Chapter 1194: The Valeria He Remembered (2)

The conclusion struck deeper than Valeria expected.

Irritation came first, clean and immediate. Beneath it lay wounded pride, sharpened by something she had less interest in naming. She had chosen him because he was among the few capable of understanding what her swordsmanship had become.

He had been the one to expose the flaw within her perfection. Her forms had once been exact enough that their correctness became prediction; every transition carried the certainty of doctrine, and Lucavion had repeatedly turned that certainty against her. Everything she had rebuilt since then had begun with that lesson.

She had wanted to place the result before him in the only language neither of them could dispute.

Instead, Lucavion had entered believing he already possessed its grammar.

The anger did not disturb her stance. It settled it.

Valeria drew one measured breath. The excitement that had scattered through her chest condensed beneath it, losing its restless edge as her fingers adjusted around the zweihander’s grip. Her shoulders loosened. Her weight returned to the centre of her stance.

She did not need to demand that Lucavion recognize the difference. She had no intention of explaining it while steel remained between them.

’If that is the woman you intend to fight, then keep watching her.’

He trusted the conclusions of the Olarion forms he remembered. He moved toward their openings before they appeared because experience had taught him where those forms must end.

The certainty insulted her. It also made him easy to lead.

Across from her, Lucavion’s estoc began correcting toward her restored guard. Scarcely a second had passed since she withdrew from the unfinished sequence, yet within that second Valeria understood the direction she needed to take.

Valeria moved before his correction finished.

The zweihander rose from her restored guard in a direct ascending line, forcing Lucavion’s estoc outward before its point could settle. Her rear foot followed. Instead of completing the lift into the overhead guard he remembered, she turned her wrists and allowed the flat to fall across the space before him.

Lucavion withdrew from its reach.

Valeria followed.

’Keep watching.’

Her next cut began from the shoulder, compact enough to preserve control while still carrying the weight to punish contact. Lucavion stepped outside it, his estoc touching near the middle of her blade and pressing just long enough to encourage the expected recovery.

Valeria let the pressure turn her weapon farther.

The zweihander passed across her centre, but rather than arresting its weight and restoring the proper guard, she stepped with it. Her front foot crossed toward his retreat while the blade continued around her body, transforming the displaced recovery into a second sweep.

—SWOOSH!

Lucavion bent beneath the returning edge. The movement took him lower than before, one hand nearly brushing the floor as the zweihander passed above his shoulder. He rose behind its path with the estoc aligned toward her side.

Valeria’s rear leg drove against the stone.

She turned before his thrust could arrive, bringing the pommel across and forcing him to pull his head from its path. The estoc scraped against her crossguard as they separated.

—SKRING!

Neither seal registered contact.

Lucavion landed two paces away, his stance already restored. The amusement remained, though something brighter had entered his eyes.

"You have gotten faster."

’Pointless words.’

Faster was what one said when an Awakened advanced. Faster, stronger, more controlled—the ordinary improvements brought by denser mana, reinforced muscles and continued training. He was acknowledging the body carrying her sword without recognizing what had changed within the swordsmanship itself.

Valeria offered no answer.

She crossed the distance again.

This time, she gave him less force and more blade. The zweihander’s point occupied his centre while short advances compressed the lane behind him. Lucavion shifted left. Valeria altered the angle through her wrists, preserving the threat without chasing him, and his route narrowed until the barrier stood three strides behind his heel.

He tested the line with a shallow thrust.

She did not parry.

Valeria moved her torso beyond the point by a finger’s breadth and drove the blade downward toward his forward leg.

Lucavion removed it before the edge arrived. His recovery remained impossibly quick; the estoc returned along her lowered blade and threatened her hands before the zweihander could rise.

She released the pressure in her forward hand.

The grip loosened just enough for the blade to turn beneath his point. Her rear hand pulled the pommel across her hip, rotating the crossguard into the thrust. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ

—CLINK!

His estoc glanced aside.

Valeria advanced through the contact, shoulder entering behind the guard. Lucavion gave up the space near the barrier and slipped around her right, but she had already shortened her grip. The zweihander turned within a tighter circle than its length suggested, its edge rising where his retreat should have escaped it.

—SWISH!

Lucavion leaned back. The blade passed before his chest without touching, close enough that the restraint seal along his uniform flickered in response to the displaced mana.

He recovered first, his point already returning toward her exposed flank, forcing Valeria to lengthen her grip and drive the strong of her blade against it. He yielded before she could bind him, circled around the crossguard and threatened her wrist from the opposite side.

Valeria shifted her hands.

The point followed.

She stepped back before the seal could register.

Lucavion did not chase. He remained near the centre of the lane now, having taken it during her withdrawal, and the faint curve at his mouth deepened.

"Faster hands too."

Her fingers tightened.

’Is that all you see?’

He had noticed every physical improvement. That was the problem. He could measure the speed of her recovery, the increased strength beneath her grip and the smaller movements through which she now controlled the zweihander. Each observation was accurate, yet all of them remained arranged around the assumption that she had polished what already existed.

Valeria lowered the blade.

Not into rest. Into invitation.

Lucavion’s weight shifted subtly toward his lead foot. He recognized the middle guard and the Olarion entry built from it: a rising displacement against the opposing weapon, followed by a committed diagonal cut once the centre opened.

She stepped.

The zweihander climbed beneath his estoc.

Lucavion allowed the heavier blade to carry his point aside rather than contesting it. His rear foot moved first, taking him beyond the descending line before Valeria’s hips had completed their turn.

Valeria committed to the cut.

—SWOOSH!

Lucavion slipped beyond its edge. His estoc reversed around her blade while her weight travelled forward, and he stepped toward the opening that should appear as she arrested the zweihander and restored her guard.

There.

He had chosen the answer she wanted.

’Got you.’

Valeria did not stop the blade.

The descending edge passed the point at which Olarion swordsmanship demanded recovery. Its remaining weight pulled across her centre, taking her shoulders with it. Her front foot had already settled too far forward, and for one dangerous instant her balance became precisely what years of training had taught her never to permit.

Wrong.

She reinforced it.

Mana drove through her hips and thighs. Her rear leg locked against the stone before the sword’s momentum could tear her stance apart. At the same moment, Valeria slid her forward hand down the grip, shortening the distance between her hands and collapsing the weapon’s rotational radius.

The recovery ceased to be a recovery.

Lucavion’s estoc entered the opening he remembered.

Valeria turned inside it.

His point passed beside her ribs as the zweihander curved around her lowered shoulder, tighter and faster than a blade of its length should have managed. The movement exposed her left side and left only a narrow continuation available, but Lucavion had already stepped into its path.

His eyes changed.

Too late.

Valeria’s rear foot drove her forward. The shortened grip sacrificed leverage, but the weapon no longer required it. Its weight had never stopped moving.

She carried that momentum through the turn and brought the flat across his chest.

—THUD!

Pale light burst between them.

The formation registered the contact in a sharp chime, and the restraint seal swallowed the force before the zweihander could drive him from his feet.

Lucavion slid back half a pace.

Valeria’s own rear foot shifted upon landing. The reinforcement held, though strain pulled hot through her thigh and the unfinished stance left her torso open for longer than she liked. Had the seal not ended the exchange, his estoc might still have found a price to take.

But the point belonged to her.

"Contact."