[Narrator POV]
As Claude settled into his fighting stance, Reida Reia found herself genuinely intrigued. The position he'd adopted carried echoes of familiar forms—hints of all three major sword schools—yet somehow remained entirely distinct.
What style is this? she wondered, her experienced eye dissecting every angle of his posture. It borrows elements from techniques I know, but the synthesis... is he actually creating something new?
Creating an original sword style wasn't merely difficult—it was the work of masters who had spent decades perfecting existing forms first.
Yet this boy, barely past childhood, displayed the confident precision of someone who understood the fundamental principles underlying all swordsmanship.
"One!"
The final count rang out, and immediately Reida's attention snapped to her disciple. Isolte had abandoned the traditional Water God defensive opening, instead launching herself forward in a direct assault that caught even her grandmother off-guard.
When did she become so aggressive?
Claude stumbled backward, clearly taken by surprise as Isolte's blade sought his head with surgical precision.
The girl pressed her advantage with a triumphant grin, already preparing her follow-up strike.
Then a fireball erupted from Claude's position.
"What?!" Reida's warrior instincts screamed danger before her rational mind caught up. For a split second, she'd been ready to intervene against an outside attacker—until she realized the magical assault originated from the supposedly overwhelmed boy.
Through the settling dust cloud, Claude emerged behind a shimmering barrier, his sword extended as if he'd cast the spell through the blade itself.
"Fascinating," he commented with casual disinterest, already preparing another incantation. "A defensive specialist taking the offensive? How refreshingly unexpected."
A second fireball screamed toward Isolte. She managed to deflect the first using her Flow technique, redirecting its trajectory into the alley wall, but the second caught her completely unprepared. The explosion sent her tumbling across the cobblestones.
"Ugh!" Isolte grunted as she struggled to regain her footing, smoke rising from her singed training clothes.
Claude approached with deliberate slowness, tapping his sword against the ground in a rhythm that somehow managed to sound mocking.
"If you're already exhausted, perhaps you should stay down, princess." His voice carried an edge of cruel amusement. "I'm certain you realize you can't defeat me."
"Damn it..." Isolte gasped, using her sword as a crutch to pull herself upright. "You're awfully ruthless for someone who just declared his love for me."
The advanced-level spell had clearly taken its toll. Her legs trembled with the effort of maintaining her stance, but her eyes still burned with determination.
"Impressive power in that fireball," Reida observed, studying Claude with new interest. "You caught us both off-guard, boy."
"You flatter me, Water God." Claude's tone remained conversational, but something darker flickered in his expression. "I merely wanted her to experience my capabilities firsthand. I couldn't help but feel insulted—a Water God style practitioner attempting such a pathetic opening assault. Did she mistake me for some common street thug?"
Despite his apparent romantic interest in Isolte, Claude's priorities had shifted with startling abruptness.
The memories of three previous incarnations—Alex, Fred, and Kuro—pressed against his consciousness like hungry ghosts, their accumulated pride and strategic thinking overriding the fourth incarnation's emotional attachments.
He might recognize Isolte as the focal point of his predecessor's feelings, but those emotions belonged to someone else.
This Claude had been forged through logic and calculation, shaped by the accumulated failures of lives he'd never actually lived.
At least, that's what he told himself.
"Very well," Claude continued, noting Isolte's renewed readiness. "Since you've regained your stance, allow me to properly introduce myself."
His posture shifted, adopting the unmistakable aggressive form of the Sword God style. The transformation was subtle but unmistakable to Reida's trained eye—like watching water freeze into steel.
"I am Claude of Arbalest, creator of the Cloud Style." His voice carried formal weight now, as if he were announcing himself at a tournament. "It's my pleasure to meet you, disciple of the Water God."
Then he vanished.
Both women's eyes widened in shock. Even Reida, with her decades of combat experience, found herself momentarily disoriented by the sheer speed of his movement.
Isolte's survival instincts screamed warnings as she sensed the attack materializing behind her.
Pure reflex guided her Flow technique, redirecting the incoming strike just enough to avoid decapitation.
BOOM!
The power behind the deflected blow sent shockwaves through her arms and carved a deep gouge in the alley wall behind her. This isn't the strength of a mere Saint, she realized with growing alarm. This boy is genuinely dangerous.
But before she could fully process the threat, Claude was already moving again—not attacking, but repositioning with fluid grace. He appeared to her left, sword raised in a textbook Sword God overhead strike.
Isolte pivoted desperately, her Flow redirecting the descending blade past her shoulder. The strike embedded itself six inches deep in the cobblestones where she'd been standing.
"Good reflexes," Claude commented conversationally, as if discussing the weather. He didn't even seem winded. "But your footwork is sloppy. You're telegraphing your movements."
To demonstrate his point, he flickered to her right side, his blade coming in a horizontal sweep aimed at her ribs.
Isolte managed to deflect it upward, but the force of the redirect sent her stumbling backward.
"See? You're reacting instead of predicting." Claude continued his lecture while maintaining his assault.
A thrust toward her center, deflected. A feint high followed by a low sweep, barely avoided. "Water God style teaches you to read the flow of battle, but you're only seeing the immediate stream, not the river's course."
Every instinct urged her to flee. The person before her had transformed from a romantic suitor into something predatory—a methodical hunter who seemed to catalog her every weakness while barely exerting himself.
"Your grandmother must be disappointed," Claude mused as he launched into a complex sequence.
High slash deflected left, immediately followed by a spinning strike from the opposite direction that forced Isolte to duck completely.
Before she could recover, his pommel was already descending toward her exposed back.
She rolled forward desperately, Claude's attack missing by inches and pulverizing the stone where she'd been crouched.
"Running away? How undignified for a Water God practitioner." His voice carried mocking disappointment. "I suppose I overestimated your school's reputation."
The taunt sparked something in Isolte's chest—a flare of pride that burned through her fear. She spun to face him, raising her sword in a proper defensive stance despite her trembling arms.
"There we go," Claude said with genuine approval. "Much better posture. Now, let's see if you can maintain it."
What followed was the most systematic dismantling Isolte had ever experienced. Claude didn't simply attack—he conducted a brutal tutorial, each strike designed to expose a specific flaw in her technique.
He came at her with pure Sword God aggression, forcing her Flow to activate reflexively. "Your redirections lack conviction," he observed as her desperate parry sent his blade sliding past her guard. "You're afraid of the force, so you're only glancing the attacks aside instead of truly controlling them."
To prove his point, he immediately launched the same attack again. This time, when Isolte's Flow activated, he somehow adjusted mid-strike, following his blade's new trajectory to attack from the angle she'd redirected him toward.
"Predictable," he said as she barely managed to duck under the redirected slash. "You're using Flow as a crutch instead of a tool."
The lesson continued with relentless precision. Claude would demonstrate a weakness, allow her to attempt a correction, then immediately exploit whatever new opening her adjustment created.
He fought with the patience of a master craftsman, methodically reshaping her combat instincts through controlled violence.
A vertical strike that she redirected to the side became a horizontal follow-up that she had to desperately backstep to avoid.
When she tried to create distance, he closed it instantly with Sword God speed. When she attempted to hold her ground, he simply overwhelmed her guard with a flurry of precisely angled attacks that her Flow couldn't fully redirect.
"Your breathing is wrong," he noted during a particularly intense exchange where she'd managed to deflect seven consecutive strikes. "You're holding your breath during the difficult sequences. That's why you're getting winded so quickly."
As if to emphasize the point, he launched into an even more complex pattern—alternating high and low strikes with irregular timing that forced her to Flow constantly.
Within seconds, she was gasping for air while he remained perfectly composed.
"And your stance widens when you're tired," he continued, easily stepping inside her extended guard to tap her shoulder with his sword's flat. "Telegraphing your exhaustion to any competent opponent."
The tap was gentle—almost playful—but it carried the clear message that he could have ended the fight at any moment he chose.
This brat is toying with her, Reida realized with growing fascination and mounting irritation. The outcome had been decided from the first exchange, yet Claude continued to methodically pressure her granddaughter, turning what should have been a simple defeat into an extended lesson.
He's teaching her, she understood with sudden clarity. Each attack is calibrated to push her just beyond her current limits without actually causing serious harm.
But there was something almost cruel in the precision of it—the way he maintained just enough pressure to keep her in constant danger while never quite allowing her to adapt fully to any single pattern.
It was the methodology of someone who understood exactly how much stress a student could bear before breaking.
Claude shifted tactics again, this time incorporating magic between his sword strikes. A Fire Bolt would force her to dodge, only for his blade to be waiting where she landed.
An Earth Spike would erupt from the ground, and while she jumped to avoid it, his sword would sweep the air where she'd have to come down.
"Magic and swordsmanship aren't separate disciplines," he lectured while maintaining his assault. "They're different expressions of the same fundamental principle—imposing your will upon reality. Until you understand that, you'll always be half a step behind opponents who've mastered integration."
Isolte's world had narrowed to pure survival. Every muscle burned with the effort of constant movement, her Flow technique pushed far beyond its normal applications as she desperately tried to handle attacks coming from impossible angles and backed by both steel and sorcery.
And through it all, Claude never seemed to truly extend himself. His breathing remained steady, his movements economical, his commentary flowing as easily as if they were having tea instead of fighting for her life.
"You're improving," he acknowledged as she managed to redirect one of his fire-enhanced strikes into the alley wall, creating a brief opening that she tried to exploit with a counter-attack. "But still too reactive."
He caught her thrust on his crossguard and twisted, disarming her with casual efficiency. Her sword clattered across the cobblestones, leaving her defenseless.
"And that," Claude said with satisfaction, pressing his blade gently against her throat, "is why you should never commit to an attack unless you're certain it will land."
"Hah... hah... hah..." Isolte's breathing came in desperate gasps as Claude stepped back, lowering his weapon to allow her a moment's respite.
Sweat dripped from her face onto the scarred cobblestones, and her legs trembled with exhaustion.
"Have you had enough sparring?" he asked pleasantly.
"What... sparring?" she managed between breaths. "Damn it... you were toying with me!"
Her sword clattered to the cobblestones as her exhausted muscles finally gave out. The victor was obvious without any formal declaration.
"To think my disciple could be handled so thoroughly by someone her own age," Reida mused aloud. "Truly astounding."
"You're too kind, Water God," Claude replied with casual dismissal. "Your disciple simply hasn't matured enough to pose a real challenge."
"Now I understand Charles's confidence in you. Dual mastery at your age—magic and swordsmanship both at such a level—is genuinely remarkable. I find myself quite interested in Arbalest's future."
Claude offered a modest shrug in response, but his relaxed posture proved premature. Some instinct screamed danger, and he immediately employed Flow to redirect a sudden attack from behind.
BAM!
"How strange," he commented, studying his elderly opponent with new respect, "seeing the Water God employ Sword God techniques."
Longsword of Silence. He recognized the advanced technique immediately—a variant of the Longsword of Light where the blade moved faster than sound itself, leaving no audible warning of its approach.
"Don't look so surprised," Reida said with a predatory smile. "Age hasn't dulled my edge entirely. I'm still a Sword King, you know."
Claude activated his Time Square instantly, the world slowing around him as he gained precious moments to analyze his situation.
But even with temporal acceleration, Reida's next assault came uncomfortably fast. He launched a rapid sequence of spells—wind spear, water ball, fireball—hoping to create space and breathing room.
"Remarkable casting speed," Reida acknowledged as she employed her own Flow technique. But unlike Isolte's simple deflections, the Water God's mastery allowed her to reverse and amplify the spells, sending them back at Claude with increased velocity and altered trajectories.
Oh, shit.
His own magic hemmed him in from three directions—wind spear behind, fireball above, water ball below.
The narrow alley that had seemed tactically sound now became a trap, limiting his mobility options to a single forward vector.
Unfortunately, that's exactly where the Water God waited.
Why the hell did I choose an alley for this fight? he berated himself, even as he committed to the only available option. Shallow thinking.
"Brave boy," Reida acknowledged as Claude charged directly toward her, accepting the disadvantageous engagement rather than succumb to his own redirected spells.
Even within his Time Square's acceleration, she somehow sensed his approach and countered with one of the Water God style's five secret techniques.
The impossibility of it left Claude wide-eyed with shock as he found himself pinned, her blade at his throat.
"I surrender," he managed, raising his free hand in defeat.
"That should teach you what happens when you bully my adorable granddaughter," Reida said with satisfaction, punctuating her words with a sharp rap of her sword's pommel against his skull. "Try anything like that in the future, and you can expect considerably more pain than this gentle reminder."
"Ow," Claude rubbed his head ruefully, though his expression carried more amusement than irritation. "Well then, I suppose I've earned approval from the grandparents."
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