Chapter 1: An Old Country Bumpkin Goes on an Expedition

“Ready!”

“All right, come at me.”

A young man charged at me with a spirited battle cry, a wooden sword in his hands. That said, it wasn’t the same length as what I or the knights usually used, it was just a little shorter. One day, he would use the real thing, but a wooden sword was actually pretty heavy for those who weren’t accustomed to the weight. Despite its long and slender appearance, it was still a solid lump of shaved wood. You needed a certain level of expertise to be able to properly wield something of that size.

“Hah!”

“Mm, much sharper than before.”

The young man—Lumite Bafang—let loose a diagonal slash. I used my own wooden sword to alter his blade’s trajectory. He’d studied swordsmanship before this, so was just a little ahead of the others, and he’d also kept up with Ficelle’s harsh training, which was coming along pretty nicely.

“Why, you...!”

“Hup.”

Lumite kept his grip on his sword, stepped in closer, and attacked with an upward slash. I kept my eye on his rising wooden sword as I lowered my own to meet it. The sound of wood scraping violently against wood resounded around us.

In a direct clash, there was no way for him to win against my muscle mass, so I shifted my weight to ward off the blow without bringing it to a stop. It felt better to be able to swing all the way through, after all.

Just as I mentioned earlier, Lumite’s swordsmanship was looking pretty good. However, that was only in relation to the other students of the sword magic course. As someone who regularly trained with the knights of the Liberion Order, there was no way I would get hit by his sword. It could be a different story in several years, though.

“Hggh!”

“Hm?”

With his training sword held overhead and his torso extended, Lumite forced his body to twist to bring his blade downward. I wondered why he chose to do that. Even if he was scared of a counterattack, he could’ve used his momentum to simply jump backward. And