MAZE - The Endless Quest

"To start, Ah'm gonna teach you about the most basic weapon there is. The sword."

He made a couple of moves with the wooden blade, simple swings and stabs.

"Now, Ah say it's basic, but that only means to start using it. No weapon is easy to master. The sword only needs to hit with any part of the blade to deal some damage, and that's why it's a good starting point."

The teacher made more complicated moves, all of them holding the sword in one hand.

"As ye become more familiar with the sword, ye can use more difficult moves and techniques to increase yer power or make it more difficult for your target to evade or parry."

He started moving even faster, doing some flourishes, and using some footwork to spin around an invisible target. He did it in a way that even the recruits could understand where the phantom enemy was.

"If ye ever master the sword or any other weapon ye can even place own yer will in the weapon, making it even stronger."

Mr. Greyson then turned to a golden dummy and slashed with all his might. Hera did her best to focus on the movement, but the slight glow that the sword gave caught her attention.

The glow seemed to have a form now. It was sharp and jagged, like it was a saw. Hera watched as the sword hit the dummy, and a score of 250 popped in the screen behind it.

The whole class and even a few other Explorers who were training clapped. Mr. Greyson fidgeted a bit after that, Hera recognized that reaction to the same one she has when someone praised her and couldn't help but smile. Even a seasoned warrior like him could be embarrassed.

"Now then, what ye need to understand is how to strike with it, gauge the distance, and aim. So everyone grab a sword and stay in front of a target."

Everyone seemed to be excited to start combat training. It took a bit over a minute for all the students to be in front of a dummy with a sword in hand.

"Very good, now first Ah want ye all to measure the distance between the target and yerself. Touch the tip of the sword in the dummy chest and move as far back as ye can. Then take another step back and swing a few times to understand how much strength ye can put in each attack."

Hera did as he asked. Placing the tip of the sword in the dummy and walking back as far as she could while still maintaining the contact between the sword and the target. When her arm was as stretched as it could be, she took a step back. A couple of students misunderstood the idea and were balancing themselves on one foot, trying to be farther away from the dummy. The teacher gave one of them a small scolding, and quickly, the rest understood that they needed to keep their footing while moving away.

After that, everyone swung their weapons. Leonidas seemed to be used to this type of drill, although his movements weren't as effortless as when he used the spear. Pamella was having some trouble. She was constantly walking closer to the dummy and had to step back. Alex, on the other hand, seemed to have a good grasp of the training. She wasn't moving one inch while doing the same overhead swing over and over.

Hera did the same. She kept attacking the air with her sword, trying to pay attention to her form and how her body moved. Her mind was trying to figure out which muscle was being used and how to use them more efficiently. It was a weird feeling to analyze herself in such a way. Even stranger was the fact that the idea seemed to be in her head already, as if she didn't need to think about it. Wondering if the reason for that was her increased Intelligence stat, she kept swinging.

Ten minutes had passed since the recruits started the drill when Mr. Greyson gave the next instruction. "All right, now the most basic move is an overhead swing. The same some of ye are doing, use one or both hands to raise the sword above yer head and swipe it down, aiming for the head or neck. "

He showed the move in the air a few times so everyone could see it being done properly. Hera noticed that he didn't shift his weight when doing so, even though in all his other attacks, she had seen had some sort of footwork.

"Mr. Greyson, should we keep our legs still doing that?" She asked after raising her hand.

"Aye, but just for this exercise. In a fight, the place where yer weight is keeps shifting. So ye must move yer legs to be sure not to fall. But for now, Ah want ye all to understand how ye strike properly before we move on to footwork. Can't have any of ye poking an eye out on the first day of training."

Hera nodded as much as she wanted to try some other moves. Moving around with a sword in hand was a recipe for disaster, especially if she was surrounded by people doing the same.

The teacher showed a couple more attacks, a slash from side to side, and an upward strike close to what an uppercut would look. All the recruits mirrored the movements, but after twenty minutes without stopping, it was hard to maintain their concentration. Hera's mind wandered off the same way it did when she had to organize the shelves in her old job.

However, unlike the way it was back then, her thoughts weren't about what she could do if she were an explorer, but about what will she do when she travels inside the MAZE.

Hera had to constantly bring herself back from her daydreams and focus on the exercise. It didn't take long for her to realize that the more she focused on the movement, the easier it was to get distracted. So, she focused on the target instead, where she should strike and trying to figure out a way to replicate what Mr. Greyson had done with the energy of his sword.

The first step was to make sure she was hitting the target where she wanted.

She aimed at the neck with the overhead swing, under the armpit with the uppercut and a bit above the hips with the side swings. It took a few tries, but after a while, Hera was striking the same spot with almost every hit. Just like a lumberjack has to focus on a single place. She also needed to do that. Or at least that is what she believed at that moment.

After one hour of this exercise, Mr. Greyson decided the class was familiar enough to move around.

"Next, ye are going to attack and move around. Do an attack, step in any direction, and do another, don't try to attack while moving ye need to be familiar with the range of the weapon." He then gave a demonstration, making one of the attacks he taught the class, taking a step to the side, and making another attack. Then another step and a strike. He kept going like this for a few seconds to be sure everyone understood what he was expecting.

"But Mr. Greyson, sir, if we see the sword like an extension of ourselves, we will be able to know the range better, won't we?" Mark had asked, Hera felt a little bad for him. He already was on Mr. Greyson's bad side, and she doubted that question would help with that.

The teacher rolled his eyes and let out a long sigh.

"Yes laddie, if ye can do something that even the great masters take decades to figure out ye can certainly do it. Now, if ye don't have a clue on how to swing a sword, then just do the damn training."

Mark lowered his head and gave a weak, "Yes sir," before turning around and start his practice. Hera could understand him. Movies and comics always talked about how a sword should be an extension of the wielder. Even if it never made sense to her, Mr. Greyson seemed to confirm that as truth. Still, mastering the sword wasn't high in her priority list, so making it an extension of her arm seemed just a cheesy line.

They kept going with this exercise for another hour. It was easier to keep her focus when she had to move around thinking about where she was going next. Hera started to get a good rhythm, not spending over ten seconds in the same place before moving.

Leonidas was even better. He was taking a step every five seconds, Pamella was still having trouble not to move while attacking, but her movements were bigger and wider. Alex took some time between each strike, but her attacks hit the same spot every time, even if her position was different every time.

Then the teacher showed a parry to the class and activated the dummies to attack at random intervals so the recruits could learn proper timing. Hera felt that it was a bit odd. They had almost no training with the sword, and they were already supposed to defend? It was common knowledge that defending was more difficult than attacking. Still, she wanted to try, mainly because Pamella was right beside her, and she could see the girl was good at defending.

Unlike when they were attacking Pamella was steady. She waited to move when the dummy was going to strike, making sure the chop impacted with the sword at the right time to send the dummy's arm back. That was a real parry. What the rest of the class was doing was barely a block.

Hera did her best to copy Pamella, but she still wasn't able to do a proper parry. The times she got close, the dummy ended up hitting her head. Even though the attack didn't have much force behind it, it still hurt.

It was five o'clock, one hour before the ending of the class, when Mr. Greyson spoke to the recruits again.

"Very well, now ye have to do it all at once, the dummy will attack and spin. Ye must hit it from the front and block its attacks. This is the closest that we have to a real monster, so be careful. In the screen behind it, there will be a score, each hit and block ye do, will increase it by the strength or skill of it. If ye can't beat the score in the next hour, ye will be here running laps around the training room for two hours after class. Good luck."