Reincarnated as a Sword Vol. 2 Page 6

  They would be sorely disappointed.

  “That’s not going to work.”

  With a short swing of myself, Fran deflected the spearhead. It sent Krad tumbling since he had put the entire weight of his body into his thrust. As he tripped, Fran kicked him right in the ribs.

  “Gah!”

  The kick sent Krad rolling across the ground.

  “Dammit!”

  “Had enough?”

  “Hell no! You got lucky just now, but you’re not going to catch me with the same trick twice!”

  Wow! I didn’t expect to hear something so clichéd today! As much as he annoyed me I had to thank him for that.

  “In that case.”

  “Huh… Gah!”

  Fran jumped to Krad’s side in the blink of an eye and smacked him with the flat of my blade.

  “I’m not done!”

  That blow should’ve been enough to tell him how much stronger Fran was, but Krad got back up. His tenacity was impressive.

  “Hm.”

  “Raaah!”

  Desperate, he unleashed a flurry of thrusts with his spears. However, Fran dodged each and every stab. How long could he keep this up?

  “Why?! How?!”

  “You’re not going to hit me like that.”

  “This is ridiculous!”

  He kept up his flurry of stabs for three minutes before he started gasping for breath. He leaned against his spear for support, shocked that none of his blows connected.

  “Dammit… Dammit!”

  “Time to end this.”

  “Wha-? Argh!”

  She swung me at Krad’s face, knocking him out cold.

  “Boss!”

  His friends surrounded him.

  That should take care of any future disputes.

  “Hm. What a letdown.”

  I know how you feel.

  Fran never had any sparring partners who could go toe-to-toe with her. At least Krad had chutzpah to spare.

  “You’re so strong, Fran!”

  “Hm.”

  Amanda came up and hugged her. My steel body couldn’t feel her soft flesh. Curses.

  There was an odd look about the A-Rank, though. Her lips were curled into a friendly smile, but her eyes weren’t smiling. She looked like a predator who had just spotted its prey.

  “Do you want to spar with me?”

  “Right now?”

  “Of course. I’m a solo A-Rank, remember? I don’t really have any training partners. But you’ll do just fine, Fran!”

  So Amanda was a loner, too. Sparring with an A-Rank would be a great learning experience for Fran, but I couldn’t help worrying…

  Fran—

  I was going to ask but the excited look on Fran’s face told me all I needed to know.

  It’s a perfect chance to try out Blade Mastery.

  …Right.

  There was no stopping Fran once she entered battle mode. Fran gave Amanda a challenging smile which was received with a predatory grin.

  “Heehee.”

  “Hm.”

  There was no need for further words for these battle maniacs. They walked several paces from each other to get into position. The tension in the air was palpable.

  “Ready?”

  Amanda made the first move. She pulled out her whip with her right hand and lashed it at Fran.

  “Mmph.”

  That was close! I had expected Amanda to wait for Fran to make the first move. Instead, she immediately targeted Fran’s eyes with her first strike. Fran barely dodged it.

  “Good reflexes. How about this?”

  The path of a whip was too irregular to parry with a sword. It put Fran on the defensive and she had no choice but to dodge every strike. Amanda’s whip strikes got faster with every successful dodge, however. Seeing Fran keep up with her assault must’ve excited her.

  If Amanda landed a hit it would do heavy damage.

  “Haaa!”

  With a crack of her whip she blew away the ground Fran was just standing on.

  What the hell was that?!

  The impact left a small crater in the earth. It was as if a warhammer had smashed into it. Amanda was likely holding back so she wouldn’t outright kill her but the damage was great enough to send shivers down my spine.

  “Ahahaha! You’re doing great, Fran!”

  Amanda had roped Fran into her pace. Her whip kept Fran at bay with no way of moving in. She would unleash one great blow after another at blinding speeds. As soon as Fran had dodged a strike, Amanda was already letting loose another. This was the power of an A-Rank adventurer. I had to admit I underestimated her at first.

  Who knew a whip could be so dangerous?

  All Amanda had to do was land one blow on Fran and the fight would be over. Worse, there was no way of telling where her attacks would come from. Her methods morphed freely without notice. Sometimes it was a straightforward lash. At other times, the crack of her whip was strong enough to break boulders. She could also lash her whip without a sound.

  The real mystery wasn’t the workings of Amanda’s whips but rather how Fran was still managing to keep up with it. Amanda must’ve been holding back since this was a sparring match. She wanted to see how long Fran could last.

  Are you alright?

  You don’t need to get involved, Teacher.

  I know.

  I’ll definitely get a hit in!

  Good luck.

  As far as goals went, I thought that was impossible. Amanda hadn’t moved from her original position since the start of the match.

  Amanda was a master at the whip despite being a Storm Warrior. She could use a higher form of Wind Magic called Storm Magic, yet she hadn’t felt the need to cast a single spell.

  The Mage skill allowed me to see any enchantments she might have cast on herself before the fight but she came up clean. It underscored how much of a skilled fighter she was if she could control the situation with just Whip Mastery.

  But Fran wasn’t to be scoffed at, either. She was getting used to the whip’s movements and was now closing in on Amanda. Once she was close enough, she swung her sword.

  “Now!”

  “You missed!”

  “Part of the plan.”

  “Hah! Such cheek.”

  Fran came close to landing a blow on her. After several more attempts, she had forced Amanda to start using her feet. She leapt back to draw her whip to her side and evade Fran’s attack.

  “I’m sorry for holding back on you.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Time to get a little serious…!”

  “Oof.”

  “Well, then. It’s been a long time since anyone dodged that on their first try.”

  Amanda’s whip came snaking toward Fran and jumped at her. It looked like it had a mind of its own. The whip had been infused with mana, now. This must be one of Amanda’s Whip Arts. The whip acted on its own without her having to move her wrist.

  The exchange continued. The enchanted whip was so powerful that the wind pressure was enough to cut. Soon Fran’s body was covered in lashes. Blood flowed freely from her wounds.

  Still, I wasn’t too worried. We had asked around what kind of person Amanda was on the day we met her and figured out she was a genuinely good person. She had been managing an orphanage in Alessa for the better part of thirty years. The orphanage was now home to close to five hundred children, and she got a lot of respect for that.

  There used to be a lot of adventurers who would try to run this dungeon twenty years ago. When they died, they left behind orphans who in turn disturbed the public order of Alessa. Amanda started helping those children when she was a measly twenty-year-old D-Rank adventurer.

  She built the orphanage with money out of her own pocket. She started housing kids off the street and cared for and educated them. The orphanage now got a lot of help from the townspeople now but it was tough when it just started. The people we asked had fond smiles as they remembered Amanda and her h
umble beginnings.

  That was how Amanda got her Protector of Children title. Now she had to keep saving and caring for little children if she wanted to keep that title. I had no doubt in my mind that Amanda was a good person and was also a friend to Fran because of this.

  They might rough each other up during this fight but they were both consenting. Besides, there was no ill will behind it.

  “Ha!”

  “Kuh…”

  Although I was beginning to sweat a little bit now that it had gotten more intense.

  Fran had been forced on the defensive and was losing a lot of blood. Even if they could heal her, full recovery was still going to take a couple days.

  I wondered if I should stop Fran, but decided to just keep watch. It looked like Fran had something up her sleeve.

  “Now!”

  Fran made her move. She timed her steps to Amanda’s whip strike and moved in instead of dodging. It looked desperate but it was a calculated trade on Fran’s part.

  “Guh!”

  Amanda hardened her whip until it became spear-like. She stabbed Fran in the side and blood came gushing out. Fran grit her teeth. She had used Wind Magic on herself to push herself forward and she continued her advance.

  “Very smart!”

  “Ha…!”

  Fran put her entire weight on her sword and charged. Amanda didn’t have enough time to draw her whip back to her side. Still, we were up against an A-Rank. She must have something else planned.

  “Wind Shield!”

  With a high-pitched whistle, Amanda summoned a gust of wind which blew Fran away. Fran was getting close to landing a blow if Amanda was using Wind Magic now. Still, close wasn’t good enough for Fran.

  Fran answered the wind spell with a Flare Blast.

  “Flare Blast!”

  She could cast the spell while fighting thanks to Double Mind, and had been waiting for the perfect chance to fire it. Amanda had just cast a defensive spell. No matter how good she was, she couldn’t have cast another spell in such an instant.

  Nice shot!

  The direct hit of the Flare Blast caused a huge explosion. The blast blew up dust and smoke and scorched the earth around it. The flame was even hot enough to melt stone.

  She wasn’t dead, right? She might be an A-Rank but that explosion might have been a bit too much…

  But I had nothing to worry about. Amanda had come out of the explosion unscathed. Which I found preposterous. How did she manage that? I knew she had Magic Resistance but I doubted that was enough to nullify the damage of such a spell.

  “That was close.”

  “Hm… Shame.”

  Fran fell to the ground while looking disappointed. She had lost too much blood and was now at the limits of physical exhaustion.

  Too bad… You did well, though.

  She got so far with such a monster, and I didn’t even help.

  “Fran, I’m so sorry!”

  Amanda rushed to Fran’s aid and began dousing her with a Life Potion. It was the good stuff, too. The hole that was in her side closed in a matter of seconds. No wonder Amanda could go all out.

  “I wanted to let you land a hit on me as a reward, but I can’t help Beloved of the Spirits triggering automatically.”

  So that’s what that was. The skill worked by nullifying the damage of a massively destructive attack. It was a handy skill to have, but it had a 24-hour cooldown. Fran might say it didn’t count, but she managed to trigger Amanda’s safety skill so I’d say that was good enough.

  Get some sleep, Fran. You’ve earned it. As for the night watch… we could find someone else to do it. Probably.

  An hour had gone by since Fran’s match with Amanda.

  Fran awoke to Amanda sitting across from her. She had been very apologetic about going overboard during the spar and asked Fran if there was anything she’d like to know to make it up to her.

  I didn’t think she had anything to be sorry for. Fran learned a lot from the match, and Amanda had taken Fran’s place in guarding camp. She had even spent a powerful Life Potion on Fran to heal her. We’d be owing her instead if she was willing to give us free classes on top of all that.

  “Let’s start Battle Arts.”

  “Please do.”

  We asked her to teach us the mechanics of Skills and Magic. We’d been using them and had been on the receiving end of them, too, but we could learn a lot from an A-Rank.

  “Just to be clear, I’m not good with theory so I can’t teach you everything.”

  “Good enough.”

  We didn’t know how any of this stuff worked, after all.

  “The Mastery skills like Sword Mastery and Whip Mastery increase your proficiency with a given weapon.”

  These skills gave a numerical value to your technical mastery of a weapon. Got it.

  “Battle Arts, like your Sword Arts and my Whip Arts, are skills you need to expend mana to activate.”

  “I know that much.”

  Amanda continued her lecture. First, you needed Sword Mastery to unlock Sword Arts, and Bow Mastery to unlock Bow Arts. A Battle Arts skill level could not exceed the skill level of its corresponding Mastery skill. So if you only had Sword Mastery 5, your Sword Arts would cap at 5, as well.

  “As for how you learn new Battle Arts…”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t know the exact details of it.”

  “What?”

  “I know how to unlock them, but I can’t tell you the underlying logic behind it. There are researchers who might be able to tell you that, however.”

  “I don’t care about theory.”

  “And that’s why you’re an adventurer. Thing is, you can only learn new arts once you have Mana Manipulation or Spirit Manipulation. How you unlock either of those, I have no idea. I’m a Half Elf, remember? I’ve had them both for as long as I can remember. We’ll move on since you don’t seem to have any trouble with them, anyway.”

  “Go for it.”

  Mana Manipulation allowed its user to project magic outside of their body while Spirit Manipulation allowed for the use of mana within a user’s body. You only needed one of them to use Battle Arts since they both technically manipulated mana. You could even use one instead of the other once you were used to it, although it wouldn’t be as potent.

  “You learn a new Battle Art by letting mana flow through your body or weapon. At some point, you’ll get a flash of inspiration for a new Battle Art. When that happens, just let loose. You can call on it again and again once you have it learned. Don’t you remember the first time that happened to you, Fran? You can use Battle Arts, after all.”

  “…?”

  “Well, you probably learned them while you were too little to remember. You’re a genius for being able to use Battle Arts at your age.”

  That was close. It was a good thing Fran was still a child. We now knew where Battle Arts came from. We would be able to add more Sword Arts to our repertoire from now on. We could use Sword Arts but there was a huge difference between using them and being good at them. We were still at the former stage. We would get more Sword Arts as we got better with our Sword Mastery.

  “You increase the level of a Battle Art by using it repeatedly. You’ll learn new Battle Arts as it levels up.”

  The hardest part was getting it up to Level 1.

  “I’ll go into Magic now.”

  “Okay.”

  “There are four elements: Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water. Its advanced forms are: Land, Storm, Flame, and Ocean.”

  We could use the four basic elements, plus the upgraded Fire Magic that was Flame Magic.

  “There are also magicks which are called Compound Elements. There are six of them: Thunder, Frost, Wood, Steel, Sand, and Life.”

  “Compound what?”

  I had never heard of these before.

  “They could be unlocked by leveling up two of the basic elements together. For example, Wood Magic is made up of Water and Earth.”

 
“Could? So it’s not a guarantee?”

  “Let me explain.”

  The traditional way of learning magic was having an old master teach you. Alternatively, you could use various items and tools to unlock it. The non-traditional methods Amanda described were… extreme, to say the least. I couldn’t believe it myself, at first.

  In the case of Water Magic, the prospective would douse himself in water every day, drink water, submerge himself in water, and even imagine himself as water. Once he started dreaming about water, he had a chance of learning Water Magic.

  To learn Wind Magic, you had to bathe yourself in wind and run around during a hurricane while naked. Obtaining Earth Magic involved burying oneself with dirt and chewing on rocks. I guess that was one way of becoming one with the earth. Few mages were determined enough to obtain this second element. However, I caught a faint gleam of nostalgia in Amanda’s eyes. I wondered how she got her Wind Magic…

  Unlike Sword Arts, however, there was no guarantee of acquisition. There was still the arbitrary wall of talent to think about. Everyone could get better at swinging a sword with practice, but you had to have the gift of magic to use spells.

  “Talent?”

  “You could call it aptitude for a certain element. If you didn’t have the talent for Fire Magic, you would never be able to use it no matter how hard you tried.”

  Meaning all that hard work would be for nothing. Without talent, you wouldn’t be able to use Fire Magic if you set yourself on fire. That sounded awful.

  “There is no way of telling whether you’re talented at something. However, everyone has at least one thing they’re naturally talented at. You just have to keep trying until you find the one that works.”

  “Hard work still works.”

  “Exactly. I tried unlocking Fire Magic once but it didn’t seem like I had the talent for it. I do have an inclination for Wind Magic though, so I got that one in a week.”

  “I see.”

  “There are geniuses who come out of the womb ready to shoot fireballs, too. You might be one of them, Fran.”

  “What?”

  “I guess you don’t remember that, either. Anyway, back to our discussion of Compound Elements. There are two problems which lay at the core of unlocking them. Firstly, you need to have aptitude for not just one, but two elements.”