Chapter 257: Accomplishments

“Haa…haa……”

“Are you done?”

“One more!”

The training to parry attacks began the day after the mock battle. What we do is simple: I parry the attacks from the old man’s instantaneous movement for now. In between, he would point out what was wrong with my movement.

There are two major problems with this training: First, I’m attacked unilaterally, which causes me a lot of stress, but I’m told that if I keep putting up with it, it’ll work. This is okay, though, because I just have to keep putting up with it. The hard part is the other problem.

“Now it’s more about relaxing the shoulders, raising the angle of the sword about five degrees, lowering the feet half a step, moving the center of gravity back a bit, and lowering the hips another three centimeters.”

“……”

“Respond!”

“Yes…”

The second problem is that too much is required. The instructions are nice and polite, but at the same time, everything is demanded of me. The fact that there are so many things to be pointed out may be the flip side of what is expected of me, but it’s almost impossible to correct this amount of things all at once. Perhaps this old man has never taught anything to others. The more I think so, the more difficult it seems to implement.

“Haa…… By the way, do you have any criteria for letting me go home?”

I asked the old man during a 10-minute break every three hours. I thought it would be more encouraging if I had some kind of goal.

“The minimum line is until there’s no more sound from the sword when you parry an attack.”

“Eh…”

In other words, what is required is a level of skill to be able to parry a sword with the arm like this old man did. Otherwise, when it is parried, a sound will be heard.

“If you can do it quickly, I’ll teach you how to cut magic at a distance, which I displayed.”

“Seriously!”

The old man is talking about the one that cut all of Sophie’s magic. With that one, I can cut the magic prepared for Sophie’s magic transfer. I might be able to beat Sophie without spiritualization.

“Is your motivation increased?”

“Yes, It is.”

This is quite motivating. I’d rather have something useful now than something I don’t really need right now.

“Let’s get to it.”

“All right!”

And then the 10-minute break was over, and it was time to do the same thing again.

And I trained day after day after day, and it had been a week since I started training.

“You’re getting better, aren’t you?”

“Hmmm…I guess so!”

I could parry one out of 50 attacks without making a sound. And the remaining 49 times, I would only get a faint sound.

“Nii-sama.”

“I know.”

I was given a week of special training. This means that it’s already past the date scheduled to hold the inter school competition, but I haven’t heard from the magic tool. Either it really hasn’t been held yet, or the magic tool is broken and cannot contact me even though it’s being held, or there is something that is stopping us from being contacted by the magic tool…I’m not sure.

If the inter school competition started as scheduled, I should be heading home soon because the main survival battle will start in the next day or so.

“Um….”

“I understand. You want to leave soon, don’t you?”

I was about to tell him that I wanted to leave, but the old man anticipated that.

“I honestly didn’t think you could improve so much in such a short period of time. If you’ve improved so much, I’m sure you’ll master the art of parrying  by yourself.”

“Oh, oh…”

This may have been the first time I received a compliment in the past week. I was so happy I almost cried.

“Bozu, you were able to turn 0 into 1. But it will be even harder to turn 1 into 100. Don’t forget to be diligent.”

“Yes!”

Indeed, it would be quite difficult to make absolutely no sound. But it certainly looks like I could do it from here with my own efforts. I was able to get the hang of how to parry attacks.

“If you get stuck, come back here. There are still many things I want to teach you. Just don’t come too late or I’ll die.”

“Yes!”

“After all, I couldn’t teach you how to cut magic from afar. I want you to come here again when you have a chance.”

“Thank you very much!”

I said and tried to run off with Sophie. We were almost ready to transfer, so, we tried to move a little further away so that no one would know about it. We’re grateful for his help, but we don’t want to show our entire hand to someone we don’t know very well.

“Where are you going? You can make the transfer here.”

“Huh? What do you—?”

“Haa…Nii-sama…”

“Ah…”

“That’s the kind of thing bozu has to grow up in!”

I felt like I was scythed. But if you ask me, I certainly don’t think he would think I’ll be running back to the royal capital from here, even though I’m in a hurry.

Sophie has already given up and started preparing her magic to transition here. I’m really sorry…

“The connection disappears suddenly and without warning. It doesn’t matter how much power you have to prevent it from disappearing. So keep getting stronger.”

“Eh?”

The old man said, stroking his two white swords with a somewhat lonely look.

“What do you mean—?”

“Good luck, Zeros.”

“Transfer!!”

And so we returned to the royal capital.

◇◆◇◆◇◆◇

“…… Was this the right thing to do? Si…you had something to teach him and I think it would have been better if you had taught him directly. You forced me to teach him without talking to me, which made me quite a strange person in their eyes.”

“That’s all right. When you teach him, that’s already the answer. He can’t grow if you tell him the answer directly.”

“You’re an idiot, aren’t you?”

“Leave it alone! Thanks for doing me a favor.”

“No, I enjoyed teaching my skills for the first time.”

“I’m glad to hear that. I was worried that you were going to tell on me at the end.”

“I keep my promises. I’ve never intentionally broken a promise, have I?”

“No, you haven’t.”

“So you can rest assured.”

“I’ll rest easy there. And what was that funny way of talking? I couldn’t stop myself from laughing.”

“Isn’t it nice to have that kind of atmosphere? I’ve been talking like that lately.”

“Huh! It certainly gave off a good vibe!”

“Isn’t it about time?”

“Yeah, well… it would be nice if you could take care of him from time to time.”

“Yes, I understand. Well, goodbye…”

“Oh… good-bye…”

He was alone in the deep forest and gently stroked his white sword before walking away.

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