I Became a Swordsmanship Instructor in a Romance Novel

─ Rosnante, don’t underestimate Lillie.

“U-Underestimate?! I would never!”

─ No, she’s truly beyond imagination.

“Beyond… imagination…?”

─ Yes, she’s even more out of her mind than you can imagine. Tsk, even when she could use mana, she hated walking so much that she created aerial magic… She’s a woman who believes laziness is the quality of a great mage.

“Princess Lillie is a mage?! But why is she now…”

─ Well, that’s not important, so let’s move on. Back to the training, even if you managed to get her to agree to train by holding her necklace hostage, she’ll definitely give up after moving for a few minutes. You’ve trained, so you know, right? How much one’s own will plays a part in training.

“…That’s, that’s true.”

─ So, right after you get that promise. You have to push her without giving her time to think.

Rosnante steeled his resolve, repeating Zeke’s words in his mind.

He put down various training equipment on the floor and picked up several thin bracelets.

There were two sets of five.

It pained him to force such vicious things onto her noble body, but if he didn’t take these measures, the training itself wouldn’t be possible.

“…Wh-What is that… Restraints…?”

What Rosnante held in his hand were restraints used only on the most heinous criminals.

One for each arm and leg, and one for the neck.

Rosnante put on one set himself first.

Lillie, who was watching him with shaking eyes, opened her mouth.

“…Don’t tell me, no way…?”

“I don’t want to do this either.”

Thud.

Thud.

As Rosnante walked towards her, Lillie stepped back.

“No, damn it! That’s not it! I said I’d train!”

“…I’m sorry to force this miserable state upon you, a Princess, but it can’t be helped. I’ve decided to become a devil.”

Lillie turned her head sharply and glared at Zeke, but he was too busy hammering swordsmanship into the other children.

“Do you really think you can handle me after putting those on me?”

“I don’t know, Instructor said he’d take all the responsibility.”

Lillie clenched her lips tightly and faced the approaching Rosnante.

‘…Still, I don’t have much strength left, but Rosnante is…’

She was practically carried here by Zeke, but in any case, she was one of the saviors of the Dave Continent, even if she was about to die.

No matter how weak she had become, even if she couldn’t use magic.

Even if she had a body that fainted immediately after using a Mana Stone as a medium.

She had lived every day on the Dave Continent as if walking on a sharp knife’s edge.

A time when a slight lapse in concentration would lead to immediate death.

The experience of hardship she had gone through was different from that of a guy who hadn’t lived through those terrible times.

‘Even if I have to show a little bit of my strength, I need to subdue him here and get exempted from future training. I absolutely refuse such a barbaric method!’

It was time to return to the Saintess of the Dave Continent from that time.

Lillie’s eyes stared sharply at Rosnante.

Her sharply honed senses were capturing his movements.

On the other hand, Rosnante, who was facing her.

He was looking at Lillie with a puzzled expression.

‘Hmm…?’

***

Rosnante is a slow learner.

Although there were circumstances, he was the last to awaken mana in Zeke’s class, and his talent for swordsmanship and mana was far behind his peers.

It was safe to say that it was always Rosnante who was rolling on the dirt floor during sparring sessions.

However, even if they disregarded Rosnante himself, no one in Zeke’s class disregarded sparring with him.

It wasn’t for nothing that Zeke praised him as a ‘Basic Training Specialist’.

His stamina and endurance, built up through hard work, could not be ignored, so they were rather reluctant to engage in prolonged matches with Rosnante.

Even when everyone used mana to enhance their physical abilities, he trained with the same intensity as the other children, using his bare body without using mana.

And even though he fell behind in all the training, he never dropped out.

He was the only student who gritted his teeth and persevered even when the other students who couldn’t use mana were all knocked out by Zeke’s training.

In other words, he was like a rabbit caught among beasts.

Could that rabbit just be an ordinary rabbit?

When he first started training with Zeke, Rosnante was panting just from the sandbags attached to each of his limbs.

Now, he trained with pouches filled with iron powder strapped all over his body, not just sandbags, and even added weights to his sturdy wooden sword.

Sometimes, when he trained with a wooden sword without added weight, he would even frown at its lightness.

Furthermore, by constantly clashing with his monstrous classmates and having his body and mind shattered by Zeke’s sword and killing intent, he gradually became tougher, both externally and internally.

Zeke’s earlier thought, ‘Now, even if I throw him into the Dave Continent, there’s no risk of him dying from exposure,’ included Rosnante as well.

And for Zeke, the standard of ‘no risk of dying from exposure’ meant being able to clear a small dungeon with werewolves alone.

Rosnante, who had always been on the receiving end and accumulated only defeats, found Lillie, who was significantly weaker than those on the Dave Continent and couldn’t even properly utilize mana, to be incredibly weak.

‘…How did she survive until now with such a body? Come to think of it… She was sweating just from running one lap around the training ground… Wow, a woman can be this weak…’

Since the only women he knew were the children in Zeke’s class, he didn’t even realize how skewed his comparison was as he made such an observation.

* * *

“Grooooan…”

“Hah!”

“Huuuuuuh…!!”

“Ha!”

“Kyaaaak…!!”

“Haa!”

Rosnante swung a giant wooden sword, which was wrapped tightly with iron wire and pouches filled with iron powder.

And beside him, Lillie, with a pale face, was striking the air with both hands in the same posture as Rosnante.

“…Damn it, fuck…”

Unlike Rosnante, Lillie was bare-bodied without any added weight, but her entire body was already drenched in sweat as if she had taken a shower.

The restraints she wore were in the form of plain, thin bracelets, but their power was not to be underestimated.

Criminals in the capital city were usually sent to work in mines or on road construction sites.

However, in the case of heinous criminals, they often disobeyed orders no matter how much pain was inflicted or rewards were offered.

The magic tool created by the combined efforts of the mages in the capital city as a solution to this problem: Restraints.

The restraints came in sets, and when the person wearing the master type performed an action, the person wearing the linked restraints would perform the same action.

Since most of the work in mines or road construction involved swinging pickaxes, the efficiency was similar even if they performed the same actions.

This was one of the training methods Zeke had taught Lillie’s maid, Karen, that day.

Making them perform the same action, what an incredible experience it would be to be able to mimic the swordsmanship of a highly skilled person with your own body.

Of course, to implement this, one needed the magnanimous generosity to readily offer their swordsmanship to others and the willingness to wear the humiliating restraints themselves, but there was no better way to learn advanced swordsmanship.

What Zeke was currently doing, hammering swordsmanship into the children’s bodies using mana, was an extension of that.

Of course, what Zeke was doing was on a different level.

Lillie gritted her teeth in humiliation.

‘What is this?! It’s strange! This shouldn’t be happening…!’

As she was forced to move her hands by the will of the restraints, she thought.

She definitely wasn’t being careless.

In the Dave Continent, a moment of carelessness would lead to being eaten alive.

It was commonplace for even the weakest opponents to hide a trump card, so she had to be wary of every approach.

In fact, even during sparring sessions with Karen or the knights of the Northern Duke’s family, she had subdued them within three moves.

Even though her physical abilities were lacking, she could overwhelm them with experience, intuition, and her gaze.

However, she couldn’t stop it.

Rosnante’s approach.

She had detected his movement the moment he closed in, but Rosnante had read her actions and instantly reacted, twisting his posture flexibly and grabbing her hand.

The moment she was caught off guard and her movements stopped, the restraints were placed on her wrists, ankles, and neck.

“…Unbelievable…”

It was no surprise that the children who were currently exchanging swords with Zeke had the talent from their previous lives, but to think that she, who could freely move her body, would be defeated by Rosnante like this…

She hadn’t even imagined it.

“Huff… Huff…”

Sweat dripped down from her forehead to her chin.

Only after she had fainted several times while standing did Zeke’s class finally end.

He had extended the class by an hour, saying they had lost time due to the class transfer, and that hellish time…

As soon as the class ended, Lillie collapsed on the floor.

The sky that came into her view was starting to turn yellow as the sun began to set.

“…Fuck.”

Lillie muttered a small curse.