These late night hours were all too peaceful, not a single soul in sight. Azriel found himself enjoying it, thinking that maybe he should start waking up earlier. All the things he could do without being disturbed, it was an attractive thought.
He stepped inside of the training hall, which was of course, empty. Smiling, he turned on the lights, which were once again provided by the Magician's Guild.
Now lit up, the training hall was a fair-sized room with a wide open wooden floor for classes. It also had some other things, like a few magic powered training dummies to train your swordsmanship, and some equipment to train your strength. Both of these had been placed off to the side.
Azriel walked over to a stand and grabbed a wooden training sword that was close to his own sword in terms of weight and length.
He went to the wide open floor first and started out by practicing drawing and resheathing his sword. It was one of the most core moves in a knight's arsenal. You never when you would have to be ready to fight, it wouldn't do to fumble with your sword at the wrong moment.
Naturally, he was already had that down perfectly by now, he had been training for many years after all. But it wasn't good to become complacent, both the instructors and Sir Edward had hammered that into him many times. Just practicing it a few times everyday, would make sure his moves stayed crisp so he'd be ready for anything.
When he was satisfied, he went on to practice his stance, as well as a few strikes and thrusts. No flashy moves were part of his daily training, it was all about the fundamentals. Only with solid fundementals could a knight adapt, and overcome any situation.
Feeling sufficiently warmed up, he practiced a bit on the training dummy's, but it wasn't worth much. Although he felt faster and stronger than ever as he trained, the dummies wouldn't make him a better swordsman. He had long since graduated from the daily ritual of tirelessly striking and thrusting at dummies.
They couldn't hit back, and they didn't even move. All they had going for them was the magic that had been infused into them, which allowed them to withstand most damage you could do to them. Even then, magic wasn't perfect and they had to be replaced once every so often.
But they were useful to the younger trainee's, and pages as well. When Azriel had been a page in Sir Edward's household, he had been required to practice on a dummy for two hours every single day.
This requirement was made of the other pages as well, which made it a bit troublesome as Sir Edward only had one of those dummies in his household, and 6 pages. It brought a smile to his face as Azriel thought back to those times.
Things were so different now, the Royal Academy had six dummies, and not many people bothered to use them. And his future was looking brighter than ever. In just a few short years, he would be dubbed a knight. Perhaps by the queen herself, as was tradition for most of the knights that came out of the Royal Academy.
Yes, the future would be grand, he was sure of it. With another smile, he decided to get some weight training in before breakfast.
He placed his usual on the barbell, and laid down to train. He set into position, arching his back and driving his legs into the ground, pinching his shoulders, he pushed the weight up off of the rack.
It felt… Lighter than usual.
As he slowly lowered the weight to his chest, he was even surer of it. Had he grown stronger? He couldn't seem to stop smiling today.
He easily lifted and lowered the weight, and even put a few kg more onto the barbell, to see where his new limits where.
He was easily able to handle 10 kg more, big improvements like that rarely happened from training session to training session.
He went through the rest of his training regimen, surprised to see he had improved in all the excersises.
Finally he finished up with some core excersises, which was perhaps the most important to a knight. Armor was heavy, and swinging a heavy sword far away from your body required a strong core, and a strong body. Therefore most of the training focused primarily on compound movements and core. Of course stamina and agility were also important, so the instructors regularly took them on long runs, and made them train sprints.
Once he was done, Azriel wiped the sweat off of his forehead with his sleeve. He put the wooden sword back in it's rack and turned off the light, leaving the training hall.
He hurried back to his room, eager to practice his breathing excersises before breakfast.
In his room, he took a seat on the dark hardwood floor and placed his hands on his thighs. These breathing excersises were important, perhaps more important than strength training. Through getting in tune with their body, knight's were able to slightly surpass the human potential, growing stronger through arduous dediation.
Due to this, most breathing excersises were only passed down from the royal family, or within the Royal Academy. This made the knight's trained here far stronger than knights, who were trained solely by a knight, and never went to the Royal Academy. This is what would've happened to the other pages who trained with Azriel under Sir Edward.
Azriel calmed his thoughts, so he could start to get in tune with his body. And soon, his breath too began to slow, as he followed the breathing excersise.
His blood began to circulate in accordance with his breath, he was now fully in tune with his body. But strangely… Something was lacking. It didn't feel as it was supposed to. This shock almost brought him out of tune, but he had enough practice to calm down and bring himself back.
But it still didn't feel right. No, something was definitely missing. Everything was taking place as it should be, but that spark… That tingling feeling he always felt in his stomach wasn't there. It couldn't be felt in the slightest.
Stubbornly he pushed on, but this only brought him further out of tune. Finally, his body able to take it no more, he coughed up blood.
His thoughts began racing, pondering over what exactly had just happened. He knew better than to keep pushing, but in his slight panic he had done so anyway.
Shaking his head, he cleared his thoughts again. It did no good to panic over it now, and it could've gone much worse. He had heard the horror stories of student's who had been stubborn in their approach, and paid the price for it. He would just have to ask Sir Edward or one of the instructors for guidance some time.