"Since you have already formed a barrier, we can start practicing how you use it, and to do that, fighting is best," said Coach Eva.
"Okay," Akhil replied with a nod, already resigned to his fate. As he pulled out his dagger and sword, the atmosphere surrounding both Akhil and Coach Eva became eerie, both looking for the opportunity to strike as soon as they saw an opening. Unfortunately for Akhil, Coach Eva left him no openings, and one small mistake from him and Coach Eva would be on him faster than a child with a new phone.
To his surprise, Coach Eva found an opening, and without much hesitation, he attacked with his skill 'shift'. But in that minuscule second in which he appeared in front of her, he felt a sharp stinging pain under his lower rib. His eyes opened wide in shock, looking at the retracting leg of Coach Eva. He fell face first, gasping for air because it was literally kicked out of him. It took him a while to regain composure. The pain was unimaginably unbearable; it felt as though his bone cracked but didn't. Then he realized she didn't use her fire barrier but a plain old magic barrier with no attributes.
The pure force of her kick was beyond the expectations of Akhil; he had experienced them before but not to this extent. "Surprised? That wasn't even my full attack," Coach Eva said with a smug expression, but in her head, she knew there would be a day when she couldn't hurt him. "A barrier can be used to attack. Imagine getting hit by a tennis ball, and at a high speed, it would hurt, but then you coat it with a hard material and get hit by it at the same speed. Wouldn't it hurt more? That's what I did."
"The reason why you felt so much pain is that you didn't expel or deflect the kick; you absorbed all the force, and although your bones did not break, the pain you felt was evident. Your barrier was strong but it wasn't sturdy."
Akhil got up with the slowly fading pain and reactivated his barrier; this time he made it malleable. He could somewhat keep up with Coach Eva's speed so he thought before she hit him, he would push some of the magic to a certain point, strengthening it. After ten seconds Coach Eva raced towards Akhil. She came in with a right jab and a left cross, then a left and right jab with a straight right cross, then a left hook. Her combinations kept changing from punches to kicks to grappling. Akhil had little time to execute his plan, but he was slowly keeping up with her.
Then at the right moment, Coach Eva came in with a right hook to the body. Akhil, with what little reaction time he had earned, pushed the magic from his left side to his right, limiting the damage from the hit but at the same time giving him enough force to spin around with his sword to strike Coach Eva. As he was about to, Coach Eva seemed to have smiled and stepped back, dodging the blade of the dagger and ducking quickly enough to avoid the sword.
With the upthrust from the bend, she came up to uppercut Akhil, and with his feet off the ground and his mind bobbing about, he had no time to react to the roundhouse kick to his unprotected left side, sending him flying into training equipment.
With that, he was out of commission, his fourth and fifth rib bones cracked from the kick. Although it looked disastrous, Akhil's physique was strong enough to not die from his injuries; he needed almost a day to heal. The magic power coursing through his body assisted with the healing process.
A few minutes after the injury was cleaned and wrapped, he woke up dazed. He managed to get up after a few seconds, stabilizing himself.
Coach Eva was again practicing her sword moves attentively. She swung her sword at an abnormally slow pace exercising each muscle and trying to control the sword's movement with flow not veering from its path unintentionally. She never stopped she continued directly into each sword move connecting each move seamlessly.
She continued like this for a while gracefully, slowly, steadily and sharply swinging her sword. Then a bright orange light began shining around the edges of her sword. Each swing seemed to be producing heat that even if the sword itself didn't hit you would definitely be burned due to the heat released
A few minutes later he got up and started practicing similar to Eva. He started as she started without magic power to boost his body. he had not learnt any sword skills as his style was almost original and could only develop through combat but what he did was the normal actions when using a sword and a dagger and trying his best to transition between using both at the same time.
He was fast in areas he knew and slow in areas he is trying to improve or control. His constant change in pace and strength was coming along his shift between sword and dagger was improving not flowing but improving. Not being naturally ambidextrous was proving a challenge but it can be overcome with more practice.
Eva stopped her training and was watching Akhil train. She saw what he was trying to do and was impressed with his initiative. With a thought she went and got two books both on footwork. One to accompany swords and the other to assist those who use daggers. She was going to give both to Akhil for him to study and use a base to possibly create his own foot work for his sword style.
She called him over for more sparring....