We moved to the yard at the back of the building where most of my training and sparring with Dad and Seal took place. Fila, Onelri, and most of the adults were all standing close to the back entrance watching in on the yard where Agnes and I stood on the grass with our own practice swords in hand. Seal was there with us standing as our instructor/referee.
As I felt the practice sword’s weight in my hand, the events of last night flashed through my mind. How with two of the bandits’ own weapons, sharp and lethal tools with my mana infused in the blades, I made quick work and killed one of the lackeys and the leader so easily while I was hiding in the darkness, the splatters of their warm blood quickly cooled as they settled and dried on my bare torso. I could still recall in good detail how messy and soaked in blood the blades were at the end of the one-sided slaughter.
One of the few moments I wasn’t keeping my cool that night was when I killed the first two bandits standing guard with one Wind Needle. I was used to seeing blood from all of the animals and monsters I hunted, but I never looked at the corpse of a fellow human being before, let alone two at once. I almost vomited from the grotesque sight at first. Even as I recalled the imagery of last night’s events while I held my practice sword, I gagged a little at the thought.
“Soar? Are you all right?” Seal asked.
“Huh? Oh, yeah, sorry, I got lost in thought. Actually, I’m a little sore from the arm-wrestling matches. Excuse me for a moment.” I channeled my mana into recovery magic, specifically to repair the slight tears in the muscle fibers of my arms, but I took my time with the healing while I tried to calm myself down from the post-traumatic experience with deep breaths.
“Ooh~, recovery magic, huh? Just as Master Galveston said, that boy has talent in the magical arts,” Melissa commented.
“Isn’t he?” Ms. Renne asked while puffing her chest. “I taught him that along with everything I know, and yet he even teaches me things I wasn’t even aware of, such as how concentrating on the finer details of the healing process and the flow of mana channels makes recovery magic more effective.”
“Interesting …”
Recovery magic, by the way, is one of the non-elemental types of magic where one’s success depends on the Magician’s aptitude. It sort of works like a pyramid. Even if you train your mana capacity to large limits or if you fully understand the process and concept of a spell, if you don’t have the aptitude, you can’t cast it. Non-elemental spells work in that the higher your aptitude is, the more you could accomplish, including everything that’s below your rated rank.
When I finished recovering my soreness and collecting myself, Seal started us off with warm-ups as we both had in every one of his training sessions. I could tell Agnes was judging me in every fiber of my being but I just focused on my form and control like normal.
“All right, it looks like you two are plenty warmed up. Shall we start in our match?” Seal asked.
“Let’s get this over with. The sooner I am finished with this, the sooner I can take Mr. Galveston back to the kingdom.”
“… Right. I’m ready to go.”
<“Good luck, Soar!”> <“Do your best!”>
As we got to our positions, the cheers of my Companions hiding off to the side with hide-detection magic filled my mind with telepathy while I was thinking of the unique circumstances in that situation. I was keeping in mind how much I controlled my power output so I wouldn’t get the wrong attention, especially in front of the adults. And yet, there Agnes was, a boyish-looking girl around my age, who came all that way after hearing about my talents from the instructor we both shared, just to diss me and take advantage of her social status to try and ‘claim ownership.’
I remembered then that her dad was the freaking knight general of the Reskondant Kingdom’s Guard. Agnes’ maid, Melissa, may have been escorting her out of safety, but what if she reported what she saw from me that day to her father, the man of the house? She was certainly interested in my magical prowess from how I overheard her and Ms. Renne talking, what if she saved my name for the knight general, Tristen, to draft me later when I got old enough? What if I got targeted for defaming a noble? I wanted to avoid either of those cases at all costs.
Even so, despite my concerns for the future, the only thing I had in my mind was how much I want to make that brat cry for being so rude, especially to someone on their birthday of all things. If I was going to become an enemy of a kingdom just for knocking down the general’s daughter a peg, then that speaks for itself how petty their guard really is and how much I wanted to deal with them, let alone join their ranks.
By that point, I might as well have secluded myself and trained my magic enough to try and take over the world just to set those people straight, but I had neither the ambition for such a cause, nor the intelligence, patience, skills of leadership, and ‘compassion’ for others’ well-being to even pull it off. If anything, I’d rather knock those egocentric people out of their high horse and scare them shitless by my powers if our lives weren’t on the line.
And so, I decided to give that match with everything I had. I didn’t take her gender into account because since everyone in Manara is capable of casting magic, including strength enhancement, the girls can be just as strong as guys under any circumstances. Mom and Dad were the perfect examples of this. No matter how experienced Dad was in life-threatening situations, when it came to Mom … he knew what lines shouldn’t be crossed with her if he didn’t want to experience whatever hell she would bring from getting ticked off. It spoke levels of her experience in handling aggressive hunters in her previous work as a guild receptionist before settling down as a housewife with Dad.
Anyway, since we were having a proper match and were experienced with enhancing our strength by magic, we were both allowed to use it at a certain extent to even the odds and neither of us would be at a disadvantage by the limits of our physical compositions. But once again, I had yet to realize the significance of my C+ ranked strength, as well as the average after putting my stats together, not counting my EX ranked intelligence and magic, of course, the highest rating above ‘S’ that even left my Companions stumped when they first saw it. There was also how my experience with the bandits last night affected my senses, too.
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Our audience watched us with mixed expressions as Agnes and I took our fighting stances across from each other. Condescendence and superiority were blazing in her scarlet eyes.
“Ready … begin!” Seal called out.
Everything seemed to slow down around me as I immediately enhanced my legs and burst my way in with C ranked agility and I winded up for an enhanced two-handed backhand swing with C+ ranked strength. My eyes were directly on Agnes’. There was a delay in her reaction before she widened her eyes, realizing how quickly I was closing in. She instinctively moved back half a step while prepping her sword to parry my initiative attack.
I initiated my backswing from low to high, a form I practiced a hundred times every other day as I did with the other sword motions and steps. She quickly adjusted herself from parrying to guarding position, the last-minute change was her downfall.
Blades clashed, a loud ‘clang’ ran in the air along with a practice sword out of one’s grip. The mobile weapon fell and, despite its dullness, pierced the tip into the ground upright. Some distance away, an unarmed and surprised Agnes was caught off-balance, frozen in place. The tip of a dulled sword pointed to her chest, one thrust to pierce the heart, and that would be the end for her if the blade was sharpened. The holder of that blade aiming at the chest was me, standing close to her as I was still locked into her eyes since the beginning of the match.
““…””
The audience and the referee played by Seal were struck silent. Even my opponent, Agnes, was also at a loss for words right up to when she fell on her butt from loss of balance. I felt like I was in that fight with the bandits from last night again, but I was facing the leader head-on in broad daylight, and I aimed to kill him quickly with everything I had before he had a chance to collect what had just happened. My initial rage in that duel added fuel to the fire.
I still remembered who I was dealing with, though: a precocious upper-class brat with no experience of the world outside of her luxurious home if her getting lost in a town like Lunargrove was anything to go by. I came at her with intent to kill, only to stop at myself short to show her just how hopeless it would be to go against me in a real fight, a true battle to the death, and how merciless I was when it came to opposing those who’d look down on me.
“… The first round goes to Soar!” Seal announced after a slight delay.
While Agnes was still sitting on the ground, I pointed the tip of my dull blade right between her brows. My glare at her eyes was still as smoldering as it was from the beginning. The formalities I displayed at the start were no longer present.
“Pick it up,” I said, wanting to finish this duel with little time wasted.
The only responses I got from Agnes, however, were the growing dark stain between the legs of her trousers and watering eyes.
“DAAAAADDYYYYYYYYYYY!” she bawled as the waterworks broke loose while the stain between her pants grew ever bigger and even leaking a little.
Melissa rushed in and picked her up from the grass princess-style. “E-Excuse me, where are your facilities?” she asked in Mom and Dad’s direction.
“… The door to your right as you go into the kitchen,” Mom answered calmly.
After receiving that answer, Melissa rushed back inside with a crying Agnes in her arms. Their own fairies also followed behind them. The scene wasn’t any different than an embarrassed parent taking their crying child out of the movie theater in the middle of a horror film, surely annoying everyone in it with thoughts like ‘why the hell would you even bring a kid to this?’ like it did for us in that backyard, some of which probably had thoughts of ‘what’s the point of picking a fight if you’re gonna cry about it?’
The backyard fell immediately into silence as we all watched the door where Melissa and Agnes ran into. Well, silent to the majority of people, however, but I—and likely Onelri from the way she was shifting her gaze around—heard all of the fairies in the area laughing their heads off. My fairies in particular, who were hiding out of Onelri’s sight, were especially loud.
<“W-Well … that could’ve gone better for her,”> Breezy commented while failing to stifle her giggles.
<“Ha! Serves her right for talking down on my Soar!”> [Shadina]
<“I’m glad I didn’t have to be that girl’s Fire Fairy to put up with that humiliation.”> [Cinder]
<“So wet … yes~, such wet mess. Tears from above and below from fright. Mist is pleased.”> [Mist]
It seemed my Companions had similar thoughts to what I had at that moment as I lowered my sword.
Pathetic, just like a spoiled brat.
A few claps broke silence between all of us. “All right, all right, let’s get back into business here,” Lilia said as she approached Seal and I. “From this, I think we can assume Soar’s the winner. Unless Seal wants to have a go at him next, I’d like us to move onto my tests for the young man.”
“… No, I think I’ve seen what I wanted to see as well,” Seal said, his eyes locked in my direction with a serious undertone. Nobody else in the field opposed her suggestion, either.
I don’t even care what everyone thinks of me at this point. I’m satisfied with what I accomplished, I thought.
“Um!” Onelri then cut into the talk as she ran to us. “You will be testing Soar in his magic, yes?! If it is ok, I would like to showcase my capabilities as well!”
“Ooh~, eager, are we? What about you, Fila? Would you like to try as well?” Lilia asked.
“I’ve … never practiced magic before. I don’t know what my affinity is. I don’t think I have what it takes.” Fila’s ears deflated in accordance with her mood.
“… You have what it takes.”
“Huh?” Fila, as well as the others, looked to me after I said that.
“It’s just a feeling I have, but I’m confident you have some talent that has yet to be touched. If you weren’t properly taught the basics yet, I can teach you while we learn what your affinity is.”
“R-Really?”
“He’s not lying. I can see it as well,” Onelri then said. “Honestly, I am amazed you have yet to touch magic yet. Your aptitude is on the same level as Mr. Osmis and my mother as C, and I am an A.”
The others had jolted toward Onelri with widened eyes at the sudden revelation of their aptitudes, and she wasn’t wrong. Like her, I saw it from them thanks to my gift and experience in seeing the aura of mana. Honestly, it was a bigger shock that so many people with such high aptitudes were gathered around in the same area.
Just to note, how a person’s magic aptitude is rated is similar to what’s shown on the status cards they would receive after making a contract with a Companion, going from H to A before S followed after that at its highest, but without any (+)’s and (-)’s added into them for simplicity. Having Fila’s, Dad’s, and Onelri’s mother’s aptitudes being ranked as C meant they’re just above average compared to most.
“If … If what Soar and Onelri said was true, then I want to try! I want to cast magic like the two of them!” Fila exclaimed, looking pumped then compared to a few moments ago.
“Well, you are at that age, so this should be a perfect opportunity,” Lilia said before raising her Magician’s Staff. “That said, let’s set up our dummies!”
Nobody even questioned what became of the crying spoiled brat until we found out later, much to our dismay.