Chapter 209 : Chapter 209
Chapter 209
Something was off about Rozalin.
"Hehe, hehehe, heheh? Hehee."
She roamed the streets laughing like a lunatic.
A slack grin stretched ear to ear, and the sight was nothing short of bizarre.
"What happened to that senior?"
"No idea...... Even when you ask, she just says 'hmm?' and keeps laughing."
"What. Did something happen between her and Teacher Cassian?"
That Rozalin followed Cassian with devout dedication was a fact known to all.
Everyone knew the feelings had crossed the line of an ordinary teacher-student relationship.
They simply chose not to say it aloud first.
"Probably not. Teacher went completely off the grid."
From the moment Rozalin had awakened, Cassian had vanished.
Rumor had it he had abandoned even his classes and shut himself away.
Among some students, the rumor had even spread that Rozalin had jumped him.
"That senior is capable of it."
"A frightening person."
Rozalin ignored every such rumor.
Leave petty gossip alone and it would die within a week.
After all, in one week, the hellish midterms would begin.
While she had been away, the teaching assistants had apparently drilled the students hard.
The students' level, when she saw them after a week, had risen dramatically.
'But I had the most dynamic growth.'
From Sword Expert to Sword Master, no less.
Number one in the special class!
Number one among all students at Akarind Academy!
Number one among Teacher Cassian's disciples (excluding Pan, who was just a leftover from the past life, of course)!
What a resplendent ring.
"Hehehe, hehe."
And Pan, who knew the truth, watched Rozalin with a rare, sulky look.
"Happy?"
"Obviously. How could I not be?"
"Must be nice."
"Hehehe. You would not know this feeling."
He did not.
His past self might have, but his present self did not.
So all he could do was strive to learn.
"Let us spar."
"Oh ho."
"You are a defense one-trick now, right? You gave up offense to be Teacher's shield? Then my Aura should cut right through."
"......What did you just say?"
Pan, who had recently turned sixteen, was growing pricklier by the day.
Being an orphan, he had no father or mother to keep him in check.
Cassian merely called Pan's attitude cute.
"This big sister will have to straighten out your personality."
Historically, the answer to such younger brothers had always been an older sister.
Rozalin erased the smile from her face and drew her sword.
"Sparring match!"
"Rozalin and Pan are fighting!"
"Clear the area! Form a ring!"
"Runners and above, barrier up at the front!"
At Akarind Academy, sparring like this happened naturally all over the campus.
Students flocked as though a rare spectacle had appeared.
Even so, they instinctively gauged the two combatants' Aura range and settled back — a skill not built in a day or two.
The spectators were a diverse bunch.
Very young freshmen through graduating seniors formed the core, joined by auditing guests staying at Akarind.
From bearded elders to stooped scholars.
And a mass of knights and soldiers on top of that.
Three days after the deployment.
In that time, the soldiers and knights had perfectly blended with the students.
Their backgrounds, personalities, and life paths all differed.
'Is Teacher Cassian not absolutely incredible?'
'?!?! So the uncles finally understand Teacher Cassian's greatness!'
'Not "uncle." Call me "bro."'
'Bro!'
Unity achieved through the shared praise of Cassian.
On top of that.
'Rozalin is kind of incredible too, no?'
'?!?!?'
And the person capable of forging a second unity was about to throw hands — no, spar.
How could anyone not be interested?
"Huhuhu."
Rozalin drew her sword.
A sword she had carried her whole life, yet the feel in her hand was utterly new.
Her sword slowly settled into stance.
It was like watching a fortress lock its gates for a siege defense.
Pan's sword, in contrast, was like a battering ram.
He resembled the offensive side of Cassian's swordsmanship.
His teacher could fire attacks from range, transcending the sword's limits.
Then — could that ranged attack not be replicated as swordsmanship?
Using his signature steps, he closed the distance in a single bound.
Then, employing the essence of Vürhelm swordsmanship, he used his whole body like a whip to thrust the blade straight out.
It was less a sword and more a crossbow bolt fired with the full body.
BOOM!
With a sound like a battering ram hitting a castle gate, Pan's sword was deflected.
His brow twitched.
'Deflected?'
In the past, when his sword met Rozalin's in a situation like this, it would not bounce back but be smoothly pressed down.
A swordsmanship with the noble elegance of an aristocrat.
That had been the sword Rozalin pursued.
But this sword's force did not push downward — it pushed straight back.
And that force was no joke.
'My wrist is ringing.'
The recoil was as fierce as blocking Hati's mace with a sword.
His whole wrist ached.
A novel experience.
After Aura awakening, mana had activated his entire body's strength and endurance.
Ordinary sword swings no longer tired him.
His skin had thickened, his bones had hardened.
Yet the impact had left a stinging shock in his muscles and bones, which meant......
'I see. She wrapped Aura not around the sword but around her whole body.'
Pan's sharp mind quickly decoded the situation.
Rozalin's sword had not grown much stronger.
Rather than honing her swordsmanship and expanding her Aura, she had focused on distributing mana evenly across her entire body.
Her overall physical strength had risen dramatically, and she used it to build an ironclad defense.
A perfect fortress that wins by firmly repelling every enemy attack.
That was Rozalin's new Sword Intent.
"Huhuhu. How do you like that?"
"......Tch."
Pan flicked his wrist once and attacked again.
A full-body assault would only produce more recoil.
His attacks became more precise, more persistent, operating in smaller increments.
A one-man war of attrition, chiseling away at a fortress wall.
"Something is weird about Pan's sword."
"Rozalin Senior's sword does not seem that different, though."
"Did something change? If anything, Senior Rozalin's sword seems plainer."
To the onlookers, Rozalin's sword appeared rather ordinary.
She had been grinning all over the place, so they had wondered if she had achieved some enlightenment.
But if this was her sword, it looked like regression, not progress.
And yet Pan could not get through — that was strange.
'......Well, well.'
Sordian let out a dumbfounded laugh.
The Spear God's eyes shimmered with a peculiar longing.
Freizia's face flushed slightly, in awe of the senior she admired.
Bridget and Eleveth debated with their eyes how they might break through, then grew grave.
Duke Crownhardt stroked his chin with a hmm.
Only the Experts — the midterm bosses — could read the meaning in Rozalin's sword.
'So that is what Master means.'
And they understood what the path forward looked like.
Just as Cassian could discharge sword energy through intent alone, without swinging.
Just as Rozalin had given up the sword and spread mana throughout her body.
They themselves had to become a single sword.
A path invisible when only one Master existed now began to emerge, faintly.
They left without watching any more of the spar.
Having found the road, they had to walk it.
They could not afford to lose second place — let alone third.
"I will stop here."
Pan felt the same.
The pain that had begun in his wrist had crept to his shoulder and flank.
Something beyond mere physical force was endlessly infiltrating his body.
That was probably a new form of sword energy.
Unless he prepared a counter, he could not win.
"Ehehehe, hehe. So? What do you think? This big sister's sword is something else now, huh?"
"I am leaving."
"Huh? I said — what do you think?"
Rozalin approached Pan with a playful expression.
When else would she get to tease Pan?
On top of that, during her recent unconsciousness, she had met the old Pan for the first time in a long while.
Muscular, casually rude, ill-mannered — but so good with a sword that she had just had to go along with everything. Humanity's hope.
The chance to tease someone like that did not come twice.
"......You still got rejected by Teacher Cassian, though."
But the timing was bad.
Pan was feeling a touch bitter right now.
"......What?"
"There is a rumor going around that you confessed. That is why you have been grinning. But Teacher Cassian went into hiding. So you got rejected."
"What did you say?"
"Teacher probably hates you and is running away and......"
"You — you?!"
Students who had been watching the commotion all stood at once.
Their faces drained white, as though they had heard something they should not have, and they fled in a hurry.
Sparks seemed to fly from Rozalin's eyes.
Staying here meant getting caught in the crossfire.
"Mister, run — now."
"I told you, call me Uncle."
Students tugged at the clueless soldiers and knights.
Within barely a minute or two, the only ones left were Rozalin and Pan.
"Ah, well, Teacher needs personal time too, and if you keep following him around, h-how annoying must that be."
"You little shit. You want me to show you I can do siege too, not just defense?"
"Aww~ An Expert needs to go train. Teacher would never like a Master who bullies Experts~"
"Get back here! Huh? Just stand still. Two hits. Just let me land two."
Pan fled at a brisk pace, and Rozalin chased after him.
And Cassian, the subject of all this.
"Whew."
Was standing alone, in a quiet training ground some distance from the Academy.
***
His mind was more tangled than ever.
'Because I was wrong.'
The words he had said to Rozalin in her unconscious world circled endlessly.
He had been wrong.
That possibility birthed a flood of new thoughts.
'I had thought I was always right when it came to the sword.'
Perhaps he had been too drunk on the voices around him.
Others' skills really had improved, and he truly had discovered Aura.
So even he himself had been fooled by his own intuition.
But now he knew the truth.
In the end, this was "future sight" — the ability Perdius had awakened in him.
Reading students' potential, then simply telling them the path.
A kind of cheating — looking at the answer key and solving the problem.
So he truly needed to refine his intuition.
'I have to go back and re-examine every swordsmanship I brought from the future.'
Swordsmen who had survived over ten years, accumulating data.
A small handful of them were currently at Akarind Academy.
What battles would their present selves go through to eventually complete those swordsmanships?
What dilemmas had they faced? What enemies had they fought?
He had to find out.
He closed his eyes.
For the first time, nothing was visible — just a vast, fog-like road stretching before him.
A road he had to walk.