Chapter 123: CH 123

Episode 123 – A Hard-Fought First Win

Because of the strong overhead slash just now, Lyra’s movements were much more cautious than before. To be honest, Lyra’s forte was in moving reactively according to her intuition, so when her movements were being kept in check like this, it was a lot less scary.

This kind of situation where the flow of the battle stalled happened way too often during my mock battles with Kirty. If Lyra was stronger than Kirty, it would be a different story, but… there was absolutely no way that was true.

The two of us slowly inched forward, gradually closing the distance between us. The moment our swords crossed, Lyra moved first, commencing her attack. Lyra’s close range fighting style involved throwing feints in here and there to throw off her opponent’s timing. If I were to fall for Lyra’s feints even a little bit, I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the next few attacks because her athletic ability was simply higher than mine. That’s why the most important thing was to not fall for any of Lyra’s feints.

No matter how many times Lyra swung and brandished her sword at me, I maintained a middle-level stance1 and endured. With a middle-level stance, even if I were to fall for a feint and allow Lyra to counterattack with all her might, I would still have enough time to put a guard up. In general, the key to defeating Lyra was to not be swayed and to pull her into my own pace.

(TL: The middle-level stance, or the chūdan stance, is one of the five main kendo postures. It’s the most basic stance and provides a good balance between attacking and defensive techniques.)

From an onlooker’s point of view, it looked like Lyra was the one laying on the attacks as she was moving her body up, right, left, down, and center, but in reality I was the one forcing her back one step at a time. The smile on Lyra’s face as she maneuvered about every which way gradually morphed into an expression of anguish. Because of her showy movements, her breaths were quickly becoming labored, and her cheeks started flushing red as she tried to make me falter.

Lyra was very strong against opponents who were willing to take her bait. On the other hand, when up against someone who chose to fight at their own pace just like I was now, she would always try to find an opening by drastically changing her fighting tempo to fast and slow extremes. And right now, she was using a fast tempo.

She was overly fixated on trying to break the timing of my defenses, so she was moving faster and faster, which resulted in a lot of wasted movements and stamina. Plus, she had stopped shifting her tempo and was only trying to move as fast as she could, which actually only made it easier for me to deal with her movements.

…There were times where I became impatient with my attacks just like this, and Kirty would always scold me for it every time. It was true that fast movements were effective in battles, but it was never good to allow your opponent to get used to them. In order to shake up your opponent, it was good to use a slow and steady pace to start, then before they could get used to it, strike out at top speed. During my training, Kirty would often emphasize this point to me.

Seeing that Lyra had entered into the same bad state that I had been taught not to fall into, I started moving to close out the match without hesitation. Calmly reading Lyra’s quick movements that were trying to throw me off to no avail, I stabbed out sharply.

The thrust slipped through the gaps in her movements and struck her perfectly in the left shoulder, throwing her off balance. Immediately after, I pressed the attack, swinging my wooden sword in a diagonal slash that collided with Lyra’s right shoulder while she was still unsteady on her feet.

""

“…….That’s 3 hits. Match set. It’s Lewin’s victory.” (Nina)

When I heard Nina’s matter-of-fact announcement of my victory, my shoulders finally relaxed. This was the first time I had had a flawless victory against Lyra. It was probably also the best match performance I’d shown so far.

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“……….Wuuu, how frustrating. I lost so badly that I don’t even know what to say…” (Lyra)

“The match just happened to go well for me, but I’m glad I was able to beat you, Lyra.” (Lewin)

“Lewin, you’ve really become strong. If it were last year’s Lewin, I would have been able to finish the match in the first blow, but now you don’t even fall for a single feint of mine.” (Lyra)

“It’s only because I’ve received a lot of help from my sword master.” (Lewin)

And then, in the other match, Byrne versus Porta… completely unexpectedly, Porta came out victorious somehow.

The defeated Byrne was flopped on the ground, seemingly astounded by this outcome. The match consisted of Byrne one-sidedly attacking Porta, who was only guarding and throwing in an attack at the moments where he could safely attack, so the match was completely uninteresting to watch… But just the fact that Porta was able to beat Byrne was enough to nearly move me to tears.

At the start, among the five of us, the two of us were the weakest and always felt ashamed of our inferiority in these mock battles. Being in a similar position as him, I was the one who could recognize best the amount of effort Porta had been putting in. But the reality of competition was cruel. No matter how hard you tried, there was no guarantee you would get stronger; but if you didn’t get stronger, you would never win.

Thanks to Kirty’s superb teaching, I was able to become stronger at a favorable rate, so I was able to earn some victories against Lyra, Nina, and Byrne comparatively quickly. Up until today, Porta had never won against any of us.

But today he had finally earned his first victory, however hard-fought or unrefined it was.

I wanted to run up to Porta to congratulate him, but when he turned and looked at me, his eyes were not rejoicing. Instead, he was gazing at me seriously. From the look in his eyes, I could instantly tell that Porta’s goal wasn’t to win only a single match.

“Porta, congratulations on your first win.” (Lewin)

“Thanks Lewin. Since you won your first match, I’m glad I could win one today as well. Let’s settle this in the finals, as the two weakest.” (Porta)

“Alright. In the finals… bring it on.” (Lewin)

Bumping fists with Porta, I promised to fight him in the finals match. Well, there was a chance we could get matched up through rock paper scissors and end up having to fight in the second round, but… I somehow got the feeling that I would be fighting Porta in the finals.

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