CHAPTER 12: TRAINING (3)

It was morning, the sun rose, shining its rays upon the glorious sight of the everlasting snow landscape.

*Twitch*

Standing in the snow, Blu instantly felt a pain great enough to that it affected his heart till it nearly stopped.

*Thump*

Instantly he dropped to a kneeling position with both hands pressed on the white snow.

*Bleugh*

Eventually, he coughed up a mouthful of blood.

While he watched over, his blood painted the snow. Slowly, everything started to get blurry.

*Pant*

As he breathed heavily, from the rising amount of cold air entering his lungs.

Blu then instinctively raised his head forth, as everything started to appear in slow motion.

*Clang*

The sound of two metal striking filled the space as Blu could sight Aria wielding a dual short blade, attacking Dust, who also wielded an amethyst glove with a horizontal slash.

*Spark*

Sparks were sent off into the air each time Aria stroked Dust with the blade.

*Clang... Spark*

At first it looked like Aria was gaining momentum with each strike, but the level difference between her and Dust was too much. But she didn't give up, as she continuously followed through and attacking.

*Clang*

Striking from a guard stance, Aria cutting diagonally from left to right.

*Clang*

Followed by a drawing stance, cutting from right to left. Continuously from all directions.

*Slash... Clang... Spark...*

As each time she attacked. Her strikes were all parried by Dust's fist, as he was blocking and guiding her blade away with only the edges of his Amethyst gloves.

*Swoosh*

Aria then dashes backwards instantly, as she notices her attacks being fend off.

*Pant*

Exhausted from the rapid attacks, she breathe heavily sweating profusely.

"Five seconds more".

She whispered as she changed to a guard stance, gazing at Dust.

*Fwoosh*

Immediately she noticed, he disappeared phasing with the air.

*Jolt*

Her eyes dilated instantly, as she then noticed he appeared right in front of her. Shocked by the sudden development, in mere seconds, she froze in response.

*Bang*

Dust then struck a punch on Aria's pit with great strength, rendering her body up against gravity.

*Kuek*

Aria instantly felt her internal organs squashed on impact as she coughed up a mouthful of blood from the injury she received.

*Crasssshhh... Thump*

Meanwhile, after receiving the blow, Aria was sent flying into the snow crash-landing for a few seconds before finally landing behind Blu.

*Thump*

The blade Aria held then fell into the snow right at Blu's face.

To Blu, everything appeared in slow motion, but their fight had been going for more than 10 minutes.

'When did it get to this?'

Blu pondered watching the match between Aria and Dust.

*Kuek*

Blu then heard the sound of Noire coughing up beside him.

"Huh!"

Glancing right, Blu notices his friends laying on the dry snow after being taken out by Dust.

'When did our normal training sessions change to a death match?'

Let go back a few weeks ago.

***

After we were given weapons for training.

"Now after you have all selected your weapons, am giving you all 5 minutes to get ready, your real training starts now".

Dust said with a large voice while he stared at us.

Perplexed by his statement, I began to think.

'What does he mean by real training? All we have here are... W-Weapons?!'

As I glanced at the weapons at hand, I took notice.

'I see the real training must mean a duel with our trainer'.

"But I don't know anything about fighting... Shh...

Huh! Fighting?"

Whispering my thoughts, I felt a strange sensation over my head.

"2 minutes left".

He shouted out, informing us about our time limit. The rest then also took to notice that the time limit was for the duel against Dust after a couple minutes of pondering.

'What's with this feeling?'

I pondered as the eerie feeling was that of déja vu—'It feels like I know how to fight even though I had never fought before'.

"If it's this, I feel like I can fight him off".

Reminded of the first fight, every reincarnated protagonist's feeling wasn't strange to me, as I knew it would all go well.

"1 minutes".

He shouted again, but this time as he noticed us all taking our amateur guard stance. Dust then wore on a white glove with three blue stripes on the base of his hand.

'OK, let's do this. All I have to do is follow the instructions in my head, and I can struggle back a little'.

Ignoring the gloves, I then said to myself.

"Now let's start".

He shouted out after putting on the gloves.

*Fwoosh*

They say that—"Experience is the best way to learn", that day I understood the perspective of those words.

From that day, we were all flat out beaten, without any option of throwing in the towel.

And that continued everyday, we were all sent flying with his punches from our faces, pits, legs, bones and any other parts he could find as our blind spots were attacked.

It was a beat down without mercy from our sides.

***

'But today, after weeks of getting beat down. I was able to observe all his attack points, and together we were all able to come up with a full proof plan to take him down'.

***

"So how would we be able to attack him once when he's like a monster?"

Drok asked as he wondered about the sudden change of plans.

"We don't need to attack him, all we need is buy time for the main attack".

"Even if he is a monster, of course he has to have some limits to his strength, so all we need to do is attack him by surprise when his guard is down".

"And when he does, we simply have to weaken him more".

"What do you mean weaken him more?"

Blu smirk as he said.

"Hehe... using the new improved explosion spells".

Normally all spells

Blu then brought out spell crystals with blue runes on them.

'Explosion spells, they all are small amethyst crystal balls inscribed with runes in them. Using the knowledge of whatever they gave us, I was able to configure the runes inside the spells to different types of explosion and that's—'.

***

A smoke screen.

*Jolt*

As Dust noticed, Aria was no longer able to move after the low blow. He then instantly felt a sensation, as then glanced under his feet, there was a small spell.

*Boom*

The spell then went off, sending a gray mist into the air, covering the whole area around Dust.

Perplexed by the whole situation, Dust then stood still anticipating the test subjects next attack.

On sighting the spell going off, Blu smiled, recalling the talk he had with his friends.

***

"I don't think that's still going to work".