@Fro5tburn: she didn't match strength for strength. She dodged and deflected. Yes, he's physically larger, heavier, and stronger than she is, but he never was in a position to make use of that. She never opposed him with force-on-force. He basically defeated himself by charging around and swinging wildly so she could take advantage of his momentum.
I still dont get what benefit the merchant would get by sour the relations they had with the knights-order. But mc is even harder to understand: why did she think her first fight should be against some outsider with dubious motives while blackmailing everyone into allowing it makes sense? She could have at least made ppl more comfortable with the idea by starting in-house.
I'm always amused when people feel disgusted when a guy reincarnates into a girl or vice-versa. It's just flesh, the mind is still sound. -.- Just like how bugs go through metamorphosis to change into their adult forms. =/
Given the description of this, the reason they're gonna go 'you can't be a knight' is gonna be because our hero won't manifest the rune thingy, right? It's probably something that's supposed to manifest when you're young. But the ether control power and latent skill is gonna cause it not to come, I'm gonna guess.
EDIT: So I found the WN and read ahead with google translate, here's some spoilers:
The rune gives people a special weapon that's effective against the magic beasts, because normal weapons aren't effective. Before even undergoing the baptism that gives people a rune, Inglis tests out that the ether control is enough to coat a weapon (I'm guessing) and deal damage to them. So when the baptism happens, a rune does not appear since it's not needed, as modern people don't have the kind of ether control Inglis has, as the rune weapons are a supplement to let them deal with beasts. People without a rune can only be basic low-ranking foot-soldiers, but that's fine with Inglis since they want to be on the front-lines all the time anyways.
