Chapter 24: The Tutor - 3
William began to kneel to accept his new teacher, but he found himself unable to. Umbra's sword had intercepted his knee, and he couldn't continue going down.
"Hold your horses, big boy. I'm going to watch over your training for a few years – I didn't say anything about accepting you as a disciple." She said, holding her hands up in an X shape.
William stared wide eyed at the sword that was floating there on it's on, stopping his knee from descending. Coughing awkwardly, he stood up again.
"Good." She said.
"Hey chameleon, can you go report to your mistress that I'll start training these boys today." Said Umbra, dismissing Alan.
"Chameleon?" asked Alan, raising an eyebrow.
Umbra waved him away, not bothering to talk to him again.
Sighing, Alan shimmered out of view.
"Alright kid, seeing as you're so eager, we'll start with you." Said Umbra, pointing at William.
"From what I've seen over these past few days, you have excellent strength and stamina. You also have decent agility and quite good battle sense. However, your speed seems to be quite lacking." Said Umbra, accurately spelling out William's physical statistics.
"I take it that you've already used your stat points?" asked Umbra.
William scratched his head, looking at Damon from the corner of his eyes.
"It's fine to tell her William." Said Damon.
William nodded.
"Lady Ariel advised Lucy and I to not use our stat points when we levelled up, despite our tutor's advice." Said William sheepishly, ashamed of having deceived Norman.
Umbra's smile grew wide.
"Excellent – most people advise children to use stat points when they are at level 1 and 2 so their bodies can become capable of more intense practice, but that's a stupid way to go about things. At this level, you can still improve your stats through hard work and exercise – save your stat points for when you become so strong and fast that normal training has minimal effects." Said Umbra.
William already understood this - Lady Ariel had already given him this piece of advice.
"That being said, the first thing we're going to address is your physical training. To be honest, your stamina is monstrously high for someone your age. Normally, stamina can be increased as a side-effect of normal training, but I haven't even seen you break a sweat in your training with baldy." Said Umbra.
William nodded his head in acknowledgement. It had been over a year since he had felt strain during his daily training.
"What will I be doing to improve my stamina?" asked William.
Umbra gave him a wide, toothy grin.
"I'm a believer of multitasking when it comes to training." Said Umbra.
As she spoke, she reached her hand out into the air in-front of her. The space shimmered and a large grey bag fell in front of her.
"A storage pocket" Thought Damon. Storage pockets were folded spaces that were bound to certain items – rings, belts, bracelets, or bags. They were a feat of magical engineering and were extremely expensive.
Umbra reached into the bag and pulled out several items. A brown tunic and a pair of brown trousers, black boots and gloves, and a series of small silver bracelets that were connected to each other via extremely thin silver wires.
BANG!
Umbra dropped the tunic, boots, trousers, and gloves, and they fell with such force that they formed a small crater.
William gulped.
"These are gravity enhanced training clothes, boots, and gloves. We'll adjust them to a low setting to begin with. Doing your training in them will strain your body and will help improve your strength and stamina." Said Umbra.
She then raised the set of silver bracelets and wires.
"These are restrictive braces. You clasp a bracelet at each joint, and when the set is activated, they act as a constricting counter force. This stiffens your joints and dulls your reflexes. They also have a curse applied that increases the magnitude of damage received." Said Umbra. Her smile did not change, and yet the more she spoke the more menacing it seemed.
"With this, your agility, speed and durability will increase." Said Umbra.
William gulped again as he looked at the items before him.
"Everything starts and ends with your body. Your stats need to increase, but more importantly, you need to become more balanced – so we'll start with lower weights and higher brace restrictions."
Umbra gestured at the pile in front of William.
"Take these with you, we'll start using them tomorrow." Finished Umbra.
William walked forward, picking up the items that Umbra had gotten for him.
"Now that the basics are sorted, we can address the second issue." Said Umbra.
She stepped down from the dueling stage and walked towards William. She stopped in front of him and gestured at his sword and shield.
"Who the fuck agreed to you using such a stupid combination of weapons." Asked Umbra, her smile gone.
"Huh?" asked William, shocked.
"You're freakishly tall and have great reach, so there's nothing inherently wrong with using a great sword. But why in the world would you pair it with a medium sized shield?" she asked.
"It covers up some of the openings caused when I use my reach to approach the enemy." Said William.
"Right, and it limits your mobility and angles of approach. The extra reach advantage a long sword gives you is basically neutralized as the shield gets in the way of you properly attacking at that range." Said Umbra, pacing up and down as she spoke.
"The clunkiness and length of the sword means you can only rely on the shield to both attack and defend at short range, so you're also limited defensively and in counterattacking." Continued Umbra.
"Take your duel earlier. If that idiot who you were fighting had stayed within close range, you would have been stuck – only able to defend. Isn't that basically what happened while you were exchanging blows? If he hadn't gotten impatient and backed away so he could deal a stronger blow, you wouldn't have had your opportunity to attack." said Umbra, poking a finger at William as she spoke.
"You're better of getting rid of that sword and using a normal length one. Your long limbs already give you a reach advantage, and a shorter sword gives you the ability to operate in the short range." Said Umbra, pointing at the sword.
She walked around William, inspecting him as he spoke.
"Alternatively, get rid of shield and use a wider, two-handed weapon. A War-sword has greater reach than a great sword and is also much wider, allowing you to use it to both attack and defend. Come to think of it though, I don't think you're agile enough to pull that off."
She was talking to herself now as she analysed William's build.
"I guess you can go all in on range and use a larger shield and a pole-arm of some sort. A lance or spear might work for you. You seem quite proficient at the Southern Stance so that's also an option." She said.
Damon was in awe of Umbra. He had been a powerful warrior, but one that was quite unconventional in his means. Very few people had the combination of size, speed, strength, and agility required to effectively use a War-sword, and as one of them, his sense of conventional weapons was not great – especially as he had never been formally trained.
Eventually, she threw her hands in the air.
"Alright, we'll scrap your weapons for now and focus on your physique and general fighting experience." Said Umbra.
"What do you mean by general fighting experience?" asked William.
Umbra's smile returned.
"We're going to fight. We're going to fight a lot." She said.
She gestured at all the weapons on the training racks.
"You have good instincts and a good grasp of the basics. But, aside from unbalanced physicals, you also lack real experience in using and dealing with various weapons and fighting styles." Said Umbra.
"The aura techniques that baldy will bring will give you some more cards and versatility, and the best way to use those and find how to effectively apply them is through actual combat." Continued Umbra.
"Going forward, your training is going to be 30% purely physical training, 25% theory, form and isolated practice, and 45% actual combat with your physical restrictions on." Said Umbra.
The more she spoke about fighting, the wider her smile grew.
"Once I've spent enough time fighti-... training you, we can see what weapons are most suitable for you." Said Umbra.
William nodded slowly, a hollow look in his eyes. He looked troubled more troubled at the thought of having to switch weapons than he did at the prospect of fighting under such severe physical restrictions.
"Good." Said Umbra, walking towards Damon.
She gave the young prince a wide smile as she produced a similar set of gear as she had for William.
"You're still young, so don't think about swords yet. We will work on pushing your physique to it's absolute limits. I'm really curious to see if I can raise a monster that can crush Maxi." Said Umbra, staring at Damon as if he were a precious item.
"You're not going to teach me how to use a sword?" asked Damon, feeling genuinely disappointed.
Umbra laughed and shook her head.
"Not for now. I need you to grow a bit taller and sturdier, and then we can get started. If you can tough out my training for two years, it should be enough." Said Umbra, stroking her chin.
Damon nodded slowly, his eyes narrow with determination.
"Two years it is." He said.
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