Chapter 3: Adam – Sword Combat Technique (Rank I)

It took Adam a few minutes to figure out the best way to strap on all the armor, but once he did, he felt decidedly better protected. Yes, his chest and head were still exposed, but he *really* wasn’t looking forward to doing those Trials. Furthermore, he was pretty sure he had been correct in one assumption: his narrower, more specific Trial request gave him better results. Adam highly doubted he would have gotten this high-quality leather had he asked for a whole set of armor.

What he hadn’t expected, though, was the possibility of ‘Critical Success’ in a Trial. That opened up whole new avenues of possibility. Still, Adam was wary of attempting such a feat in every Trial going forward. It said the training dummy would be harder to beat, next time. Was that only true for the next Trial? Or was it permanent? Would further Critical Successes increase it even further, or do something else?

Regardless, Adam spent some time imagining the dummy’s movements as he swung his sword, trying to get more of a feel for how it weighed. It was rather hard to practice with no target, though. Maybe he could ask for a permanent training dummy? Ideally one that didn’t attack back? Something to consider for the future.

Sadly, despite Adam’s best efforts, no skill appeared in his mind’s eye for swordsmanship. He had really been hoping to get something besides Punch without having to do an entire Technique Trial for it, but that was apparently not in the cards.

He still decided to spend some time practicing punching, though. It was rather impressive how, on a whim, he could throw a rather powerful punch. His whole body quite simply knew how to move. It was a shame these Technique Trials took longer to refresh; they were quite a bit more impressive than the Equipment ones.

It was only after a while of practicing punching with his left hand as well that Adam got the mental whisper he wanted.

Punch (Rank I) Level 4 reached!

The level-up did show that pushing a skill forward was still important. Adam could now throw a decent punch with either hand from a variety of stances. He did wonder how high these levels could go. What would a Level 100 Punch look like? Would it shatter the training dummy in a single hit, or were there diminishing returns?

There were definitely limits to the skill. Adam tried to push what he learned into, say, kicks, but the skill would either put him in a position for punching or fail to do anything at all. Adam could still move his body as normal, but the guiding hand that allowed him to move with practiced ease was nowhere to be found.

He did at least find one avenue of success. Wielding his sword in one hand while punching with the other. It was a little weird, and he could feel the skill struggling to keep up. Eventually, though, Adam got to the point where he could swing out the sword and then follow up with a punch almost immediately. The only tricky bit was avoiding getting hit with his own blade.

Eventually, the Technique Trial was available. Adam considered doing an Equipment Trial first, but these Techniques seemed to be the real way to gain power in this weird place.

“Okay, I want to do a Technique Trial for the ideal ways to use a sword in battle.”

Technique Trial: Sword Combat (Rank I)

-Trial Details: Defeat the Training Dummy using any means necessary.

-Trial Constraints: 10:00 minute time limit.

-Failure Penalty: +1hr delay for next Technique Trial.

Continue?

Defeating the dummy had gone from Critical Success to just part of the Trial, Adam noted. “Okay, let’s do this!”

When the dummy appeared, Adam was suddenly a bit wary. It had his sword, his leather arm and leg armor… but also a helmet, chestpiece, and other armor to go along with it. Even its trademark blank face was covered.

Before Adam could fully take that in, the dummy charged at him, sword drawn. Adam quickly had to block with his own sword. He misjudged the dummy’s strength, however, and nearly had the sword ripped from his wrist from the force of it.

Adam was forced to treat the sword as a two-handed one, just to hold onto it. He exchanged several blows with the dummy, all to his disadvantage. If this was the effect of a single Critical Success, he didn’t think he would ever want another… or even be able to get one.

Adam knew he needed some sort of trick to beat this thing. He tried to do some sort of leg sweep to knock it off balance, but the dummy was able to jump backwards and avoid it. He tried to throw a loose rock at the thing’s face, but it wasn’t fazed at all. He tried to get behind it, but its ability to turn around was quite a bit faster than he remembered.

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In his mind’s eye, a timer ticked down. 3:59…58…57…

Adam needed to get this thing down, now. He made as if he was making a desperate attack, putting his all into the sword sweep. The dummy raised up its own sword to meet it, as it had met all the others. But Adam hadn’t actually been putting that much force behind the sweep. He quickly changed direction to meet the dummy’s knee joint, while also blocking the enemy sword with his new vambrace.

The sword cut several inches deep into the leather armor, but didn’t actually get through. At the same time, his sword struck true into the seam in the dummy’s armor, sinking deep into the imitation flesh. The dummy showed no signs of feeling pain, but it did lose quite a bit of mobility.

Adam circled behind the thing, where it had difficulty reaching him, and grabbed its helmet. After a bit of work, it came off. From there, Adam replicated his same move from before, slicing the dummy’s head off at the neck.

The dummy disappeared with the signature *POP*. Along with, sadly, its helmet. In its place was the strange book that Adam had seen only once before. Its title said ‘Swordsmanship (Rank I)’.

But just as Adam was about to open the book, he got a very sudden message in his mind.

Name: Adam

Trials Taken: 5 (Self-Refreshment Trials not counted)

Rank Up Trial (Rank I => II) is now Required.

Equipment Trials will not give rewards until Required trial is complete.

Technique Trials will not give rewards until Required trial is complete.

As the implications of that sunk in, Adam was rather horrified. There was a limit to the number of Trials he could take?! Nothing in the messages had mentioned that before! Yes, it had been counting the number of Trials he had taken… but he thought that was just a useful reminder, or something…

“Okay… okay! Well… at least I can still gain Technique levels… I think… and it didn’t mention Refreshment Trials being disabled. Since they don’t count towards the maximum, I have to hope they aren’t…”

Adam had been hoping to take more Equipment Trials until he had a reasonable set of armor, not to mention getting several more Techniques to practice, before doing the Rank Up Trial. He sighed.

It was notable that it said that Trials ‘wouldn’t give rewards’. Not ‘cannot be taken’, but just that they wouldn’t give the reward at the end. That intrigued Adam. Were the messages hinting that he should consider practicing against the training dummy worthwhile on its own?

That actually made some degree of sense. Adam had considered taking an Equipment Trial to make a target of some sort, but that would have been an absolute waste of one of his five Trials. That meant that, other than shadowboxing (or shadow…sword…ing), the training dummy was actually his best bet at improving his Techniques.

After getting over the shock of having his plans ruined, Adam picked up the book he had gained and opened it. As before, it turned to ash, and Adam’s mind was filled with new thoughts. His form with the sword before had been… almost not terrible. Almost. But now…

He immediately got to work, using the sword forms he now knew. It seemed the Swordsmanship Technique contained three main aspects: a strong slash forward, a parry of enemy attacks, and a feint similar to the one he performed to win the technique in the first place.

The fact that the Technique seemed to be three-in-one initially made Adam think that it was superior in every way to Punch. However, he soon realized it wasn’t so clear-cut. While Punch was more limited in scope, its ability to guide his movements was far superior to Swordsmanship. Swordsmanship was more like a gentle nudge in the right direction of its techniques, while Punch was an active guide. Some of that probably came from the latter’s higher level, but even at level one, Punch had been a lot more effective.

The realization had made Adam a little disappointed, but he still was in better shape than before he had the technique. But was it enough to pass a Rank Up Trial? He honestly had no idea. He thought he had been doing pretty well in combat already, but the Rank Up Trial seemed… different, somehow. Not the least because it was the only Trial that actually unlocked more Trials.

Adam practiced his Swordsmanship diligently, trying to analyze what he did in the last two fights and what he could have done better, or even just differently.

Swordsmanship (Rank I) Level 2 reached!

The nudges from the skill became stronger, but still barely comparable to the guided motions from Punch. Adam thought about why that could be. Perhaps because the Technique was ‘Rank I’, there was only so much it could do? There was likely a trade-off of some sort, similar to how armor worked. Punching was such a specific concept, but the Technique allowed him to do it excellently. Meanwhile, Swordsmanship was a much broader category. So… a Technique could have depth, or breadth, but not both?

“…Probably not at ‘Rank I’, at any rate. Maybe higher ranks are different…”

He tried practicing his Swordsmanship a bit further, but 2 of the 3 aspects of the Technique, parrying and feinting, really required a combatant to practice them *on*.

“So, uh… if I were to ask for an Equipment Trial for… another sword, what would happen?”

Equipment Trial: One-handed Blade (Rank I).

-Trial Details: Avoid 5 of the Training Dummy’s attacks.

-Trial Constraints: Dummy will only attack 8 times.

-Failure Penalty: +1hr delay for next Equipment Trial.

-WARNING: Required Trial is in effect. Reward will not be given.

Continue?

“Huh… so the message wasn’t kidding about the no-reward thing… annnd the Training Dummy is still in ‘harder’ mode… *sigh*… Okay, continue.”

The dummy was dressed in full armor again, which seemed to be the new normal. The fight actually went… pretty smoothly. The dummy thankfully didn’t seem to remember being tricked last time, so after parrying 3 attacks, Adam was able to feint and get it in the knee again. The remainder of the battle was almost identical to before.

Swordsmanship (Rank I) Level 3 reached!

Curiously, the message about Critical Success was not shown. Either he couldn’t get one with the whole Required Trial thing, or the requirements were increased along with the dummy’s difficulty. He could try defeating one before it even attacked a single time, but then… would that just increase the difficulty without netting him a reward? Not something he really wanted to test.

What he did want to test, though, was seeing how far he could push his skills before doing the Rank Up Trial…