History of The Fencing School

Though Jien would have liked to have spent the next few days on and off adding the 'Beginner's Introduction to Alchemy' to the repertoire of knowledge currently held in his Personal Library spell, he was not provided the time to do so continuously. He had been provided a lighter day in terms of training so that he could celebrate his birthday properly, but that didn't mean that his mentors were going to go easy on him following the occasion. In fact, they leaned into his training harder than ever.

Since he had been gifted both a rune enchanted dagger and a formation enchanted rapier both Mark and Emily forced Jien to use them in the following days of training. Jien was now fairly comfortable with the use of his rapier, being trained to wield it in either hand with decent proficiency. However, his training previously had been with the use of a training rapier which was both lighter than his gifted rapier and lacked the enchantments. Emily made sure to drill into him the use of the enchantments in their training, which now consisted mostly of sparring between teacher and student.

She had taught him the basics of fencing, she had passed onto him her teachings on precision, making sure that they were drilled firmly into his mind and muscle memory in a way that he would never be able to undo. This was a part of the small school of fencing that she prescribed to, only reaching back three generations beyond herself and she worked tirelessly in the time she was given to drill all she knew into Jien so she could then help him with what would be the final step in her training, though also the hardest.

Emily had explained her school of fencing and its history to Jien back when she started to train him, but it was now drawing nearer to the time where that history and the teaching method of the school would be coming into play. Emily's great grand master in the art of fencing was a self-taught woman. She was of a poor family on the borders of the Eternal Battlefield and struggled to live but when she made it to the age of fifteen and attended the military academy, she picked up a blade for the first time. 

Her blade of choice ended up being the rapier due to its light weight, but she didn't know how to actually use it properly. Of course, the military academy had been willing to teach her how to wield a blade, but the rapier being a dueling weapon mostly they didn't have a teacher specific to the weapon. As such they trained her in a number of basic sword forms that would be useful for a blade mainly based in piercing. At the time Emily's grand master devoured every scrap of knowledge she was given and had striven to bend it to the rapier even if it wasn't meant for such a light blade. She also spent time digging into any type of weapon that could be used in a piercing manner, whether a pull arm or a dagger and began to pull the similarities into a semblance of fencing art.

Of course, the art itself was far from perfect at first but over time she refined it into something usable. It was after her time at the academy that this young maiden chose not to continue with the military and instead work as a mercenary doing odd missions here and there. She used that time to further polish her style and in one of her adventures ended up taking in a young boy who had lost his only family member to the never-ending war. She took in and trained the boy in her own style of fencing even prior to his unsealing rite. This was done for both his own protection and to ensure that he wouldn't go through the struggles that she had in the military academy.

The boy eventually grew up and went his own way after being taught everything that could be regarding his mentor's style. He took her teachings and refined them by simplifying the techniques in his own way, maximizing the power while minimizing the energy spent. This was his contribution to the art and what made him the second one in the fencing school's lineage.

Emily's grand teacher passed down his knowledge of the fencing art when he grew older, passing it to Emily's own mother. He taught her the original art as well has his simplified version, allowing for a full understanding of the base of the school. It was at this point that the tradition was created. Emily's grand teacher told had told her mother to find a way to improve what he had passed on to her and make it her own before even thinking of passing her knowledge forward.

Emily's mother, Cassandra, did just that in the end. Though she struggled at first, she found what she felt the art given to her was missing, 'swiftness'. Though the art itself had been simplified and cleaned up by Cassandra's mentor it lacked an approach to be fluid and continuously flow into the next movement. So, she poured her time into learning how to make the movements more fluid, eventually coming to the decision that the use of air element spells and the use of mana manipulation would make the movements both swift and fluid in ways that the physical body alone would not be able to manage. With her teacher's help Cassandra was able to refine her own version of her mentor's teachings and those of his mentor before him.

Then came Emily herself, the only daughter of Cassandra, born to a middling family in a small village to the north of the Elitrix Empire. Cassandra trained Emily in the fencing art she had learned and advanced from a young age. However, where Cassandra's teachers had waited a decent amount of time, letting her attend the academy before asking her to make her additions, Cassandra informed her daughter immediately that though she would be taught the art, that she would be asked to improve upon it and to think about what she would add to it while she learned.

This separate approach was what allowed Emily to see the art and the school of fencing for what it was, a continuous path to be walked. The style was not 'perfected' like many styles claimed to be. It was something to be changed, something to be made one's own from the very beginning.

Emily chose precision as the topic of her own change to the style. Her mother's version flowed elegantly and had great power due to the use of air element magic and mana manipulation, but it lacked the precision to constantly aim for weaknesses and vital points, instead aiming to be a dance that would aim to cut the opponent to ribbons. Emily found that her mother's style may be more useful to other blades more than the rapier, but rather than bring this up she chose to do what she had been asked and build on what she had been given.

And now Jien was getting to the stage where he too would be asked to make his addition to the style and then realize it with Emily's assistance.