Every morning since they started training, she would wake up to the face of her trainer a millimetre away from her nose with his progressively thinning fingers running through her hair. He said it was to train her mind, but she was beginning to think he just liked messing with her.
During the mornings after breakfast, he’d give her basic instructions on forms and techniques best suited to her fighting style and how best to utilize her skills with her preferred weapon. At noon after lunch, she’d practice by herself while he honed his craft away from her and in the evenings, he’d test her and correct her mistakes as they sparred.
Every other week for the first three months of her training she’d descend the mountain for food and return the next day, she sold a sword or necklace every month or so to keep them fed. After a few months had passed Archive met them in the training grounds, her simulated clothes took on the form of a farmer’s and she held in her hands the proof of her secret labour.
“Good work Archive we won’t need to leave the house again for at least a couple millennia.”
She bowed happily the grain she’d grown in a bundle threatening to spill onto the ground as she did so. From then on, their training continued nonstop. Though he did give her a day every week to rest and recover her muscles.
One fine morning as the simulated birds chirped to signal the start of another training day the girl’s eyes opened indifferently to the sight that had become the norm, over the months she’d spent here.
“Morning master.”
“Your mind has gotten stronger young one.”
She tilted her head questioningly, but he refused to elaborate, and they entered the kitchen to begin cooking the morning meal. Archive was sitting in her seat at the table wearing bifocal glasses a simulated thin satin robe and held a book on agriculture in her hand, her face showed a pensive thoughtful stare as her eyes passed carefully over every word, her lips opening and closing soundlessly as though she were mumbling the words aloud to herself. One hand on her chin the other holding the book.
The girl couldn’t help but find the sight beautiful. The man began processing the raw ingredients Archive had brought in that morning, grains were ground to flower, corn was shucked, fruits were sliced and so on. She began firing up the oven and cooking the ingredients he handed over and he began preserving the ones that would be used for lunch and dinner.
The tarts she’d made for breakfast to go along with their morning coffee wasn’t the best use of their resources but it was the recipe the master of the cave had picked to make for the day, so it was the recipe they were following.
“Perhaps this is too sweet for a morning meal.”
He lamented to no one in particular.
[“I enjoyed it, master.”]
She expressed not even looking up from her book as she ate with one hand not caring about crumbs or syrupy filling falling down her wrist. Every now and then licking it off while reading.
“If you think it’s too sweet, we can always just try something else tomorrow.”
He nodded his head and sat her down on his lap when she came over to eat at the table. Originally there had only been two seats so when archive arrived, he began doing this as a way of messing with her, but she seems to have stopped caring.
His eyes carefully inspected the girl’s movements as she ate her food and drank her coffee, the natural way in which her trained muscles moved without even a hint of tension in her body. He gave a warm caring smile and whispered into her ear.
“Since I’ve already had my breakfast, you can just take my chair if you’d like.”
“That’s very kind of you to offer.”
Came her monotonous reply. He very carefully watched her as she responded, and once he confirmed that she truly had no strong feelings one way or the other he lifted her off his lap removed himself from his seat and sat her down before leaving.
She tilted her head in a moment of confusion for the action that just transpired and after a few seconds, Archive looked up from her book and answered her confusion.
[“You passed his test. He won’t be uncomfortably close to you anymore unless you ask him to be.”]
“Oh, bully.”
Her response seemed indifferent on the surface, but she couldn’t help but lower her head to hide the tinge of red on her cheeks as she smiled for getting his approval in a way, she hadn’t for the past year she’d been training under him.
When she went out to receive her instruction for the morning, she saw her master in the middle of completing one of his own trials. Darts were flying at him from all angles and though blindfolded he was dodging catching and returning the darts right into the simulated moving enemies’ weak points.
Not only that but every enemy that aimed for his vital areas got a fatal wound back every enemy that aims to seal his movements had their movements stolen instead. In such a way he continued blindly, knowing where his enemies were, and to where each one was aiming, until the last false enemy disappeared into particles of light and a short curt fanfare resounded to the falling of imaginary confetti.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
He removed his blindfold and when her eyes met his she readied her sword for his instruction but her took the sword from her hands and replaced it with a stick.
“Um… master?”
“The sword you’ve already mastered. You mastered it a week ago I just didn’t want to inflate your ego at the time, now is the time to train with weapons you can find anywhere in case your sword is broken, stolen, or lost.”
“Right!”
She held the stick as one would a sword and he instructed her to get a looser more rugged stance, the kind that seems not to know what it’s doing. He told her that when using a stick as a weapon it’s best to appear unskilled with it to give their opponent a false sense of security.
And so, for the next four years, he trained her in hand-to-hand combat and improvised weapon fighting until she was able to turn anything within arm’s reach into a viable weapon. She seemed thrilled every time she began learning a new skill.
One morning as she slept with a contented smile on her face a sound, she hadn’t heard in years woke her, it wasn’t the sound of a bird auditorily glitching mid chirp, nor the sound of heavy breathing she’d heard during her first year of training, but the sound of bare feet resounding through a cold metal hallway.
As she opened her eyes, she noticed her arms were loosely hung around her master’s neck and her naked body was being carried while pressed up against his. She closed her eyes again thinking she was still dreaming and gently pressed her face against his neck.
“You know, while it shows the mental strength you’ve gained not to be phased in this situation, you should do something about your habit of not even trusting your own eyes.”
Her eyes opened again and met his. He began to set her feet on the ground, and she began to tiredly follow after him as he led her through the halls.
“What are we doing today master?”
“You’re going to be a hero, right? It’s time you choose the artefact you’ll use.”
As he finished speaking, the door before them opened and a room filled with weapons opened up before her. Her eyes glistened at the sight of all the varying designs and shapes, weapons even she had no idea how to use. She stood in awe for a few moments before her eyes recalled the halberd she saw in the far back.
She happily hugged him and expressed her gratitude.
“Don’t thank me yet depending on what you chose you may need more training. And if I remember correctly, you said this was an emergency.”
A look of determination crossed her face, and she began to earnestly inspect the weapons laid out before her. She immediately passed over the guns and ranged weapons she knew she had no training for and went straight to the swords.
As she began looking around, she noticed something.
“You didn’t make all of these did you?”
He put a hand over his mouth to cover his smile, but she could hear the mirth in his voice when he responded, “How could you tell?”
“About half of these are over-detailed and a third of them are completely eclipsed by the beauty of the halberd I saw when I arrived, there’s no way you could make something so unimpressive.”
“Wonderfully deduced. But… about a fifth of those overly detailed swords are actually fairly good weapons from an age long past, it hurts my eyes, and the style doesn’t suit me at all but I can’t argue with their quality.”
As she looked around, she found one sword that didn’t have a scabbard. The blade was covered in horrendously jagged teeth and the blade part seemed detached from the rest. She tugged on it and saw it move.
“Oh, that’s a fine sword you’ve got right there, try lifting it with both hands on the handle and pouring your magic into it.”
As she did as he asked a horrendously loud roar filled the chamber as the chain began violently rotating and the blade sprung to life. Fire sprang from the dull back end, and she looked in awe of the loud and powerful blade in her hands.
When she stopped pouring her magic into the blade the chain began to slow on its own and the fire dyed down but her eyes gleamed in wonder.
“You want that one then?”
She nodded happily and he led her back to the training ground. She was a bit upset but he then began explaining.
“Since you’ve already mastered the sword, this should be a fairly simple explanation. I won’t keep you long and then you can go save your family.”
Once they entered the training ground, he called Archive to run a training simulation and began explaining.
“The weapon you’ve chosen is called a chain sword. Its blade will be fairly dull until you put your magic into it as its sharpness is mostly reflected by the speed at which the chain moves.”
As he spoke, he pressed the sword up against a simulated tree showing that nothing was happening until he poured in his magic causing it to glide through the tree like a hot stick of butter through the bare grate in the oven after drunkenly forgetting how to cook one evening.
“The fire that comes from the sword is an expression of excess magic being poured in, you only need so much to keep it running but the fire should let you know how much that is, it’s also useful to start fires though.”
He handed her the sword and let her practice giving it the bare minimum magic it needed to run optimally. She couldn’t figure it out within the first try and got the chain caught in a simulated knot in the wood of the tree.
“The chain itself is made of tungsten steel, I doubt it could break easily but if it ever does just bring it back here and I’ll fix it for you.”
He wrapped his arms around hers as she held the sword and guided her fingers to a button on the handle.
“If you hold down this button the excess magic gets turned into electricity instead of fire, it’s fairly useful to shock enemies in plate mail if you don’t feel like looking for an opening in their armour.”
She took about an hour running through simulations until she got a feel for the sword and tied it around her back with the long red ribbon handing from its pommel. There was a hole in the back close to the tip where she tied it and she began wearing it. He led her to the door, and she left with nothing but the sword on her back and the pack of adventuring supplies she’d brought when she arrived.
After she left and the door was closed Archive walked up behind him and asked a simple question.
[“How long do you think it’ll be till she realizes she’s still naked?”]
A smile crept over his face.
“Who can say?”