Judge had only been at it for a few hours, and already, he was feeling like a sword-fighting prodigy. He could read his master's attacks with alarming accuracy, almost as if she had become a predictable NPC in a poorly coded game.
Each time she swung with enough force to turn his bones into confetti, he managed to deflect or dodge just in time—by the hair on his skin, mind you, and he did not have hair on his skin since it was full of scales.
Whenever there was no escape route and he found himself staring down the barrel of her wooden sword, he'd redirect the blow with his own, trying to minimize the damage like a discount shield with a zero refund policy.
He still felt the impact, of course, but it was the difference between being mildly uncomfortable and becoming tomorrow's feature in Worst Training Accidents Weekly.
