Eli learned a couple of lessons in this sparring match.
First, the stat gap was insane. He couldn't open Juli's status window since she wasn't registered in the Index yet, but the clash of their swords told him everything he needed to know. Each of her strikes was so heavy that it felt like his sword was colliding with a mountain.
Her Strength and Agility must have both been over 100 to overwhelm him so completely that he couldn't even perform a proper counter.
Second, his [Maid's Intuition] was less omniscient than he had assumed. The S-Rank label had tricked him into thinking it would show him every incoming strike, and that all he had to do was parry or dodge. In other words, his over-reliance was his downfall.
It simply didn't work that way.
He had to feed it information: sight, sound, the brush of air on his skin, the weight shift of an opponent's feet against the dirt. Every sense had to be open and engaged for the ability to paint a clean trajectory in his head. The moment he let one channel go dark, Juli's sword vanished on him, and his intuition went haywire.
[Maid's Intuition] was simply a supplement to his senses. It was not a cheat with a 100% success rate, so Eli had to learn to use it properly, especially against stronger opponents who could trick him with their presence alone.
That reliance also made him overcommit too often by trusting his life to the system. Every single round, the moment Eli thought he had his opponent's moves all figured out, or saw an opening, his instincts narrowed into fatal tunnel vision.
Even though he recognized this fatal flaw before the third round ended, his impulse still pulled him back into the same hole in the fourth. Recognizing the flaw and breaking the habit were two very different things, and it would take a while for Eli to tune himself to this ability.
Third, and the one that hurt the most — his fundamentals were a mess.
Stats could be raised. [Maid's Intuition] and bad habits could be fixed and fine-tuned. But beneath it all was the actual craft of swordsmanship, which Eli had been borrowing from Elise to fight Juli. The grip was Elise's. The footwork was Elise's, smoothed out by [Maid's Dexterity]. The forms were whatever the system patched in when he failed.
And Elise, in her own short and broken training, had never made it past the basics. Just two years of hurried evenings and early mornings, with the longest streak just under a month, she did not have a solid foundation to fall back on.
Juli's swordsmanship, on the other hand, was the result of nearly a decade of repetition baked into her bones, muscles, and brain.
Eli could feel it in every exchange. The way her stance reset itself between strikes without thought. The way her sword flow never drifted off-course. The way she recovered from a missed strike that became a part of the next strike. There was simply no wasted motion.
Even if his stats were to match hers tomorrow, even if he mastered [Maid's Intuition], Eli would still lose.
'Yeah… Got a long way to go.'
Eli let out a long breath through his nose and rolled his sore shoulder one more time.
Across the yard, Juli was stretching out her own arms, twirling her wooden sword lazily in the latern light.
"Soooo," she sang, hands still toying with her sword. "Have you sweated it out yet, or do you need another hundred losses?"
Eli huffed and tilted his head back.
"I think a hundred and sixty-seven is plenty. My pride can't take another."
"Like you ever care about that."
Juli finally stopped twirling the sword and walked over, dropping into the dirt and leaned on his shoulder. The blade landed across her lap.
"You got better… somehow. Did someone train you in secret, hmm?"
She propped a hand on the dirt, shifting forward, one eyebrow raised as her lips pursed.
"If only I had the time to train with another," Eli said, sighing. "I would have surpassed you long ago."
Juli jolted, smacking him in the thigh.
"In your dreams!"
"Ow!"
"Anyway!" Juli coughed. "You have really improved on your reflexes and senses of the blade. Because Elise — and I say this with all the love in the world — you used to fight like a baby deer on ice. You're talented in learning, sure, but in a real battle, you were hot garbage!"
Eli's eyes widened along with his mouth. He couldn't believe Juli would call him that!
"Hot garbage!?"
"Don't even try to deny it! The second I put any real pressure on you, your weight went everywhere. Your form is still bad, but at least you can block and counter now."
Eli curled into a ball, tucking his chin and burying his face into his knees.
"Anything else?"
Juli leaned in even more, almost toppling him.
"Your hips are out of line. Your center of gravity isn't low enough. You overextend a lot. Your footwork is a mess. Your recovery is slow as a turtle. You don't account for feints. You overcommit to a swing, so your attacks are one-dimensional."
'They just keep coming!'
"But at least you improved!" she continued, her hands tracing the flat of the wooden sword.
"You're still a rookie swordsman. Good reflexes need to go along with good forms."
Juli was right; everything Eli had diagnosed in himself was laid bare. To think that beyond the fundamentals, there was aura waiting for him, and learning to control it was even harder. Then he had to store aura in one Song, then another — it was an endless road of self-discovery.
"I want to awaken a Song."
Juli chuckled under her breath.
"Elise, you've only trained on and off for two years. You've barely held a blade long enough for it to rust, and you want a Song? Greedy! I didn't awaken mine until I had five years of experience."
"You were seventeen, right?"
She nodded.
"Mhm. I trained my ass off at the academy! That's why my professors loved me, even though I was a perennial troublemaker."
Eli chuckled, his lips curved at the corners.
A younger Juli sprinting from the crime scene while her professors pretended not to see.
'Yeah, that tracked.'
Just then.
Knock knock.
A soft knock landed on the back gate. Both of them stilled.
Through the slates came a voice unknown to both Eli and Juli. The man spoke quietly:
"Pardon. Delivery for a Miss Elise. From the florist."
Eli's blood went cold.