SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant Chapter 502: Sparring with Eryndor [II]

He was learning in real time through contact, through adjustment, through sheer feel.

Eryndor’s expression changed.

The broad, easy humor on his face thinned into something harder and more satisfied. He rotated the greatsword once in his hands, took a wider step, and the air around him seemed to draw taut.

Trafalgar felt it at once.

A concentration of intent so complete that it pressed against instinct before the strike even came.

Eryndor’s voice cut across the field.

"Take this blow."

Sword Insight finally woke.

The change was immediate and violent. Trafalgar did not see light or hear any inner chime. His senses simply flared. The position of Eryndor’s hands, the angle of his shoulders, the way his right foot bit into the earth, the path the greatsword would trace once his hips turned through it, everything arrived at once with brutal clarity.

This was no ordinary attack buried inside clean fundamentals. This was a technique, one hammered into the body through repetition so deep it had become part of the man himself.

Danger screamed through Trafalgar’s nerves.

Any sensible choice would have been to evade.

He did not.

His grip tightened around Maledicta. He brought the blade up, aligned it with the incoming path, set his feet, and met the strike head-on.

The impact exploded across the field.

It was not a clash. It was a detonation of force compressed into steel.

Maledicta held. Trafalgar held with it.

The instant the greatsword crashed into his guard, the ground behind him split with a jagged report. Cracks ran through the packed earth in branching lines, racing away from his heels like black veins. His boots dug trenches as the force drove through him. Dust and fragments burst upward in a dirty cloud. Behind him, the low training wall took the rest of what his body and blade could not absorb, and stone broke apart with a thunderous crack. Chunks of masonry blasted backward, skidding across the field in a spray of grit.

The class recoiled as one.

Trafalgar felt every inch of it.

The strike did not throw him off his feet, but it came close. His arms burned. His shoulders felt as though hooks had been driven through them. The vibration running along Maledicta climbed into his bones and rattled his teeth. Even so, he had taken it. He had not stepped aside. He had not been flung away.

When the pressure finally released, dust hung thick in the air between them.

Eryndor held his position, greatsword lowered by a fraction, and stared past Trafalgar at the damage left behind. His mouth twisted.

"Whoops... Althea is going to kill me."

The line struck the field in the strangest possible way. A handful of students who had half expected blood or a lecture instead found themselves too stunned even to laugh.

Trafalgar’s breath came heavy now. He lowered Maledicta an inch, another, and only once he was sure his knees would not betray him outright did he let the sword angle downward fully. His chest rose and fell hard enough to hurt. The effort of catching that strike had wrung him dry far faster than he wanted to admit. He took one step back, found no need to prove anything else, and dropped onto the ground in an exhausted sit, one hand braced behind him.

Dust clung to his clothes.

Fine cracks spidered under his boots. The shattered wall behind him said everything words would have cheapened.

Eryndor exhaled through his nose and rested the greatsword on one shoulder.

"Well," he said, voice carrying easily across the field, "you did well."

His grin returned, though this time it held more weight than before.

"More than well, actually. That was far beyond what I expected from a light spar."

Trafalgar tilted his head back slightly, drawing air into lungs that felt scraped raw. "You call that light?"

That earned the reaction the field had been waiting for. A rough burst of laughter left Eryndor without any effort.

"For me?" he replied. "It was."

The class heard the answer and understood that he had not mocked Trafalgar. If anything, he had honored him by saying it in front of everyone.

Only sword against sword, and Trafalgar had endured a strike that had split the training ground and broken stone.

That truth spread through the students faster than anything said out loud.

The first-year from earlier stood with his practice weapon hanging forgotten at his side, mouth slightly open. Others had long since abandoned the pretense of sparring. Some stared at the ruined wall. Some stared at Trafalgar. A few looked at Eryndor as if remeasuring their own teacher for the first time. What none of them could do anymore was reduce Trafalgar to stories from the war, rumor around his bloodline, or the echo of a title.

His swordsmanship was real.

Eryndor seemed content to let that understanding sink in on its own. He swung the greatsword once, dismissing it in a flare of mana, and folded his arms.

"Enough gawking," he barked at the rest of the class. "If you have time to stand around with your mouths open, you have time to work on your footwork."

That broke the trance enough to send people scrambling back into motion.

Eryndor turned back to Trafalgar, and the humor on his face eased into something more practical. "Catch your breath. When classes ends, don’t forget what I said. The offices."

Trafalgar gave a short nod from where he sat. "I won’t."

Eryndor held his attention a beat longer, as if fixing the measure of him in his mind, and finally moved away to restore order across the field.

Trafalgar stayed where he was for a few breaths more, Maledicta dissolving from his hand in dark motes. His arms still throbbed. His chest felt heavy. Sword Insight lingered in the back of his mind like the afterimage of lightning, the shape of that final technique burned into memory.

Around him, the class had resumed.

After a while, the weight in his arms eased enough for him to rise. Trafalgar walked to the weapon rack, took one of the wooden swords, and returned to an empty stretch of the field without drawing attention to himself. He began with the basics. Simple cuts. Footwork. Guard changes. Repetition stripped of pride. Sword Insight had already carved more technique into his mind than most students would grasp in years, centuries perhaps, but that changed nothing. Foundations mattered precisely because they were easy to neglect once talent started carrying too much of the burden. He had no intention of becoming careless.

By the time the class ended, sweat clung to him again. Trafalgar headed back first to the dormitory, took a quick shower, and changed before the smell of dust and exertion could follow him into the next lesson. When he stepped out, he found Bartholomew already waiting nearby. Together, they set off for their next class.

It was time to see Professor Rhaldrin.