“Fight!”

  The moment the word left Magnus’ mouth, Lucas exploded into motion.

  He pushed himself off the ground hard, lunging towards Sasha and lashing out with a quick stab towards her side. The training weapons that Magnus had made wouldn’t cut or pierce much, but they would still hurt when they hit. Lucas had the bruises to prove it.

  As swift as Lucas thought his attack was, it was much too slow for him to catch Sasha with it. The brunette easily danced out of the way of his strike, shifting her body to the side to dodge his stab. And when he got within range, Sasha took advantage.

  Her arm came down, slamming the pommel of her scimitar into Lucas’ wrist. The pain was sharp, and it was nearly enough to cause Lucas to flinch and lose his grip on his own weapon. But he’d been training the past few days with Magnus, and the man hadn’t pulled many punches with him either. He’d felt worse.

  Sparing a glance at Sasha, Lucas was surprised to see a faint flicker of respect in her eyes when he didn’t drop his blade. But then she was moving and Lucas had to put all his focus into just blocking her flurry of blows.

  Sasha didn’t hit nearly as hard as Magnus, that much was clear from her first strike, but as Lucas rapidly readjusted to block slash after slash from Sasha’s scimitar, it became clear that she focused more on speed than strength.

  He’d been quick to try and take the initiative at first, trying to go on the offensive and use what he’d learned from Magnus, but instead he was getting pushed back with each passing second. Sasha saw weakness and she pressed in, her strikes coming even faster as Lucas struggled to block them all.

  He managed to last a minute before things started to fall apart. He’d been struggling to keep up more and more as Sasha kept up a furious assault. He was doing far better than he’d expected to, though he figured that was thanks to the mana enhancing his body. He could move much quicker than he’d been able to before, and training with Magnus had at least made him learn how important it was to be able to block an attack.

  But he’d only been training for a few days, and that showed when Sasha slashed at his left arm. He rushed to get his xiphos into a position to block, but then he saw the girl grin, and he knew he was in trouble. She executed a perfect feint, dropping her arm lower and bypassing Lucas’ blade entirely. The dull blade slashed against his side and Lucas grit his teeth. The familiar feeling of flesh bruising was enough to know that Sasha had left her mark. If it had been a real sword, it would have been a devastating wound just below his ribs.

  Sasha jumped back after that, giving Lucas a moment to breathe and a bit of space as he coughed and held his side. It hurt, but he could still keep going. He wanted to keep going.

  He held his left arm close to his body to block his wounded side, his stance getting tighter as he tried to protect his core. This time, when Lucas advanced on Sasha again, he moved slower. He didn’t lunge or rush, he watched her to try and tell what the brunette was going to do. She let him approach, more than content to wait for him.

  “You look like you’re ready to fall over already. Are you tired after a simple little warm-up?”

  Lucas bit back a growl and glared at the girl. She was taunting him, trying to get him riled up. And it was nearly working.

  Instead, he circled around Sasha, watching her and trying to find some kind of chance. But Sasha just spun with him, keeping his eyes on her while her stance remained perfectly relaxed. With the way she idly spun her blade in her hands, it didn’t even seem like she considered the fight worth putting in any effort for. It was the complete dismissal that got Lucas’ blood boiling.

  He knew he wasn’t especially skilled with the sword yet, but Lucas thought that he would have been good enough to at least make Sasha put in a little bit of effort. It stung, knowing just how inexperienced he really was. And the longer the fight went on, the more and more obvious it became that Lucas had little chance of actually taking on the daunting challenge of beating Sasha.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  But that didn’t mean that he was going to give up. If Sasha wanted to beat him, she would need to force him to give up, because he refused to back down or stop until he couldn’t anymore.

  When she went to spin her blade again, he went on the offensive again. A rising slash suddenly met with Sasha’s blade as she moved faster than before and interposed her own sword between them. Lucas was stronger than she was expecting, though, and he grinned as he watched the brunette stagger back a step, her eyes widening a little.

  Despite his slim build, Lucas had a lot of muscle in his arms from years of archery. It didn’t translate perfectly to wielding a sword, but he could put a good lot of force behind his swings. And his opponent was finding that out firsthand.

  This time it was Lucas’ turn to push the advantage, hammering into Sasha with quick, heavy blows. He kept the pressure up, trying to keep her from dodging and forcing her to block. He recalled the times that Magnus had done the same to him, hammering into his defenses with repeated blows to try and stagger him. When Magnus did it to him, it worked, but against Sasha, Lucas was finding that he didn’t quite have the same level of strength that Magnus did.

  He was able to force Sasha to go on the defensive with enough attacks, though, keeping her blocking rather than attacking. Unfortunately, the moment of surprise didn’t last long and Sasha quickly began to focus as she weathered Lucas’ assault. Each strike and swing that he threw at her was swiftly blocked with a worrying level of ease. Still, his strikes were strong enough to make Sasha give up a little bit of ground each time, and that was enough to bolster Lucas’ confidence.

  In an attempt to land a blow, Lucas tried to take a page out of Sasha’s book. He lashed out with a jab, trying to stab Sasha in the stomach and stagger her with a bruising blow of his own. The brunette blocked the strike, diverting his blade off to the side with next to no effort. But that left her open for Lucas to swing in, throwing a punch at her face.

  The spar was never said to strictly be a sword fight, after all.

  Sasha was open, or at least, Lucas thought that his attack had left her open.

  Instead of his knuckles connecting with the brunette’s face, Lucas found her hand clamping down around his wrist in a vice-like grip. She was grinning again, and Lucas felt his heart sink at the sight.

  “Nice try.”

  And then her foot found his gut and Lucas staggered back, gagging and coughing. This time, Sasha didn’t let Lucas catch his breath, she rushed in and sent a barrage of slashes at him. Left, down, up, right, he tried to block, but he was still recovering and blow after blow slipped through his shaky guard. Any ground that Lucas had forced Sasha to give, she swiftly took it all back and more.

  His arms took multiple slashes, leaving welts and bruises from the force of the blow. When he tried to push back, he got a stab to the chest in return that left his ribs aching.

  Then Sasha went low, slashing at Lucas and slamming the flat of her blade into his knee. He went down, groaning in pain as his leg twitched and shook. For a few seconds, he got a reprieve as Sasha stood a few feet away, her scimitar pointed at him as she stared down at him.

  “You really can’t beat me, you know. Just give up,” She taunted playfully.

  Her words only stoked the fire building in his chest and Lucas glared at the brunette. More determined than ever, Lucas pushed himself to his feet and took up his rough stance once again.

  “I… can still fight,” He spat back.

  Off to the side, Fay stepped forward, her face a rictus of concern. But before she could step in, Magnus held out an arm to stop her. He watched silently as the two teens stared at one another, a grin slowly growing on his lips as he saw the fire in Lucas’ eyes.

  Sasha blinked, surprise evident on her face as she watched Lucas stagger to his feet. Then, she nodded and smirked.

  “Ok then. If you really want to do this.”

  Lucas just nodded his head, his breathing ragged as he kept his eyes locked onto Sasha.

  He blinked once, and when his eyes opened she was on him, in his face and her blade lashing out towards his side.

  Lucas’ eyes widened and he just barely managed to get his blade up in time to block the strike. But it left him open and Sasha took the chance to throw a punch of her own, slamming into his solar plexus with far more force than her small frame would hint at.

  Lucas collapsed, falling to the ground again from the blow. He gasped as he tried to fill his burning lungs with much needed air after Sasha had knocked the wind out of him. Stars flashed across his vision as his head hit the ground, and it took him a minute to recover.

  When he did, Lucas found Sasha standing over him, staring him down and holding the tip of her scimitar a scant few inches from his neck. He wanted to keep fighting, but his body was screaming at him to stop, and the brunette wasn’t going to let him up.

  “I...”

  He hated to say it, the words tasted foul in his mouth. At least with Magnus, the older man would simply end their current bout himself and tell Lucas to try again. But against Sasha, he had lost fully and completely.

  “I yield.”

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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