8 Chapter 7: Knife Training

"Dana, wake up."

Dana was still sleeping when someone suddenly shook her and said those words.

"Ugh, five more minutes..." she groaned and tried to pull the sheets further over her head. This proved to be a futile action as the person who tried to wake her up just pulled them back of her again.

She shivered for a moment when she lost the familiar warmth of her bed and winced some more when the whole cover was pulled away.

"Come on, Dana. Wake up." the voice spoke again. This time the impatience in her voice unconcealed.

She opened her eyes with seemingly great difficulty and saw the familiar sight of Mary with a frown on her face.

"We were supposed to start morning duty, remember? This is the reason the sisters see you as lazy, you know?" Mary continued, still with the familiar frown but this time alced with a sigh.

"Ugh, alright. I got it, I got it..." Dana responded, still not entirely awake, before setting of towards the well to wash off. The day was off towards a great start.

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"Alright Dana. Are you ready?"

She looked up and saw Father Alexanderstanding before her. Morning duty was just finished and she was cleaning up the stuff she used when he called her out.

"Yup," she responded, "let's go!"

He smiled. It's good she's enthusiastic about training? If it was against her will she won't make good progress.

"Alright then, let's go." he continued.

They kept walking away from the orphanage and out of the town's walls until they came across the familiar forest around the town. They stopped once they were a good ways in but not far enought for wild beast to randomly attack them. He looked around for a bit and nodded as if satieisfied with something.

"This should do." he said while taking a packet out of his cassock and layed it before him. "See what's inside."

Dana walked over to the package full of anticipation and opened it up like it was a present for her birthday. When she opened it up she saw a dozen blades around 20 cm long made of shiny metal, presumably iron. It seemed he opted against using silver ones in practice. They were forged out of a single piece of solid metal and were shaped in a teardrop shape with a small crossguard and handle of around 5 cm.

She picked one up and balanced it upon her finger. It was really interesting how it was shaped like this and was still perfectly balanced. It didn't weigh that much, around a glass of water, so she could throw them around with ease.

"Happy? Those are for practice-time. When you are more proficient I will give you ones made out of silver but those will be smaller, mind you, so you will have to practice to get used to them." he remarked.

"How come?" she questioned.

"Silver weighs more than iron, so the knives must be smaller. It's easier to get used to a new shape than a new weight in my opinion."

"Oh, okay."

"Well, you will probably need to wear gloves because of the silver so here you go." he said while he tossed a pair of leather gloves towards her.

"Wear those during practice or equip your gauntlets as thet perform the same function. For now, just wear those until you get used to the knives and we'll see what comes after."

She nodded and put them on. She picked up the throwing knives and turned to Father Alexander with a look as if to say 'what's my target?'. Needless to say, she was very eager to begin.

He chuckled. 'So impatient.'

"Calm down, Dana. Your target will be that tree over there." he said and pointed to a young spruce tree about 5 meters away from them.

She turned to the tree, all but ready to throw at it when she heard his voice again: "Once again, calm down, Dana. There is a proper way to this. you can't just throw them haphazardly, there is technique involved as well."

She turned around to look at him, "Oh? How so?"

"First of all, relax your body. You need to throw you knife as if it is an everyday occurance, like walking for example."

"Hm." she nodded.

"Second, stand up straight and basically do the same as you do with your Pugilist training. Right foot forward and left foot slightly behind and grab your knife with the thumb and the forefinger. We'll begin with grabbing the blade itself, since that is easier to begin with. Stand a little closer to your target, around 2 meters to begin with."

She did as he said and stepped closer to the tree until she was around 2 meters away from it. She gripped the knife and tried to relax before throwing it.

It hit the tree but not where she aimed at. She frowned

"Don't mind it if it doesn't land at where you intended it to. Just focus on hitting the target and making sure the blade stays lodged into the tree."

They kept doing this for a while, Dana throwing and Father Alexander correcting her and giving advice, until he finally stopped her.

"Alright, that's enough." he said as he stopped her, "It's about time I send you to Bratt to train. We'll continue tomorrow and then I'll show you another technique to throw things."

"Alright."

They quickly cleaned up and walked back towards the town and the orphanage. When they arrived at the orphanage, Dana quickly made her way to her room to grab her gauntlets and dashed to the training field. She arrived just in time to see the others finish their warming up exercises and joined them.

"Alright everyone, since verybody is here let's start with the training. I want all of the warrior students to pair up with similarly armed people while the mage students go to their instructor."

Everybody did as they were told though not everybody knew why they had to do this. One student n particular had a very happy expression.

"We'll start with doing mock battles against eachother. This is make you experience fighting more and maybe to let you see your own flaws in your fighting style. Don't fight to wildly though, I don't want to go to Father Alexander and explain why some of my students have broken bones or something."

Dana was paired up with the only other Pugilist user present here. He was a boy of around 13 years old and had brown hair like her own and bright blue eyes. He wore the standard leather gauntlets the Guild gave out. He put his hand out for a handshake to which she responded in kind. AFter they shook hands he put his guard up and assumed a normal looking boxing stance while she did the same.

She was a bit nervous. She wasn't looking down on him but she knew she was stronger than nirmal children and even some adults. She didn't really want to accidentally injure him.

Her opponent clearly didn't have these thoughts and immediately went on the offensive. He knew she wasn't a normal child and wanted to win before she had the change to respond to him and knock him out. In technique he was above her but in absolute, raw strength he lost to her. Badly.

Dana saw the fist coming towards her, shaking her out of her thoughts. She quickly guared and crossed her arms to catch the fist and minimize damage.

The fight had begun.