Chapter 42: Sword’s Expert Stage Clue

Yale was also very happy to have learned a healing spell that he could use.

Since Wyba’s mother died, he regretted hadn’t been able to use a healing spell.

Furthermore, he had planned to ask his sister to help him improve the spell; Yale wanted to master Basic Healing as soon as possible.

Even if Yale didn’t intend to be a healer, he considered that being able to heal was very important as it wasn’t possible to have always a healer in the proximities.

Yale didn’t fear his own injuries as he had Auto-regeneration, but he didn’t want to feel impotent again in front of a similar scene like the one in the Beast Trial.

The next class was the Poison Class, Aizu had her books, but Yale was worried because Swordmad was still in possession of his own books.

Swordmad left too quickly the previous night after the lesson and didn’t have time even to return the books to Yale.

The poison teacher didn’t seem to be the type of teacher who would give Yale another set of books.

Yale didn’t worry that the teacher got angry with him, if a teacher dared injured Yale, Swordmad wouldn’t be lenient with that teacher.

Yale concerned more about wasting the hour without doing anything; he already felt that he wasted to much time in other magus classes.

Mastering only one spell was the requirement to advance to the 2-star mortal realm, and Yale knew that it wasn’t necessary to master any other spell before reaching Rank 1 in the standard paths.

Yale knew that the reason for the teachers avoiding teach more spells to the beginner class was that the newcomers would focus on practicing and increasing their realm instead of only learning a lot of spells. However, Yale still felt that if every day would be the same, he would just lose his time.

As Yale was pondering about the magus classes, the door opened.

However, who appeared wasn’t the middle-aged teacher.

The one who entered the class was Swordmad, who had come to return Yale’s books.

Swordmad had been discussing about the Mysterious Expert with Sainac since the last night and lost track of time.

When they finished, Swordmad realized that he didn’t give back Yale’s books.

Yale sighed in relief and thanked Swordmad.

Then, Swordmad left the room, and Yale started to read the books even if the teacher hadn’t come.

Aizu imitated him; she had been planning to share her books with Yale, they have too many books to read, there wasn’t any problem in lending one she wasn’t reading.

However, Yale never thought of that option even if that would have been an excellent solution to the problem.

The teacher only came when the class already exhausted more than half of its time.

However, no one spoke until the class ended and the teacher left as silently as he arrived.

The Darkness Elemental Class was also a boring one; Yale didn’t manage to get any new insight nor learn anything new.

After the last lesson ended, Yale left the class with all the books of the poison class again.

In the Poison Class, the teacher didn’t say a word, but he learned much more by reading those books than in the other lessons excluding the Healing Class.

Even if Yale and Aizu went to the same destination, he needed to reach the training grounds soon, so he used Quick Wind on himself and ran at top speed alone.

Swordmad praised him for his speed and didn’t bother about the books as he already knew the reason. However, he didn’t take them into his space artifact like the previous day; he only told Yale to put the books where they didn’t disturb the training.

Their training season was the same as always, but Swordmad detected something in Yale’s swordplay.

“Yale, I detected that your swordplay improved again.”

“I had few insights this morning that let me improve a bit.”

“Very good. However, your improvement this time wasn’t like the others, you reached an important threshold.”

“An important threshold?”

Yale knew that his Sword mastery was at the Apprentice level ten, but he didn’t realize that there was an important threshold in that level.

“Yes, a critical threshold and one that had stopped a lot of people. Once you have advanced past this threshold, you will be considered an expert in the sword.”

Yale at that moment understood that the Apprentice level eleven probably didn’t exist and the system would change the Apprentice part after he reached the next level.

“It’s hard to become an expert in the sword while staying in the mortal realm; training alone wouldn’t suffice.”

“Then, what can I do?”

Yale didn’t want to stop improving his swordsmanship until reaching Rank 1 just because of that.

“If you want to be able to reach that stage while you stay in the mortal realm I have a method. I was able to become an expert in the sword while staying in the mortal realm, the method I will tell you is the one I used.”

Yale wasn’t surprised to hear that Swordmad managed to do it in the past; if Yale could reach the threshold while in the 2-star there was no doubt that Swordmad in his young days wasn’t worse than him.

“What you need now is a change of perspective. Until now your swordsmanship had been focused on the techniques that suited you the most. However, that wasn’t enough to become an expert.”

Yale heard Swordmad with all his attention, what Swordmad was saying was true, Yale’s swordsmanship based on a style suitable to him.

“Devising techniques that don’t suit oneself is a difficult thing, but there is one shortcut that could help you. The method is teaching others about the use of the sword. When you teach someone else, you need to focus in a style that suits the other and not yourself, that would expand your own view about the sword and pave your way to become an expert.”

Yale didn’t expect such a method. Furthermore, he was already planning to do that as he would be teaching Aizu after the lesson with Swordmad.

Unconsciously Yale was about to do the same Swordmad did in the past to reach the expert stage.

“Of course, that isn’t the only possible way, but is the only one I recommend to you.”

“Don’t worry master. It is just a coincidence, but after our lesson, I will teach about the sword to my classmate Aizu. She is the girl to started to live in my sister’s house today.”

Swordmad didn’t expect Yale’s words, even without his advice Yale was already planning to teach someone else.

“Excellent! Without knowing it, you chose the same road as me in the past. Of all the students I had in my life, you are the first to do that.”

“Don’t overpraise me, master. I wasn’t thinking anything about reaching the expert stage by teaching her; I didn’t even know about the existence of an expert stage before.”

“That’s just why I said that you are the same as me in the past. I also didn’t know anything and only wanted to help a friend to improve in his swordsmanship.”

Yale had difficulties to believe that himself was that similar to the past Swordmad, but that was something that made him happy.

“I leave now, good luck in your first lesson as a teacher.”

Swordmad left, and a few minutes later Aizu arrived.

She knew that Yale was training with his master before their lesson, so she didn’t want to disturb them by going too early to the training grounds.

Yale didn’t want to lose time, so he went straight to the point.

“Let’s start with the training, first I want to see your ability, show me your moves.”

Aizu started to execute moves with her wooden sword and left Yale speechless.

Aizu had said that she was average in her class, which made Yale think that such sword class had a serious problem if Aizu wasn’t lying.

Aizu’s ability with the sword seemed inexistent from Yale’s point of view, and he didn’t dare to imagine how she was with other weapons given that she had said that was even worse.

“It seems that teaching her would be a challenge, but I gave my word to her. I will teach her and then I’m sure I will reach the expert stage in Sword Mastery.”

After Yale thought those words, he told Aizu to stop.

That kind of swordsmanship was hurting Yale’s eyes, that demonstration was enough to let Yale know Aizu’s level.

The truth was that Aizu was really average, but Yale’s level was too high so an average ability for a ten years girl seemed like an inexistent ability in his eyes.

Yale was used to fighting with George who was extraordinarily talented in the sword or practiced with Swordmad who was a true master of the sword.

He didn’t even look at his own classmates’ abilities.

If he observed them, Yale would have seen almost the same scene as Aizu’s show of ability.

That was the same reason as he felt the magus classes boring, his insight was superior to almost all the students, and their demonstrations couldn’t help Yale, the first day he improved a lot due to his lack of basic knowledge regarding the elements.

However, remembering and understanding all in the first try wasn’t usual, to the other students, those repetitive lessons were necessary to learn the basics of the elements.

“Let’s start to forget anything you learned about the sword until now. Your foundation is wrong, no matter your talent, if you had such flawed foundation improving will be difficult.”

In Yale’s eyes, Aizu had a lacking of a good foundation, and that made difficult to improve more. Thus, Yale planned to start again from the basics.

“I tried to learn how to use the sword by myself; it is my foundation too wrong?”

“Completely wrong. It is difficult to have a good foundation without anyone teaching you, so don’t feel depressed. Starting again with the basics would let you improve faster afterward.”