Chapter 1639 - 228 - On The Frontline (15)
She was fast.
Her speed wasn’t quite on Morishita’s level, but she was still moving quickly enough to be considered impressive. In terms of speed, she was roughly comparable to Sakai, which meant that she was certainly faster than the average person.
She immediately went for a slash.
Her sword came diagonally toward my side, the mana surrounding the blade making the attack considerably more dangerous than an ordinary sword strike.
I moved my wooden sword into position and blocked it.
The impact traveled through my arm, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle.
Kaori, however, didn’t hesitate after her first attack failed.
She recovered from the blocked strike almost immediately and followed up with another attack.
Then another.
At the same time, flames began spreading across the blade of her sword.
The fire wrapped around the weapon and danced along its edge, making her next attack considerably more threatening.
"Raaaaahh!"
Kaori shouted as she swung again.
The shout wasn’t particularly intimidating by itself, but I could tell what was behind it.
She was trying.
Unlike Sakai and Kashiwagi, Kaori still had some hesitation when it came to actually striking another person. The way she moved told me that she wasn’t completely comfortable with the idea of hurting someone, and there was still a certain restraint behind her attacks.
Even so, she was trying to overcome that hesitation.
That was the important part.
She also seemed to understand that I wasn’t going to be easily killed by her.
Because of that, she was putting everything she had into her attacks instead of worrying about accidentally defeating me.
"That’s right!" I shouted while blocking another attack. "Show me what you’ve got, and don’t hold yourself back!"
"Haaa!"
She shouted again as she swung her sword.
The next attack came from another angle, followed quickly by another slash.
She kept attacking without giving herself much time to think.
I continued blocking her strikes with my wooden sword while watching her movements.
She had energy.
That much was obvious.
She wasn’t lacking enthusiasm, either.
If anything, she had more fighting spirit than I initially expected.
Unfortunately, enthusiasm wasn’t enough.
Her determination still wasn’t quite there.
There was a difference between wanting to win a fight and being genuinely prepared to hurt someone in order to win it.
Kaori was somewhere in between those two things.
Still, she was doing considerably better than Sakai and Kashiwagi.
At least she was trying to overcome her hesitation instead of simply allowing it to control her.
I continued blocking her attacks, letting her come at me again and again.
Her breathing gradually became heavier.
Her movements became slightly less precise.
She was beginning to tire.
Eventually, I decided that I had seen enough.
When she swung her sword again, I shifted my wooden blade into position and completely blocked the attack.
Then I immediately swept my sword upward.
The force of the movement knocked her sword straight out of her hands.
Her weapon flew through the air before landing several steps away.
The tip stabbed directly into the ground.
Kaori froze for a moment as she stared at her empty hand.
"Ugh..." she muttered, sounding visibly frustrated.
That reaction brought back an unexpected amount of nostalgia.
I had heard that exact kind of frustrated sound so many times back in my previous life.
For a brief moment, I could almost picture the girl I had known back then.
The memories disappeared just as quickly as they had appeared.
This wasn’t Earth.
I wasn’t the same person anymore.
And Kaori wasn’t simply the childhood friend I remembered either.
She was someone standing in front of me now, someone who needed to become stronger if she wanted to survive what was coming.
"You are certainly better than the others when it comes to physical strength and the way you swing your sword," I said while lowering my wooden sword. "Your attacks have proper weight behind them, and you’re able to combine your swordsmanship with mana without completely losing control of your movements."
Kaori remained quiet while listening.
"You also have the mindset required to actually cut down an enemy," I continued. "That’s an important quality when you’re going into a real war, because hesitation can get you killed just as easily as a bad attack."
I paused for a moment while looking at her.
"However, your determination to actually do it is still lacking."
Her expression changed slightly.
I could tell that she understood what I meant.
"In fact, aside from Morishita, all of you are lacking in that area."
I looked over at the others.
They were all capable of fighting.
They could use their weapons.
They could use their abilities.
They could even put up a decent fight against weaker opponents.
The problem was something deeper.
They hadn’t completely adjusted to the idea of actually killing another person.
That hesitation was still there.
It might not seem like much right now, but once they entered a real battlefield, that tiny hesitation could become the difference between walking away alive and ending up dead.
A battlefield wasn’t going to give them time to think about whether they felt bad for their opponent.
Their enemies weren’t going to politely wait while they gathered their courage.
War didn’t care whether someone was mentally prepared.
If they hesitated at the wrong moment, someone else would take advantage of it.
I thought about that for a while.
I was fairly certain that they simply weren’t in tune with that part of themselves yet.
They had trained to fight, but they hadn’t truly trained themselves to kill.
Those were two very different things.
So perhaps I should train them specifically for that.
Maybe I needed to force them into a situation where they couldn’t simply rely on hesitation.
I had Beelzebub with me, after all.
If I made her appear completely innocent and harmless, then had them believe they were supposed to kill her, perhaps that would be enough to make them overcome their hesitation.