Swiss Arms 87 (Patreon)

Swiss Arms

Chapter 87

-VB-

Hans von Fluelaberg

If my wife wanted to learn how to fight to protect herself, then was I going to refuse? No, I wouldn’t. Certain other men might take offense and tell their wives no because they would incorrectly infer that their wives considered their protection to be lacking, but Isabella and I didn’t have any misunderstanding about that.

If words failed, then the displays at the front of the castle of the ruined plate armors I cleaved with my ridiculous sword made my own strength abundantly clear.

But I wasn’t sure if I was the right person for the job, mostly because I didn’t know how to fight gracefully or with a dagger. I was the definition of brute force made manifest, and the kind of skills someone wielding a dagger would need was not a skill I had nor was I good at teaching.

Ping!

I jolted in place, which made me bump around the cramped corridors of the mines underneath my castle.

I had been in the process of digging out another chunk of rock into my inventory (something I was still wary about revealing) when the ping alert stopped me on top of creating a translucent screen that only I could see.

I blinked and read it.

[Quest: The Way of the Blade

Your wife wants to learn how to fight herself! This is a good thing, and you will support her all the way.

Pre-requisite:

*Isabella von Fluelaberg (IVF) must take up a blade as her weapon.
*IVF must learn how to use her weapon with at least intermediate (LvL.10) skill.
*IVF must reach this level before the birth of your child.
*IVF must live to the end of the quest.
*IVF must not leave you before the end of the quest.
*IVF

Reward:
*Skill: Teaching + 10 Teaching Skill LvL
*Increased relationship with Isabella (obviously)

Failure:
*Potential “Accident”

Y/N?]

I stared at the bottom of the quest screen and at the ominous word marked with quotation marks.

“I don’t like that,” I grumbled as I closed the quest screen because what else was I going to do? Not help my wife? And the “accident” might be anything and everything, so there was no reason to even worry about it. It might just mean an injury with whatever other weapon she chooses.

It’s also been a while since I got a quest, and it was related to Isabella. I wondered if that meant that the Gamer that I had considered her to be significant enough to him (or both it and him) to warrant quests and if there would be more in the future.

Probably.

---

“A dagger?” Isabella asked me as we stood in our training courtyard. Normally, my Rangers would be here on days they weren’t patrolling or training out in the valley, but today, I cleared it out for Isabella. I didn’t want her to feel pressured or judged because she couldn’t do something she never trained for.

Sure, there were people who did great under pressure and actually needed it to keep going, but I also knew - not for certain but almost - that Isabella wasn’t that kind of a person. She needed to set her own pace, even if that pace might be brisk by most people’s standard.

“Yup,” I told her as I pulled out a dagger. The entire dagger, from the tip of the blade to the butt of the handle, was about the length of my forearm. For her, it looked like a shortsword. However, it was certainly a dagger for self-protection because it wasn’t made for utility in mind but the ability to kill.

See, I thought long and hard about what Isabella needed to learn for her sword skill. A spear wasn’t going to work because she wasn’t supposed to be in the frontline or out in the open when she needed to defend herself. It couldn’t be a sword because she lacked the upper body strength not because she was a woman but because she simply didn’t train herself.

So if she was going to start with a blade, it would have to be something made to kill as quickly as possible on the assumption that the enemies were already close to her.

And as such, I smithed out her very own dagger.

Or rather, a stiletto. With a fine tip and a narrow blade, she wouldn’t be using this to parry but to strike quickly and efficiently as possible to ensure a kill.

I handed her the stiletto and she frowned.

I blinked. Did I not give her the right gift for what she wanted?

“This is not like any knightly dagger that I have seen,” she hummed appreciatively.

“Ah, knightly daggers,” I let out a sigh of relief. Knightly daggers were just that: daggers used by knights. Unlike the stiletto, knights used their knightly daggers in close quarter combat not only to kill but also to parry. Of course, people other than knights also used it for both combat and civilian uses like butchering or cutting meat. The stiletto, however, didn’t have the blade required to cut meat. It could do one and one thing only: stab.

“How will I be using this dagger?” she asked me as she got into what she assumed was a fighting stance, and I’m gonna be honest. She wasn’t half bad. She did grow up as a count’s daughter, so she must have come into contact with many knights and seen them train, never mind how many times she’s seen my rangers, militiamen, and myself train.

“You will move your body a lot,” I replied. “Where the knights are immovable and unstoppable fortresses on the battlefield, men-at-arms the flexible blade needed to cut down enemies, and my rangers the unseen blade even upon a battlefield, you will be like water, flowing around the enemy attacks until you find the right time. And then -.” I slammed my hands together in a thunderous clap. “You will strike to kill.”

“So a killing art, not a knightly art.”

I snorted. “Do I need to remind you just how many knights I’ve killed? You might have to forgive me for not having the highest regard for them.”

“They still train for more than a decade in the service of their liege lord. You should respect that.”

I nodded. “I do respect that, and I do it by putting them six feet under.”

“You can be oft cruel and crass, husband,” she hummed. “Now, show me how to use this.”

“Now, you won’t be training with a real blade,” I told her as I gingerly took the blade away. “Like everyone on the training grounds, you train with wooden versions until you need to actually test out the blade.”

And handed her a wooden version of it with an iron core to simulate the weight of the steel stiletto.

She hefted it up and down and even swung her arms around to get used to it.

“Ready?” I asked her.

She nodded. “Ready.”

It was our first couple’s special training session.