Charlotte wiped the sweat off her forehead. 

She tried to remember how her elder brothers forms as they swung their own swords at the training grounds, emulating their movements and slashes.

It was hard work. She never really appreciated just how much work went into swinging a sharpened lump of steel around, not to mention doing it for 5 years to become a knight.

But here she was, in the forest bandaging her calloused and bleeding hands that never saw work other than gripping a pen or lifting a teacup.

"Ow... ow..." She tried her best to grip the sword, ignoring the throbbing pain from her palms.

The sword was doing most of the work for her right now. It's a miracle how the sword cuts through anything like butter if she applied even a little force to it. 

"Tsssss..." She got off the rock she was sitting on, her calves groaning in agony. Every part of her body hurt, she just wanted to go home and relax as she had done for the past 16 years.

If not for the second prince... 

Her grip tightened, her current pain unimaginably small when compared to what he had done to her family and her way of life.

Oh, she'll make him pay alright. Piece by piece. Finger by finger. 

But for now, she has to focus on leveling, and not die stupidly to the wolves.

Stabbing the blade into the ground, she used the sword as a crutch to wander deeper into the forest. 

One more level. One more level until she calls it a day. 

The sun was still high in the sky, and she estimated that there'll be roughly 6 more hours of sunlight before she was forced to go back.

She took a swig of her waterskin. Whew~ 

Suddenly, she felt the sword quiver.

Instantly, she threw herself to the floor, as a large, furry wolf soared right above where she was standing.

"Fu-" She got herself off the ground and pulled the sword out of the ground. This was officially the 9th time it had saved her.

"Thanks." She said with a whisper. 

Same level as the one before. 

This'll be easy. She thought to herself. She just had to wait for the wolf to make the first attack, and she just had to stick out her sword and let the wolf cut itself in half on it.

Sure enough, the wolf leapt at her, and she held the blade tightly. 

A splatter of wet liquid hit her face, as several of the mushy organs that were once inside the wolf slid down her cloak.

"Peh!" She spat out the blood that got into her tongue and wiped her face clean. 

Her blade cleaned up the rest, the blood magically floating up from her surroundings and entering the sword. It glowed a deep red.

"Amazing..." No matter how many times she saw this, it was an eery but wonderful sight. To her knowledge, no sword she could think of that belonged to her family even came close to this. 

She continued to watch as the sword finished absorbing the blood before continuing on her quest to level.

Finding another 3 Wind wolves after a few minutes, she slayed them all, resulting in her progressing halfway toward level 20.

"Whew..." She rested on another rock, checking her status panel.

She had tried to activate some of the skills she gained when she first bonded with her sword, Masamune, but had failed spectacularly. 

The skill had shown her pretty clearly how to perform it, but she still couldn't properly activate it fully, as it simply fizzled out, with droplets of blood forming before ultimately failing to form into her desired shape. 

She groaned. What's the point of giving her skills if she can't even use them?! 

Thankfully, she thinks that still uses [Blood Barrier] and [Blood Explosion], simply because they were marked under the system as Magic spells and not Sword skills. 

And as the descendent of the Arch-mage, who served alongside the Hero when they sealed the Dark gods below the desert sands to the east, her bloodline was pretty darn powerful.

If she could figure out how to unlock it, of course.

But until then, she's stuck trying to wield a sword when she's a mage. 

Not that she's complaining, but her fireball was basically useless when trying to kill things, with one of her tests showing that it took an entire 10 fireballs for the wolf to finally drop dead, and that cost nearly 80% of her mana pool.

Getting back up and recalling her status panel, she wandered deeper into the forests in search of a stronger opponent. 

She had almost wished she didn't do that, as only several minutes after walking, her sword quivered again, as she hit the ground.

A massive pair of jaws clamped where she was just standing before, and when she turned to look at it, the gaping maw of a plant stared back.

It looked like someone stuck 2 tables to a plant and called it a jaw, with the lower part of its body extending into a tubular sac that was colored nearly the same as the tree it was stuck to. The jaws were connected to the body in a thick neck that coiled around the body in a spring shape, no doubt it had the ability to snap her up even from this far away. 

It smelled foul, like rotting corpses mixed with fermented fish. Charlotte could've sworn that several bits of small bone were barely sticking out of the dirt below it.

It hissed at her, before its head arched up and shot a glob of green liquid that scraped past her leg.

She screamed in pain. The place where the liquid had touched was now sizzling, the smell of burnt flesh made her gag. 

Tears formed in her eyes, as she forced herself to stand. The Mantrap had its head arched again, and if she didn't move, it won't be a near miss.

Her legs screaming in pain, she propelled herself with her good leg toward the side, letting the acid ball fly past her leg. 

Using her sword to stay upright, she cast a simple Fireball spell, the small ball of fire forming in her palms and shooting towards the Mantrap.

As expected, it only left a scorch. However, the Mantrap shied away from it, canceling its next acid ball, and recoiling itself.

Charlotte used this to her advantage. Her current MP stood at 64% after resting, which meant she could spare a total of 7 more fireballs before running out of MP. By strategically using her fireballs to cancel the Mantrap's attacks, she hoped to get closer to it and stab it with the sword.

She wobbled slowly over towards the Mantrap, using her sword as a walking stick. Every time the Mantrap seemed to attack, she flung another fireball at it, forcing it to protect itself for another 3 seconds.

Slowly, bit by bit, Charlotte closed the meter distance between her and the Mantrap.

On her 5th fireball, she finally got close enough for her sword range. Flinging another fireball for good measure, she pulled the sword out of the ground and stabbed its neck.

Not getting the notification, she pulled out her sword and flung her last fireball, keeping it down for her final strike, as she severed the neck from the body, causing the massive jaws to fall lifelessly to the ground.