16. Training With The Empress (2)

Take a player who’s made a real name for himself in online rhythm games. Would he be just as good at the offline arcade versions? Better than your average person, sure, far better odds. But against an offline grizzled veteran? Not a chance.

Both games boil down to matching the rhythm, yet the stats they actually demand of you are completely different. Online play comes down to fingertip micro-control and flat-out inhuman reaction speed, wringing the maximum efficiency out of the smallest possible movement across a tight keyboard.

Offline play demands something else entirely. The raw physicality and route-management to cover oversized buttons across a wide cabinet, working your wrist, your arm, sometimes your whole body. The muscular endurance to keep pounding buttons several times heavier than keyboard keys, the spatial awareness to fly between buttons spread far apart. Those are things only an offline veteran ever earns, and you don’t pick them up sitting in front of a monitor.

“…Let’s stop.”

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

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

What I meant was that no matter how much training Seraphina put me through, an online powerhouse like me wasn’t going to magically turn into an offline one. Rolling around with the ice knight was about as good as it got 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, as if she didn’t agree, gave a small shake of her head.

“Arden. You are far too weak.”

— Krrng-.

At her command, the ice knight hoisted its enormous greatsword overhead and charged at me. Crude and simple, but even a glancing blow was enough to shatter bone.

— KA-BAM!

“There’s no point, I’m telling you.”

Seraphina had no idea how familiar this ice knight was to me. The Frost Empress raid, Phase 1: that boring, endless stream of trash mobs that flooded out to greet you the second you set foot in the boss room. The ice knight was one of them, and its attack patterns came in just three flavors. Downward smash, horizontal sweep, thrust.

— Whoom-!

I flattened myself to the floor as a blade of chilled air skimmed the back of my head. With Eve marking each attack path ahead of time like a guideline, dodging was nothing. Not that it mattered. Even without her, the result would have been the same, since the ice knight’s patterns were tattooed onto my brain.

— Whip, tak, shoo-!

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

Watching from a distance with her arms crossed, Seraphina narrowed her eyes. To her, it must have looked absurd: her sickly little brother, who’d never so much as held a sword properly, pulling off acrobatic dodges against a magic puppet of the Empire’s Knight Commander.

This isn’t helping.

This was strictly memorization territory. To put it a little dramatically, it was about as useful as dancing along to music. Grinding the same drill forever was never going to clear the first trial, “strength of arms.”

“Anything else? This is just boring.”

I deliberately worked a yawn into it to bait her. She flicked a finger.

— Crash-shatter!

The ice knight splintered where it stood and dissolved into glittering powder. Seraphina walked slowly toward me, a wooden training sword in her hand. Something in me tightened, even as the corners of my mouth tugged upward.

The Frost Empress raid? I’m not exaggerating when I say I’d 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 settled into my stance, brimming with confidence.

Seraphina’s shoulder moved.

.

That angle, that foot placement. Reading it as an upper-right slash, I dove lazily to the left and readied a counter.

— THWACK-!

The world flipped upside down. When I came to, I was face-planted on the cold ice floor, my side burning like it was 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?

“Don’t judge with your eyes alone.”

Seraphina looked down at me, her gaze frigid.

“You’re 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 this. I pretended to move the way you predicted, then twisted my wrist mid-swing to change the trajectory.”

I staggered upright. Rubbing my throbbing side, I took another look at the woman in front of me. This wasn’t the lump of data I’d cleared a thousand times over, the Frost Empress I knew. This was the Empire’s Knight Commander, a hardened veteran who’d carved her way across countless battlefields, an NPC I’d never once met in my life.

“…How boring.”

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

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

“Now we can call this real practice.”

I scrambled backward, barely avoiding the attack.

But unlike the ice knight, Seraphina left no gap between her strikes. She had no recovery frames, in other words. The pause between blows, the half-second to catch your breath, the room to plan your next move, she granted none of it. 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; my breath snagged in my throat.

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

Panting hard, I whispered to the fretting Eve at my side.

“Eve. From now on — no chat.”

Eve stared at me, stricken, looking about to burst into tears again, sure she’d done nothing but get in the way.

Seraphina was advancing slowly toward me. Keeping one eye on her, I 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.”

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

“I don’t need half-baked predictions. Once the data piles up, and piles 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. She gave a solemn nod.

— Ding.

The message window blocking my view vanished. All that was left now was to hold out, to keep my body in one piece until Eve found the answer.

Seraphina caught on that I was scheming something.

“Rest period is over.”

She leveled her wooden sword at me. In the face of that murderous aura, 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 bouncing figure, something like a zombie dragged its legs along in a half-crawl.

“I mean, this whole operation is supposed to be ‘Arden’s Running Crew,’ but the actual crew leader is nowhere to be seen, is he?”

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

“Huff… huff.”

Leo didn’t have the breath left to fire back; all he could manage was ragged panting. A coppery, sickly-sweet taste lingered inside his mouth.

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

“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 it with an expression that could have been either worry or quiet glee.

“Which is exactly why we have to run hard and stockpile stamina! For the Young Master’s share too! All right, one more 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, Leo had been thinking this might be the worst stretch of his life. Betraying the Young Master had been his own fault, start to finish; no excuse for that. But that was that, and pain was pain. His throbbing legs, his blistered fingers, the pitying stares from everyone around him. He’d felt like dropping it all and bolting back to his hometown.

“The Young Master told me, don’t sympathize with a traitor, don’t feel sorry for one.”

Elli, who’d looked like nothing but a simple country girl when she first arrived, took every chance to torment Leo these days.

“Fine. It’s all my fault. Happy now?”

There was exactly one reason he couldn’t bring himself to leave this place.

“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 huge good news!”

Elli broke into a genuine, brilliant smile. At the sight of that pure grin, the dark thoughts 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. It was a strange feeling. He had tried to kill the Young Master, and the Young Master was trying to save the one weak spot Leo had in this world. On the way to the herb storeroom, the truth had struck him to the bone: he was a more selfish creature than even he had thought.

If he’d had even a scrap of conscience left, could he have taken that paper at all? But conscience wouldn’t save his little sister, and he knew it. So he’d gathered up every herb on the list and sent them home. For his little sister, he could do anything. Even fall into hell.

“What’s with your fingers?”

Elli’s gaze had dropped to Leo’s hand. The knuckles, swinging at his side as he ran, were patched with old bandages wound shabbily over a constellation of scratches. Without thinking, Leo balled the hand into a fist and hid it behind his back.

“It’s nothing.”

At his curt answer, Elli stopped running and stared straight at him. The weight of her gaze made him slide his eyes away.

“They say when someone refuses help and says ‘it’s nothing,’ what they really mean is they want you to help them.”

“Who in the world taught you that nonsense?”

“My dad.”

“….”

As if it were nothing at all, Elli started walking again.

“On the days he came home 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 forever-suffering little sister flashed through his mind.

— Rio, are you all right?

— Mm-hm, it’s nothing.

He looked down at his scratched-up hand, marked by the work the Young Master had set him.

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

“Oh yeah?”

Elli stopped running again and studied his genuinely worn-out face. In place of her usual smirk, her eyes held 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 kept landing nothing but bullseyes lately?

Elli stretched.

“That doesn’t mean we get to slack off, though. The Young Master gave me another job to do.”

She pointed to the east side of the garden, not even glancing back.

“Senior, follow me too.”

“Why should I?”

At Leo’s 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, Elli took the lead.

“It’s not like I’ve got anywhere else to go, so ‘slipping out’ is hardly….”

Grumbling to himself, Leo trailed reluctantly after her.