Chapter 6 - Training

Every morning of the first week Orion would make breakfast and after they both ate then he would take her out and teach her 5 different forms in a sequence and then have her do them 100 times. After she got that down he would show her how they went together and had her do the complete set 100 times and correct her mistakes. At the end of the week Orion had Sherly go through the forms with him, with someone from town playing a flute. Orion emphasized it was a dance that he called the dance of life. After the first round he told the flute player to speed up the tempo each round so what started slowly became a fast pasted fight as this happened more people came to watch and were in aww as the fist and kicks flew. Many had never seen such a fight. Many could not keep up with the blows as the speed kept increasing but many knew that she had only been training a week and was fighting in a way that many felt they could not keep up with they watched and saw it was not in anger but a beautiful dance of back and forth. When they hit the 40th repetition Sherly fell on her butt because she tripped. Orion helped her up and said "good job!! Now tell me what you have learned" Sherly took his hand and said "I learned that the 5 forms I learned every day are actually able to be combined into combination moves and the combinations can change with the situation, that much like a dance a fight depends on your movements and your partners movements. That the forms can be used to form different combinations and the repetition helps muscle memory and the way you describe it as a dance just makes it easier to learn and practice and the music just brought everything home". Orion smiles and says "this next week after your forms and combinations have been completed, we will dance and integrate all the forms. We will do like today and start slow and get faster each repetition. And starting tomorrow in the evening you will start on the sword forms you will learn 3 a night. And while we have so many Dwarves here, I want to see if you can fight one well". Then Orion announces to the dwarves "I will give an old-world gold coin to the first dwarf that can best my apprentice in hand to hand but its one at a time so if you want the chance line up ". Several dwarfs thought they could take her thinking she is just a girl. The first Dwarf lasted 1minute and was down and out. The second lasted half that long by the fourth one the rest shook their heads and said she was to fast and left. Sherly was shocked at how fast she has learned. She could not believe she had beaten 4 in a row and she wasn't even tiered. She heard the comments that she was too fast. She knew Orion was fast. But she never thought she was that fast. Next thing she knew Orion pulled out the wooden swords and showed her the basic downward swing, the basic side block, and the basic angle swing. And told her to do 100 of each. She noticed as she practiced with the wooden sword that her mana was moving with the swing of the sword. The more she practiced the more she connected with her mana and the more confident she became. She gained power with each swing. She could feel that it had to do with the fact the sword was alive. At the end of the 100 sets, she was exhausted but felt her mana flowing through her. Orion stepped out and showed her the steps combined and had her do them together then he corrected any mistakes and then said do 100. As She did, she learned how many flowed through her body and how it related to the sword swings not to wildly slashing but practiced movements. It amazed her she never knew she could move like this or that her movements could generate mana. She knew her demonic side had mana but this felt different purer like it was natural. She never had a master but with so little time she has learned so much that she never imagined was possible. The guy who taught her to be a mercenary did more just beating her than teaching her, Orion teaches her how to move and how to dance and she feels like singing. The more she trains the more she can feel it this means something. The power gained needs to be restricted by an oath otherwise people would use this power to be tyrants. After she went in and there was food and she could bath and relax. The next week was wake up eat learn 5 martial arts forms and practice them 100 times each then learn how to combine them and do 100 of them then a dance with the master to see how she was doing and then the 3 sword forms 100 times and then the sword forms combined then eat bath and sleep. At the end or the second week in the morning Orion walked out with the wooden sword and together they went through the martial arts and sword forms all combined. Like the week before it was slow at first then faster and faster till she was on her butt again then Orion smiles and says "you are doing very well you're rebuilding your mana pathways and hopefully feeling it build up in your body". Sherly confirms his statement and then Orion says "take today off because next week you will do nothing but train with the sword". And the next morning she learned 9 sword forms a day 100 times each and then learned how they combined and did them 100 times each.