“You wonder why so many nobles who trained in the martial arts since young would often perform horribly in a real battle?

Honestly, that question had a simple answer. More often than not, they simply lacked the experience. Training, no matter how skilled your tutors might be, as well as spars could not replace actual experience with battles where your very life and death was at stake, and all too often those who had never been exposed to it got cold feet once they met the real thing.

This mostly happens with the richer kids in the inland provinces, mind you. Those on the border know all too well of the folly of having inexperienced kids who were groomed in a glasshouse take the field. Instead, they give their children harsh training often straight at the frontlines from young. Most young nobles from the borders had earned their first kill the hard way by the time they turned fourteen.” - Duke Stef Agazy, of the Sevral Duchy, Clangeddin Empire, circa 480 VA.

Elfriede couldn’t help but smirk as she ducked under another of her opponent’s slashes, far enough that even the bladed invisible limbs that clawed for her completely missed. To most, such a trick to use magic to extend the reach of one’s blade might have caught them off guard, especially given the invisible nature of said extended reach.

To Elfriede however, it was plain as day. She quickly deduced that her opponent was a fellow wind affinity mage, one who had channeled his skills into a way to further his swordsmanship. It was honestly a valid method, to condense the wind into invisible blades much like the common wind blades most offensively inclined wind mages did, and then attach them to his weapon to use as an extension of the blade.

Most people would not have noticed a thing until they were cut, and while most mages worth their salt might have caught the fluctuations of mana, they would have been uncertain as to the form and shape it took. Unfortunately for her opponent, Elfriede “saw” what he did with extreme clarity, and easily avoided the blade, invisible extensions and all.

Where her opponent had channeled his magic and mana to an offensive purpose, hers were focused mostly on a perceptive path instead, as the magical sense she relied on to get around was merely an application of her magic, one that she had now honed through over two decades of constant usage.

She had felt every little twitch of her opponent’s muscles through those senses, from which she could interpolate the trajectory his blade would have taken and avoided it preemptively. The invisible blades of wind around his oversized sword’s blade was glaringly perceptible to her, as their form was also reliant on the wind to form.

Whereas a wind mage trained and skilled in the more orthodox techniques might have tried to unravel or unmake the wind blades, Elfriede had no such thoughts. The only thing it had done was to make her avoid the blades with more of a margin to account for the movement of the invisible blades. Movements that had dulled and lessened, as her opponent could no longer focus on the offense for a while now.

Elfriede’s own blades, despite their mithril coating, were not exactly capable of slicing through well-made plate armor like what her opponent wore. Even if they managed it, they were more likely to be stuck in the process, which was something she would prefer to avoid. On the other hand, her opponent’s similarly constructed weapon would likely have cleaved clean through her gambeson, her flesh and bones, and out the other side with little difficulty.

That assumed that they ever managed to land a proper hit, though. Something Elfriede made difficult with her skilled movements, evasive steps that had long been ingrained into her reflexes.

Most likely it had something to do with how during the years after she had left the Holy Kingdom and before she joined the Free Lances, Grün was her daily sparring partner. Spars with a void mage like her ingrained some habits into Elfriede’s fighting style, like how she simply would not block a strike unless it was unavoidable, preferring evasion or parries by far. You simply do not block a void-clad blade unless you had some seriously expensive stuff enchanted with anti-magic, period.

And even those rarely last that long unless they were the really good stuff.

That way of fighting was in full display as she deftly avoided her opponent’s slashes, with only the occasional parries when he went for a tricky strike. In contrast to how she was practically untouched other than the small nick on her forehead, her opponent’s platemail showed marks and shallow cuts on many places where Elfriede’s blades had struck home. He had managed to avoid any injury so far, but that was partly because he was lucky. One of the strikes had stopped a tiny distance away from a seam between two plates.

The man was skilled, Elfriede would give him that. He wielded his overlong blade expertly and knew not to overcommit on his strikes, which prevented her from exploiting openings as often as she would have liked, but in the end, his training and the way he fought felt more like a knight having an honor duel before his liege and a large audience, where they would have stopped at first blood traditionally.

While his strikes sometimes had lethal aim, more often than not they felt like they just tried to land a hit regardless of the effectiveness of such a hit. Her opponent was good enough to cover such flaws with quick defensive moves or relying on his well-crafted armor, but they were there.

In contrast, Elfriede never learned how to fight properly. All she ever learned was how to kill, and that included things that would have been frowned upon hard by those who considered themselves a more civilized part of society. Doubly so for stuck-up nobles like the one she was against.

As she leaned back to avoid one of his slashes, Elfriede lowered her left arm to the ground, seemingly for support, but in actuality to scoop up a bit of the sandy soil using the crescent blade affixed to her weapon’s handguard. As she lithely returned to full height, she tossed the sand over her opponent’s helmet, aimed at his eye slits specifically.

The surprised noble gave an incongruent yell of outrage and annoyance and he jerked backwards in surprise, some of the sand likely having landed on his eyes, and Elfriede had not wasted the chance. She kept the man’s blade at bay as she caught it between the point and the scythe-like extension of her own left-hand blade, while she pressed close to make it difficult for him to maneuver with his oversized weapon.

Her right hand flipped the weapon into a reverse grip, and she used the short dagger built into the pommel to accurately stab into the gap of armor at the man’s armpit. She stabbed upwards this time rather than sidewards, since the man looked like he would be worth more alive than dead, and was rewarded with a pained squeal as her mithril-edged weapon pierced through the chainmail her opponent wore underneath his plate armor and into his flesh.

Then Elfriede pulled the weapon out, and jabbed the point of the blade into the man’s other elbow, which made him drop his sword. She quickly caught the falling weapon with the tip of her shoes and kicked it up where she caught it with her left hand and stored it into her storage artifact. Reinhardt had lent her one of the large ones she found from their night raid a week ago.

Other mercenaries who kept watch in case their support was needed quickly rushed forward and tied up the injured noble like a hog as they all returned to the path kept open by both the Free Lances and the young Duchess’ knights. The rest of the Company had went ahead, so Elfriede and Grünhildr exchanged a look before they pursued after them.