Chapter 93: Endurance

Open-water endurance turned out to mean this: swim out to the second marker flag, swim back, do it four times, and Instructor Halvard stands in a boat with a whistle and tells you your form is an insult to the sea.

I got through two lengths before my arms turned into wet rope.

"SAKANA. I’VE SEEN DOGS SWIM BETTER THAN YOU!"

[H-Hey, I’m a fox! You can’t say that!!!]

I tried to hurry up. Behind me, I could hear the hundred or so students clapping and cheering from the sand, and I couldn’t help but think they were making fun of me. Still, I gave it a good shot. I pushed my hands and my feet as much as I could, swimming like my life depended on it!

And by the time I got there...

"SAKANA, TIME: TWO MINUTES!"

[... Didn’t everyone else make it in like thirty seconds? I’m this bad?]

I had to actively resist the urge to let the waters take me.

After that, I got back and flopped face-first next to Odette.

"... Can you look up what the best ways to swim are?"

"I don’t think any research I do would be of benefit to you," Odette admitted with a sigh. "You’re lucky your body doesn’t let you just drop to the bottom of the ocean."

I glanced over at Lily, who was sitting by Serena’s side.

[... Right. Lily doesn’t know how to swim. How’s she gonna get through this?]

In the original, she just went up to the teacher, told him she didn’t know how to swim, he berated her, and then Aldric stuck up for her, which naturally led to the teacher dropping the issue. It soon became her turn now, and she whispered something in Serena’s ear.

The two of them walked up to the instructor, exchanged a few words that I couldn’t hear, and went back to where they had been sitting.

[Just like that? It’s done?]

So, instead of Lily, next up was Serena.

The white-haired villainess walked up to the water, wearing shorts over the same extremely skimpy swimsuit that had nearly cost me my second life, and on the teacher’s mark, she jumped in.

It was nothing like my attempt. No, Serena would have set records if she swam competitively back on Earth. She made it all the way to the little floating marker and then back to the sand in the blink of an eye, and the teacher didn’t bother criticizing her once.

Everyone gawked and whispered as she came out of the water like a supermodel. She threw one glance my way and then strode back over to where she was sitting.

[Show-off.]

"You’re pouting again."

---

I was walking with Sabine now.

"Well, let’s hope this hunting session goes better than your swimming," she said as she walked ahead of me, beneath the palm trees.

[WOMAN, I WAS AN AUTHOR! THE ONLY CONTACT I EVER MADE WITH WATER WAS WHEN I SHOWERED AND EVEN THAT WAS RELUCTANT AT BEST!]

"Yeah, let’s hope so," I muttered.

The tide pools past the palms were wide, flat, and full of things that wanted to kill me.

"There," Sabine said, stopping at the edge of the biggest one. "Do you see them?"

I didn’t, for about four seconds, and then one of the rocks in front of me just... stood up.

It came out of the water on eight legs with a shell the size of a dinner table and two claws that opened and closed with a sound like a door being broken. Then the rock next to it stood up. Then three more, further out, and every one of them turned to face us at the same time.

"Coastal Ripper," Sabine said, in exactly the voice you’d use to point out a nice bird. "C-rank, aggressive, no ranged attack, no magic. The shell is the whole problem. Nothing you own will go through the top of it."

"Great. Wonderful. So what am I supposed to do?"

"Underneath. They have to lift to strike, and when they lift, the seam under the front leg opens for about half a second." She folded her arms. "I want you to use Tide. You will run the band down into your legs to close the distance, up into your arms for the cut, and back into your legs to leave. If you hold a full Coat out here you’ll be out of mana before the third one and I’ll have to carry you back, which I will do, and which you will never hear the end of."

"Half a second?"

"That’s generous. It might be less." She started walking back toward a dry rock to sit on. "Also, mind the meat."

"... The what?"

"The meat, darling." She sat down and arranged her skirt. "Ripper is the single finest thing on this coast. The tail section particularly. There’s a fat under the third plate that renders out if you put it over a fire, and the whole village comes down for it when the season turns. They serve it with a sour fruit that grows up on the headland, which is why students keep going up on the headland, which is why students keep falling off the headland."

"... Professor."

She pressed on.

"The trick is not to overcook it. People panic and leave it on too long and then it goes to rubber, and honestly at that point you may as well eat the shell."

"PROFESSOR! You want me to EAT MONSTER MEAT?"

She blinked.

"What do you think is in the soup?"

My jaw dropped.

I stood there with my sword out and my entire worldview rearranging itself, and the nearest Ripper took that opportunity to charge me.

I got Tide up about half a beat late.

The band went down into my legs and I moved, and I moved fast enough that the claw came down where I’d been instead of on top of me, and it cracked the rock it hit. Then I had to get the layer up into my arms, which is the part I keep failing, and it arrived roughly when my swing did.

I went in under the front leg.

The seam was there for about a third of a second, and I put the blade into it, and the thing screamed through its shell and came apart sideways in the water.

The second one nearly took my head off, because I dropped the band coming out of the turn and had to eat a claw on my shoulder with nothing on it, and I felt that all the way down to my fingers. The third and fourth were better. The fifth was actually good, honestly good, seven full seconds of Tide from the first step to the last cut, and I came out the other side of it breathing hard with my arms shaking and about nine mana left in the tank.

Sabine clapped twice, slowly, which from her is a parade.

"Nine seconds," she said. "Now, let’s build a fire."

---

"... Okay, it’s actually pretty good. Fuck."

"Mm."

"No, I mean it’s REALLY good. This is the best thing I’ve eaten since I got here."

"To be fair, we haven’t had much food yet."

[No, lady, I meant since I got to this world.]

"Yeah."

We were sitting on the flat rock with the fire between us and about four pounds of tail meat coming off the third plate exactly like she said it would. I burned my fingers twice and still did not slow down.

Sabine she watched me over the fire while she ate, and after a while she said:

"So what’s happened with you and Everdawn?"

I stopped chewing.

"Nothing’s happened."

"Mm."

"Nothing has happened! We’re fine. We’re completely fine."

"Kohaku." She put a piece of shell down. "For two months, that girl has been attached to you at the hip. She waited outside my office for you, on the floor, for forty minutes, twice. If I had been told the two of you were married, I would have said, ah, that explains the matching bag."

"That’s a wild exaggeration."

"Yesterday, at lunch, you sat four tables apart. Today she sat on the sand beside Frostfall and you lay face down beside the Yun-Salera girl." She picked the shell back up. "So. What’s happened?"

I poked at the fire with a stick, which is what you do when you don’t want to answer something.

"Nothing’s happened. Lily and Serena knew each other when they were kids, and it went badly, and now they’re fixing it. That’s all it is. Serena’s teaching her guard work this afternoon."

"Ah..."

"Don’t ’ah’ me."

"... And do you like that?"

"Of course I like it!" It came out fast. "That’s, look, that’s the best possible outcome. Lily’s getting real instruction from someone with an actual rank, and Serena’s actually talking to a human being for once, and they’re both, you know. Happy. Obviously I like it."

Sabine chewed.

"But you feel left out."

"I do NOT feel left out."

"Mm."

"I’m not a child, professor! I’m a grown woman with a plan and a schedule, and the plan is working, and I don’t need to be sitting in the middle of everything all the time to know that."

"Mm."

"Stop saying ’mm’ at me!"

She shrugged one shoulder and sucked something off her thumb, and for a while there was just the fire and the sea doing its thing behind us. Then she stood up and started kicking sand over the coals.

"I’ll say one thing and then we’ll go back," Sabine said. "You spend a great deal of energy arranging other people. Which is fine. It suits you." She looked down at me. "Just don’t forget that you’re allowed to want things too, darling. It’s not a privilege reserved for everybody else."

Then she walked off toward the palms with the knife still in her hand, and I sat there by the dead fire for a second with grease on my fingers.

[I do want things. I want a hammock, and a harem of fox girls, and a drink with a little umbrella in it. And I’m working toward it, thank you very much.]

I got up and followed her back.