8 - Harsh Training!

"First up is sword training kid. This is the most important aspect. It will also be the replacement for your morning runs, functioning as your physical training method. This will be what your entire fighting style will revolve around. As you have a pretty lean physique, it would be best to focus on mobility-based swordsmanship. I will be teaching you how to quickly dispose of your enemies using swords in the fastest way without wasting any movements or energy. However to get to that stage, your basics will need to be firm, so we will start with that." Elijah explained. 

"Claire while we train, you do the usual. Don't get hit a single time." Elijah instructed Claire. Arthur was confused about what 'the usual' was, so he observed Claire. Out of her body, a clone stepped out, leaving behind streaks of light while emerging, that quickly disappeared once the clone fully formed. "What the hell?" Arthur asked out loud.

Claire smirked at him, before saying "My Essence is 'Illusion'." Arthur's eyes got wide in surprise. He for sure didn't expect that. Claire and her clone went off a bit further from Arthur and Elijah, creating a sword out of thin air and then instantly beginning their sparring. They were moving at incredible speeds, disappearing and reappearing every time they swung. Despite that, neither of them managed to hit each other. They were incredibly good at dodging!

"Okay, enough watching her, focus on me." Elijah said with a smirk. Arthur quickly realized and focused back on him. "Take this." Elijah said, throwing a wooden sword, which Arthur quickly caught.

"The basics are very simple and very repetitive. However they are the foundation of everything else, therefore they need to be honed to an incredible degree before I teach you anything new related to swordplay. 

You will first learn the 8 main basic attacks. There are basically 8 angles of attack with a sword when cutting - straight down, straight up, diagonally down to the right, diagonally down to the left, diagonally up to the right, diagonally up to the left, and left and right strikes horizontally.

While other angles are theoretically possible, they are all pretty much variations of the 8 main attack angles - as are thrusts. " Elijah explained, Arthur listening attentively.

"If you want to win a fight, it's best to make the first move instead of waiting for an opportunity to attack. Kill the opponent before he even has any time to react. You need to be quick, precise, and deadly." Elijah said. 

"So first we will focus on your attack. Repeat all 8 basic angles of attack in random patterns until I tell you to stop." Elijah instructed Arthur, who quickly did what he was told. He repeated the motions of all 8 attack angles and mixed their patterns up. 

"Don't just swing with your arms, use your entire body!" Elijah said, Arthur quickly heeded his advice and tried to use it. "Your left foot back a bit more, back straight!" Elijah kept giving him instructions as Arthur was practicing his attack. "When you attack with any of the lower 4 attack patterns, squat down a bit and use the energy from your legs to propel your sword!" And so they kept practicing for 3 hours. This entire time Claire had been practicing with her clone, not getting hit once. However, even though she was completely out of breath by now, of course moving at incredible speeds while having to use your full attention to not get hit by a single attack for 3 hours was extraordinarily taxing.

Arthur was completely exhausted as well by now, however, he was only at the beginning! "Okay, enough. Both of you rest for 10 minutes, then come back." Elijah gave them a small break.

"Haaa...haaa..." Arthur gasped for air, falling to the ground. Claire walked towards him and fell to the ground next to him. "You did this daily?" Arthur asked. "Basically since I could walk." Claire responded.

"Your Essence, it's very interesting." Arthur complimented her. "Thank you. But that's about all it is. It is just a distraction, it can't cause any real harm. I would've preferred if I had something like Dad's Essence to control lightning, or Mom's Essence to create explosions." Claire admitted.

"Yea sure but I think your Essence has much more potential. I mean in a fight it doesn't really matter who can output more power or whose Essence is more powerful, in the end, it just matters who's more skillful and can defeat the other person. Your Essence is incredibly useful for actual real battles, after all even just distracting an opponent for a split second can be the difference between life and death." Arthur said, highlighting the good points of Claire's Essence.

"I guess you're right." Claire said, gaining a new perspective. Arthur and Claire continued to have a casual conversation for the next 10 minutes, drinking some water and resting before the next phase of the training began. 

Elijah appeared next to them. "Okayyyy, that's enough resting! Come on get up!" He said in a cheerful tone, earning a pair of grunts. Arthur and Claire got up and readied themselves for the next part of training. 

"Claire since you are already proficient at the important universal Zeal techniques, you will focus on your Zeal manipulation and constructs. Form a triangle made out of Zeal that spins towards the right with your left hand. Form a square that spins towards the left with your right hand. Keep both of them up at the same time while also using Zeal reinforcement on your body." Elijah said. Arthur was perplexed at the difficulty of her task. Doing all this normally would be hard, much less if you have to do it with Zeal! Arthur remembered some old mental training in his previous world where people would try to write a word in the air with their left index finger while at the same time writing a different word with their right one. He suspected it was similar to that, probably just much, much harder. 

Claire once again went a bit further away, sitting down and closing her eyes. Completely focusing on her task. She held her hands out and a white glowing triangle and square materialized themselves. They began to slowly spin in opposite directions, a lot of hiccups occurring throughout it. The constructs disappeared and reappeared a lot during the training, the stability wavering.

"Arthur, you will learn the very basics of Zeal techniques. The first one will be reinforcing your body with Zeal, temporarily strengthening it in the process. This is a similar process to awakening your Essence. However, instead of trying to guide your Zeal towards your core, you will instead use the Zeal from your core and guide it to the rest of your body, reinforcing it with Zeal in the process." Elijah explained. 

Arthur quickly got to it. He could now feel all the Zeal in his body, everything in the core, and all the Zeal in his veins as well. He closed his eyes and willed his Zeal from his core towards his veins. Since it was a very similar process to awakening his Essence, he already had experience manipulating his Zeal in this manner and managed to do it pretty quickly. He felt strength overflowing from his entire body. He opened his eyes and punched the ground.

Crack! The ground cracked from the force of his punch. His strength had increased by an incredible amount! "Good job. Like I said, you truly are gifted in the ways of Zeal. However, don't think everything will come as easy. After all, you need to be able to keep this up during combat!" Saying that, Elijah attacked Arthur. 

Arthur quickly blocked the move with his arms, losing his concentration and not reinforcing it with Zeal. Elijah's punch threw Arthur dozens of meters back, hitting the ground and bouncing up from it multiple times. Obviously, Elijah had adjusted his strength to match that of Arthurs's endurance, he didn't want to hurt him too much of course. "Argh...fuck." Arthur said, standing up and cleaning the dust from himself. He looked towards Elijah and saw him quickly approaching. He reinforced his body with Zeal and sparred with Elijah.

Elijah held back an incredible amount, it was like playfighting a toddler. Arthur on the other hand was giving it his all. He knew Elijah was holding back unbelievable amounts however he didn't care for that. He simply focused on himself, improving his reinforcement and gaining practical fighting experience. He didn't care for winning over Elijah as he knew that wasn't possible, he simply wanted to improve himself. This was exactly what Elijah had hoped for, so they kept fighting and fighting. 

Throughout the spar, Elijah lost concentration of his reinforcement multiple times, which caused him big consequences whenever he blocked or got hit by the next attack without reinforcement. Arthur didn't manage to land a single hit on Elijah, however he felt himself learning a lot and becoming faster throughout the fight. 

An hour later, Arthur's Zeal reserves were almost running dry. "Reinforcement is not as easy as you thought at the start huh? It isn't a simple process of 'on' and 'off', it has levels to it. The amount of Zeal you possess, the amount of Zeal you can manipulate into your veins from your core, how fast you can do it, and especially how efficiently you do it all factor into how well you can perform this technique. When you manipulate your Zeal into your veins, Zeal gets lost in the process because of your unsatisfactory levels of Zeal manipulation. You need to train more because at this stage you won't be able to use that technique for long and it will eat through your Zeal reserves. The more proficient you become at Zeal manipulation, the less Zeal you will lose during this process." Elijah explained everything as simple as he could, making it a point not to let Arthur develop an ego. After all, he knew how it felt to be very good at something, especially at something that makes you superior to other people. He also knew just how much ego could affect your training and fighting, so he made sure Arthur would stay humble. 

Arthur took his words to heart and made sure to train his Zeal manipulation. "I understand." Arthur said firmly. "Good job. Unfortunately, you don't have enough Zeal left for training your Essence today, so I will teach you two new things in the mental training method instead. Before we do that, however, I have to let you know that the previous method of mental training can be ignored for now. That method is solely to enter your inner world and awaken your Essence. 

The actual real mental training method is meditating and manipulating your Zeal throughout your entire body. Similar to your inner world technique and zeal reinforcement technique. However instead of either pulling the Zeal into your core or pulling it out of your core into your veins, you will instead circulate it throughout your body. Imagine it to be blood and your core being your heart. You will manipulate your Zeal to traverse your entire body, starting from your core and doing an entire course before once again ending up in your core. This in a continuous loop of course, so you're basically constantly manipulating your Zeal throughout your body." Elijah explained the method on how to perform the actual mental training method. 

"This will allow you to train your Zeal manipulation. Training this will allow you to manipulate more Zeal faster into your techniques, allowing you to perform them in a quicker and more powerful way. It will also increase your proficiency at using Zeal, reducing the amount of wasted Zeal and increasing its efficiency. Lastly, it will also increase the quality of your Zeal, allowing you to perform your techniques more powerful while keeping the amount of Zeal used the same." Elijah explained all the benefits of this technique. Arthur was shocked at just how good it was! If he trained this enough, couldn't he basically use no Zeal or a negligible amount of Zeal in his body reinforcement? It would also be much stronger than before!

"This is what you will be primarily doing when training using the mental training method. As for the second method, it's how to gather Zeal from the nearby atmosphere and 'recharge' yourself. You will manipulate your own core to function as a 'magnet' and pull nearby energy towards it. It is similar to your inner world technique, just instead of pulling the Zeal existing in your veins, you pull from the nearby Zeal outside of your body. Doing this will help you fill your Zeal reserves up a lot faster than before, allowing you to train even more." Elijah explained with a smirk. Despite the implications of having to train even more, Arthur was happy to learn that technique as well. After all, he really hoped to learn more about his Essence today but his low Zeal capacity hindered him.

"Got it boss! I'll focus on the recharging technique first." Arthur said, earning a chuckle because of the boss. He quickly went into a meditative position and started to perform the recharge technique.