Testing My Luck in the New World

“Come now, mio amico… Don’t tell me… you’re getting tired already.”

“I don’t know… what you’re talking about. You’re the one drowning in sweat.”

“What are you talking about? My skin’s as dry as the Roccia Desert.”

“Yea? That explains… those giant pit stains.”

“Hahaha. Maybe so. Maybe so.”

We both talked a big game, but our rasping breaths spoke volumes about how our lungs were trying to kill us as we pushed ourselves to our limits.

Our training had started much as it did the day before with a quick sparring match, an even quicker lesson on what I was doing wrong, followed by a few wrist-strengthening exercises. After that was another match, the another round of wrist-strengthening exercises, which was then closely followed by another sparring match and then yet another rousing round of wrist-strengthening exercises, only this time, he explained what I was doing wrong as I worked on myself.

While another sparring match after all that sounded right up our alley, we instead decided to mix things up a little with some cardio. Which was why we were currently running laps around the city.

Surely, since the training was supposed to be for my benefit, and not because he wanted to see me suffer, Giulio let me borrow his guard armor to better acclimate to extreme cardio in full gear, but my not asking how far he planned to run was quickly proving to be a mistake. My socks were soaked with sweat and each step I took felt like I was stomping on a wet sponge.

Even by Yua’s standards, this man’s training regimen was insane. We do our fair share of cardio back home, and I did have my stamina regeneration trait to fall back on, but at this point, I was just trying not to fall behind this guy.

“Woah there!” Giulio exclaimed with a laugh, carefully sidestepping a little boy who’d blindly walked in front of him. “Careful now!”

Careful himself, he placed his hand on the boy’s head as he leapt around him and turned him to face his mother, who quickly began chiding him for not paying attention. Leaving the poor boy to his fate, we kept running.

When a merchant’s cart pulled in front of us to chat with a shopkeep, Giulio dropped to the ground and slid beneath it, while I sprinted around it the long way. By the time I left the merchant and his horses in the dust, Giulio was already back on his feet and running again.

We were almost stopped again when our heavy footsteps drew the attention of a gaggle of women, who all flocked to Giulio to flaunt their fluttering eyelashes and varying bustsizes.

Or so they tried, as Giulio bypassed them with a quick turn down an alley before emerging back out onto the street on the other side.

I was close enough behind him to catch sight of only his foot as he turned the corner, so I sped up and, the moment I left the alley, I drew my training sword and blocked the heavy strike that’d been aimed at my chest.

Our wooden blades clashed together with a satisfying thunk, and Giulio laughed almost proudly when I blocked it - this time. I almost laughed as well as our next sparring match began.

Many eyes turned our way, watching us with amused curiosity. To them, we must have looked like a couple of kids playing knights in the street – laughing, half-swinging, half-dancing around to avoid drawing onlookers into the fight. But the heavy overhead slash I just barely ducked promised real pain.

I rose up as he tried to reel in his missed strike and countered. Giulio moved instinctively, fluid, deliberate, like water through a perfectly smooth stream, barely blocking with the shoulder of his blade.

The tendons in my wrists panged at the sudden stop.

“Keep your shoulders loose,” he said, letting me recover. “Power comes from your hips and your arms. Put your everything into only one, and your movements become predictable. Remember, form before power.”

“Easier said than done. It’s one thing to learn something, it’s another thing entirely to make use of it.”

He tapped his sword on his shoulder.

“Really? You seem to be improving well enough, though. You’re making fewer and fewer mistakes with each bout. You really are a quick learner.”

I rolled my wrist to relieve some of the pain, but it didn’t help much. The bruises from our previous matches were already starting to show themselves. To his great effectiveness as a teacher, or maybe as a sadist, his promise to help train my wrists had made them his favorite target with each match he started.

“Ha!”

And it was always him initiating, it was on me to respond.

I barely had my fingers wrapped around the grip of my sword when a horizontal slash whipped at my chest. I blocked, kicking a foot back to better absorb the blow, but the assault had only just begun.

This time his attacks came in a flurry, a pattern of slashes and jabs so swift I barely had time to react, let alone consult my memory to see where this was going.

I blocked each successive, relentless blow whose impacts shook my arms and, when the fifth strike appeared as a plainly underpowered jab, I recognized the pattern. He wanted me to parry and then use the opening to steal a free hit on him. This would have given him another, even more predictable strike to counter.

I knew this because it was how I earned the bruise on my right shoulder, but I was ready for it this time.

I stepped past his jab, ignored it and with my blade already pulled back over my shoulder and brought it down on him.

He was surprised, but only momentarily. He let go of his sword and ripped his elbow backwards. My strike blew right past him and crashed into the ground, sending bolts of pain sparking throughout my wrists and fingers. He reclaimed his sword before gravity ever had a chance to claim it, smirked, and he launched into a series of quick slashes that were new and unpredictable.

I blocked and parried as best I could, but my fingers were starting to numb with each concussive blow. Every time his blade brushed past mine, my grip slackened more. Likewise, droplets of sweat flew off his forearm.

I retreated a step. Then another. My grip tightened unconsciously, trying to keep him from knocking my sword away again, but the fatigue was building fast.

“When facing down your foe, your sword must be an extension of your arm. Move it as though you’ve been moving it your entire life, let it be a part of you. But never forget that it is just a thing. Unlike your arm, you can drop it when you need to.”

“That doesn’t sound like something a sword master should be saying!”

“I never said I was a master. I was taught to obey the orders of those above me and to kill for my country, not to baby my tools. Respect your sword and it will respect you in return, but if you die respecting it, what’s it good for? Watch my wrists as well.”

His relentless tempo continued, undaunted by his speech. He kept testing me with quick, sharp strikes that forced me to roll my wrist out of harm’s way.

“See how I do this?” Giulio demonstrated, flicking his wrist to send his sword spinning in a tight circle. “That flexibility is everything. Your wrist is not a separate hinge, it does not move only one way and it does not move alone. It needs the support of your elbow and shoulder.”

His sword slapped against mine almost like a cat’s paw toying with its prey, but then he circled it again and it crashed into my elbow, forcing my forearm to reel back as pain erupted in my mind.

“When you fight monsters, they don’t expect finesse, but in a duel among men, finesse wins every time!”

He stepped forward, circled his blade again, smashing it into the backside of mine, forcing my wrist to bend past its limit. I grit my teeth, but the pain forced me to let go.

His blade didn’t stop. It flew towards me again, finally stopping just inches from my throat. I was breathing hard, sweat pouring down my face. It was my loss again, but I nodded, feeling the truth of his words.

“See how your wrist flexed backwards when I struck your arm? Put too much pressure on one joint, and the others forget their role. Your wrist weakened and fell back when your elbow was forced to move.”

Giulio pulled his blade back and flicked it down to his side, as if to be done with it. The happy smile he’d been wearing was all the brighter after yet another win. He collected my sword and handed it back to me.

“It’s still too easy to disarm you… Though I suppose if we were using real swords, striking your elbow would have been all I needed to do.”

“Good thing we weren’t, then,” I said, rubbing the spot he’d hit.

I’d really hate to have to ask Nerissa to reattach an arm. Assuming she even can.

“Haha! Of course. Only a fool trains with a real sword.”

“Yea… Suppose I’d be dead, what, six times over already?”

Giulio laughed, though not in a proud or mocking way, but I was really starting to feel like this whole memorizing his attack patterns thing was just wishful thinking that bordered on being a waste of time. Not once have I been able to capitalize on predicting his moves. Every time I counter the move I know is coming, he has another retort hidden away behind that smile of his.

He thumped his sword on his shoulder again and put a thumb on his chin.

“I think you think too much, mio amico. Planning out a fight beforehand is all well and good, but trying to do so while someone is swinging a sword at you is distracting.”

“… How else am I supposed to do it? Not strategizing sounds like it’d get me killed.”

“Hard to say, I suppose. You just need to feel it. For now, your only plan should be watching your opponent. React to and counter their actions when you can, and charge forward when you can’t. You have to fight like it’s second nature.”

“But it’s not.”

“It will be in time. This, I can promise you,” he said, patting my shoulder. “But until that time, I suggest you focus more on the fight in front of you, instead of where you think the fight might go. You’re too inexperienced to make such guesses.”

Giulio looked off down the street towards a couple of girls that were waving and hollering his name. Apparently, the floosies we’d ditched heard our match and came to watch. Reluctantly, he smiled and waved back as he continued.

“Nobody I’ve taught has learned to match me as fast as you have. I think you really have a knack for the sword.”

“Well, let’s hope so. Thank you.”

I opened my hands and grimaced at what I saw. A few of the blisters bubbling on my palms were already well on their way to becoming calluses. They were supposed to be signs of progress, but they were inevitably going to have to be wiped out by Yua’s healing so they didn’t get in the way of our quest.

“Haha. Of course. Of course. Now, go on. Get running.”

“Yessir. Right away, sir.”

Perhaps claiming all the running was just cardio may have been wishful thinking on my part. It was actually my punishment for making mistakes in my swordplay. The idea being that each successive failure brought the punishment of prolonged pain in both my lungs and legs, while also training my stamina. It was a progressive form of torture.

At least Giulio wasn’t entirely evil, however. As soon as I set off, he was quick to join. He always kept pace with me.

We ran for another mile or so before Giulio veered off the streets and pulled us into a small grassy park that was, for the most part, empty. There were a few trees for sightseeing and fewer people, but that was about it. The park was still under construction.

I watched the piles of lumber lying about in the grass, wondered for a moment about what they were going to be some day, but then I remembered who was likely going to build with them and guilt clouded the mood.

“Let’s stop here,” Giulio said, wiping his brow.

When he pulled his sword off his belt, I reached for mine, thinking he meant to spar again, but then he tossed himself and the sword onto the grass. He rolled over to face the sun and let out a long, relieved sigh.

Thankful for a break myself, I sat on one of the nearby benches lined up along an unfinished, brick footpath that cut through the park. I set my sword down beside me and aimed a finger at my mouth.

“Water Ball.”

One obligatory chant later, and an underpowered ball of refreshment shot from my finger to wet my parched throat. I gulped it down greedily and cast another for good measure.

Just as I was seriously considering dumping one or two casts on my head to cool myself down, Giulio sprang back up into a sitting position. The impressive smile that impressed itself upon his face stayed put, even after he wiped at his brow again.

“Mio amico, could you spare a little mana for me as well?”

“Hmm? Whatever could you mean?”

“Come now. Don’t be stingy. My throat's drier than a salt mine on the sun. Please help me, or I might start hallucinating… Wait, were there always two of you?”

“Haha. Okay, okay. Here.”

I shrugged and aimed a finger at him. He opened his mouth wide, somehow without ever losing his smile as he leaned back onto his hands. It looked like he thought of this as a game and yet, he left himself utterly defenseless to what, on paper, was supposed to be an Adventurer’s attack spell.

Baffled by this man yet again, I decided to play along and shifted my finger off him and towards the sky.

“Heads up. Water Ball!”

“Woah!”

Another small sparkling orb of water shot upward an arc. Giulio jumped to his feet, eyes wide and his mouth wider. He shifted side-to-side, almost dancing as he followed the trail of droplets that peeled off the water ball.

The water quickly reached the zenith of its arch and started back down. Giulio’s feet stopped. He leaned back, then just before impact, he tilted his torso a little to the right and the water ball landed straight into his mouth. He gulped it down just as greedily as I had and grinned, evidently proud of himself.

“Ahh, that’s the stuff! Really puts the water wells to shame. I see now how that sort of spell is so handy. Can I have another?”

“Haha. Sure, why not? Water Ball.”

I fired another into the air and Giulio happily repeated the same dance to catch it. He almost looked like a puppy waiting for its owner to throw the ball in his hand – if he had a tail, it’d be wagging. He waited for the ball to drop and caught it again with ease.

“Another!”

“Alright then. How about we make this more interesting?”

This time I fired three water balls into the air, placing each one at a different angle. Then, when he was already focused on the first, I put a little more force into a fourth shot, causing it to soar higher than the rest.

“Hey now!”

Laughing to himself, Giulio stretched his neck to catch the first water ball. He gulped it down and sprang to his left to barely chomp down on the second. He then leapt to the right, landed awkwardly on one foot as he tried to catch the third. He’d misjudged the distance, but leaned hard to the side, his left foot flying up in the air with all the grace of a drunk ballerina.

He barely managed to catch the water ball in his mouth, but the slight force of its drop sent him tumbling to the ground, and just as he landed on his ass, the fourth shot splashed down on his head. His head and tunic were left drenched, but he slicked back his hair and laughed even more.

“Hahaha! As you can see, I was feeling a little full, so I let the last one cool my head.”

“Yea, sure. It was totally on purpose.”

“Good, you believe me then?”

“Absolutely.”

“Good. Good.”

After a quick nod to himself to play off his own joke, Giulio fell back into the grass again and spread out his arms. Soaked through both with water and sweat, he looked supremely relaxed as he basked in the warm sun.