I was confused why Brell stopped us and was a bit more confused when I saw him walking over to me while holding a stick almost as long as my sword. He then handed it to me “Use this instead of your sword.”.

Lin shouted out after seeing him do so “Hey! Are you making fun of me?!”.

Brell just turned to Lin and said “If I didn’t see Crim fight just a bit ago, I wouldn’t have done this.”. He paused for a moment before elaborating “We ran into a Chicha on the way back. It was a mature one with large tusks.”.

“I know Chicha’s are dangerous, especially the ones that are left to mature but how does seeing that fight make you do this, Brell?” Suta questioned him.

Brell then looked towards Suta “It’s because Crim’s strength is no joke.”. “The fight was very short and ended with Crim not only cutting off a fragment of the Chicha’s tusk but also half of its body in the same swing.”. Brell then turns to Lin “This way if he has this instead, he can go all out without the thought of accidentally killing you.”.

Lin squinted her eyes at Brell for a few moments. Her eyes then shifted to me and turned to a serious look. “Let’s see if his strength can compete with me then.”.

I was confused on what she meant by walls and wanted to spar with her sooner so I turned to Brell, grabbing the wooden stick. I was uncertain on where to place my sword and I didn’t like it but I handed it over to Brell since this will be short.

When Brell grabbed hold of the hilt and I let go of it, he almost dropped it to the ground “How heavy is this thing!?”. I just looked at him surprised that he thought it was heavy before turning back to Lin.

I ready my wooden stick and watch over Lin, wondering if she will make the first move. We studied each other for several moments before one of us made the first move. I broke ground as I ran towards her. Unlike this morning she didn’t run towards me and let me come. Seeing this, I make the first strike and swing down.

As I was close to her, I felt something hit my left leg which caused me to begin falling forwards. Before I hit the ground or anything else, I saw a fist fly towards my face. With her fist hitting my face, I fell backwards and caught my footing.

When I looked to see the source of what just hit my leg, I saw a piece of ground retracting back down to normal. Seeing this, I wondered if this is what earth magic looked like. To avoid getting caught up in her magic, I decided I needed to be faster. I broke dirt closing the distance before she made the next move. When in range, I made a sweeping strike. Not used to the length of the stick I held, it just grazed her legs. Before she could retaliate, I was already making another sweeping strike. This time, since she saw the first, she tried jumping backwards. She didn’t manage to escape the strike and I caught her mid jump. The instant I finished the strike, I went in for an overhead.

When she landed, I saw her cross her arms to block and at the same time, two columns of dirt made a cross as well. As my stick hit the columns, it caused part of the stick to break off, shortening my stick making it even smaller than my blade. I jumped back before she could do anything in return.

Before either of us made a move, I heard a shout from the sideline “Wait! Crim’s weapon just broke, you guys should just wrap it up.”. We both looked to the source to find Suta with a worried expression to Lin.

“No, it’s fine. I can still fight like this.” I stated before anyone else could say anything.

“Yeah, just let us fight!” Lin shouted out to Suta.

Suta’s face looked like he didn’t care anymore “Alright fine, do whatever.”.

At those words, Lin and I looked back to each other. While we studied each other, I thought that with the current length of my weapon, the best attack I could make would be spinning strikes. I wanted to use magic, specifically speed magic but it would be a bit hard to explain that one.

While lost in thought, I suddenly saw Lin flying towards me with her feet behind her on a piece of earth propelling her forwards. With the unexpected speed, I couldn’t avoid the hit and brought my stick up to block.

Her fist hit the stick, which stopped her momentum but at the cost of breaking my stick. I made more distance between us and faced my back to the onlookers.

I then closed my eyes and poured as much mana as I could into my legs. The instant I heard Lin rush towards me, I opened my eyes and made dirt fly as I rushed towards her.

Her face showed she didn’t expect the sudden speed and with my now shortsword sized stick, I made the first spinning strike. With the low weight of the stick, I was able to control my speed without failure.

The first strike connected with her as she barely brought her arms up to block. Before she could use earth magic, I was already making the second strike to her side, hitting her exposed midriff. She wasn’t able to keep up anymore as I made the third strike and was fully behind her. The strike hit her leg causing her to drop to one knee. I stopped my onslaught as the stick was resting against her neck as she was on one knee.

The area fell silent as everyone saw as I deftly made my way behind her and now had the stick against her neck. Finally what broke the silence was the one kneeling “It’s… my loss…” a voice of dejection was heard from Lin as she said the words.

I looked over to the others and all their expressions were all the same as they all wondered what just happened. I then retracted my blade from her neck and placed it upon my back before remembering that it was just a stick and I just dropped it to the ground instead. After which I didn’t feel right without my blade and walked over towards Brell who looked a bit exhausted. I extended my hands out for him to hand it over to me. As he does so he mentions “I don’t know if it was from the fight of holding your sword but I feel lightheaded and exhausted.”. He then looked a bit better after he gave my blade back.

As I placed my sword upon my back and I felt secure again Brell also added on “What a fight though. The more I see you fight, the more I can be certain that you are worthy of being a lone wolf B rank adventurer.”.

I then heard someone approach from behind and turned to the source to find Lin with a defeated look in her eyes. When I was facing her, she suddenly brought a fist towards me “You won this time but don’t think this is over because next time we spar, I’ll win for sure.”. After telling me this, she dropped her hand and added, “Even if you use your sword.”. Once she finished saying that, she began walking past me “Anyways, I’m tired, I’ll be going to sleep first.”.

Brell then turned to follow her as well “Yeah, I am too. For some reason I feel so exhausted right now.”. When Brell was walking towards the fire, his party members, Krello and Howari followed suit.

I then saw Suta walk towards me while saying “If that's how you fight with a stick that keeps on breaking, you definitely would have won faster if you used your sword.”.

I turned to Suta “If she was able to use more of her magic, it would have been my loss.”.

“Heh, being humble after winning with what looked like ease.” He said while stopping in front of me. “I knew from the first exchange you had with her that you were at an advantage.”. He then sighed “I tried stopping the fight since I feared that Lin’s ego would be hurt.”.

“I think if it really did stop, she’d be in a worse mood than how she is now.” I told him.

“You may be right but I’ve known her for a while, whenever she loses, she beats herself up over it for a while.” Suta said with another sigh. “I just hope she doesn’t do anything irrational before we get to Nishilon.”.

I looked at him curiously “How so?”.

Suta looked past me towards Lin who was getting into her sleeping roll “I don’t really know what she’ll do since I’ve seen her act that way only a few times.”. He then added on “Usually when she loses, she still acts out loud.”.

“Should I have let her win?” I wondered if that would have helped.

“No, it’s fine, if she caught wind that you let her win, it would be worse.” Suta told me. “Anyways, before I head off, I just want to say, I think I know…” he stopped himself as he fixed his glasses. “Never mind, I’ll be going to sleep now.” He said as he began walking past me, towards the empty bedroll.

I stared at the back of Suta, wondering what he was about to say before I brushed it off. Once I saw all of them laying in their bedrolls, I thought about how I should spend the night.

After a bit of thought, I decided it would be best if I did some meditation as I felt fatigue has been building up. Not wanting them to know that I meditate, I went to a spot that was a bit out of sight of them and placed my sword against a tree near me and sat down cross legged.

Once I cleared my mind I lost sense of the world as I came into my subconscious. When inside, I decided to practice again on controlling my mana and spent the night doing so.

.

.

.

After spending a good amount of time controlling the flow of mana throughout my body, I felt like the sun would be rising soon. As I rose myself out of meditation, I saw around me that it was still dark out and decided to spend the rest of time practicing swordsmanship. This time around, I wanted to practice sweeping strikes.

When I saw the light begin breaking through the leaves behind me, I decided to make this set the last set of swings. After making a third sweeping strike, I went into an overhead and swung with all my might without magic. I feel my blade cut into the ground and slows down as it was partially in the ground. The blade stopped when it was almost half way into the ground. I then pulled the blade out of the ground and saw my sword with no changes to it.

“Wow, Brell wasn’t lying about your strength, if you can swing that hard with no foe in front of you, I can believe you cut a Chicha clean.” I heard from the right. As I looked over to my right while wiping the sweat off my forehead, I saw Suta leaning against a tree. “I was curious about how you stayed rested and woke up a bit before sunrise but all you were doing was swinging your sword.”.

I was happy I roused myself out of meditation before he woke up if that was the case. “Do you want to spar me too?” I asked, curious if he could use magic since he studies it.

“No, no, no.” Suta said, shaking his head and hands. “I know for sure you’d win against me alone.” He tells me as he gets off the tree. “Anyways, we should go wake them up, eat and to get back on the road.” he said, changing the subject.

It didn’t bother me that he didn’t and decided to just agree with him and began walking towards the sleeping people.