Chapter 62: The Difference II

Leon’s hand stopped halfway towards his pocket.

Dustin quickly turned his head, while Raul looked down and failed to hide his smile.

"Lazy?" Leon asked as he stared at her.

Linda realised how blunt the question sounded after saying it.

"I mean, you spend most of your free time sitting around or sleeping." She explained.

"That doesn’t mean I’m lazy. It’s called efficiency."

"Do you train when we’re not around?"

"Sometimes."

"Often?"

Leon didn’t answer immediately.

Dustin’s expression was becoming difficult to ignore.

"What?" Leon asked as he looked at him.

"Nothing..."

"You look like you have something to say."

"Nothing at all to say... I’m listening."

Linda waited until Leon turned back to her.

"I’m not criticising you." She said. "I just don’t understand it. You’ve improved so much, but you never seem particularly concerned about training."

"I train when there’s something I want to work on."

"And the rest of the time?"

"I do other things."

"Like sleep." Dustin added, both he and Raul almost bursting into laughter.

Leon gave him another look.

"Don’t you ever feel like you should be doing more?" Linda asked with a faint smile.

’Not really? Those guys are already at their max potential.’ He thought to himself.

Not to mention, his summons did most of the fighting, and the Great Swordsman barely needed his instructions. That still didn’t mean he couldn’t spend more time working on himself.

Leon had been thinking about doing exactly that for a while now, though thinking about it wasn’t the same as actually starting.

’I probably could do a little more.’ He thought.

"Sometimes." Leon admitted.

"Sometimes... Then why don’t you?" The first part came out only under her breath.

Leon opened his mouth to answer, but nothing useful came to mind.

"I suppose I just don’t feel like it." He said with a small shrug.

"At least he’s honest." Dustin said with a laugh, still holding it in.

Leon didn’t bother responding, while Raul was turning the other way now, admiring the walls.

Linda watched him for a few seconds, unable to understand him at all. ’Perhaps this is what a real genius is like.’ She said in her mind.

As for she herself, she had never considered herself a genius. To her, when people called her a genius, they were inaccurate. While her Yeti was Grade 4, to her, it only meant it gave her a better starting point than most students, that didn’t make her a genius per-se. Foe example, that didn’t automatically make her better at using it, and tonight had made that difficult to ignore.

For her, training was the part she could control. She could practise until her instructions came faster and more precise, and she no longer needed as much time to decide where the ice should go. She could also learn how to stop her summon from becoming trapped by the same terrain it created.

Leon apparently spent his afternoons sleeping and still found ways to win.

Linda wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do with that information. The best way for her to explain it, was regarding him as a real genius, unlike herself.

"Well, I don’t think that approach would work for me." She said, her voice calm.

"It doesn’t work for us either." Raul replied.

"Bro, you’re not supposed to admit that." Dustin said as he looked at him.

"Yeah right, like that makes a difference. you just watched him win another fight from a chair."

"Are we leaving?" Leon asked as he adjusted the strap of his bag. He could tell they were looking for an opportunity before the maiden, but he wouldn’t allow it. Being older, he could understand younger people reasoning, so he wasn’t annoyed at all when they tried to make make fun of him before Linda or other such scenerios.

With that, they collected their things and left the training room together, keeping to the clear section of floor beside the seats.

The evening air outside felt warmer than it should have. Linda flexed her fingers as they walked, only then realising how cold the room had become during the fight. Luckily for her, some time after awakening her Yeti, she had gained quite a bit of resistance to cold, and luckily, heat didn’t affect her specially. Though, she was yet to see if it did with her Yeti.

Dustin and Raul continued discussing moments of the fight as they walked on. Linda listened and occasionally corrected what they thought her Yeti had been trying to do, but she didn’t have much else to add.

She already knew where she had gone wrong. Learning how to avoid making the same mistakes would take more work.

"Thank you for tonight." Linda said when they reached the place where their paths separated.

"Sure." Leon replied with a nod.

"And for answering my questions." She added.

"No problem." Leon said, looking slightly uncomfortable this time.

Dustin raised one hand in farewell, while Raul wished her a good night. Linda returned the greeting and continued towards her residence. Interacting with her, their testimonies were the same, the rumour that she was proud and cold weren’t exactly right at all.

Leon watched her leave before turning in the opposite direction.

"I’ll join you in the room later." He said.

"Where are you going?" Dustin asked as he stopped.

"Need to take care of something."

"Now?"

"Yes."

"Come on." Raul said as he caught Dustin by the shoulder before he could ask another question.

Leon continued alone, while Dustin and Raul headed back towards their room.

...

After a while, Linda had reached her room, closing the door to her room, before placing her bag beside the desk.

She didn’t have a roommate, which meant there was no one to ask how the spar went or delay her from thinking about it. There was also no reason to keep her expression composed for anyone else.

’Losing is annoying.’ Linda thought as she sat on the edge of her bed and released a long breath.

She knew losing was possible, but that hadn’t stopped her from expecting a different result once the Yeti caught the Great Swordsman’s blade.

Her mind kept returning to that exchange.

If she had frozen the undead’s other leg, it would have had less room to turn. She could have also kept the Yeti’s free hand ready instead of committing everything to the downward strike, then caught the Great Swordsman when it tried to break the ice around its foot... but what if she did that and the Great Swordsman reacted differently? The thing had a mind of its own...

There were several things she kept considering.

In the end, she managed to find a way to comfort herself, if only a little.

Most of her future opponents would be beasts and monsters. She wasn’t going to find an experienced swordsman waiting inside every dungeon and calmly turning her own attacks against her.

That was some comfort, but it wasn’t much of an excuse.

A fast beast could still avoid a heavy strike. A monster could force the Yeti onto poor ground, and if Linda met someone who understood how to deal with her summon, she couldn’t continue depending on having enough power to make the problem disappear.

Linda leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees. ’Maybe I should focus even more on developing its Ice ability.’

She still had time to improve. She was a student afterall, and losing one spar hadn’t taken anything away from her, instead, it had shown her something she needed to work on.

Linda stood, took a notebook from her desk and began writing down the parts of the fight she wanted to remember.

Her frustration became easier to deal with by the time she finished. She placed the pen down and, and once her mind seemed a bit free, a thought about Leon seemed to drift in on its own.

He had been relaxed before the fight, during it and after winning. When she asked why he didn’t do more, he couldn’t even give her a proper reason.

’I wish I could be that relaxed.’ Linda thought as she leaned back in the chair.

There was always something she could improve, another exercise she could repeat or another weakness she needed to correct. Even now, part of her wanted to summon the Yeti and start working on everything she had written down.

She looked at the time, it was already getting a bit late and the female hostel had a curfew time for leaving and entering. Tomorrow would have to do.

She closed the notebook and left it on the desk where she would see it in the morning.