As she laid in bed trying to take in all the new information she got about the forest, she slowly dozed off.
The next morning, a ray of sunlight shone through the windows waking Liora up. She got up and started getting ready to go to the courtyard. Instead of the same dress she had been wearing, she wore a tunic with long jeans.
As she finished changing, Someone knocks on her door. She goes to open the door. Standing there was a maid carrying some food.
'This is your breakfast for today. Would you like me to place it on your table?'
Liora stared at the food and said:
'Sure.'
The maid placed the tray of food on the wooden table beside the bed and left. She sat on a wooden chair and began eating her breakfast.
After finishing her breakfast she left for the courtyard. With how big the castle is, She lost her way multiple times and had to ask for help from passing maids. After a while, she finally made it to the courtyard. Sitting under a tree was the middle aged soldier dozing off while waiting for her.
She walked to him and poked him a few times. The soldier woke up and stared at her.
'Ah you're finally here. Well let's begin.'
'Firstly I have to ask, have you ever held a sword or any type of weapon before?'
Liora said with a smug expression:
'Of course, anyone in the outskirts would have held a weapon atleast once before.'
'As I lived in the more outer parts of there, every few months those beasts would try to invade my home. It was hard killing them at the start, but soon people started working together to kill them.'
The soldier was visibly impressed.
'Well that's good, that would speed up things a lot.'
He stood up and started walking towards a small shed. He opened the door to the shed with a silver key. Inside was countless weapons of different types. From spears to swords, everything was there.
The soldier said:
'Pick a weapon of your choice. The weapon will be given to you by the empire to bring to the forests.'
Liora looked around for a while. Staring at the countless weapons. After some thought, she decided to pick the longsword.
After picking, they both walked out of the shed and the soldier locked the shed back up.
The soldier held a longsword that was the same as hers and started explaining the basics of combat.
'A longsword is one of the more heavier swords, that is why longswords are meant to be wielded with two hands instead of one. The longsword is known for its versatility in combat with how it can be used in both thrusts and cuts.'
'Now show me how you swing the longsword on the training dummy there.'
She walked towards the dummy and tried to swing the blade. Since she had never used a real weapon before, her cut was not that good and barely damaged the dummy.
The soldier walked towards her and said:
'That wasn't bad for a first try. But it's not good enough to fight memory beasts. In order to swing a sword correctly, as you bring your sword down to cut, the hand closest to the blade has to push down and the hand farthest from the blade has to pull up in order to create the most force on the cut.'
She raised the sword up again and began trying the technique she learned. As the cut struck the dummy, it got almost cut in half from the cut.
The soldier applauded.
'Very well done. The technique isn't perfect yet but with more practice you will get better at it. Now lets put these longswords away first.'
He pulled out a wooden longsword for training.
'We will use these to get you more used to combat. You will spar with me for a while.'
He gave her the blade and began holding a stance for combat.
'Come at me with all you got.'
She dashed toward him and raised her sword to cut him, the soldier held his sword up to block the incoming strike and began shifting to the right to strike her. She tried dashing back to avoid a strike from the soldier but the soldier was too quick for her. As the sword was about to strike down on her, she blocked it with her sword. The strike felt like a huge boulder striking down on her. Her muscles ached from blocking that strike. The soldier continued striking her over and over again. She kept trying to block the strikes but after a few strikes, She couldn't block it anymore. The soldier put down his sword.
'Rest for 10 minutes, we will continue later.'
She sat down on the grass still tired from the spar just now.
'So that's the difference between a veteran and a rookie.'