The thick fortified walls of the monastery fortress, which I currently called home, blocked out the early morning sun, which was casting the sky in a brilliant display of brilliance, beauty, and glory.

Despite being in the centre of the peaceful Kingdom of Breckhithe, the order's knights patrolled the walls constantly. A pair of guards were doing more than a cursory walk around the walls.

Down here in the darkness of the trampled earth courtyard, the air was unpleasantly cool. Still, I was there wearing not much more than a short crimson woollen tunic, faded and almost threadbare, and baggy grey woollen leggings which were almost sprouting holes in the knees. The clothes were still damp from yesterday. So the cool air felt even colder. But I dare not put them out in the sun to dry. In the six years I had been in this short, slender, and malnourished body, it had grown taller and filled out with semi-lithe muscles due to age and the intense physical exercise I put it through. Maybe this body wasn't as tall or as strong as some of my fellow trainees, but I gave it my all to be as useful for the goddess Aggard as I could be.

In fact I had been doing so well that the Grand Master himself had given the order for me to progress to a cohort further along their path to squirehood.

Which meant that the trainees surrounding me were even taller and stronger.

Using the polished wooden practice sword and the shield I had booked out of the armoury, I went through my morning practice swings. The wooden training axe I had booked out at the same time hung off my belt, banging into my leg as I went through my practice sword swings.

Though I had not been told this during training, I knew that quantity was important, so was quality. For practice didn't make perfect, but reinforced what my body knew what to do. So, for each and every swing, I focused on how my body felt and how it moved.

By the time I had done my two hundred swings, my mind was more tired than my body. I sheathed my practice sword and took out the practice axe. As soon as I held the axe in my hand, the mental strain of using the sword flowed away.

Unlike the sword, the axe felt comfortable in my hands.

Feeling refreshed, I started doing my practice swings for my axe, combining them with the shield. Even though I was paying the same amount of attention, I felt myself flowing through the motions so much easier, smoother, faster, and more accurate than the sword practice swings.

The moment I had finished the required number of swings, the same two hundred as with the sword, it was time to move onto the next phase of my morning training. I started jogging around the outskirts of the courtyard. My weapons were sheathed, and the shield held tight in my hand. The sun had now lit part of the courtyard up. The warmth of the sun was nice against my sweaty body when I jogged through that patch of light, right next to the newly built infirmary.

The infirmary was a large, well dressed, stone building. Its peaked roof stood almost as high as the fortified walls. The new stone walls shone bright against the morning light, standing at odds with the aged stone of the walls and the even older square keep that stood watch over the entire fort.

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The gilt decorations on the roof of the infirmary, ornate fictional monsters, glinted brightly in the morning light.

I got into a flow of jogging. Carrying the shield had made it harder in the past, but by now I had gotten used to jogging with the shield. For some reason, this body was fitter and stronger than the overweight body I had before reincarnating into this world. Compared to how I was, moving this body was a joy that I didn't want to lose. Hence part of the reason I was eager to exercise every morning.

Before I realised the bells in the temple's tower rung out for those who had obtained Holy Orders to prayer. As befit a military religious order, the temple bell tower also doubled as the corner defensive tower of the fort. The temple itself was a solid squat building, one that fit in with and looked more a part of the fort than the ornate and well-dressed infirmary.

In fact, the simple rectangular temple was not much bigger than some country parish churches I had seen in England, maybe enough for about a hundred people. More here, as there weren't seats or pews on which to sit. I kept glancing at the temple, wishing I could attend morning prayer.

But I wasn't allowed to. So I kept jogging laps around the edge of the courtyard. The only three trainees I saw were pleasers. They left our wooden dorm building, built alongside one wall of the fort, and strut proudly across the earthen courtyard, over the much smaller flagstone courtyard, and into the temple.

Those pleasers nodded regally to the trainers, who had just climbed down the keep's external stairs. Being especially polite to those to whom they owed the most patronage.

As I got closer, I glanced longingly inside the half-empty temple with its bright crimson and gold decorations and rich paintings depicting the life of Aggard herself and of a few of her most famous saints. Especially the warrior saints.

Despite longing to worship her in any service possible, my fellow trainees had barred me from attending. The one time I went against their wishes, they beat me so hard I ended up in the infirmary for a week.

The doors closing on the temple indicated the time for exercise to come to an end. I slowed down to a walk. Letting my body calm down from my morning exercise.

By the time I had walked an entire lap, reaching the River Gate, my breathing was calm and even again.

I went towards the well house, which was nestled next to the River Gate gatehouse. To be honest, well house was a bit of a too grand name for it. Yes, the singular pillar holding the roof up was ornate, and the roof held the same high quality tiles, lacking the gilt ornamentation of the infirmary. But it really was just a singular pillar holding up a small roof which required it to rest upon the fortress wall and the River Gate gatehouse.

There was already someone in the well house. So I waited at a little distance. It was a lay member of the order, a short, portly man who wore a deep crimson tunic of much better quality than the worn and faded one I currently wore. His chubby face was ruddy. He worked in the infirmary and was drawing a bucket of water out of the well.

There was something strange about the set of the man's shoulders and the haughty sneer he shot me with his squinting pig-like eyes as he walked past. Not long ago that man had nodded kindly to me, even if he had not spoken to me.

Once again, my situation as a barbarian outcast was making things difficult for me. But that didn't matter: I was in a place where I was working towards becoming Aggard's Sword.

A place where I could be once more in her bittersweet, loving presence.

A place where I could do what I could to make her smile and be at peace. Yet how I, a lowly mortal, could do that for a goddess, I had no idea.

Yet despite that, I would do anything in my power to make it come true.