Cain woke up in a daze. By the time he managed to fall asleep the night before it could be considered as early morning, and so, he did not get the good nights sleep he had wanted the night before. "Whatever. This doesn't change anything anyway." He thought as he sat up and stretched.
He knew where he was in relation to the enlistment booth so he started heading over to it. He wasn't sure if it would be open, it was 5:00 in the morning after all, but he figured he might as well start moving.
On the way to the enlistment booth, he saw shops and street vendors beginning to open. His stomach growled. As he passed by a vendor with baskets filled to the brim with apples, he grabbed one and, amidst the shouting of the vendor owner, ran off as fast as his legs could carry him.
He was chased by the vendor and a few passersby tried to intervene, but he managed to escape and ate the apple, savoring it, and spending some time to catch his breath. As a street urchin, he was very fast but not very strong. The only reason he managed to escape the vendor was because of how well he knew these streets, he lived in them after all.
After he finished eating, he began heading in the direction of the military enlistment booth. He estimated it would take him roughly thirty minutes to walk there, especially since he was taking his time.
By the time he arrived at the kiosk, the sun was fully out. It had taken him about an hour to get there because he had decided to make a few stops along the way.
Manning the booth were two gruff looking men with buzz cuts. As Cain approached them, they eyed him suspiciously. "What do you want, brat" the one on the left said. Cain responded, trying to sound as calm and innocent as possible. "I was hoping to enlist"
The man on the right smiled "good. We need some good young soldiers now, especially since-"
He was hushed by the man on the left who then handed Cain some papers. "Fill these out and you're good to go"
Cain took the papers and went over to a nearby bench to fill them out. They asked a few basic questions that he was able to fill out, what's your name, why are you enlisting, and etc etc.
The only issue Cain faced was that he didn't know his last name, but when he asked the two men they just laughed and said it didn't matter. "You know where the barracks are kid?" Asked the man on the right. " Cain said yes and they told him to meet there at the end of the week to begin training.
In the meantime he would have to live in the barracks, even though training hadn't yet begun.
That week Cain had nothing to do, so he decided to start a training regiment. He trained his agility by taking apples from the food hall and teaching himself to juggle with them. He made a decent amount of progress in the first week, being able to juggle with two apples, but whenever he tried to add a third he would drop them.
For strength he decided to do bodyweight exercises, Push-Ups, situps, planks, Russian twists, and butterfly kicks. In the first week he didn't make any substantial progress other than newbie gains, but he built up a tolerance and became able to do more of each exercise.
By the time training started he had doubled the amount of exercises he could do in one sitting, although that was still a maximum of 20 reps in one sitting.
Training was difficult, but mostly just conditioning. The only thing he wasn't prepared for was the combat training which started in the second month.
There were a few different weapons he could decide to train with. Most of the other recruits chose a shield and then either a sword or a mace. The majority went with swords but a good portion also went with maces.
The choices included the following.
Swords - a good all around weapon but doesn't have great range.
Mace - similar to the sword in range and ease of use, but the user must be more precise because only the end of the mace will deal significant damage.
Spear - spear is a good longer range weapon, especially when paired with shields. Suffers at close range.
Daggers - Very good close range weapons. Drawback is that you have to get close to the enemy to use them.
Bow/Crossbow - archery is somewhat frowned upon in the empire, as it is not considered honorable to kill your enemy from range. It is taught only because of the necessity of having archers. A good long range weapon.
It was also possible to become a mage once further up the chain of command, but that was far out of Cain's reach for now.
Because of how extensive the empire was, they had many different types of each of these weapon classes, but if a soldier wanted to use something that wasn't the slandered sword/mace and shield, they had to find someone to instruct them on it. This applied to all the classes, not just the swords and maces.
As Cain browsed the armory on the first day of the second month of training, he weighed the pros and cons of each weapon he found.
Just as he was about to give up and pick the standerd sword and shield combo, he reached the end of the armory.
There in the far corner of the room, a large sword hung from the wall. It was almost as tall as Cain, and probably weighed just as much as he did, if not more. It had a thick blade, with a handle just as spartan and barren as the rest of the sword.
"If I could wield that I'd be unstoppable" Cain thought happily. The first month of training had put some muscle on his once skinny frame and while a month ago he definitely would've been unable to pick the sword up, now he could do it without extreme difficulty.
He couldn't wield it yet, it was far too heavy and he was far to weak for that, but at the very least he could swing it around with difficulty.
As he brought the massive sword out of the armory, the Sargeant laughed. "Someone finally picked the Claymore" He said with a grin. "You're much too small for that sword though kid"
But other that that one remark, the Sargeant didn't say anything in that suggested he should choose a new weapon, so Cain kept the sword.
Over the next few months Cain struggled. He had ling since moved on from the exercises he had done that first week, having mastered them but despite this, he was unable to win a single sparring match with the weapon he had picked and he was starting to get discouraged. Unbeknownst to him though, he was actually making progress in terms of strength. What he didn't realize was that he was using the weapon completely wrong, and that was why he was unable to win a sparring match. The reason for this is because if a soldier decides to use a weapon that the Sargeant doesn't know how to use, they will have to figure it out for themselves unless they are able to find a teacher. So until he found a teacher, Cain would continue to lose.