I was reborn as an orphan, But I won't let that stop me

After Annette won, it took her about 1 hour to be called in again. The tournament is now in the second round and Annette is first out. She walks out to the arena and faces her next foe. Her next opponent is a foreigner and looking at his bearing he should be a noble. He is tall and slim but not skinny and he uses a battle rapier. He is standing with his sword in front of him and his left hand behind his back. Annette can see that he is much stronger than her previous opponent and she hopes that he would be strong enough to test how strong her swordsmanship is. The battle starts and Annette takes out one of her katanas. The two of them stick at the exact same time, clashing their swords with 2 completely different styles. Annette uses a  slashing motion while her opponent's motions are more like stabbing. Annette uses her sword to block and tries to push the sword aside to gain an opening and slash her opponent's body. Her opponent on the other hand tries to bypass her sword by stabbing and he is aiming to stab it on her upper body. As the battle goes on the attacks get faster and faster and soon no normal person can see their moves as they are just so fast. Only those with magic or a trained eye for battle can see it. Right at this moment both of them are an equal match and unless something changes then the only thing that can determine the winner is just to see who has better endurance. 

Seeing that this person's rely did prove as a challenge for her Annette starts to smile wildly. This is exactly what she wanted a challenge to improve herself. Although she is more of a two-handed user Annette still insists on using only one sword. After all, unless her opponent is really strong she doesn't want to use both of them. Using one is more of a challenge for her, which is why she is only using one. In battle, there is no telling if you would lose one of your swords so training herself to be better at using only one can only be beneficial to her. Only using one sword without magic is her weak link and only by training at what she is worst at can she illuminate her shortcomings. That is her goal, to train and eradicate this weakness. After all, if it is used against her then she can lose miserably if she is unlucky. She knows this through and that is why she acts upon it. This is what her mother from her previous world has taught her and she has always kept this advice at heart. 

The battle continues and with each strike, she becomes more focused and her strikes become harder and harder. So much so that each time their swords clash her opponent's arms and hands start to tremble. This is the weakness of a rapier user who does not have as much pure strangh as other swordsmen. After all, they favor speed and preciseness over brutal string thus leaving their arms weaker than other swordsmanship users. But they are more accurate and morally faster. So rapier users are still very respected even though they lack a little when it comes to strength. Knowing her opponent's weakness is exactly why she uses more force than usual. This is a tournament match after all, not a real fight. That means that she can't go on forever and can't wait until her opponent is tired. She is on a time limit after all so she can't drag this on. So she pushes forward trying to tear down his defenses with brutal strangh. It is not elegant but she has never cared about that. Even so, he still puts on a good fight and holds on. Unfortunately for him, she can't keep on with this forever. So he also tries to find a gap in her defense as his hands will soon give in and he will lose while dropping his sword. If the sword was smashed out of his hand by his opponent it would not be shameful but if he were to just drop it in the middle of battle then it would. In fact, some even quit swordsmanship forever after such a thing has happened. Dropping your sword is just like losing your life in a real battle and even in a mock battle they would never dare to drop it. This is their honor and it must never be broken. 

10 more minutes passed and finally, Annette managed to redirect the rapier and smash it out of his hand. Then she went for the kill and struck at his chest. He got teleported away and she won and is now in the semi-final where only 26 are left remaining.