novelraw Chapter 100 : Chapter 100
Chapter 100 : Chapter 100
100
After finishing the morning class, I went back to my office to rest.
Bang, the door flew open.
It was Rozalin.
"Teacher! The time is ripe!"
It was a sudden appearance that I hadn't felt any sign of.
“Wh-what?”
“I think it’s time to go monster hunting!”
Monsters, all of a sudden? What was she talking about?
It wasn't even vacation; it was too sudden.
“Why monsters, out of the blue?”
“Because we have to hunt the Giant-Block!”
“……Me?”
I just blinked, not understanding the reason.
The Giant-Block.
The first demon to appear in the world, and it was said that ranged weapons were completely ineffective against it.
It was an opponent I hadn't been too worried about, as I had heard it could be easily defeated with Aura.
It was also the core of the multi-national rift operation I was currently preparing.
"Weren't you guys supposed to take care of the demon when it appears?"
“Someone will take care of it. As you said, teacher, it’s highly likely that we’ll be the ones to take care of it. But teacher.”
Rozalin looked up at me with serious eyes.
“The demons will continue to appear from now on. Why do you think I was trying to take the students that day? Because it would be practice. Because I had to keep the students alive for as long as possible.”
Avril had said something like that.
“If you don’t die now, you’ll die later. If you work hard enough to die now, you’ll live later.”
“……”
“So you have to prepare too, teacher. Prepare to fight large monsters, demon-class monsters.”
Rozalin said that much and then stared at me.
It seemed she was giving me time to decide.
She wasn't wrong.
'The monsters I've faced are just the Harpy Queen and the Beholder.'
They were powerful monsters that had almost killed me, but in the end, they were just monsters.
If a being called a demon had such abilities beyond common sense, it was natural to prepare.
Moreover, my swordsmanship was not one created to face monsters, but one specialized in facing humans.
I needed to confirm if I could face monsters.
“But can I come and go during class?”
“Fufufufu. Normally, you wouldn’t have been able to prepare for this. But who do we have? We have the teacher’s legal slave, the graduate student!”
“Slave? She’s just a graduate student…”
“In the Empire, those two words are used as synonyms!”
Her words were harsh, but I could tell what she was trying to say.
Ulf was a person who could create her own clone and send it here even while being far away in the Great Forest.
With the power of a 6th-circle mage, she would be able to create something similar to a monster, even if it wasn't a real one, and use it for training.
"Alright, I'll do it."
Rozalin was right about everything.
I couldn't just throw a tantrum and say I wouldn't do anything.
Perhaps Rozalin had implicitly known that my mindset had changed like this and had only now made this suggestion.
The day after I received Rozalin's suggestion, I met with Ulf and conveyed Rozalin's suggestion as it was.
Ulf stroked her chin as if she were interested.
“Oh-ho. Did that child Rozalin make such a suggestion?”
“Is it impossible?”
“No. It’s a training method that’s already widely used in the Great Forest. What I’m interested in is that the target of that training is not the Firestorm mercenaries, but you, teacher.”
Me?
“No matter how great a mage I am, I can’t create multiple illusion magics from this distance. A couple of times a week. And even then, it’s just enough to create an illusion for one person.”
“It’s that difficult.”
“She wouldn’t just be asking me to recreate a normal monster. That child was strict when it came to practice.”
Ulf let out a laugh as if she were recalling an old story.
Come to think of it, she had said that the two of them had a connection in the past.
“She’s a child who knows my abilities precisely. For such a child to make such a request means that she cares for you that much.”
Ulf let out a laugh, huhuhu, with a smile that seemed to say she understood.
“A well-cared-for teacher.”
I turned my gaze away, feeling unnecessarily embarrassed.
I knew that Rozalin liked and followed me, but I became embarrassed every time I was reminded of that fact.
I had never done anything proper for that child.
Suddenly, I recalled the first day Rozalin had returned after regressing.
That was the day Rozalin had said she would drop out of the academy.
‘Why are you always like that, teacher?’
She hadn't understood why I had stepped up to help the villagers.
She said she couldn't stand the recklessness of risking my life when I couldn't even handle a sword properly.
‘You don’t have any skills, yet you’re always nagging the students. Your posture for moving the sword is wrong. You’re using your strength wrong. Your footwork is wrong…’
She had said she found me pathetic for running around, creating a systematic swordsmanship training method instead of the barbaric teaching methods of other sword masters.
I know now.
That all of that was said out of concern for me.
That she had said those things because she didn't want to see me fighting a threat that could kill me.
'No matter how skilled she was with a sword, she was just a 13-year-old child.'
She was at an age where she was going through puberty without even knowing how to express her feelings properly.
“Alright. Since we’re on the topic, let’s have a training session.”
I and Ulf slowly walked towards the training ground.
As soon as we arrived at the training ground, Ulf took out a small pouch from her bosom.
It seemed that even a clone could replicate something like that.
In the pouch, there were powders that seemed to be dried herbs of various kinds.
Ulf gathered the powder and drew a huge circle that surrounded the entire training ground.
Then, with a few waves of her hand, countless powders scattered on the floor and began to form complex characters.
It was an ancient language traditionally passed down in the Great Forest region.
“Done. Prepare your sword and stand in the middle. Then an illusion will appear and threaten you.”
Following Ulf's guidance, I held my sword and stood in the magic circle.
“Even though it’s an illusion, it’s high-level magic. You won’t get injured, but the sense of pain will work properly. You could die if you take a strong attack.”
“……Wouldn’t it be better if you told me that before I stood here?”
“You were going to stand here anyway. What’s the difference between hearing it now and hearing it later?”
I wanted to protest more, but there was no time.
Because the spell circle had been activated.
The circle on the floor glowed purple, and the faint shape of a monster began to appear in the air.
'A gorilla?'
At first glance, it looked to be about 4m in size, and its bulk seemed thicker than three people standing side by side.
Its appearance resembled that of a human, but it had grayish fur all over its body and its back was hunched.
“It’s the King Gorilla, a monster that lives in the Great Forest.”
On both sides of the King Gorilla's mouth, canines more than 60cm long, like an elephant's, rose up, and a sharp aura, as if it could cut with a mere graze, flowed from them.
— Kroooooooooh!
The monster's huge roar shook the surroundings.
Every time it slammed its fist, the size of my upper body, onto the ground, the training ground trembled as if it would shatter at any moment.
So all of this that I'm feeling so clearly is the effect of illusion magic.
Which means, as Ulf said, I would feel enormous pain if I were to be hit by that fist.
But why?
'I don't feel like I'm going to get hit.'
I calmed my breathing and raised my sword.
I organize my basic swordsmanship in my head.
Swordsmanship for facing humans is specialized in aiming for weak points.
The heart, lungs, large intestine, veins, arteries, ankles, and eyes. The brain.
The key is to aim for the places where a person can be instantly neutralized when cut or stabbed, and to advance in a way that cannot be blocked.
'But monsters are different.'
Right now, the only thing I could swing my sword at was one of the giant King Gorilla's legs.
So the way I swing my sword had to be different.
Instead of attacking first, I would receive the opponent's attack and then slowly cut into the places I could cut.
“Go.”
— Kroaaaaaaang!
The gorilla roared and then slightly bent its body and leaped.
With a single jump, the distance between me and it was erased.
It's fist came at me as if it would crush my head at any moment.
'I deflect it.'
I held the sword at an angle and twisted it the moment the attack landed to deflect the opponent's attack.
The sword, which had received a huge impact, shook violently.
Seeing that there wasn't even a scratch on its fist where it had touched the sword, its skin seemed to be very thick.
I let my body be carried by its strength and flew backwards.
My body, which had lifted off the ground, moves away from the gorilla.
Thump!
But the gorilla slammed the ground once and then turned its body and swung its long arm like a whip.
'A familiar trajectory.'
Swinging it with elasticity like a whip was a method that Rozalin often used.
It looked like it was being swung with a random trajectory, but basically, the trajectory was created from a central axis.
When an attack starts from one point and goes to another, as long as I could figure out where it was going, it wasn't difficult to dodge.
The gorilla's attack grazed past the top of my head.
'Now.'
I raised my Aura and cut upwards, grazing the gorilla's arm.
Swish—!
One of the gorilla's arms is cut off and falls to the ground, dangling.
It was a hard skin, but it seemed it couldn't block even the Aura.
— Kraaaaaaah! Krak! Kraaak!
As if it couldn't bear it, it writhed in pain and rolled on the ground.
Its huge body rolled around, bombarding everything in sight, but.
'I see it.'
The trajectories were more visible than I thought.
It was a movement based on instinct, but because of that, there were no unexpected movements.
I walk forward, avoiding the trajectories that move within the range of motion of its shoulders, arms, and wrists.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
Its fists and elbows swung wildly from side to side, but I dodged them all and swung my sword.
With each swing, pieces of flesh fell from its body.
And finally, when I reached its side.
— Kro, ooooh…….
The monster, as if tired from the short time, shoved its mouth at me with a menacing look.
Just before death, it seemed to be trying to crush me with its fangs.
'Let's think of that as a sword.'
I take a step back, out of reach of its body.
I raise my sword from the bottom up and take a stance.
The gorilla then brought its chin and thrust it forward, as if to kill itself.
The third style of Fel's Three Swordsmanships.
“……Hoo.”
I exhale the breath I had been holding.
As fresh air entered my lungs, the pain throughout my body slowly came to my awareness.
There was a humming sensation, as if my whole body, from the palms of my hands to the tips of my toes, was vibrating.
There was a hot sensation where the tattoo Ulf had engraved was.
The pain must have accumulated from swinging the sword so much in such a short time.
Still.
'It was manageable.'
I turned my head and looked at Ulf.
“……Huh?”
Ulf was genuinely surprised, with her eyes wide open.