Chapter 331: Book 5-20.2: Candidates

Yuriko carefully put on sparring gear in the changing room. She didn't have her own training gear so the masters provided her with spares. For the weapons test, she wore a padded jacket, leggings and comfortable boots. She was supposed to wear a helmet, too, but her hair bunched up too much and wouldn’t fit into the one sized for her head. The bigger helms were too loose to bother with.

She walked back into the arena bareheaded and carrying training weapons, a side-blade, a spear, a greatsword, and a Lancet. The Lancet fired harmless blobs of cool plasma coated in denatured Animus. The chamber she entered wasn’t the same as the previous one. It had wooden flooring instead of sand, was about half the size, and two walls were covered in floor to ceiling mirrors. There was no audience seating, too.

Armsmaster Kinohara stood at the centre with Master Soren. The two students she fought were waiting there, too, wearing the same kind of sparring gear. The first boy, Claude Synka, who was more a young man than a boy really, had an intense look on his face. His cheeks reddened in shame when he met her eyes though and Yuriko shrugged apologetically. She hadn’t meant to knock him unconscious during their bout, but there were simply too many openings in his stance.

As for the other boy, Selwyn Jaegra, he nodded to her respectfully. Several other students turned up to watch, including cousin Miya, who waved at her cheerfully.

“Miss Mishala.” Armsmaster Kinohara said when Yuriko approached. “Please demonstrate the Forms of the Four Phases with any weapon you prefer.”

“Four Phases?” Yuriko frowned. “What do you mean?”

Kinohara blinked in surprise. “The Four Phases, or the four weapon styles. Sweeping Gale, Flowing Water, Roaring Volcano, and Jade Mountain Style.”

“Ah!” Yuriko gasped, “I apologise but I’m not formally trained in it. Er, my Da taught me the rudiments of Flowing Water but I don’t really know the, uh, forms?”

“How do you practice then?” Kinohara asked curiously. “The Four Phases should have been taught in your Academy, even if you’re from a frontier plane.”

“Uhm, I simply…er…practice?” Yuriko scratched the back of her head in frustration. She had sword dances but none of them really had specific movements that she had to follow to the letter.

“Well, please demonstrate it.”

Yuriko nodded. She laid the other two training weapons off to one side, picked up another training side-blade and stood at the centre of the room and stood casually upright. She closed her eyes for a moment before she spurred her Animus into the fused pattern of the first, second, and third dance.

She felt herself fall to the familiar rhythm and once she was ready, she danced. The blades in her hands were light, but the speed at which she spun, slashed, and thrust made the air whistle and whoosh. She could almost feel the wind, swirling around her. She could feel the bodies nearby, and could keenly feel the terrain around her. There were imperfections in the wooden slats, mini cracks, and pools of moisture. There, the wood would be a bit more slippery and would require a firm foothold. There, the wood was springy and could be used to boost her attack.

The wind told her how everyone around her moved. Her Anima had expanded slightly beyond her skin which was what made reading the movements of the air possible for her. Her body followed the gusts, cutting through them at times, while moving with them at others. There were no set movements, but the Intent of her sword play was clear.

Since she had no opponent, she envisioned one for herself. Her last fight had been with those Lignoculi, terrible creatures that didn’t tire. Wounds didn’t make them flinch and they only paid attention when strikes would have severed limbs, joints, or tendons. Well, they avoided strikes to the heart, but oddly, didn’t pay much attention to attacks to the head.

She danced around a shadow of one of them, the condensed version that had been driven by the pirate captains. She danced and weaved around the blows, striking at the same time she dodged. She tightly circled around the same spot, shadowing attacks and defenses.

After a couple of minutes, she sensed someone approaching from behind her and she started to slow to a stop.

“Eh?”

Someone struck at her from behind, but she sensed it in the airflows. She spun and ducked under the blow, only to realise that it was the Armsmaster. Kinohara pressed her attack using a springy weapon, a rapier, to stab at her torso.

Her right blade caught the rapier, twisted to the side and pushed it away from its line of attack. The left blade stabbed from a high angle, aimed at Kinohara’s collarbone. Yuriko was taller than the other woman, affording her a better reach. She assumed the other would step back, or dodge to the side, and was prepared to follow. Instead, the woman pulled a parrying dagger, a training blade too, and met her thrust point to point, stopping the attack dead.

Yuriko’s eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed as she focused. At first, she attempted to leverage her strength, but somehow, even if she felt that Kinohara wasn’t as strong as she, the other woman easily blocked her push. She pressed the bind, stepping closer and instinctively using her Anima to increase her leverage.

Kinohara looked surprised when her blades started to move closer to her body but she controlled her grey-coloured Animus deftly. Before Yuriko could react, the tendrils snaked around the blades and touched the weapons. All of a sudden, Yuriko’s weapons were pushed back. Kinohara’s rapier suddenly felt much heavier and the change threw her off. Still, she recovered easily enough and stepped around the older woman.

Kinohara was stockier than she was but that was honestly true for nearly everyone here. Yuriko’s lithe footsteps easily danced around the Armsmaster, but she simply turned to keep herself centered.

She struck at Kinohara's thigh, while the other blade went high. The other woman’s response was the natural reaction of protecting her face, but then she stepped back and avoided Yuriko’s low thrust.

Yuriko responded to the defense with a brutal kick to the shin. Surprisingly, the kick connected and Kinohara gave a pained grunt. This caused her to waver in her defence and Yuriko found an opening. She slipped a side-blade against the rapier’s basket hilt, getting it between the quillons, then hooked it off the Armsmaster’s hands. The bout didn’t end just yet since Kinohara immediately dove for her weapon, but she threw the parrying dagger at her arm, which was easily avoided. It cost her a fraction of a second that she could have spent chasing after the woman.

Kinohara caught the rapier before it even touched the ground, somersaulted and twisted to face Yuriko. Animus pooled around the woman’s feet, and even before she landed on the boards, she used her power to launch herself into a series of fierce thrusts and slashes that had Yuriko frantically dodging and parrying.

Animus coated both of their blades now, gold against grey, and every time they clashed, sparks flew like fireworks.

It took nearly a minute for Yuriko to get used to Kinohara’s different style. It was the Roaring Volcano Style that she recognized from senior Kale’s usage. It was startling to see it used with a rapier and parrying dagger, as instead of brutal sweeps and charging stabs, Kinohara struck with implacable ferocity and speed. Each attack was aimed at a vital point, forcing Yuriko to dodge or parry. She could have used her Anima to absorb the blows, and in truth, she used it surreptitiously to divert the rapier or the dagger’s point away. If she blocked with Anima directly, she had the sneaking suspicion that Kinohara’s Animus would strike deeper into her and who knew what power she possessed. Probably something to do with momentum and weight.

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The moment she got used to the style and started to counterattack, Kinohara changed her technique again. This time, she transitioned into Sweeping Gale, using the last five inches of her double edged blade to slice. Against a singular opponent, Sweeping Gale sought to overwhelm by filling the gaps with slices and thrusts. Kinohara’s Animus left gleaming arcs in the air, and Yuriko’s second dance screamed at her to avoid touching them. A stumble grazed her against one and split the cloth of her gear as though a hot knife through butter. It didn’t touch her skin but her Anima cracked at the glancing blow.

She swept her Animus coated blade against one of the arcs and managed to dissipate it. But Kinohara merely made more. So. They were using all of their power now, were they?

Yuriko danced back from the area, keeping her defense up while she formed Animus patterns and filled it with Radiant energy. She kept having to stop when Kinohara pressed her. Somehow, the woman could detect that she was trying to do something and did her best to distract and interrupt her. Finally, when Yuriko stopped trying too hard to create an entire fusilade, she succeeded in forming a sunshard. A single one that was a couple of inches long. The air around it seemed to catch on fire until she tightened the weave that held it together, then, tethered to her Anima with long tendrils of Animus, she sent it flying about to cut down the ribbons of grey that were slowly limiting her movement.

A surprised gasp came from around her but Kinohara focused entirely on their fight. The other woman grinned savagely and changed tactics again even as Yuriko pressed her attack. Now, she used the arcs and ribbons her blade left behind to divert and block Yuriko’s sunshard. It took the miniature blade a second or two to cut down a grey ribbon, which was more than enough time for Kinohara to dance away.

So Yuriko made another one, and sent it to harry the armsmaster. And when that proved insufficient, she created a third, then a fourth. Without using Fri’Avgi, four was probably her limit. In fact, she could barely pay attention to her own sword dance as she expressed it through the sunshards now instead of her body.

It had been a long two weeks inside the Silver Tiger and in that time, she had managed to decipher Fri’Avgi’s sunshard creation. Her speculation had been right. Once she learned how to do it on her own, when she used her artefact to create the shards, it had been easier and cost significantly less Animus and Radiant energy. Though the limit of control was still seven.

Soon, the sunshards had managed to corner Kinohara. The woman stood firm and used a variation of Flowing Water, and Jade Mountain to defend herself. With the latter style, she formed her grey Animus into hexagonal shields, much like how Heron used his Facet, to block and redirect blows.

The stalemate lasted for five minutes, an unimaginably long time for a duel, but Yuriko thought the woman was running on fumes. At least until Kinohara flared her Protective Field and flung away the sunshards.

“Enough,” she said and lowered her weapons. Her brow was slick with sweat, but her face was aglow with excitement and pride.

Yuriko nodded and called the shards back around her. In truth, she had gotten her second wind after that brief rest. An advantage of the sunshards was that it only took her mind and Intent to control them, not her body. Animus was still used up though, when she kept the dances up, but without them, the shards would be so clumsy that it wouldn’t take much effort to avoid them.

She admired her Animus construct for a moment. The elegance of the lines and how it all cycled ambient Chaos into its structure, kept it stable and burned it for heat, was something she would never have been able to do without her artefact. Well, she managed to make the sunblade, but miniaturising it to that extent without sacrificing power and control was a wonder to behold. Anyway, she dissipated the shards and returned her attention to the instructors.

A thunderous applause made her jump. The students watching were howling and whistling their appreciation, but remained at a respectful distance thanks to the instructors presence. Claude and Selwyn’s faces were pale and withdrawn, but they, too, clapped.

“Well done,” Armsmaster Kinohara said while she waved for the students to quiet down. “Let’s move to a more private space so we can discuss your performance and what it means for you.”

There was a small counseling room right next to the arena, it turned out, and the four of them, Master Ruminos included, settled into it.

“Now then,” Kinohara started, “that was a magnificent showing. You’ve no knowledge of the other two Phases and even the ones you use aren’t true to form. But, I can see that you’ve faced battles, and none of them were easy. You don’t have that stubbornness in insisting to use your sword to the exclusion of everything else and you’ve got an amazing bloodthirst.” She looked at Master Soren and Master Ruminos. “It would be a shame if we left your training as is, but honestly, there is little practical need for you to remain in Martial Sciences class. You’d be better served with a private tutor or seek a swordmaster or armsmaster to teach you the forms.”

“What does this mean, Armsmaster?” Yuriko couldn’t help but ask.

“It means,” Kinohara grinned, “you’ve completed all the credits you need for Martial Sciences. You won’t have to take any of such classes to graduate.”

“That leaves us with Animus control, Runescribing, Spellweaving, and the basics of Sorcery,” Master Ruminos declared. “And of course, your knowledge classes. Those, I don’t think you’ve passed.”

“So does this mean I’m stuck with History, Arithmetic, and the others like that for the next three years?”

Without being able to train with the other students too? Yuriko wasn’t sure if she was happy with this result, but…she wanted to return to Rumiga and to her brothers, so maybe this wasn’t so bad. Ah, didn’t Aunt Layla say that since she was a third order Journeyman, she was likely to be put in graduate studies?

That meant she was free to pursue her own schedule right? And which campus she wanted to be in? She mentioned as much and the three masters exchanged glances.

“Graduate studies means you actually have to pass all of your basic classes,” Master Ruminos said. “You haven’t yet and from the results of your reassessments, you’re actually far behind. No, I’m afraid you’re still stuck as a student, Miss Mishala.”

Yuriko sighed, then said, “My name is Yuriko Mishala Davar. Why don’t you call me Miss Davar as everyone I know does?”

Ruminos snorted a laugh. “You’re of the Mishala clan, there’s no doubt about it. Hence, you are a Mishala. Now then, I believe we are done for the day. Please enjoy the rest of your afternoon and we’ll see you tomorrow to continue the reassessment exams.”

Yuriko sighed, but didn’t protest. As soon as she left the counseling room, Miya grabbed her arm.

“There you are! Come on! We’ve still got places to go. Oh, but change out of that dreary outfit! I’ve got some clothes for you.”

And despite her protests, Yuriko got dragged behind her cousin.

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