Sitting on the bench alone, I stew in the tense atmosphere left over by my match.
I decided to sit on a seat away from everyone since I doubted the others want to sit next to me. Some part of me is annoyed with the silent treatment I receive, but mostly I’m embarrassed. After all, it’s not really a good look to beat up on a girl younger than you to the point she is crying and needs medical attention.
Part of me wants to defend myself to the group. This is DIC difficulty at the end of the day- we shouldn’t be fooling around and half-assing our training. I might have gone a bit too far in the spar, but it’s not like I seriously injured her or anything.
A few broken ribs shouldn’t be that big of a deal, especially since the freaky nurse back at the tavern can heal her fully by the time the wave arrives. In this type of environment, we should be pushing ourselves much harder than some weak spars where you have to stop the second someone gets hurt. I mean, Henry and Angus’s match was just sad. I have doubts about their likelihood to survive in the future if they can’t manage to get their shit together.
Angus is one thing, as the boy has little combat experience since he told me Garf let him potshot trapped monsters to gain his class. I can’t fully blame him for being useless right now, but Henry had the same trainer as Vince and still can’t manage to keep his head on his shoulders during a real fight. That type of incompetence will surely get him killed, and no one will be to blame except himself.
Nikki was actually a decent fighter and she still apparently can’t handle a little bit of pain. What the hell does she even have a concentration skill for if not to keep her emotions in check during a battle?
I’m aware my annoyance is affecting my judgement somewhat, but I can’t help but thinking about leaving the training field for the day. Anything sounds better than having to sit around in awkwardness while watching any more pitiful fights. At this point, I would rather just go push for my class by myself and let everyone cool off.
I stare at the ground and muse over leaving for a few more minutes while fiddling with my hands. Just as I am about to make the decision to leave, a shadow falls over me.
“Hey.”
Looking up, I am surprised to see Sandra towering over me with her toned arms crossed over her chest.
“Were you lying about not having a class yet?” She asks with an unreadable expression.
I had been expecting her to berate me for hurting Nikki, so it is safe to say that her question stumped me for a moment.
“Um, no. I wasn’t lying, I don’t have a class.”
Sandra’s eyes narrow and it feels like her gray irises soften somehow as a spark of an unidentifiable emotion plays across her face. After recognizing that I am telling the truth, she moves around me for a moment before finding a seat right next to me on the bench.
“I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but Nikki wasn’t supposed to use her class during the fight. That wind wall thing she used was a part of the skill she got from her class selection.”
My eyebrows quirk in confusion and growing outrage as my attention focuses solely on the impossible to read woman sitting next to me. Sandra doesn’t even bother looking at me, and instead observes the field as Sara and Kathryn move to begin their duel.
“I’m sure you are probably getting tired of this, but Vince wanted to test you by telling everyone to hold back a bit.” She says without a hint of sympathy.
“…Why?” I ground out from between my teeth, barely holding back the anger festering in my gut from the realization that once again, no one here trusts me.
“There were multiple reasons. For one, he wanted to see if you would lie about your level since we can’t see each other’s. Secondly, he wanted to know just how strong you actually were, and if you would try holding back in the spars if you saw we weren’t as skilled as we should be given our higher levels.”
Her eyes turn to fix on mine for a moment. “Looks like he was worried about you holding back for no reason though.”
Sandra’s amused look pisses me off even more than her mention of the test. Before she can say anything else, I try out something I hadn’t seen anyone else do yet and pull up a part of my status while willing it to sit directly in front of her face.
Level: 21
Body (BDY): 29
Mind (MND): 28
Agility (AGI) : 22
Power (PWR): 69
She frowns slightly and I can see the screen’s reflection in her eyes telling me she can see the words just like I wanted.
“First of all, you could have just fucking asked. Believe it or not- I don’t like when people beat around the bush. If you want to know something, just ask. I’ll either tell you what you want to know, or I will tell you to fuck off.”
Dismissing the screen, I lock eyes with the woman one more time.
“And FYI: I was holding back. If I hadn’t, you would be picking up pieces of Nikki all the way up until the wave started. I barely dipped into my mana pool for those little explosions.”
Sandra just stares at me for a moment with her mouth slightly open. If I weren’t so angry with her and Vince for playing games with me and not showing me their real power, then I might have actually found her expression to be funny.
Looking away to watch the two women standing ready in the field, I suddenly hear a snort off to my side before Sandra actually starts to laugh, causing the bench underneath me to shake slightly. The soft noise of her laughter is surprisingly girlish despite the rigid persona of the woman I had been used to.
The sounds of her mirth die off after a few moments, and I can hear a satisfied sigh escape from her lips.
“Sebastian, I think we’ll get along just fine.”
Her words weird me out a bit, but when I glance over, a smirk is settled on her face, and her gray eyes are on the field in front of us once again. Before I can ask what she meant by that, her hand gestures for me to shut up for a second while she addresses Kathryn and Sara who wait patiently on the turf.
“Hey! Forget what Vince said. I already told Sebastian the situation so feel free to let loose. There’s no point in faking it now; we don’t have to worry about making him feel bad for being under leveled now that he can kick one of our asses even without a class.” Her voice echoes across the field, and the two women have the decency to look embarrassed for my sake before settling into combative stances.
Now that she let them know not to hold back, Sandra waits another beat before swinging her hand down, signaling for the fighters to begin.
As Sara and Kathryn move into action, the silver-haired woman at my side addresses me once more before settling back in to watch the fight.
“If it helps at all, I wanted to let loose right off the bat. Like I told Vince, if you were actually hiding anything, then it wouldn’t matter once you saw us fight. In my opinion, if you were weak enough to try and hide your class from us, then I doubted you were stronger than any of us, much less Vince or I.”
I find myself nodding along to her explanation, and strangely enough, the embers of my anger have cooled significantly over the course of the conversation.
“So, Angus and Henry aren’t that hopeless, then? I mean, that fight was pretty goddamn bad, so it makes sense now that I know they were holding back a lot. They could have made it a bit less obvious though, right? I mean, can you imag-” I trail off as the woman clearly avoids eye contact with me.
Ummmm…
“They were holding back, right?” I ask with a bit of desperation in my voice.
Instead of responding, the woman just shakes her hand in a ‘so-so’ gesture while pointedly keeping her vision glued to the spar currently taking place.
So that’s how it is.
“…Oh.”
I offer nothing else, and neither does Sandra as we turn our attention back to the current fight with the silent understanding nothing else needs to be said.
…
Having missed some of the start due to my conversation, my interest in the duel skyrockets when I finally focus back on the spar at hand.
Kathryn’s skill is truly a sight to behold as the Korean girl glides across the ground as if the soil is pushing her around. The fight’s tempo has increased significantly in comparison to what I expected from earlier, with the two women dashing in and out of each other’s range while looking for any openings in either’s position.
Unlike Kathryn’s visual display of power, Sara is completely unassuming as she moves as superhuman speeds to constantly chase her opponent around. Given the lack of obvious skill use, I am forced to pay more attention to the movements of the older woman as she moves with a smoothness and confidence that betrays her normally cool attitude.
Despite being the second oldest in our group behind Henry, Sara’s ceaseless assault is something to marvel at, as Kathryn is forced to create wall after wall to block any of her attacks. At this level of intensity, the women trade blows back and forth without pause, and due to my lower MND stat and level than the rest, I find myself having trouble keeping up with the fight completely even with active.
Kathryn’s main strategy is obvious enough, as her reliance on her overpowered skill acts as offense, defense, and movement. Small dirt clods shoot at Sara’s weaving figure, and I even catch the ground beneath the messy-haired woman’s feet roll around in attempts to knock Sara off her feet. I’m also certain she is using and some type of other skill to efficiently target her clods directly at Sara’s joints.
Sara seems to be dancing around most of it though, with only a few glancing blows ever reaching her body. Taking in another conjured wall of Kathryn’s, I watch as Sara’s hands puncture the wall in a slicing motion rather than a blunt impact. In response to her fluid attacks, the walls are carved up as if a sword or some other sharp object were piercing through them.
Before I know it, I’m leaned as far forward as I can be, and I sharpen my mental skill to a razor’s edge as I observe the way Sara’s skill slices through Kathryn’s creations with ease.
< Fixation Lvl. 11 -> Fixation Lvl. 12 >
That skill.
Her ability to cut through solid objects with ease.
That’s the only skill I have seen so far that could possibly be responsible for the cuts I saw on Floor One.
My eyes refuse to blink while the fight continues. The older woman rushes after her opponent while constantly cutting through every defensive measure Kathryn puts into place. Her style is brutish, and the way she moves is more instinct driven than any sort of actual technique. She often gets in her own way as well, as the soil she assaults relentlessly sprays into her eyes due to simple mistakes.
Watching her now, the attacks Sara uses aren’t anywhere near as refined as the scalpel-like slices I saw on the corpses of our other groups members I found in the goblin prison. Her strikes upon the earthen surface of Kathryn’s walls are ragged, like a thick saw or something.
Her technique is completely off too. The constant tempo of attacks she dulls out to pressure the younger woman are nothing like the clean and technical skill that would be required to cripple a moving opponent like the goblin I saw previously.
My logical side screams at me that Sara has to be the traitor, as there is no other options from what I have seen so far. Yet another part of me can’t help but question what is in front of me. Sandra said it herself; everyone has been holding back for the most part up until my spar.
Who’s to say the traitor hasn’t been holding back since arriving on Floor Two?
This thought invades my brain like a parasite, and I can’t help but question my own judgement on the matter. The women in front of me are fighting without holding back on Sandra’s command. One of Sara’s skills points her out as the obvious suspect, yet I can’t help but doubt my conclusion. The more I focus on this woman moving around the field, the more my thoughts become clouded.
Why would she out herself like this is if was her?
My impression of Sara so far has been positive. She is laid back, kind, and helps out when needed. Other than that, I have seen absolutely no evidence that would make her out to be a traitor. If she were the one to sabotage the other group members on Floor One, then why would she flaunt the same skill right in front of me when she knows damn well that I could have discovered her handiwork while I was alone in the forest?
The answer is overwhelming obvious; so much so that my brain can’t seem to push against the conclusion as it forces my mind to bend to its will.
Sara cannot be the traitor.