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Oswald charged me and opened up with a flurry of measured strikes, leaving me little room to counterattack, by the 10th strike that I parried, blocked, or dodged, I had to admit, he was better in swordplay than the goons he threw at me, this Berkeley family did a good job grinding the basics into their kids.

Once I opened some space between us with a hop backward, Oswald looked at me with some confusion on his face, “How are you not tired? Are you using some boosting potions?”

I just chuckled at his confusion and replied, “Nope, I was just acting weak to lure your cowardly ass here to face me, I was getting tired of smacking your lackeys around and decided it was your turn.”

Hearing my response, I saw Oswald’s face contort into a few different expressions as he pointed his sword at me and shouted, “You!... You!!... Die!!” and then charged me.

I decided this brat’s bullshit has gone on long enough and it was time to teach Oswald a lesson, traditional Asian style, as the old saying goes, spare the rod and spoil the child.

I charged forward and met Oswald mid-charge, our swords clashed, I angled my blade to let his sword slide off, but in response to that, he also tried to angle his blade to be in an advantageous position for a follow-up strike.

Seeing what he was up to, I used my back leg to kick Oswald’s front leg, sweeping it off the ground, and making him lean forward into our locked blades.

The moment I felt the change of weight on my sword, I stepped aside and let Oswald stumble forward while trying to regain his balance, which I gladly helped him regain.

The moment Oswald passed me, I rotated the grip on my sword 90° and swung my sword toward his butt with all the speed I could manage, but only exerted just enough force that my sword does not fly out of my hand.

When the flat side of my wooden sword made contact with Oswald’s ass, a loud *THWACK!* echoed out across the training ground, followed by a girly scream coming out of Oswald’s mouth as he arched his back and hopped forward while clutching his butt cheeks.

And as Oswald was hopping around, I noticed the surroundings had become rather silent, when I looked around, quite a number of fights had come to a stop to look in my direction, and even the instructor was joining in the staring. That was until one of the students on a nearby stage decided to take advantage of his opponent’s lack of concentration to win his duel, that was when the other stages got their shit together and remembered they were in the middle of a match.

After a few seconds, Oswald finally got himself under control and turned to glare at me with tears in his eyes while clutching his butt with one hand while pointing his sword at me with the other.

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As I saw he was about to spew more rubbish from his mouth, I quickly shut him up by charging and attacking him. This forced him to get a grip and hold his sword with both hands to fend me off.

Deciding that the smack on the ass would be the first of many smacks, I went on the offensive and toyed with him throughout the fight, with every few blows Oswald managed to parry or block, I managed to slip in smacks with the flat of my sword somewhere on his body.

After 3 minutes of smacking Oswald around, both his cheeks were swelling, welts all over his exposed skin, and no doubt there were more under his clothes.

I have to say, I am rather impressed with the perseverance of this brat who came from a noble house, with the tears flowing from his eyes, I expected him to give up and surrender 2 minutes ago. I guess he is from a martial house for a good reason.

But by now, beating him is just sad, so I will give him an out, “Give it up Oswald, there is no honor in me beating you further, nor disgrace in you yielding to a superior opponent. Yield and walk away.”

Hearing this, Oswald started seething, then I saw his eyes look from left to right as if he was looking out for something, and then he smiled.

That was when I felt it, it was faint, but I felt it, Oswald somehow stealthy activated his aura, there were no translucent wafts of aura or anything like that, outwardly it looked like nothing happened, if I had just a few steps back, I would have just mistaken it as a light breeze, and if did not know what the pressure of aura felt like, I would not have connected the dots to recognize it.

It was just a pulse of the aura activating before the feeling blended into the background, but I am pretty sure he still has his aura activated, I guess this must be one of the reasons the Berkeley family has risen so far just by being a martial house, they most likely have their own aura technique.

Before I could form more theories in my head, Oswald bolted toward me at superhuman speed.

Knowing it was a bad idea to meet him head-on, I waited until the last moment and rolled backward as Oswald tried to take my head off, I managed to dodge his blade by mere millimeters as I rolled off my back and pushed myself onto my feet as Oswald zoomed past me.

The moment I got to my feet, I turned around to see Oswald ready to charge again. I was sorely tempted to unleash my own aura, but I knew that if I did so, everyone and their mothers would notice it as plain as day. Maybe I should have experimented on how to safely activate my aura on a low burn, maybe I would have even the odds a little more, Dad did say it was hard to detect even with his mastery of aura, but that is a problem for another day, now I got to find a way to beat up this kid short of killing him, and him using aura is not making it any easier.

Lucky for me, this is hardly the first time I have fought a physically superior opponent, the only difference this time is that the physically superior opponent is around the same height as myself, so I have some getting used to that.

For the next 5 moves, I did nothing but parrying or dodging while throwing in some counters with my own sword before I noticed a pattern. He seems to be aiming for my head while ignoring my counters, letting his aura-empowered body eat the damage of my wooden sword.

I did not want it to come to this, but I had to take his fight seriously now. I changed my grip from the flat side of the blade back to normal and walked toward Oswald, “Grit your teeth, Oswald, you are not going to like what comes next.”