It’s strange.
Something feels off.
This was the thought of Laksia, the 4th Vice Commander of the Golden Dusk Knights, as she swung her sword.
At first, she was too anxious and then too angry to think straight, but as her nerves and anger gradually subsided, all that came to her mind was that something was indeed off.
Despite attacking dozens, if not hundreds of times, she hadn’t been able to land a single hit. Not that she didn’t manage to deal effective damage, but that her sword didn’t even graze the man’s body.
She swung her sword again to shake off her unease. A perfectly executed diagonal cut from the lower right to the upper left.
However, the trajectory of Laksia’s sword, upon colliding with the man’s blade – which looked like it was about to snap as all its teeth had been knocked out – drastically twisted and ricocheted off in a bizarre direction.
She couldn’t comprehend it at all. Laksia had maintained her sword meticulously every day, crafted from far better metal than that sad excuse for a weapon, and was worth many times more than that near-broken sword.
‘But why?!’
Laksia gritted her teeth and swung her sword again. Twang! A sharp metallic sound rang out, yet again the trajectory of her sword changed. In sync, Laksia’s body lurched dangerously.
She staggered back to prepare for her next attack. Pulling her arms back, she launched forward like a bowstring. Her body lifted off the ground, and just before reaching her peak, she extended her sword.
After confirming which direction her opponent was trying to dodge, she twisted her body in mid-air to prepare for a trajectory shift. While it was impossible to change her angle entirely, a slight adjustment was still achievable.
Adjusting her trajectory while airborne was no easy task, demonstrating the swordsmanship worthy of the 4th Vice Commander of the Golden Dusk Knights.
Her posture, angle, and position—all were absolutely perfect.
—Crash!
Except for the fact that she had failed.
The man in front of her seemed to move left to evade, but as Laksia redirected towards him, instead of distancing himself, he rolled directly towards her.
As a result, the tip of Laksia’s sword didn’t even brush against him, instead burying itself in the ground.
—Snap!
“Yowch!”
“Oh, my mistake. I didn’t hit you on purpose.”
Taking the opportunity to regain her stance, the broken sword smacked her left buttock with a snap. Her firm backside wobbled. A sharp pain spread through her body.
Unintentionally, Laksia let out a strange scream. Honestly, it was fortunate that it only ended up as a scream. If that had been a real weapon used in actual combat, her flesh would have been cut.
The thought of how it would have been had she worn armor briefly crossed her mind. She figured it would have been much better to wield a real sword while wearing armor, at least she wouldn’t have made such a ridiculous scream.
At first, Laksia had no intention of fighting without her armor. Afraid of a complete loss, her only goal was to win at least once by any means necessary.
But as she had pointed out herself, the opponent was just a newbie knight, and wielding a weapon like that made armor feel excessive.
‘Could it be that he deliberately chose a broken sword to provoke me?’
With another hit to her armpit causing her to let out a funny scream, Laksia pondered this.
The one wielding the broken sword had expressed that wearing armor was fine, and Laksia had foolishly insisted on removing hers; that memory had already faded somewhere in her mind.
The fact that it was already too late to be proud about that only added to her frustration.
“Hey! Delta! Are you aiming for those spots on purpose? First it was my butt, and now it’s my armpit!”
“No, I’m saying it was a mistake! In that situation, there was nowhere else to hit!”
“If you’re hitting my butt, then later I’ll let you hit mine as much as you want—Ouch?!”
“Are you crazy, sis? This is the training ground! There are other people here too! Please stop saying such lewd things!”
What was fueling Laksia’s anger even more was that while she was desperately fighting with no room to spare, the guys seated on the waiting stones seemed to be enjoying a casual chat.
It was distracting enough that she could hear the whispers of the knights watching the spar. Laksia clenched her teeth. If she lost, it would be the ultimate humiliation.
She absolutely had to win, whatever the cost.
‘……Was the shock too much?’
Looking at the Vice Commander being dragged away with a blank expression, I scratched my head unnecessarily.
‘I told you to wear armor in the fight.’
As its name suggested, the broken sword was closer to a switch than a legitimate weapon. It didn’t inflict serious injuries, yet she constantly screamed in pain.
In fact, her screams were rather peculiar.
Whatever the problem was, each time she got hit, the sound that came out was closer to a screech than a scream, leaving me more confused than ever while hitting her. Consequently, I ended up with an odd misunderstanding from Lize.
If she had just worn armor and fought, she wouldn’t have had to scream like that or be dragged away in such a pitiful state.
I couldn’t understand why she insisted on holding onto unnecessary pride, making it awkward for both the attacker and the attacked.
“…….”
The faces of the Golden Dusk Knights watching me were filled with sheer shock. In particular, the face of another Vice Commander who had come in mid-fight was even more agitated.
And rightly so. The human, labeled a newbie, had toyed with and defeated their Vice Commander in the spar, how could they not be shocked? They must have been quite taken aback.
However, the thing worrying me lay elsewhere.
‘Their outfits are quite…’
While the Silver Dawn Knights wore tight white sleeveless tops and dolphin shorts, the Golden Dusk Knights’ uniforms seemed to highlight their bodies in a way that revealed every contour through sporty bras and leggings.
Moreover, for some unknown reason, even wearing sporty bras, their chests were bouncing prominently. I had thought sporty bras were supposed to prevent that during exercise.
And naturally, they weren’t wearing any underwear, their lower halves sticking to their bodies like they were in vacuum-sealed packaging without a single line showing.
“Great job, Delta. Did you see their expressions? They look completely out of it!”
Returning the broken sword to its original spot, Claudia greeted me with a snicker. She appeared to be thoroughly enjoying the moment, clearly having built up a lot of excitement.
“Is it really that good?”
“Of course! He won’t be able to show his face around here again! Oh, wait. They’ll probably be fine since they challenged you and got wrecked.”
Claudia’s voice echoed loudly, resonating throughout the training ground, causing all the Golden Dusk Knights to freeze as if struck by lightning. Apparently, that guy hadn’t told them that he had lost to me.
Seeing this, Claudia wore an expression of sheer delight. Iris subtly nodded with a smile, and Erika was no different.
“Did you enjoy playing around while hitting other girls’ butts?”
However, only Lize was pouting with her cheeks puffed out. The absurdity of her sulking was because she was upset that I hit another girl’s rear instead of hers.
“I told you, it was a mistake. And if someone hears that, they’ll misunderstand.”
“Given it was a mistake, you sure looked pleased while hitting her. I could stick out my butt right now if you want to make you feel even better hitting it.”
“……That would really be a misunderstanding.”
The reason I laughed while finishing the spar with the Vice Commander was that I was finally able to enjoy a leisurely battle after such a long time.
After facing the vicious DLC boss Lucia, and the Creature Abandoned by God from the previous encounter, going up against this level of opponent felt like a refreshing healing experience.
Of course, compared to Vanilla, it was still a significant increase in difficulty, but right now, that comparison held no weight. Every difficulty level is relative.
Well, for me, whether it was the DLC final boss or the mid-boss I just faced, it was the same—just a single touch would mean death.
‘……Could this also be due to the dark magic on my head?’
Once that doubt began to creep in, whenever I felt even a little less scared, it all started to feel like it was the dark magic’s fault. I might have to find that witch soon and hear the truth.
“So? Are you going to keep trying?”
“…….”
At Iris’s question, all the members of the Golden Dusk Knights subtly averted their eyes. Whenever our gazes met, they flinched, lowering their eyes or hesitating to turn their heads.
The atmosphere was one of complete loss of will. Just moments ago, their Vice Commander had overwhelmingly lost in a spar, and now their Commander had charged at me only to be defeated. It was only natural they felt disheartened.
Gazing at them, a sudden curiosity struck me, prompting me to turn my head.
“Erica.”
“Yes, Delta. What’s up?”
As I spoke to Erica, whose face was glowing with a smile, her voice returned to me in a light-hearted tone unlike her usual self.
“You said they started it, right? What did they say?”
“The Vice Commander who lost to you said to us something along the lines of why they, being the outcasts, were allowed in this sacred space. Other knights had a similar vibe.”
Ah, so that was the root of the issue.
It made sense why the Commanders kept pushing me to accept the spar—they wanted to make that woman pay for instigating the situation. She must have wanted to make them pay dearly for it.
That they were anxious made sense as well, having instigated a spar they’d never won, now finding it impossible to salvage.
‘Where did they find the confidence to challenge Commanders with that combination, though?’
Considering the training ground’s forces, there was only one Vice Commander and the rest were all regular members. The thought that they had the gall to provoke us with a lineup like that was amusing.
What in the world had given them that confidence?
“If you don’t plan to pounce again, we’ll be leaving. There’s nothing more to do here.”
Iris stood up. It was true; our work here was done. The Commanders exited the training ground and strode off with purpose.
Everyone except me, including Lize, seemed to know where they were headed.
Lize, at first, had the same bewildered expression as mine, but upon seeing the expressions of the other three, she quickly deduced their next destination.
“So, where are we going now, Iris? Is there somewhere else to visit?”
“There is. To be exact, it’s somewhere we should have gone originally. I came here first, wondering if they might be elsewhere, and got caught up in all of this.”
“The place we were supposed to go?”
Iris halted momentarily before continuing.
“It’s a place where our knights… no, the knights that were once under us are located.”
