Heat and dust rose together from the sandy training ground.
Two figures, one tall and one small, fought at a furious pace amid the clear ringing of swords.
"Hyahhh-!"
The red-haired girl gripped her greatsword tightly in both hands, her long, bright-red hair flying wildly as she attacked with bestial ferocity.
She slashed at the opponent before her with claws bared, her attacks wild and unstructured but astonishingly powerful.
The beast-eared woman facing her, however, handled them with ease.
She held her sword in only one hand, her muscular arm steady as a rock.
Her longsword traced a series of impenetrable silver arcs through the air. With a rapid succession of clangs and sparks, it blocked every one of the girl's slashes without fail.
Suddenly-
The girl kicked off the ground, using the force of the rebound to leap a long step backward.
In the instant she gained that distance, she lowered her stance, steadied her breathing, and quickly held her longsword at her waist.
Boom-!!
She forcibly poured a vast, violent surge of magic into the blade all at once.
In an instant, a visible scarlet aura tore through the air like a raging tide and clung tightly to the sword's edge, emitting a piercing hum.
What sharp combat instincts!
Ghislaine's sensitive beast ears twitched sharply, and she reacted instantly.
The sand beneath her feet exploded as she became an afterimage, charging at the girl in an attempt to interrupt the move before it fully formed.
But Eris seemed to have put plenty of tedious, hard work into this move.
Muscle memory outstripped thought, allowing her to concentrate her magic to its limit in an instant.
"Take this-!"
With a cry, Eris swung her sword with all her might! Blazing scarlet sword energy came with a piercing howl.
Like a blood-red beast bursting from its cage, it tore across the ground with a roar!
The two were now less than ten meters apart, leaving even someone as powerful as Ghislaine no way to dodge.
Her pupils narrowed slightly, and at the last possible moment, she held her sword across her body.
Bang-!
A muffled boom erupted with a violent blast of air.
Even though she barely managed to block the strike, its violent force still drove Ghislaine backward across the sand, plowing two deep furrows before she finally came to a halt several meters away.
After unleashing that nearly exhausting strike, Eris was completely drained.
With a plop, she collapsed ungracefully onto the scorching sand.
Her chest heaved as she gasped for breath, sweat drawing muddy streaks down her cheeks.
"Eris, are you all right?"
Ghislaine lowered her sword and stood still, her posture undisturbed.
But her normally stern face was now filled with concern she could hardly conceal.
The red-haired mad dog on the ground, however, only stared intently at her own trembling hands.
After a few seconds to recover, she abruptly turned to look toward the shade of a distant tree.
There, a brown-haired boy sat with his legs crossed in a thoroughly inelegant manner, enjoying being fed by the pretty maid beside him without the slightest sense of guilt.
"Rudeus-!!"
Eris shouted at the top of her lungs, her voice carrying its usual imperiousness and refusal to admit defeat:
"Where's that potion that restores stamina? Give me a bottle, quick! I'm going to train for another three hours today!"
"Come on, my lady Eris~"
The brown-haired boy lazily swallowed the fruit in his mouth, then slowly stood up and dusted off his backside.
He stretched at length before walking at an unhurried pace toward the center of the training ground.
"It's almost lunchtime. You need to balance work and rest; you can't rush for results. As the saying goes, more haste, less speed..."
He put on a gentle, harmless smile and chivalrously offered his hand, helping the limp Eris to her feet with care.
It had to be said that, after more than half a year of his diligent instruction, with all its pain and pleasure,
Eris had transformed into a genuine intermediate rank magic swordsman.
Of course, Rudeus himself had set the standards for these ranks, though they were perhaps roughly similar to the system commonly used in this world:
- Elementary rank magic swordsman: able to imbue a weapon with magic or use elementary auxiliary magic to enhance one's physical abilities.
- Intermediate rank magic swordsman: able to produce magical sword energy with an elemental attribute from a magic-imbued weapon, or proficiently use intermediate auxiliary magic.
- Advanced rank magic swordsman: able to release and control magical sword energy at will while using advanced auxiliary magic for all-around enhancement.
- Magic sword saint: mastered at least one complete secret art of the Magic Sword Style.
- Magic sword king: mastered two secret arts of the Magic Sword Style.
- Magic sword emperor: mastered three secret arts of the Magic Sword Style.
- Magic sword god: a domain belonging to the gods, of which mortals could not glimpse even the slightest part.
As for the so-called "secret arts of the Magic Sword Style," in the past half year and more, only one had been developed so far, drawing on the grand imagination of a previous life and the magical talent of this one.
That was Blade Storm.
A large-scale AOE killing skill created purely to carpet-bomb an area and look spectacular.
An outsider unaware of the details might scoff:
Why did learning one move make someone a "saint," and learning three make them an "emperor"? A high-ranking mage playing with mud could smash a huge area too.
That was because ordinary people could often see only the cool moment of someone onstage shouting a move's name like a chuunibyou, never imagining the tedium and hardship behind that splendor.
A so-called "secret art" was by no means a fixed move learned by rote.
It was the ultimate proof of a swordsman's transformation at a particular stage, gained after reaching a bottleneck in magic, the body, and the rules.
To learn Blade Storm, one first had to see just how inhuman its prerequisites were.
First, one needed control fine enough to manipulate the violent magic within the body to a hair's breadth. Otherwise, the flying swords would explode into fragments the moment they left one's hands as their magic ran wild.
Second, one needed terrifying mental strength. This directly determined the maximum number of flying swords one could control at once, as well as the precise paths they followed through the air to shred their targets.
Third, one needed magic reserves as vast as the ocean. Otherwise, this energy-hungry war machine would suck its user into a dried corpse in less than three seconds.
Finally... and most cruelly, talent.
Talent determined just how far one could go down this path.
If you raced someone who had been born at the finish line and started running far faster than you,
then even if you bled yourself dry, the result would most likely be you falling to your knees and looking up from below.
Effort could only ever determine a person's lower limit, while talent was the iron rule that truly locked their upper limit in place.
What path will I take in the future?
In this second life, so absurd yet so real, just what kind of life can I live?
Rather than fantasize about a grand future far beyond reach, it was better to make each sweat-soaked day worth remembering.
Thinking too much was only making trouble for oneself. Besides, even if years later he discovered he really had taken the wrong path...
As both a transmigrator and a genius, he had a margin for error that ordinary people could hardly hope to match.