A gentle breeze swept across the sea of green, making the dappled sunlight on Ivette's face sway like shimmering ripples on the Silverthread River—beautiful beyond measure.
Hearing Ivette suddenly speak up, Lucia instinctively let out an "Huh?" "L-Learn what?"
She had actually heard what Ivette said, but she kept feeling that she must have misheard.
Then she heard Ivette reply with perfect clarity, "Swordsmanship."
Lucia fell silent at once. She looked at the Witch reclining in a lounge chair, silver hair spilling down, eyes half-closed, as lazy as a dozing Arctic fox. After several seconds, she clicked her tongue in amazement. "Ivette, so you can make jokes too."
"I wasn't joking," Ivette said with her eyes closed.
As far as she knew, a magic swordsman's combat power mainly came from four aspects—swordsmanship, combat experience, magical power and magical pressure, and combat techniques.
Aimon had used "safety" as his excuse for not letting his daughter attend the Academy of Truth, so any contest between the two would certainly be a comparison of overall combat ability, involving all four aspects.
Of those, "combat techniques" were often called "combat arts." Considering that Aimon had already taught Lucia a family combat art encompassing various close-combat techniques for both defense and offense, and that its quality was genuinely good and Lucia had already mastered it, that area could be considered balanced.
Among the remaining three areas, neither combat experience nor magical power and magical pressure could surpass Aimon overnight. That left only swordsmanship as the one advantage she could improve.
At the same time, as a magic swordsman, beating Aimon in that area would be the most likely way to leave him utterly convinced and speechless.
"But aren't you a Witch? How do you know swordsmanship?" Lucia asked skeptically.
Over the past three and a