Rein's boots dragged along the gravel land as he stared at the small pond surrounded by trees.
'Seriché and the others are probably far south by now'
Their plan was to go like by like, slowly working their way deeper into the forest. If they encountered anything they couldn't bear or required serous attention, they would reach here and regroup, consult dias and move back to monolithos.
As for rein....
"Now to start off, there's plenty forms of defense out there. Each one's different, got its own purpose, and it'll make all the difference in a fight if you use it right. You gotta figure which one suits your fightin' style best"
Dias sat on a large round stone beside the lake, fiddling a walnut sized pebble in his left hand.
"There's blockin', the most basic one. Then there's parryin', evadin', redirectin', interceptin', minimizin', and plenty more. It's important you know what you're after before you choose which type of defense you wanna prioritize on"
Rein looked at dias with a stale expression.
'what I want...?'
"Just something that makes me good at not dying...?"
Rein waited, then thought for a moment and said.
"No, actually. I want something that'll let me conserve the most energy and hit back"
Dias chuckled under his breath
"There ya go"
With that, he put the walnut sized pebble between his fingers, pulled his arm back and then swung it.
"!"
The small rock came towards Rein's head at frightning speed. Almost reaching him under a quarter of a second.
Rein turned his head barely enough to miss the pebble and not have it destroy his eye completely.
It did leave a small cut along his temple thought.
"Wha.... Are... Are you FUCKING OUT OF YOUR MIND?!"
Rein said, his hand wiping the small traces of blood building up at his temple.
"You gonna learn evade and redirecting"
Dias said, standing up and looking straight in reins eyes.
"And what better way to be learnin' than practical demonstration?"
"You're.... You're goddamn insane"
"Took ya long enough"
With that, dias took out a thin metal stick, it was around 70 cm long and barely 2 cm thick.
"I am gonna hit you, and you gotta evade. We clear son?"
"No, no, no we not clear. What if you injure me?"
Rein said in a steady but low voice, his brows knitted together tightly.
"It's fine, just push through the pain. I got healing potions"
Ah, ofcourse he did.
Healing potions, from what rein knew, were made from the blood, flesh and organs of a specific type of monster found near shien.
It would've been a giganticly expensive and important, if not for the fact that it was wholly ineffective to all Awakeners.
Though even then, it still is an extremely important and valued item, capable of working on over 1.2 billion people.
It's just that the conglomerate of rulers decided that an item of such importance simply cannot me monopolised. Thus, it was made to be a unprofitable item.
Simply put, the phou association, which controls, extracts, creates and distributes these potions, will give it to only those who need it. It cannot be used as a product to make profit.
Though rein doubted that that was what was actually happening, as he did hear deski mutter something about corruption spreading among the phou association.
"Shouldn't you be using it on something else. Something more important?"
"There ain't a lot of things more important than the emergence of a new Awakeners. The higher ups of the continent themselves be givin' Awakeners priority"
'.... Ah well. Anything to go forward, I suppose'
And with that, a metal stick was already appreaching his head from above.
Rein took a step sideways.
'its suprisingly slow'
Dias took a moment to study his foot work and said.
"Use the moment you gain from evadin' to attack. Judge which part 'ere is the most optimal space to move to"
"How?"
Rein said as he drew severer. His gaze did linger on the glinting blade for a while.
'whatever. I'll have to use it someday anyway'
"Keep yo eyes steady and known what's happening. Don't be movin' too quickly because you gonna give em even more leverage. Don't be movin' too late because you gonna die"
"Thanks captain obvious"
Rein said as he swung towards dias' shoulder, who responded by tilting the stick and simply letting the blade slide off of it, when severer almost reached dias' hand, dias pulled it backwars while pushing rhe metal stick upwards, and the blade alongside it.
Suddenly, rien found himself completely open.
He grit his teeth, sug his heel to the ground and pushed himself backwards, barely evading the metal stick that was aiming for his face.
'now he's swinging it faster'
"Be quick on your feet, distribute your weight evenly and don't fall down"
'oh boy'
Dias moved forward again
.
.
.
Rein submerged his hand in the water and washed his redenned wounds.
There were some cuts along his body, there were even more bruises, and there were even more parts that had redenned in a long line on his body.
Rein had taken off his shirt, his thin structure painted by the beatings he just took.
He's entire body was sore, and he was exhausted. During the whole.... Training, dias was throwing instructions at rein and somehow hoping he would put it into practice immediately.
Which he did, multiple times, but there were multiple times he couldn't.
He did learn two important things though.
First was that muscle memory matters a lot. Like a lot.
And second is that evading is mostly about speed and dexterity as well as presice perception of space. Redirecting is mostly about precise and refined skill as well as correct distribution of force and bodyweight.
By dias' own words, redirecting wasn't about putting a shitton of force and hoping it would throw the attack off its course, but about skill fully positioning you weapon and body and apply minimum force in such a way that you change the trajectory of the attack enough to gain an advantage.
Rein found the evading itself to be the esiar part, as he was good at space perception and being quick at his feet. The hardest part was redirection, because the smount of strength rein could but was just much less than what dias could, but he also had no idea on the positioning of his blade, footwork, body and many other things.
As for the training itself.... It was a misture of evading his strikes and redirecting them when he couldn't, evading he succeeded in, redirecting he didn't.
Dias' himself was a huge source of demonstration because rein could mimic his attacks and see how it was 'meant' to be redirected.
During the evading traning, dias would start slow, then progressively get faster after each swing. He would also increase the force behind the swing steadily.
Every time rein got hit, dias would reset and start back from slow.
So far, rein hadn't managed to evade past the 5th swing.
'he refused to give the potions... Which I get, because I am not in nearly enough danger plus... I couldn't even get a skill out of it'
Shionelle had explained on their way to here that skills weren't easy to get, it was actually the opposite and depended a lot more on thenature of the person, their body type, fighting style etc etc
Rein put his shirt back on as he glanced at the broken stick on the stone. It was broken in two pieces, but of them were damaged heavily except the base, where dias held it from.
He hadn't managed to land a strike on dias, but he had managed to break the stick.
Rein turned to stare at the sheathed severer.
'its really mysterious....'
Then, form the corner of his eyes, rein noticed shapes slowly appreaching them from behind the trees.
He instinctively put his hand on severer's grip, before realizing that it was just seriché, shionelle and deski.
Rein sighed and appreached them, seriché stared at rein for a while before offering a soft yet consoling smile.
Shionelle smirked and said
"You look exactly like I expected"
Rein stared at her impassively before turning to stare at dias who was also approaching them.
"Thank you very much for you consideration"
"Hm~"
She just smiled gleefully.
"So, what the news on them monsters?"
Deski was the one to respond after staring at seriché and shionelle.
"W—well. There were a lot more mistborne, like d—dozen more. We killed all of them, t—thankfully. As to what t—they were doing on this p—part of the continent.... I'd guess they are moving towards shein"
Seriché then spoke.
"Though their nest is closer to ivoryhold... my best guess is that this is a group that had wandered off and are now being called back. As to why they're being called back...."
Seriché hesitated for more than a moment.
Rein connected 2+2 and made some assumption.
"Either they're going to launch an attack on ivoryhold.... Or they're being attacked, and these are reinforcement?"
Shionelle snapped her finger and pointed toward rein while looking at dias.
"That's my guess too"