"Eh? You want to train with a blade?" Shizuku asked, her eyes widening in surprise.
"What's wrong? Is it really that shocking?" Suzuki looked at her in amusement, loosely tossing his Knight Killer dagger in the air and catching it. It was the weapon he had casually confiscated from the Acrobat assassin earlier that afternoon—a sleek, black-and-orange blade with a gray hilt. It was simple, perfectly balanced, and highly lethal.
Naturally, since they were only sparring, he quickly swapped it out for a blunt wooden training dagger. He had absolutely zero intention of hurting his girlfriend.
Now that I think about it...
Suzuki fell into a brief, analytical trance. If he could somehow acquire the multiversal blueprint of the system used by his counterpart in Solo Leveling, would his [Online Shopping] skill evolve? The Solo Leveling system allowed its host to purchase high-tier, magical weapons from an internal shop. If Suzuki could mimic that architecture using the Manager AI, he could permanently solve his issues with fantasy-grade weaponry.
At the moment, however, he had just forcefully acquired the [Synergist] job from the corrupt Earl.
It was a strange feeling. In the eyes of their naive classmates, a Synergist was a common, unglamorous crafting job. Yet, it was powerful enough to earn an Earl a permanent seat at the table with the kingdom's wealthiest Guildmaster.
Using his [Deep Appraisal], Suzuki had already audited the guild's inventory—which he now legally owned—and discovered that the Earl had monopolized high-end alchemy, enchanting, and blacksmithing. While the man's noble status certainly provided leverage, it proved that the Synergist class was an absolute goldmine.
It was a highly versatile, economy-driving job. This realization made Suzuki genuinely confused as to why the rest of the class looked down on Hajime Nagumo. With a Synergist class, Nagumo possessed the raw potential to become one of the most vital figures in the Kingdom's infrastructure.
But what did Nagumo actually do with it?
He forced himself to swing a sword.
Instead of playing to his unique strengths—as Suzuki did by focusing entirely on the hostile takeover plan of this kingdom—Nagumo was desperately trying to be a frontline fighter. It was a glaring weakness born from modern Japanese societal conditioning: the desperate, suffocating need to conform to the group rather than excel as an individual. Nagumo didn't want to be left behind, so he wasted his massive crafting potential trying to be a mediocre swordsman.
But what did I expect? Suzuki mused. Nagumo was just a normal teenage boy. Expecting cold pragmatism from him was asking too much.
"Are you sure about this, Suzuki-kun?"
Kaori's voice pulled him from his thoughts. She looked at him with deep, genuine worry as she followed them into the moonlit courtyard of the royal castle. "You might get beaten up, you know?"
"..."
Suzuki's expression turned incredibly subtle as he recalled the highly intimate, exhausting "sparring" he and Shizuku had engaged in back at his penthouse.
"...What are you thinking about?" Shizuku's face instantly flushed crimson, noticing the loaded, teasing heat in his dark eyes.
"Nothing."
"You must be thinking about something incredibly weird!"
"I was just thinking about how beautiful you are, Shizuku."
"Liar~!"
"...Can you two please stop flirting?" Kaori sighed helplessly, rubbing her temples as she felt like the ultimate, awkward third wheel.
After dinner, Suzuki had led the two girls out to the quiet, empty training yard.
"It's been a while since we had a real spar," Shizuku smiled.
She fluidly shifted into her stance, raising her wooden sword in a flawless, textbook Kendo guard. Her back was perfectly straight, and she immediately radiated intense focus and honorable intent.
It was the Yaegashi-style. A traditional samurai martial art developed by her family's dojo and refined over generations. Though primarily focused on kenjutsu (sword techniques), it also incorporated iaijutsu (quick-draws) and taijutsu (hand-to-hand combat).
Thanks to her natural talent and relentless, lifelong training, Shizuku was an undisputed master of the form. Back on Earth, Suzuki often let her drag him into Kendo spars, mostly to indulge her whims and stay on his future father-in-law's good side.
But in the savage world of Tortus, her honorable style was a fatal liability. Suzuki needed to show her that surviving a dungeon required ruthless, dirty pragmatism, not point-scoring.
Facing her flawless, heavily fortified stance, Suzuki simply stood completely still. He held his wooden dagger loosely by his side in a casual reverse grip. To Shizuku's trained eyes, his guard looked completely open and full of suicidal holes.
"What kind of style is that?" she asked, her brow furrowing.
"It's a new fighting style I picked up."
"Derived from your Judo?"
"Yes, but heavily combined with Pencak Silat."
"Pencak Silat?" Kaori echoed, tilting her head in confusion.
"It's a martial art from Southeast Asia," Shizuku explained, her eyes never leaving Suzuki's blade. "Historically, it was designed for brutal jungle warfare and surviving lethal ambushes."
She looked back at him, her competitive spirit igniting. "When did you have the time to learn something like that?"
"When I didn't have to study anymore after securing my Toudai recommendation."
"...You really are amazing," Shizuku smiled, her grip tightening on her sword. "So, do you want to test it against me?"
"Go ahead."
"Here I come!"
Shizuku moved at blinding speed, heavily bolstered by her superhuman Swordmaster stats. She launched a textbook, devastating overhead strike (Men), fully expecting him to step back or cross his dagger to block.
But Suzuki didn't block. In Silat, trying to block a heavy, two-handed weapon with a light dagger is absolute suicide.
Instead, Suzuki subtly activated his newly stolen [Assassin] skill. He didn't use the highest tier to turn invisible; he simply engaged the lowest level of Presence Concealment to blur her depth perception by a fraction of an inch.
As the wooden blade crashed down, he executed a fluid Langkah (footwork pattern), stepping diagonally off the centerline. The sword sliced through empty air, missing his shoulder by a hair's breadth.
"Huh?"
Shizuku's eyes widened in shock. Her momentum carried her slightly forward, and before she could pull her sword back into a defensive guard, Suzuki was already completely inside her personal space.
He didn't aim for her body. Instead, he raised his forearm and brutally parried her wrists—completely bypassing the blade and killing all of her weapon's leverage.
"Ah!"
This was exactly where Shizuku's dojo training failed her. Her techniques were designed to defend against honorable swordsmen, not dirty, close-quarters street lethality. In Tortus, monsters didn't care about honor. Suzuki needed her to adapt, or she was going to die.
Jamming her wrists, Suzuki smoothly weaved his left training dagger over her forearm, hooking it and forcing her arm downward into a painful, biomechanical bind.
"Ngh~!"
Shizuku was momentarily trapped by her own sword. With her upper body completely neutralized, she instinctively tried to back away to create distance.
But Suzuki instantly dropped his center of gravity. He swept his leg directly behind her lead ankle, executing a brutal, textbook Silat takedown.
Shizuku lost her balance and fell backward into the dirt. Suzuki didn't gloat, nor did he step back to let her reset. He seamlessly dropped down with her, planting his knee heavily onto her weapon arm to pin it to the ground.
Before the dust could even settle, the tip of his wooden dagger was resting gently, but firmly, against her carotid artery.
"..."
Kaori gasped, covering her mouth. The entire courtyard went dead silent.
The exchange had taken less than three seconds.
Shizuku lay in the dirt, staring wide-eyed at the wooden blade at her throat, completely frozen. She was the Swordmaster. She had more than double the base combat stats of a Merchant. Yet, she had been effortlessly dismantled.
"Your sword is entirely too honest. I read you like an open book."
Suzuki's voice wasn't mocking; it was filled with genuine, heavy worry. He pulled the dagger away, stood up, and offered her his hand.
"A sword is just a long lever," he explained softly, pulling her to her feet and gently dusting the dirt off her uniform. "If I step inside the fulcrum, the weapon becomes completely useless."
His dark eyes met hers, his expression solemn. "Your form is absolutely beautiful, Shizuku. But you fight like you're trying to win points from a referee. If you fight the monsters in the dungeon like that... you're not coming back."