Fight Training

7:30 A.M.

That was the time when maids came into my room to wake me up. It felt like I had just fell asleep.

“Please, Hero, it is time to prepare for your training.” They said at the door, and I responded by wrapping myself further in my blankets until I had become a little burrito.

“Please...” They started shaking me, to ensure I was awake, and gradually intensified their efforts until they were practically rolling me like a piece of dough on my bed. Eventually I relented, and left that little piece of heaven that was my soft bed to throw on my track suit.

I still felt like I was asleep as we walked through the halls, and I checked my HUD to see if there was anything I needed to see after waking up.

Well-Rested Bonus!

+25% EXP

Perception +1

I got a perception bonus? I could barely focus a few feet in-front of me, and everything was still hazy. Maybe I would see its effects later.

Since I was going to need it, I didn't bother disengaging it.

Some moments passed, and we were standing in a large washroom. Since I hadn't bathed in the entire time I'd been here, I was probably a bit musky. It would definitely help wake me up, too.

I gestured for the maids to leave the room, so I could undress, but they just stared at me as if they didn't understand what I was trying to convey. Since they wouldn't leave, and just tilted their heads at me, I gave up and undressed in-front of all these very strange women.

It was as comfortable of an experience as you'd expect.

They led me to a little stool in-front of a stream of flowing water. Once they sat me down they got to work putting shampoo in my hair and lathering my body in soap. Once I was thoroughly coated, they collected some water in a small bucket that laid beside the stool and dumped it over my head at first, before moving to other parts of my body where the soap hadn't washed off.

They stood me up and dried me off as best they could with a towel, and led me to a dry part of the room where they gave a fresh pair of underwear. Wait, this favorite character underwear from a Magical Girl M**oka! Where did they get it?! How?!

Before I could question them on it, another maid walked in from outside of the room. Her arms were straining somewhat from the weight of the gear she held. There was a drab gray tunic, under a dull silver piece of metallic armor, black and brown boots, and a pair of black leather gloves.

Each piece of equipment was laid out on a low counter-top on the opposite side of the room that I had been washed.

Both the pants and upper of the clothes were a somewhat coarse gray material, but while the legs were relatively thin, the upper was significantly thicker. It seemed as if some kind of padding was laid inside, making it somewhat thick. I put on the high boots next, and they went up nearly to my knees. They were black, except for the sides, which were dark brown, and some string was put through some holes put into the sides to tighten them up.

The armor was next. It looked just like the armor those tall soldiers wore, but each piece was dull, and dented and scratched in several places, plus I'm sure that this set was missing some of the pieces that they wore. The greaves was placed over my shins, extending from my ankles to my knees on the front. The body piece was put on over my head, and there was a piece of metal that extended upwards in-front of my neck. I put on the black gloves next, which went nearly covered the entirety of my forearm, and the vambraces were placed over it.

Finally was the helmet. It looked just like the ones in ancient artwork from a long time ago, and looked fairly basic. It had what looked like a fin that extended front-to-back on a dome part, and on the sides metal extended outwards and downwards, and each side met at the front and back to form a V-shape. There was some leather that cupped my head, and the maids adjusted a chin-strap that held the helmet snugly against my head.

When I put all the armor pieces on, I saw a exclamation point appear on the armor tab of my HUD. Focusing on it, it opened the inventory and automatically displayed the armor's attributes.

Basic Soldier Armor (Training) Equipped

15% Physical Defense

Basic Padded Clothes (Grey) Equipped

2% Physical Defense

Defense percentages?

Help – Defense

Defense is the percentage of damage that a given piece of Armor or Clothes will negate.

For example: If a weapon inflicts 20 points of Attack Damage, and a given piece of Equipment provides 25% Defense, then that weapon will only inflict 15 points of Attack Damage.

Keep in mind – Magic Damage will not be negated by a Physical Defense rating.

Interesting. That means that as I gain better armor, then there may be some weapons that won't even do any damage, essentially.

They led me out of the room to wherever I needed to go next, and on the way I passed by some mirrors. Of course, I couldn't resist the temptation to stop and see how I looked.

I looked absolutely ridiculous.

I sure as hell didn't look like an awesome MMO-RPG hero. I looked like those NPC's that had the stats of a dry stick and would die no matter how hard you tried to save them.

We walked for quite a while through the halls, and crossed a small bridge that connected this castle to a smaller adjacent structure. Looking between the two, and the town below, the castle seemed to loom over everything in sight. It was awe-inspiring, just like those ancient castles in Germany that sat on-top of huge mountains. Huge towers extended upwards from the middle of the castles and had beautiful banners hanging from the ledges, and I could see soldiers that were observing the outside of the castle from ramparts both above and below the height of the bridge.

The people leading me explained that this was both where the majority of the capital's garrison lived, as some also lived in the town below with their families, and all training was performed in this area. Other combat activities were also conducted here, they said.

Eventually we reached a large courtyard, and then the maids left to return to the larger castle.

There were several square spaces in the middle which were marked off by wood posts and rope, and some were occupied by two or more soldiers. They were fighting with a variety of weapons: daggers, swords, and other longer ones I didn't know the names of. I could see what looked like effigies of people formed from wood and hay on the far side, and bulls-eye targets were there as well. Some arrows were still stuck in the targets.

Most of these weren't being used, but one of them being absolutely massacred by a woman in white and navy. She swung a sword repeatedly at it, sometimes stopping to fix the stuffing attached to the posts, before returning to her task of murdering the effigy.

I swear I could hear her screaming at it, too.

Good thing no kids were around to hear her.

There were benches that ran the length of the court yard, and lot of soldiers were sitting and talking. Since I was here to be trained by that group last night, I scanned the courtyard to see to find them.

“Ah, Hero! Over here!” I looked towards the yelling and I saw the tall, fair-haired man that I met last night. He was waving in my direction.

I walked over to where he stood, and on the benches I saw the rest of the members of his group. They were all sitting on the benches watching the other soldiers fighting. There was that portly man who rested a warhammer on his shoulder, joined by slender brunette woman with shoulder length hair that had a bow on her back; a young bald guy with a sword sheathed on his waist; and there was a mountain of a man sitting behind them all with a long beard and a rough buzzcut, and had a set of huge axes laying besides them. Unlike the others, he didn't have any armor on his arms – his monstrously-sized arms were exposed right down to the skin.

This group had different armor than anyone I'd met. They each had their own custom armor that varied wildly from the armor I'd seen on the regular soldiers or even the Honor Guards. The tall guy had the nicest armor out of them all. It was a highly polished gold, with the same design as the Honor Guard, and on his left pauldron there was a depiction of a bird in-flight on-top of the model. It was really quite breathtaking.

As I approached, the rest of the group had started looking at me and started talking among themselves.

“Thank you for coming, Hero. I hope you enjoyed the dinner last night, and I hope that my sister's antics didn't disturb you too much?” I went wide-eyed with the casualness of that revelation.

“She...Adrastia's your sister?”

“Hm, yes. That girl over there is, in-fact, my little sister.” He gestured with his shoulder at the person who was now punching and kicking the hay effigy. I wouldn't have guessed that. Tonya is about my height, whereas this man is easily 6'2.

“We had planned on introducing ourselves to you today, before we officially began your training, but it seems that my dear sister had her own plans.” He let out a small sigh before continuing. “I must also apologize for the fact that Tonya came back your room to heckle you. I learned of it this morning, when the maids saw her leaving your room yesterday.”

“It's fine, really, I wasn't bothered by her.” He smiled.

“Good! Then, without further delay, let me introduce me and my friends - your party members.” He pointed at himself with his thumb.

“My name is Lionel Adrastia. I was the King's Personal Guard, prior to taking this post.”

“That short man is Maximilian Zunberg, he was a blacksmith in this little town prior to joining this party. Don't let his face scare you, he's all heart.”

“Geez, Lionel, don't tell any of my kids that! You'll ruin my campfire stories!” He laughed heartily. “Nice to meet ya, Hero.”

“I'll try to not.” He laughed alongside him, before continuing on.

“This is our archer, Hero. Her name is Nicia Saichek, and she was the leading archer of Swetland. She joined us when we attempted to rescue Her Majesty, the Queen, and you'll never find anyone better than her.”

“That's right.” She said, nodding to herself. Why's it always got to be the archer's that are the arrogant ones?

“That bald man is Apollo Balito. The first time we met him as when we ran after him, when he swiped our coin-purses in the town of Rialytz in Demi-shi, during it's evacuation. Normally we wouldn't let a thief in our noble party, but he had also smuggled in a cursed treasure chest into the command tent of the invaders. Since he was able to single-handily kill the generals leading the invasion, giving us a chance to get everyone out, we decided to...give him a chance.” He said, somewhat hesitantly.

“Hey now, don't think of it as 'thieving' or 'stealing.' Think of it as: liberating one's things for better use.” He crossed his arms, and grinned smugly as he leaned back into the raised bench behind him. “If you ever are need of something, Hero, and you don't ask how it was obtained, I can deliver just about anything.” He nodded in his own approval.

Lionel starred at him with a dubious face, and continued to the final member.

“Finally we have 'Stormbreaker.' He was formerly with the 'Lightning Army' that was fighting the despotic King Raphael, in country of Byzantia to the west. The two armies joined forces prior to invasion, and before they were routed by the Darkness, it's said that he single-handily held off wave upon wave of attacks as they all retreated to Aquila. He's quick to anger, but he doesn't talk much. Just don't call him 'stormie.'” Stormbreaker didn't say anything, and kept his attention on the other fighters.

“Now that we have all that out of the way, let us finally get to our training!” He raised the rope, allowing me to move under it, before following suit. As we stopped in the center of the fighting square, he gestured to a squire, and ordered him to retrieve a longsword.

“So then, Hero, tell me: In your world, are there warriors such as us? Have you fought with any weapons? Such swords, zweihanders, bows, pikes, or anything of the sort?

I briefly considered saying “yes,” since I had actually used those weapons...in video games. But I decided that saying so would probably be a bad idea, all things considered.

“Well yes, but only a long time ago in my world. It's almost ancient history. So, no – I've never used any kind of combat weapons before.”

“I...see.” For a brief moment, his face flashed with worry before he caught himself and returned to his normally cool demeanor.

All that the “legend” said was that a hero was going to save the world. It didn't say that the person they summoned would be an actual hardened warrior like them. I guess he wasn't expecting to start from scratch and even teach me how to wield sword, no less.

I couldn't blame him, honestly. I imagine even children in this world know more about sword-fighting than I do!

“Well, it doesn't matter either way. You have the best looking after you, so you'll be ready in no time!” His arms opened up, and I could feel his confidence washing over me. Would I really be whatever short time that they had to get me up to speed before sending out on a quest?

The squire returned to Lionel with a longsword. Retrieving it from him and sending it back on his way, he approached me and put the sword in my hands. A box appeared on my HUD after I gripped the sheathed.

Longsword (dull) Equipped

1 Point of Attack Damage

I attached the sheath to my belt and let it fall down to my side. After pulling out sword, I felt so excited! I've never a real sword before and it gleamed in my hand. I took a couple of steps away from Lionel and started swinging it around haphazardly and laughing in glee. I stopped swinging it and did my best imitation of Tonya from the night before, but I was so surprised by how heavy the sword seemed to become just then.

You see, in the movies they always carry it around in their hands like it weighs nothing. I could feel my arm straining when I pointed it outwards with one hand like Tonya did last night. She must have killer biceps.

I held it closer to my face, close enough to roughly see my own reflection, and ran my gloved fingers up the edge of the blade. I could tell there was a bit of an edge on it, but it seemed as if it were utterly dull.

Lionel was starring at me, and was apparently having a bit of fun in my newbie excitement.

“Whenever we have new soldiers join, we give them the same kind of sword you have in your hands to train with. It feels heavy now, but once a blacksmith sharpens down the edges, you'd be quite surprised on how lighter it becomes.”

That makes sense, giving a newbie like me a fully-sharpened sword would be like giving a hyped-up kid a knife to play it.

“If the initial excitement is done with, let's proceed.” I sheathed the sword and walked back to him.

“You already know how to draw a sword and I'll assume you know how to grip it, so let's work on your stance.” He had me pull my sword back out, and told me to assume a stance that seemed natural for me.

He around around a few times to see me from all angles, occasionally stopping to get a better look. I started off squared off to him at his original position, but as he got to work he would actually grip my shoulders and almost force me to stand nearly sideways to his original position, with the left shoulder oriented forwards. Pushing down my shoulders, he had me slightly bend my knees. It felt like the way athletes would stand in sports.

“Yes, yes. When you stand like this, you'll exposure less of your body to attack. Standing straight up will also make knocking you down easier as well, so that's why I'm having you hunch down a bit. It makes moving around easier, too.”

He walked around me a few more times, nodded and muttering to himself. It felt a bit straining to maintain this position, but I guess the more I do it the easier it'll become. I know enough to know that getting knocked down while I'm fighting an enemy means a sure death.

After walking around a few more times, he got closer again and started hitting my feet with his, causing my stance to widen slightly. And he gripped my hands, which I was using to grip my sword, and pushed them closer to my body, where my hands with resting on my right hip.

Satisfied with his work, he returned to his original spot.

“Good! Now you're ready to begin fighting! You'll find that it's much easier to move back and forth, side-to-side, and switch your orientation to the opposite way, all the while as you keep you keep your feet under you.” He crossed his arms and nodded. “Much better than standing straight up and walking to be knocked down and stabbed.” He laughed.

I faked a laugh, but I shuddered at the thought.

He had me do some drills where I did just that for a good ten or fifteen minutes. He was right! I felt natural to move like this, and I became more comfortable moving and swapping orientations. Sometimes he'd try shoving me to knock me down, to make sure I really had my feet under me. When he felt that I got the point, he had me stop.

“I'm sure you're excited to finally get to the fun part of the training!' He reached and pulled his own sword out. It was just as ornamental as his armor and was quite long, fitting with tall stature. His armored gloves gripped the sword tightly, and I could see that the entire hilt of the sword was also polished, with the hand-guards fashioned to appear just like the wings of a massive bird.

Even he got into his own stance, he towered over me.

It was pretty intimidating, even if he was going to take it easy on me. I responded by getting into my newly taught fighting stance, but I see the tip of my sword shaking out of the corner of my eye.

“Fear not, Hero. This sword is just like your own. You have more than enough armor to withstand my blows, but please do try to block. Feel free to also attack, if you can.” He held that charismatic grin until he started to focus strictly on me, at which his face went utterly blank.

We stood for a moment, just staring at each other. He would take a step toward me, and I would take one back. The entire courtyard, which was awash with talking and clashing metal, was now silent. I could feel the eyes of everyone present fixed right on us.

Lionel lunged straight at me, thrusting his sword straight at me. I knocked it to the left, swinging it back and down toward him. He quickly dashed backwards, resting it on his shoulder as he circled around me. Facing him as he moved, I quickly reversed my orientation and closed again to slash upwards at him. He went to block, and I could feel his raw power as he brought his own down to block it, forcing the end of my sword directly into the sand. I pulled it back, putting extra distance between me and him.

He was obviously going easy on me, but I knew that if this were a real fight – I'd already be mince meat.

He brought his sword up to his shoulders and launched forwards, with the blade towards me. A barrage of swings came. I would block one, only for him swing from the opposite direction, forcing me to reorient myself to block the other, and would dash backwards before I could respond in-kind. We moved in a circle, and I did my best to block everything he was throwing at me.

Everything he did was telegraphed, but it was still lightning fast.

He took a couple of steps toward me, finally taking another and swinging down at me, I swung up to block it, it bounced up and launched my own attack. I was moving forward, him backwards, as my blade met his in each bout.

I was getting more confident.

Going back on the attack, he swung up and I leaned back to avoid it. Now there's my opening!

His sides were entirely exposed!

He began his swing downwards, but I had him! I swung up diagonally towards his right armpit, ready to make contact.

But he took a step to my right. Suddenly I felt his sword bash part of my armor where the neck-guard extended upwards from the back of my breastplate. The force was so hard that I felt myself getting knocked forwards, and got a face full of sand.

I flipped over on my back and he was having a pretty good laugh.

“Hah...For someone whose first time wielding a longsword was just now, you've actually done pretty good! Training you will be a lot easier than I originally thought!” I extended his hand towards me, and I grabbed it to get back onto my feet.

“I was sure that I was going to land a hit on you much sooner than I did, but you did well in defending yourself. If that were anyone else, then you may have actually won.” He started shaking his head. “But you have to keep moving as you strike, since you leaned into that swing and stayed still, I was able to side-step you and land what could have been a fatal blow. You have to keep your head!” He started laughing at he started patting me on the back.

“Personally, I would've given him a good blow in those opening moments with Baby and called it a day!” Maximilian interjected, raising his hammer over his head.

“But he didn't have a shield! It wouldn't have even been a fair-fight to have him go up against you at this point!” Lionel yelled back, and they both continued to joke about how they could've killed me sooner.

They were a regular comedy duo.

“I also think you went too easy on him, Brother.” Adrastia said, her face awash with frustration and her arms crossed, her fingers tapping her arm. She entered the fighting ring, and approached her brother.

“If this is the training that he's going to receive, then-”

“It's not.” Lionel interrupted.

“If this is the training that he's going to receive, then he'll never get ready.” Tonya continued, ignoring her brother “Don't you think you should have a real swordsman show him how it's done?” She had a smirk on her face, and the soldiers in the crowd were murmuring to themselves.

“You don't need to show off, Tonya. You don't need to take out your anger on-” Lionel's face was showing visible annoyance, and his forehead was furrowed.

“Shut up, big brother! Just let me do this!” Lionel let out an exasperated sigh. Looking at me and shrugging his shoulders, he went off to join the rest of his group. He passed by a squire who was rushing over to give Tonya a dulled-off longsword, as apparently she was about to start fighting me, who had such a sword, with her razor-sharp short sword.

She didn't have any armor or anything protecting her! How in the hell was I going to be able to strike at without hurting her?!

She ran her eyes over the sword to check it out, and got ready to fight.

“I told you, Daisuke, I wasn't going to take it easy on you!” Without waiting, she rushed towards me, swinging her longsword from and any all directions she could without exposing herself.

She wasn't kidding. Unlike her brother, she was not telegraphing. At all.

I was straining myself to keep up with her, and I was getting freaked out by how much fun she was having. We circled around each other. Each time she would rush in to launch her barrage of slashes and stabs, and quickly stop it the moment I caught it up with hers, dashing backwards to put some distance between me and her. Not only was I having to block, but I was having to do my best to just dodge her attacks, too! She was moving so fast that, by the time I swung at her, she was in a completely different spot!

Being a flexible teenage girl apparently works in your favor in this kind of this situation.

But apparently her incredible swordsmanship and speed wasn't giving her the edge against me that she thought it would. The longer the fight wore on, the more times she would attack but not be able to land a single kill-shot, the more flustered she got. Finally she did manage to land a slight hit on me.

But not the type she was looking for.

In one of her rushes, she started swinging at my face in her anger, and I wasn't able to lean back enough to fully avoid the tip of her sword. There was some booing on the part of those watching. You aren't supposed to go towards the head of your training partner, if I heard their objections correctly. Even though it was dulled, and my HUD said it did no damage at all, I could feel the tip just barely slice my right cheek.

Lionel stood up and shouted at his sister, “That's ENOUGH, Tonya!”

“No it's not! That's just a surface wound! It's not over yet!” She retorted

“She's...right, friend. The sparring session must continue until she lands what would be a killing blow.” Maximilian reluctantly agreed. As they argued, I touched my cheek with the back of one my gloves, and a good deal of blood was coming through, despite it being a light wound.

My hands were shaking. I...I'd never been hurt like this before, but I did my best to keep my cool. She might really have been looking to hurt me and show off. Eventually she turned her attention back towards me.

She lunged right at me, and I started to backpedal. Bringing her sword up, she swung as hard as she could downwards as hard as she could. I planted myself, bringing mine up to block her. She kept pushing down on it with some force, without bring it back to hit again, so I gripped the blade at some distance away from where hers had landed with other hand, and was going to push her off.

Staring at me dead in the eye and laughing, she oriented the tip of his sword down towards the ground, pushing it down and towards my sword's hilt, until the two hilts were clashing and her sword was pointed at my feet. She scuttled underneath and got in-between me and the two swords, gripped the blade of her sword with her other hand, threw her left leg behind mine and starting pushing in opposite directions and to my right.

There was so much leverage that I could literally feel my sword being flung out of my hand as she pushed against mine with her sword, and the act of my losing it caused the remaining force to throw me backwards.

I saw stars for a moment there, my HUD went awash with static before regaining my bearings, but all that greeted me was Tonya's smug face as she sat on my chest with her knee. I tried my hardest, but I couldn't summon enough energy to threw off a teenage girl who was placing all of her strength square into my chest. She dangled a longsword over my face, one hand on the hilt and one on the blade, guiding it ever closer.

She pulled it back.

I closed my eyes and started thinking of an apology to whatever God I could think of.

And then I heard the sound of a sword being driven into the dirt. It was so close my nose hit the flat part of the blade when I turned to look.

This girl...was terrifying.

“Congratulations, Lady Tonya Adrastia. You have successfully defeated someone whose first time using a sword was this morning. Festivities are in order.” Maximilian said, clapping slowly with an obtuse look on his face. The sarcasm was lost on her, however. She just stood there with her hands on her hips, triumphant as if she had just slain a massive beast all by herself.

“Erm, Hero!” The bald one starting yelling. “Since her attention is away, you may yet want to swipe her coin-purse! You would probably need some money to fix your face!” He started laughing, and the girl threw him an evil eye.

“Are you proud of yourself, dear sister?” Lionel strode up, a look of contempt shooting at Tonya from his gaze.

“It's you fault, big brother.” She crossed her arms and looked away. “If he were really the hero, then he wouldn't have lost against a little girl like me!” She looked back at him. “If this is the best we can get, then maybe they should call me 'Hero,” give me the Legendary equipment, and let me at the Demon Generals!” She laughed smugly.

That “little girl” is a monster, but she wasn't exaggerating about how good she was.

“Sure, you'd only been tutored by various swordsmen since you were five. And you started using techniques that we hadn't taught yet, of course he was going to lose!”

“So?”

The two bickered back and forth for a while

An apothecary was summoned by one of the party members, and he stitched my face up. He said it might leave a scar, however.

I checked my HUD again, and there didn't seem to be any changes my HP from this fight. So apparently even if I do get cuts and scrapes and such, it doesn't necessarily mean I took any “actual damage.”

Eventually the two stopped bickering, and Lionel had cooled down. The rest of the group joined us inside the circle.

“Since my little sister's obsession with being the best has been...satiated so far, I think we won't have to worry about any more incidents like this in the future, do we?” He looked at Tonya, who was avoiding his gaze, and looked down at the ground.

“No, not at all.” I guess he really let her have it. But I could see why they put up with her antics, she really is the best.

The Sun was starting to set. Apparently we'd been out here far long than I thought.

“So, this is the cue to end our training for today. We have a lot of work to do in a very short amount of time, so we'll be doing this everyday for the next few weeks. But, seeing how you did in our sparring session, and Tonya's little demonstration...” Tonya clenched her teeth, and started staring up at her brother.

Tsun-tsun levels are at 100% here.

“...I think it's safe to assume that you'll just soak up whatever we have to teach you between now and then. You did very well in both fights, especially considering you'd never done such things before. Eat well and get a well-earned rest tonight, you earned it! And be ready for tomorrow! Neither me, nor Tonya, nor anyone else in this group will take it easy on you from now on.” He and everyone looked so thoroughly impressed that I felt kind of embarrassed.

They remained and talked among themselves, but I went to return to castle. Before I completely left the courtyard, I turned back to the group one last time for the day. They were fixated on each other, but Tonya was looking at me as I left. When she realized I was looking in her direction, she stuck her tongue out at me, made a crude face, and then turn towards the rest of them.

Tsun-tsun levels are off the charts.

Following the advice of Lionel – I returned to the castle, changed back into my track suit, ate, and collapsed on my bed, not even bothering to take off my track suit.

The routine of the following few weeks was more or so less the same route. The speed of the training ramped up in light of my performance the first day, but my own pace was keeping right up with them. Eventually I was able to win against Lionel within a week, and each following fight was getting better and better. With the both of us going as fast as possible, I was still able to beat him within two minutes.

I also went up with against the others, who had their own unique fighting styles. Even when Apollo tried to play dirty and throw sand in my eyes and other gimmicks, I was able to cleanly beat him. I had some trouble with Nicia, since she was able to jump and faster than I could swing my sword, of which about half as long as the longsword I fought with at first since it was closer to the length of the Legendary Sword, I was able to use a shield to deflect her arrows until eventually I landed a solid hit. The shield also came in handy when Maximilian tried to use “Baby” against me.

Tonya also watched our training sessions, and every and now then she'd get fed up, complain that they just letting me win, demand that she be allowed to fight me, be told no, and then fight me anyways. The group started treating it like an inevitability, and just stopped saying no altogether. Most of the time, she won because she'd pull some new technique I didn't know out of her hat to make sure she won. But, in the last couple of weeks of my training, I was finally able to match her speed, as she was even faster than Lionel, and beat her!

She was fuming, and kept complaining that I had cheated in the time I won, so we fought again, and I won again. It was great to finally make her eat her words. Just amazing.

Also, apparently winning such training matches did net some me a good amount of EXP. By the end of the second-to-last week, I had gotten up to a level 4!

I was supposed to fight Stormbreaker, but ultimately decided against it. He would probably break me in half no matter how deep in the training we got, so we put that off until I got much, much better.

Finally, we got to the last week of the training.

We were all gathered on the benches beside the fighting cages.

“You've definitely exceeded all of our expectations of you in these last few weeks, Hero.” Lionel was standing up in-front of the benches, nodding. “Before we began, when you told me you'd never fought with a sword, I was worried that we still may not be able to adequately prepare you for the road ahead, but you've definitely put those fears to rest!”

He clutched his chin, thinking about what's next.

“We've done all that can probably accomplish here in the in the training yard, I think. So I think what's next is that we go out and get some hands-on experience.”

Apparently, when the leader of the invading army was killed, his control over the undead monstrosities was broken and some wondered off before they could be mopped up by the defenders. Patrols have been sent out to search for them, and a lot of them had indeed been killed. But enough of them still hung around that, on top of the natural dangers present in the countryside between Aquila's cities, movement for travelers and merchants in the countryside was now even more precarious.

“So, unless anyone has any objections, we'll replace on the scheduled patrols. That'll give the us the opportunity to dispose of these pes-”

As he was about to finish his sentence, a series of explosions went off from the direction of the town below. Shock-waves were sent over the garrison's walls, and we were all hit by a wall of air, knocking anything light enough over and along the direction of the wind.

“What the hell was that?!”

“No way! Not again!”

Soldiers in their training clothes were running around in a panic, before being guided towards the armories.

“Men! To arms!”

I ran ahead of the stream of soldiers heading to armory, and steeled myself for the battle to come.