“How about we wrap things up with a sparring match?”

“Eh?” Is Katja serious? Sparring sounds interesting, but I have no doubt I’ll get absolutely crushed. “W- with this sword?” There’s no way she’s crazy enough to spar with real swords. I would just die! She hasn’t given me anything other than this katana, so I’m scared.

“No, obviously not.” Katja gave an exasperated look. “People don’t usually spar with real swords. But I can tell you that with the difference in our skills, it would be safe to spar with real weapons, but that’s not what we’re gonna do. Leave the real sword for solo practice. We’ll use wooden swords.” Katja went back into the storeroom and brought a pair of wooden swords with her.

“R- right… That’s a relief.” Katja took the real katana off my hand and replaced it with the wooden sword. Since she had me start with a real katana, holding this wooden one is a new experience for me. Katja put some distance between the two of us and entered into a stance.

“Alright, Iroha. Come at me whenever you’re ready.” Katja looked straight at me with a smile on her face. She’s making fun of me. Is she bullying me? I’m being bullied by my mentor! Incredible. I haven’t even entered the job market yet! Wait, no. Isn’t what I’m doing at the House a job in its own way?

I put aside my idle thoughts and grabbed onto the sword with both hands while facing Katja. She told me to start, but I have no idea what to do. We haven’t learned that yet. I raised the sword over my head and ran straight at her. As soon as I was within range, I swung my sword down with all my might!

*Clack!* Katja placed her sword sideways in front of her face and easily blocked my attack. The sound of the wood clashing reverberated throughout the dojo. I expected it would go like this, but that doesn’t mean I had any idea what to do afterwards. I pulled my sword back and decided to strike her from the sides where she wasn’t guarding. But Katja quickly moved her sword around and blocked each one of my attempts.

“Ahahaha! You need to do better than that, Iroha!” I knew it, she’s making fun of me. “Did you forget everything you learned today? You got the forms down, but now your movements are sloppy.” Oh! Is that what the problem is? The forms we practiced were so precise that I didn’t even try to use them while moving. I guess that’s the most difficult part about learning how to fight with a sword. There’s a lot to consider during combat.

I recalled how to correctly move my body and focused on getting into the right position, but it didn’t go as planned. “What?” Katja went on the offensive and swung her sword at me. I was able to react just in time to block, but that just ruined my focus and sent me back to square one. I tried focusing several more times, only for Katja to interrupt every single one of my attempts. She’s playing with me! This isn’t a coincidence! She knows what she’s doing!

“The enemy’s not just gonna wait until you’re ready. You need to be quicker.” You want quick? I’ll show you quick. I ran straight at Katja, only to have all my attacks blocked again. Our little back and forth continued, with all my attacks being blocked and me barely being able to defend myself against hers. She was clearly holding back since, even though her attacks got through, I was still able to move after being beaten into the ground.

“That was a good fight, Iroha.” Katja offered me her hand to help me get up.

“Was it?” I don’t buy it. She kicked my butt! It wasn’t even close. “I couldn’t do anything.”

“You did learn something, didn’t you?” Katja gave me a knowing look. I did… I did learn something. I still have a long way to go. But…

“You didn’t need to be so rough with me! That was unfair!” She’s much more experienced than me. She knows what to do at all times and counters anything I do. It’s so frustrating!

“I’ll admit that I wasn’t really holding back other than the amount of strength I used, so I’m sorry.” Katja furrowed her brows apologetically. “But this is an important lesson for you to learn. Unless you’re that much stronger than your opponent, you’re always going to have a very hard time during a real battle.”

“I got that much…” You made sure of that. “But I still don’t know what I was supposed to do. I wasn’t able to focus, so I couldn’t use my full strength. I doubt it would have made a difference, but it would have still been better.”

“Sorry, but I did confuse you on purpose. You started off well by attacking me, but then you got discouraged that you weren’t making any progress and backed out. I told you to think about what you were doing, but that was a trick that just gave me an opening.” And I fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

“That’s mean.” Why did she have to go that far against me? It’s actually making me pout. “What should I have done, then?”

“Generally speaking, I find that it’s better to act on instinct and be on the offensive than to be stuck overthinking on defense. You’re inevitably going to fail if you don’t have a lot of experience, but if you can keep your opponent on defense long enough, eventually an opening will appear. The most important thing and the thing you really want to learn is the ability to persevere until that opening shows itself, and the knowledge to be able to capitalize on it.” Katja took my wooden sword back and tidied up the dojo while explaining. The most important thing is being good at creating and seizing opportunities…

Katja came back from the storeroom and continued. “Thinking is obviously important, but if you find yourself in the middle of a battle with someone stronger than you, it’s already too late to start thinking. Any thinking that needs to happen during battle is part of your skills, and it has to be so fast that it’s closer to instinct than rational thought. That’s why sparring matches are good. It’s the best way to train that part of your brain.”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“I see…” If someone didn’t know any better, they would think we were just playing around with swords, but it turns out this is much more complex than it appears. Sounds kinda like how in fast-paced games, you still need to think, but since you don’t have enough time, the thought processes almost become muscle memory with enough practice.

We were wrapping things up for the day, so I put my katana away in the storeroom together with the wooden swords, like Katja told me, and went home.

Now that Katja started training me for real combat, the next few days involved a lot of training. We spend most of our time with swords, but Katja also mixed things up with more running and some strength training. I thought the running was over… I was still going to school like normal, and getting along with Miyuki, but as soon as school ended, I would come to the House to train with Katja.

The time spent training had increased a lot, but I could feel myself improving, even if I was still severely lacking when compared to Katja, something she made sure I wouldn’t forget. At some point, this routine became fun.

The days continued to go by until one day we got interrupted before we had even grabbed our equipment.

“Hey!” An energetic voice caused me to turn around to see the visitor peeking into the dojo.

“Narumi…” I’ve been spending so much of my time here with Katja that I haven’t gotten to speak with the others that much. Except for Carol, no one here is avoiding me, so we still end up talking. Narumi has always been nice to me, just like Hecate, so I’m kinda happy to see her here. I wonder what brings her here.

“What are you two up to?” Her short orange hair bobbed around as she walked into the dojo. “It’s a bit suspicious that it’s just the two of you out here in such a secluded place. Are you having fun without me? How mean of you!”

“We’re training. You know that very well.” Katja turned towards Narumi with a cautious look, watching as the girl sat down on a bench against a wall. “What about you? Are you here to join us?”

“No way, no way! Ahahahaha! I’m just here to watch.” Narumi dismissed the idea by waving her hand in front of her laughing face.

“And why did you decide to come here? Isn’t there anything better you could be doing?” Katja placed her left hand on her hip.

“I don’t know. I just felt like cheering for Iroha. You know, Katja, I’m fed up with your shit. It’s about time someone taught you a lesson. And I don’t wanna miss that.” Narumi had a ridiculous expression on her face, meant to portray anger, but only led to Katja feeling dumbfounded.

“If you really wanted something like that, all you’d need to do is try a little harder.” Katja moved her free hand to her face. Is a fight between them that close? I didn’t think Narumi had it in her. “Don’t involve Iroha in your imaginary proxy war, you’re gonna confuse her.”

“Don’t feel like it! It’s more fun this way! Go Iroha! Kick her ass!” Narumi raised her fist while rooting for me. I don’t know how to tell you this, but there’s no way in hell I can beat Katja. Don’t get your hopes up.

“So? What’s the actual reason why you’re here?” Katja ignored the ruckus to get to the heart of the matter.

“I’m booooored!” Narumi didn’t even hesitate. “So bored that I could die! Hecate and Carol left since they had work to do, so now there’s no one around!” Work? I’ve come to learn that the girls do more than just fight. They’re probably not out to deal with a monster, but something related to the other world must have come up.

“So that’s how it is… I should have expected that. You can stay and watch, but only if you don’t disturb.” Katja was speaking like a teacher dealing with an unruly brat.

“Okay!” Narumi replied cheerfully and finally quieted down, something that prompted Katja to heave a sigh of relief. Before turning towards me.

“Uhmmm… What are we doing today?” I walked towards the storeroom to grab my katana, but Katja stopped me.

“Wait, we’re not gonna use swords today.” Alright… We’ve been doing other things, so this isn’t really surprising. “We’ve been training enough lately, and I’ll have to meet up with Hecate and Carol later, so we don’t have enough time today.” It seems like she already knew what was going on before Narumi even showed up.

“Okay, what’s the plan then?” I’m a little disappointed to learn that we’re not gonna train today.

“Today, I’m gonna teach you about strategy and how you should act when faced with a monster you don’t recognize. There are three levels of intelligence that I want you to know, since being able to quickly identify what kind of intelligence a monster has will change how you should act.” Katja started her explanation, and it grabbed my attention.

This is the first time Katja has tried to teach any type of theory. I thought there just wasn’t anything of the sort worth learning, and that she would just gloss over it. I’ve heard of a couple theories that try to explain intelligence, I wonder if I’ll recognize anything she says.

“The first type of intelligence you’ll find in monsters is actually having no intelligence at all. Unintelligent monsters have something they want, but they can’t analyze the situation and will do only things they know work, over and over, until they get what they want.” Sounds pretty unintelligent. “What you’ll want to do when faced with these types of monsters is quickly identify their simplistic patterns and find a way to counter them. Once you do that, the monster is completely helpless. For example, remember that beetle monster we ran into? All they ever do is charge straight at you. As long as you’re able to dodge their charge, you’ll be completely safe, and since you know everything they’re gonna do, you can do pretty much whatever you want as long as you continue to dodge.”

Predicting your opponent’s moves is really important. Reminds of how much easier it is to play against bots than other players in games. I’ve always been good at seeing through the smoke and mirrors and being able to read how the AI moves.

“The second type of intelligence is a little better, and it refers to monsters who can adapt. Pretty much every monster will adapt to a certain extent, some more than others. A lot of humans also fall into this category, and this is more due to a lack of experience and preparation than a lack of intelligence. Basically, this type of monster will still do something they know works in order to achieve their goal. The biggest difference is that they’ll change their behaviors when something isn’t working. The important thing for you here is to mix up your own actions a lot so that your opponent can never predict what you’re gonna do next.”

It felt weird to be receiving a lecture out of nowhere, but it was easy enough for me to understand. “We want to keep them guessing, right?” Katja nodded in agreement before finishing her explanation.

“The last type of intelligence is when monsters are perfectly rational and are acting according to a plan. This is the most dangerous type of monster, and if you’re not careful, you’re gonna find yourself on the side that’s guessing and trying to adapt. The best thing you can do against this type of opponent is to use the element of surprise. Since they can form a plan and try to use that plan against you, you want to prevent them from forming the plan in the first place. I’m referring to the momentary plans formed during battle, but this also applies in the long term. If you can defeat your opponent before they decide on what to do, you’re good.”

Surprise and shock the enemy before they have time to think. Isn’t that how special forces usually operate? That’s the impression I got from the games I’ve played. Wait, aren’t we at the House a kind of special force as well? Oh! That’s why she’s teaching me that. It’s all connected! No wonder it sounded familiar.

“I think I get it.” I don’t know if I’ll be able to put the information into practice, but I understood what she said. I’ve only been thinking about the moves I would learn and how to use them, but learning battle strategy is also very important. It’s no wonder Katja’s the one teaching me, she’s really competent. I don’t know if she’s the one who put that together, and the information isn’t really ground-breaking, but she put it in a way that’s easy to understand, and it feels like it would be easier to put into practice than anything I’d come up with.

“Whether it be because of the element of surprise or because you can see through your enemy, having an absolute advantage is the most important thing.” Surprisingly, this piece of advice came not from Katja but from Narumi, who had gotten up and joined us. “If you want to immobilize or capture an enemy, you need to have an overwhelming advantage over them. A lot of goals are much more delicate than a simple victory, so sheer strength is not going to be enough.” Is Narumi getting smarter?

It really wasn’t what I was expecting, but I feel like I learned something valuable today. The reason why Katja is able to beat me so easily every time we spar is that she surprises and prevents me from thinking, and then she sees through my simplistic moves. If I can find a way to surprise her too… I think I’ll be able to land a hit on her… I can’t wait! I can already see it!

We were more or less done. Katja ended up leaving like she said she had to. Narumi and I remained in the dojo. I was ready to go home, but Narumi stopped me.

“You’re going home already, are you? Let’s play some games! I’m going to die of boredom if you don’t! You don’t want me to die, do you?” Games? As in video games? Can’t say I’m not interested, but it wasn’t part of my plans. Unfortunately, she started clinging to me with that big chest of hers. Since when have we been this close? I guess I’m playing some kind of game with Narumi today.