Swoosh!
My black pajamas fluttered as I dropped through the open air. My stomach lurched with that horrible falling feeling all over again.
Gods, I hated heights. I genuinely, deeply hated them.
All I could do was curse under my breath as I watched Arthur dive after me with the biggest smile on his face.
"By the way, I will not be saving you, young master! You know how to teleport after all!" He called out as he picked up speed toward me.
Absolute lunatic.
The ground rushed up fast. Just before I hit it, I called on the space element and my body blurred and was gone.
Swoosh!
I reappeared at ground level in a flicker of dark purple, feet touching stone without a sound.
"Arthur is completely insane!" I said out loud, to nobody in particular.
Then my eyes went wide as I felt danger spike before the thought finished and I threw myself sideways on instinct.
A fraction of a second later Arthur hit the ground exactly where I had been standing.
Crash!
The cobblestones cracked and burst apart. Debris flew outward and a cloud of dust rose from the impact, swallowing his landing point entirely.
Then six large chunks of stone came shooting out of the dust cloud straight at me.
I slashed the first two out of the air with my sword. The remaining four I let come and rolled through them with a spinning flip, the stones passing clean over and around me before I landed back in my stance.
Arthur walked out of the crater he had made, brushing nothing off his shoulder, completely at ease.
"Your body seems different from yesterday," he said, tilting his head slightly. "You have grown again. What exactly are you eating? Or is it possible my training is already showing results this quickly?"
"Hah." I shook my head. "You wish. I have always been like this. You are just getting old and forgetting things."
Arthur's lips twitched at the jab.
I seemed to have hit the mark with that insult.
Then six armored figures appeared out of nowhere, moving in a blur, their combined presence pressing down on the air around them with a suffocating weight that made every hair on my neck stand up.
The pressure vanished the instant their eyes landed on us. They all bowed at once and disappeared just as fast as they had come.
The palace guards. They must have felt Arthur's landing and come to find out who was causing that kind of destruction on the grounds.
I turned back to where Arthur had been standing.
He was not there.
"Ah, damn—"
The attack came from directly above, angled straight down toward the top of my head.
I pushed mana through my entire body and moved, raising my sword to meet it.
Clang!
The impact rattled up through my arms and drove me back several steps before I planted my feet and held.
I did not let my eyes leave him for even a moment after that.
Arthur came forward again immediately. I went at him too.
I couldn't just always stay in the defense, I had to attack too.
I closed the distance and jumped, driving a kick toward his face.
He read it early, caught my leg with one hand and started pulling me toward him.
Not happening.
Before his grip could lock I snapped my other leg into the back of the first one and used the momentum to twist my whole body, wrenching my leg free from his hand and spinning around to land behind him.
The moment my feet touched down, I did not hesitate. I thrust forward, aiming for his exposed back.
As expected of him, he dropped low and the blade passed over him.
I followed through immediately and drove my knee upward toward his face.
It met nothing. His figure blurred and he was simply gone.
Then my world flipped upside down.
"What?"
He had swept my legs while I was still processing the miss. I felt the ground leave my feet and then I was falling.
And as I fell I saw his fist already pulled back and coming forward, straight for my face.
Cold dread hit me before I had time to think properly.
If that punch connected I was never going to forgive him.
Without a choice, I teleported.
His fist hammered through empty air.
Then the shockwave from it hit me anyway.
Boom!
I felt the pressure of it against my skin even from where I had landed a few meters back. I stared at the small crater his punch had left in the stone where I had been falling and the cold sweat running down my spine was not entirely from the exertion.
"Are you actually trying to kill me?!"
Arthur turned around and tilted his head in what looked like genuine confusion. "Is that not the point of this training?"
Someone please help me.
"You are doing well, by the way," he added, almost as an afterthought. "This is the longest you have lasted against me without taking a clean hit. Keep that up."
Golden lightning crackled to life across his body, casting sharp light across the dark courtyard.
"Watch carefully, my disciple. This is the first move of the Swift Sword."
He took a stance, rapier extended forward, body low and still.
I swallowed.
He was going to use a real technique. On me. Not on a practice dummy, not in a controlled demonstration, but aimed directly at my actual body. The gap in common sense between this man and normal people was something I was still getting used to.
The golden lightning spread from his body down the length of his blade, wrapping around it until the metal was barely visible beneath the glow. I felt the air shift. The ground under my feet vibrated with the pressure of the energy he was releasing and every hair on my body stood at attention.
I pushed everything I had from both cores through my body and readied the space element at the same time, one hand figuratively on the trigger to teleport the instant I saw an opening.
Then Arthur spoke, his golden eyes glowing bright.
"Swift Sword, First Move: Thunderclap Bullet."
His body vanished.
Not fast. Vanished.
A crack of thunder split the air a half second after he had already moved, like the sound was scrambling to catch up with him. The only thing I could track was a shape wrapped in golden light cutting through the dark in a zigzag that my eyes refused to follow properly.
Then there was something cold and still against my neck.
His blade.
I had not teleported. I had not blocked. I had not even begun to react. He had simply moved faster than any of those things were possible.
The only thing I felt in that moment, standing there with a sword resting against my throat, was the very real and very specific sensation of death. Not as a thought. As something my body understood on a level below words.
His golden eyes met mine.
Ba-dum.
Ba-dum.
My heart hit my ribs so hard I genuinely thought it might crack one. My hands were shaking without my permission.
But underneath the dread, underneath the racing heart and the cold sweat and the very clear understanding that I would currently be headless in any real version of this scenario, something else was there.
Excitement.
I wanted that. I wanted to be able to move like that. The thought of learning it was already pushing through the fear and sitting right at the front of everything else.
"Huff, huff." I breathed out slowly. "Teach me."
Arthur lowered his blade and stepped back. The golden lightning faded from his body and he sheathed the rapier in one clean motion.
"Of course." His eyes dropped to the weight cuffs on my wrists and ankles. "Though first, I notice you seem to be moving without any real difficulty with those on."
I did not like where this was going.
I felt the weight of each cuff double before I could say anything. Thirty kilograms each.
I felt it. A clear pull, heavier than before. But not enough to actually slow me down, just uncomfortable enough to notice.
The reason it was not crushing me the way it had been at the start was simple. Virgil's space had not only been spell training. I had spent a month there pushing my physical body as well, and the results had carried back with me into the real world. My muscles were in a different condition now than they had been before the awakening. I was fairly confident I could manage forty kilograms without losing meaningful range of motion.
Arthur was watching me with an expression I could not completely read.
Then the weight shifted again. Up by fifteen more.
Forty-five kilograms total.
I clenched my jaw and held my ground. It was uncomfortable now, a real pressure, but I was still standing straight.
Arthur's gaze stayed on me, steady and probing.
He suspects something. I thought. Not that I could blame him. Two days ago I was a different person physically, and now I was shrugging off weight increments that should have been putting me on my knees.
What Arthur was actually thinking, though, was something I would not have guessed.
This kid. Does he have a body constitution or is he a genius? Arthur thought.