"Ugh, I’m tired..."
"Good work."
Van muttered tiredly, and in the now-empty reception room, he slumped his head onto the table. Espada, with his usual calm expression, spoke words of encouragement while sorting through documents. He was like a machine, Espada No. 28. No, if there were twenty-eight Espadas, it would be terrifying and make me want to cry. Let’s stop thinking about that.
Feeling the exhaustion, Van let his mind wander to such irrelevant thoughts before blankly staring into space. Ah, my body feels heavy.
Around dusk, when the air was thick with lethargy, the door suddenly swung open with force.
"Van-sama, good work!"
It was Dee who appeared. Dee entered the room with a bright smile, his white teeth sparkling.
"Van-sama, since there’s no time today, the training will be only for an hour! But don’t worry! I’ve devised a special training that will pack more than half a day’s worth of work into that one hour! And that training is none other than... training everything at the same time, without breaking it up into parts! We’ll run while simultaneously sparring with swords! In real combat, we can’t always fight in the same conditions as training, right? So, we’ll swing our swords while running, defend while running, dodge while running! It’s a mystery why I didn’t think of such a great training method before!"
Dee, in a great mood, said something outrageous, and Kamshin furrowed his brows.
"Captain Dee. Surely, that’s..."
"Huh!? Kamshin! Do you want to try it too!? Alright, then, let’s do it together, the three of us!"
"Eh!?"
In the blink of an eye, the number of victims increased. However, the training content was clearly absurd. This was a matter of life and death.
"Espada! This is going to kill us, stop it!"
Van hastily pleaded with Espada, and he nodded deeply before speaking.
"Hm... Dee-dono, it’s already late, and we don’t have much time left. Could you shorten it to about thirty minutes?"
Espada said this, and Dee looked disappointed for a moment, but then suddenly came up with a new idea.
"Hmm! In that case, what if we climb a steep mountain while sparring with swords...! Oh, that’s a great idea, isn’t it!? Alright, let’s go right now!"
"Eh? Climb a mountain while... what!?"
"There’s no way we’ll survive that!"
Van asked again in disbelief, but Dee just laughed his usual hearty laugh.
"Ha ha ha ha! Alright, this is getting interesting!"
As a result, thanks to Dee showing his teeth while laughing, Van and Kamshin were dragged along. Til and Arte were flustered, but there was no way they could stop it.
"Alright, we’ve arrived! First, the two of you will run ahead, and I’ll chase you afterwards!"
"...Eh?"
The place Dee brought them to was, to their surprise, a rock climbing spot. It was steep enough to be called a mountain hike, though it was clearly more rugged with large rocks scattered about. Climbing over them would be quite a challenge.
"Eh? We’re climbing this?"
Van asked, and Dee just nodded, showing his white teeth.
"...Van-sama, let’s take this seriously. If we don’t give it our all, Captain Dee will be chasing us."
"...Just running here is enough to make me think this is a lie."
While talking with Kamshin, Dee closed his eyes, crossed his arms, and started counting.
"One, two, three..."
"What!? What’s the count for!?"
"We’re going!"
Startled by Dee suddenly counting, Kamshin kicked off the ground and quickly sped up. His speed was incredible. Clearly, after doing more than three times the amount of training that Van did every day, Kamshin’s reflexes were on another level.
"Wait, Kamshin! Don’t leave me behind!"
"Sorry! But I’m sure Dee-sama will take it easy on you!"
Kamshin, while shouting an apology, nimbly found footholds and began running up the slope, jumping repeatedly like a mountain goat. Watching this, Van really thought, "This is bad." There was no way he could catch up to Kamshin. But Dee would surely be even faster than that.
"That’s it! I’ll just set traps or something while I run..."
Desperately trying to think of something, Van started running while coming up with ideas that had nothing to do with sword training. Behind him, he could hear Dee happily counting out loud.
"An... a cage...! No, a wall! I’ll build an insurmountable wall!"
While desperately working through his thoughts, Van ran, his mind racing.
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