Fedal

I don’t know much about katanas. I don’t know much about any weapons, really, if I’m being honest. But I have a skill nobody else has…there’s no reason not to attack first. How can you defend against someone like me?

There was no use worrying about it now. I raised my sword high and confidently unleashed my [Air Strike]—numerous air blades sent flying in his direction. It wasn’t going to land, of course—his stats were too high and if Carr could dodge them with zero points, I should know it wasn’t the ultimate technique I thought it was. But it was going to do something to him, I was sure. Enough for him to show me what he could do.

Yet I still did not expect him to simply block them with his sword still sheathed.

It was a graceful motion, and he simply waved it off like the air blades were mere flies to be swatted away. So if someone’s [Swordsmanship] is high enough they can just block it like that? It made sense, I just hadn’t run across somebody with numbers this high before…and instinctively, this made me hesitate. Don’t run. Are you going to think you’re going to lose just because you don’t know for sure if you’re stronger? One of the things I had learned from talking to Carr was that he candidly admitted he didn’t know if he could win most of his fights. Until then, I had always assumed that sportsmen instinctively knew that they would win. How else did they manage to appear, let alone feel that confident during a match?

Guess I have to find out.

Carr had simply told me, “Visualize it.” When I had pressed him for answers, he only said that “To win, you have to be able to picture yourself winning.”

His [Swordsmanship] added up to 1036. Mine had gone up to 1030 these last few days…I hadn’t practiced empty swings as much as I’d like, Carr had me focusing on footwork instead, in spite of our plan to get my points high up enough to fight Johan. If only I had focused on increasing my points more….

If, if, ‘if’ doesn’t exist!

As we stood, we were within ten points of one another. Even without accounting for Carr’s fencing tricks, even going purely by this world’s rules, the result wasn’t plain. I could still win. If we did account for fencing…then I was probably inferior. Still, that didn’t matter.

This guy hasn’t drawn his sword yet. I don’t know what he can do. Not to mention he has a legendary skill of some sort that I don’t know what it does…I have no choice. If my [Skills] won’t do it, I have to close in.

I pointed my smallsword at him. Smallsword it may have been, but it was frankly closer to a rapier in length. I had learned during the many discussions between Gilder and Carr that smallswords were a new type of sword in this world, smaller rapiers that were easier to carry—but that there was hardly a uniform length for it, and the lack of traditions meant they came in all different lengths. Mine was closer to Valle’s rapier than Carr’s epee, but it was still a smallsword.

There was hardly much I knew about katanas but I knew this: they were shorter than even an epee, let alone something close to a rapier. The same way Carr and Valle had done in a thousand duels…I could harass my opponent from a distance, until they made a mistake. I took a few steps forward, blade extended, and attempted at a shallow thrust at his arm.

Martim drew his katana and slammed my blade to the side as he stepped in, hitting his blade against the strong part of my sword, and pushing it aside. His blade is shorter, but it’s so much faster when it’s cutting than mine is…not to mention the sheer strength of the strike. Absently, as if in slow-motion, I noticed droplets of blood in the air. Blood? Whose—MINE.

I jumped back to safety and assessed the damage—when I stepped toward him, he had pushed my blade aside and managed a cut on my bicep. It was quite deep, and it hurt a lot.

Martim laughed. “You have a lot of [HP] don’t you? Consider yourself lucky…that would have taken the arm off any of your friends.”

He wasn’t joking. If Carr or even Valle had gotten hit by that move they would have lost their arm…heavens only knew what would have happened to Isabella, I couldn’t really read her strengths and weaknesses anymore. But me, I had my [HP] to fall back on. They wouldn’t have allowed themselves to be hit like this…

[Fedal]

[HP]: 902 → 820

If I had any blessings, it was the fact that I knew he couldn’t see my stats right now. He had no idea how high my [HP] was or what [Skills] I had. But he was still smirking at me, looking confident he would win. Why? Because I look pathetic. I look scared. He knows he doesn’t have to fear me because I fear him. How did I fix that?

I couldn’t very well feel confident. But I could appear confident. I smiled back at him, and said, “Are you enjoying this?” I punctuated the question with a laugh at the end, and this caused Martim to hesitate slightly. Good. “Let’s get this duel started for real, then.”

The implication I could kick it into a higher gear seemed to scare him, and I very much wished it was real. My footwork was nowhere near good enough to make my speed any faster, and if we were going by pure stats we were both about the same speed…so I couldn’t really just outspeed him here. Then what could I do?

“Speed is a trap,” Carr had lectured me. “It’s really tempting to think all you have to do is hit your opponent before they hit you, but…it’s not that easy. The faster you go, the longer your recovery time is going to be if you miss.”

“What do you mean?” I remember asking. “The faster I go the longer I’ll take to recover?”

He nodded. “Try a simple experiment. Slowly reach out your arm, like you’re punching the air in slow motion. Then once the slow motion punch motion is completed, pull your arm back.”

I did so. Carr liked to show me those experiments, and I found that it really drove some concepts home for me. “What about it?”

“There was almost no delay between stopping the punch and pulling your hand back, was there?”

“Not really, no. It was pretty much instantaneous.”

“Okay, now I want you to actually punch the air as fast as possible, then pull your hand back.”

I did so and the result was interesting to say the least. “It’s like there is…some…lag, for the lack of a better word, after the motion finishes.”

Carr smiled. “Lag…yeah, that’s a pretty good way to put it. Professional athletes have ways to reduce it by using other muscles to help the swing, but a pretty general rule to consider is that the larger the motion, the longer you’ll take to recover. This is just a general rule and there’s a lot of ways around it—or else jabs would be useless in boxing. But the key thing to keep in mind is that increasing your speed can have drawbacks. A fast attack in fencing is impressive, but it will leave you wide open if you miss.”

In other words…if I couldn’t outspeed this guy, I had to make him miss. This is going to be risky. I took a deep breath and stepped forward.

At this moment, the sound of a piano distracted me. It echoed, it thundered, it reverbed through my body in that gigantic cathedral. It was a beautiful piece, starting slow, but advancing, reducing the pauses between notes and producing a melancholic, tragic tune as a result.

“Surprised?” Martim asked. “The cathedral’s piano plays itself…it was one of god’s gifts to the Emperor, don’t you know?”

The god of this world…he had created that piano? Was it a mechanical device or a magical one? It didn’t matter, really. But there was something eerie about that low tone reverberating loudly through the entire area. It felt as though I was been serenaded to my own death. Can’t really complain, I suppose. I love that sound…almost forgot how much I liked it…

I advanced, with that eerie background and my sword in the foreground—his katana was now drawn, and I had a better chance. Sure, last time his draw took me by surprise, but now he stood, one foot in front of the other and sword in his hands pointed at me. I had a better understanding of where his attacks could come from now. My sword was longer than his, I could harass him from a distance now. It was going to work.

An extension toward his upper arm—and he swatted it away. We were at a distance, so he couldn’t close it in to attack, but it prevented me from doing anything. Even if his sword is shorter, he can still easily block my thrusts because of the way his sword works. Did that mean the advantage was with him? No. This much even I knew—the rapier (and my weird smallsword by extension) was specifically crafted for one on one duels while the katana was more of a war weapon. In unarmored one on one combat, there should be hardly any weapon that could match mine…the advantage surely belonged to me.

The only issue was, I was too amateurish to know why and thus could not exploit it.

Martim suddenly stepped forward, holding his sword with both hands high over his head, but blade pointed low, almost upside down. When his blade got underneath mine, I thought I had the leverage advantage and attempted to bind it down—it was a mistake. While I had some leverage, he was using a two-handed weapon and had approached my blade from a favourable angle. His sword turned right-side up as he twisted his wrists, bringing his blade up and then down again, cutting me diagonally in the chest.

[Fedal]

[HP]: 820 → 618

Shit…I would be dead again if I didn’t have this impossibly high hero level of [HP]…

The [HP] kept the blow from being fatal, but blood still poured from the open wound sprawling from my right shoulder until near the left side of my hip. I have the advantage! I have to have the advantage…so what is it? What makes thrusting weapons better than a katana in an unarmored one on one match? Think, Fedal…you have to think!

As I desperately tried to come up with a solution, taking a step backwards in a haze, Martim charged forward at me, hands low and the tip of his sword pointed at my chest. “Who said you could rest?” he uttered. It was both a threat and a vision of the future at once. I attempted at blocking the attack one more time, but he still drove his sword through my chest.

It hurt.

I had glorified pain. I always thought that nothing was cooler than the heroes in those stories that shrugged off pain, stood up despite his injuries, grinned maniacally and gestured at their opponents demanding more. There was also something cool about those guys having training montages, enduring the worst of pains so they could train day after day and become stronger. But pain wasn’t like how I had imagined it. It wasn’t a matter of just being ‘determined’ and gritting through it. Pain was debilitating. It restricted how you moved, and it pinched when you least expected. It wasn’t just a sharp pain either; strong pain makes you feel nauseous at times. Like you’re going to throw up. Your stomach turns, your legs weaken, and it doesn’t feel like you can just use willpower to push through it—because your entire body just fails to respond. It urges you to give up.

For the first time, I was feeling what pain really felt like.

And I immediately wanted to quit. Where…was I, even?

The sound of the piano brought me back.

When I regained a measure of consciousness, I was standing a few steps away from Martim, my sword still wielded by my shaky hand, blood dripping out of my numerous wounds. What…what happened? I…did I take a few steps backwards? I must have. While in pain, I blanked out for a few seconds…but my body stepped back at the last minute to prevent further damage. How bad had it been?

[Fedal]

[HP]: 618 → 362

This is bad…he wants to destroy me as soon as he can…he’s not giving me any space…

He wasn’t giving me any respect. And I didn’t mean in the sense that he wasn’t being considerate of me, but in that he wasn’t scared of anything I could do. Normally, in a fight, you wait things out—give your opponent space until you figure out everything they are capable of, watch out for possible counters. Martim wasn’t doing any of that: he was relentlessly attacking because he didn’t fear a strike back.

I heard the sound of steel meeting steel, and it was only then I realized he had closed in and knocked my sword out of the way. I had been hit, it seemed, but the pain was such I barely felt it now.

[Fedal]

[HP]:362 → 323

This feels shallower than the last few wounds…what should I…do…

Martim approached again. What was he even attacking at this point? My chest? My face? No…even he wasn’t bold enough to attack my face. Why though? Because it was dangerous?

I saw steel come closer to me.

If I’m going to get hit anyway…

Fuck it. I made a snap decision.

The blade went through my chest again, though this time not nearly as deep—and I stuck my own blade through Martim as he attacked me. He’s not paying attention to me…so he’s not going to dodge this. Both our blades went through each other, but he jumped back instead of going further. Good decision.

[Fedal]

[HP]:323 → 211

[Martim]

[HP]: 149 → 78

“Oh, so you can fight?” It was a taunt, but Martim coughed up some blood as he did so—my attack had damaged him. “And here I thought this would end too quickly…”

HE DOESN’T KNOW HOW MUCH [HP] I HAVE.

Suddenly my consciousness returned. It felt like a path to victory had formed and with it I saw reason to stand firm. He was killing me like that because he knows I have no idea how to parry his attacks. But he doesn’t know how much [HP] I have, he only knows it’s a ludicrously high amount…so as far as he knows, I can just hold my sword in place and go for a double-hit every time he attacks me.

That was what I needed.

Now I had earned his “respect.”

Martim could no longer attack blindly because he knew I could go for the double-hit now. If he thought of me as a coward before, he knew I had the determination to do it now. The pain hurt, it ached…but it could wait. It would wait.

Now that he knew he couldn’t attack blindly, he would have to try to hit me without being hit…meaning that considering our nearly even speeds, he would need me to miss an attack so he could safely counter me, or he would need to read my next move and attack where I would leave an opening. But once that’s the game we’re playing, it means we can both play.

“I will give you one chance to surrender and give your power to Lord Johan peacefully.”

I smiled. “Listen, I’m enough of a coward to know that when someone gives you options it means they aren’t as confident as they want to appear.”

Martim approached me and I lunged in his direction—I had worked hard on my lunges—aiming at his left shoulder. He took half a step back and beat my blade away with his katana, in an upwards cutting motion. At this point, I also retreated then advanced one more time, tip once again aimed at his shoulder. His upwards beat came again and this time I tried to disengage around it. It was a much wider disengage than you would use against most thrusting weapons, but the principle was the same: if I could make him swing at empty air, I could land a hit.

His attack missed and I landed a shallow hit on his shoulder, but I had to retreat afterwards—this was a match to the [Death] and shallow hits like that weren’t going to win it for me. Is this what we’re locked into? A guessing game of who is going to disengage first?

It was indeed the game we were playing, it seemed. Our footwork was even and so was our speed—and our weapons made for a match where the winner of the exchange was decided on the approach, and close range fighting was nearly nonexistent. Twice we disengaged around each other—me circling my blade around his, him changing the angle where his blade was held from—and landed shallow hits on each other.

[Fedal]

[HP]:211 → 138

[Martim]

[HP]: 78 → 59

I was getting some hits in now, but…he was hitting me more. Whether due to more experience or less fear, he was winning the guessing games more times. I would approach at him from above, then disengage low, then approach low and disengage high—and as our exchanges increased in number, so did the accuracy of his predictions.

It’s a funny thing, fencing. Even a beginner like me could tell, the longer a match went the more the superior fencer ran away with the score—because they had dissected their opponent. They knew what patterns they had available to them and they prepared for it. The advantage of the smallsword is the quick disengages…but…if he knows where I’m disengaging to, it’s useless!

Different patterns were an obvious solution, but one I couldn’t quite implement. Carr had made that patently clear during our lesson—changing rhythms was incredibly difficult for some people, especially if you hadn’t been practicing for long and I definitely hadn’t. So what? Do I just give up now? Do I just try to prolong this match until Celle gets out so we can escape?

No. What was the point? Even if we did that, he would come after us. Escaping was fine, but delaying my death by running away wasn’t. I was just trying to find an excuse to justify giving up. I had done that my whole life. Whenever things got tough, I would rationalize why giving up was the ‘smart’ thing to do. Keeping at it was what ‘tryhards’ did. I tried to make fun of people who tried hard…to make fun of their efforts…so I wouldn’t have to admit how uncool I was.

Not anymore.

I wasn’t going to wait anymore.

I wasn’t going to run away and leave things for an eventual ‘tomorrow.’

IF I DON’T WIN TODAY…THEN WHEN AM I EVER GOING TO WIN?

I grit my teeth. “Even if I run away and live to see tomorrow…I know that there’s no tomorrow for me, IF I DON’T BEAT YOU TODAY!”

It was bullshit. I always pictured people having epiphanies when engaging in a hotly debated contest, a sudden truth completely changing them as people. It wasn’t the case. But what I found was that right there, when I was sweating, bleeding, breathing heavily and focusing on nothing but how to crush my opponent…everything stopped mattering. My fears, paranoias, self-hatred…they didn’t matter for that moment. They didn’t exist for that moment. The only thing that existed was me and the guy standing in my way.

And at that moment, I really saw myself for who I was for the first time. Not who I wished I was. Not who my self-loathing told me I was. But who I really was.

I’M JUST A GUY WHO FUCKING HATES LOSING.

Suddenly I lunged but dove downward—it was a move I hadn’t done before, and despite the dangers of it, such was the shock in it that Martim couldn’t dodge. I hit his foot. Immediately after, he brought his blade down in shock, and I held it above my head in a parry quinte, where the tip of my blade was pointed sideways using it almost as a slashing weapon. I couldn’t even stand up properly after that, but fortunately Martim’s balance was off and he couldn’t cut off my head. He did, however, manage a cut against the underside of my forearm as I retreated.

[Fedal]

[HP]:138 → 92

[Martim]

[HP]: 59 → 48

This was fine…I still had more [HP] than him. If I was lucky I would have more than him by the time we finished attacking each other. While it was true he was landing more attacks than me, since I had way more [HP] than him to start with…

I can’t rely on surprise attacks forever. I have to find a way to beat him. A new rhythm. Something I can do but that he won’t recognize. How can I change up my rhythm this quickly?

The sound of pianos broke my concentration and reminded me of Carr’s lecture.

“There’s a ton of options. This isn’t a problem with a single solution. One solution is to just have the footwork so ingrained in you and your reflexes so sharpened that your transitions are just fast no matter what.” Carr had pointed at himself at the time. It gave me some measure of relief to know he wasn’t supremely talented in at least some ways. “That’s basically what I did. But there’s a few other things you can do to help trick your brain into transitioning from one area to another more effectively. For example…music.”

Music…

The eerie pianos that kept playing during the match…I’ll do it. I’m going to win!