Even If No One Wants You, I Do

Chapter 12 - Shopping with the villainess

Normal text
Thinking
Onomatopoeia

Keira's POV
Once I reached the open field, I saw the 3rd male lead standing there, wearing a plain white shirt and black shorts, showing off the toned muscles on his arms and legs. I'm glad he suggested that we train early in the morning. Otherwise, with all the fan service he's giving out, I'm pretty sure every girl would shriek and swarm around us like a pack of piranhas.

"Morning, Keira," his chirpy voice sounded.

"Morning. What are we doing today?"

He grinned, "I'm going to teach you how to counter magic abilities using a sword."

I looked at him sceptically, "Really???"

He nodded, "Don't look down on weapons just because they have a shorter range than magic. Magic projectiles aren't omnipotent. If used correctly, weapons will be able to counter magic."

He opened his right palm to conjure up a ball of orange flames, "Try touching this."

I look at him as if he's gone insane, "Are you mad??? I'm not touching fire!"

He rolled his eyes, "Come on. Trust me. I won't hurt you."

I didn't quite believe it so I decided to use my left hand. After all, it's already burnt to a crisp. What's one more burn gonna do to it? When my palm slightly grazed the flick of the flames, I didn't feel any agonising burning pain, only warmth. I widened my eyes and started pushing my luck, plunging my entire hand into the centre of the blazing flames.

The 3rd male lead chuckled, "See? Magic will not always hurt people. If willed by the owner, they would not hurt others."

"Do you notice that not all parts of the flame have the same intensity of heat?"

Now that he mentioned it, it's true. The outer orange region of the flames were hot as you would expect but it wasn't the hottest region. When it came to the tip of the inner red cone of flames, the temperature was much more intense than the outer region, possibly the hottest part of the flames. But surprisingly, as you go further into the inner cone of flames, it becomes relatively colder than the rest of the flames. I never expected scorching flames to have such low temperatures.

I nodded, "Yeah. The most inner portion of the flames is the coldest."

"Correct. This is because it's the delicate point of this fireball. Not all parts of a magic projectile will have equal mana density. There will be some parts which have the least concentration of mana. Those are the weak points. So if you learn to identify such things in combat quickly, you can slash your sword through these points, breaking apart magic spells."

After he said that, he threw the fireball up into the air. The flames acted as how a ball would. It sailed through the air and after reaching the highest point, it began hurtling downwards towards us. The 3rd male lead took out his sword from his interspatial bag and swung it towards the base of the fireball, the coldest region of the spell. It was instantly sliced apart, breaking into tiny orange specks of flames. I was staring at the male lead in awe.

"This is what I want to teach you. I will teach you the technique of quickly identifying the weakest points of every spell."

For the next hour, he started listing down all the weak points for common spells. As an ace student back in my high school, crunching information within a short span of time was what I did best. Within the hour, I was able to memorise a bunch of information. Afterwards, it's a matter of practical application. Now, this was when I met my first stumbling block. I might be able to pick up the sword easily, but it doesn't mean I'm a genius at using the sword. Since I was ultimately from the 21st century, where people aren't allowed to walk around carrying 28 inches of sharp metal, I was very inaccurate with my swings. Let's not talk about hitting a specific point on a tiny-ass projectile, I already had trouble landing my swings consistently. It's like playing baseball and you're the batter. Hitting a fast-approaching magic projectile was already not an easy feat. One miss-timed swing and you would be gone. Now imagine, not only do you have to hit the ball, you also have to specifically hit at the lower-half region of said hurtling ball. Now do you see how hard it is? Not only do I have to make sure that my blade makes contact with the magic projectile, I also have to make sure that it hits the specific weak point of that magic spell. Every time I missed the weak point, I would have to suffer the consequences of not running away from angry raining fireballs.