And here is chapter 12 of Kanna the G.o.dless. This is self-edited so it may have mistakes here and there. Be sure to tell me about those if you find any, okay?
Enjoy~
Translator: Jun
ED: Jun
Chapter 12 – The true charm of fantasies are slender people using huge weapons, right?
Right after I stealthily returned to my room afterwards, I released all that had acc.u.mulated in my lower body by applying the handbrake.(TL:( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)) I"m physically at my limit in various ways, let alone mentally. It wasn"t very bad, but I"m not confident I can endure this until the next evening. In addition to going tomorrow evening, the fact is that we depart the morning after that. That"s going to be physically harsh. We"re only staying here for three days and two nights, so the first night was my only chance.
For now, I refresh my lonesome self and enter the next day.
"Uoraah!"
While sending out a yell, I swung my right fist that is equipped with a hand guard. My aim is the center of my opponent"s face.
"That was solid, but too honest"
While Real calmly muttered those words, she prepared her sheathed greatsword and defended against my attack. Of course, I took her defending this into consideration. My fi was to unleash my left hand"s follow-up from below without drawing back my right hand. I don’t know if Real also antic.i.p.ated this, but she adjusted the angle of her greatsword and defended it with the tip of the scabbard. If she was a novice opponent, this time’s distinct up and down attack would be quite effective, but it was dealt with without breaking a sweat.
"Your aim is good, but this time the weight you put in is lacking……… see!"
Inserting power right after the end of her sentence, Real flicked off my fists that were stopped by her sword. I couldn"t withstand the impact on both arms and moved several steps back with my stance crumbled. From there she struck an attack on the upper body.
Although I promptly crossed my arms to catch the blow, my knees almost felt like breaking from the tremendous impact transmitted from my crossed arms to the whole body. There is the ma.s.s from the very sword itself, but the strength of its wielder Real is also amazing. If I didn"t have my hand guards, my arms would have probably been smashed. That didn"t happen, so every joint is screaming. Even though I didn"t receive it on my head, my brain is shaken and my field of vision is flickering.
"Noooh……… gaah!"
However, when I somehow held onto my consciousness through willpower, I caught the blow from the sword and I went all in and released a right kick.
Will she dodge it or will she let go of her sword and catch the kick with her arms? In any case, I want to immediately take distance and prepare myself to attack again.
But wait, she once again raised her sword overhead without even taking any evasive actions.
My right kick made a direct hit to her flank. Equipped with a leg guard, it"s a kick that had its force of impact improved by its accompanying ma.s.s. Even then, what returned to my feet was the feeling as if I had a large tree as an opponent. Is she really made of flesh and blood?
Real"s face is slightly clouded. It wasn"t like she didn"t feel any pain. Even so, her sword wielding posture didn"t move.
“This is bad” just as I thought that, the next moment the sword was swung down.
This time I couldn"t stop the blow. Even if I stop it with both my hands once more, my body would be thrown to the ground with each defense.
The training we had in the hotel backyard we borrowed this morning met its end when I collapsed on the ground.
In one way or another, I went from being defeated to sitting down on the ground, but that is my limit. It doesn"t look like I’ll be able to stand for a while from the pain and fatigue. Real, on the other hand, stabbed the ground with the greatsword in its scabbard and placed her hand on the grip, but it"s not to support her body. She is standing normally. Being the only one gasping for breath is really comforting. With that I put on my cool face.
"As I thought, if your defensive capabilities increases, freedom will appear in your spontaneous movements. Especially around the end, where you distracted my eyes with your upper body attack from your right and did a lower body attack from your left. That move was quite good."
"You stopped those blows normally though."
"This may not be barehanded, but I have considerable experience in dual sword fencing after all. If I didn"t learn how to cope with it at that time, I would have difficulty receiving this. It"s just that, you didn’t put any weight in the second hit like I said. You won’t have any problems if you can neatly defend it. But I"m certain it"s a move that is fairly effective against opponents you meet for the first time.
What I"m surprised about is the fact you defended my blows until the very end. Although it was with my scabbard, I didn"t think you would defend even a single blow in all seriousness. I unleashed them with the intention to crush each of your defences though."
"It"s all about your stance. If you didn"t attack from above but from the side, I would certainly be blown away. I couldn"t withstand the second cut either."
The fact is that with just one blow, my strength was completely shaved off. Both my hands and feet are still trembling.
"And that, what was that about, receiving my kick equipped with a leg guard without defending. What I felt wasn"t that of flesh and blood."
“No matter how much its intensity is increased by the leg guards, I know what a kick can do when done out of desperation. By not neglecting training your body, your posture won"t break if you stand firm on both legs."
I"m interested in how far I have to go with that training. About as far as being able to swing around that huge sword at will? That"s not completely unreasonable.
"Kanna, even you wield weapons made from spirit magic don’t you? You could swing around that giant axe after all"
"That"s by borrowing the power of the spirits, so that"s not going to raise my physical strength. If that wasn"t the case, I wouldn"t be able to hold such a brutal weight since it"s made of ice."
If the objects formed from ice made with spirit magic exist by my influence, I wouldn"t feel much of the weight it possessed. Thanks to that, I can also wield super heavyweight cla.s.s weapons that rivals Real"s greatsword with relative ease. As a test I made a giant axe and tried to hold up something that removes the divine protection of spirits, but the weapon was so heavy, my lower back almost got hurt. When I relied on the spirit again, I could hold it up normally as expected. Moreover, it"s at a manageable degree, neither light nor heavy. It"s more than satisfactory.
Besides, the goal of today"s training was in order to train my own movements and not a direct improvement to my fighting strength. No spirit magic and none of Real"s enhancement sorcery. If we use those, then the inn"s backyard will be too small. If there is no s.p.a.ce with a radius of about fifty meters, it will cause inconvenience to other places.
"Oh that"s right"
When we waited until our bodies cooled off, I recalled last night"s event. I can"t let the contents of the event slip my mouth, but let"s ask Real about the problem at that time.
"Yesterday in town, I heard that 『Ice sorcery』 is super difficult, but is that really true?
" ……… Aah, now that you mention it, that"s true. I have no excuses, I"ve forgotten to tell you."
Real easily admits it.
"As you already know, I"m weak with elemental magic. I memorized the coping method of each element, but I completely forgot to teach you the details of them.”
Both Real and her grandmother were taught about elemental magic during their stay in the village at the foot of the mountain. Earth, wind, water, fire, origin, sky, ice and lightning. Elemental magic can be roughly bundled into these eight elements. (TL: I wrote down origin, but I can’t find the actual element that corresponds to this kanji: 元, which roughly means beginning, former time or origin. Anyone has any better idea?)
“Within those, origin, sky, ice and lightning are called superior attributes within elemental magic. As you can expect, mastery over those four are harder than the other four elements and they can"t be handled by anyone other than the limited people with talents for them."
"It seems there is plenty of talent within you the moment you can use magic though."
When I try saying that as the representative of incompetent men.
“If it is like lighting up a fire on your fingertips or bringing about the wind to ward off the summer heat, even a five year old could do it as long as they have quite the skills for it. But if I could say whether or not that could pa.s.s in actual fighting, it would be a no. There may be no clear rules about this, but if you can"t at the very least suppress a magic beast with just sorcery, then you can"t be called a sorcerer, now can you?"
"So you judge by fighting strength?"
"It"s because you won"t be able to take down even the lowest ranking magic beast with an amount that is like a fire on your fingertips."
"So it means that a firepower to the extent of being able to roast a magical beast whole is the minimum as a sorcerer, huh"
"The rate of people who can overcome the lowest level of a sorcerer for the human race is one or two in ten. These ratios differ for each race. There are those who exceed five per ten and there are some who may or may not have one in hundred. ……… We went quite off-topic didn’t we? And, so. For now I will continue the explanation limited to the human race. Further within the people who can use sorcery at a combat level, the ones who can handle the four superior attributes are about one in thousand.”
(TL: does anyone understands what it means when someone says "De, da." in an explanation? That"s literally the whole sentence. I"ve translated it to "And, so." for now)
Generally speaking, the calculation means that only one person would be able to handle superior attributes among ten thousand humans. A handful of guys that can be called a genius.
After Real temporarily finished her explanation, she made a complicated expression.
"Well, it"s unusual to call it unusual, but only its mastery is difficult and it"s a different story if it may be used in combat as it is. It"s because the earth magic users are stronger than the superior attribute magic users within the magic experts."
Did she recall unpleasant things? Her face looks like it has a sour face printed over it.
"The last what you will hear for today is that it may be for the best if you refrain from using spirit magic in public. You"ll grab all the attention just from the unusual magic after all."
"Won"t you hesitate in using it in combat if you become too desperate in concealing it?"
"If it becomes a scene involving life and death, that hesitation will go away. I don"t want you to die by sticking to appearances and honor"
I don"t feel like restraining myself in giving or taking lives.
While I continue the conversation with Real, my burning body settled down pleasantly. My body even recovered to the point of being able to move and so I pressed my hands on my knees and stood up. When I look above in the sky, I could see the sun will be reaching the zenith soon.
"This is a good time don’t you think? Let"s go shopping for useful things after we have lunch shall we?"
"You"re very resilient as always aren"t you? Normally your stomach won"t accept food when you"re that fatigued, you know."
"Toughness is one of my few redeeming features after all."
An answer that doesn"t show if I"m actually boasting about myself or mocking myself naturally came out of my mouth.