Chapter 6: Right on Track
Armored Dragon Calendar Year 413 – Claude, Age 8
[Claude POV]
The beastwoman arrived at the village on a morning that smelled of autumn.
I was practicing forms in the field, behind Paul's house, when I first saw her. She moved with the predatory grace of a born fighter, her tanned skin and beast ears marking her as something far more dangerous than the ordinary travelers who passed through Buena.
Everything about her spoke of violence honed to perfection. The way she walked, each step economical and purposeful.
The way her eyes moved, scanning constantly for threats even in this peaceful village. The muscles visible beneath her sparse clothing were corded and powerful, built through years of combat rather than simple labor.
Ghislaine Dedoldia. The name surfaced before I could stop it.
Sword King rank. Former adventurer.
Hired to protect Eris Boreas Greyrat.
Which meant she was here for Rudeus.
The knowledge came with fragments I couldn't quite piece together. Rudeus, hired as a tutor for the Boreas family's wild daughter.
Him leaving the village. A redheaded girl with a temper like a wildfire.
I pushed the fragments aside. They didn't matter right now.
What mattered was the warrior standing before me.
Paul's expression when he saw her was complicated. Old guilt, maybe?
The history between them was written in the tension of his shoulders. It was written in the careful neutrality of his voice.
"Ghislaine," he said, his voice carefully neutral.
"Paul." She nodded once, her eyes already scanning the surroundings with a warrior's instinct.
"The boy?"
"Inside, learning magic."
Their conversation continued, but I had stopped listening. My attention was fixed on Ghislaine's movements, the way she held her body, the subtle readiness in every muscle.
My mind was cataloguing details without conscious direction, analyzing her stance and finding... recognition.
The Sword God style.
This was the style as it was meant to be practiced. Every movement stripped of excess, reduced to pure efficiency.
There was no wasted energy in the way Ghislaine held herself, no unnecessary tension.
She was relaxed and ready simultaneously. She could explode into violence at a moment's notice.
A pressure built behind my eyes. Not quite a voice, not yet.
More like an instinct straining to break through. Whatever it was, it recognized Ghislaine's stance.
It resonated with knowledge I possessed but couldn't consciously reach.
I felt my stance shift without deciding to change it.
I felt my weight redistribute into a position that matched Ghislaine's. It was closer than anything Paul had taught me.
My grip on the practice sword adjusted, my feet repositioned, my center of gravity lowered almost imperceptibly.
Then the sensation faded, leaving me slightly dizzy.
My body had moved without my permission again. The instinct had retreated.
I had assumed a stance I didn't know how to maintain.
"You." Ghislaine's voice cut through my disorientation.
She was looking at me now, her beast eyes sharp with interest.
Those golden irises missed nothing. I knew with sudden certainty that she had seen my stance shift.
Seen the moment when something else had moved through my body.
"What's your name?" she asked.
"Claude." I forced my voice to stay steady.
"Just Claude."
"You train with Paul?"
"Yes."
She studied me for a long moment, her expression unreadable. I felt exposed beneath that gaze, as though she could see past my skin to the strange presences that lived inside my mind.
Then she nodded. Approval, maybe.
Hard to tell with beastfolk.
"Your stance is wrong," she said. "But the instincts behind it are sound."
Before I could respond, she had turned away, following Paul toward the house where Rudeus was studying. I watched her go, my heart pounding for reasons I couldn't explain.
She had seen something. Recognized something in the way I moved.
And whatever she had seen had interested her enough to comment.
Before returning to my training, I found myself drawn to the Greyrat household.
Zenith had given birth a year ago, and Lilia had followed shortly after. The house was different now, louder, messier, somehow more alive.
Two baby girls had transformed the home into constant motion and noise.
"Heya, Norn. Heya, Aisha."
I scooped them up one at a time, cradling them against my chest. "Big brother Claude is here."
"Put them down," Rudeus complained, appearing at my elbow with a scowl. "They're my sisters, not your toys."
"Someone's jealous." I planted an exaggerated kiss on Aisha's forehead, making her giggle.
"Don't worry, princesses. Your actual brother is just grumpy because he can't beat me in sparring."
"That's not, I could totally," Rudeus sputtered.
"Kyahaha!" Aisha laughed, her tiny hands grabbing at my face.
"Gah!" Norn added, which I chose to interpret as agreement.
"See? They know who the superior brother is."
Zenith watched from the clothesline, her expression warm with amusement. Lilia, standing beside her, covered a smile behind her hand.
"Keep that filthy mouth away from my sisters!" Rudeus made a grab for Aisha, but I spun away with a laugh, keeping both babies safely balanced.
"What filthy mouth? I'm the most wholesome big brother in this village."
I tickled Norn's belly, earning another delighted shriek. "Right, princess?"
"You're the most annoying person in this village," Rudeus muttered.
Paul had emerged from the house at some point, watching our exchange with the resigned expression of a man who had given up controlling the chaos in his life. "Claude, stop tormenting my son."
"I'm not tormenting anyone. I'm bonding with my future—"
"Don't you dare finish that sentence."
I grinned at Paul's warning tone. The running joke, about me marrying his daughters, had become a reliable way to make his eye twitch.
"I was going to say 'future sparring partners.' What did you think I meant?"
"Uh-huh."
"You have a filthy mind, Paul. I'm nine years old."
Zenith laughed outright at that, while Lilia's composure finally cracked into a genuine smile.
The moment felt precious. Ordinary.
Two babies gurgling happily, a frustrated boy, exasperated parents, all of it normal and warm and exactly what life should have been.
I held onto that feeling, even as the knowledge in my head whispered about what was coming. In two years, these babies would be toddlers.
In some years, the sky would split open and scatter everyone I loved across the world.
But for now, in this moment, I could pretend we had all the time in the world.
I spent the rest of that afternoon making tiny sparks of colored light for the girls, safe, harmless magic that made them clap and squeal with delight. Rudeus watched with poorly concealed jealousy, occasionally muttering about showing off.
"Pretty!" Norn managed, her first clear word of the day.
"That's right, princess. Pretty."
I created another shower of sparks, and her face lit up brighter than any magic I could produce.
These were the moments I was fighting for. These small, precious, ordinary moments that the disaster would try to steal.
I wouldn't let it.
Ghislaine's stay in Buena would be brief, barely three days, before she and Rudeus departed for Roa. The official summons had already arrived.
She was here to escort him, to the Boreas estate, where he would serve as tutor to the young lady Eris.
But in those three days, I learned more about the Sword God style, than I had in years of training with Paul.
Not through lessons. Ghislaine hadn't come to teach.
Her purpose was retrieval, not instruction.
But a Sword King couldn't help but move like a Sword King. Even in casual moments, walking through the village, speaking with Paul, waiting while Rudeus prepared for his journey, her body maintained the perfect readiness of a master.
Every gesture was a lesson for anyone observant enough to read it.
I watched obsessively, cataloguing every movement I could catch. The way she shifted her weight when standing still, the angle of her shoulders when she turned, the subtle positioning of her feet that would let her explode into action from any position.
The Sword God style was built for speed and aggression. A single decisive strike rather than prolonged exchanges, cutting through the enemy before they could mount a defense.
It suited my body's instincts in ways that Paul's mixed approach never quite had. Paul taught a blend of all three major styles, the speed of Sword God, the defense of Water God, the power of North God.
It was a practical approach, giving students versatility without mastery. But watching Ghislaine, I understood what pure dedication to a single path could achieve.
Every movement she made was an expression of the Sword God philosophy. Strike first, strike hard, end the fight before it truly begins.
But it was one particular technique that captured my attention.
The Longsword of Light.
I didn't know how I knew the name. It surfaced from the depths of my memory like a fish breaking water, bringing with it fragmentary images of a blade moving faster than sight.
A technique that converted raw speed into cutting power, making the sword invisible to the naked eye. The ultimate expression of the Sword God style, a strike so fast that the blade became light itself.
Ghislaine never demonstrated it. Perhaps she couldn't.
Perhaps it was beyond even a Sword King's abilities, reserved for the true masters, who had transcended mortal limitations. But the concept lodged in my mind and refused to leave.
Speed. The secret was speed.
Moving the blade so fast, that it became a beam of light, rather than a physical object.
But what if I approached the problem differently? Not pure speed, but something that mimicked the effect through other means?
I began experimenting in my private training ground.
The clearing, over the past two years, had grown from a simple practice area into something more elaborate. Multiple training dummies stood at various distances, each marked with the vital points I had learned to target.
Weapon racks held practice swords of different weights, allowing me to train with varying resistance. A small shelter protected my notes and experimental materials from the weather.
This was my laboratory. My sanctuary.
The place where I could push my limits without fear of discovery.
Warriors used something called Touki, battle aura, fighting spirit, life force shaped into power. I had seen glimpses of it in Paul's movements during our most intense sparring sessions, a faint shimmer around his blade that made his strikes heavier than physics alone could explain.
Ghislaine radiated it constantly, her very presence carrying a weight that had nothing to do with her physical size.
Touki was what made the Sword God style possible. Pure physical enhancement, drawn from the warrior's own life force rather than external mana.
I couldn't access it. Not reliably.
The knowledge was there, buried in fragmentary memories, but my body didn't know how to produce battle aura consistently. So I had been experimenting with an alternative, using mana to achieve similar effects.
The first attempts were clumsy. I burned through my mana reserves in seconds, achieving nothing but exhaustion.
The sword moved slightly faster, perhaps, but nowhere near what I was imagining.
I tried again the following night, pushing myself harder. Each failure taught me something new, refining my approach through painful iteration.
The problem, I realized, was that I was treating mana like fuel. Pouring it into the sword and expecting speed to result naturally.
But mana wasn't fuel. It was energy, raw and unstructured, waiting to be shaped by will and intent.
I tried adjusting my approach. Instead of flooding the blade with energy, I created channels, paths that the mana could flow through in a specific direction, adding momentum rather than simply adding power.
The theory came from somewhere deep inside, from knowledge I didn't consciously possess. Someone, something, had understood these principles far better than I did, and fragments of that understanding surfaced when I reached for them.
Better. The sword whistled through the air with noticeably increased speed.
But still not enough. Still not the blinding flash I remembered from dreams.
I experimented with different mana flow patterns. Tried concentrating the energy at the tip of the blade rather than distributing it evenly.
Tried releasing all the accumulated energy in a single burst, timed to the moment of the strike. Each modification brought me closer to something, though I wasn't sure what.
◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ AUTHOR'S NOTE ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆
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