You're the Worst Class I've Ever Taught

Karya didn't give Lux any more time to prepare. He quickly began the training—though it was also possible he was deliberately changing the subject because he didn't want Lux to keep probing into his appearance.

In any case, by the time Lux had just figured out what the training required, the battle had already begun.

Faced with a swarm of beetles, Lux reacted exactly as one would expect of a girl her age: when a twelve-year-old girl saw that many bugs, her first response was to scream.

But unlike an ordinary, delicate noble girl, Lux screamed as she raised the longsword in her hand.

Even though the grip didn't feel quite right and the balance was a little strange, she still adopted a fairly standard basic sword stance, held the blade out in front of her, and swept it across the beetles charging at her.

Pure muscle memory.

Lux had a solid grounding in swordsmanship, but she clearly lacked the presence of mind to make sound judgments when faced with the unexpected.

Perhaps worried that too many beetles would surround her, Lux chose a wide-reaching sweeping attack right away, trying to clear the enemies in front of her and get herself out of trouble.

Unfortunately, though the attack covered a large area, it was difficult to inflict any real damage on the beetles. Their shells protected them, so Lux could only knock them flying; she couldn't actually kill them.

In other words, even if Lux bought herself a little breathing room, the beetles would crawl back and attack her again.

If she'd been thinking clearly, Lux should have realized this quickly and changed her choice of attack.

But unfortunately, this was the first real combat training of Lux's life.

Faced with beetles that seemed utterly real, her mind had gone completely blank!

Magic, models, swordsmanship, adapting to the situation—all of it had been flung out of her mind.

In that state, Lux followed almost nothing but instinct, swinging her sword again and again with all her strength. She had no room to think at all.

And so, as her performance became more and more disastrous, the beetles around her kept multiplying, while her strength steadily dwindled. In less than three minutes, her swings had noticeably slowed. Then two beetles broke through her defense, lunged at her arm, and opened their mandibles...

As a pain so intense it seemed tangible washed over her, Lux's vision went black. The next moment, when she came to again, she was no longer in the simulated training ground.

The training required her to last ten minutes to pass. Lux had held out for only three.

Leaning weakly against the city wall, Lux was soaked through at the forehead and temples. The girl looked as though she'd just been pulled out of a pool, even her dazzling golden hair sticking to her head in damp strands. She was a complete mess.

But Lux couldn't spare a thought for any of that.

She immediately raised her arm and examined it carefully in the sunlight.

Thank goodness.

Her fair arm was still as flawless as Ionia's porcelain. There were no wounds or scars.

Lux hadn't actually been bitten by the beetles. Everything that had just happened really had been an illusion.

It had simply been so realistic that Lux felt as though she'd truly been chewed by those mandibles. For a moment, she was still dazed...

"An utterly dreadful performance." Just as Lux let out a sigh of relief, Karya's voice finally sounded again. "My assessment is that you did an excellent job of maintaining the poise and courtesy expected of a noble girl. Even in the face of an enemy, you remained kind and gentle."

"I—"

Lux wanted to argue back, but once she'd regained her senses and remembered how she'd just acted, all she could do was gape.

Argue... argue what, exactly?

Now that she thought back on it, even Lux felt her cheeks burning!

Her behavior had been a "textbook example of what not to do." She'd made practically every mistake one could make in a fight!

"I was just unfamiliar with it!" Lux gritted her teeth for a long moment before finally coming up with an excuse. "I was distracted because I was curious about what you looked like!"

"Your ability to make excuses is on par with your combat skills." Karya delivered his assessment in his uniquely fair and objective manner. "Anyway, take some time to reflect. And keep an eye on the surroundings for Sona. Next up... Sona, you're up."

Unlike Lux, who had first entered the simulated training full of curiosity and anticipation, Sona seemed much calmer when she arrived among the dunes.

However, just like Lux, Sona was also curious about Karya's appearance. She, too, tried to see his face clearly.

So, like Lux, she was tossed down below the dunes.

Then, on the dunes, Sona wasn't given a sword. When the training began, Aihua floated in front of her.

"Make good use of your magic," Karya added. "Now, the training begins."

The next moment, as the desert began to churn as if it were boiling and countless dog-sized beetles surged up from beneath the yellow sand, Sona quickly plucked the strings!

Magic gathered on the strings, then transformed into blades of sound as solid as matter. With a piercing crack, one of the nearest beetles was torn apart.

The solidified sound cut right through its shell, sending it tumbling onto the gravel. It didn't move again.

Clearly, Sona's attacks were far more effective than Lux's. Her resonance with Aihua was innate. Even though she'd never tried playing the instrument with magic before, her first attempt was still strikingly effective.

After her successful opening strike, Sona plucked the strings again. With the burst of the next note, another beetle was cut apart. Sona had scored a double kill!

Unfortunately, this wasn't a bug-extermination game.

Sound dissipated in the desert wind, and Aihua's sound-blade attacks had a fairly limited range.

Sona couldn't play fast enough to keep up with the beetles closing in around her. Even though every strike landed precisely on a beetle's head and killed it, she quickly found herself on the back foot.

She simply couldn't deal with so many beetles.

Unlike Lux, who'd mindlessly swung her sword until she ran out of strength and left a gap in her defense, Sona's problem was that she focused on what was in front of her and neglected what was behind. In less than two minutes, a beetle had pounced onto her back.

As a stabbing pain swept over her, Sona's first training session came to an end.

Once she regained consciousness, Sona clutched Aihua tightly. She and Lux leaned back-to-back, panting heavily.

Going this hard on the very first try had been way too intense.

"Sona was reasonably calm." Karya gave his assessment without pulling any punches. "Unfortunately, you seemed afraid to let loose at all. The way you plucked the strings one note at a time made you seem like a fool holding a sharp blade but only daring to tap people on the head with the hilt."

"..."

Karya's strange comparison left Sona speechless too. Just as he'd said, she'd been too restrained during the training, too afraid to try anything she hadn't completely mastered. Facing so many beetles, she could only pick them off one by one, so her performance had been even worse than Lux's.

"It's because you won't let us train together!" Faced with Karya's criticism, Sona accepted it humbly. But seeing her friend still shaken, Lux spoke up to defend her. "If we trained together, we could easily deal with those awful bugs!"

"If you trained together, your enemies wouldn't be bugs!" Karya snorted. "Now, take a fifteen-minute break, then we'll continue. All you have to do is hold out for ten minutes against a swarm of scarabs. Even Shurima's magicless scavengers could manage that with nothing but a stick!"

"Yeah, right!" Lux said indignantly. "You're always saying I'm the worst class you've ever taught, and now you're saying even Shurima's scavengers can do it. You're such a liar!"

"I'm not lying." Karya chuckled. "How about this? If you pass the training, I'll show you how the best students I've taught got through it. I can also show you how Shurima's scavengers deal with scarabs. How does that sound?"

"Fine!" Lux nodded at once. "If I find out you've been lying, you'll take off your hood and let me see what you look like!"

"If I haven't lied, then stop fixating on that." Karya took the opportunity to make his own demand. "You'll find out when the time comes!"

"Deal!"

"Deal!"

With their wager settled, Lux stood up full of confidence. As she thought about how to deal with those awful bugs, she let out a gleeful, "Hehehe."

So you like being mysterious, huh?

I'm the worst class you've ever taught, am I?

This young lady will expose every one of your lies sooner or later!

Once I see your face...

I promise I'll draw you as a villain in a story and make sure everyone in Demacian Imperial Capital knows about you!

I'm a great artist, after all!

What Lux didn't know was that while she was gearing up with such confidence, Karya was silently smiling too.

You think I don't know what you're up to?

There's no way I'm showing my face. I can't give you anything you can use against me!

As for whether I'd lied when I said, "You're the worst class I've ever taught"...

Of course I hadn't.

Don't forget, the ones Karya had taught before were all Ascended from Shurima!

Compared to those exceptionally talented powerhouses, Lux and Sona... really were the worst class he'd ever taught!