"Hello, Seraph!" Astrid approached with a dazzling smile on her face, Seraph instinctively took a step back and her sudden interest in him made him confused.
"H-Hello." He regretted stopping and waving his hand. Astrid looked beautiful in all sense of the word, She was the school's top beauty and now 'here' she was wearing a sexy mage outfit and standing way too close!
The conversation turned awkward, That's if you could call their awkward staring contest a conversation. Seraph was staring at her in silence with a confused look on his face while Astrid was staring at his face with a smile on her face.
The first to interrupt the awkward silence was Astrid "Sooo… How was your day?"
Seraph replied with a nervous chuckle "The day just begun...uhh.. I don't know yet, but it looks like it's gonna be a good day... "
"Oh- Ha ha..." Astrid responded and let out an equally nervous chuckle which surprised Seraph a bit. Astrid was known to get along with people, Able to start a conversation from nothing and spark a connection between people with her words and intellect. However, here she was nervous to speak to him.
'What did i do?' Seraph thought quickly 'I never seen her for like a week... did I do something before that?'
"Yesterday." Astrid continued "Yesterday, I saw you and the janitor training…"
"Yeah?" Seraph didn't know what she was going with.
"I just wanted to say, keep it up!" She pumped her fist in the air "The training looks really hard and… You're really working hard!"
"Thank you." Seraph smiled slightly, he was happy to be complimented by her even though he really did dislike her. He still liked someone recognizing his hard work even if he did just work out for an hour for a single day...
"You're always being bullied so I'm happy that you're taking time to really build yourself and fight back!" She lightly punched his shoulder, "I think i can already see a little muscle on you!"
Seraph held his shoulder and nodded "Thank you, you're really kind." Seraph was cringing inside.
Astrid said a little goodbye and Seraph just nodded and rushed away from her, His course was still toward John and Seraph's spot they used for training. The spot was a small field that was made on request for john.
Seraph walked over to the spot to see John, He was standing upright he held his wooden sword in one hand hooked over his shoulder, his back was facing seraph and his front was looking at the forest, he looked serious and solemn and seraph didn't want to interrupt whatever he might be doing.
So Seraph approached silently and took a seat on the dirt ground, he got curious as to what John was doing so he looked toward the forest to see if there was anything in there but he didn't see anything. He looked up at John's bearded face to see that his eyes were closed and mimicked him, 'Maybe John is just meditating?'
After a minute of sitting around and not doing anything seraph couldn't hold on to the boredom, he sprawled his body on the ground and faced the sky, he saw the three far away moons and smiled. This was proof that the world was different and he loved it.
John after a lengthy five minutes opened his eyes, He looked at seraph who was basking in the light of the sun and smiled. He tapped seraph's nose with his wooden sword.
Seraph's eyes shot open, he looked up at John who responded with a "Shall we begin?"
Seraph nodded eagerly, he stood up and took a wooden sword from the side of the field.
Seraph and John circled around each other in the field, seraph held his sword to the side pointed to the ground but John held his sword almost like a rapier parallel to seraph's head. Each step taken by the pair was heavily thought out, John had drilled into seraph from the first session about tactics within fighting.
The footwork he was learning was only so he could implement those tactics, He needed to run away and charge forward when needed but since this was seraph's second lesson he was still clumsy he was slow in his steps and thought very hard where to place his foot while circling john.
John didn't slow down however, he took steps forward and backward while circling seraph forcing him to react.
They slowly inched on to each other, John controlling the entire battle.
John suddenly lunged forward, Seraph was struck hard on his chest and was sent tumbling down.
He held his chest and looked up to already see John's wooden sword being once again parallel to his head.
"Am I really learning anything?" Seraph sighed.
"That was just an unlucky exchange, let's try again." John said reassuringly.
Seraph got up and the battle continued, Seraph lasted longer this time he was able to dodge john's first lunge attack but was quickly defeated when john changed his attack into a strike. The battle continued over and over again, Seraph was barely getting better.
By the end of it Seraph could dodge John's lunge with ease, but the next attack would end him quickly. When he used his sword, he found that he was always too slow and when he was right on time his sword was easily knocked away from him.
"I think that i need to mix in some practice with striking and defending… " John remarked, He winded seraph's weapon with his sword and then threw it out of his hand.
Seraph had started to mimic John's sword play but mimicking something and understanding it is two different things so Seraph readily agreed.
Seraph and John decided to stay a bit longer at their spot. John was demonstrating basic strikes to seraph while seraph was just sitting on the ground nodding his head from time to time. His eyes were narrowed and his face was focused on John's explanation of the sword.
John swung his sword horizontally, Diagonally and Vertically. John was explaining to serah about his body positioning in each swing, the way the sword is supposed to move and the ways his strike is supposed to feel. John's teaching was great which surprised Seraph a lot 'How can he suddenly teach? Couldn't he have explained the same using the footwork?'
After the lengthy explanation about sword work, which also delved into the very basics about strikes and other weapons. John got very passionate about the topic.
John ended the lesson by looking into the sky using his hand as a shader he looked around and then said "That's enough for today, You can do some 'independent' practice if you want. Just don't overdo yourself."
John nodded toward seraph and then walked past him into a tent.
Seraph got up, picked up the sword and started practicing the strikes in place. The day was still bright having only spent about 3 hours training one to one with John even though two thirds of that time was John explaining how to use a weapon properly.
Seraph swung his sword around, he was mimicking John's motions while also applying what John had said to his motions.
"Just like this… No this!" Seraph suddenly struck out and he could feel his stamina slowly dry up. His arms felt tired after doing each swing, Seraph tried to chain his swings together only to find that his accuracy fell drastically and the action he was attempting to do turned into a wild slash.
Seraph suddenly collapsed with his face up, panting.
"Damn, I only- did a few swings… and I ended up like this." Seraph said these words to himself bitterly.
Seraph suddenly heard footsteps rapidly approaching him, he couldn't move so he didn't bother attempting to look at the person suddenly approaching him. He heard a girly gasp and then saw the long red hair along with their floppy wizard hat and stupid looking staff in their hand.
"Seraph are you okay?" Seraph's mood suddenly soured.