Chapter 18

As Gil and Tash got back to the castle, Gil headed to the training hall and Tash went to drop her shopping of, as they where opposite each other Tash offered to drop his of in his room seeing how eager he was to train. Thanking here he ran of the the training hall closes to the dorms. As Gil ran the wind on his back caused his cloak hood to flip up, but Gil didnt care.

As Gil entered the hall he walked over to a dummy not being used, this was near the centre of the hall where people tended to leave as most people could see. Gil took a breath like he normally did before fighting anything and gripped his sword handle, when his last finger grasped the handle he felt a sudden power rush through him. Drawing the blade he performed the same action he always did with the school sword. He made an upwards diagonal slash on the dummy, when the tip of the blade left the dummy he instantly altered his grip and performed a sort of C slash. This slash went from the tip left of the dummy to where the shins of the dummy would be, since the moment he drew the blade to when it left the bottom of the dummy it had been less the 4 seconds. When Gil had done this with the school sword it had taken around 6-7 seconds.

"Nice sharp edge, and well balanced, but the it looks like the blade will snap at any instance" Gil thought.

[Swordsmanship activated]

Gil now tried performing combinations starting from different positions to see how the system would guide him to move.

Rose had left Will and Jade at the village and headed back to get some training done, although see was in the support group her role needed some combat experience. Her role was a scout, as she had the power of speed se could choose which part to partake in. She had opted for one that would allow her some action but would ultimately be safer then an attacker. When she entered the training hall she used one of the wooden dummies that was split in 4 different parts with 2 beams sticking out of them, when one of the beams was hit it would spin causing the other to come round. Rose brought out two wooden daggers and started to hit and block the first two levels getting baster and faster.

She was completely focused when she was a man dressed all in black walk up to the dummy in the middle.

"There probably covering themselves to hide from humiliation" Rose thought as she slowed down to watch, others did the same expecting the hooded figure to try something flashy and fail. The figure reached behind him and started to attack, in an instant a blade shot out causing a slice to appear on the dummy in the next second the figure was attacking the feet.

"Would i be able to react to that?" Rose thought forgetting to block the pole coming at her chest causing her to stumble back. When she looked bask at the hooded figure they where performing flips in in the air and weird slashes, and as Rose looked round she saw others stop and look.

"Who's that hooded figure and what type of weapon is that"

"Where can i find that hood"

"Whos that"

"Go and challenge him"

Rose could here lots of different people talking and ignored the last comment as she thought it was a joke that anyone here could face him. The strongest fighters tended to use training grounds away from others.

Just when the the figure performed a front flip slamming the blade over halfway through the dummy, the force caused a gust of wind to flip his hood up revealing his Silver hair. This was all people needed to identify the boy.

For 30 minutes Gil trained like this until Tash arrived and both left to go to the library. Spending the rest of the day there Gil had read 4 different book and Tash brought some to read for Sunday. Both heading back the to dorm, Gil noticed two things when we walked through his door. First being that Tash has put away the items he brought so they weren't lying in the floor. The second and more obvious was that Leon was sitting on the desk chair reading a book.

"Nice to see you Gil, you sure do spend a lot of time training." Leon said with a light chuckled.

"Oh, HI Leon what could i do for you?" Gil was never sure how to talk to Leon, he was so much stronger then Gil that he still couldn't see anything other then his name whilst inspecting him.

"Ive noticed you have got a new sword, im here to collect the one i gave you before" Leon said handing out his hand.

"Ah here." Gil fumbled drawing his old sword giving it to Gil.

Standing and taking the sword from Gil Leon headed to the door.

"Make sure you have practice with this before the exam on Monday, even though they are both swords the characteristic are very different." With that Leon turned to the door to leave, but walked straight into the door. At the last second a rift opened and Leon disappeared. Heading to bed Gil thought about how to train in the morning.

Waking up Gil got changed and left his cloak in the dorm, he stared doing he morning run and found a empty training arena near the lake, walking in he hoped his plan would work. He rose as many strong earth pillars as he could and 12 came, each different size and shape.

"Perfect, now to do some strength training waiting for my mana to replenish." Gil thought starting to do some push ups and sit ups. After 30 minutes he felt like he could start his plan.

Facing the army of stone pillars Gil raised his sword and started attacking them.

"Not to deep.... Not to shallow..... Nearly there" These thoughts ran though Gil mind as he started chipping away different parts of the pillars.

"Now on to step two" Walking back Gil raised his hands and started firing elemental needed aiming at the slashes he made in the pillars. After firing the element needles at the larges slashes Gil sent mana blasts at the smaller slashes. He repeated this until all the pillars crumbled to the ground. Summoning more stone pillars Gil repeated the same.

Slash's.

Element needles.

Mana blasts.

Raising stone Pillars.

Repeat.

Gil kept doing this until the sun was in the middle of the sky, having a break for some food and a drink he got ready to continue.

"So he raises the pillars to sizes consistent with goblins, then attacking where the neck, kneed and stomach is with a sword, following it up with different elements after… interesting." Ava said watching Gil train. Leon had mentioned he trained harder then most but this was a shock to her.

"Attaching those spots that normally have the least defence is a good idea, the length of the slice should take down a normal goblin and the mana attacks definitely would" She thought to her self. Just as she was about to look on other students Gil had placed both hands on the ground.

Gil was attempting to summon a stone pillar that would be the same size as a hob goblin, the goblins where 2 meters tall and about 1 meters across. Closing his eyes and a huge pillar emerged.

"Hob Goblins have less armour then normal goblin but are much stronger, when attacking I need to picture how the monster will react" Gil thought as no monster would stand there and allow chinch's to be cut from them.

[Shadow fighting learnt]

[Shadow fighting lvl 1

An object will be replaced by the image of a monster in the users mind. The better the understanding of the monster the better the shadow image will be]

Gil activated the skill and saw the pillar slowly changed into something resembling the hobgoblin he saw from the books he read. He started to swing his sword at the pillar when he felt the need to jump backwards, looking at it there was an phantom arm slowly melting into nothingness, charging back in Gil started attacking the pillar like he did with the dummies mixing in sword work and mana attacks. Every now and then he would raise his sword, for a shield or jump backwards.

"Is he picturing a monster whilst fighting" Ava thought, she decided to stay longer and soon confirmed her idea.

Gil spent the next 8 hours training this was and by the time he finished he was plastered with sweat as he only stopped every now and then to allow his stamina and mana to build back up. Heading back to the dorm he washed and went to bed forgetting to eat since lunch.