Once again, the wooden sword smarted against his wrist. No matter how much he tried, he simply wasn’t fast enough to slide through his opponent’s guard without receiving a punishing blow to hands, wrists or arms. What was once possible, courtesy of several extra years of rather unfair experience from Earth, simply went into the department of undoable after they each contracted their respective god. Ioha still made good use of his knowledge – experience was experience after all, but what had just seemed like a vision of fantasy land now growled, bared its teeth and proved to be the real thing. No human back home could move as fast, jump as high or reach as far as his fellow students now, when they were imbued with magic and wielded the abilities that came with it.

  Ioha bent down and picked up his sword again. The hilt was grimy and worn from contact with his sandy palms.

  Two weeks since their memorable classroom lesson, and by now, his losing streak had the other students look away whenever they suspected he wanted another bout. For them, he was a waste of time. Karaki and one female spellsword student were the exceptions. Ioha suspected he’d heard her in the worst way possible when he fled his room one late evening, but that was, for too many reasons, nothing he could ask about.

  “Again,” he said. Damn, I hate it! His arms hurt too much, and when the expected riposte whipped against his gloves, he imagined his aura hardening and forming a small disk just far enough from his hands to protect him.

  Thus far, he’d only entangle himself in the onrushing sword when it caught between his hand and the magic shield. For once, he had success of sorts. Karaki’s blade bounced harmlessly off the extended shield, but the momentum threw it almost full force into Ioha’s face. He flailed backwards, blinded, and tried to rub the burning sensation away.

  “Ioha!”

  Knees to the ground, Ioha forced a hand away from the pain and waved. “My fault. I’m good.” The burning stopped, just to be replaced by a dull, throbbing pain. A few months earlier, he’d have sported an impressive bruise with glorious colours as a reward for his stupidity, but now he had someone who adamantly refused to let him keep any lasting blemishes.

  “Canadena, he’s bleeding!”

  “You’re bad news for Ai,” Canadena said from his right. Ioha finally had a name for the girl who tried her weapons just before him during the day of their first tests. A no-nonsense, curious but all too often quite impolite girl.

  Ioha blinked away the pain and met her eyes. “For her or her aura?”

  “Both. Don’t understand what she sees in you.”

  He blinked again, not from pain this time. “Huh?”

  “She has to heal you all the time, and you’re useless in bed.”

  “Huh?” How would she know? Especially as Karaki, as far as Ioha knew, hadn’t crossed that line yet.

  “She ever bedded you?”

  Ioha shook his head. This really, really wasn’t a topic he felt like opening right now. Remembering that style of talking big during his own high school years didn't help either.

  “See, useless.”

  He turned to Karaki for help.

  “I’m not useless,” his friend grinned. So much for that help.

  From the corner of his eye, Ioha saw Canadena nod in agreement. “You’re good in bed. Pity you’re not very smart.”

  And that’s supposed to be a compliment?

  The broken sound of feet rapidly tapping against gravel broke his thoughts. “Ioha!”

  Damn, shit! Here comes another scolding.

  It did, but it also came with tender hands touching his face, and he would have no bruise to brag about, and one evening of painful training turned to night, followed by a day of lessons and yet another evening.

  This time, Canadena delivered the abuse, and Ioha failed to score any hits as usual, but fewer of the counterattacks made it through his defensive aura extensions. That evening rolled into night, morning and day, followed by the ever-darkening evening routine where Ioha failed to score any hits.

  There was progression, though. For each evening, he clawed himself closer to at least one clean hit, and his parrying sword became more a part of his left hand than a wooden stick he desperately clung to. Eventually, a new ability flashed alive on his status display, and he was able to create independent hard shields at a distance from himself. A week passed by in this fashion until Ioha finally broke through a frustrated Karaki whose weapons got stuck in the intricate web of shields and traps Ioha surrounded himself with.

  A few evenings later, he tapped Canadena’s shoulder after he ripped both her weapons from her hands with disarming tentacles he barely managed to control. The shield behind her feet that she tripped over when he extended a force field into her upper body and face was by design, though.

  After that, Ioha forced himself to wake up an hour earlier every morning, and he used that time to try mixing magic and physical abilities on his own. With no one to harm, he turned to his real parrying sword and sabre. The difference between sharp steel and wood was uncanny, and in the end, his reward came in the form of the status display flashing once or twice every morning. The numbers went up, not by much, and it was slow progression, but it was progression.

  Somehow, he wasn’t even sure himself how, he found the time to squeeze in mini dates with Ai. A few minutes hanging on a fence and talking about nothing, half an hour between training and bedtime, taking a long walk along the borders of the school and one time even a full hour’s worth of training alone with her in a dojo.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  By now, he finally understood a few of the more obscure abilities his audience with Heimdall had given him. They were nothing he should use at school. Abilities creating lust-filled rage in the mind of an opponent, abilities slowly destroying intestines, abilities permanently weakening weapons by a tiny degree and a peculiar one that continuously cut shallow wounds into an opponent as long as they didn’t attack him. It wasn’t that the other spellsword students didn’t learn magic that hurt their enemies – they most certainly did, but theirs didn’t slowly crush an opponent's mind, soul and body in as humiliating and disgusting a way as possible.

  In the end, Ioha used them anyway.

  Anthony tried to force Ai into his room.

  Ioha borrowed a rope from Karaki, help from Canadena to scale the walls to Anthony’s window and unleashed every single ability Heimdall had given him. Ioha understood less than a third of them, and almost half he had no clue what they did, only how to apply them.

  The next day, Ai told him that her teacher, the one who threatened Ioha with ripping his legs off, had to save Anthony’s life after his roommate found him barely breathing in a blood-soaked bed when they were supposed to grab breakfast.

  ***

  There were threats of repercussions, but they never materialised. A week later, three carriages from Isekai arrived with a bunch of middle-aged people. They were here to inspect the school they funded. Isekai wasn’t merely a large donor and, Ioha guessed, Ai not merely just a student.

  Rumours had it a fourth carriage made its way to the Clevasti estate with Ai’s father, Nakagawa Akio, accompanied by his Swedish aide, Andre Cafelde, or Andreas af Carlfeldt, on the other side of the gate. When they departed, so did all talk about Ioha receiving any kind of punishment.

  The downside, he knew, was that he had once and for all turned the Clevastis from just angry into lifelong enemies. Nobility didn’t take well to humiliation. Well, that was a later problem. His current one materialised in the form of five shiny spellsword uniforms leaving the inner entrance to the administrative building.

  The fourth years had their own accommodations in Schooltown, which was the main reason it had grown to the point where it couldn’t decide whether it was a large village or a small town.

  “Tryouts?” Karaki asked from his left.

  Another four youngsters left the building. Two of them wore the colours of noble houses, the other two whatever combination of clothes and weapons worked best for each of them individually. They walked in pairs, with a large distance between knightage students and their soldier of fortune counterparts. All four draped heavy cloaks around them against rapidly declining temperatures. The spellsword students didn’t. Continuously burning aura, which for some strange reason was never called mana, on climate control magic was taken for granted. It was stupid, but it was considered very flamboyant, and spellswords were supposed to be flamboyant.

  “Tryouts,” Canadena answered from his right. They were, by a wide margin, Ioha’s best friends. He didn’t count Ai as a friend. From her, he wanted a lot more.

  “So, mock duels for a week to make the open tournament fair?” Another question from his left.

  “You’re good in bed but way too gullible.” She never minced words.

  Ioha agreed with her, though. For two reasons. Despite excessive experiences snogging with the girls, Karaki remained wondrously innocent. Also, the upcoming tournament wouldn’t be open, and it wouldn’t be fair. He shook his head. “Sixteen knights, sixteen mercs and thirty-two cats.” A few months after school started, most everyone used shorthand for the combat division. “You can bet on them tilting the tree to one side,” he continued.

  “Tilting the tree?” Karaki asked.

  “Yeah.” Ioha slapped his friend over his shoulders. “Learn some maths, dammit. Good for you.”

  “Whatever. Explain so we understand!” Canadena complained.

  Ioha grimaced. “All nobles will be placed alone in their brackets. The rest of us, especially if we do well during the tryouts, will be facing each other immediately.”

  “And?” Karaki wondered.

  “That’s cheating!” Canadena exclaimed.

  The beauty and the beast. Ioha threw Canadena a glance. Make that the beauty and the brains. He shook his head again. “Anyway, all nobles will end up in the top eight unless someone screws up royally.” It was even worse than that.

  Canadena blinked. “When the class tournaments are done, won't there be twenty-four left for the open one?”

  That was the worse part. “And they’ll assign sixteen of those to participate in the open tournament in a way that doesn’t blatantly scream of cheating.”

  She frowned. “That’s just ugly.”

  “We’ll end up with maybe a dozen nobles, and then they’ll pad out to sixteen with the worst performing commoners among the top twenty-four.” He bit his lip and slapped Karaki’s shoulders again. “See where I’m going?”

  The penny finally dropped. A large and heavy penny, and some slapping had been needed, but Karaki finally turned and looked up at Ioha. “Isn’t that kind of unfair?” he asked. OK, said penny had at least dropped halfway.

  Ioha decided to slap it all the way down. “That’s why it’s called cheating!”

  “Cheating?”

  There was no helping Karaki. The coin was stuck once and for all. Ioha turned and threw a glance at Canadena, asking for help. She looked back, shrugged, and threw her hands up in the air.

  “Told you he’s good in bed. That’s all I want.”

  Ioha gave up on the help. “Let’s just line up,” he said instead.

  That was the signal for Karaki to leave them. For formal line-ups, he had his place among the mercs. Ioha followed Canadena to where the other cats gathered. Today they’d receive information from the fourth-years present. From the nine double-named fourth-years. Why take any chances when you can stack the deck from the start?

  He lumbered away to where his fellow students started to find their places in neat rows in front of the oversized building one. It had to be. It held twice the number of students compared to buildings two and three combined. Looking left and right, he saw knights form up in front of building two and the mercs on the opposite side of the school yard, in front of building three. The staff students in building two and the magic strategy students in building three had to watch the spectacle from indoors. When sleets of rain draped them in wet misery, Ioha decided they were the lucky ones.

  “Listen up, you little shits!” Of course, it was one of the senior knights. “Today we’ll tell you about the freshman tournament.” He was almost an adult, but his voice still croaked a little when he tried to cover the entire school yard.

  Ioha did his best to close his ears mentally. He’d make the cut, maybe win one bout, and that was it. Worst case, he’d get lucky and make the top eight, which meant being sent to the open tournament where he’d spend his first and only bout delaying it all until the judge deemed him too boring and named his opponent the winner.

  Behind the yelling fourth year, on the stairs to the administrative building, Ioha noticed five older students glaring at the spectacle with disapproval. He vaguely remembered them from his first visit to the mess hall.

  Tryouts were scheduled for two days ahead. Before that, a far more important event awaited. Tomorrow, he’d share his first proper date with Ai.