Chapter 41: Building Experience
Armored Dragon Calendar Year 417 – Rudeus, Age 10
[Rudeus POV]
I dropped my spoon.
The metal clattered against my bowl, sending soup splattering across the table. Everyone around us fell silent.
"Ruijerd Superdia," Claude said again, his voice calm and certain. "Have a match with me."
I stared at him, searching his face for any hint of jest. Found only cold determination.
Ruijerd, ever stoic, merely nodded his acceptance. No questions.
No hesitation. As if dueling a child was the most natural thing in the world.
"Are you insane..." I managed.
"Probably." Claude was already rising from his seat.
"But I need to know where I stand."
Eris's eyes lit up with that familiar gleam. The one that ignited whenever combat was mentioned.
"This should be good."
We followed them outside. The rare sunshine bathed the Great Forest in golden light.
The brightness almost jarring after days of perpetual gloom beneath the canopy.
A crowd was gathering. Beast-tribe villagers who had heard about the boy who killed the North Saint.
They wanted to see what he could do.
I wanted to see it too. Even if part of me was terrified of the answer.
Claude dragged the coffin into the sparring ground.
The metallic screech of iron against dirt set everyone's teeth on edge. The box was massive.
Easily large enough to hold a body. It left deep furrows in the earth as he pulled it relentlessly forward.
"What is that thing..." Ruijerd asked, his eyes narrowing slightly.
"My scabbard." Claude's lips curled into a half-smile.
He knelt beside the coffin and pressed his palm against its surface. Runes I didn't recognize flared with light.
Then the lid swung open.
Weapons poured out.
Axes first. Small hand axes followed by massive two-handed behemoths larger than Claude himself.
Then swords. Every conceivable design: curved sabers, straight longswords, dual-bladed monstrosities that defied conventional form.
Spears followed. Then daggers.
Maces. War hammers.
Chains and flails and weapons I couldn't even name.
The arsenal kept coming. Weapons materialized from what appeared to be an impossible void.
Filling a quarter of the sparring ground with gleaming metal.
"Spatial storage," I breathed. "But the capacity... this is beyond anything I've seen."
The village elder had moved closer, her eyes wide with scholarly interest. "The enchantment work is exceptional."
"He's using a folded-space architecture, but the stabilization matrix..."
"English, please," Eris muttered.
"He made a magic bag for weapons," I simplified. "A very, very big magic bag."
Claude straightened, surveying his arsenal with a critical eye. "The inventory is limited to objects less than four times the box's external dimensions."
"And I haven't mastered weight reduction yet, so the coffin itself is still heavy."
"Still," Ruijerd observed, examining the weapons with interest. "An impressive collection."
"Built it over years." Claude selected a longsword and tested its balance.
"The dungeon destroyed most of them. I've been rebuilding."
He stepped away from the coffin. Assumed a stance I recognized.
Sword God style—aggressive, forward.
Ruijerd raised his spear. The weapon hummed with power I could feel from twenty feet away.
"Begin when ready," the elder announced.
Claude didn't waste time with words.
The fight lasted four minutes.
Four minutes that redefined everything I thought I knew—about Claude, about myself, about the gap between us.
Claude opened with textbook Sword God style. The stance was perfect, weight forward, blade angled for a descending strike.
Ghislaine had drilled the same posture into me during my lessons. But where I struggled to maintain it, Claude wore it like a second skin.
He exploded forward. A straight thrust aimed at Ruijerd's chest.
Fast. Direct.
The Sword God philosophy made manifest: end the fight before it begins.
Ruijerd deflected without moving his feet.
Clang.
Crack.
A hairline fracture ran from tip to crossguard. The blade couldn't handle the force of even a casual block from Ruijerd's ancient weapon.
"Good form," the Superd warrior acknowledged. "Too telegraphed."
Claude didn't waste breath responding. He threw the damaged sword aside.
Snatched a curved saber from the scattered arsenal in a single fluid motion. The transition into his next attack was seamless, a downward slash that became the opening movement of the Longsword of Light, that legendary Sword God technique said to move faster than sight.
Too slow. The technique required perfect commitment.
And Claude hesitated for just a fraction of a heartbeat.
Ruijerd's spear was already there. The parry shattered the saber completely, fragments of steel spinning away into the dirt.
Claude was already reaching for his third weapon before the pieces landed.
"You've studied the advanced forms," Ruijerd observed, circling to Claude's left. "But you haven't internalized them."
"Your body second-guesses what your mind commands."
Claude recovered, a straight-bladed longsword now in his grip. This time he came in low.
Sweeping at Ruijerd's legs before flowing upward into a rising cut. North God style, unpredictable angles, power generated through leverage rather than pure speed.
Ruijerd sidestepped the leg sweep. Caught the rising blade on his spear shaft.
The impact should have driven Claude backward, but somehow he absorbed it, letting the force spin him into a horizontal slash.
The longsword held. Barely.
Another fracture appeared along its length.
"Interesting." Genuine interest flickered in Ruijerd's ancient eyes.
"You're mixing schools."
"The dungeon didn't care about proper technique."
Claude pressed his advantage before the weapon could fail him. His sword wove patterns I couldn't follow, Sword God aggression bleeding into Water God redirections, beast-tribe footwork carrying him around Ruijerd's guard.
He attacked from angles that shouldn't have been possible. Each strike flowing into the next without pause for breath.
The longsword finally gave out, snapping clean in half during a parry. Claude let momentum carry him into a roll, snatching a hand-axe from the ground and hurling it at Ruijerd's face while grabbing a heavy bastard sword with his other hand.
Ruijerd deflected the axe with contemptuous ease. But the distraction had bought Claude half a second.
He used it well. Three more exchanges, the bastard sword singing through the air.
Ruijerd actually retreated, three full steps.
For a moment, hope lifted. Maybe Claude could,
Then Ruijerd stopped retreating.
His first real attack came at half-speed. A simple thrust that Claude barely managed to deflect.
The bastard sword shattered on impact. The blade wasn't designed to absorb that kind of force.
Claude stumbled backward, weaponless, arms trembling.
He dove for his arsenal. Came up with twin short swords.
The second attack was faster. A sweep that caught Claude's left blade at the wrong angle.
The sword bent, then snapped. Claude threw the useless hilt at Ruijerd's eyes.
Switched to a single-handed grip on his remaining weapon.
The third attack was something else entirely.
Ruijerd's spear became a blur. Three strikes.
Five. Seven.
Each one precisely placed, each one punishing. I couldn't track the individual movements. They simply existed, and then they were over.
Claude's last short sword lay in three pieces on the ground. He was bleeding from his arms, his side, his legs, and reaching for yet another weapon, a curved cavalry saber.
Non-lethal. Every wound designed to teach rather than kill.
But the lesson was brutal.
"Your defensive transitions are too slow," Ruijerd said, not even breathing hard. "When you shift from Sword God to Water God stance."
"You leave your left side exposed for two heartbeats. Against a faster opponent, that's death."
Claude's response was to attack again. Desperate now.
The cavalry saber moved with renewed fury, technique abandoned in favor of raw aggression. When it shattered, he grabbed a war hammer.
When the hammer's head flew off from a parry, he snatched up a spear of his own.
When Ruijerd cut the spear shaft in half, Claude used both halves as improvised clubs.
Then came the killing intent.
I felt it from where I stood. The air turned thick.
Cold. The pressure of absolute murderous focus.
Refined over centuries of warfare into a weapon of its own.
Claude went rigid. His body locked up for just an instant, muscles seizing, breath stopping, survival instincts screaming at him to flee.
An instant was all Ruijerd would have needed.
But he didn't capitalize. Just stood there, spear lowered, waiting for Claude to recover.
"You understand now," he said. "The gap between us."
Claude was breathing hard. Sweat dripped from his face.
Blood trickled from a dozen minor wounds. But his eyes held recognition, not defeat.
"Not yet."
He snatched up the heaviest blade he could find. A massive two-handed greatsword that looked absurd in his hands.
He launched himself forward. Every technique he knew.
Every combination he could improvise. The greatsword became an extension of pure will.
Attacking with the fury of someone who had nothing left to lose.
And for one brief moment, something changed.
Light gathered around his blade. Not mana. I would have sensed the flow of magical energy.
Not enchantment either. This was something different.
Primal.
The sword moved faster than it should have been capable of moving. Claude's body moved faster than his muscles should have allowed.
For one heartbeat, he was everywhere at once, blade singing through the air with force that cracked the ground where Ruijerd had been standing.
Touki. Battle aura.
The legendary technique that allowed warriors to exceed their physical limitations.
Ruijerd's eyes widened. "There it is."
He actually had to move to block. The spear came up in a proper defensive posture for the first time since the fight began. Steel met steel with an impact that sent shockwaves rippling outward.
But the moment couldn't last.
The energy flickered, then died.
Claude overextended, his body unable to sustain what his will had briefly achieved. His arms dropped.
His legs trembled. The greatsword, now sporting a crack running its entire length, wavered in his grip.
Ruijerd's spear flashed once.
The greatsword shattered. What remained of the blade went spinning away.
Embedding itself in a tree twenty feet distant.
The Superd warrior's blade stopped a hair's breadth from Claude's throat.
"Match concluded," the elder announced.
The sparring ground fell silent.
I couldn't move.
The ground before me lay littered with broken weapons.
Each shattered blade was evidence I hadn't wanted.
Mortification settled. How did this happen...
When had Claude, my student, my junior, surpassed me so thoroughly...
I had lived decades before this life began. I possessed knowledge and experience that should have placed me leagues ahead of a mere child, regardless of his talent.
Yet the evidence lay scattered across the ground.
"By now, he's undoubtedly surpassed my father," I admitted to no one in particular. "When I left the village, he was only marginally stronger than me."
"Now... I couldn't match him without ambushing him."
Eris appeared at my side. Her expression was split—part excitement, part concern.
"You still have your magic," she said. "You're better at ranged."
"Maybe." I wasn't so sure anymore.
Claude had trained for nine months in that dungeon. He'd mentioned using fire and water magic to survive.
"But in direct combat, without spells..." I shook my head.
Ruijerd approached, having left Claude to catch his breath among his scattered arsenal.
"The boy has potential," he observed. "Remarkable potential."
"But potential is not mastery."
"He's twelve years old," I pointed out. "And he just lasted four minutes against you."
I looked at Claude. He was sitting among his broken weapons, staring at his hands.
His body was covered in bruises. His breathing was ragged.
But he was smiling.
A small smile. Almost invisible.
The smile of someone who had found exactly what they were looking for.
"He needed to know," Ruijerd continued. "Where he stands."
"What he still lacks. Now he knows."
"And where does he stand..."
"Saint level. Perhaps higher."
Ruijerd paused. "But Saint level is not enough to face what comes. Especially for him..."
We visited the grave afterward.
Claude had recovered enough to walk, though his movements were stiff with pain. He carried fresh flowers clutched in his hand.
Their petals bright against the dull green of the forest.
The mound of earth looked small against the vastness of the trees.
"I apologize," Claude said as he replaced the withered blooms. "For blaming you."
"For being harsh."
I knelt beside him. Helped arrange the fresh flowers.
"You had reason to be angry."
"Reasons don't always justify actions." He sat back on his heels, studying the grave.
"I've been carrying this knowledge for so long. It's made me... difficult."
"Paranoid. Obsessive."
"Terrifying." I offered a weak smile.
"Also right about most things, which makes it worse."
He snorted. Almost a laugh.
We sat there in silence for a while. Two boys with too many burdens, paying respects to people who deserved better.
"I need to craft better weapons," Claude said eventually. "The ones I have aren't strong enough."
"For what..."
"For what comes next." He stood, brushing dirt from his knees.
"There are people I need to find. Battles I need to prepare for."
"And a timeline I'm running out of."
"What do you mean by timeline..."
He looked at me. Considered something.
Then shook his head.
"Later. When we have more time."
I wanted to push. To demand answers.
But something in his expression stopped me.
Some things couldn't be rushed.
"Right." Claude was walking beside Eris as we headed back toward the village.
"Birthdays. I won't be giving you any presents since you never remembered mine."
The words stopped me.
"I... I don't even know when your birthday is," I admitted.
"Exactly my point."
"When is it..."
"Not telling now. You had years to ask."
Eris was watching our exchange with growing amusement. "He has a point, Rudeus."
"I might be your future brother-in-law," Claude continued, "but that's still theoretical. I remain your elder, right Eris..."
"You're my age," she pointed out.
"I'm older by months. Months count."
The bickering was familiar. Comfortable, even.
For a moment, it almost felt like nothing had changed. Like we were still children in Buena Village.
Arguing about trivial things while the world turned peacefully around us.
Then Claude made a face at me. A stupid, childish face that looked completely wrong on his usually serious features.
I snapped.
"Water Ball!"
The spell conjured instinctively. Mana flowing through my staff before I could think better of it.
Claude's eyes went wide.
"He's attacking!" He dodged effortlessly, a genuine smile breaking through his mask of seriousness.
"Run, Eris, run!"
"Run!" Eris cackled, darting away with him.
I chased them through the village. Launching water balls that splashed harmlessly against trees and startled beast-tribe villagers.
Claude weaved between obstacles with that impossible agility. Eris ran straight through anything in her path.
Laughter trailed behind them like scattered petals.
Claude looked his actual age then. A child playing rather than the burdened warrior who had faced Ruijerd.
He was still in there—buried under years of preparation and pain and impossible knowledge, but still the person I had known. Still worth fighting for.
I launched another water ball and kept chasing.
◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ AUTHOR'S NOTE ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆
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