## Chapter 75 – The Teaching Assistant Is Disappointed in You
Lucia di Borgia.
A top-tier talent from Saint Plancina Academy, about to graduate after completing her fourth year.
Challenging her meant two things:
Challenging her status as the daughter of the Borgia ducal family.
And challenging her skills, which placed her firmly among the strong.
“Good.”
Even after seeing the look in Anne’s eyes, which suggested that this wasn’t just about ‘sparring,’ Lucia simply smiled and nodded.
Her junior, still in the stage of rushing forward without a clear conclusion, was so openly throwing her heart at her.
How could someone who was only 2% short of perfect maturity dislike that?
“It’s what I wanted too.”
And because she, too, was hoping to find some answers in Anne, Lucia once again pulled out her rod and unfolded it into a longsword.
As the two women stood up from the bench and moved more than a certain distance apart, the flower bed, which had been buzzing with insects, fell silent.
“I’ll… go first!!”
With Lucia’s murmur, Anne’s surprise attack began, sprinting towards her before she could even draw her sword.
A surprise attack using the advantage of the mechanical longsword, which, as just a short rod before deployment, allowed for easy stance changes.
Anne had never used it in actual combat, but she was confident in her movements, believing it was possible.
“Haaap!!”
Even as she sprinted forward, closing the distance at a terrifying speed, Anne didn’t miss a single movement of Lucia, who was slowly raising her sword and assuming her stance. Anne’s own stance changed several times as well.
Sword fighting was literally a battle of moves, like chess.
To defend against the opponent’s attack, to land a counter.
A swordsman had to calculate countless moves, apply their skills, and even anticipate the opponent’s skills.
As if to show that the opponent was doing the same, Lucia’s posture changed slightly as she stared at Anne with wide eyes as she ran.
Using that as a reference, Anne changed her sword path, and as she assumed what she thought was the most ideal attack posture, she exploded the power in her thighs and calves, lowering her stance.
“A low stance. Stable.”
And at that very moment, sharp blades emerged from the rod that Anne was holding with both hands.
“Haat!!”
“A surprise attack using the characteristics of a mechanical longsword.
It would have been nice if the curriculum included something like this.”
For Anne, this sword wasn’t hers.
So, in a sense, it was like wielding a weapon that wasn’t familiar to her, but that didn’t matter.
She would simply use everything she could, every open possibility, to defeat the woman in front of her.
In conclusion, she could gain an advantage in the mental battle.
Since Anne, who belatedly drew her blade, could correct her stance faster than Lucia, who had been holding her sword from the start.
– Kaggeugeuk
Sparks flew as Anne’s perfectly stable sword clashed with Lucia’s, who managed to block it in a relatively unstable stance.
This was an experience that could never be had with other ordinary students and ordinary weapons.
Even in that moment, as sparks flew like a fountain from the crossed swords, as if steel were grinding against steel, the two women glared at each other as if they would devour each other.
“What are you doing without thinking about the next move?”
But as the clash of swords turned into a mere test of strength without the next move, Lucia’s eyes narrowed slightly.
Above all, she was a true talent.
She was a human who had already surpassed the significance of graduating at the top of the Academy’s swordsmanship department.
As Lucia’s hands gripping the longsword’s hilt tightened, Anne felt a heavy energy pressing down on her in an instant.
“If you’re thinking of forcing your way through, it won’t work!!”
“A low stance is stable, but it has its limits.
If the opponent’s strength is greater than yours, it means nothing.”
Feeling the point where the two swords crossed gradually approaching her, Anne quickly pushed the sword aside as if letting the force flow away.
And as Lucia felt her sword being deflected, Anne lunged forward, extending her sword to the side.
There should have been someone to be cut by the extended blade, but Anne realized that the sensation was not of flesh, but of the sword that had already been retracted.
Anne felt an intense impact on her abdomen and bit her lip to suppress a scream.
Anne’s knees didn’t buckle, but as she hunched over in an awkward posture, enduring the pain, she heard Lucia’s stern voice again from behind.
“A surprise attack only works once.
By showing it in the first move, I can anticipate that the next move will also be a surprise attack, so you get countered like that.
If you’re thinking of bringing more surprise attacks, bring something no one can predict.”
Lucia’s sword was literally a textbook swordsmanship that faithfully followed the basics.
One might even expect her to be caught off guard by unconventional swordsmanship, but Lucia thoroughly countered the surprise attack, making up for the disadvantage with her individual skill.
“If you’re going to make a surprise attack, don’t stop.
Because if you disrupt your breathing and give them time to recover, it won’t work.”
The biggest factor was that she had unnecessarily engaged in a power struggle where she tried to push through with force.
Realizing that a sloppy attack would never work to break through Lucia, Anne straightened her back and adjusted her stance again.
“I’ll… go… again……”
“Come.”
This time, Anne adopted a textbook stance, just like she had learned in class.
An accurate stance born from desperate practice.
Even Lucia mirrored her stance, adopting the same posture.
Anne, glaring at her, charged forward and began to exchange textbook sword strikes in a proper stance.
“Hmm……”
In this kind of ordinary frontal battle, the situation was bound to be more advantageous for her, who had far superior skills in the basics.
Lucia, humming to herself for a moment, narrowed her eyes as she watched Anne’s ordinary attacks, which defended against her sword and occasionally launched attacks.
“The difference in skill between you and me is too great to engage in textbook attacks, isn’t it?”
Lucia’s question was directed at Anne, who was deflecting her horizontal slash with the side of her sword and letting the weight flow away with a step, but Anne silently continued her original style of attack.
Thinking that she would be disappointed for the second time, Lucia began to launch a strong counterattack against Anne’s attacks.
“Ugh…”
Anne’s face contorted as she struggled to block Lucia’s sword, which was overpowering her with overwhelming force.
It was literally overwhelming power.
One couldn’t help but doubt whether they were the same woman, or whether the age difference of three or four years was correct, with the different levels of strength and precise control of the sword.
“Kuh-heuk……”
The point where the two swords crossed was getting so close that it felt like her face would be cut at any moment if more force was applied.
But Anne, who instinctively knew that Lucia was deliberately holding back and going easy on her by adjusting her strength so that she could barely block, began to distort her face as she screamed.
“My advice was meaningless, I see.
I couldn’t be more disappointed.”
As Lucia launched her attack, forcefully lowering her sword as if pressing down with her weight, it seemed that the duel was about to come to an end.
Except for the fact that Anne widened her eyes at the final moment.
“Eek…!!”
“……!!”
At the very moment when the force was applied downwards.
Lucia’s eyes widened at Anne’s action of completely deflecting Lucia’s sword path downwards and shifting her center of gravity.
Of course, Lucia also seemed to be trying to thoroughly regain her balance in that situation through superhuman movements and balancing, to the point where the name of talent would not ring hollow.
But it seemed that even she couldn’t easily recover from the broken balance of that moment.
That was because Anne’s eyes, which had been glaring at Lucia with a burning gaze, were moving incessantly, clearly confirming her ‘next’ move.
“Hoo… Hoo…”
Before Lucia, who was trying to regain her posture by catching her breath and recovering her stance, could regain her balance, Anne’s continuous attacks began to surge towards her.
Taking advantage of the gap in her posture, Anne slipped her foot between Lucia’s legs to trip her, and a shout burst from Anne’s mouth as she crossed swords with Lucia, who had frozen in an awkward posture, and pushed her away with her weight.
“Haaaap!!”
“Hmph…”
And before Lucia, who had been pushed away, could regain her balance by doing a backward roll, Anne attacked her as if she were hacking her to pieces, forcing her to focus all her strength on defense.
In some ways, it was a despicable sight, only targeting the opponent’s weaknesses and not giving them any room to breathe.
But on Lucia’s face, along with a dizzying numbness that seemed to drain her soul, there was a faint smile.
An attack that thoroughly exploited her carelessness and used every possible method to disrupt her posture and balance in order to not let go of the advantage she had once seized.
Looking at Anne’s reddened face, it was clear that she, too, was pushing Lucia without even taking a breath, cutting down her own breath.
‘This is it… Yes… This is it……’
The sword paths of each other become increasingly chaotic, and everything they had learned and internalized disappears beyond their minds.
Only the senses they possess as living beings and the instinctive intuition to sense danger remain, and the two women begin to engage in a bloody battle that is not suitable for the peaceful Academy.
‘More… Refine it more……’
One is pushing to knock down, and the other is struggling to not fall.
If someone had seen that chaotic exchange of sword strikes, they might have exclaimed in admiration without realizing it.
‘Until it becomes your sharpest and most deadly weapon……’
In every moment, as they instinctively exchange blows, their arms and legs, faces and bodies are scarred, and even the saliva in their mouths dries up due to tension and concentration.
Unlike before, Anne’s appearance, now overwhelmingly pushing Lucia, was so overheated that it was fair to think that she had the goal of killing her opponent.
‘I misjudged her……’
.
.
.
.
.
.
What on earth was I doing?
I can’t remember at all.
If I remember anything, it’s definitely the sound of hard steel clashing against each other.
Following that sound, which sometimes sounded like the hammering of something being forged.
The moment she roused her heavy body and dizzy mind, she felt her whole body screaming, and she inadvertently let out a gasp.
“Ah… Heu-heut……”
“Don’t get up. You’ll have severe muscle pain.”
“Senior… Nim… Eu-geugeuk…!!”
When she opened her eyes, she found herself lying on the bench with her head on Lucia’s lap. Anne desperately tried to get up, but she slumped down with a groan.
“Even if you want to win, you have to fight while breathing.
You went over the edge at some point. Just lie down for now.”
“Ah… Eu-eu……”
Anne’s face turned pale when Lucia told her that she had been so busy exchanging sword strikes that she had suffocated herself and collapsed.
She had suffered an unsightly defeat, and the reason was that she had held her breath and fainted.
Judging from the fact that her body felt heavier and she couldn’t muster any strength compared to usual, it seemed that she had definitely collapsed from exhaustion.
This time, she felt a particularly severe pain all over her body, but more important than that, the shame that kept stabbing at one corner of her heart was overwhelming her.
“Euaeu……”
“Goodness… I told you not to get up.”
“I… I’ll get up…!! Let me go…!!”
“If you insist.”
Eventually, Anne rolled off the bench and barely managed to stand up, staggering. Lucia, who was still sitting on the bench, chuckling to herself, slowly began to open her mouth.
“A swordsman’s most important asset is their body.
Always cherish your body.”
“Ye- Yes……!!”
“And…… No.
You’ll be at practice tomorrow, right?
Let’s have a full-fledged sparring session again from tomorrow.
Make sure you take care of your body and come.
Here, take your sword.
Go on.”
“Ah, thank you…!!
I’ll see you tomorrow…… Senior-nim…!!”
Anne left with a greeting, hurrying away, or rather, hobbling away with a bent back, clutching her waist.
Lucia, who was still sitting on the bench, simply turned her head and watched Anne’s retreating figure, a small smile on her lips.
To think that there was such a passionate junior among the freshmen.
Compared to her fellow fourth-year students, she was still weak, but she was definitely a talent who could give her, who was now staying on as a teaching assistant, new enjoyment for the time being.
And especially, the form of that beautiful energy, faint but tinged with purple, that she had unconsciously manifested.
‘I’ve discovered a promising prospect.’
Since the time to manifest it is from the second year, when they learn about it directly, the fact that she was the first to discover the freshman girl manifesting something that no one had ever taught her was nothing short of hitting the jackpot.
That is, it was the same as saying that she was the first to discover her junior’s potential.
But she couldn’t just be happy.
‘But…… What on earth was that……’
The sight she had seen when she had taken the sword from Anne’s hand for a moment to fold the mechanical longsword, which she had been clutching tightly even while unconscious, in order to take care of the fallen Anne.
Basically, the vast majority of mechanical longswords coming from Barenhausen to the Groden Kingdom were custom-made.
Especially that sword, which was of such good quality that it was second to none.
The biggest advantage of custom-made swords was that you could use a sword that was customized to your desired settings, as well as the basic quality.
In her case, it was the flamboyant engravings that symbolized her family, and the composition that allowed for heavy attacks due to the slightly unbalanced balance.
In that sense, the fleeting moment when she discovered the engraving on the inside of the cover, which was usually impossible to find, inside the mechanical device that was turning with a rattling sound inside Anne’s longsword.
Lucia’s face was filled with an unknown question as she tried to recall it again.
『Vivian de Grenot』
