While eating, everyone from room 173 again sat down together, this time Auren started the conversation, all the while gasping with fatigue while drinking water.

"I can't stand it... How much can you run like this? I thought I was going to pass out again."

"Also, it's already making me sick at the very thought of having to run."

Daren added, staring down at his soup, unsure whether to eat it.

Looking around at everyone, Kane felt he needed to give his new friends some encouragement. After a moment's thought, he advised

"Keep the mind calm, don't think about the end of an exercise but how to do it the best way, complaining won't do anything."

He sighed and got down to his food.

After this statement, the boys realized that Kane, despite being the youngest of all, mentally towers over them, and they got down to eating while thinking about the advice the boy had given them.

"Now swordsmanship, right? Let's give it our all, theoretically, this is more enjoyable part of the day, so we'll see how it goes in practice."

Kane said to give encouragement to his colleagues and took advantage of the moment to rest before the mentors told them to go out to the training ground, which unfortunately did not last long.

"No more food, everyone out to the training ground".

Already a little satisfied and excited, the recruits went out to the square, looking forward to learning how to use the sword.

Everyone received a wooden, straight sword and lined up in their places.

"Starting today, you will begin to learn the basics of swordsmanship, during your stay here, we will teach you the 5 stances you must master to become a knight. Each group will train with its tutor, who will teach you individually as much as possible."

Tutor Lorenz shouted, then left with his group.

Kane lined up in the first row, looked toward tutor Nilon, who stood on a chest so he could be better seen, and began teaching.

"Alright, focus everyone, we are starting to learn swordsmanship, Today I am going to show you the first basic stance, which is used to attack. It may seem trivial to you at first, but in the course of sparring, you will understand why you have to practice it to perfection for so long."

Everyone grabbed their wooden swords and excitedly waited for Nilon's demonstration.

"We'll start with the first stance, the simplest overhead attack, that is, you catch the sword tightly with both hands, both legs steady on the ground, with the right leg slightly forward. You raise the sword above your head, but so that your elbows are bent, that is, you do not raise the sword with straight arms above your head. 

Once you are in this stance, you quickly and sweepingly strike down with the sword. Don't swing the sword like a toy, focus on your muscles and use the full force you have, the bottom of your body should be steady."

He finished the initial explanation, then demonstrated the overhead attack with his example. As Nilon took his stance for the strike, you could see his powerful muscles tensing on his hands. In the blink of an eye, Nilon slashed the sword so hard that everyone managed to feel the wind flying toward them from the swipe of the sword. 

During the demonstration, everyone focused on the sword and hands, but no one except Kane looked at the tutor's legs and hips, which he mentioned. During the show, Kane looked at the lower part of the tutor's body, and noticed that despite such a strong blow, his legs didn't move out of place even a millimeter.

"Okay, it's more or less something like this, simple, but you need to spend a lot of time and strength to learn how to perform it correctly and effectively. I'll continue to demonstrate the overhead attack for a while, and in the meantime, you repeat it all the time until you get it right. When I'm done showing, I'll walk between you and correct you. Now start."

Everyone, slowly looking at their own feet and hands, tried to repeat what Nilon had shown and started waving their hands sloppily and quickly.

Kane focused on himself, set his feet, then tensed the muscles on his arms and raised his sword, looking at his tutor and trying to follow his stance. When he felt that he was in a good position, he struck the sword with all his strength. The sword was slow, and he felt in his hands that he hit weakly, but the stance of his legs was set well, The boy understood the reason was his weak hands and focused on mastering the stance correctly. 

As he slowly but with precision swinging his swords, unlike others who put amount over quality, Kane began to understand all the elements of training. Running for stamina, weight-bearing exercises for muscle, swordsmanship for skill, and sparring for understanding the weaknesses in his fighting. The boy, proud of himself for understanding what all the effort was for, continued to learn stance.

Tutor Nilon began to walk among the recruits, and after looking over everyone for a while, he returned to the chest and shouted.

"Everyone stop! Literally, out of 50 of you, maybe 10 are doing it right, you didn't listen to me at all. You are not supposed to swing that sword like a toy, focus on your body and position your body well. It's better to do the swing slower but with all your strength and focus than to swing as fast as possible, like some stick. The speed of the attack will come with time as you learn to do the stance well and gain strength. One more time."

The children, more slowly this time, began to adjust their strikes to the corrections Nilon gave. Kane, in silence, closed his mind and slowly tried to perfect the technique itself, knowing that he would have to wait patiently for the force of the blow.

After half an hour of practicing the first stance, Nilon stepped back on the chest and spoke.

"Most of you are doing well for the first time, remember what I said, focus on your body. Now everyone thousand repetitions, if I see someone doing fast and not even trying to make an effort, I'll add another thousand strikes to him. I'll keep passing around you and correcting your stances. Get started."

Everyone wanted to complain after hearing about the thousand strikes, but they already preferred it over 2 hours of running with backpacks.

For a couple of hours, all that could be heard on the training ground were the shouts given out by sword strikes and heavy, tired breathing.

Kane, despite his fatigue, was satisfied with his efforts, and not even tutor Nilon intervened in his technique when he passed by.

Time passed, and everyone began to finish their thousand strikes. When everyone finished, they immediately threw their swords out of their hands out of exhaustion, their hands were full of corn and trembling, no one had the strength to raise their hands. The recruits, seeing tutor Lorenz approaching to speak, were already starting to get annoyed with him before he could say anything.

"Congratulations, You've persevered to the end of your first swordsmanship lesson with better or worse results. We're about to move on to sparring to summarize what you've learned, but first you have a moment to drink some water and take a breath."

All happy that they would be able to fight with swords, they went satisfied to rest, meanwhile the tutors explained the rules of today's sparring.

"Depending on the day, the sparring will have different rules, sometimes there will be fights so that you can test out new stances, like today, where the first person will attack and the second will just take it in turns to defend themselves, other times there will be simple 1-on-1 duels. We will randomly match you and start."

At this point, one person raised his hand to ask

"Yes, what's the matter?"

"Because one person will defend himself, but how do we do it?"

"Until you master your first stance from today, you will improvise and combine on your own, so you will not rigidly use stances during the fight but also improvise, and it will come faster for you to understand what swordsmanship is."

Nilon answered him, although he didn't mention that, thanks to the fact that the recruits don't know how to defend themselves, they will get used to the pain and have the determination to become stronger.

"We are starting all right, your mentors will select a partner for you, line up on the training ground and decide among yourselves who attacks first and who defends, today the duel will end when the defending person has been hit or when the attacking person fails to hit in five strikes. Today we will play as many sparring matches as you can manage in an hour."

Everyone forgot about their fatigue and ran into the training ground, glad that they would be able to fight.

Before they started, they were interrupted again by Lorenz

"We forgot to mention that during sparring, the person attacking can only use overhead attack, the person defending is free as to how to defend but cannot attack. These will be today's rules that apply to you. And remember everyone..."

Suddenly, the tutor's gaze and voice took on a dark tone.

"... Ignorance is the cause of death, do not underestimate even a wounded enemy. A man pushed to the wall shows his true nature and is unpredictable. Remember this for the rest of your life."

Everyone went through shivers seeing Lorenzo's cold gaze.

The recruits from Kane's group were divided into pairs. Kane's opponent turned out to be two years older and therefore taller and stronger. He knew from the start that this would cause problems, but he believed in his cleverness and what he had learned today.

All pairs lined up so that there was a 4-meter gap between the attacker and defender. At the signal of the bell, the sparring began. The tutors monitored to make sure that no one went overboard with the brutality and that the rules were not broken.

Kane had drawn the defender first. Not knowing what to do, he decided to stand steady so as not to lose his balance during the strike, and then improvise. The boy's opponent ran up to him and aimed a sweeping strike at Kane. The boy panicked, and instead of defending himself, he took a dodge from the sword, jumping aside, and, standing next to him, re-positioned himself as before, this time knowing what to do.

"The attacker can only use an overhead attack, meaning all I need to do is block the sword or somehow deflect it, but looking at his strength, it's unlikely that deflecting the sword will be possible."

Said the boy in his head to himself, catching the sword in both hands with all his strength, standing steadily on the ground, he tilted the sword slightly so that it was not straight but turned slightly to the side to make it easier to block.

The opponent again began to attack, but this time Kane sucked it up and tried with all his strength to block the strike.

Again, there was a strong sweep that clashed with Kane's sword, The boy's hands went numb when he felt the powerful impact that he had to stop, but he continued to stand and tried with all his might to maintain his position when the opponent pressed against his sword.

Feeling that he wouldn't be able to handle that kind of pressure for long, Kane jumped back, this was the second missed strike.

The 12-year-old, frustrated that he couldn't hit someone weaker and smaller than himself, forgot his technique and started hitting his sword like a hammer against Kane's block, wasting his strike limit. The first round ended with a win for Kane. The nervous boy went on the defensive, as it was Kane who attacked this time.

He took a moment to reflect on the previous fight and realized that everyone was foolishly attacking the opponent's middle with their strikes, hitting the sword, even though the tutors didn't mention what part of the body they had to hit to win.

Kane took his stance as soon as he could to tighten his tired muscles throughout his body and slowly began to approach his opponent, holding his sword up.

"The attack doesn't have to be strong, it just needs to hit."

He thought in his head.

When he sensed that he was at the right distance, he took advantage of his lower height and struck the wrist of his opponent's right hand with his sword.

"I won."

Kane said this in a proud voice while looking at his opponent with cold eyes.

Nilon, seeing the two duels, smiled, seeing the potential in the boy.

The sparring sessions lasted a total of a little over an hour, with the recruits enjoying the fight or trying to learn through it how to fight effectively.

At sunset, the exhausted and beaten recruits went to supper.

Despite the fatigue, there were loud conversations in the dining hall again, with excited recruits talking about their sparring and training.

"Finally, we can take a break."

Collin said, stretching his arms over his head.

"I don't know how we survived this..."

Auren sighs quietly.

"Then, how did it go with your sparring matches?I won 6 and lost 4."

Daren praised himself.

"7 wins and 5 losses, but I definitely did better on defense than attack, how about you, Auren?"

"8 wins and 4 losses."

"What, you?"

Said surprised Daren.

Then everyone looked in Kane's direction.

"9 wins and 2 losses, towards the end, they understood how to attack, and it was harder to defend..."

Everyone looked amazed at Kane

"You won with that bruiser?!"

Shouted Auren

"Surprisingly, my height helped me against him as I attacked, but in defense it was difficult to withstand his strikes."

"He? What's the matter? What bruiser?"

Collin looked around with a goofy expression on his face, not knowing what was going on.

"I saw that Kane got some 12-year-old as a sparring partner, which was about a head taller than him."

Everyone looked in surprise at the boy.

"In general, as I was going in, I heard that some people finished their sparring matches without any losses, I heard about some results like 15 to 0 or 12 to 0."

Daren shared an interesting fact from today, which caught Kane's attention.

"Do you know what groups they were in? They must be strong, or they've trained before otherwise, it's impossible for them to do so well on the first day."

"Or talent"

Kane added, looking around the room...

After dinner, when everyone dispersed, there was a dead silence in the hallways, no yelling, talking or running around. Everyone, without exception, as soon as they got back to their rooms, the pain and fatigue kicked in, and they didn't even think about talking, just fell on the bed and immediately fell asleep.