Chapter 271: Building a Wall

Despite being the weekend, the Royal Knights Academy was quite rowdy. Notice boards throughout the campus were entirely swamped by swarms of students from every year, all desperate to catch a glimpse of the parchment pinned to the board.

The hallways of the main building were a sea of bodies. People huddled over each other’s shoulders, squinting at the announcements, frantically scribbling notes, and throwing elbows just to keep their places.

Everyone was after the same thing: the preliminary tournament rules, the details about points, and, most importantly, the initial matchups.

Safe from the chaos, Lionne sat beside me, holding a small, leather-bound notebook. She had managed to convince a friend to write down her section of the bracket, and then some, before the boards were completely mobbed by the others.

“Let's see... it says here I’m up against Jasson from Class B,” Lionne muttered, tracing a finger down the page. “And after that… oh, no, not her.” She groaned, letting her head drop into her hand. “I guess I'll just concede.”

On my other side, Eve leaned comfortably against the stone wall. “Come now, Lionne. I’m sure you’ll do well if you just give it a try,” she teased, her tone light.

“Excuse me for not wanting to break my bones.” Lionne then turned to me. “Oh, right! Lady Carine, it says here that your first opponent is—”

“Myura from class Oxen, right?” I interjected.

Lionne blinked, her gaze darting between her notebook and my face a few times. “Y-Yes. Exactly right.”

I crossed my legs as I leaned back against the wall. “Admittedly, I never heard that name before. I’ll have to press Kyro for details later.”

“Too bad he couldn't make it to our joint training session today, huh?” Lionne said, flipping her notebook shut.

“If it makes you feel any better, I don't think he had a choice,” Eve added, staring up at the ceiling as if visualizing the scene. “Last time I saw him, three of his classmates were carrying him away from the stables by his limbs.”

Lionne winced. “No kidding. With injuries that severe, I'll actually believe it if someone told me the horse danced on top of him."

“Ehem.” I cleared my throat. “Pay attention, please. The spar is about to begin.”

Both Lionne and Eve shifted their gazes toward the center of the training grounds, where two figures stood poised on the edge of the training mat.

One was Feyt, holding a proper stance, eyes kept sharp against my opponent.

The other was a rather unorthodox special guest.

While the rest of us were wearing our proper training gear, our guest here had arrived clad in a loose, lightweight blouse and what appeared to be cotton jogging pants.

That special guest was none other than our beloved Instructor Liz.

I know I asked her to meet us outside of her official hours, but is this really the best attire to wear?

Looking closely, even though she was still wearing long sleeves, the scars I had noticed underneath her uniform before were much more prominent here, mostly thanks to Carine’s eyes being able to see slightly under her blouse. From what I could tell, her wounds were even more numerous than I had imagined.

Instructor Liz chuckled aloud. “I can’t believe you two are this obsessed with me, dragging me out here on my day off? Give it a break, why don’t ya?” She snapped her head in Carine’s direction, her eyes gleaming bright. “Unless… you’re not lying about that, right?”

Without a word, I lifted a remarkably heavy leather pouch from my side. It let out a dense, metallic clink as I dropped it onto the seat beside me.

Liz’s eyes locked onto the pouch, narrowing instantly. She placed a hand over her chest and offered a deep, weirdly respectful bow. “Lady Carine. You truly are the most magnificent, benevolent noble to ever grace my presence. Consider your money’s worth guaranteed.”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Stop with the theatrics and get to sparring already.

She turned to face the other me, readying her own blade.

“You do know what she paid me to do to you, right?” she said, keeping her voice low.

“Don’t worry, I know,” I said as Feyt.

“Hmph.” She let out a dry, humorless scoff. “I won’t go easy on you, just so you know.”

“Don’t worry.” I leveled my blade against her. “I know.”

Before the tournament could officially begin, I wanted to get a better grip on these new techniques even more. Yes, I did use those techniques against Instructor Liz. And yes, I did win against her using them. But that was because I was using both bodies at once.

So, before I could step into the ring, I wished to master three things.

Feyt’s individual hearing prediction.

Carine’s individual vision analysis.

And, most importantly… building a wall between my bodies.

Today’s private lesson was all about the last one.

“Lady Carine?” Lionne asked, leaning in slightly. “Is that a new notebook?”

“Indeed.”

Resting on my lap was a small, hand-sized leather-bound notebook I’d picked up at the pop-up market a few days ago. The moment Feyt and Instructor Liz’s match started, I opened it, raised my pencil as Carine... and began to draw.

That’s right, the most important training I needed to have right now was multitasking my mind. If, in the middle of a one-on-one fight, my other body was distracted by something, the one in the fight would be at a massive disadvantage.

Case in point, the moment I tried hearing Liz’s muscles to anticipate her moves as Feyt, I was trying to draw a sword as Carine in the notebook. In the end, I couldn’t get quite a good grasp on both, which ended up with me being smacked on the nose with a blade as Feyt, and nearly pushing through the paper with my pencil as Carine.

Okay…

Maybe I should take this slowly.

…

..

.

I was breathing heavily as Feyt, my training gear scuffed, wooden blade cracked, and a few parts of my body were throbbing. Instructor Liz didn’t hold back at all, she just kept circling me, waiting for me to make a move again.

On the sidelines, things weren’t going much better.

The notebook I had been sketching in as Carine, they were filled with jagged lines and heavy drags of graphite. The initial lines of the things I was drawing looked okay, hell, I would say they looked great, but the moment I moved forward as Feyt, I would get my ass handed to me.

Even if I managed to predict from her muscles what Instructor Liz was about to do, I would barely be able to react to it, and she would immediately follow up with something I couldn’t have time to focus on predicting.

Also, I didn’t know if this was the money talking or what, but she really was taking this training seriously. Not a single joke left her mouth ever since we started.

“Lady Carine?” Lionne’s voice drifted over, laced with genuine concern. She was staring down at my lap. “Your… your hands are shaking quite a lot. And you’ve been gripping that pencil so hard it’s almost breaking.”

I blinked through Carine’s eyes, realizing my knuckles were completely white.

“O-Oh…”

“I-If it’s too painful to watch,” Lionne continued hesitantly, casting a worried glance toward Feyt, “maybe we should call it a day? I know Sir Feyt is doing this for the tournament, but seeing him get hurt like this must be—”

I immediately shook my head, my expression hardening with conviction.

“No. We must not stop,” I said as Carine, my voice firm.

Are you crazy? We can't stop. This is the whole point of the training! If I can't learn to ignore Feyt's pain while Carine is doing something else, a single lucky hit in the tournament is going to take down both of my bodies at the same time!

“But, Lady Carine… You look like you’re in pain yourself.

She really wants me to stop this, huh?

In a way, Lionne's interrupting me here was a form of training as well. If I couldn't hold a conversation as Carine while fighting for my life as Feyt, I’d fail the multitasking test anyway. But I would like to clarify that I was not moving away from this seat.

“Feyt is to become my personal bodyguard," I said, keeping my voice steady as I looked right back at my own scuffed form on the mat. "In the future, he’ll be beside me as much as I’ll be beside him. If I cannot bear to watch him struggle now, then how could I ever deserve to have him stand by my side? I must witness everything he endures, as I’m sure he’ll do the same for me. However, if you can’t bear to watch and must leave, you are free to do so.”

Lionne froze. A heavy flush crawled up Lionne’s neck. She lowered her head so fast her hair fell over her face, completely hiding her expression.

“I-I am deeply sorry, Lady Carine!” she squeaked out, her voice a full note higher than usual. “Please forgive my thoughtlessness! I didn’t mean to question your uhh… resolve! I will remain right here and witness his efforts right beside you!”

I gave her a slight nod of approval, but I didn’t quite understand why her eyes looked… glassy? Was she tearing up? But, as long as she was staying quiet, I wasn’t going to complain.

Good. Glad we got that settled.

Now back to the grind.

With Lionne silenced and Eve keeping to herself, the sidelines grew quiet again, allowing me to re-allocate my processing power to focusing on drawing as Carine once more.

I forced Carine’s eyes back down to the small, hand-sized notebook. My white-knuckled grip on the pencil relaxed just enough to place the graphite tip back onto the paper… before a sharp pain ringed in Feyt’s shoulders as Liz landed another attack.

Ow, ow ow!

O-Okay…

Maybe I really did push myself too hard here.

But, even with that realization, I refused to give in. Once more, I lifted the graphite tip, strained my ears, and pushed both of my bodies back into the fray.

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