It was more than 20 minutes that Noah and Dominik began to train together and no hits were landed so far. What changed was that, in the last three repetitions, Noah wasn’t pushed to the ground because he grasped a way to keep more balanced while swinging his sword.
<<”It’s enough now. If you want we can stop for today and resume tomorrow.”>>. Said Dominik.
Surely, Noah felt tired and mentally exhausted from more than 1 hour of constant training but he didn’t forget about the time limit on Dominik teachings. He had 1 week left of training with the instructor, then there will be active training on the fields after a period of city guard duty.
What caught Noah attention was that he was apparently given the choice to stop or not, coming to this point he decided to endure for some more time. The advantage of this virtual body was that it didn’t felt physical fatigue, the only taxing aspect was the mental strain after an excessive amount of concentration.
<<”Actually, if Instructor is free, I’m able to keep going for 30 more minutes at least.“>>
Dominik gazed at Noah resting figure and nodded: <<” Good, willpower is the best thing to have. Without it nothing significant can be obtained.
Since you want to keep going, after 5 minutes of resting we will resume”>>.
After this small break, the instructor walked to Noah and explained that they were going to do something different.
<<”I think that you got a feeling for being dodged and pushed around by taking advantage of a shown weakness, we will now reverse our roles. Fear not because I will stop before hitting you”>>. Having said this, Dominik got ready in center of the training ground and waited for, the now insecure, Noah.
Like with hitting a person, he hasn’t ever experienced being attacked. It made him feel a bit of fear, mostly because he was going to be faced with a muscle mountain, a few heads taller than him. Dominik was like a giant and when performing his sword dance, he felt unstoppable while gently flowing between transitions.
<<”Now look at my sword arm, when you feel like it’s going to land on your body then it will be time to take a step back.”>>
What followed next was a slow motion first passage of the sword dance followed by a youngster jumping back by almost 2 meters. Noah got a bit scared and jumped back too early and fast.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
<<”To dodge you have to wait until the last moment and use the least movements possible or there will be openings created. We will repeat this until you get it right, try to lessen the dodge space with each rotation.”>>
After 15 minutes of a constant replay of the slow motion downward slash, Noah got the dodging time inside acceptable parameters. In fact, Dominik started to follow up with the second transition and the first time this got his disciple on the ground because of a too big jump back. At least he reacted and wasn’t caught totally off guard, such were the instructor thoughts regarding his student.
Time passed and Noah was getting a hang on how to dodge, it was getting easier with each try and space between the blade and his body was constantly getting narrower. Shortly after having been successful in both dodges, Dominik started to attack a little bit faster and sometimes there would be some surprise attack that followed the usual sequence.
After another successful dodge there was a sudden notification.
Congratulation on obtaining your first skill!
-Dodge(passive) Lv-1 gained!
A higher level will let you have an easier time dodging: each level up of this skill will give you agility points and reduced stamina consumption for dodging.
This notification surprised Noah a bit, he could actually gain a status point by leveling a skill! He wanted to know more but at the same time, he didn’t want to ask such a precise question to his Instructor, seeing the way he replied to other inquiries it wasn’t clear if Dominik understood about status screens and attribute points. Noah wanted to deepen their relationship since this was directly linked to the hidden quest rewards he could get and, since this was the case, it wasn’t a good idea to appear like a crazy and strange person.
‘It’s best if I keep going for now, looking at the way I obtained this skill it should gain experience by actively dodging. I will see if Dominik comes up with skills on his own or not.’
Inside a training ground, there was a spectacle of a big, slow statue chasing a jumping and agile monkey. Noah was dodging at the last moment possible and some other times he jumped away at some sudden burst of speed or surprise followups by the instructor, this was fun and enjoyable, he felt a bit refreshed but the exhaustion from before was piling up rapidly; it was more than 2 hours that Noah was training and soon would be time to end it, still it was a nice bounty, in this last period of time he got 2 notifications alerting him that dodging levelled up and what he got was 1 free point of agility, it gave only 0,5 per level, not that much but this made him more agile than an average human who should have 10 as basic parameter if he guessed correctly.
There weren't’ flying soldiers or ones who moved mountains to train, so it was likely that his guesses were correct. Only the instructor felt more amazing than the rest.
‘ Maybe I should look into this. But first I will take a break and go to shower after logging out. Now I just need to hit Dodge Lv 3 and then I can go ‘.
After 10 long minutes, that level up had yet to come. Noah was really exhausted and couldn’t endure any longer, apparently it was harder to gain experience while grinding at the same level. Either Dominik had to go faster or they should do a sparring with free attacks and don’t follow a set of moves; everything could wait for tomorrow though, it was now time to rest.