The sun was up by the time The first person showed up.
It was a young soldier from what Aiden could tell. He remembered seeing the man around a few times. Though he called him young, the man was probably older than twenty-five.
The man hesitated at the entrance, stunned. After a moment, he gathered his wits about him and went about his day. He cleaned as best he could, arranged as best he could. The man checked up on the dummies and the weapons but made no attempt to get close to Aiden.
Aiden didn’t blame him. It was safe to say that none of the swords belonged to him and he didn’t want to have anything to do with what was happening.
It was two hours past first light when everyone else started trooping in. And soon the challengers started to show themselves. It was in the scowls Aiden saw. Most of the soldiers scowled, but the challengers had a specific type of scowl. Somehow they managed to make it condescending.
They looked like predators spotting a prey.
Aiden sighed. How unfortunate.
When even the armored trainees came in Aiden finally got up. He stood in the middle of a ring of six swords and two spears and looked around at everybody.
“Let me make one thing clear!” he announced, drawing the attention of even those that wanted no part of this to him. “I am not a nice person. I am not kind enough to play games. By the virtue of these weapons, you have all made your decisions. You have challenged me and not the other way around.”
Mumbles rose slowly from the crowd but one of the armored trainees stepped away from the section where only they trained. He wore light armor and no helmet. It seemed he was yet to put on his complete armor.
“Silence!” the man declared.
Everyone obeyed immediately.
“He is the challenged!” the man continued. “You may not like him, but you will accord him the respect due of the challenged.”
Aiden nodded to the man. “Thank you.”
“I did not do it for you,” the man replied coldly. “I like nothing about you but respect is important. Cultures must be respected.”
Aiden nodded. That was quite unfortunate because the man wasn’t going to like what he was going to say next.
“As I was saying,” he continued. “I am the challenged and that’s fine and good. But I came here for my own reasons and this little display of yours has chosen to delay my plans a little bit. That said, if I am forced to play your games, then you will be forced to play mine. I will face you to first blood, to surrender… even to the death.”
Aiden saw scowls turning into grins, feral smiles widening. One particular scowl turned scared and the man paled.
“However,” Aiden went on. “I will do all this on only one condition. We will face each other without active skills. If you agree, then we can play this game of yours. If you do not, then understand that I will place all your swords and spears back in that poor dummy and you can riddle it all you want and you will continue to be ignored until the day I leave.”
“You cannot!” someone shouted from the crowd. “It is not allowed!”
Aiden snorted. “And yet I will.”
“You will go against culture?” another asked, the voice feminine.
“Your culture,” Aiden pointed out. “Not mine. Say what you want, but as someone famous once said, ‘I’ll do what I’ll do and you do what you can do about it.’ Now hurry up. Make your decision and let’s get this over with. I have more important things to do than play these childish games.”
He stepped out of the ring of swords while the muttering resumed. He could hear the anger. Good. Angry opponents made mistakes.
Unsurprisingly, the armored man did not step in to quell it as he had done once before. Aiden didn’t know if it was because the mutterings were necessary due to the need for deliberation or because he was not going to ask them to respect a man who did not respect the culture.
Probably the latter, he thought as he picked up a sword from the training pile. He checked it as he waited. It was too worn out.
He dropped it and picked another. It took him going through the process on four swords before he found something good enough. It could’ve been weighted better but…
What the hell, why not?
Aiden turned away from the swords and walked over to a clear space. There had been eyes watching him through the process and some of those eyes had grown serious. It seemed there were people who’d understood what he had been doing.
He placed the tip of his chosen sword on the ground and started walking. It drew a line in the sand as he moved until he’d made a large and complete circle.
When some eyes started glancing up, Aiden followed them. He was not surprised to find Valdan standing behind the railing they’d stood to observe the soldiers on their first day here.
Beside him, Nella stood with a puzzled expression.
When Aiden was done with the circle, he stood inside it.
A man walked out from the crowd and over to the ring of swords. He was around Valdan’s age, at least he looked it, and walked proudly. He pulled a sword from the ring and approached Aiden.
He entered the circle Aiden had drawn, garnering everyone’s attention.
“I will face you with no skill,” the man said, trying his best to glance discreetly at the range of the circle.
“Don’t mind it,” Aiden told him. “The circle is meant to distract you and guide me. I hope not to fall outside it. Think of it as me challenging myself.”
He swung his sword in a single downward slash beside him.
“Then I, too, shall not step outside this circle,” the man said.
Aiden would’ve mistaken it for some level of honor if he hadn’t heard the tone of the man’s voice. The man was condescending.
It was unfortunate and didn’t matter. Aiden was not honorable, and rarely was he fair. Everything was mind games.
Knowing of the circle, the man would always have a portion of his mind on its boundaries. Aiden had angered them, now he was distracting his opponent. When you faced uneven odds, you played every card to your advantage, just to be sure.
“You will begin on my call!” Valdan’s voice boomed over the entire training space.
Whether it was because they knew who he was or because of Nella standing beside him, no one objected. Some of the armored trainees even straightened up, stood at attention.
Valdan placed his hands on the railing.
“To what grounds?” Aiden asked.
His opponent glared at him, condescending blue eyes focused. “The death.”
Aiden nodded. “To the death it is.”
“Begin!”
The man charged forward, sword held low and to the side in two hands. He was fast, but not fast enough. When you wish to take the initiative and strike first in a duel, the take off in a charge was just as important as every other action. The man’s take off had been poor. It seemed he had an active skill that helped him charge forward.
Such sloppiness in a charged take off was only this bad if you relied on such a skill too much. Your body tended to forget how to do it properly without assistance from the skill.
Aiden simply stepped forward. He felt himself ease into the version of himself that had once been an instructor in the Order. He had been significantly more powerful then. But there were things that didn’t change simply because you stopped being powerful.
He leaned back on his first step and let the man’s upward swing skim past his face. It had been designed to take his neck, and without hesitation. A death blow with a lot of power behind it.
The man spun into the swing, exposed his back for a moment before following up with another on his turnaround.
The second attack was sloppy and Aiden parried it easily, sent the sword skewing up and away.
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In return he stepped forward and brought his sword down in a simple forward cut with both hands. The man hurried to block it. Caught in an awkward position, his defense was successful but sloppy.
Aiden followed up with a simple side slash as he stepped forward again, footing casual but precise. His opponent hurried to block that too as he took a step back.
Aiden swung again, stepping forward with each swing.
Head.
Shoulder.
Waist.
Stomach.
Head.
Each swing was basic, simple. Each swing was powerful. It was always the first thing he taught new recruits. The basics were powerful. They were greater than what most people thought.
The trick to overpowering an enemy with the basics was to ensure that every swing, as simple as they were, was intended to kill.
By the eighth deflection, his opponent glanced back, against his better judgement, checked how close he was to the edge of the circle. And that was the distraction.
Aiden switched, swung his sword down with one arm this time. The man hurried to defend himself. Panicked by his distraction, he swung his sword against Aiden’s with both hands.
If Aiden had used both hands as he been doing since the beginning of the fight, the blow would’ve been defended perfectly. But he wasn’t. The man swung too hard, and while it deflected Aiden’s blow, pushing his sword arm back, it left the man wide open.
Aiden didn’t worry about his sword. He kicked the man in the chest, instead, and sent him falling on his butt and outside the circle.
Aiden turned and walked back to the center of the circle. He stood there, sword held out to his side in one hand. The tip of the blade tapped the sand slowly and in a steady rhythm.
The silence of their audience was deafening.
The man picked himself up and looked down at the scuff marks he’d left in the line of the circle as he’d staggered out of it.
He looked from it to Aiden and back.
Aiden said nothing. He allowed the man decide which one of his words was more important. To the death or that he would not leave the circle.
Everything is a game of the mind.
Aiden saw when the man made a decision. His entire face squeezed in a scowl, twisted in anger. He hurried back to his feet and stepped back into the circle.
To the death it is.
He charged Aiden once more, sword slashes coming in a horrid flurry. Aiden did not retreat. He stepped into the attack, sword raised in both hands, deflecting each blow. The sounds of metal clashing filled the silent training ground.
Anger fed strength, but it most times starved technique. The man’s anger fed power into his blows, certainly depleting his stamina faster until the man’s attack slipped up again. He broke his own flow in between combos and Aiden stepped into it.
He slipped into the man’s attack on a downward, swing caught the swinging arm over his shoulder, and tossed the man over him with a shoulder throw. Aiden winced at almost nicking himself with his own sword.
The man hit the ground with a loud thud. Aiden moved quickly. He stepped on the wrist holding the man’s sword and placed the tip of his sword against his neck.
“Yield,” he said.
The man spat at him, which was stupid, because the distance between them was a lot and his spittle just ended up falling to the sand.
“To the death!” the man ground out.
Aiden raised his head to look at their silent audience and the man moved. It was a simple twitch cut off when the tip of Aiden’s sword pierced the fabric of his shirt and cold steel touched flesh.
He looked back down at the man. “Yield.”
The man was defiant.
Honor or pride? Aiden wondered.
In the end, it didn’t matter.
He had been a good person once, then his brother had left him, a kingdom had turned against him, and he had joined the Order.
Aiden moved the tip of his blade to the man’s shoulder, the one that belonged to the arm holding the sword. He drove his blade into it slowly.
The man gasped in pain. His free arm rushed up to grab the sword. The action moved his shoulder awkwardly and Aiden watched the man’s eyes widen in pain as he let out a pained scream.
He did not stop pushing his blade.
The man did not stop scrambling. He was raising dust. Eventually, he pushed through his pain and grabbed the blade of Aiden’s sword in his hand. He tried to pull it away and Aiden wondered how much faith the man had in friction.
Too much was the answer.
Aiden pushed his blade deeper. When the man tried to pull the sword out, test his strength against Aiden’s, he only succeeded in cutting his palm and fingers on the blade.
He let out another scream, releasing the blade. Aiden pushed a little more and a notification flashed in front of him.
[You have dealt a critical blow.]
At the same time, the man’s eyes flashed to the air in front of him. His interface was probably alerting him to how much health he’d lost.
Critical blows often took out a chunk of health.
Aiden pushed further, he was making sure not to strike bone.
“Yield!” the man bellowed. “I yield!”
Aiden stopped. The blade was almost through to the other side.
He drew his blade free and stepped away from the man. He checked his stamina.
[Stamina 91%]
Chances were the man’s level wasn’t that high. Maybe he should’ve asked for the average level of the people here.
The man picked himself up but his sword arm hung limp and his sword fell from his hand. There was a small patch of blood in the sand and now it dripped down the man’s limp arm from the injury in his shoulder, soaking his shirt.
The man looked at Aiden then at his sword. His head twitched to the side and Aiden noted how he refused to look at his comrades.
He left his sword in the circle as he staggered his way out of it.
Defeat and pain affected a person gravely, especially when they expected victory in its place. Aiden wondered how this would affect the man.
Perhaps I should keep an eye on him.
He walked over to the scoffed line of the circle and redrew it with the tip of his bloodied bladed then turned to the crowd. There were no sneers or scowls left. No one was looking down on him now.
“Next.”
…
By the fourth challenger, Aiden’s stamina was at sixty-two percent. The entire arena was silent. The armored trainees watched with rapt attention as a boy younger than everyone present ran a gauntlet on those older than him.
The fourth challenger chose until surrender and surrendered after being forced out of the circle. Aiden had not yet used any complicated sword techniques.
The basic sword movement of the Order was proving sufficient even if it was taking more of his manner to win in the way he was with it.
The sixth man was the first spearman amongst the challengers.
There was a part of Aiden that wanted to face the man equally with a spear but he wasn’t so stupid. While the spear was a weapon he was capable of using, he did not have the [Spearmanship] skill.
Challenging someone with their weapon of choice when you did not have the skill to back it up wasn’t just hubris, it was stupid.
It didn’t matter how well he’d known the spear in his past life, Aiden just couldn’t bring himself to that level of stupidity.
The fight was a little tricky. The man employed the advantage of a spears reach and had sharp and fast thrusts. Aiden had needed more than the basic sword skills to fight him. It had pushed his footsteps up a notch and forced him into more complicated techniques.
The fight took far more stamina than the others had and Aiden finally broke a real sweat. But defeat did not befriend him here.
Valdan and Nella watched in silence even as he overpowered the man and dealt him a fatal blow to the thigh, rendering him unable to fight.
When the man struggled some more, the butt of his spear pressed against the ground to help him stand, Aiden walked up to him and shoved him in the chest with his foot.
“Stay down,” he told him in a calm voice. “Every man should know when he’s lost. You did not choose to the death so I have no compunction to watch you bleed to death here.”
The man was helped out of the circle by two others and led out of the training area, most likely in search of a healer.
Maybe it was from seeing Aiden work harder against the spearman, maybe not, but the next spearman was a little too cocky with his attacks. It was not on the part of blatant carelessness, but it was enough to put him in trouble.
At a point the instructor in Aiden almost lost it at how many mistakes he was making with every stab or sweep and he was tempted to humiliate the man for no more reason than humiliating him. But he did not.
However, he ended the fight in a more disgraceful way than any of the others. He slipped through the reach of the spear, drew close enough to render the spear an uncomfortable weapon of choice and knocked the man out with a fist to the face.
He let the man fall to the ground in an unceremonious heap.
Only one sword remained in the ground now as Aiden pulled up his stamina.
[Stamina 38%]
It was low, but enough for one more person.
A childish waste of time. That’s what this is.
He waited for a while, and when nobody stepped out to claim the sword, he asked, “Is that all?”
It was midday and the sun was bright in the sky, beating down on the world of Nastild.
“Yes!” a feminine voice answered.
Aiden turned in its direction and found the woman that had been displaying her axe skill any chance she had.
“You use an axe,” he said simply.
“I do,” she answered, defiance in her voice.
“Yet you declare that this is all despite the sword in the sand. Am I to assume that it is yours, despite your favored use of an axe?”
“I will not fight you without a skill.”
Aiden nodded.
“Then you will not fight me at all.”
He drove his blood stained sword into the sand, where it stayed, hilt pointing to the sun, and walked out of the training area.
There were no words in his wake, no jeers or compliments. Only silence.
He did not have to look back to know that he had given every soldier there, squire or not, something to think about.
He was weaker now, younger too. But experience had not fled him.
[Basic Swordsmanship (Mastery 59.00% --> 61.06%)].
[Unarmed combat (Mastery 49.00% --> 52.01%)].
[Resilience (Mastery 98.00% --> 98.13% )]
[Light steps (Mastery 94.09% --> 95%)].
At least the entire ordeal had not been a complete waste.
Aiden read his notification as he stepped out of the entire training area and out into the open compound of the Naranoff estate. The air here did not have the smell of blood and sand and steel and sweat.
The entire encounter had increased his mastery in some of his skills but not enough. It seemed his skills had reached the threshold of how much mastery he could pull out of them in situations that were not overtly stressful.
Stress was the key word, and while what had happened inside the arena had been tasking, strenuous maybe, it was not stressful.
There was only one surefire way left.
No greater stress than something life threatening, I guess.
He was a good distance down the path back to the mansion when Nella and Valdan caught up to him.
When they did, Valdan had only one thing to say.
“That was brutal.”
Aiden wasn’t too bothered by it.
“They needed to learn,” he replied. “Blind servitude is a deadly thing. Most people are blinded by their loyalty. Such things lead to the most unnecessary losses. It took the first man a while but he finally realized that this was not a cause worth dying for.”
Valdan nodded, but whatever was on his mind had gone nowhere. “A cause worth dying for.”
He sounded very thoughtful, reflective.
“I have no response to that,” Valdan said. “But one thing I can say for certain is that some of the people there now fear you, while others now respect you.”
None of that mattered.
Aiden shrugged. “At least they’ll stop impaling that poor training dummy.”
Nella was still yet to say something, but she looked like she, too, had a lot to say. Her face was fixed in something thoughtful. There was also a dire touch to it.
“Is everything alright?” Aiden asked.
In her early twenties, he was sure there was much she had not seen. She might often hang out with adventurers but he was certain the worst she had seen was monsters being monsters or humans being humans.
He doubted she had ever gotten to see such a show of empty cruelty before. What he had done to the first man without batting an eye might’ve stuck with her.
Nella said nothing. She continued to stare thoughtfully.
Only when they reached the main house did she speak. Her words were precise and her expression was torn between worry and acceptance.
“You are dangerous, Lord Lacheart.”