Chương 34: Chapter 33: Fight Like Yourself

The sheer force of the clashes rattled against Elma's eardrums, leaving a sharp, throbbing ache behind her eyes. In the center of the clearing, Silk was systematically dismantling her opponent. The spar immediately exposed a massive structural flaw in Jorm's combat logic: she was utterly exposed. Gund simply weighed more than its wielder. Every committed swing dragged Jorm's center of gravity forward, pulling her off balance.

She attempted to compensate by allowing the blade's momentum to carry her into a continuous, spinning fan of motion, but that would only throw her off balance more. Silk punished every single rotation, her glowing blade slipping uninterrupted past Jorm's wide guard. Silk had issued several verbal corrections, but Jorm stubbornly refused to abandon her grip on the massive slab. Beside Elma, Lucien watched the spar with vacant admiration.

He kept his eyes locked on Silk's fluid, lethal movements, taking slow sips from his flask.

"Isn't she beautiful?" he muttered.

"It really is beyond me why everyone isn't throwing themselves at her feet." Elma stared up at him, then looked back at the spar.

"What exactly do you provide?" Lucien blinked, pulling the flask from his lips.

"I'm sorry?"

"You are useless," Elma stated.

"I fail to understand what to be admired about you."

"So you do understand everything," Lucien scoffed, screwing the lid back onto his flask.

"How old are you again?" Elma didn't bother to answer him.

"And to answer your question, there are many things she likes about me. You just wouldn't get them." Lucien puffed out his chest slightly, eager to validate his own existence.

"I'm loyal. I'm smart. I'm funny. I'm kind—""Useless and cheap commodities," Elma cut in.

"Except for loyalty. But since you are completely harmless, your loyalty is entirely pointless." Lucien stared at her for a long second.

"Yep." He unscrewed his flask and took another heavy sip.

"No wonder mother likes you so much."

Clang. A violent shockwave rippled through the dome. Gund was ripped from Jorm's trembling hands, the massive slab spinning through the air before impaling the damp earth. Jorm collapsed to her knees, gasping for air.

"Grab it," Silk commanded, instantly lunging forward to press the advantage. Elma watched closely. Jorm didn't reach for the heavy sword. Instead, the maid's eyes narrowed into slits, her focus entirely locked on Silk's descending steel. Jorm flared her Resonance Field, attempting to project her Geo affinity outward to catch, stall, or manipulate the metallic structure of Silk's incoming blade. Nothing happened.

Silk's blade cut through the air unimpeded, coming to a dead stop exactly a millimeter from the bridge of Jorm's nose. Silk held the position for a second before sheathing her weapon with a cold hiss.

"This is not going to work." Elma walked across the grass to join them. Jorm lowered her head, her shoulders heaving as she stared at the dirt in defeat.

"Perhaps you should attempt to weave and use a smaller blade," Elma suggested.

"At least until your frame grows in the future."

"What if I never get bigger?" Jorm choked out. The words left her mouth so quietly they were almost swallowed by the night air. She immediately lowered her head, embarrassed by the confession, and tightened her grip on Gund's hilt. The answer seemed obvious. Size was a variable. Strength was a variable. Neither determined the outcome. Lucien stepped forward.

"Well, if you're so adamant about using that specific piece of iron, we could just take it to a smith. Melt it down and reforge it into two or three smaller, actual weapons."

"No!" Jorm shouted, her head whipping up as if she had just been deeply insulted.

"Then continuing this exercise is only wasting both of our time," Silk said, turning away.

"Change the weapon, or give up trying to fight with a sword." Elma was quiet for a moment longer than she meant to be.

"You don't have to be big to fight," she said finally. Jorm looked up. Elma glanced toward Gund.

"You were trying to fight like someone else. You need to fight like yourself." Jorm lowered her gaze to the damp earth for a long moment. She understood what Elma was trying to say. Perhaps she had always understood, but had simply refused to acknowledge it. Slowly, her gaze drifted left, rising to the clock face mounted above the maid house. She watched the metal hands moving in perfect synchronization, ticking away the seconds in the cold dark. A fragment of memory surfaced.

Tiny fingers wrapped around a brass pocket watch far too large for her hands. Her mother knelt beside her, patiently guiding one finger to the shorter hand, then the longer one, teaching her how to tell the time. Jorm remembered almost nothing of that day anymore. Only the warmth of her mother's smile, and her own fascination with the tiny machine. Hidden gears, each turning at its own pace, somehow joined together so perfectly that every hand moved exactly when it should. Tick. Tick. Tick.

The rhythm lingered in her head long after the memory itself faded.

"Do you require sleep?" Elma asked, observing the sudden, deadened shift in the maid's posture. Jorm didn't answer. She extended her right arm toward her weapon. Reaching out with her Resonance Field. A dull thrum vibrated through the air, and Gund ripped itself from the grass, spinning forward to lock neatly into her waiting grip. She leveled the massive blade forward, extending her empty left hand flat and parallel to the one holding the blade—the exact stance she had been drilling for the past hour.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. Elma silently took two steps backward, granting the sudden spike in kinetic potential adequate clearance. Jorm kept her stance, her eyes locked on the shimmering surface of the weapon. She was studying its shape, trying to reconcile the reality of the metal in her hand with the distorted memories still looping behind her eyes. She was trying desperately to separate this heavy, worn sword from the one her father used to wield.

In her childhood memories, his blade had been larger, heavier, and radiated a legendary presence. They are not the same, Jorm told herself. The sword in her grip was hers. It was the weapon she wielded to protect her mother, not the phantom blade she had idolized in her childhood dreams. The heavy fog in her mind slowly dispersed, leaving only the cold iron in front of her. From the damp grass, Elma watched with analytical fascination. She had never seen the maid's focus narrow to such a razor-sharp point.

"What is she doing?" Lucien whispered, squinting through the dark. Elma raised a finger to her lips, keeping her gaze locked on her friend. Jorm shifted Gund to her right side. She extended her empty palm into the air. In a single sequence, she wove a second identical slab of heavy iron into her left hand. Silk tilted her head slightly, the moonlight shifting across the cold steel of her mouth guard.

Jorm, then, swung the right blade forward, the immense weight immediately threatening to haul her momentum off balance—but she countered instantly, sweeping the left blade in a synchronized, opposing arc. Silk shot forward immediately, closing the distance in a blur of silver. Her glowing steel snapped toward Jorm's neck, but slammed to a dead halt, caught in a crushing cross-guard between the two iron slabs.

Before Silk could redirect her leverage, Jorm snapped her head forward, headbutting the guard square in her metal faceplate. The force of the impact sent a shockwave rippling through the clearing, blowing back Elma's golden hair and flapping Lucien's coat around his knees. Silk skidded backward across the damp grass, her boots digging twin trenches into the soil to arrest her momentum. Jorm launched herself forward.

She used the second sword as a counterweight, turning every wild, unbalanced swing into a continuous engine of momentum. Iron crashed against silver in a blinding flurry of sparks. In the heart of the sealed acoustic dome, the maid had finally found her frequency, fighting the silver-clad killer on equal footing. Elma smiled faintly as she watched Silk's posture tighten. Silk was undoubtedly infuriated by the headbutt. Underneath the silver armor and the elite training, she was still exactly the same.

In the center of the clearing, Jorm had tapped into a completely different operational framework. The breakthrough had fundamentally altered her spatial awareness. She moved like a balanced gyroscope, muttering sharply to herself to map her attack vectors as she spun.

"One o'clock." Jorm redirected the right slab, intercepting a thrust.

"Nine and a half." She brought the left blade around to catch a flanking strike. Silk staggered backward slightly.

"Twelve o'clock!" Jorm brought both blades together in a sweeping horizontal pincer slash. Silk vaulted backward, clearing the lethal arc by a fraction of an inch. Jorm looked over her shoulder at Elma, a wide, breathless smile plastered across her face. From the damp grass, Elma raised her hand and gave the maid a rigid thumbs-up.

"Really?" Lucien shouted from the safety of the hedges.

"You're just going to let her do you like that?" Silk's leather-gloved hand tightened audibly around her hilt. She reached up with her free hand and pushed her hood back, exposing her dark hair, though the metal mouth guard remained fixed in place.

"Let's step it up a bit now," she said, her voice dropping in preparation. Jorm's smile vanished. She let out a nervous, awkward laugh.

"Actually, it is getting quite late, and I have an early shift tomorrow—" Clang. Jorm threw her blades up to parry at the last microsecond. The impact was so violent it sent her skidding several feet backward across the grass, her boots tearing up the turf. Elma glanced at Lucien. He was taking another casual sip from his flask, nodding approvingly at Silk's sudden burst of speed as if he were her personal instructor. Elma looked away in mild disgust and returned her focus to the spar.

Silk had drastically scaled up the effort behind each swing. Every clash was now either violently throwing Jorm off balance or creating a dangerous gap in her guard. Elma's eyes narrowed. Jorm's maximum output was 2, 000 Will. Silk was casually, effortlessly exceeding that threshold. Elma sighed.

"It's late, we need to conclude this now." But the two combatants didn't break apart. They continued trading rapid blows. Watching their footwork, Elma quickly deduced the ridiculous truth of the engagement: Silk wasn't trying to disarm Jorm. She was deliberately extending the fight, hunting for an opening purely so she could headbutt Jorm back. And Jorm, somehow aware of the assassin's petty vendetta, was desperately keeping her guard high to protect her face.

"I am releasing the acoustic dome," Elma announced loudly over the ringing steel.

"If you wish to wake the entire estate, you are welcome to continue." The violent exchange stopped instantly. Silk stood perfectly still in the grass. The muscles in her jaw visibly tightened as her metal mask bulged slightly. With a sharp flick of her wrist, she sheathed her glowing blade.

"When should our next training session be?" Silk asked. It was obvious she could not wait for her next opportunity to fracture Jorm's nose.

"I don't know, but definitely not tomorrow night," Jorm gasped. She dropped her focus, and the two massive iron slabs clattered heavily to the earth. Her hands were trembling slightly from absorbing the force emitted by Silk's strikes. Elma stared closely at Silk's sheathed weapon. The blade looked flawless. Despite having just been repeatedly slammed against two massive, reinforced slabs of raw iron, the edge hadn't chipped, and the metal hadn't bent.

That alone was highly irregular, not to mention the fact that Jorm's Geo affinity completely failed to resonate with it. Lucien clapped his hands together, stepping out from the hedges.

"That was a very cool performance, little maid. To survive a spar with Silk at your age... that was actually incredible." Jorm rubbed the back of her neck, swaying slightly on her feet as she smiled at Silk.

"It's all due to her great teaching."

"I taught you as well," Elma reminded Jorm. Jorm blinked down at her.

"Oh. And yours too, of course."

"The night after tomorrow," Silk commanded sharply, grabbing Lucien by the sleeve of his coat and dragging him toward the manor.

"Be here." Lucien stopped her.

"Wait." Silk glanced back.

"We can't just leave Elma here." Elma knew immediately that she couldn't refuse. She looked back toward the maid house. Jorm already had used her Resonance to carve a small hollow beneath the earth, burying the copy sword and the discarded pieces of iron before they could dissolve back into nothingness. She carried Gund last. The sword was wrapped in a red cloth and placed carefully inside. The soil was returned with remarkable precision, leaving no trace except for a single white stone placed above it. A marker.

Elma remembered the white stone Jorm was searching for at the hidden exit. Was that how she marked her hidden things? She stored the observation away.

"Elma, we're waiting," Lucien called.

"It's getting really late."

"You're good now?" Jorm asked. Elma looked back at her. The maid's eyes were still tired from the night's events. Her hair was slightly disheveled, her apron stained with dirt from the training ground, and yet she was smiling.

"I am," Elma said. Jorm studied her for a moment longer, as if checking the answer herself. Then she nodded.

"That's great," she said quietly. A yawn escaped her before she could stop it.

"Good night, Elma." Jorm turned toward the maid house, taking slow steps toward the entrance. Elma watched her until she disappeared inside.

"Elma." Lucien's voice pulled her back. He stood beside Silk, one hand raised impatiently while the other adjusted his coat.

"We don't exactly want to be caught out here with the Sovereign's child, especially after all the recent drama around you." Elma walked past them without looking.

"You are a child as well." It took one step for them to catch up. Lucien opened his mouth. Closed it.

"Let me guess. Because I'm incompetent." A low gasp escaped Elma's mouth.

"He's evolving," she muttered to herself. She glanced at Silk, who had said nothing the entire walk back. Her posture gave nothing away. But Elma had been watching her all night. Tomorrow, Hephryx was coming. And based on Silk's silence, she already knew.