In Mushoku Tensei with an A.I. Chip

Luke stood a distance away at the edge of the arena, smiling at her approach. "Then, Sword King Ghislaine, as previously discussed, you will face the Sword Saint Grant first before our duel." 

The Boreas family suddenly realized that they had forgotten the reason why they had been invited for Luke's birthday celebration in the first place. It was all for Grant to duel Ghislaine so that he could claim her title as Sword King!

Ghislaine paused, looking at the Sword Saint and bluntly blurted out, "Oh, I forgot about you. My apologies." 

"It has only been ten minutes…" The pitiful Grant looked away in tears at being disregarded by the person he had literally just challenged minutes ago, but he recovered quickly afterwards.

"Let us duel first then. It will be faster. The Sword God style's usual rule should suffice, right?" She proposed. 

Grant nodded in agreement. "One strike."

Between practitioners of the Sword God style, though usually only the higher ranks would really adhere to the rule, one strike was all that was necessary to determine who was better. Both parties would use the Longsword of Light at the same time without even putting any attention into defense. The one whose sword reached their opponent first would be the indisputable winner. 

That was all. A second strike would not even be considered. It was a rule that was as straightforward as the philosophy of their techniques. 

"Wait," Philip suddenly spoke up, "Shouldn't we have a healer on standby?"

Luke chuckled and raised his hand in acknowledgement, "Don't worry. I'm the healer on standby." 

"Oh… right, of course." Philip wanted to ask if the young lad really knew the extent of the injury that might result between a duel at such a level. It would not be a wound that could easily be healed with just Elementary or Intermediate healing spells… 

Grant moved to the left side of the arena, while Ghislaine took the opposing end. 

Seeing that it was a duel between swordsmen, the Boreas family stepped closer than they had initially been standing at. Eris looked on with barely contained excitement, and her parents also showed much interest. A duel on this level was not very common after all, even with Ghislaine as their bodyguard. Not many were stupid enough to trifle with a Sword King after all. 

Luke stood outside the arena, between the duelists, acting as the referee in the impromptu duel. 

"Swordsmen, are you ready?"

Grant unsheathed his sword, as did Ghislaine. Both fighters took up position, their stances are identical though with minute differences. Grant's stance is textbook, while Ghislaine leans forward slightly and has a lower center of gravity. 

His blade is an elegant and curved saber like a crescent moon and slender like a willow branch. Its polished surface reflects the artificial light installed on the ceiling of the underground chamber they were in, gleaming with a sharp edge

Hers was granted to her by the Sword God, Gal Farion himself, on the day she became a Sword King. It is a katana with a dark blade with a red edge. When the sword unsheathed, the katana sang as it cut through the air, signaling to the world its sharpness. 

Their respective swords were raised diagonally, not high above the head, but mid-guard, the edge tilted slightly forward, poised like the claw of a hawk ready to dive. The Longsword of Light—a technique of such speed and precision that even a blink could cost victory. Its power could shear a boulder smoothly in two. But its essence lay in something far simpler: speed.

The underground chamber falls quiet. Luke's personal guards watch the duel with eagle-eyed focus. They had seen Grant fight before, and none of them had been able to best him even one on three. But they had a feeling that his opponent this time was at worst his equal, if not even better.

Jude recognized the Longsword of Light's opening stance, unconsciously mimicking the forms with his arms. Should he one day master, or even learn this technique, with his natural Saint-ranked bodily strength, he could easily claim the title of Sword Saint. 

The rest of the audience, the Boreas family, fell silent. Even the least martially inclined of them, Hilda, could recognize the weight and tension of the moment. 

Grant and Ghislaine's breath synchronized. Their eyes never left their counterpart, while their breathing slowed to an eerie crawl. Every breath, every twitch, every heartbeat… could reveal intent. 

Touki begins flowing from their core, enveloping their bodies in a layer of reinforcing mana. The density of Touki is not evenly spread across their body. Certain muscles received more mana as they tensed in preparation for movement. 

[Beep! Data collected!]

[Ghislaine Dedoldia (Beast Race Feline Variant)]

Strength: 6.9

Agility: 10.4

Vitality: 7.6

Spiritual Force: ???

Magic Power: 18.9

The A.I. Chip's scanning finally completed after Ghislaine summoned her Touki. Her physical stats were high, but that alone would not translate into the strength, speed and deadliness of the Black Wolf Sword King.

What Luke had noticed long ago after training with Grant, Ward and Bernard for so long was that their physical stats only indicated the robustness of their body, but Touki could still be used to enhance those stats beyond their physical limits. So the deadliness of a swordsman could not be determined just by looking at physical stats alone. 

Her Magic Power was high compared to the average untrained human, but pitiful next to someone like Grant, who possessed over 60 Magic Power. Yet mana capacity alone didn't determine the amount or quality of Touki a swordsman could wield.

Every swordsman capable of using Touki possessed an innate filter that governed its strength. At any given moment, only a limited amount of mana could pass through this filter to fuel Touki. However, with training, the filter could be gradually enlarged.

With just a glance, Luke could tell Ghislaine's Touki was simply a few notches more potent than Grant's. A fatal shortcoming in a duel between two Sword God practitioners where speed was the only factor worth considering when determining victory or defeat. 

Perhaps in a real fight the outcome might be more inconclusive, but in a duel such as this where only their mastery of the Longsword of Light and their physical prowess was measured, Grant simply fell short on the most important aspect. 

Maybe the Sword Saint could sense the difference between them as well, as the grip on his saber tightened, and his posture became tenser. 

Ghislaine on the other hand was a picture of focused serenity. Though she had been struck by a feeling of fond nostalgia–it had been a long time since she last had a duel following the Sword God style's rules–it was replaced with a sharp will intent solely on cutting the opponent before her. 

Both waited patiently for Luke's signal to begin, each passing moment saw them tensing their muscles like a coiled spring, ready to unleash all of the potential energy pent up in their bodies. 

Luke raised his arm up, and a beat later swiftly swung it down. 

"Begin!"

The moment the second syllable of his command to start the duel was heard, two explosions occurred simultaneously. The earth cracked and cratered under the sheer power of their lift off from their back foot as they exploded towards each other. Dust and rock shot back from their feet as their legs launched them forward. 

Every ounce of strength, every fiber of trained instinct was poured into a single, pure motion. 

The Longsword of Light. There was no flourish, no fancy tricks. Just a line, perfect diagonal arcs from two blades. Their swords moved faster than the eye could track—faster than sound. Swung not only with brute force, but also technique honed to such perfection that even the air that was more akin to a solid wall at those speeds was cleaved in twain. 

In a fraction of a second, they passed each other. Their swords held in front of them having reached the end of their arc and momentum. It took another beat for the air to catch up to their speeds, as the wind howled like thunder after catching the slipstream from both swordsmen breaking through the sound barrier.

Grant and Ghislaine held their stance as the wind settled down in their wake. They stood twenty paces apart, backs turned to one another. 

Who won? This thought barely crossed the minds of the audience before the result revealed itself. 

A thin red line emerged slowly, diagonally down from collarbone to hip on the torso of the Sword Saint Grant, before blood began spraying from his wound.

So, I am still lacking. Grant realized with a wry chagrin. In truth, he had known the outcome the moment his sword failed to reach his opponent, while the edge of the Sword King's blade slipped into his body.

She had very simply been faster. For the two Sword God practitioners who had already mastered the Longsword of Light, the difference in technique was a negligible factor in the calculus of precise and exacting violence. 

His knees buckled, weak from the sudden and major blood loss, but more so from the weight of his failure. Thankfully his consciousness still held and he managed to catch himself on one knee before he could slam face first into the ground. 

Ghislaine exhaled the breath held. She didn't need to look, she already knew the result. If she had been slower by a blink, the result would have been reversed. But in truth, 'a blink' was an eternity for a Sword God practitioner at her level. The difference between Grant and Ghislaine was not big, but significant enough that Ghislaine did not feel threatened by his Longsword of Light. 

She calmly sheathed Hiramune. The sword not having even a drop of blood on its blade spoke volumes of the speed and control by which it was wielded. 

When she finally turned back, she saw Luke was already by the side of her opponent. 

Luke took out a small pouch from his clothes containing crushed magic crystals. In his experiments, he found that while larger magic crystals obviously held more mana in them, crushing them into smaller fragments did not diminish the overall amount of mana in total. And being crushed like so made the magic crystals easier to drain of the mana it contained. 

Wordlessly, Luke reached into the pouch and grabbed a handful of crushed crystals each roughly the size of peas. He held the magic crystals over Grant and used the mana in them to fuel his subsequent chantless healing spell. 

Green light shone from the small fist clutching the crystals as the magic flowed into Grant. With the A.I. Chip's guidance, the green glow pulsed and spread precisely over the long, open gash on Grant's torso. 

Beneath its healing touch, the severe wound began itself knitting close. The long gash sealed itself, replaced with angry red skin that then paled into a healthy complexion. 

Grant's breathing, shallow and slow, eased into a more regular rhythm. When the last of the glow faded, Luke pocketed the now lifeless and dull magic crystals that had lost all its previously gleaming luster. 

"I'm sorry, young master..." Grant murmured, his voice barely more than a whisper, laden with regret. His eyes remained fixed on the ground, refusing to meet Luke's gaze. Shame weighed heavily on his shoulders, and his failure hurt more than the bloody wound Ghislaine had left on him. 

"It's okay." Luke replied simply without any disappointment tinging his voice. The A.I. Chip had predicted Ghislaine would win with over a 90% certainty before the duel even began. Luke himself had also felt the difference in the vigour of their Touki when they began enhancing their bodies with it. 

As such, Luke had not been surprised at the outcome. 

Ghislaine approached her fallen adversary. "It was a close one."

"Heh," Grant let out a self-deprecating laugh, "You don't have to comfort me. I know best how far away my sword was from you before you cut me. It was not close at all." It was in truth but a few inches, but it was a distance impossible to close for the current him. 

"Maybe not in sword lengths, but in purpose. You wanted to win. That gets you close. If the one you challenged was the me who just became sword King all those years ago, I might have lost." She conceded. 

It was already nearly twenty years since Ghislaine descended from the Sword Sanctum as a freshly crowned Sword King. The difference between the present her and the past her was significant. 

Ghislaine extended a hand. Grant only stared up, one knee on the ground, his gaze switching between the victor and his young master, before he clasped her hand and let her help him up. 

"You're right. I don't intend to stop here." Grant replied, now standing and staring back at her in the eyes defiantly. "I'll just keep training and one day I'll catch up to you." 

Ghislaine smiled in response, "I look forward to our next duel."