Chapter 28 - Back To The Basics

-Thwam!

Flynn and Aiden slammed into each other with immense force, knocking both of them unconscious for a few seconds as they collapsed to the ground.

Both of them had tried to pincer Frank by attacking him from both his left and right side but the butler had skillfully evaded them by spinning on his heels, causing both of their weapons to harmlessly swoosh past him.

He then used the momentum from his spin to grab both of them by the head and smack them into each other.

"Arrrggghhh!!!"

"Shhiiittt!!!"

Flynn let out a painful groan while Aiden cussed in pain as their heads collided with immense force, after which they both fell to the ground while rolling around on the floor, still reeling from the pain of the head shattering slam they had both just experienced.

"That's enough training for today young masters. You both lasted approximately five minutes today even with the immense pressure and bloodlust I was putting you under. That's a lot of progress compared to last month" Frank commented, his eyes returning back to its gentility from his previously cold and dangerous demeanor.

"I shall now go and prepare breakfast. We shall continue your training later in the evening" Frank continued with a bow, immediately transforming back into his graceful butler mode.

Aiden and Flynn who were still in immense pain and were still groaning on the floor, couldn't even respond to his words so instead, they both raised one of their hands up forcefully and gave a thumbs up with their fingers.

Frank gave a bow one more time before gracefully walking away from them and towards the mansion to cook their morning meals.

Although the duchess had told him several times that she would handle their meals pending the time he would be training both of her sons, he had respectfully declined her offer every time by telling her that it was his duty to do it since they had no chef.

However, Anna Belmont being the stubborn and strong willed woman that she was would still occasionally cook breakfast before Frank even had the chance to get to it.

As Frank walked towards the mansion, he couldn't help but be bewildered by how fast both brothers were adapting.

He had originally expected that both of them would require a lot of corrections and guiding but to his surprise, after each fight, both brothers would strategize and come up with new ways to take him down, all while improving and fixing whatever inefficiencies they had and taking all of his instructions into account.

A week after he had started training them, both brothers had stopped trying to use their weapon arts to attack him and just focused on the basics of normal swordsmanship.

As he continued thinking while heading into the mansion with the intent of going to prepare their breakfast and hoping that the duchess had not beaten him to it, he glanced over at Ivar from one corner of his eye who had been sitting underneath a tree in a meditative position with immense concentration even as Aiden and Flynn were being beaten to a pulp.

Frank smiled slightly at this and kept walking into the mansion.

After the butler had left for about 5 minutes, Aiden struggled to get up, staggering like a drunkard till he finally stood up properly.

"Master sure doesn't hold back…" he said with a painful grimace, his hands gripping tightly onto the greatsword even as he was barely struggling to maintain his stance.

"Yeah…" Flynn struggled to respond even as he lay sprawled on the green grass of their backyard, a tinge of pain present on his face.

He then got up a few seconds later in a similar fashion, almost like a puppet being controlled by strings. He was also gripping his Katana tightly.

This was the third Katana that he was using as the first two had broken during his training sessions with Frank.

The first one broke when he had tried using the {Severance}, the first form of the {Moonveil Art} while the second broke during a spar with Frank who caught his blade with his bare hands and snapped it in half like he was breaking a twig.

Although Flynn had an immensely strong visual representation of how to use the weapon art, his mana could not maintain the immense force involved in cleaving things in a single strike and as a result, the katana broke and shattered completely, living only the hilt intact.

He had been quite disappointed in himself for not being able to maintain it and also because he knew that it would take quite a while for him to be able to fully master it, all as a result of his low-tier C-rank core.

He still needed a quite a lot of mana to successfully and flawlessly pull it off and as a result, he knew that it might take about five to six months because he had estimated that it was the time it would take him to reach the next tier.

However, Leopold, Frank and Anna had been totally shocked that he could even pull off the first form of the most difficult weapon art to master, albeit very incomplete in just over two weeks.

This was something that took even the people who had successfully mastered it in the past close to a year to even understand it's concept, let alone pull it off. As a result, the three of them couldn't help but marvel once again at just how insanely talented Flynn was.

Aiden's prowess was just as amazing as Flynn's and it gave them just as much of a shocker as Flynn's even though he had also pulled off an incomplete version of {Whirlwind Slash}, the first form of the {Berserker Art}.

It was however to be expected considering they had all known that Aiden had always been very talented, but even then, it was still a magnificent feat.

Aiden and Flynn who had now stood up properly, took deep breaths and instead of going to eat breakfast, walked a fair distance from each other and began practicing basic sword moves.

They had both come to a singular conclusion after their first week of sparring and training with Frank.

"Our basic swordsmanship movements are absolutely shitty and we depend too much on magic and our weapon arts"

That was what they had told themselves.

As a result, ever since that day, for the past one and a half months, they had been practicing the basics of swordsmanship after every spar with Frank.

Frank who had also been planning to tell them about this after training them for a week was quite surprised when he had seen them practicing the basic swordsmanship moves after he finished sparring with them that same day.

Basic downward slash, upward slash, sideways slash and thrusts. Those were what they had kept practicing all this while without even practicing any other thing, asides training their mana cores and forming the mana veins.

Frank had also ensured to correct their footwork, breathing and posture, ensuring that everything blended seamlessly into one another without even a single mistake.

He had also explained to them that they should channel raw strength and power into every strike, making it so that whoever it was they had to face would be wary of even a singular strike from them.

While keeping all this information and corrections in their head, they kept repeating the exact same movements, sweats dripping from their face as they focused with great intensity on their sword strikes, every single one of it making a whistling sound as it cut through the air.

-Whish!

-Whish!

-Whish!

As they kept doing this, Ivar opened his eyes to see both of them continuously repeating the same motions.

He had also been vigorously training his mana core for the past one month and immediately he felt like he had reached his limit for the day, he would instantly pick himself up from the ground, go back to his room for a quick shower due to the sweat from training his core and then straight to the room in the mansion that the duke had remodeled into a laboratory.

Today was no different as well and Ivar, who after taking his shower, was heading to the lab.

-Pow!

Ivar had been just a few steps away from the doors of the lab and upon hearing the sound of a tiny explosion, immediately ran into the lab.

The moment he opened the doors, he was met with his sister whose hands contained a shattered vial of glass.

"I shouldn't have added thristlebloom…" Ivelia muttered audibly to herself while staring at the broken vial of glass in her hands.

She then turned around to look at Ivar who was just shaking his head in resignation as she spoke.

"Hey Ivar"

"Don't you 'Hey' me sis! You pulled another all-nighter didn't you?" he said with a bit of annoyance in his tone.

Ivelia just averted her gaze and looked away while turning around to face her apparatus.

Underneath her eyes were very dark circles and it was also very obvious from the scrunched up white lab coat that she was wearing and her disheveled hair that she had indeed pulled another all-nighter experimenting with the healing potion.

The reason for this, asides from Ivelia being an absolute workaholic and just been utterly grateful towards the Belmonts for taking them in was also because her father's documents only detailed how to push the potion's efficacy to about 96%, and as a result, there were no particular instructions on how to push it past that so it was unknown territory from here on out.

Ivelia and Ivar who had wanted originally wanted to get the potion's efficacy to 99% due to Briar's sickness, found an even stronger reason to push the potion's efficacy to its highest. Ensuring their dad's life work was completed, improved upon and made known to the world.

-Sigh…

"Just pass me a vial" Ivar sighed in resignation and said while picking up a lab coat from the rack beside the door.