Ch.17
By the tenth session on the wall, Ais had stopped holding back for my level and started fighting me like I was an adventurer worth hitting.
The shift had happened gradually over the past week. Each morning she'd calibrate a little higher, test a little harder, close the gap between training and real combat by increments she probably thought I didn't notice. By session eight she was moving at speeds she'd use against a Level 3, and by session nine she'd stopped resetting between exchanges to correct my form. She was just fighting me.
And I was keeping up.
This morning she was different again.
She came at me from the first exchange with her full teaching speed and I matched it. Footwork drill, three-step pattern, the same sequence she'd been building for weeks. My feet hit the marks on the packed earth and my body turned where hers turned and the wooden practice sword came up in the correct guard position each time. Clean. The movements had settled into my muscles, past thinking, into reflex.
She increased speed. I matched it.
She increased again. I matched it again.
Her head tilted. That crease between her brows. She reset her stance and came at me with a combination, and I read it off her shoulders and met it with a block-pivot-counter sequence she'd taught me three sessions ago. The counter missed her by an inch.
We sparred.
The practice swords cracked together and the sound echoed off the crenellations and I was inside the rhythm of her fighting in a way I hadn't been before. Her patterns were burned into me from weeks of taking hits, and underneath that, from the anime. I knew where her weight would shift before she shifted it. I knew which recovery stance she'd choose based on how the previous strike landed. She was faster, stronger, five Levels above me. But I knew her.
On the fourteenth exchange, I grazed her forearm.
It was a rising cut that she should have blocked. She was mid-recovery from a horizontal slash and her guard was transitioning and I saw the gap and my sword came up through it and the wooden edge dragged across the outside of her forearm. Barely a touch. It left a red line on her skin that was already fading.
We both stopped.
Ais looked at her forearm. At the fading mark. Then at me.
The crease between her brows was gone. Her gold eyes were wide and her mouth was slightly open and she was standing in the middle of the training ground looking at a Level 1 who had just touched her.
"...You're fast," she said.
My heart was hammering and my grip on the practice sword was tight and I'd just grazed a Level 6. That shouldn't be possible. Not for a Level 1 with any amount of training. Not for most Level 3s. The mark was already fading and I memorized the spot before it disappeared.
She looked at her forearm again. Touched the mark with her other hand. It was almost gone.
Then she reset her stance. And the air changed.
She came at me with everything.
The first strike was faster than anything she'd used in training. Full combat speed, the practice sword cutting the air hard enough that I heard it whistle. I blocked it and my arms shook from the impact and the shock traveled through my wrists into my shoulders. The second came before I'd recovered, a lateral cut that caught the edge of my guard and drove me sideways. The third was a feint-into-thrust that I recognized from the anime and dodged by a margin thin enough that the wood brushed my shirt.
She didn't pause. A descending overhead that I sidestepped. A sweep at my ankles that I jumped. A reverse cut that I caught on my sword edge and it nearly tore the handle from my grip. Every strike flowed from the last, her footwork silent on the packed earth, and the gap between her attacks was getting shorter with each exchange. She was accelerating. Testing how far I could stretch before I snapped.
I lasted longer than I should have. The foreknowledge kept me alive through the first exchanges, reading her body for the patterns I knew and the new combinations she'd built since the last time I'd predicted her. But the new patterns were multiplying and my prediction window was shrinking and raw speed was replacing what knowledge could cover.
She found my limit. A combination I'd never seen, three strikes that came from angles that overlapped each other's recovery arcs. I blocked the first, dodged the second, and the third caught my sword flat and sent it spinning out of my hand.
She pressed. Strike after strike, no resets, no teaching pauses. My arms were numb. My shoulders burned. The packed earth kicked up dust under our feet and the morning sun was hot on my back and I was losing ground with every step.
My back hit the wall.
Stone behind me. Ais in front. Her practice sword pressed against my throat, the wooden edge firm against my pulse. She was breathing hard. I was breathing harder. Her golden hair had come loose from its tie and strands of it were stuck to her neck and her forehead and her gold eyes were close, close enough that the morning light caught the striations in her irises.
Her chest was heaving. The battle cloth had shifted during the sparring and the sheen of sweat sat in the hollow of her throat. The heat of her body was right there, radiating off her skin. Clean sweat and soap from her hair.
I looked at the blade against my throat. Looked up at her eyes.
"Better than yesterday," I said.
Her eyes moved across my face. My jaw. My mouth. Back up to my eyes. The practice sword trembled against my throat. A fine vibration, visible in the wooden edge, coming from a hand that was shaking.
She pulled the sword back. Stepped away. Turned around.
Her hand, the one holding the practice sword, was trembling at her side. She gripped the handle harder and the trembling stopped. She didn't turn back.
"Tomorrow," she said. Her voice was flat. The back of her neck was red.
She walked to the stairs and went down.
I leaned against the wall and caught my breath. My throat had a red line across it from the wooden edge. My arms ached and my back was bruised where I'd hit the stone. The warmth from how close she'd been was still there, lingering on my chest.
A red line on a Level 6's arm. In the entire history of Orario, there was probably no Level 1 who could say that.
Lili was waiting at Babel.
She was in her Pallum form today, no Cinder Ella, her real face and her real body and a fresh set of clothes Hestia had found from the storage chest. The clothes were too big. The shirt sleeves had been rolled twice and the pants were cinched at the waist with a cord. She had the backpack on and she was standing by the entrance with her brown eyes scanning the crowd.
"Bell-sama is late."
"Training ran long."
She looked at my throat. At the red line from the practice sword. At my arms, where fresh bruises were already darkening under the sleeves. Her eyes narrowed.
"Ais-sama?"
"Yeah."
She pressed her lips together. We went into the Dungeon.
Floors 7 through 10 were routine now. We cleared them efficiently, Lili collecting stones while I handled the spawns. Firebolt for the clusters, Knife for the rest. The rhythm was smooth. She knew my patterns, I knew her positions, and we moved through the floors with a coordination that came from running together every day.
Floor 11 was different. The Dungeon widened into open rooms connected by low-ceilinged corridors, and the monsters got bigger. Imps came in packs, fast and clever, throwing chunks of stone from the walls. Hard Armoreds lumbered through the open spaces. Silverbacks appeared from blind corners, big and fast.
I fought through them. Firebolt handled the Imps at range and the Knife handled everything else in close, and the stats I'd been building for weeks made the middle floors manageable in a way they shouldn't have been at Level 1. An Imp pack on Floor 11 tried flanking us through a side tunnel and I put a Firebolt into the tunnel mouth and collapsed the entrance on three of them. The rest scattered and I ran them down individually while Lili collected stones from the cave-in.
She was quiet through all of it. Efficient. Professional. But watching.
On the transition to Floor 12, a pair of Hard Armoreds blocked a narrow corridor. I cracked the first one's shell with two Firebolts and put the Knife through the gap, then used the dissolving body as cover to close on the second one. The Knife went through the soft spot behind its head. Clean.
Lili watched me fight.
She'd always been efficient during combat, tucking into cover and collecting stones during the lulls. But today she was watching differently. Her brown eyes tracked me through the fights, measuring response times, noting techniques. A supporter who'd spent years watching adventurers work and knew what growth was supposed to look like.
On Floor 12, a Silverback charged me from a side passage. I sidestepped it, drove the Knife into its flank, and finished it with a Firebolt to the skull at contact range. The detonation echoed through the chamber. The Silverback dissolved.
Lili was crouched behind a rock outcropping. She was staring at me.
"Bell-sama."
"Yeah?"
"How are you this strong already?"
She said it quietly. Her brown eyes were steady and her mouth was set and she wasn't asking as a compliment. She was asking as someone who'd been a supporter for years and watched dozens of adventurers and knew what growth cost.
"Good training. Good teacher."
"Lili has seen good training and good teachers. They don't do this." She gestured at the dissolving Silverback. "Bell-sama has been adventuring for a month. Lili has seen Level 2 adventurers with a year of experience who couldn't do what Bell-sama just did."
I picked up the magic stone. Pocketed it.
"I'm a fast learner."
"Bell-sama keeps saying that." She adjusted her backpack strap. "Lili doesn't believe it."
Her brown eyes held mine. She wasn't going to push. She wasn't going to demand an answer. But the question was there. She was going to keep watching.
"Come on," I said. "Two more rooms, then we head up."
We cleared the rooms. An Orc and a Silverback in the first, a swarm of Imps in the second. Lili's eyes stayed on me through every fight, tracking with the same focus Eina put into her charts. Measuring the gap between what I should be and what I was.
We exchanged stones at the Guild. The total was higher than any run we'd done before. The clerk counted twice.
Walking home through the evening streets, Lili walked half a step behind me, her backpack heavy, her brown eyes on my back. She'd asked her question and I hadn't answered it and she was patient enough to wait but sharp enough to keep looking. She was going to figure it out eventually. The gap between "fast learner" and the truth was the same gap that Ais was finding in my combat patterns and Eina was finding in her charts.
Too many people were watching me get stronger too fast.
Her eyes were on me the whole way back.