小嫂子的味道

"Can I ask you for something?" I said.

"Of course, you can. In fact, you don\'t ask us for many things so I\'d be more than willing to give you whatever you want. But yeah, if you want to get married right now, I\'m afraid that won\'t be possible. Even if it was legally allowed I want you to complete your education first—"

"I know, I know! This isn\'t about marriage anyway. Wait! This was never about marriage. Why are you so fixated on that?!"

"Hahahahah," Ron burst out into a peal of laughter. "I\'m joking, joking," he said as he patted me on the back. "So, what is it?" he asked.

"I want you to test my sword skills in a duel," I said.

"Hmm? That\'s an unusual thing to ask. Could I know the reason?"

"It\'s nothing big. I just never really got the chance to cross swords with you, so I wanted to try since this seemed like a good chance," I elaborated.

"Well, I don\'t have a problem with that. If anything, I\'d be more than happy to do that. I never got the chance to test what my son\'s capable of either," he said. "Just wait here, I\'ll be back in a moment with the swords."

After that, he left to bring the swords.

[I\'d like to know your reasons too…real reasons.]

\'It\'s a family thing, don\'t poke your nose into it. Is it so wrong that I want to spend some quality time with my father?\'

[Whatever…]

\'That was actually wrong. While the statement about spending some time with him wasn\'t false, I wanted to spar with him for some other reasons as well. And it was to see his skill level.

\'After all, even if I took the best possible route I will still be at the academy by the time the hit calamity will strike, thus it will take me some time to reach here. While the demons shouldn\'t raid this area that quickly, I don\'t want to take any risks.\'

***

A few minutes later Ron returned with two wooden swords in his hands, he came up to me and handed one of the two.

"Let\'s get started then," he said with a smile and stepped a few meters back.

He took his stance—which was not too far from what the basic stances were—but it was clear that he\'d done some changes of his own. I also shifted into a battle posture, however, I was more on the defensive side.

After all, my goal was to test his skills and not beat him up. That\'s why my main tactic would revolve around blocking his attacks and delivering a few counters out of formality.

Though this was going to be harder than an all-out fight since I\'d have to make sure that Ron doesn\'t sense that I was going easy on him, I really didn\'t want to face that outcome. Therefore along with measuring his strength, I\'ll have to make this spar look like a real one.

"Are you ready?" he asked.

"Whenever you are," I replied.

A smile came on his face and right after that, he dashed toward me. Raising his sword above the shoulders his first attack was a basic upper-right to lower-left slash.

Now, considering the speed of this attack, the obvious and reasonable choice would\'ve been to dodge it entirely by taking two steps back. But I wanted to know how much force his attacks carried, thus I obstructed his sword\'s path with my own.

I lowered my sword to my right side and then moved it upright, smacking it straight with Ron\'s sword. The angle wasn\'t the best thus I felt the vibrations from the impact run into my bones.

But it wasn\'t much. Good to beat the shit out of some bandits, but not good enough to stand against the demons.

"Not running away, eh?" he said as he remained rigid on his feet.

"Why would I? I want to savor every moment of this," I replied.

"Hehe, good. That\'s the way I like it, you\'ve inherited your father\'s battle spirit," he said with a proud smirk on his face. "Now let\'s see if you have your father\'s strength as well!"

He brushed off my sword by grating his against my sword\'s blade. This was something that could only be done while fighting with wooden swords, if you were to do this with a real sword you will probably throw back your opponent but at the cost of your blade\'s sharpness.

I took a step back and held my sword in front of my chest with both hands. Ron was going full offensive though.

He took a step forward and planted his left foot on the ground, he moved his sword up with just his right hand and brought it down straight toward me. It was a custom move, and it looked as if he were cutting something with an axe.

I quickly moved my sword in front of my face while holding its hilt with one hand and grabbing the tip of the blade with another. This was a way to keep yourself from getting pushed back, but again it was something you could use only with a wooden sword, or else you\'d end up cutting your own hand.

A second later after I\'d put up my defense his sword hit, no, it was supposed to clash with my blade as the attack was directed toward my shoulder. But on the way, he changed the trajectory of his blade and struck me on the left side of my chest.

\'Still not enough,\' I said inwardly. Even if not blocked, the strength of his attacks was not enough to damage a demon.

The next moment I hit his sword down with my left elbow. I jumped and spun in the air and threw a slash at him. I ducked under my sword and moved his blade in an arc to brighten it in front of himself in order to block the next attack I threw at him.

\'Well, at least his defense is better.\'