My Taboo Harem System

Chapter 137: The Basics

The Knight told him she’d start training him that day.

Denzel hadn’t fully processed it until they were already standing between the trees, the forest bright and still around them, the deal barely cold.

"The entrance exam," she said, "is in just a few weeks."

She said it the way people say things that are already decided. Not a warning. Just a fact she was handing him.

"So we need to start as soon as possible. Now, you seem to be so prideful with yourself, so let’s see how much you can handle yourself against me." she added.

"Show me your form," she said.

"Attack me."

She was standing loose, hands at her sides, nothing in them. The trees sat quiet around them. Light came down through the canopy in thin broken lines and she stood in it like she didn’t notice.

"Hmm...okay."

He didn’t even need an excuse to convince himself to hit her. Besides, after everything he had been through, it was only natural.

Denzel rolled his neck, set his feet, and went at her.

She moved. He didn’t see how — one second she was there and the next his momentum had nothing to find, and something caught him at the knee and the ground came up fast and dirty and hit him across the chest and chin at the same time.

He lay still for a second. Just a second.

"Get up," she said.

He got up.

---

He came at her again, lower this time, trying to cut under whatever she’d done before. He got close — close enough that he thought he felt it, that half-second where a fight tips — and then his arm was locked, his weight was nowhere useful, and she took him down hard into the earth.

His forearm caught the ground wrong. Something lit up blue across the bone, deep and immediate, the kind of pain that doesn’t peak — it just settles in and stays.

He pressed his teeth together and breathed through his nose.

’That one’s going to be there tomorrow.’

"Get up."

He got up.

---

It went on.

The forest didn’t care. The trees stood the same whether he was on his feet or on his back, and he spent enough time on his back to have an opinion about the canopy. Light shifted through the leaves as the hours moved, slow and indifferent, marking time he wasn’t spending well. He tried angles. He tried speed. He tried waiting her out once, just standing and watching, and she waited him out longer without blinking.

Every time the ground found him, it found him a little faster.

By the time his legs gave without him deciding they should, he wasn’t sure how many times it had been. He hit the dirt and just — stayed. His body filing a complaint he couldn’t argue with.

The Knight stood over him. Arms folded. Not even breathing differently.

Denzel stared up through the canopy, the light broken and shifting above him.

’Hmm...at this rate...He is not going to survive the preliminary round,’ she thought, releasing a soft disappointed sigh.

He heard her exhale. Something shifted in the silence after it — not quite a sigh. More like a woman doing arithmetic.

"Maybe I’m being too harsh," she said. Quiet. Mostly to herself.

He turned his head to look at her.

She wasn’t looking at him. She was looking somewhere off between the trees, jaw working slightly, thinking. After a moment she reached to her belt, pulled out her blade and tossed it to him.

He caught it. Barely.

She turned, walked a few paces, and crouched down near the base of a tree. Stood back up with a stick in her hand — thin, short, nothing. She turned it once and then pointed it at him.

"Simple drill," she said. "Take this from me."

Denzel sat up slowly. Looked at the stick. Looked at her.

"That’s it?"

"That’s it. If you can get it from me — you win. I’ll go easy on you."

He looked at the stick again. It was barely longer than her hand.

"What if I hurt you?" he said. "If something goes wrong. The blade could kill you."

"I won’t."

"But—"

"It won’t," she said, same tone, like the subject bored her. "Use anything. Any measure. Don’t worry about me."

’She’s holding a stick,’ he thought. ’A stick... vs a sword?’

He stood up, picking the sword as he moved and then... He went at her.

She moved around everything he had — every angle, every adjustment, every last attempt — the stick still in her hand at the end of each exchange, and Denzel back on the ground, staring up at the canopy again.

He lay there.

The forest was quiet. Somewhere above him a bird moved between branches, unbothered.

His sight was soon blocked as the knight’s face came into view, staring at him.

"You okay?"

’So this,’ he thought, ’is the difference.’

Not technique. Not strategy. Not even strength, exactly. Just — everything. The gap between a Knight and someone like him was not something you could logic your way around. She didn’t even need a system. She’d used a stick. A stick she’d picked up off the ground. And he hadn’t gotten close.

’I’m not...even close,’ he thought, flat and honest the way only exhaustion allows.

"Yeahh...I’m good."

The Knight turned away from him. Walked a few paces to where his sword had landed when she’d taken him down — he didn’t even remember dropping it, it had just been gone — and picked it up. She turned it once in her hand, inspecting it, not particularly impressed.

A rustle behind her.

Faint. Just leaves shifting wrong.

She didn’t turn around. Just shifted her weight slightly to see Denzel was on his feet.

He didn’t know when he’d decided to get up. His legs had made the call without him. He was standing, breathing through his teeth, sword gone, hands at his sides — and the almost-angry look that had been sitting on his face since the first time she’d put him down was just gone. Replaced by something quieter.

"I get your point now...I do wanna get stronger and, if its this difficult to take a stick from you then I can’t exactly to do much if I get to the outside world. You’re stronger than me. A lot stronger. So whatever you think is right — whatever you think I need — I’ll do it. All of it."

He meant it. She could tell he meant it. That was the part that had changed.

The Knight looked at him for a moment. Just a moment.

Then she smiled. Small. Controlled. The kind of smile that doesn’t give much away but gives just enough.

"Alright," she said, and handed him back his sword. "Let’s get you started on the basics then."