"No." I replied bluntly, not bothering to disable my magic. I was on vacation, I'm not going to fight a child. Besides, I have a self admittedly large weakness for children so I would rather not fight one if I can help it.
"Your kid is a ghost?! That's awesome!" The young miss shouted out in childish amazement, momentarily forgetting about fighting my dad. She's got a few things to fix for sure but for a child, she's surprisingly powerful considering she didn't have the same benefits I did.
"I'm not a ghost idiot." I refuted her without hesitation, disabling my magic spell. I had hoped not to since it may cause trouble for dad if he saw but it seems like he didn't even bother to think about the consequences.
"I'm not an idiot, idiot!" She shouted out angrily. Rubbing my brows I couldn't help but be annoyed. This was my vacation, my chance to relax but nooo~ dad just had to be annoying. I was content with just one vacation for the next decade but come on!
"Yes, you are." I replied blandly. She seemed like a muscle head from the very beginning so it isn't surprising that she's a little bit dumb but once again, nobody in this world is particularly smart since everyone has specialties.
"Now now, why don't we be nice and fight with swords instead of words?" Dad said with a smirk on his face. I'm going to throw a fireball at your head if you keep this up, dad. It won't hurt you but your eyebrows might vanish.
"Let's go!" She shouted out happily before running down the hall with dad dragging me behind her. I know she and my dad forgot but wasn't she supposed to be studying right now? I get that she doesn't want to but studying is important.
"Just go with it. I was mean to Philip so I'm trying to make it up to him by being nice to his daughter." Dad whispered into my ear with an awkward smile on his face despite it being clearly an attempt at getting me a friend.
From my dad's perspective, I can completely understand and sympathize but I was once an adult so there is a difference in life experience that makes it difficult for me to grow close to people my age.
"Ok." I agreed with a sigh. At this point, it was better to just go along with it rather than endlessly argue over something so meaningless. I'm much too old to be having a temper tantrum even if my family would disagree.
The arena she brought us to was a fairly large area with a simple dirt floor and a weapon rack on the side. Obviously, all the weapon rack held was swords but that was to be expected with such a heavy focus on them in this world.
"How are we fighting?" I questioned her while grabbing a sword that fit my current physique. While I was nowhere near as good with a sword as I was with magic I was pretty good if I say so myself.
The main problem holding me back is my undeveloped body though the same could be said about her as well. Not only that but I had much more training than she did even my time was split into thirds.
Currently, I am intermediate ranked in Sword God and Water God style and advanced ranked in North God style while she couldn't even qualify for basic rank in any of them. My body is weak to the point where it would be difficult to qualify for the rank if not for my overwhelming reserves of mana but my skills definitely reach the necessary level.
Even if my body had been tempered by intense training using healing magic to ensure my safety it still couldn't be compared to somebody like dad who had trained for over a decade. It was a different story if I used mana though.
My body wasn't strong enough to handle all the strengthening I could give it but if I brute forced it I'm confident in saying that I could probably beat my dad. Of course, there is no reason to since I can just use magic if I really wanted to beat him.
Still, I didn't even have to use a drop of mana if I wanted to beat her. She seems talented but the time difference between our training can't be beaten just yet. In the future it may be possible to but that is not right now.
"We'll fight until one of us gives up!" She declared without hesitation, a wide smirk on her face. I can't tell if she was excited to fight someone her age or if she was just excited to beat me up. Either way, she was extremely excited.
"Mhm." Humming in agreement I took my place across from her, my sword in a basic stance. As average as I was in the Sword God style I was still leagues above the current her. Maybe in the future, she'd be difficult but right now I didn't even have to pretend to try.
She seemed like an instinctive type fighter which was a bad match up against me as a more technical type of fighter. Well, normally that would come into play but the skill difference was a little too much right now.
From what I could tell though she had potential. Her msucles were developed in a way that was stronger than most fighters meaning from the same amount of training she would have more physical power.
Not only that but it was obvious that like my dad she was stupid which meant she'll be a good swordswoman. She may struggle to defeat technical fighters like me but just from the fact that she instinctively threw the vase in a way that it wouldn't hit anybody I can say confidently that she has a similar level of potential as dad.
But potential wasn't power and right now that's what she needed. Similar to me in my younger days I had potential but no power to protect anything so I ran full force toward power, putting most things off to the side.
Luckily she has the political protection of her family and the physical protection of the woman with the demon eye. Compared to me she hasn't had the same compulsive desire for power that I had in the past and have currently.
In the end, all that means is that the winner of this fight is obvious. In the future the result of a purely sword fight may be different but right it's a piece of cake.
"Ready? Go!" Dad signaled the start of the battle. Dashing forward at a leisurely pace, I knocked her sword out of her hand and place my own by her neck in one smooth motion as her eyes flashed to her hand where, from her view, her sword suddenly vanished.
"I win." I declared bluntly.