Clang* *Clang*
The sounds of metal clashing rang out as two people clashed swords against each other in a spar.
"Hahaha, you've grown this much in a month alone?!" Fredrick said as he laughed boisterously, when he heard some incomprehensible words.
"Hmm, it's still lacking"
"Huh? Did I hear that right?" Fredrick couldn't help but ask.
He came from a month's long journey and decided to check on Ezra's progress.
Needless to say, he was completely stunned by how much Ezra had grown.
But when Ezra had told him the training he did, Fredrick felt it could only be natural.
He wore an entire suit of heavy armor and slashed downwards more than a hundred times, before taking another armor and holding it up, then started duck walking ten times around the training ground.
For an entire month! This caused him to increase by two inches, his formerly flabby muscles now chiseled a little and the best thing was…
'Thankfully, my physique has reached Intermediate rank'
Ezra had advanced his physique, which allowed a smooth transition into Intermediate rank!
An intermediate rank at five years olds! Truly, men weren't (re)born equal.
Yet…
"It seems that's the limit of what I can reach right now" Ezra said as he sighed disappointedly, before turning to Fredrick and asking…
"Tell me, which one is really you exactly, the calm and reserved man or the vigorous and energized man?"
"Well, both actually" Fredrick said as he paused for an instant, before talking in a low tone.
"I act with vigor and energized or calm as you have seen whenever the situation calls for it. The vigorous me is what I mostly show to people, while the calm me comes in when I do it in secrecy and with inconspicuousness. So, there's your answer, I am both" he said.
"Then…why did you always say 'ye' instead of you and 'your'? And why did you stop now?" Ezra asked.
"Well, I did that to throw off those looking for me. As for why i stopped…it wasn't intentional, but since I became your knight, I stopped using it"
"Hmm" Ezra muttered as he nodded, before asking…
"What about 'that'? Were you able to succeed?" he asked.
"Yes, it was a total success" Fredrick answered.
"Now, the game begins" Ezra said as a light with a myriad of meanings flashed in his eye.
Meanwhile…
*Clang* *Clang* *Clang*
Another spar was undergoing as two people fought with wooden swords.
"Is that the best you can do?" said the boy as he taunted his challenger.
"Well, I am trash after all"
Yes, trash.
The name a certain noble gave to a certain group of people, and it stuck to them since then.
The next day after the first incident, those of noble blood banded together to suppress the Black Jaw members, as they saw them as a thorn limiting their authority.
They then challenged each one of them to a spar with an Expert Knights as the regulator, and the results were as expected.
The nobles won almost all the fights against the Black Jaws members, though Cabrera didn't participate in what he called 'a fight between children'.
Rather, he was constantly sparring and losing against Expert-rank Knights.
The results were as expected and the nobles had come out on top.
The problem was what came after.
Unlike normal peasants who would despair at the gap, before eventually giving in…these guys were relentless!
Cabrera had told them after their first battle that…
"The results were just as I expected, because we have been lazy for long enough that our skills have rusted" he paused, before saying…
"You may think that you'd lost, but that's not true" he said, causing the boys to give him weird gazes, but he continued.
"Tell me, why are we here in the first place?" he asked and one said…
"We came to grow stronger"
"Exactly!" he exclaimed, before asking…
"And how do you grow stronger?"
"By training" one said.
"By working out" another said.
Cabrera nodded at their answers and continued…
"You're right, but that's not the main thing. Who knows the main thing?"
A minute passed with no answers, so Cabrera told them…
"By learning, boys. Only by learning from your mistakes, from your enemies, from your friends, from your teachers, and absorbing it to improve yourself can you grow stronger. Do you UNDERSTAND?!" he shouted.
"Yes boss!" they said in unison as Cabrera nodded, before saying…
"So don't think about losing. If you lose and learn from that loss, you'll be able to improve" he said.
"Failing isn't losing, no, it's losing and not learning anything from it. Now, that's failing. To fall and not stand up, that's failing. But losing to kids who have been training with weapons since they were seven years old is nothing to be ashamed of"
"To lose is to be human, but to not learn is to be an animal" he said and left them with their own thoughts.
And when the next day came…
"I want to spar with you"
They went to spar with the nobles a second time and lost, but instead of envy or despair surfacing, the boys had excited looks on their faces as they said…
"Guys, I'm able to hold on for five seconds more than last time! I'm getting stronger" one bragged.
"Hey, no fair, I'm the one sparring next" another protested.
"No, it's me" another declared
"What the heck? Of course I'm the one" another ascertained.
And like so, the scene of a group of nineteen men fighting to get beaten up became the norm from then onwards.
The nobles tried to use other tactics to crush them.
From crushing them with overwhelming power, to releasing killing intent, they were all unsuccessful.
When one noble tries to crush the spirit of one of them, other members come in to share the burden, while still being competitive of who would last the longest in the face of such pressure.
And because of that, their skills grew at an unprecedented rate.
They knew how to fight to begin with, their skills were just rusted. But after being hit with overwhelming auras, as well as killing intent thick enough to make one shiver every single day, they had built resistance to it.
A little more, and it might even become an immunity.
Like this, the nobles who found themselves against a wall called Black Jaw guild members, who were relentless even after losing and instead wore smiles. Fear began to creep up in their minds as some nobles started running away from them, while the smarter ones copied the guild members' mindset to always learn and gradually became just like them in relentless sparring.
The suppressed commoners also did the same thing as they sought to remove the oppression of nobles.
This gave way to what was now called endless sparring.
Two people would fight while others waited in line.
The loser leaves and another challenger arrives to fight the winner.
And such a process goes on for as long as they are people who want to spar.
The Expert-rank Knights could only be amazed at the new attitude the guild boys had infected others with.
The average level of skill became much higher than what it normally was due to the act of sparring.
Fighting different people with different techniques consecutively as you constantly sharpen your senses, techniques and improvisation, one can only improve to defeat their opponent.
The guild boys were still losing a lot, but that was because their challengers were also learning a lot.
As of now, each one was sure to beat the them of one month ago easily.
They had improved their reflexes, their five senses, refined their techniques and made some new ones.
All in all, they had sharpened themselves to an unprecedented degree.
Their boss, Cabrera, seeing his subordinates intensely wanting to improve, how could he stay behind?
And so he took it up with the Expert Knights in a separate place as he went from losing in mere seconds to lasting almost an hour.
Within two weeks of the expedition…
'It's time for the real game to start' Cabrera thought as he notified the training ground of his absence and left to go somewhere.
The missionary of Kingsmere.
—-----------------
"Huuuuh" Cabrera exhaled in order to relieve his tension, before heading into the missionary.
It was a four story building with enough space on the ground floor to accommodate a hundred people standing side by side. Usually, there were no less than sixty people in the hall at a time.
Right after entering, one would see a board at the right side. It was full of missions across all ranks, except S rank, as well as the rewards for each and a recommendation of what rank such mission is suitable for.
Cabrera had naturally seen all this more than once before, as he moved across the adventures without batting an eye to look at the variety of gears each one had on, and moved to a counter.
It was where people would register for the particular mission they had chosen.
"Hello, how can I help you?" the attendant asked. She was a female with long red hair, wearing glasses.
"I came to see the sentinel" I said, dropping a bomb on her as she immediately straightened up, fixed her glasses and asked me…
"Do you have an appointment sir?"
"Hmm, not exactly, but please tell him it's 'Cabrera', and that I've come to take his gift" I said as the gaze of the attendant took another turn as she tried to reprimand me.
"Sir, you need to know that-"
"Just tell him, he'll tell you to let me up immediately"
But I cut her off and she seemed pretty pissed while taking breaths, before she said…
"If you're lying, then I'll have you regret the day you were born"
*Shrug*
"Do as you please"
She did so and, in less than two minutes…
"Sir, the sentinel called you over"
I was guided to his office on the top floor.