Chap 17-The Thief’s Secret Technique

 

Schperen Academy’s class system was simple.

In the morning, students left their departments to attend common classes, and from the afternoon onwards, they split into the swordsmanship department and the magic department for their respective classes.

Naturally, today we were learning swordsmanship.

Swoosh! Swoosh!

Arietta next to me was swinging her sword, making sounds as if she was cutting through the air.

The heavy panting and the way she swung it made her seem less like a princess and more like a maid working all day.

“Do I have to keep swinging this sword?”

“That’s what Instructor Gustav told you to do. There’s nothing I can do about it. Besides, Your Highness needs to build up some strength.”

I once asked Instructor Gustav what he thought the princess lacked.

He bluntly said, “Everything.”

First, we needed to figure out her star sign ability. I was personally planning to have her keep swinging the sword as Gustav instructed and see if her star sign ability would manifest.

Honestly, this princess…

Her sword swinging was hopeless.

It wasn’t that she lacked the will to do it.

She was clearly swinging the sword diligently and trying to do something.

But her body couldn’t keep up.

Everyone has a weapon that suits them, and for this woman, at least, it wasn’t a sword.

“No, even so, this is a bit too hard.”

Unlike those who had tutors since they were young, she was just learning to wield a sword, so she might have missed the period when she could absorb skills like a sponge, even if she was still young.

She needed to have the basics down, even if she had a long way to go.

No, wait.

What about a dagger?

There’s no rule that a princess can’t know the Thieves’ Guild’s secret techniques.

After all, the Thieves’ Guild’s techniques are based on ‘survival.’

So, it would be a suitable, customized secret technique for her.

I took a book out of my pocket.

A kind of secret technique.

“That’s right. So, frankly, I recommend that Your Highness learn this instead of swordsmanship.”

“What is this book?”

It was originally a book called “The Secret Techniques of a First-Class Thief.”

But in the princess’s current situation, it would be better for her to learn this.

It’s better than diligently learning swordsmanship and making the other royals wary.

I’m just calling it a secret technique because if I told her it was for thieving, the princess would refuse.

“This is a secret technique. Take a look.”

“This feels very ominous and unsettling.”

Arietta was even sweating.

How rude. It was a well-made one at that.

The high-ranking members of the Thieves’ Guild had written down the best ways for a thief to survive as a secret technique.

It also included things related to daggers.

Thieves’ dagger techniques and such.

“It’s nothing much. You can just learn things related to daggers.”

Just simple things like stabbing from behind.

Poisoning and stabbing the side.

Simple things you can usually learn with a dagger.

It’s not just simple poison, but a rather advanced technique of applying mana to the dagger in a threatening way and stabbing the opponent to inflict damage. Still, it’s a little easier than swinging the sword around recklessly.

The princess took the book from me and started reading slowly.

There was plenty of time anyway.

Gustav was paying attention to the other lacking students, or not, leaving the princess to me.

It was as if he was naturally entrusting the princess to me.

“Is it okay for you to show me something like this? Isn’t it a secret technique of the Bathory family?”

“It’s different.”

The Bathory family having a secret technique? That’s nonsense.

But it would seem like I was bestowing a favor on the princess.

“But these techniques all seem strange. What is this? Assassination? Mana Poison? Robbery? They all seem strange.”

Arietta mentioned the techniques in the Thieves’ Guild’s secret book I gave her, speaking in a very uneasy and anxious voice.

Well, I guess it would seem that way at first glance.

Maybe it was a woman’s intuition, but she seemed to know it was something shady.

But it didn’t matter.

Arietta had no choice right now.

Rather, I had to forcibly connect the broken path. I had to pull up the ship called Arietta, which was sinking against her will.

So, I had to package this nicely.

“It’s different. Assassination is a technique to kill an enemy with one strike. Mana Poison is a technique to turn your mana into poison and use it as poison in an emergency. Robbery is a technique to greatly weaken the enemy’s combat power by robbing their weapon.”

If you look at it maliciously, it’s just thieving.

Would she realize that?

Assassination is effective for assassination, Mana Poison is used to poison the opponent without evidence of poison, and Robbery is just sneaking something away.

The innocent princess wouldn’t know that.

“Ah.”

Of course. I couldn’t say it was a thief technique.

She was a princess, after all. Of course, drawing lines on a pumpkin doesn’t make it a watermelon, but by blood, she was a princess.

I couldn’t just say, “Do you want to learn thief techniques?”

The princess, who had no choice, eventually decided to learn.

I was going to teach her by force if she said she wouldn’t learn, but it was a relief that she had the will to do it.

“Oh, really? Then, did you learn this too?”

“Yes.”

I had to learn it.

My master would punish me in all sorts of ways if I didn’t learn it.

I had to fight giant rats in the depths of the sewers.

It was a terrible time to think about those days.

“Ha, the sword you have seems too long to be called a dagger.”

Arietta’s gaze turned to the sword at my waist.

“I inherited it, so I can’t help it.”

The black sword Karia that my master gave me.

It’s my sword, but I haven’t taken it out recently because I haven’t fought against the Four Heavenly Kings.

My main weapon was the mana thread, and I could catch everything with the mana thread.

I took out daggers of various stages from the weapon box in the corner of the training ground and handed them to her.

Arietta shook the sword in her hand and tilted her head.

“The dagger is too light.”

That’s right, it’s light.

“It’s a problem if it’s light, it’s a problem if it’s heavy, what do you want?”

Is this why they say teenage girls are annoying?

When I shook my head as if I was pathetic, she frowned and got angry.

“Isn’t this difficult for building strength?”

“It’s difficult. But. This dagger was made by Instructor Gustav for training. It has weight. You should be able to destroy at least one barrier with force.”

That’s what Gustav would be satisfied with.

So, I threw daggers of different weights to Arietta.

Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3. All of them.

The princess took the dagger I threw and opened her mouth.

“A barrier? That’s usually what mages do.”

“Mages can’t always help. So, you have to show that you can destroy a barrier with force.”

The reason why Gustav makes her swing the sword to build the basics is probably to physically suppress magic.

Now, he makes her swing the weapon while looking at one place.

This also applies to barriers.

Barriers are eventually destroyed when damage accumulates.

“Can you destroy it too?”

“Of course. In the first place, barriers are useless to me unless they are at the level of the Four Heavenly Kings. The barriers of those magic users are a joke.”

It’s not difficult to destroy.

Just simply stab once and pull back.

The dagger is good for concentrating power in one place and delivering a single blow.

“Hey. There’s no way. I’ve never heard of destroying a barrier with force in my life, and even skilled people would have a hard time?”

I feel like I’m being ignored.

I can tolerate insults to my master.

But I can’t tolerate being ignored.

So, I picked up a dagger from the weapon box.

Deliberately the one with the least weight.

“Ah, then I’ll show you. Watch carefully.”

Holding the dagger in one hand, I spun it around and approached the barrier covering the training ground.

Fortunately, Gustav and the students weren’t looking this way.

The barrier looks like nothing from afar.

But when you get close, you can see something blue, like particles of mana.

Originally, there was a separate facility to activate the barrier. If you slammed the dagger at it with all your might?

Crack!

Cracks began to form between the blue mana particles, like a broken window.

And.

Starting from the center where I slammed the sword, the cracks crumbled into dust and disappeared.

In an instant, a hole was punched in the barrier.

I was as careful as possible, aiming at only one spot, so it didn’t break easily.

But it seemed quite shocking to Arietta.

Her mouth was wide open.

“Huh. Really a barrier?”

“It’s easy, right? Just slam into it with force.”

When I pulled out the dagger I had just slammed in, I could see the barrier fragments crumbling and scattering from the hole.

If you shot an arrow through this hole, you might be able to catch someone.

Of course, anyone who knew that the barrier was destroyed would know.

“No, this isn’t just slamming into it. Isn’t it dangerous?”

“Why?”

“The barrier is broken.”

Her face turned pale as if she was about to die.

I put my hand on my chin and pondered for a moment.

It was definitely a bit dangerous.

After all, it was broken. A barrier was top-level security.

I was innocent.

After all, all of this was because our princess told me to do it.

“You told me to break it. I just listened to the orders of my ‘master’.”

“As I recall, I said there’s no way. I didn’t say to break it.”

“That’s life.”

I patted Arietta on the shoulder.

Yeah. That’s how it is.

“Wow, are you going to pass it all on to me later?”

“Of course. But if we keep our mouths shut, that’s it. Who in the world would think that a freshman would destroy a barrier?”

“Ah.”

We just had to keep our mouths shut.

Of course, who among the first-year students would destroy the barrier like this?

I’m not deaf.

This Schperen’s barrier is known as the best in the world. It’s a barrier formula created in cooperation with the mages of the Magic Tower.

Could anyone imagine that a mere freshman, someone who was just learning swordsmanship, could win?

Gustav wouldn’t think so either.

In the first place, daggers are specialized in breaking barriers.

“Above all, there are almost no cases of breaking barriers. Even well-trained paladins can’t break this kind of barrier.”

“You broke it, didn’t you?”

“That’s because I’m great. What’s certain is that I’m strong enough to break the barrier that the mages of the Magic Tower installed with all their heart.”

“Ah, yes.”

She doesn’t seem to believe me.

“Anyway, you have to practice hard with the dagger. With the feeling of stabbing in one blow. Train in a way that you strike down rather than simply swinging it.”

“By the way, seeing that you have prepared these weapons by type, that Gustav guy is really tough.”

The princess’s eyes turned to Gustav, who was correcting the students’ postures in the distance.

“It’s not that he’s tough, it’s that this is normal.”

Gustav prepared customized classes for the students.

The various weapons were proof of that.

Two-handed swords, one-handed swords, double-edged axes, axes, daggers.

All of these had weight enchantments, so even if the sizes were different, the weights were all the same.

Daggers were no exception.

“Ugh. Ugh. I don’t want to get muscles on my body.”

The princess complained while swinging the dagger.

As expected of a woman. She’s very picky about this and that.

“It’s amazing that you’re still worrying about your appearance in the midst of all this.”

“Don’t you know? Women need to have good looks to get married. Who would like a woman with a lot of muscles?”

Well, I guess so.

A woman’s appearance is valid regardless of her status.

Commoner women need to have good looks to succeed, whether they enter a noble family as a concubine or whatever, and noble women and royals need to have good looks to prevent their husbands from having concubines.

I’ve seen some of the noble ladies I’ve met already virtually confined to villas because of their appearance.

Those women have already received all the humiliation as women and ask me for a request with faces filled with despair.

To kill their husbands or concubines.

Certainly, when I see things like that, appearance is important. Yes.