful. But at least we were doing something good for other people. Now it would be safer for other adventurers to come up to the mountain to look for herbs and such. While there wasn't a convenient health potion, there was a lot of practical alchemy to cure illnesses.

We found a nice open clearing for our duel. There was no time for me to ruminate on the possible mutagenic effects of magic.

"I have been looking forward to this, Playa-dono!" Yae brandished a wooden training sword at me with a small smile on her face.

"Well I can't say I have the same level of enthusiasm but I suppose a man who wants to get better at using his sword has got to go through a little assbeating in order to improve!" Wait the phrasing on that? Oh well. "Bring it on!" I retorted, pointing back with my training spear.

Unlike with Yae's duel with the Viscount, we didn't waste time trying to feel each other out. The first virtue is always speed! Whoever strikes first might not necessarily win, but at least they set the tempo! Just like in chess, white moves first and their choice of openings is what sets up the board. Just like in the workplace, timeliness and punctuality is a sign of respect!

If you can move fast enough, one hit is all you need! No defense, all offense! Kinetic energy equals mass times velocity squared!

Clack!

Clack! Clack! Clack!

Unfortunately, without the boost provided by magic, /of course/ Yae who had trained as a swordswoman from childhood and had years of practical experience would be faster than me. For this particular duel, Monika wasn't helping with any body [Amplification] or [Quick Time] assist and I chose not to use any magic to augment any of my abilities or in attack spells.

I managed to fend off her initial series of attacks. I couldn't identify any openings in her guard, so I lunged and stabbed at anywhere. Yae was frowning in concentration. Sparring meant that a light touch counted as a deadly hit, and so we traded hits here and there, pulling our strikes at the last moment.

Yae's placid expression tightened into a frown. We were getting nowhere fast. A naginata was traditionally the weapon of preference for Japanese women. She knew all about how to deal with spears or sword blades at the end of spears.

Yae leaned back and went into another flurry of blows. I managed to fully block half of them. Unfortunately, I managed to do so with my face.

Fortunately, Yae was so over-conscious about not damaging my sight-granting headset, and my head was nicely protected by a steel helmet, so her sword could only really hit my cheeks. I disengaged and stepped back to rest on the short spear like it was a hiking staff. I worked my jaw from side to side, feeling as if I had the heck slapped out of me by an angry girlfriend.

"Ow."

"Yeah! Make him eat dirt!" Elze cheered from the sidelines. The others were sitting on a log, and Monika was projecting herself to sit beside Linze. She whispered something to Linze, who then shook her head.

Yae let out a frustrated sigh. "Playa-dono… you hold your training weapon like a toy. It has no life to it."

I nodded hesitantly. "Yeah, this is pretty unsatisfying. And that is why I asked the blacksmith to provide us with metal training blades."

I had already asked the Barral, owner of the Three Bears Weapon Shop for a blunt replica of my sword a few weeks back. He had less interest in carving out a wooden duplicate so I had to make do with a short spear.

Elze reached behind her seat, picked up and then approached us with the metal weapons. "You know, what even is the point of this? I thought you wanted to learn how to deal with fighting magic users?" she asked Yae. "What's the point of doing that if no one's using magic?"

"… Hey, I do also want to improve, you know? Sparring is supposed to help both sides," I put in. All considered, we had been in this world for a little under a month. It was still an absurd rate of improvement, you know?

Elze sniffed. "Well swordery is kinda irrelevant for a cheater like you, isn't it? It's just to show off."

"… Elze, someone like you has no room to say something like that to me."

She laughed shamelessly at my face as she handed over my blunt replica sword. "We don't really have time for things you can practice indoors. I kinda like seeing you show off now and then, you know? Try not to make it too boring for us watching. I mean, what else are we going to do here in a place where there's nothing we care about getting blown up?"

"Indeed, that is my wish, Playa-dono!" Yae said as Elze then handed her the iron training weapon. The swordswoman frowned slightly as she hefted the blade, for it wasn't a replica katana but more like a long saber with a katana hilt. It was the best Barral could do within an afternoon of work as we asked for yesterday. "I would like to face your powers as a magic swordsman!"

Her eyes still glittered with a sort of trusting eagerness. She expected a lot more from me than what I was ready to give. All that epic speechifying was backfiring from having people believe that we were vastly more competent than our ages implied.

"… right. Whatever that means..." I breathed. That didn't mean spells more like an artillerymage or Linze's niche. Wizards remained squishies that should be kept away from the front line. My ideal was not some long-range spellcaster, however. Bombardment spells were useless indoors and trying to rescue hostages.

I needed strength. But strength without precision was just wasted effort. There was a lot to learn from fighting to your weaknesses, for even when you choose to specialize at least you will learn what to avoid and how to mitigate damage.

Hope for the best and prepare for the worst. And the worst that could possibly happen...

/"I'm still not [Amplifying] your strength or speed,"/ Monika reminded me. /"There will come a time when you can't just count on having me to round out the inefficiencies in your build. How do you plan to compensate for that with only your own magic power?"/

... Is to fail to protect ones I care about. When I am finally and inevitably /literally/ blind. Alone and shattered.

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