There were several reasons Lindy wanted a mock battle with Rei.
First and foremost, she needed to become stronger to protect Anne and the others. She absolutely refused to let her own weakness result in Anne being recaptured by the Dolan Workshop and enslaved once more.
That said, she also had a more calculated motive.
Lindy had been working as an adventurer in Egginis and had built up a respectable track record. But it was only respectable—she did not stand out among the city's adventurers. Even judged in the most generous light, her skill level was upper-middle at best.
The overall caliber of adventurers in Egginis was by no means low. As an autonomous city, it drew large numbers of nobles and merchants, which meant adventurers frequently fought bandits on escort missions. In terms of escort work alone, there were likely many adventurers rated higher than Rei.
In recent weeks, large numbers of bandits had begun gathering in the mountains not far from Egginis, and a considerable number of subjugation requests had been posted as a result.
But that level of opposition alone wasn't enough to push Lindy's abilities further.
If she had an exceptional talent for combat, her skills might have grown even against enemies of that caliber. Unfortunately, while she did possess talent, it was only modest. She wasn't the type who could grasp ten things from hearing one. That was precisely why she needed to find another path to becoming stronger—so that she could find Golias, the one she loved, and stand beside him as an equal.
In that sense, Rei's existence was an incredible boon for Lindy.
An alias-holding A-Rank Adventurer. Under normal circumstances, he was someone Lindy—whom one might charitably call riffraff—would never have had the chance to meet. Yet thanks to Anne... and though the matter with Golias made her feelings somewhat complicated, the fact remained that she had somehow become acquainted with Rei.
Having witnessed his battles against bandits and golems, she was convinced the rumors about his strength were not exaggerated. If anything, she suspected the rumors actually undersold his true ability.
A mock battle with someone like him would undoubtedly raise her own skill level.
Having settled on the mock battle, the next question was where to hold it. Since adventurers could never predict when or where a fight might break out, one option was to simply spar in the living room where they currently sat. But for those trying to relax there, that would be far from welcome. Besides, with the alchemists present suffering from full-body muscle soreness, there was no telling what kind of collateral damage a spar might cause.
Holding it outside the hideout—in the Slum District—would invite all manner of complications.
In the end, Rei decided to broach the matter with the guard stationed at the door.
"A mock battle? I think you could use the place where we do our training. Would you like that?"
"Is that alright? Just like that?"
"We've been told to accommodate Rei-san's requests as much as possible."
From Fusetsu's perspective, Rei was unquestionably a troublesome figure—but he was equally someone they could rely on when things went sideways. Given the current situation, with the Dolan Workshop making large-scale moves, building a friendly relationship with him was simply the obvious course of action.
If he had made some more difficult demand—say, asking to be led to a restricted area within the hideout that outsiders were never permitted to see—they would have had to refuse. But a request to borrow a spacious area for combat training was an entirely different matter. Something of that level could be approved on the spot.
Rei couldn't read the man's thoughts, but judging that there was no issue, he decided to take him up on the offer.
"Understood. Lead the way, then."
And so Rei and Lindy were guided by one of the guards to the space where Fusetsu's members conducted their training.
In truth, the man guiding them was secretly looking forward to watching Rei's mock battle—though nothing of the sort showed on his face.
"This is... impressive. I can't believe they carved out a space this large underground."
The place they were led to was a vast chamber spreading out beneath the surface. It was roughly the size of a small gymnasium, and Rei marveled at the effort it must have taken to construct—though, on reflection, since the Fusetsu hideout itself was built entirely underground, creating such a space was hardly impossible.
Beside him, Lindy also stared in surprise as she took in the room.
(She supposedly did cleaning and such with Anne, but she never came here?)
Given how large the space was, it would have been natural for it to be included in any cleaning rotation. But Rei quickly understood why it wasn't.
This was where Fusetsu's assassins conducted their combat training. As such, it would certainly be treated as off-limits to outsiders. The areas Anne and the others were permitted to clean were strictly limited to places they were allowed to enter, so it would have been perfectly natural to tell them to stay away from here.
Or perhaps, since Anne was regarded as Rei's companion, the assassins would have judged it too dangerous for her to clean while training was in session and told her not to bother.
In fact, several assassins were engaged in combat training right now in the direction Rei was looking.
...Though their training was somewhat different from the norm.
Rather than the head-on fighting style Rei was accustomed to—attacking an opponent frontally and overpowering them—their drills focused on exploiting openings and killing with a single decisive strike.
This was likely what combat training for assassins looked like, as opposed to adventurers.
(Still, from what I can see, there's nothing special about this place. It's just a wide-open space. For assassin training, you'd think they'd want to simulate a city street or the interior of a building. Or maybe those kinds of facilities are elsewhere?)
If Fusetsu had gone to the trouble of excavating an underground space the size of a small gymnasium, it wouldn't be surprising if they had several similar spaces elsewhere. In fact, Rei found that more plausible than not.
With that in mind, the small number of assassins currently training here also made sense.
They noticed his gaze—or rather, they had likely been aware of Rei and Lindy from the moment they entered. The assassins halted their training and turned to watch.
Their expressions betrayed neither hostility nor welcome. They simply stared, faces completely blank.
In a way, it was the most assassin-like demeanor imaginable.
The man who had guided Rei and Lindy approached the assassins and explained the situation. They nodded without complaint, and after a brief exchange, the man returned to Rei.
"They're fine with yielding the space, but they're asking if they can observe your combat training in exchange. What do you say?"
"Observe our training? I don't particularly mind. Lindy?"
For Rei, sparring in front of an audience was nothing unusual. As an alias holder, there were plenty of people eager to learn even a fraction of what he was capable of. Among them were some who believed his Crimson title came from Seto or from sheer luck rather than his own skill. In that sense, holding mock battles also served to demonstrate his true ability to such skeptics.
From that perspective, he had no objection to sparring in front of the assassins.
But that was Rei's perspective alone. For Lindy, who was about to face him, it would have been perfectly understandable to balk at the idea of sparring in front of assassins.
"I don't mind. Let's do it."
Contrary to his expectations, she accepted with surprising ease.
"Are you sure?"
The question carried multiple layers. It meant showing the assassins her combat style. It meant demonstrating that despite traveling with Rei, she wasn't particularly strong. There were several other implications besides, and while Lindy probably didn't grasp all of them, she still nodded without hesitation.
"Yes, I don't mind. The people here might be assassins. But for this incident alone, they're our allies, aren't they? Then there's no problem."
Whether they overheard her declaration or not, a flicker of surprise appeared on the assassins' otherwise blank faces.
They had never expected to hear such words from Lindy. To Fusetsu, Lindy and her group were regarded less as comrades and more as charges under their protection. Many members even saw them as a burden holding the organization back.
The assassins training here leaned toward the former view. While they wouldn't go so far as to call it protection, they did see Lindy's group as people they were duty-bound to shield—which was precisely why her words caught them off guard.
The fact that they wanted to watch the mock battle despite this attitude was likely because their interest lay not with Lindy but with Rei. They may have seen Lindy as someone to protect, but Rei was a different matter entirely. After all, Fusetsu's leadership had chosen to destroy Blood Blade rather than face Rei in open conflict.
They knew his reputation through rumor, but they had never witnessed his strength firsthand. With Rei about to hold a mock battle, they couldn't pass up the chance to see it for themselves.
"Alright. Come at me."
"Haaaaah!"
The moment Rei took up his weapon—not Death Scythe, not the Twilight Spear, but a cheap throwing spear that could snap at any moment—Lindy charged without a split second's hesitation.
It was a blistering strike, delivered so fast that she had no room to entertain the thought that Rei might be underestimating her by forgoing his usual weapons in favor of an ordinary spear.
Even so, it was only a blow that Lindy believed had caught him off guard...
"Too soft."
With that single phrase, Rei deflected her longsword with the spear.
The weapon in his hands was one of several damaged spears he had purchased in a bundle from a weapon shop—the kind that would shatter after a single throw. Yet it showed no sign of breaking as it redirected the full force of Lindy's blade.
That meant the impact of her swing hadn't transferred through the spear at all. It was possible only because the gap between them was so vast.
But Lindy was entirely unfazed. She understood the difference in their abilities perfectly. Something like this was exactly what she had expected.
That was precisely why, even watching it happen, she refused to yield—and immediately pressed her attack once more.
"Haaaaaaaaaah!"
With a fierce cry, she unleashed a flurry of consecutive slashes.
Under normal circumstances, a mock battle would call for blunted weapons or pulled strikes. But Lindy showed not the slightest concern for such niceties as she kept up her assault, fully aware that a clean hit would injure Rei, yet showing no sign of restraining herself.
Perhaps it was because she understood the gulf between them so completely—knew that even attacking with everything she had, she could never truly harm him. Or perhaps she was simply so focused on landing a single blow that nothing else entered her mind.
Whatever the case, the mock battle between Rei with his broken-down spear and Lindy with her longsword continued in deadly earnest, the assassins watching in silence from the shadows of the underground chamber.