Weapons Hall

Mossy soon left to go back to her alchemist shop so John thought about what he should do first. 

In the end he decided to head to the Weapons Hall to check out the weapon's training since he could not even damage a rabbit before and thought he may as well learn unarmed combat at the very least. 

As he entered through one of the many entrances around the base of the Weapons Hall, he walked along a short hallway before it opened out into a huge open field. 

The center of the field was filled with hundreds of target dummies where lots of individuals from different races were practicing. 

John saw elves, fairy's, satyrs, Fauns, Centaurs and others all training with different weapons that were separated into sections. 

Each section had strange rings on the floor, and the rings with someone inside them seemed to glow slightly. 

One section was for melee weapons that had hundreds of target dummies spread a few meters apart from each other, while another was for melee combat where individuals were standing inside the ring and practicing punching and kicking, one elf though was hitting a strange wooden post that had other wooden parts on coming out of it. 

There was a long-range weapon section where elves, Centaurs and other creatures were practicing with the bow or crossbow. 

As he looked around, he eventually saw some individuals queuing up before some tables that had people sitting down behind them, so John went and joined a queue behind a Centaur. 

John was not sure about being behind the canter since he had heard stories of what happened when horses kicked a person, so he kept a bit of distance, the Centaur eventually noticed a human standing behind him. 

"A human, here?" The Centaur said in a rather loud surprised voice catching the attention of the other people queuing as well as some of the instructors who all showed surprised looks. 

"What are you doing here human? This is not your starting village." The Centaur asked. 

"That's something you would have to ask Tia since she was the one who placed me here." John replied simply, not willing to explain the whole story to a complete stranger. 

"Tia did? That's strange, however she must have had her reason." The Centaur then turned around and held out his hand before saying. 

"My name is Maeldres. Nice to meet you." 

"Vincarna, please to meet you also." John said, returning the handshake. 

"What weapon do you plan to train in? For me I of course have to hold up the pride of the Centaur race and train in the bow, spear, and sword." 

"Honestly right now I am not sure, I think first I will go with unarmed training and then maybe the sword, though not sure after that." 

"Hmm good choices, unarmed is helpful to you two legs and the sword is the king of all weapons." 

"Oh it is my turn next, good to meet you Vincarna, I hope we meet again" Maeldres said before going up to the now open table. 

After waiting for a moment Maeldres went off towards the long-range section so John stepped forward and approached the desk that was being attended to by another Centaur. 

"Well now this is a surprise, a human in Yesta Village, how did you gain entry to hear human?" The Centaur asked in a tone that was not hostile, just curious. 

"Mossy gave me a letter of invite after I helped her with a task." John replied 

"Mossy indeed? Well, if Mossy vouches for you then you're more than welcome here." 

"Welcome to the Training Hall." He said, opening his arms wide. 

"Here you can learn the basics of most weapons with hard work and repeated practice, lots of repeated practice." 

"I am trainer Giz'riner, what would you like to train in human boy?" 

"The name's Vincarna and to start with I would like to train in unarmed combat." 

"Ok first off you will have already noticed a strange ring on the ground that is glowing when someone is inside it." 

"That is the training ring and once you step into it all external noise will be eliminated so you can fully focus, also you will see a projection of an individual performing a move and your objective is to copy that move." 

"The projection won't change to a different move until you get that one right, and when all moves have been learned you will start over again." 

"You will want to train using the Wooden Man Post over there first, they are used to help you learn parry defense before you move on to the normal empty circles where you learn attack skills." Giz'riner pointing to the strange post John had seen before continuing. 

"A few things to remember, first you will naturally think that you should first focus on your power and try to hit it as hard as you can, this is wrong, you need to focus on your positioning and footwork first." 

"There are triangles on the ground beneath the dummy that will help guide you in where to put your feet when defending." 

"Try to always remain an arm's length away from the dummy, too far and you can't hit them, too close and you won't get full power behind your hits." 

"The post has three smaller wooden sticks sticking out, the top two are there to represent the arms of an enemy so you can practice your parry skill as if you were deflecting their attacks away." 

"The post below them and is pointing directly as your chest is there to help you keep an eye on where the target dummy is centered so you don't always have to look at the triangle on the ground." 

"Other than that, just follow the movements of the projection and don't give up, you can't get anywhere in training if you give up halfway." 

"Any questions?" Giz'riner asked. 

"How long am I allowed to train for?" John asked, which made Giz'riner grin. 

"For as long as you can last, the longer you train the better results you will see but remember push yourself too hard and you may end up dead" Giz'riner laughed at the end before saying. 

"Off you go then." 

John nodded and headed off towards an empty Wooden Man Post as instructed.