CHAPTER 6 - PUNISHMENT

On the early morning after my twelfth birthday with the light shining into my face, I couldn’t help but hide under my soft blanket from the offending sun. I continued hiding under my blanket until I felt that it was too stuffy so I stuck my head back out finally sufficiently awake to know that if I didn’t wake up soon and head to morning training, general Harlow would only increase my training for the afternoon and evening. I had already missed out on a day’s worth of training yesterday if I miss out on it today as well his going to skin me alive.

With Erika having already prepared everything for me I quickly got dressed and headed to training barracks only to find my friends training under general Harlow.

Noticing my arrival general Harlow wordlessly pointed to the heavy armour stand. At that moment I knew my worst fears had come true. The only time we used heavy armour was when we were doing endurance training and heavy armour training. My friends weren’t doing either of those they were clearly sparring.

Think about those traitors who woke up early and didn’t wake me up leaving me to face punishment alone I felt upset. Using my negative emotions to help give me the strength I needed to start my two-laps tour around the palace walls that separated the palaces from the busy city. This was the training routine that general Harlow had set us minus the heavy armour. With the wall being a total length of two km it was safe to say it would take me a while to complete this task.

As I ran along the wall some of the guards that knew I was being punished for sleeping in joined that ‘sleeping beauty had finally woken up as I ran past them. Their jokes at my expense were not appreciated, remembering their faces I waited until my second lap around the wall to enact revenge.

I acted naturally as if I was going to simply run past them but as I went past them, I gave each of them a good kick in the ass before running off laughing and shouting.

“Punishment to all who tease this princess.”

That should teach them to tease me. Feeling good about myself I started heading back towards the barracks at Lily palace

After finishing my tour around the palace walls general Harlow immediately told me to grab a sword and to join in with the sparring without letting me rest and catch my breath. He really was an old brute.

Taking off the heavy armour I faced my sparring partner for the day. Today my sparring partner was Anna who was even worst as she preferred the fire form an aggressive combat style and she was skilled at it too. Even when I’m well-rested, I find it difficult going against her as I was proficient in the wood form a calmer style that waited for the right time to strike, but often I would tire out before I could counterattack against her, leaving me in defeat. Seeing my frustration general Harlow hinted that I should not favour one form over the other but use all of them. So, recently I had started practicing the water form the best suited to combat against aggressive opponents, by using their aggressive nature against them. While I hadn’t mastered the style I was improving to a rapid degree.

As we started to spar, I watch Anna’s preparing for her assault. Completely within expectations, she performed a diagonal slash from her left shoulder downwards towards the right. It was her favourite move. Ready for it, instead of parrying the sword like I usually would by binging my sword against hers I instead opted to try something new. Having to stop her sword in motion using a normal parry and knowing that she would then put more force into her slash I flicked my sword so that it was above her sword I lean my whole weight forward pushing her into holding her into an awkward position. Not wasting a single moment, I brought my training sword to her neck thus scoring the first point.

Feeling a bit adventurous from my earlier success. I decided to that the initiative for the second round. Imitating Anna’s favourite move I slashed diagonally from my left shoulder down to the right. Instantly knowing what I was trying to do Anna easily stopped my sword and started to taunt me.

“Using my favourite move against me is probably not your smartest move Ayra. As my favourite move not only am I familiar with how to use it I’m also familiar with how to counter it.”

“I’m just getting started, Anna. See if you can stop this.”

In a battle of strength, I would always lose to Anna who was taller and stronger, but I had the advantage of being more flexible. Dropping down into a front split and leaning to the right as she slashed upwards I narrowly dodged. Rolling onto my back I performed a crescent moon kick, kicking her sword out of her hand. With a diagonal front handspring, I knocked her onto the ground.

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Having watched what happened general Harlow walked up to me and brought his fist onto my head.

“This is a sword sparring session, not a free combat session.”

Feeling guilty I quickly helped Anna up and checked to see if she was ok. Shaking her head, she indicated that she was fine and joked that the kicks felt like soft taps. After that, it was safe to say I had was completely and utterly defeated by Anna without a chance to do anything again.

Honestly, I think those kicks must have hurt and she was taking revenge on me. I continued to massage my sore arms as we walked back into Lily palace for lunch.

Inside the dining hall, I found Erika serving Ingrid some beverage, which I assume to be a red tea of sorts. Seeing our arrival, she greeted us and informed us that she had something to tell us.

“I’ll let you know after lunch seeing as you're all tired and hungry from your training. I might even join you girls later in your afternoon training. I haven’t been training much recently with all my duties. If only someone wouldn’t constantly make trouble for me. The guards told me that you almost kicked them off the wall for some unknown reason.”

With a guilty conscience, all I could do was keep quiet and pretend like I hadn’t heard her.

While I didn’t expect the guards to keep quiet about the incident from this morning, I also didn’t expect Ingrid who oversaw all the palaces and internal affairs so quickly. It goes to show she was getting swamped by every little thing within that happened in the palaces.

While my dear sister-in-law was nagging my head off my bunch of traitorous friends looked on with interest with no intentions of stopping her. First, they didn’t wake me up in the morning and caused me to be punished, then they watch on as I told off again. I feel that my place as a princess in their hearts is becoming more and more displaced if not already completely shattered.

Luckily for me, my trusty personal maid once again comes to my rescue by informing us that lunch is ready and asked whether we wanted it now. Ingrid being the person with the highest authority present finally stopped her nagging and indicated for lunch to be served.

Soon plates of food started coming in with most of them being filled with meat. Noticing how unbalanced our diets were, Ingrid couldn’t help but comment.

“You girls are completely carnivorous. All you do is eat meat all day. You need to have a balanced diet.”

Does Ingrid have to always nag me about this and that? I know that she only does this because she cares but sometimes, I feel that it’s a bit too much. It may be because I’m not used to having a motherly figure in my life. Claude as great of a brother he is can often be insensitive and lacks the delicate touch that Ingrid has. This includes the lack of knowledge on many female-related issues. As if on cue she dropped another one of her great wisdom.

“You know your all as flat as the training grounds because you do have a balanced diet you know.”

As if to prove her point she indicated to ample chests. My friends and I gulped the meat we had in our mouths and started to fight for the little vegetables there were in the salad bowl. Trying to get more for myself, I threw out a few words using my rank.

“As the crown princess, I demand that you let me go first.”

Giving me a snort, they continue to fight with me. Catrina went a step further and directly took the whole bowl making herself public enemy number one.

“I'm sorry my friends it's all fair game when it comes to food.”

As she started to munch on the salad, I vowed that I will not share food with Catrina again. Unbeknown to us Ingrid has asked Erika to bring in some more so we could all have some. When the maids brought more in our checks couldn’t help but turn red as we were embarrassed by our earlier display. Ingrid reminded us that as good friends we had to play nice and talk it out, no matter the issue.

Having finished with lunch Ingrid finally told us why she had decided to visit us. It had to do with our future enrolment at the academy and whether we still wanted to go. We confirmed our decision to go to the academy. She informed us that because it was close to the end of the year it would be better for us to wait until the year started before, we started to attend but we were fine to enrol anytime we wanted.

She also told us that because we had already completed the general education, we could take a test and be exempted from those classes. She went through in detail both the adventurer and knight courses explain how they differed giving us advice on which were the best courses to choose.

Next year there would even be a slightly different system where they would separate everyone into ability levels in the combat course with experienced instructors that match our that could further our abilities.

From what she told us battle tactics and auxiliary training from the knight’s course, as well as beast & monster biology, scouting 101, and wilderness survival training from the adventurer would be the most useful to us as while general Harlow could teach us a lot, he couldn’t teach us everything. Ingrid also encouraged us to join different clubs individually to broaden our views and skillsets.

Now that we were done with our talk, we headed back to the barracks outside Lily's palace. Not seeing general Harlow anywhere. Ingrid had an impromptu free combat session, where we all went against her. The results, let’s just say I don’t want to talk about it.