The World Is Mine For The Taking

To be fair, I couldn't exactly blame her for feeling that way.

Zes was ridiculously strong.

When I first encountered her, I had already realized that she wasn't someone who could be judged by appearances alone, because everything about her physical ability seemed completely disconnected from what her body looked capable of doing.

She looked like a normal human who had simply been blessed with an absurd amount of muscle and physical strength, but then she started jumping across helicopters as though gravity were nothing more than a minor inconvenience that she could casually ignore whenever she felt like it.

At that point, trying to determine whether she could even be considered human had become practically pointless, because ordinary human beings simply weren't supposed to move like that unless the definition of human had been stretched beyond recognition.

"Come at me with everything you've got!" Zes shouted, spreading her arms slightly as she challenged Sakai to continue the fight instead of giving her any opportunity to recover comfortably.

Sakai slowly stood up again, steadying herself until she was properly balanced on both feet and making sure she could still move without her injuries throwing off her stance.

For a brief moment, she simply stared at Zes from across the training field, apparently trying to determine what she could change before making another reckless charge.

Then she suddenly dashed forward again, putting considerable speed behind her movement as she closed the distance between them.

Zes merely watched her approach, her eyes remaining completely focused on Sakai without wandering away for even a moment, almost as though she had already figured out exactly what kind of attack was coming.

She didn't need to move yet, because she was simply waiting for Sakai to commit herself before deciding how she wanted to respond.

Sakai eventually swung her sword from the side, delivering another sideways slash with enough force to make the blade cut sharply through the air as she aimed directly for Zes.

It was an efficient way to fight because anyone caught directly by an attack like that would almost certainly die, especially if the blade connected cleanly enough to separate the upper body from the lower body.

The attack also covered a fairly large radius, which made it useful for controlling space and forcing an opponent to react quickly rather than simply standing still and waiting for another attack.

Still, from a technical standpoint, there wasn't much flair behind it, and anyone experienced with swordsmanship would probably notice that immediately.

It was simply a straightforward attack that relied heavily on speed, strength, and the threat created by the sword's reach rather than any particularly sophisticated technique.

There was nothing complicated about it, and that simplicity could be useful against an inexperienced opponent, but against someone like Zes, it was practically announcing exactly what Sakai intended to do.

Zes caught the sword again with both hands before Sakai could complete the swing, stopping the blade with an absurd amount of strength and making the attack look almost harmless.

She twisted the blade with an almost casual movement, forcing Sakai's arm to rotate along with it before Sakai could adjust her grip or pull herself away.

Then Zes suddenly increased the force behind the motion and threw Sakai away once again, sending her body stumbling through the air for a second time.

Sakai was sent flying backward, her body tumbling through the air before she struggled to recover her balance and prevent herself from crashing down in an even worse position.

"Miss Sakai, if you keep fighting like that, you won't be able to defeat the men from the republic, you know?" Zes said while calmly cracking her fingers one after another, making the sound echo slightly through the surrounding area.

Her expression remained calm, but her words carried a clear warning that she wasn't simply mocking Sakai for the sake of doing so.

"If you genuinely want to defeat them, you're going to have to do more than that."

***

After a bit, Sakai was finally done with her bout against Zes, although, if I were being completely honest, the fight had been a little disappointing to watch from my perspective.

She had certainly put in the effort, and there was no denying that she had enough ability to become a strong fighter, but the problem was that her current fighting style was still far too predictable for someone who was going to be thrown into an actual war.

Still, I suppose I could at least say that Sakai managed to get something useful out of the whole experience.

She had finally started realizing one of her biggest problems.

Sakai always tried to cut her opponent in half by swinging her sword sideways, and while there wasn't technically anything wrong with using that kind of attack, relying on it so heavily was a completely different matter.

A sideways slash could be powerful.

It could be fast.

It could even be deadly enough to end a fight immediately if it connected properly.

The problem was that an experienced opponent wasn't going to keep falling for the same trick forever.

If Sakai continued throwing the exact same attack at someone over and over again, eventually that person would catch on, figure out the timing, and start preparing for it before she even finished moving.

Once that happened, the attack would become much less effective, and she would basically be handing her opponent the answer to her own fighting style.

That was Sakai's biggest mistake.

Thankfully, she seemed to have realized that herself after fighting Zes.

At least, judging from the expression she had afterward, she seemed to understand that simply swinging her sword harder wasn't going to magically solve the problem.

The same issue applied to the other heroes as well.

They were definitely strong.

There was no point pretending otherwise, because their physical abilities alone were already far beyond what ordinary people could achieve.

In terms of raw strength, they actually had more power than Zes.

The problem was that raw strength wasn't everything in a fight.

Zes had years of experience behind her, and that experience made a massive difference when it came to actually using her abilities against another person.

The heroes were still inexperienced.

They had power, but they didn't yet know how to use that power efficiently against someone who already knew how to read their movements.

It was like giving someone an extremely expensive sword and expecting them to immediately become a master swordsman just because the sword happened to be expensive.

Well, that certainly what happened to them. But...

That wasn't how things worked.

"You think they'd get better?" Beelzebub asked from beside me while watching the heroes continue their training.

"I would hope that they wouldn't," I replied.

Beelzebub looked at me with an amused expression.

"But they seem pretty determined to keep going through with this, so who am I to tell them otherwise?" I continued. "I'll just make sure to drill enough lessons into them that they'll at least think twice before repeating the same mistakes."

"So you're getting hard on them because you don't want them to join the war?"

Beelzebub gave me that usual cheeky smile of hers as she asked the question.

She had clearly already guessed the answer.

I looked at her for a moment before turning my attention back toward the heroes.

They were still training against Zes, and this time they were fighting her together rather than taking turns.

"You have a soft spot for them, don't you?" Beelzebub asked.

I glanced at her again.

"Even though you don't want to admit it, you actually care about them."

She paused for a moment as though she were reconsidering her own words.

"Although calling it a soft spot might not really be accurate," she continued. "You seem to have a particular kind of feeling toward the girl who can use magic through her blade."

Feelings?

I wasn't exactly sure what she was talking about.

Well, I was lying. I knew...

There were obvious reasons for that, and I didn't particularly feel like explaining them to Beelzebub.

"Why don't you just help with their training instead of asking me questions like that?" I said.

Beelzebub tilted her head slightly.

"What kind of help are you thinking about?"

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