“Phew… You two did great. Every day, first thing in the morning, we will repeat this mock combat and I will teach you two what can be corrected, but for now…”
She drew closer to us while dropping her daggers to the floor, and when she got close enough, she hugged us both while caressing our heads.
“Congratulations…” Her voice had a hint of sadness mixed with relief. She probably still wanted to raise us normally, but since I so desperately wanted adventure and combat, she gave in and decided to train us the only way she knew how.
Still, adventurer training is pretty brutal, huh? I guess it makes sense though, it’s a business where a mistake can lead to your death.
I can’t help but wonder how we’ll fare compared to Luna’s previous students; she did say she had experience training kids before.
It wasn’t going to be easy; I was sure of it. But I had told myself multiple times in the past month that this was what I wanted, so I’d better live up to my words and try my best.
…
The rest of the morning was entirely dedicated to learning sword techniques and general fighting stances, it was way more in depth than the basics she thought us in the past, and it wasn’t as intuitive either.
The sword fighting techniques in this world were clearly different from the ones of Earth.
Not that I had much experience, but I did watch tons of HEMA practitioners on YouTube back in the day, and HEMA seemed a lot safer and tamed in comparison to the fighting style Luna was teaching us.
It was like every move Luna taught us had a much stronger attacker and opponent in mind. Shallow cuts were completely ignored in favor of thrusts and powerful blows, and small openings were also not counted as good opportunities.
Instead, the focus was to either beat your foe into submission with brute force, break their defenses to expose major openings to deal massive damage, or a combination of both.
Another thing that was different was defense. Instead of contained blows with both defense and offense in mind, Luna clearly differentiated defensive maneuvers from offensive ones.
There was blocking, and there was attacking, and when you attacked, you attacked to kill.
The middle ground between the two were movements consisted of a parry and a riposte combined, but she emphasized their difficulty several times.
All in all, it was a much flashier fighting style.
When I asked Luna about it, she said small blows had little to no effect against strong opponents or monsters, and were only used to clear waves of weak but nimble foes.
If small, safe, and quick cuts weren’t useful, then one needed to put everything into the attack to force the opponent to defend, making the large openings created by such attacks manage to stay unexploited by the enemy.
I imagined this was all the result of much stronger armors and weapons compared to those of Earth, as well as much stronger and faster bodies compared to the humans of Earth.
The thing she told me back at the waterfall about some warriors having muscles so tough their armor became useless came to mind.
To put it into perspective, if a HEMA practitioner were to fight an experienced warrior from here, even if both had equal strength and speed, as soon as the HEMA trained fighter made the usual quick and safe attack, the warrior would just ignore it completely since it would not do significant damage, and would strike at the same time with a much more powerful blow that could end the battle in seconds.
Even Luna, who fought with daggers, never wasted an attack to make quick cuts on the opponent, and instead focused on instant kill blows through the eye.
The exception to this fighting style, of course, was poison, but we were forbidden to use it for now.
There also seemed to be a lot of gaps between techniques, but she said it was because we weren’t yet being trained to factor magic into the equation.
All in all, it was brutal but exciting training. When we were finally dispensed to do our usual activities, we just collapsed from exhaustion and didn’t manage to lift weights at all.
This didn’t mean I would stop bodybuilding, but I needed to get my body used to the strains of the new regiment before I could get back to it.
…
The day was far from over. Luna allowed us to rest during the time we should be weight training, but after that, the bootcamp resumed.
She did allow us some extra time to eat, since we had to wait a little for our stomachs to accept food again after all the strenuous work we went through.
She was also a little awkward and walked around us a lot looking like she wanted to say something. If I had to guess, I’d say Luna was struggling between maintaining her serious and strict attitude even while we rested, or allowing herself to spoil us again.
Whatever her inner struggles were, breaktime was over and we now had to go back to work.
Thankfully, however, this time it was only studying.
Did I really just say that? Well, at least it’s a more exciting topic.
“Like I said, today you two are going to learn about magic spells.” She said with a forced poker face, but couldn’t keep a smile from forming when she noticed I was completely focused on her class.
It wasn’t hard to figure out why, after all, in the past month I was struggling to stay awake during almost all her classes, let alone focus. But it couldn’t be helped, magic was the thing I was most interested in, even more than melee combat.
That’s because I had witnessed first-hand the power these spells could achieve. Even a rookie like myself could cause serious harm with a simple minor firebolt, the damage I could inflict with a sword in my hands paled in comparison.
Even if I could only do it once a week, it was not something to be ignored.
“Toba, I know you can’t cast spells like your brother, but it’s important for you to learn this too. If you walk the path of a pure warrior, you will need to learn all you can about magic so you can defend yourself against it.” She said in a serious tone while Toba looked at her intently.
“Basically, magic can be divided into several categories of power, the first one being minor spells. The spell Cona can cast is a minor spell called minor firebolt.”
This is precisely why I’m so excited about magic! If my spell is the weakest rank and is already that powerful, imagine what the other categories can achieve!
“The categories are, in order: Minor, regular, major, great, and greater spells. When referring to regular spells, however, we just say spell instead.” She looked at us to see if we were paying attention, and when she saw we were still 100% focused, she continued.
“They are also divided according to their type. Cona’s minor firebolt is considered a natural spell since it’s a spell involving only fire, and natural type spells include fire spells, water spells, and earth spells.”
“What about wind and lightning?” I asked immediately, accidentally interrupting what she was going to say next.
It can’t be that there aren’t any air spells! That’s prejudice against monks.
“Spells involving wind and lightning are included in another type. For now, we’ll focus on natural spells, but there is also law, wish, and wished spells, although wish and wished are essentially the same.” She answered matter-of-factly. It seemed this was a common doubt.
“Each spell type has its own unique characteristic, and the unique characteristic of natural spells is their ability to be modified up to a certain extent. This has many advantages, and it also gives margin for error, which makes it a great type of spell for beginners to learn.”
“Margin for error?”
As if she was already expecting my answer, she continued immediately.
“Remember how, in the beginning, your firebolt didn’t have a set trajectory? It’s not supposed to come out like that, and if it wasn’t a natural spell, it wouldn’t even complete the casting, the spell would fail automatically.”
I see, so because natural spells can be altered, mistakes made count as alterations, and the spell is activated anyway. Pretty convenient indeed.
“I see, so it’s good for beginners who don’t have multiple spells slots to waste on training and can’t afford to keep failing.” I thought out loud.
“EXACTLY! I mean… Ahem… Yes, it’s just that.” Luna said as she failed to keep her strict and serious act intact.
So cute… I miss the old Luna but learning how to explode my enemies is more important.
Suddenly Toba, who was keeping quiet until now, decided to speak as he lowered his head a little in a slightly sad gesture.
“Good for beginner… but Toba still can’t make fireball like Cona…” He said as his head sunk even more, but it was hard to convey sadness with that exposed eye glaring at everyone like it’s going to shoot out a laser beam.
My sweet brother, you clashed with Luna with enough force to break her weapon, do you have any idea what this adorable woman is capable of?
Toba’s attempt at a pitiful display finally managed to crack Luna’s shell, I could almost see tears forming in her eyes as she looked at him like he was an abandoned puppy.
“Toba…” She hugged him tight and caressed the patch of fur growing from his neck to his back, but when I thought she would finally break down completely, she managed to hold herself back at least to some extent.
“I get how you feel.” She said softly as she continued her caress, and Toba snuggled closer into her embrace.
Sneaky little bastard, I thought you didn’t like physical contact.
“But you must remember, everyone has their strengths. I am sure you know this, but in terms of physical power you are much stronger than Cona even though you two train the same. If you learn how to make the best out of that strength, you won’t fall behind.”
I knew it was true, and I knew it was immature of me to get worked up because of it, but I would be lying if I said hearing that from Luna didn’t sting.
For fuck’s sake, I used to bench 200kg, this can’t stay like this!
Starting tomorrow, I’ll double my chicken and triple my rice.
“Besides, even if you can’t cast natural spells and you follow the path of a pure warrior, there is still a type of spell you will be able to use.” She said with a warm smile, as she grabbed shoulders and gently pushed him away so they could both look at each other.
“Cona, stop pouting, you know I spend much more time with you than I do with Toba, don’t be jealous.”
“I’m not pouting…”
I was pouting.
“Ahem.” Luna flipped the switch in her brain again and went back to teacher mode as she sat Toba down.
The little guy was visibly cheered up. Luna was extremely kind to him and did her best to take care of him and teach him all she could, even if he didn’t understand or didn’t show results.
I couldn’t thank Luna enough in my heart, all she was doing for us more than made up for the time we spent crawling around in a dark cave and sucking a wolf’s tit.
“Alright, moving on. You two know this already, but the number of spells one can cast is very limited.”
We both nodded as our focus on the class returned.
This was actually a huge doubt of mine, since a week seemed like way too much time to regain spent MP or whatever it was. Luna seemed to have no trouble casting spells left and right though.
“This is because the amount of mana in a creature’s body is very small, and it takes a long time to recover, one week to be exact.”
“Mana, by the way, is the energy used to activate magic circles and cast spells, and it’s found in huge quantities all around us.”
I raised my hand immediately and Luna nodded.
“Does everyone need one week to recover? Luna oneesan can cast so many spells…”
“Yes, it is one week for everyone. You will understand in a bit the reason why I don’t run out of spells as quickly.”
“Ok!”
“Like I said, mana is abundant in the world, but the quantity living beings can contain is very limited. That is why every spell needs a magic circle to function, and there are no known exceptions to this.”
“The purpose of the magic circle is to gather and manipulate the mana around us into spells, and the mana within us is what is required to activate the magic circle. That tiny portion that comes from our body is what takes a week to recover.”
“Oooh! So, the mana we use is just a spark, and the fuel is actually the world’s mana.”
“Yes. It’s exactly like that.” She said with a warm smile.
Interesting, so the reason even a child can inflict so much destruction with spells is that it’s not actually their mana being consumed.
“You two already know this, but apart from the caster’s activation mana and the magic circle, spells also require gestures and words of power. Some spells also have material components they need, and they can be consumed or not depending on the spell.”
Me and Toba nodded again, even he was already familiar with this process since he tried a few times to cast minor firebolt with no success.
“The last thing you two need to know for now is the activation mana required for each spell rank.”
This was arguably the most important part, and the one I was most confused about. Luna seemed to have no problem casting multiple spells, but I couldn’t exactly use her as a baseline, so I still had no clue about the “average” number of spells an adventure could cast.
“It’s easy, if we take minor spells as a baseline, then each regular spell is worth two minor spells, and each major spell is worth two regular spells, or four minor spells. From major to great it’s three times the amount, and from great to greater it’s four times.”
As soon as she finished, she turned to Toba and explained it to him again with more detail. It was simple math for me, but my brother’s head was about to shut down from the amount of information he received.
Knowing the different activation costs was essential and it also gave me a sense as to the power of each category of spell, but it didn’t answer what I wanted to know the most.
“Oneesan, how many spells can a regular adventurer cast?”
She brought her finger to her delicate chin as she thought for a bit.
“Well, a fully-fledged adventurer specialized in magic should be able to cast 2 major spells, but if we’re talking about the bulk of mages going around taking quests, then it’s 1 or 2 regular spells at best, and most don’t manage to learn a major spell even if they have the mana capacity to cast it.”
That was… Shocking, to say the least. Now that I learned most mages could only cast 4 minor spells at most, I was forced to once again reevaluate just how exceptional Luna was.
That’s because, from what I witnessed from Luna so far, she was flawless in terms of preparedness and caution, so much so that I was surprised when the tiger managed to sneak past her.
That meant that she was not carelessly spending spells that she could end up needing later, and if even so she could throw away so many spells like that without needing to worry, just how powerful was she?
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