After hunting the grey wolves, I ended up eating monster food for the first time. Needless to say, it was awfull. It was hard to chew and I never tasted something so bitter.

'I would like to never eat this anymore but I can't help but think that I should get used to it.' That's what I tought.

Really this meat was so bad that made the glass of water used for poison training, kind of sweet.

The Routine proceeded as normal, with all classes being held in the same as always.

During Ksavir's class we were told to form pairs and either by the work of fate or Ksavir's shenaningans, I ended up paired up with Gary.

"I will be counting on you for today."

"Hm." Gary nodded at my words.

Staring at Gary's calm face I couldn't help but feel slightly angered, I mean, would it hurt to say something?

Gary stared at the weapon stand, seemengly unsure of what weapon to chose.

"What weapon do you prefer, John?"

'Ah! He spoke!!'

"W-well, I prefer swords over other weapons."

"Is that so."

He looked again at the weapon stands and picked up a sword and told me to pick mine aswell with some hand gestures.

As we walked troughout the training grounds I watched the other pairs exchanging blows with various weapons.

"How many weapons do you know how to use exactly?" I asked.

"I train mostly with various types of swords, bows, polearms and daggers, today was my first time trying a whip."

"I see, but why do you try so many different ones? Why not focus on a single one?"

Gary slowly turned his head towards me and spoke.

"I want to be a master of all trades."

"Don't you mean, jack of all trades?"

"As the saying goes, a jack of all trades is master of none, I want to be the first to master all weapons and fighting styles."

What a dream! Who would have tought that this impassive guy had such a grand dream?

"I wish I had such a dream."

"You don't?"

A confused expression appeared on his face. What? What is wrong with not having a dream?

"Don't you have something you really want to do?"

"Not really?"

"Is that so?"

Finnaly understanding my point of view, Gary continued to walk in the direction of our designed area.

Once we reached our training ring we stood facing each other and prepared our stances. They were very similar, both of our stances used the sword play of the neto programm as a base, but only the base was equal.

The way we builded our fighting style on top of that base was completely different, for example, I used what I saw my father practicing everyday in the garden.

"Are you ready?"

"Yes."

As soon as I responded, we both activated our runes and reinforced our bodies, a thin read aura surrounded my body while a thin aura of lime green and bright purple surrounded Garry's body in a similar way.

We both rushed forward meeting eachother in the center.

Garry started first with a thrust to my left shoulder, I responded by deflecting the sword to my left and right after attacked with a wide swing from the left to the right.

Seemingly unsurprised, with his empty left hand Gary performed a palm strike to my elbow before my swing could reach full strength.

Flustered due to the unexpected move and the strength behind it I lost my footing. However before I could fall, Gary retracted his sword and aimed his sword to my, now exposed, right side.

Hitting me right below the ribs, my body fell to the side.

As expected I couldn't beat him.

"I tought I had you."

"You did."

"?"

Seeing my confused expression, Garry decided to clarify.

"In terms of technique, your not so far below me that you would be beaten so easily like now."

"What?"

What did he mean? If my technique was not that bad, then why did I lost in that manner?

"What you lack is mentality."

"How so?"

"What you lack is not sword moves, but you are to focused on solving single problems, 'How should I block that?' or 'Where will he aim for?', altough you should keep asking those questions you should also ask, 'Once I block how will he react?' or 'What if changes his aproach?', do you get it?"

"No."

He sighed, with a look of anoyance in his face. Whoa! Had I actually irritated this guy?

"What I mean is that you only think of singular scenarios, you must strategize, you must not only think of the present but also think about the infinite amount of actions your opponent might take, you must also think about how much your opponent has analyzed about you, do you understand now?"

I really left this guy angry, huh?

Regardless, what he said finally made sense. I needed to broad my mind and not only have much more toughts simultaneously but also predict every possible future scenario.

"So I must strategize, huh?"

"That's correct."

Strategize.

In the same way a chess player tries to predict his opponents next moves, I must also predict the movements of my enemies taking into acount that they are also trying to predict my own moves.

"Maybe warriors are good chess players, I tought they had brains made of sand."

"Chess? Sand?"

"Nevermind."

You were acting so smart just now, don't take the role of an airhead!

"Anyway, how should I go about this? How do I improve my... uhm... mentality?"

"It's not something you can easily train, like mana control or sword moves, you just need to acumulate battle experience, the rest is a matter of intellect."

So I only needed to fight and after that fight some more?

"Muscle Brain."

"?!"

Anyway, it doesn't seem to be something I can solely focus on. I should keep doing what I'm doing while keeping this matter in mind.

Gary was really a monster being capable of stratagize like that even tough he was only a few years older than me-

Wait a minute.

"Gary?"

"Yes?"

"Where did you learned this?"

"My father is really strong."

What a simple answer, as expected.

"Did he train you?"

"Kinda?"

"What do you mean?"

"According to what my father sad, we 'Sword Talked'."

"?!!"

I'm sorry, what?

"Sword talked?"

"According to my father, 'Sword Talk' is a exercise to accumulate a certain amount of battle experience."

"How does that work?"

"It's like sparring but there are no words involved, like we are doing now, it's also prohibited to hit any part of the body, you should only try to point your sword to the opponents neck in a way that it's impossible to either dodge or block."

"I see."

It was like chess.

If one compared to chess, the king would be the neck. Every move was the movement of one of the pieces, one must predict and counter each attack accordingly. In the same way every time an attack was aimed to the neck, it was check, and if it was impossible to block or dodge, than it was checkmate.

"Are there any rules?"

"That I haven't said? No. The rest depends of the game mode."

"Game mode?"

"Best out of 21, or maybe best out of 55, if it is a uneven number it's a gamemode, I once saw my father participate on a sword talk of 181 rounds."

"I-is that so."

Who is the idiot that fights almost two hundred fights in a row, i mean there is no real injury in each round. But even so!

"Let's do, uhm... best out of 27."

This guy! I cannot even stand my ground for five rounds against him and he wants me to fight for twenty seven?!

"Best out of 5?"

"No. Best I can do is... best out of 25."

"What about 7?"

"23."

"Ok, I will go with 9."

"No. 31."

"Y-you!! You increased."

"Was I supposed to keep decreasing?"

"Yes!"

"Why?"

Good point.

"17?"

"Okay, 17 it is."

In the end, we stopped at the ninth round with an absolute win for Gary, nevertheless I was capable now of getting a grasp of Gary's actions.

Maybe it was because I was fighting the same person repeatedly, but I felt I was onto the right path.