Harem Training System: Every Girl I Train Makes Me Stronger!

Chapter 51: 51. Training Grounds: The One Place Nobody Has to Pretend They’re Fine

He found Catherine that afternoon in her office, a stack of paperwork tall enough to qualify as a genuine architectural hazard occupying most of her desk, quill moving in efficient, practiced strokes across yet another form.

She looked up when he knocked on the open door, and something in her posture straightened automatically, the reflexive composure of someone used to being interrupted by problems rather than people.

"William... Is something wrong?"

"Nope~! Just wanted to ask you something." He stepped inside, closing the door behind him with a soft click, and watched her expression shift subtly at the gesture, some old instinct reading the closed door as the precursor to a conversation she wasn’t going to enjoy.

"What is it?" she said, setting down her quill with deliberate care.

’I’m probably going to sound dumb shoving her this, but... I’m a man who can’t let secrets be secrets that slowly destroyed someone little by little!’

’Here goes nothing!’

"The White Sword of Astoria." He said it plainly, without preamble, deciding that dancing around the subject would only give her more time to build up defenses before he even got the question out. "That’s you... isn’t it?"

Catherine’s face didn’t change much, but William caught the small, involuntary tightening around her eyes, the same flicker he’d seen that morning when her hand had started shaking.

For a moment she said nothing at all, and the silence stretched long enough that William began to wonder if she was going to answer at all.

’She’s so readable... it’s almost insane that she has the title of fastest in three kingdoms, they said...’

"Where did you hear about that?" she said finally, voice carefully flat.

"I heard it from two instructors, talking in the lounge, but hey!" William raised both his hands. "I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, so yeah... it just happened, and I had to ask to make sure that it’s not an accusation or anything."

"Of course it did." There was an edge to her voice now, thin and brittle, the sound of someone holding a door shut with both hands. "Well... I might as well tell you about this since I’m your assistant and you deserve to know the truth..."

"Well... That was a very long time ago, William." Catherine lowered her hair. "A different version of me, in a different life..."

"It has absolutely no bearing on anything relevant to the present."

William clenched his fist. "It’s still has some bearing on why your hand shakes when you hold a sword too long."

Something flashed across Catherine’s face then, quick and sharp, gone almost before William could catch it. Not anger exactly, but something adjacent to it, a wound reflexively defending itself against a hand that had gotten too close.

"That period of my life is... finished," she said, each word clipped and precise, the diction of someone determined to close a conversation through sheer force of formality. "I don’t discuss it anymore because it’s in the past..."

"To be exact... I haven’t discussed it in years, and I have no intention of starting now, regardless of how well-intentioned your curiosity might be since you’re a very sharp instructor at reading anything."

"Catherine, I—"

"I have a considerable amount of work to finish before this evening," she said, already reaching for her quill again, the motion pointed enough to function as a period at the end of the conversation whether William chose to accept it or not. "If there’s nothing else..."

’Aw man... I fucked up... but it’s entirely not fucked up because I get some pieces of the puzzle that I could solve. ’William thought. ’This problem about the past... I know it needs time or not maybe... but I had to help her at some point.’

William studied her for a moment longer, noting the tightness in her shoulders and the way her hand gripped the quill just slightly too hard. He recognized the shape of this particular wall.

’I can’t push her too far... I’ll just need to give it time and try to find some solution.’

’Is this the start of the real training...?’

He’d built enough of them himself, back in his old life, to know exactly how they worked and how badly they responded to being battered down directly.

"Alright," he said, backing toward the door. "I’ll let you get to it."

"Sorry to bother you... and to say something about ’that’ out of the blue." William lowered his head.

"It’s alright... you’ve discovered it from the other instructors, so... I can’t blame you if you’re that curious." Catherine gave him that bitter smile that William noticed instantly.

’Ouch... that smile.’

He then walked away only for him to catch, just before he shut the door behind him, the way her shoulders sagged the instant she thought he was gone, some careful mask slipping for a half second before she caught it again. It told him more than her words had.

’This really is a serious problem that I had to solve...’

’Alright then...’

...

The afternoon training session, by contrast, unfolded with the chaotic, comforting normalcy of six very different people all trying to get better at things that mattered to them.

In the wake of the morning’s whispered secrets and the unsettling tremor in Catherine’s hand, William found himself grateful for the distraction. The training grounds offered something the administrative wing couldn’t: clarity through motion, truth through sweat, and the simple, honest brutality of steel meeting steel.

Kaela, true to her word, had claimed the first spar the moment William arrived at the training grounds. She was already bouncing on the balls of her feet, her ponytail whipping behind her like a live wire, her eyes bright with a barely restrained, almost feral energy.

"Finally," she breathed, the word coming out like a challenge. "I’ve been waiting all day for this!"

William let out a dry laugh as he unbuckled his training sword. "You’ve been waiting three hours, Kaela... Three goddamn hours."

"Feels like all day when you’re me, Instructor Wade! My brain doesn’t have an off switch when there’s something to hit."

They began, but it wasn’t the usual explosive dance of blades. This was different.

William had set a specific, grueling objective: reading rather than reacting. He deliberately throttled his own power, slowing his strikes to a measured, deliberate tempo.

He wasn’t trying to overpower her; he was trying to give her the space to dissect his movements, to peel back the layers of his intent before the metal actually connected.

It was excruciatingly slow going, a process that clearly grated on both their nerves. Kaela’s instincts were screaming at her, her muscles twitching with the desperate need to simply explode forward and overwhelm him with raw speed.

Every time he pulled a strike back, she looked as if she wanted to bite him.

’She’s fighting herself more than she’s fighting me,’ William observed, watching the way her shoulders tensed. ’Her body wants to react to the impact, but her mind needs to react to the cause. ’

But then, something shifted. By the fourth exchange, the frustration in her eyes began to crystallize into something sharper.

She stopped flinching at the whistle of his blade and started watching his hips. She caught the minute shift of his left shoulder, the telltale telegraph that preceded a feint, and she moved. H

Her blade intercepted his strike a half second before it would have landed, not as a desperate parry, but as a controlled interception.

"There," William said, stepping back to reset their spacing, his breathing still controlled despite the exertion. "That’s what I want... That’s the read."

Kaela wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her glove, her chest heaving.

"You’re starting to read the windup instead of the strike itself."

"It’s still slower than just hitting first and hoping for the best," Kaela grumbled, though beneath the complaint, William could see the unmistakable spark of genuine satisfaction.

She had felt the connection; she had seen the ghost of the move before it manifested.

"Sometimes hitting first isn’t an option, Kaela," William explained, his voice dropping into that instructive register that commanded attention. "In a real fight, the moment you commit to a reckless swing, you’re exposed."

"Sometimes you’re outnumbered three to one, or you’re facing something twice your size and three times as fast."

"In those moments, reading the opponent isn’t just a skill; it’s the only thing that keeps you alive long enough to find the one opening that matters."

Kaela’s eyes narrowed, the playful energy fading as she processed the weight behind his words. "Like you did with the monster in the dungeon?"

A flash of memory flickered behind William’s eyes: the wet tearing sound of flesh, the bone-deep vibration of a Tier Five’s roar, and the desperate calculus of survival in the dark. "Like I did with the monster in the dungeon, yeah."

He watched as the lesson sank in, seeing Kaela’s expression shift from competitive bravado to something uncharacteristically thoughtful. She was filing this away, treating the concept not as a tactical footnote but as a lifeline.

"But don’t get any ideas," William added with a warning smirk, breaking the sudden tension. "Don’t think that monster hunting is going to start any time soon."

"You’ve still got too many ’accidental’ decapitations to work out first."

"Aww! That sucks!" Kaela groaned dramatically, throwing her head back.