The golden wind sang without pause.
It followed the slender silhouette of the girl — a brilliant streak of light blazing across the darkness, there and gone in an instant.
Ais's swordsmanship had grown.
At this moment, Isagi had the character card [Land of Reeds] active. Bolstered by the most fundamental skill of the Sword Saint's secret arts, his proficiency with all weapons had climbed to heights he couldn't even put a number on.
And yet — he understood it all completely.
He could read every arc of the blade in Ais's hand with perfect clarity: her intentions, the flow of each motion, and the moves that would follow. The girl fractured into countless afterimages before his eyes — past and future layered atop one another — and even so, he could pick out her imperfections the moment they surfaced.
The gaps. The weak points.
Well.
Ais was undeniably, tremendously strong right now — but she was still only Lv.6. She was nowhere near perfect.
And come to think of it, Isagi had a feeling he wasn't either.
"...?"
A strange, difficult-to-articulate confusion surfaced in his mind.
Isagi furrowed his brow slightly.
It seemed that after leveling up, the skills on his character cards had also been strengthened in some way — though he'd had no idea until this moment. This was, after all, the first time since leveling up that he'd watched the girls fight.
Right now, both Ais and Ryuu-senpai were completely, utterly serious.
That golden wind was no mere spectacle. Compared to the pale green wind of before, this was a comprehensive evolution — every aspect enhanced.
And not just in raw numbers.
Isagi watched as the breezes swirling around Ais's body shifted and transformed mid-flow, condensing into invisible blades that slashed toward Ryuu-senpai from every conceivable angle.
[Flying Swords?!]
He tugged at the corner of his mouth, then noticed something else — those golden winds carried a remarkably peculiar effect.
It was the very essence of "wind."
In a sense: invisible, all-encompassing [kinetic force].
The terrifying destructive power that gale winds carry has always been the same — to topple, to overturn, to seize anything standing still and hurl it skyward, uncontrolled, sending it crashing into the far distance.
When Isagi had first arrived to watch.
He'd felt something strangely familiar about the "wind" Ais was generating.
[A Spirit].
Of course — because he happened to know Yuufi, a Spirit of the wind attribute, he recognized it instantly.
Yuufi, whose mind was utterly childlike — no, even more immature than a child — embodied the most primal and pure expression of nature's power.
Howling winds sweeping everything skyward, watching others spin and tumble helplessly in the air before vanishing into the far horizon.
And Yuufi was still only an intermediate Spirit.
But what Ais was displaying right now seemed to be something of a higher order. It was no longer purely wind — it was something drawn forth from wind as a concept, something that touched on the realm of the conceptual itself.
And among the fragments of that power she was showing.
This was it:
Isagi could see it — Ryuu-senpai's body, her weapon, even the magic she attempted to cast, all of it was being obstructed, pulled, deflected by an invisible wind—
No matter what Ryuu-senpai tried to do, she had to fight the wind the entire way, and the result was always the opposite of what she intended.
Her weapon swings were either too fast or too slow.
Her positioning was always slightly off — either too far or too close.
Her spells were thrown completely off course, grazing past Ais without ever posing a real threat.
Ais's golden wind was like some kind of persistent aura — or a force field radiating from her body at all times. Everything that drew near her simply stopped working right.
Absurd.
Only after watching carefully for a while did Isagi truly grasp just how dramatic a transformation leveling up had brought to Ais.
But what made it even more absurd.
Was that even so — Ryuu-senpai was still fighting Ais.
And from what he could see, they were [evenly matched].
Isagi wasn't showing favoritism toward either of them — he was calling it as he saw it. The Ryuu-senpai of before could not have defeated Ais.
It wasn't a question of levels or stats. It was purely a matter of "mindset."
When Ais faced other adventurers, her skill [Retaliation Princess] wouldn't activate, and she herself had no desire to compete with others — which meant she could never bring out her full strength in those situations.
But even accounting for that.
An elven girl who had spent years away from the adventurer's life, who had never fought at a high level of intensity, who had spent all that time hunting down Dark Familia members — essentially fighting well below her weight class.
She had lost her sense of how to fight against the truly strong. And she no longer had the awareness of being an adventurer.
Under those circumstances.
The Ryuu of before was no match for Ais — Isagi wasn't the least bit surprised by that.
For the strong, raw numbers, technique, and mechanics are all indispensable — but so too are an unbreakable spirit, an unyielding will, and the courage that comes with hunger for victory.
Ryuu-senpai had none of that. So naturally, winning was all but impossible.
But now, it was different.
Looking at the elven girl in this moment, Isagi could only read two words from what he saw.
[Effort].
The kind of "effort" that drove her to defeat her opponent, no matter what it took.
Even when she couldn't manage it — the kind of "effort" that forced her onward anyway, one step at a time, pressing forward, closing the distance, and absolutely refusing to stop regardless of the outcome.
In this moment, Ryuu-senpai didn't have the sudden, dramatic transformation that Ais had undergone.
The sword in her hand — [Goddess of Justice Among the Stars] — was still the first-tier weapon Cecil had once forged for her. Still slender and sharp, still wreathed in starlight, a rapier born of constellations.
Around her.
Deep green orbs of light drifted in orbit — still her most familiar, most often-used magic, [Luminous Wind].
And there were the flames of a dear friend, coiling around her body.
Flashing sword-magic as brilliant as scattering cherry blossoms, launched at intervals.
And from some "shameless" little Pallum — seemingly harmless, yet liable to detonate without warning — [Muse Bombs]…
Ryuu-senpai was still fighting with the abilities she had always possessed.
But her mastery of them had grown considerably more refined.
In fact, more often than not, Isagi couldn't find a single flaw to pick at — even with the "invisible wind" constantly interfering, her attacks were still, in most moments, lethal and—
[Perfect].
Ais's swordsmanship was exceptional — but somehow, what Ryuu-senpai was displaying right now wasn't just swordsmanship. It was something more blended, more comprehensive in technique.
A little stronger than the golden-haired girl, even.
Not by much — but unmistakably so.
What was going on here?
Isagi scratched his head, wondering: just when had Ryuu-senpai grown to this level?
When they'd been grinding in the Dungeon before, the enemies they faced were all on the lower end — so there was simply no way to tell.
But now.
He could see it clearly and without question: the strength Ryuu and Ais were displaying far, far exceeded anything he had "imagined."
What was going on — had Ryuu-senpai been quietly putting in the work this whole time, just waiting for the day she could leave everyone speechless?!
____
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