Chapter 61: The Difference

The blade stopped beneath the Yeti’s jaw, close enough that any attempt to stand would bring its neck against the edge.

"Enough." Linda said, her voice coming out firmer than she expected.

Both summons stopped.

Linda remained where she was for a few seconds and looked at the sword. Her Yeti still had one arm raised, with ice continuing to gather uselessly over it.

The Great Swordsman withdrew its blade and stepped away.

"That’s it." Leon said as he stood.

Linda nodded, though she hadn’t been asking him to confirm the result. She called the Yeti towards her and checked its injured arm after it stopped beside her.

The cuts were shallow, and the Yeti could still move its fingers properly. Its knee had also taken a hard strike, but it stood without much difficulty. Nothing that would take too long to heal once it returned to the Summoner’s Space.

Across the practice floor, the Great Swordsman lowered its sword. The damaged shoulder plate remained bent at an awkward angle, while the ice had left several marks across its leg armour.

Linda looked between both summons before dismissing her Yeti. Leon dismissed the Great Swordsman shortly after.

Without the two summons, the room became quiet enough for Linda to hear Dustin moving from his seat. Mist still covered parts of the practice floor, while the broken ice remained where the fight left it.

’I had it stuck.’ Linda thought as she rubbed her thumb against the side of her finger.

She had trapped the sword and frozen one of the Great Swordsman’s feet to the floor. There had been time to build on that advantage, but she immediately ordered the Yeti to attack with another heavy blow.

That was what she normally did.

Once an opponent couldn’t move properly, her Yeti hit them until they stopped fighting back, which usually took a little under five hits. Most summons couldn’t take the first strike, much less recover quickly enough to turn the fight around.

The Great Swordsman, however, was completely different.

Linda had still tried the same thing again later... It didn’t work still.

"You did better than us." Dustin said as he approached, his expression light.

Linda looked up at him but didn’t say anything.

"By quite a bit." Raul added.

"Thank you." She said.

While it didn’t look much like it, Linda meant it, though her eyes returned to the frozen practice floor almost immediately after.

"Is its arm all right?" Leon asked after stopping beside them.

"Yes. The cuts aren’t deep."

"Good to know." He said, his voice not showing much concern, though that was not the case.

Linda watched him for a moment before asking the question on her mind.

"Was it still holding back?"

"Only where it was aiming."

"So that was it fighting seriously?"

"Yeah, pretty much." He confirmed.

Linda nodded slowly. The answer didn’t make her feel better about losing, but she was glad Leon didn’t try to soften it.

Her Yeti had enough strength to force the Great Swordsman into trouble. She simply failed to keep it there.

"I thought I’d do better once it couldn’t move." Linda said, though almost to herself.

"You nearly did." Raul replied. "I thought you had it when you caught the sword."

"So did I."

"We never got that far." Dustin said as he looked towards the place where the Great Swordsman had been trapped.

"I still lost." Linda said with a small smile.

"That doesn’t mean you did badly." Dustin said almost immediately without even processing.

"No." Linda agreed. "It means I could have done better."

"You made it move around quite a lot too." Leon said while looking over the ice.

"But?" Linda asked as she turned towards him.

"Nothing. You did..." Dustin made a quiet sound beside him.

Linda almost smiled even if just weakly, but she was still thinking about what happened during the fight.

"How do you train them?" She asked.

"My summons?"

"Yes. Your Swordsman barely needed you to do anything." She said.

Raul and Dustin also listened attentively, their ears perking up. They had pestered Leon concerning the secret, but never got anything... Maybe now? If a beautiful girl was the one asking?

"There’s not much I can teach it about using a sword." Leon said. Dustin and Raul immediately lost interest since they knew where it was headed.

"Then what do you do with it?"

"Let it fight."

Linda waited for Leon to say more, but he didn’t.

"Against other summons? Or..."

"Usually, yeah, or amongst themselves."

"Like Dustin and Raul’s?"

"Sometimes."

"We’re getting a lot out of it too, for the record." Dustin said as he folded his arms.

"I noticed." Linda replied before looking back at Leon. "Was it always that good?"

"It’s been better than me for as long as I’ve had it."

Clearly, that didn’t say anything at all... Who compared summons with themselves?

Linda knew summons could have their own instincts and intelligence. Her Yeti didn’t need instructions on how to throw a punch or defend itself from an obvious attack, but even at that, ’he’s summon is different.’ She thought to herself.

"Do your other undead fight like that?" She asked.

"No."

"Then you have to direct them more?"

"Not exactly, but yes."

Leon answered her questions without hesitation, but he only said as much as each one required. Linda could feel where he wanted the conversation to stop without him directly telling her.

"If you don’t mind me asking, how did you get stronger so quickly?" She asked.

Leon paused for a moment as he turned the question in his head.

"That part is a little difficult to explain."

"Is it something specific to your summons only?"

"Something like that." He said.

Linda looked at him for a while before nodding.

"All right."

She would have preferred a proper answer but that didn’t really help her at all. She had hoped there might be something useful she could learn from how Leon trained his summons, beyond allowing them to fight more often.

Still, she couldn’t blame him for keeping his methods to himself.

They had barely spoken before yesterday, and asking him to explain whatever changed his entire position in the academy was probably expecting too much.

"Are you disappointed?" Leon asked after glancing at the ice again.

"A little. I was hoping I could learn something."

"From me?"

"Yes." She answered, studying his face.

Leon looked genuinely unsure about that.

"You won the tournament. People are going to ask." Dustin said, shaking his head.

"I know."

"You don’t look like you know." He said with a saggy expression.

Leon decided to ignore him.

"I suppose I learned something anyway." Linda said as she looked towards the practice floor.

There was no point in making her Yeti stronger if she continued giving an opponent the same chances to recover. More power might have forced a victory tonight, but the Yeti already had more power than the Great Swordsman.

She shouldn’t have needed an even larger difference.

"Cheer up. It’s not the end of the world. Besides, your ice did real work, didn’t it?" Leon said as he picked up his bag, drawing Linda’s eyes to him.

"You didn’t have to go after it every time you made it move." Leon added after thinking about it.

Linda followed his eyes towards the narrow gap between two broken ridges.

He was right.

She used the ice to create an opening, then tried to send the Yeti through the same opening herself. There had been other ways to attack without giving the Great Swordsman the chance to get close.

"I’ll work on that." Linda said.

Leon nodded as though the matter was settled and put his phone away.

Linda watched him before asking the question that had bothered her for much longer than the fight.

"Then why are you so lazy?"