Swordsmaster Fox-girl

Months passed. Each and every day, I smashed my hand in and healed it. Although the scars were filling up, I could definitely feel myself getting stronger.

And finally, on one faithful day…

[DEX, AUR, and ARC have reached their limit. Would you like to view your Progression Quest?]

Ye—

“Esther.”

I lazily turned my head to the side. Yep, it was Fred. “What?”

“I was wondering if you would want to grab lunch with me.”

“...We have lunch every other day.”

“Yes.” Fred scratched his cheek. “But it’s always with Dad. Now that he’s gone for a conference in the capital, I was thinking if you would, you know…”

“Wait, the Guildmaster’s gone?” I didn’t hear anything about this. Did he intentionally not tell me? To be fair, I’d always been distant toward him, but still…

As I was about to answer Fred, I felt someone hugging me from behind.

“Fox spirit!”

I turned around and returned the hug. “What’s up?”

“You wanna have lunch with me?”

Before I could answer, Fred stepped forward and got right up to Freya’s face. “Hey, I asked first.”

“You too?” After a few moments of confusion, Freya doubled down on her request. “Doesn’t matter. I’m sure the Fox spirit would want to go with me!”

‘To be fair, I prefer Freya, but what’s all this about?’

For the past few months, the siblings have been acting…strange. From blushing to sneaking glances at me, they were acting disturbingly similar to a certain raven-haired girl with purple eyes.

But that wasn’t even the worst part of it. Every time one tried to talk to me, the other would intervene and come up with an excuse to drag them both away.

Well, it seemed like everything had reached a boiling point today. Neither of them was willing to back down. Not wanting to make this whole ordeal bigger than it already was, I placed my hands on their shoulders and squeezed them hard enough that they both let out squeals of pain. 

“We’re having lunch together.”

“”Y-Yes…””

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It was cloudy and windy today, and we were having lunch under a willow tree right beside the lake. I put my back against Ursa’s soft fur and bit into the sandwich that I made.

Simply divine.

The lunch would’ve been perfect if Fred and Freya weren’t glaring fire at each other constantly.

It didn’t stop at them staring at each other with animosity. Freya took out a piece of bread that looked disturbingly similar to Fred’s head and slowly crushed it in her hand. After reducing it to basically fine crumbs, she swallowed them and commented, “So, brother, you doing good today?”

Fred answered by commanding Ursa to bare its teeth at Freya. “It was fine until you came.”

Freya took out another Fred-shaped bread and stabbed her butter knife through it. “Why’s the sour face? I’m just saving her from you.”

‘Who’s “her”?’

“Oh really? Last time I checked, you almost got her killed.”

Freya clenched her fist so hard that the handle of her knife was almost crushed. Bloodlust suddenly exploded out of her, and she grabbed Fred’s collar and pointed her knife at his throat. “Oh? So why don’t you prove your worth then?”

Ursa suddenly moved from its spot, catching me off-guard and making me fall to the ground. When I got up again, I saw that the siblings were still at each others’ throats.

“Duel with me. Whoever wins will get a date with her.”

“Hah, I thought you’d never ask.”

Okay, I might have an idea what was going on. ‘How did I not realize it sooner?’ They probably had a crush on me. And I guessed that [Ice-cold Beauty] played a pretty huge part in this.

I definitely didn’t want to be the cause of a falling-out between siblings. So, I decided to just help them in the only way I knew.

Splitting the two siblings away from each other with my Ice, my eyes turned bright blue. “I’ve had enough. Both of you, against me.”

*

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*

Fred and Freya had to fight against Esther. Their reward? They didn’t know. But their minds deluded them into thinking that Esther would choose the one that managed to defeat her.

Freya wasted no time and created a bow out of vines. She unloaded a torrent of arrows toward Esther.

For every arrow that Freya shot, Esther took a step forward. Not only did she dodge them all gracefully, she did so while yawning. Once Freya was in her range, Esther raised a foot up and kicked her away.

“Come on, what part of ‘both of you, against me’ did you not underst—”

But Esther abruptly stopped her sentence as she felt bloodlust behind her. She quickly spun around and blocked Fred and Ursa’s sneak attack with [Iron Tail]. Creating a wall of fire right in front of her, she began hurling fireballs through it.

“Ursa, go! That won’t hurt you!”

But the bear didn’t listen to his owner. Fred was an inexperienced Druid, so he couldn’t make his companion overcome the primal fear of fire.

Esther momentarily stopped her assault and conjured a cocoon made of ice around her. Almost immediately, she could hear the dull sound of arrows continuously striking against her protection. She made a slit in the cocoon and gazed outside. 

Freya was standing quite a distance away with several bows resting on vines around her. The bows unloaded arrows onto the cocoon one after another, giving Esther no time to get out of it.

But Esther realized a fatal flaw: Freya couldn’t move during all of that. 

“[Flame Cannon]”

The spell hit its target easily. If it wasn’t for Freya commanding the vines to block the attack at the last moment, she’d have suffered bad burns.

Esther let her Ice melt away and watched as Fred and Ursa quickly made their way toward Freya. She didn’t intervene. ‘Looks like they finally figured it out.’

Fred pulled Freya by her arm and put her on Ursa. With careful eyes, he slowly spoke, “Hey, I know that this is supposed to be a competition, but work with me for a bit here.”

“Why should I—”

“You know this is impossible alone!”

Freya lowered her head and bit her lips. Much as she didn’t want to admit it, she also needed Fred’s help.

“Okay… What do we do, then?”

“Look at her eyes. They turn red when she’s using Fire, and blue when she’s about to use Ice.” 

“Nn...”

“You attack when her eyes are red. I’ll handle it when she uses Ice. Got it?”

“Nn.”

With their strategy now all figured out, Fred commanded Ursa to dash forward. 

Esther tried to deter the bear by making another wall of flames, but Freya’s arrows extinguished it. Realizing that arrows were making their way toward her, Esther conjured a wall of ice to block them.

But Fred and Ursa had a counter for this. “PLUG YOUR EARS!” Not waiting for Freya to answer, the bear roared loudly. It was so loud that all Esther could hear was ringing in her ears.

And it was so loud that the newly-formed wall of ice shattered. Esther let the arrows strike her arms instead of her body.

Seeing this, Fred smiled. “Yes! Just a bit more a—”

“Weak.”

 Fred blinked. One moment, Esther was a few feets away from them. The next, she was already right in front of Ursa. He knew she didn’t teleport. The secret to her fast movement was at her feet.

“W-What the— how did you even do that!?”

Esther had slid through a trail of frozen ground. In her hands was what looked like a hammer with an absurdly long handle—a Warhammer. If it wasn’t for her absolute control over her own body and magic, she’d have never been able to do this.

The hammer, which was empowered by Aura, struck Ursa, knocking everyone off the bear. She then quickly made chains of ice and bound Fred and Freya to the ground.

“Battle’s over.”

“But I can st—”

“Shhh…” She shushed Fred and sat on top of him. Resting her feet on Freya’s stomach, she continued. “See how well you did when you’re not at each others’ throats? You’re siblings, for fuck’s sake. Stop trying to fuck the other over.”

She then stood up and healed her injured arm. “The Ice will melt in an hour or so. You’ll have plenty of time to reflect. And you—” She sharped turned toward Ursa. “—protect them, but don’t you dare free them. Actually, you can free them. I’ve always wanted to have bear soup for dinner.”

Ursa’s distressed growl was all the confirmation Esther needed. Smiling, she got away from the siblings and went back to the house.

*

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*

‘I did what I could. It’s up to them to make up.’ 

I thought back to my fight with the siblings. Yeah, it was stupid. But the best method of bonding I knew was fighting with each other.

Anyways, I sat down in the living room and closed my eyes. ‘Cool, still have a bit of Mana left.’ 

It was lucky that the alternate fighting style I’d developed for the past few months actually worked. ‘Heh, who needs swords? Definitely not me.’

And now that I was free from distractions for a whole hour, I finally saw the progression quest for the first time.

[Elimate terrorists in Cayn All-girl Boarding School

Failure condition: More than 50% of students are killed

Completion condition: More than 70% of terrorists are killed/arrested]

Cayn? Wasn’t that Nowa’s school?

…Oh no.

No.

No!

NO!

“FUCKING DAMMIT!”