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Once we finished Finia’s simple yet delicious breakfast, it was time to take Hamuea’s lecture for close-quarters combat using a bow.

The listeners were Michelle and Cloud. Finia would be receiving her lecture about magic and close-quarters combat by Cole once she was done tidying things up.

“With all things said, archers are best at using the bow, at the end of the day. It’s natural for one to lose the moment combat enters close quarters. You should think of these combat techniques as something that lets you survive such worst-case scenarios.
“Okaay!”
“Got it.”

Haumea started the topic with that blunt statement, to which Michelle answered while raising her hands up high. I wish she’d stop doing that though. She wasn’t an elementary student anymore.

“We have no shield, so when we get attacked it’s either dodge or block. With blocking in particular, we can only use our bows for it. You understand this much, right?”
“Yuup!”
“Yeah…”

As I said, raising both of your hands in reply is… oh, it makes certain things bounce, so I guess I’ll allow it.

But Cloud, you can’t go stealing glances like that. You can’t take a proper look either.

“If our bow breaks, our purpose also disappears with it, so we have to block attacks without getting our bows destroyed in the process. For that, we have to use the hard part of it which is near the grip. Putting it differently, depending on how we use the rest of the bow’s body, we could take the enemy by surprise.”
“Oh?”
“The rest of the bow… Like the bendy part? Like a whip or something?”
“You catch on quick, Cloud.”

Haumea said and swung her bow around. Each time its tip seemed to bend a little, so it could certainly be used as a whip. But wouldn’t the bow deteriorate if you do something like that? Michelle, being a bow specialist, seemed to have realized that problem too, so she voiced a similar question.

“But if we do that, wouldn’t it worsen the aiming?”
“Yes, which means that this counterattack is also a final measure. In the end, we archers should not get into close combat. But we can’t expect that we’ll always manage to stay away. Today’s goal is to teach you defensive body movements for such times.”
“I see.”
“So in my case, it’s to know about that in advance and not get taken by surprise, huh.”
“Yup. You can deal with it as long as you’re aware of it.”

With that, Haumea appointed Cloud to the attacker role. They would be parrying it lightly so there was no worry of direct hits. Thus Cole told him to use an actual sword, not a fake one.

Even in the unlikely chance that someone got injured, there was Haumea and Finia around who could use basic healing spells, so there was no problem.

As Cloud slashed, Haumea spun around her pivot leg with a peculiar technique.

I also moved similarly when dodging things by a hair’s breadth, but it was slightly different from this spinning-top-like movement as I was constantly moving to charge at the opponents.

She sometimes used her bow and wrist like hooks to grab on to Cloud’s body, limiting his movements. Her moves were filled with craftiness.

“Ugh, this is hard.”
“Do your best, Cloud. Oh wait, you’re a role model, so you can’t do that. Go go, lose!”
“That is pretty disheartening in its own way!”

Cloud continued doing basic attacks while showered in Michelle’s merciless(?) cheers.

His down, side, and upward swings were avoided, blocked, and suppressed of their momentum by Haumea’s clean movements. Her moves differed both from mine and Raum’s Adventurers, so Cloud was having a hard time.

“Yah!”
“Okay, when this comes, do this…”
“Wah—Not done yet!”
“And then this.”
“Oouch!”

Cloud’s thrust was dodged by moving her right leg behind and doing a quarter rotation. Then just as Cloud passed by her, she slapped the bow’s tip into his face like a whip, sealing his movements.

“Something like this I guess? Have a go at it next, Michelle. Start with basic movements first.”
“Okay!”

With a happy answer, Michelle took out not her usual hunting bow, but the Third Eye. Seeing that, Cloud started to panic.

“Wait wait wait! That’s unfair. That bow’s tough enough to break a normal sword!”
“It’s not unfair, it’s a bow.”
“My sword’s the one that’s gonna break!”

As he said, Cloud emphasized the shield as equipment. His current shield was quite a high-level item, given that it was created using God Hastur’s skills.

His sword on the other hand was something you could buy in any store, certainly not a quality article.

No well, it seemed to be quite a solid sword by Gadius’s appraisal, but still only in the ordinary category.

“Just come at me already. I’ll turn the tables on you.”
“It’ll be a big problem if my sword breaks!”

Cloud was always advantageous when it came to close quarters so now that she had a rare chance to stand advantageously against him, she was feeling excited.

Cloud was the one getting cold feet as she stood with her bow with a smug grin. It wouldn’t serve as training at this rate so I decided to take the role of an attacker instead.

Michelle tried to imitate Haumea to avoid it, but it didn’t go so well with half-baked imitation. She ended up just blocking my attack with the bow in panic.

“Ah, waahhh!”
“Come on, you had to ward that off.”
“I couldn’t help it… Kyaaa?!”

I used my katana’s guard to flip her bow up, then draw the fake sword in her open flank and stopped at the last second.

“Yeah, you have ways to go with such stopgap methods.”
“Of course. If she learned it that fast, I’d lose my purpose here.”

Haumea said with a shrug, and then she spent some time teaching Michelle how to move her body. After a while, we resumed our trip, once again marching on with our carriage.