I Was Abandoned Because I Was Told I Had No Talent, but Four Incredibly Strong Yet Clumsy Older Sisters Took Me In. Even the Sword Saint and the Great Sorcerer Insisted on Me Being Their Top Disciple. As a Result of Raising Me in Such an Overprotective Way, My Ultimate Talent Finally Awoke. - Chapter 5

My First Real Hit

One hundred and fifty times.

The number Reizel Master said yesterday had been stuck in my head since morning.

Yesterday my knees gave out at a hundred and twenty. Thirty more. Just thirty more. But those thirty felt endlessly far away.

“Stance.”

Master’s voice. I lifted the wooden sword.

The grip fit my hand perfectly. The sword she’d carved for me now matched the shape of my hand completely. The pain from the calluses hadn’t changed. But I could grip it straight.

“Swing.”

I swung.

One time. Ten times. Thirty times. My arms burned. Fifty times. My shoulders creaked. Seventy times. My breathing grew ragged. A hundred times. My knees started shaking.

One hundred and ten.

One hundred and twenty.

—This was it. The spot where I fell yesterday.

My knees were wobbling. The edges of my vision were going dark. The wooden sword felt three times heavier.

“…………”

Master didn’t say anything. She didn’t tell me to stop or to keep going.

She just stood three steps ahead.

One hundred and twenty-one.

I swung.

My arm moved on its own. I wasn’t thinking with my head anymore. My body was just tracing the path it had learned.

One hundred and thirty. One hundred and forty.

Everything in front of me turned white. Sounds felt far away. Only my own breathing echoed deep in my ears.

One hundred and forty-eight.

One hundred and forty-nine.

—One hundred and fifty.

I swung all the way through.

The sound of the wooden sword cutting the air rang out, and I started to fall forward—but I didn’t.

My knees were shaking hard. But I was standing. Barely, but I was standing.

I let out a breath. A long, long breath.

“…You’re still standing.”

Master’s voice came. As short as always. But I thought the end of it sounded just a tiny bit softer. Maybe I was hearing things. But even that was enough to fill my chest.

＊

“Next. Hit the target.”

A thick log beside the cabin. Master had carved an X into the center of the trunk with her small knife.

I stood five steps away and took my stance with the wooden sword.

I swung. —Missed. It only grazed the edge of the log, and a dull shock ran through my hands.

“Again.”

Missed.

“Again.”

Missed. Missed. Missed.

On the thirteenth try my arms wouldn’t lift anymore. The tip of the wooden sword dragged along the ground.

I breathed hard through my shoulders and glared at the X on the log. It felt so far away. It was only five steps, but the target looked incredibly distant.

—But.

I shifted the placement of my feet just a little.

I’d watched Master’s stance every morning for hundreds of swings. I’d tried to copy it. I couldn’t do it at all. But when I turned my right foot just slightly inward, my hips rotated. When my hips rotated, my arm extended. When my arm extended—

I swung.

—Thunk.

A dull sound echoed through the forest.

A little to the right of the X. But the wooden sword had definitely struck the center of the log.

My hand went numb. The impact shot all the way up to my elbow.

But it had hit.

“…………”

No sound came out. I didn’t know if I was happy or in pain. My eyes just grew hot behind them, and my vision blurred.

Still gripping the wooden sword, tears spilled down my cheeks. It was the first time since being thrown out for being a mukoku that I’d managed to “do it.”

Whoosh.

A large cloth was dropped over my head. It was Reizel Master’s thick cloak.

My vision went completely dark, and I was wrapped in the smell of sword oil and sunlight.

“…Well done.”

The voice that came through the cloak sounded incredibly clumsy and trembled just a little.

Inside the cloak, I cried out loud.

＊

“…Are you seriously crying over something like that?”

A slightly exasperated voice drifted down from the shade of a tree a little ways away.

When I poked my face out from the gap in the cloak, the red-haired girl—Riene—was standing there with her arms crossed. She still had that same sour look on her face, but her eyes were drifting somewhere else.

“Riene…?”

“I told you to drop the ‘san,’ didn’t I?”

She was supposed to be hiding while camping, but when she saw me start crying she couldn’t just stay put and came out.

“How pathetic. Crying just because you missed the center a little.”

“No, that’s not it. I’m crying because I’m happy.”

“…Huh?”

“Riene came to watch too! Thank you!”

When I smiled at her with my tear-streaked face, Riene let out a short “Eep!” and took half a step back.

“D-Don’t get the wrong idea! It was just a coincidence! I just happened to be passing by and you were crying…!”

“Yeah. Thank you.”

“That’s why I said! You don’t have any reason to thank me!”

Her face turned bright red as she shouted, then Riene spun on her heel.

“Next time don’t miss! It’s embarrassing watching from over here!”

She left those parting words and hurried off deeper into the forest. I thought she probably planned to come watch again, but I kept that to myself.

＊

That afternoon.

We visited the frontier town again to buy food.

But the town was wrapped in a strange atmosphere. People gathered in the square were talking in pale-faced whispers.

“Did you hear? The neighboring town to the east got completely trapped inside a ‘barrier.'”

“Was it magical beasts!?”

“No, they say powerful magic residue hardened and covered the whole town… People inside can’t get out, and no one from outside can get in.”

Reizel Master, listening to the rumors from the corner of the square, frowned and fell into thought.

“…A sword can’t break a barrier.”

When Master muttered that, I asked,

“What should we do?”

Master stayed silent for a moment, then looked up at the distant eastern sky.

“…I know someone.”

Her profile looked extremely grim.

“‘Blue Storm’—if it’s her, maybe.”

“Blue Storm?”

When I tilted my head, Master let out a small sigh.

“She’s a troublesome woman. …Let’s go, Rut.”

That was the beginning of my stormy meeting with my “second master.”