Chapter 13: Volume I – Chapter 12: Weapon Selection

I could feel my impulses slowly stirring as a man while looking at Lucia.

Is that how people… feel when they fall in love?

No… What I feel is not love.

I’ve never been in love, but this feels more like… I’ve been seduced. As I recall, Lucia’s charm statistic was something like an A+ from the beginning of the story.

After barely taking my eyes off her, I looked around to confirm my thoughts, and yes… just like me, all the men who saw her in the hallway were falling over.

I took a deep breath in and out as I kept walking.

Calm down Aiden, calm down… You’re not the type to succumb to the charm statistic. You’ve spent twenty-one years of your life as a virgin, you can’t fall for a simple statistic…

So, after about two minutes of walking, we arrived at the locker room area and were separated into girls and boys.

Satisfied that Lucia was finally out of my sight, I started looking for the locker with my name on it. Shortly afterward, I used my fingerprint to open the locker containing my training suit, which was specially designed for my body size. I put my tablet in, changed, and went out again.

Even though I was greeted with sarcastic glances everywhere I passed because of the number ‘#624’ on my name badge, I walked to where my class was lined up and waited for everyone to assemble after mingling with them.

While I was waiting, I kept looking around to see if I could find anyone else I recognized, but then my eyes fell on that blonde hair again…

So I set myself a priority, I have to find something to protect my mind as fast as possible.

“Attention!”

I quickly turned around and stood at attention as the voice of our history professor entered my ears. The professor glanced at all of us, along with my classmates who were doing the same.

“Follow me!”

Without saying anything else, she turned around and led us to an open area.

This was where I could find almost every kind of weapon, as well as where we would choose our main weapon.

I quickly looked for Adrian before looking for something for myself and saw him standing in front of a spear.

I think he’s hesitating a bit. But with the look in his eyes, I’m pretty sure he’s going to pick it.

If Adrian chooses the spear, the history professor will take him as her student when he shows his skills. So, now let’s think… What is the best weapon I can choose against the spear?

I thought about the only mastery I see in my statistics window.

Even if it’s level F, at least I have a swordsmanship mastery. So starting with that gives me an advantage. If I pick up another weapon, it will take me longer to get used to it than a sword…

I mean… I might be a bit of a sword man, but… I mean swords, swords! What man would say no to a sword?

So I quickly came to where the swords were.

There were so many different swords in front of me, varying in length, width, and sharpness that I had no idea which one to choose.

When I noticed that people around me were choosing their weapons quickly, I decided that I had to make a quick decision, so I picked out a plain and ordinary-looking sword and simply swung it.

My mastery must have been activated because I felt a strange affinity with the sword as I swung it. Even though this connection between me and the sword was too insignificant to be taken seriously, I definitely liked it.

“1-C! Gather around me! Come on!”

With the voice I heard, I quickly headed toward the sound with the sword I had chosen.

When the professor saw me, she took a quick glance at the sword I was holding and then continued speaking, again pretending not to care about me.

“Divide into groups according to the weapons you have chosen.”

We dispersed as she said and after a while, everyone was in their place.

I looked at the people standing next to me, but then I locked eyes with Julian, whom I had bumped into this morning when I was trying to figure out which class I was supposed to go to. I thought I had given him a good impression in our short dialog, but… His eyes were now almost filled with disgust, not looking at me, but at my name badge.

Great…

“Good! Now, the spear group should follow me. The other groups wait, a professor will come to get you in a moment.”

And so the professor moved off, dragging Adrian and all those who had chosen spears behind her, toward the arena in the far corner of the clearing.

We in the sword group, on the other hand, had been waiting for about four minutes when I heard someone calling out to us.

“Sword group 1-C, follow me.”

When I looked at the professor, almost a hundred and ninety centimeters tall, with short black hair and eyes as black as his hair, an involuntary smile appeared on my face.

In fact, this man is one of the reasons I chose the sword in the first place. Needless to say, swords are my favorite weapon in the game, and this man, whose private student we can become while playing the game, is one of my favorite characters. The way he moves, the way he thinks, the tragic backstory, the secrets he hides… This guy was a character I really liked.

The professor led us into an empty arena. Here we met with people from other classes who had chosen swords as their main weapon, and then he dispersed us around the perimeter of the arena and took a brief look at all of us in the space in the center.

He must have been trying to pick out some people he didn’t recognize as we were a mix of all the first years.

“Okay! Now you guys are going to have a duel with me and all the sword instructors sitting in the audience will watch us. Then they will put you in a line according to their wishes and you will be assigned a special instructor according to your ranks. So you better give it your all in the duel so I don’t kick your ass!”

It was quite a vulgar language, considering the people in this academy, but I particularly liked it, because everyone on this campus was particularly respectful to the people they met. The first time I played the game, when I first encountered this man who lacked simple common sense, it was enough to make me smile that no matter who he was in front of, he never dropped his smile and continued to make jokes, even if they were disgusting.

Of course, the fact that he was a highly skilled sword instructor on top of that was definitely worth the effort to become his student when I played the game as Adrian.

“We will start according to your overall ranking. Now, first… third place, Lucia Quie!”

My heart skipped a beat when I saw the blonde-haired beauty emerging from the crowd.

Damn… I had forgotten that she also wielded a sword.

All the men looked at her with great interest, creating a strange atmosphere, but Lucia ignored them and stood in front of the professor. With her sword in her hand, a person could be so beautiful even in a training outfit…

Oh, damn it! Stop thinking about it, you have more important things to do.

“Do your best, young lady.”

At the professor’s words, Lucia took a deep breath and pointed her sword at him. The two looked at each other for a brief moment, it wasn’t long before the first move was made.

Lucia, not caring that she was up against a professor, made the first attack with a speed that my eyes could hardly follow.

When the metallic sound of the clash of swords combined with their harmonic movements, I had the feeling that they were performing a strange but beautiful dance. Yet I did not watch them idly, I studied their every move, I memorized every detail of their duel.

For almost two minutes they kept exchanging attacks without waiting for a second, at a speed that made it difficult for my eyes to follow them.

Actually, they weren’t extremely fast, but since I didn’t know much about swords in the ‘real’ sense, it was difficult for me to read their movements. So I couldn’t really understand what was happening, it was all happening so suddenly for me.

Of course, this duel didn’t last forever. Just at the end of the second minute, Lucia’s movements started to slow down.

Soon the professor suddenly stopped attacking. Lucia collapsed in a sweat. It was adrenaline that had kept her going during the fight, but now that it had been cut off, she looked really tired.

The professor helped Lucia up and congratulated her, followed by a small round of applause from the instructors watching the duel.

Lucia didn’t seem to be very satisfied, even though she had continued to make equal exchanges with the professor for almost three minutes.

Just like in the game, she was striving for the best of everything.

“You’ve done very well Lucia, you can rest as long as you don’t stray too far from the area.”

Lucia disappeared into the crowd with a bad look on her face. Everyone was still staring at her, but Lucia didn’t seem to care. So after she disappeared from sight, the professor continued to call the students in turn.

Among the swordsmen, there were only three who caught my attention. They were, in no particular order, Julian Virhen, Lucia Quie, and Celine Potenbea.

Apart from Julian and Lucia, this was the first time I had seen Celine since I came to this world. Although she didn’t stand out as much as Lucia, she was certainly the center of attention for many, both because of her family’s reputation and the sharpness of her sword.

Her hair was a dark shade of brown and only reached down to her shoulders. In addition to her hair, her violet amethyst eyes with their sharp gaze were undeniably pleasing to the eye, even if they could not compare to Lucia’s.

“Six hundred and twenty-fourth place, Aiden Tenebra!”

It was the professor’s call to me that snapped me out of my reverie.

Hearing my rank, the students looked at me with disdain, but I ignored them and faced the professor.

“I won’t be too hard on you, buddy, but you better watch out.”

Instead of answering him, I nodded silently, narrowed my eyes, and focused on him without even taking my stance.

For most of the people in the area, my current behavior was a sign that I didn’t care much since I had already lost the match.

“Aren’t you going to take your stance?”

The professor looked at me with a frown, he must have thought I wasn’t taking him seriously. The reality was very… different.

I’m sorry, professor. I… I don’t know how to take a stance.

“Don’t misunderstand, professor, let’s just start the duel.”

At first, he hesitated a little at what I said. Then a smile appeared on his face, I think I provoked him…

Neither the professor nor I lifted a finger while the students were betting on each other on how many seconds the duel would last.

Don’t worry… I’ll give you all your remarks back in a moment.

I said… I said that, but immediately after that, the strange tension between me and the professor made my heart beat like crazy.

I started to sweat, it felt like a heavy weight was on my shoulders and the only sound was the howling of the wind, making it difficult to focus on the professor.

My eyes focused on the professor’s posture, primarily his feet, but unfortunately the calmness between the professor and me did not last long.

The professor must have realized that I was not going to attack, because he attacked me as if he was shouting at me to “know your place!” because of what I had just done. I couldn’t even see him, and yet the only thing I did was to take a slight step to the right and step aside.

Following a vertical and straight line, the sword swung down to where I had just been standing, sliced through the air, and then the professor’s face turned blank.

The crowd around us, including the instructors who had been watching us from afar, suddenly fell silent.

“Holy shit! Look at this guy’s luck!”

I heard someone in the crowd attributing what I had done to luck, but I didn’t pay attention, because the professor had quickly recovered and was on the move again, attacking me again.

And this time his attack was a horizontal swing that would not allow me to dodge easily, but I managed to avoid his attack with two steps backward before he even made a move.

As I dodged the sword a second time, the whole arena fell silent again.

I sighed slightly when I saw the shock on the professor’s face. The swing was almost as hard and sharp as his attacks during the duel with Lucia, but I completely ignored it and spoke coldly, as if this was a child’s game.

“Professor, what was that attack? Do you underestimate me?”

I said, all the while trying to hide the sweat running down my forehead and the trembling of my whole body…

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