As soon as I raised my head, the pressure vanished, lifted cleanly from my shoulders as suddenly as it had descended. The air lightened. My lungs unlocked. My knees stopped trembling from the invisible weight that had nearly driven me into the earth.
Before I could gather my breath, a voice rang out behind me.
"You can withstand my enforcement field. You got some potential, whose black bone reverted to normal."
The voice was sharper than I expected clean-edged, crisp, carrying a clarity that cut through the open air. Not rough, not gravelly like the exhausted figure I'd first seen. The tone belonged to someone younger… someone sharper. Someone who moved like a blade rather than a tired old man.
I spun around, searching for the source, but the space behind me was empty.
Then I felt it. The presence, close, too close. When my eyes shifted, the sword master was suddenly standing right in front of me. I hadn't seen her move. Not even a blur. One moment she was across the arena; the next she was a breath away, close enough for me to see the faint cracks in her chapped lips, the shadowed hollows beneath her eyes, and the thin strands of hair clinging to her temple with sweat.
If I hadn't felt the pressure vanish, I might have believed she'd simply materialized from thin air.
"I know what you're thinking," she said, her voice almost amused. Not accusing just certain, as if reading minds was a morning chore she performed between warm-ups and breakfast."That I look like someone who crawled out of a grave." Her lips tugged upward in a dry smirk. "You're not wrong."
I swallowed, trying to reorganize my thoughts fast enough to not embarrass myself.
Say something noble. Something respectful.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, sir,"
I managed. The word "sir" stuck oddly in my mouth an old reflex clashing with new surroundings.
Her eyes narrowed, not with anger, but in a way that told me I'd just stepped into something stupid.
"Sir?" she echoed. Then again. "Sir?"
She tilted her head slightly, voice dropping into a dangerously amused register.
"Who're you talking to, kid?"
I blinked. "Uh… you?"
"There's no one here but us, so I'm asking again. who exactly are you talking to?"
The arena felt suddenly bigger, emptier. My polite greeting hung in the air like a dead leaf twisting in slow motion.
Then she sighed, stepped back a half pace, and flicked her wrist dismissively.
"You really can't tell, huh? Boys from noble houses are all the same." She lifted her chin. "Fine. I'll spell it out for you."
With a click of her boots against the packed dirt, she planted her wooden sword at her side and declared,
"I, the great Worriar in this kingdom, sword mistress Velanica, have taken a personal interest in you."
Her voice boomed across the arena, powerful enough to echo off the outer walls despite the empty space. The tone didn't match the hunched posture or the dark circles under her eyes. This was confidence. Pride. Authority.
Wait.
Sword mistress?
"Hold on, did you just say sword mistress?" I blurted before my brain could intervene.
Her eyes sharpened in a way I immediately recognized as dangerous.
"Hm? You got a problem with that, huh?"
"You're a female?" I stammered. It wasn't the best way to phrase the realization, but the shock was too quick for finesse.
She slapped her forehead with the heel of her palm. "What do you think, gorilla?"
I waved vaguely at her hunched posture. "Well… I thought you were a male."
"Tch." Her scoff was almost physical. "Figures. You nobles only use your eyes, never your brains."
Despite her irritation, there was a spark in her gaze a sort of mischievous delight, the expression of someone who thoroughly enjoyed being underestimated before burying the assumption six feet under.
"Don't worry," she added, rolling her shoulders back as if shaking off years of fatigue. "I beat most men in this kingdom. And I teach faster than they can blink. So unless you plan on dying stupid, you better keep up."
Some of the tension in my chest loosened unexpectedly. Her rough humor didn't feel mocking; it felt familiar, like banter between classmates. Real. Human.
I let myself breathe. "I'm ready. Just promise not to turn me into a boomerang before lunch."
Her grin spread sharp and toothy, sweeping away every hint of exhaustion.
"No promises, kid."
Then her foot slid back half an inch, and everything changed.
The exhausted, hunched figure vanished in one movement; replaced by lethal precision, spine straightening, stance rooted, eyes sharpening with predatory clarity. Her presence shifted from frail to dangerous in the span of a heartbeat, like watching a dying ember flare into a wildfire.