“Honestly, it’s impossible how newbies would react to actually killing others. I’ve seen one of the most timid trainees just go crazy and start slaughtering enemies without any hesitation once placed on the battlefield before, and I’ve also seen one of the most courageous, brave ones hesitate and found themselves unable to do it, not even when the other guy was coming at them with blade bared.

It’s just something you could never tell until you really put them to the test.” - Archibald Neuser, training instructor for the Krigarris Jarldom.

The knight took another couple of steps back, temporarily taking him outside of Alycea’s range. The girl allowed him to do so, as she knew that her opponent would be at the height of his wariness at the moment, and there was little point for her to press the attack against a now prepared opponent while he was the most prepared for it.

Alycea watched calmly as her opponent carefully assessed the damage she had done to his armor. That she gave her opponent a moment to take things in was not something born from overconfidence or the likes, but was instead a trick from her part. She hoped that his opponent would falsely assume that the blow she gave him just earlier was the best that she could have done.

After years under the tutelage of her mother and elder sister, Alycea Edelstein was capable of far more than that. That said, those same years of tutelage also taught her that she should give her all even if her opponent might be weaker, which was one reason for the subterfuge. Alycea wanted to take down her first opponent while keeping as many of her tricks and trump cards hidden as was possible to give her second opponent as little information as she could.

It was why her first blow looked very normal to all eyes, despite the uniquely flexible nature of her weapon’s Willow Heartwood shaft. Alycea actually actively reined in the wood’s tendency to bend and flex during her strike, something she only learned after much practice. Normally during spars with her mother or sister she’d use that trick to make a feint, throw off expectations, or to simply vary her moves.

She used that trick to instead make her current opponent think that her weapon was a normal one, something he was familiar with, instead of something with more unique qualities.

After a moment of mutual silence, the knight – Alycea was naturally aware of the identity of her opponents, captives who had been ransomed to use as opponent to baptize her weapon and perseverance in blood before she would be formally admitted to the company – tried to rush in close, but she countered the move by defensively holding him back with the point of her glaive aimed at the center of his mass.

Both of them fought relatively carefully as the setting of the duel afforded them the opportunity. Normally such a setting would be more beneficial to the knight, who was more likely to be trained and accustomed to such duels, but Alycea had also trained for such situations and was undeterred. She knew what to do with only one opponent and nobody else she needed to watch out for.

This time it was the knight who lost his patience first as he batted away the tip of Alycea’s glaive using the flat of his sword before he tried to rush closer once more. Alycea on the other hand was nonchalant as she saw the move coming and pulled her glaive back in response, before she countered with three quick thrusts aimed at the knight’s torso.

To his credit, the knight successfully avoided one of the thrusts, and managed to parry and deflect a second using his longsword. The third thrust struck home and drew blood, however, although the wound was a shallow one to the man’s chest. A flesh wound that wouldn’t affect the man’s capability in the short term, to say the least.

Even so, the knight’s injury seemed to have emboldened Alycea as she went into the attack with a series of vicious slashes and thrusts that utilized the superior length of her weapon to keep the knight on the backfoot. As Alycea had always greatly admired her older sister Erycea, her fighting style had a lot in common with Erycea’s as well, that of a careful passivity that could switch to a vicious and unrelenting yet measured offense at the drop of a hat.

What a spectator – or her opponent, for that matter – might not have realized was that Alycea had been holding back all that while, despite the vicious barrage of cuts and thrusts she sent at her foe. She spent more effort keeping her weapon steady than in making those strikes, something his opponent had failed to realize.

As such, once her opponent felt that he had gotten a grasp of Alycea’s rhythm, he made a risky maneuver where he attempted to meet an incoming slash of Alycea’s with his own blade. If he succeeded in reading her move properly, he would have slapped away Alycea’s blow with the flat of his longsword, which would leave the girl wide open.

Unfortunately for the knight, that was something Alycea noticed, and she chose to spring the trap she had set up all fight right at that moment, as she simply stopped countering her weapon’s shaft’s tendency to flex and bend at the right moment. As a result, her opponent’s swipe entirely missed her glaive as the wooden shaft bent rather drastically towards the back as if swaying away from the blow.

Then with a pulling motion Alycea not only counteracted the bend, but also allowed her glaive’s shaft to flex back the other way, resulting in a slash that practically blurred in the eyes of the spectators as it struck towards the knight’s throat. There was silence for a moment, before it was broken by the noise of a longsword falling into the ground.

Which was soon followed by a human head that had been severed cleanly off its body.