Carr

“WHAT’S THE MATTER?” The Longswordsman cried out. It felt weird thinking of him as such now that he was holding an épée. “WHAT HAPPENED TO TEACHING ME A LESSON?”

His front foot moved toward me and neared the floor. I expected it to land at any moment and for his advance to stop. But he knew what I knew—faking footwork was no issue for him. When his front foot started to land, he pulled it back up and revealed he could cover more distance with a single step than I had anticipated. His step turned into a lunge and my safe retreat turned into a bloody one; I got a shallow wound to my shoulder.

I expected him to get better with an épée, but this is ridiculous. Do I suck that much with a Longsword? Is that why he was such a joke before?

I took a step back as he chased after me and I used this chance to attack him: regularly, a step back is done by pushing off your front foot to move your back foot backwards, then you bring your front foot backwards after that to keep it in line with the rest of your body. Moving your front foot first is just ineffective if you want to keep your en garde stance—try it out yourself. Feet arranged in L-shape, front foot pointed forward, back foot pointed sideways. Retreating with your front foot first is generally ineffective, save for instances when your front foot is stretched out ahead of your knee and you need to bring it back a little to begin pushing back.

But there’s one bit of trickery here: a move called half-step back. Because your opponent knows that you retreat with your back foot first, you can make them misjudge the distance by not retreating and instead only pulling your front foot back. It’s a simple trick. First you take a regular step back, pushing off your front foot to bring your back foot(and entire body) backwards, then pulling your front foot back to bring it in line with the rest of your body. Then, as they chase after you, instead of taking a step back, you don’t move your back foot at all and pull your front foot back—from your opponent’s perspective, as they are staring at you dead on, it appears as though you are moving backwards though you really aren’t. That’s when you take advantage of their mistake and lunge at them.

The Longswordsman gave chase, but when I faked my distance and lunged at him he was ready: his blade hadn’t come after me, he kept his arm half-extended and ready to parry—or at least beat attack—me. He took advantage of our now short distance to deliver another strike to my arm.

“I told you…” The Longswordsman laughed. “Do you regret letting me grab a different sword now? This is what you get for trying to lecture me during a fight!”

Regrets? I had a few of those.

Always had, always would.

There’s no athlete in this world without regrets.

When I first lost against Johan, back before we even came to this weird sword world, I was actually pretty depressed for a while. I didn’t really shut down or anything like that; I kept living my life like usual. But it was always in the corner of my mind and when I looked myself in the mirror every day I couldn’t help but respect myself a little less than I used to. It wasn’t the first time I lost and it wasn’t gonna be the last. Athletes lose. In a sport like fencing, winning a tournament can be down to luck—the difference between the winner and someone who gets eliminated in the top 8 can sometimes come down to who happens to be feeling at the top of their game that day. But that loss was different. It was the kind of loss where I felt like even if I worked for hundreds of years I would not be able to stand at the same level as him. It made me hate myself for a while.

It went away a little when I defeated Max and Fabrice, who had defeated me multiple times before. When I finally overcame him, it felt like I could look myself in the mirror again and like who I was looking at again, because I had once again proven myself to be above others. That was so fucked up. Why was it that the only thing that dragged me out of my self-loathing was thinking of myself as superior to others?

And why was I doing this again? Wasn’t I taunting this assassin wannabe, letting him become stronger, just because I wanted to heal my injured pride? Was it the same as back then?

Not quite. It was very similar, but not quite the same. Back then I was desperately clinging on to a purpose I had long forgotten. I had already given up on being the strongest, but being good at the sport was the one thing I was proud of. There was no choice but to rise up and try to get back after that point. My fragile pride, the only thing that sustained me…it needed fixing. Even if I didn’t love fencing anymore, my pride needed to be fine for me to move on. Things changed though.

While I spent time with the Bladewolves—god the name still made me cringe—I changed my rituals for a while. After a tough loss, I would come to fencing practice seeking to prove something again, but it wasn’t how tough I was anymore. Sometimes I would fence Johan, sometimes I would fence Jack. It wasn’t to prove to myself that I was still an amazing fencer that was better than everyone else. It wasn’t even to prove that I was still good at the sport.

The Longswordsman lunged at me and I felt the adrenaline surge through when I landed a stop-hit on him. I wanted to prove to myself that I still…

“…Love fencing more than anything else!”

I started to think about how to block attacks that were as good as mine but faster. It was dangerous, it was difficult, it was exhilarating. The Longswordsman’s moves came closer to me every time and merely keeping distance with him was getting tougher and tougher.

I didn’t always have a good time at fencing. Sometimes I hated it and I wanted to quit. Sometimes it just didn’t bring me as much fun as it used to. But when I fenced a tough match against someone, pulled off my mask and let out a scream of triumph, nothing in the world felt better. It wasn’t about winning. It wasn’t about being better than somebody else. No, that wasn’t true. The only person I wanted to be better than every day was myself.

Does that mean that if I beat this guy who copied all my skills…I will be better than myself from yesterday? I wondered.

“What’s the matter, Swordsman of Zero?” He asked. It was difficult to cackle and ask a question at the same time, but darn it if the mad man hadn’t managed. “Weren’t you going to show me the difference between us?”

Since he had picked up the épée, things had become quite tricky. With the amount of knowledge I had about fencing, he had become a deadly opponent, bouncing around the floor and picking me off with weak lunges from a distance. So far he had been sticking with shallow attacks around my arm, but he had been getting progressively deeper with his moves. I had been hit seven times so far and my sword arm was bleeding a decent amount.

“You had a chance with the longsword,” he said. “Your own knowledge was so incomplete you couldn’t even deal with yourself. But with the épée? You can’t defeat yourself there.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? Defeating yourself is what sports are all about!” I roared. “Besides…you don’t know the fifth flaw yet, do you?”

“Stop trying to buy time!”

“As you wish. Let’s finish this in one move,” I said confidently.

The Longswordsman advanced toward me with his blade in absence—he meant to keep his blade out of the way so I couldn’t beat it or parry it. While he would have to point the tip of his épée at me at some point, he was faster than me thanks to his [Sword]. With the overwhelming speed advantage, I couldn’t stop his blade—which only left me with one choice, a stop-hit. If I placed my sword where I thought he would be then I could easily stop him. Even if my sword wasn’t sharp, the right angle would mean his skin would effectively trap the metal button against it and if he kept pushing it then even non-sharp steel would put a hole through him, which even if not lethal would be enough to buy me time to retreat to safety.

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He only has my knowledge of fencing so I know what angles I would approach from. I could do it. But then, if he had my knowledge of it all, he would expect a stop-hit. Meaning he would attack from absence, but then he would try to take my blade…perhaps in sixte.

People don’t really understand this…but at a certain level, fencing is a mind game.

It’s not just about having the best techniques, fitness or muscle memory. Those are the bare minimum to let you stand on these hallowed grounds we call pistes. No, what really determines the winner in a fencing contest are the choices you make. After a certain level we all have the same information about a bout. We know what each other is capable of and we have roughly the same speed. The winner is simply the one who makes the better choices that day. I have beaten people slightly better than me and lost to people slightly worse than me before. This is what fencing is.

The best move I could use at this point was a stop-hit. But we both knew that. If I were to use a stop-hit, he would have to do something about my blade before being able to hit me. We both knew that too. So what were his options? He could try to take my blade—sixte would be the preferred take—or beat it—a beat four would be the best approach. If he took my blade or attempted to beat it, I could use a disengage to avoid the move and then my stop-hit would land before he could do anything. The same counter would work against both of his counters.

However, this wasn’t a guaranteed success. There would be no time to change my move if I committed to a disengage, meaning that if he predicted I would try to disengage off his beats and started the move before he got rid of my blade, he could simply lunge at me directly while my blade was circling around empty air. In other words, this would depend on what predictions we both made. We had the same information available. The same muscle memory. The same techniques.

It all came down to our choices.

LET’S DO THIS!

I held my blade in a stop-hit angle.

If he were to lunge directly and neither of us did anything, my blade would hit where his arm would be as he approached me and he would be stopped. While my blade wasn’t sharp, the pain would still make him take a step back and I could retreat to safety. Maybe. There was still a chance he could power through the metal pole getting stuck on his skin and killed me.

If he were to lunge directly and beat/take my blade, I would be killed in one move.

If he were to attack, try to beat/take my blade and I disengaged, I would be able to stop-hit him before he could land an attack on me.

If he were to lunge directly and I disengaged but he didn’t try to take my blade, my stop-hit defence would disappear meaning he would have a direct access to my heart and be able to kill me in one hit.

TIME TO GUESS, LONGSWORDSMAN! WHICH OPTION AM I GOING TO CHOOSE?

This Longswordsman had access to all my memories. He wasn’t simply reading me, he had a very good reason to suspect his conclusions would be proven correct. But to be honest, even I wasn’t sure what the right option would be. I put myself in his shoes for the moment. If I were the one with the speed advantage and advancing toward a weaker me, what would I expect myself to think? But in truth, there was no need for that.

The fifth and most fatal flaw of his technique was that he didn’t really create an equal opponent. The fact that he was faster and stronger than me made him different. The choices I would take when leading the physical matchup and when losing it are inherently different. And whenever I face off against a stronger opponent, I make decisions I normally wouldn’t. But Mr. Longswordsman, you wouldn’t know that, would you? You have my memories…you have my abilities…but you don’t know how to make the right fucking decision.

His attack reached me and we both made our decisions.

Disengage, I said.

Direct lunge, he replied.

It should have been my loss.

But the course of action I had chosen was one specifically suited for this world, not mine. My ocean of memories was covered with choices I would have made back then, in a world where sword fighting is but a sport. Here however, I had adapted my swordplay slightly. Back then there was no need to aim for the head—the blade bounces off the mask sometimes and you can lose points because of that. Might as well aim for the chest if you’re going that deep, and if not, then you go shallow and hit the arm. But here in a world where someone wanted to kill me and we weren’t fighting for points? Where my sword wasn’t even sharp? Why, there was only one more I could really aim for.

RIGHT FOR THE EYES.

I brought my blade around in a circular motion for the disengage but met only air as he never attempted to dislodge my blade. Just as I had thought. He had been aggressively pushing me around since the match had began. He wanted to finish this as quickly as possible…the vibe he was giving off was a direct lunge vibe. This guy probably didn’t fear a stop-hit from a non-sharp blade, and even if he did he expected his [HP] could tank it.

That’s when I continued the blade rotation. I used the disengage as a wind-up motion to gather power and struck his blade from below, pushing it upwards and to the side. He had much strength behind it, but I had the right angle and leverage to push it to the side. BEAT SIX! With his blade out of the way, I finished the rotation and lunged directly at his eye.

Blood flew in the air and it wasn’t mine. The Longswordsman desperately leaped back to avoid the blade going through his brain, but the blood and gore told me I had successfully blinded him. He continued to leap back until his back was to the hole at the wall he had just created. Then, his shape vaguely silhouetted against the full moon behind him, he opened his mouth and started cursing me before his righteous fury gave in to a manic laughter. “You’re fantastic, Swordsman of Zero. I’m glad to have added your memories to my collection. Lord Johan will be pleased to know I have this…I would gladly give up an eye—no, many eyes!—to have gained what I did today. We’ll meet again, Lord Carr. And when we do, Lord Johan will—“

Isabella cut off his sword arm in a single motion.

I couldn’t tell you when she had approached him; I wasn’t aware of her presence until she sliced off his arm with a single move. The Longswordsman fell into the ocean after the blow, a sharp cry of pain the last thing I heard of him. His arm—still holding on to his épée—rolled slowly down the hall, and Isabella kicked it in my direction. “I’m gonna be honest I’m not really sure what’s going on. I was very drunk and asleep until a few minutes ago. But I heard you wanted his sword and that guy looked like he was about to take off, so…” She shrugged. “Plus this way if he’s not dead, he won’t have his right arm anymore. Not like he can heal it if we still have it and his knowledge of Carr’s fencing is going to be useless if he can’t hold a sword with the right arm.”

Against my better instincts, I tried to look at her stats.

[Isabella the Queen of All Devils]

[Swordsmanship]: 0

[Sword]: 0

Leaving aside her title for now (which was rather difficult to be perfectly honest) when had her stats become zero? And if they were zero, how did she just cut off the man’s arm with an épée? That wasn’t a weapon meant for cutting! What had just happened? Before I could voice those questions, however, my eyes looked down at the arm she had cut off and another question seemed more urgent.

“Guys just to make sure, I wasn’t fighting an old woman, right?” I asked. There was a general murmur of agreement and footsteps indicated that people had started to crowd around me. I still looked at the arm before me in bewilderment. “Okay but that definitely looks like an old woman’s arm right?”

The Longswordsman had looked—and moved—like a young man. Yet this rugged arm appeared to belong to a woman of some sort, though it still clung on to the épée just as the man had been doing not too long ago. What in the world…?

“Lord Roger’s experiments,” a girl said, kneeling down near the arm. “He…I only heard rumours, but I heard he can completely alter someone’s appearance. To the point that he can turn the old into the young, in both form and function. I imagine it stopped working once the arm separated from the body…”

I looked at this woman in surprise. She was wearing a rather beautiful dress that appeared to almost behave like two. Underneath was a simple two-shaded pink dress, with the lighter shade around the edges and the darker pink in the middle. Over it was a second layer that functioned almost like a coat; a delicate looking white embroidered with a golden fabric around the edges. Her skin was without blemishes and her eyes were a bright blue.

“I’m terribly sorry to be rude, but who in the blue hell are you?” I asked. Gilder coughed in the background. “Oh, kidnapped princess, right.”

Her eyes were fixated on me and I was surprised to find a righteous anger there. Surprise, I had expected. Shock at my words, I expected that too. But fury? It seemed as though she had hated me for longer than a few seconds; this was the kind of anger that needed at least a few days to marinate. I turned around to see if her anger was directed at anyone but myself, but it seemed like if she hated anyone I was by far the one she hated the most. “I’m sorry, do I know you?” I asked, hesitantly.

“You—you are the Swordsman of Zero. Lord Johan’s sworn brother.” I twitched at this. The accusation angered me for multiple reasons. “You cleared his name—“ She pointed at Gilder “—and put him on the throne!”

I opened my mouth to defend myself but no words came out. She wasn’t wrong. I had done those things. At the time I was driven by…not wanting to confront what had happened and I was just moving on from one challenge to the next. I accepted defending this clown in a Trial by Combat I knew nothing about and succeeded not only in clearing his name but also putting Johan on the throne. That he wasn’t sitting on the throne yet was almost just a formality…

“Do you know what you did?” She cried out. Her voice wasn’t loud but it was harsh. “Do you what you might have done to the Empire now that Johan might be on the throne? Do you know how many people might die?”

“I—”

“Do you know what happened to my brother after you defeated him?”

It took me a few seconds to understand what she had just said. Until now I had been half diverting my eyes from hers, focusing more on her general appearance than her face proper. When I looked into her eyes I realized who she reminded me of. She…looks like the Executioner, doesn’t she?

Oh fuck.