16. Training With The Empress (2)

Take a player who’s made quite a name for himself on an online rhythm game. Would he be just as good at the offline rhythm games in an arcade?

Better than a regular person, sure, with way better odds. But against a grizzled veteran of the offline games? Not a chance.

Both come down to matching the rhythm, but the stats they demand of you are completely different. Online games are all about micro-control at your fingertips and absolutely extreme reaction speed, squeezing the maximum efficiency out of the smallest possible movement across a tight keyboard. Offline games, on the other hand, demand the physicality and route-management to cover oversized buttons and a wide cabinet with your wrist, your arm, sometimes your whole body. You need the muscular endurance to keep mashing buttons far heavier than keyboard keys, plus the spatial awareness to fly between buttons spread far apart. Only offline grizzled veterans ever earn those, and you can’t pick them up sitting in front of a monitor.

“…Let’s stop.”

I’d been rambling, but the conclusion was this.

“There’s no way I’m passing the first trial by doing this.”

No matter how much training I took from Seraphina, an online powerhouse like me wasn’t going to magically become an offline powerhouse. Rolling around with the ice knight was about as good as it gets for building basic stamina, but that was all it was. I had zero sense that my swordsmanship was improving, or that I was developing any kind of combat instinct.

Seraphina didn’t seem to agree, though. She gave a small shake of her head.

“Arden. You are far too weak.”

— Krrng-.

On her command, the ice knight hoisted its enormous greatsword overhead and charged at me. It was simple and crude, yet even a glancing blow was enough to shatter bone.

— KA-BAM!

“There’s no point, I’m telling you.”

Seraphina wouldn’t know how familiar this ice knight was to me.

The Frost Empress raid, Phase 1. The moment you set foot in the boss room, a boring, never-ending stream of trash mobs flooded out to greet you, and the ice knight was one of them. Its attack pattern came in just three flavors: downward smash, horizontal sweep, and thrust.

— Whoom-!

I flattened myself against the floor, and a blade of chilled air skimmed the back of my head. Eve was marking the attack path in advance like a guideline, so dodging was nothing. No, it would’ve been the same even without Eve. The ice knight’s patterns were tattooed onto my brain.

— Whip, tak, shoo-!

With the smallest possible movements, I dodged every attack the knight threw.

Watching from a distance with her arms crossed, Seraphina narrowed her eyes. To her, an absurd spectacle was unfolding: her sickly little brother, who’d never properly held a sword, was pulling off acrobatic dodges against a magic puppet of the Empire’s Knight Commander.

This isn’t helping.

But this was strictly memorization territory. To put it a little dramatically, it was a lot like dancing to music, and repeating it endlessly wasn’t going to clear the first trial, “strength of arms.”

“Anything else? This is just boring.”

I laced in a deliberate yawn to provoke her.

She flicked her finger.

— Crash-shatter!

The ice knight splintered on the spot and dissolved into glittering powder. Then Seraphina walked slowly toward me, a training wooden sword in her hand.

I tensed inside, yet I could feel the corners of my mouth lifting.

The Frost Empress raid? I’m not exaggerating when I say I’ve cleared it over five hundred times.

It’ll be harder than the trash mobs, sure — but your patterns are all locked in my head too, you know.

I took up my stance, brimming with confidence.

Seraphina’s shoulder moved.

.

That angle, that foot placement. It had to be an upper-right slash, so I dove leisurely to the left and prepared a counter.

— THWACK-!

The world flipped upside down. When I came to, I was face-planted on the cold ice floor, and my side burned as if it were on fire.

“…?!”

What the — that was clearly an upper-right slash.
My data wasn’t wrong.
Then why is the wooden sword buried in my side?

“Do not judge with your eyes alone.”

Seraphina’s gaze, looking down at me, was frigid.

“You are trying to read your opponent’s actions without reading their intent.”

She adjusted her grip on the wooden sword.

“What I just showed you was a feint. I moved as you predicted, then twisted my wrist mid-swing to change the trajectory.”

I staggered to my feet and, rubbing my throbbing side, looked at the woman in front of me again.

She wasn’t the lump of data I’d cleared before, the Frost Empress I knew. She was the Empire’s Knight Commander, a hardened veteran who had cut her way through countless battlefields, and an NPC I had never encountered before in my life.

“…How boring.”

Mimicking exactly what I’d done earlier, Seraphina covered her mouth with a hand and yawned as she looked down at me.

Was I offended? If anything, my heart was racing. An enemy with no pattern. An unknown dungeon where the strategy guides didn’t work. Wasn’t this exactly the kind of stimulus a grizzled veteran craved most?

“Now this’ll be some real practice.”

I scrambled backward and barely avoided the attack, but unlike the ice knight, Seraphina left no gap between attacks. In short, she had no recovery frames. The pause between attacks, the moment to catch your breath, the room to think about your next move: she granted none of it. It was one overwhelming, unbroken chain.

— THUD!

In the end my prediction missed, and the wooden sword slammed into my side again.

“Krgh!”

The pain rattled my bones, and my breath caught in my throat.

Eve’s tearful voice came with apology logs scrolling up without a break. I appreciated her concern, but right now it was just one more thing blocking my view. My brain capacity was already maxed out dodging Seraphina’s blade, and now I was burning extra cycles filtering Eve’s flood of wrong answers.

Panting roughly, I whispered to Eve, who was fretting at my side.

“Eve. From now on — no chat.”

Eve looked at me with a stricken expression. She seemed about to burst into tears again, convinced she’d done nothing but get in the way.

Seraphina was advancing slowly toward me, so I kept one eye on her and pressed on quickly.

“I’m not saying I don’t need you. I’m saying we change the method.”

I glared at Seraphina across from me.

“Collect every piece of data coming in through my eyes and senses. The rhythm of her breathing, the angle of her feet, shifts in her line of sight… every last tiny habit.”

Until now Eve had been doing live commentary on the ice knight’s patterns, but it was time to switch to recording mode. For the time being I’d hold the line with my body, and while I did, Eve would analyze Seraphina in the background. That was the core of this new strategy.

“I don’t need half-baked predictions. Let the data pile up and pile up… until you’ve got an answer you’re a hundred percent sure of —”

I tugged the corner of my mouth into a crooked smile.

“— then, tell me the strategy.”

At my words, Eve’s eyes shone with life again, and she nodded with a solemn expression.

— Ding.

The message window blocking my view vanished. All that was left was holding out, keeping my body in one piece until Eve found the answer.

Seraphina must have picked up on the fact that I was scheming something.

“Rest period is over.”

She leveled her wooden sword at me. In the face of that murderous aura, and even through the throbbing pain, I answered with a grin.

“Yes, ma’am!”

“One, two! One, two! Get those knees higher!”

At the same hour, in an empty garden, Elli’s booming cadence rang out across the grounds. Beside her energetic figure, some kind of zombie was dragging its legs along, half-crawling.

“I mean, it’s called ‘Arden’s Running Crew,’ but the crew leader himself hasn’t shown so much as his nose!”

Elli wiped a bead of sweat from her brow and pouted.

“Huff… huff.”

Leo didn’t have the strength left to chime in. All he could manage was ragged breathing, and a sickly-sweet taste lingered inside his mouth.

Of course, both of them knew perfectly well where their Young Master was right now, and with whom.

“He got hauled off by Lady Seraphina, so right about now he’s probably getting rolled around even worse than us, don’t you think?” Elli added, with an expression that could have been either worry or quiet glee.

“Which is exactly why we have to run hard and stockpile stamina! The Young Master’s share too! All right — last lap!”
“…Why… huff… are we the ones stockpiling….”

Leo’s desperate protest was buried under Elli’s vigorous cadence and scattered into the empty air.

Lately he had started to think this might be the worst stretch of his life. The choice to betray the Young Master had been entirely his own fault, and there was no excuse for that. But that was that, and pain was pain. His throbbing legs, his fingers covered in blisters, the pathetic stares from the people around him. He felt like dropping everything and running back to his hometown.

“The Young Master told me, you know. No sympathizing with traitors, and no feeling sorry for them.”

When she first arrived, Elli had looked exactly like a simple country girl, but these days she took every opportunity to torment him.

“Fine. It’s all my fault. Happy now?”

And the one and only reason he couldn’t bring himself to leave this place was this:

“How’s Rio doing lately?”

At Elli’s question, Leo’s expression softened.

“…Thanks to the Young Master, she’s actually been getting a little better.”
“Whoa, that’s really, really good news!”

Elli broke into a genuine, brilliant smile, and seeing how pure it was, the dark thoughts that had been crouched in Leo’s heart seemed to thin out, just a little.

— Steep the herbs written here and have her drink the brew. I’ll have to be there in person for the cure itself, but for now her breathing should come easier.

Leo had silently taken the paper the Young Master handed him, and it had been a strange feeling. He had tried to kill the Young Master, and the Young Master was trying to save the one weakness Leo had in this world.

On his way to the herb storeroom, the realization had struck him to the bone: he was a more selfish human being than even he had thought. If he’d had even a scrap of conscience left, could he have taken this paper? But conscience wouldn’t save his younger sister, and he knew that. So he had gathered up every herb on the list and sent them home.

For his younger sister, he could do anything.

Even fall into hell.

“What’s with your fingers?”

Elli’s gaze had landed on Leo’s hand. The joints of his fingers, swinging at his side as he ran, were patched up with shabbily wound old bandages over a constellation of scratches.

Without realizing it, Leo balled his hand into a fist and hid it behind his back.

“It’s nothing.”

At his curt answer, Elli stopped running and stared at him squarely, and the weight of her gaze made his eyes slip sideways.

“They say when someone brushes you off with ‘it’s nothing,’ what they really mean is ‘help me.’”
“Who even says that kind of nonsense?”
“My dad.”

“….”

As if it were nothing at all, Elli started walking again and added, “On days he came back hurt from a hunt, he’d always say it was fine, that it was nothing.”

Leo couldn’t say a word. The image of his ever-suffering younger sister flashed through his head.

— Rio, are you all right?
— Mm-hm, it’s nothing.

He looked down at his scratched-up hand, at the marks of the work the Young Master had given him.

“…I stayed up all night, so I’m a little tired.”

“Oh yeah?”

Elli stopped again and looked steadily at his genuinely exhausted face. In place of her usual snide expression, her eyes carried pure, undisguised concern.

“Then let’s call it for today. You’ll collapse if you push it.”
“No, I’m fine. The Young Master said not to skip a single day.”
“And yet the Young Master himself skipped today, didn’t he.”

“….”

Leo had nothing to say. Why was it that this country girl had been hitting nothing but bullseyes lately?

Elli stretched and said, “That doesn’t mean we get to play around, though. The Young Master gave me another job to do.”

She pointed to the east side of the garden and, without even turning back, said, “You’re coming too, Senior.”

“Why should I?”

At his retort, Elli spun around and grinned with the mischief of a little imp.

“With the Young Master away, I have to keep watch on the traitor in his place. Don’t even think about slipping out of my sight.”

Humming a little tune, she took the lead.

“Not like I’ve got anywhere else to go. ‘Slipping out,’ she says….”

Grumbling to himself, Leo trailed reluctantly after her.