Hopping from side to side, Arleigh made sure she was as explosive as possible. There was no way she could compete with Neia for strength, so she avoided it all together. Staying in perpetual motion was the best counter. Neia had incredible range on her attacks, but she was rather slow to readjust. Arleigh took advantage of that as much as possible, quickly dashing in for light hits after Neia swung hard.

Dodging to the left of Neia’s downward slash, Arleigh switched her wooden sword to her left hand and sliced at her neck. Neia had been waiting for it. Leaning her body to the left, she let Arleigh’s sword strike her shoulder. In tandem, she lifted her sword diagonally right. While Neia’s shoulder and jaw stung from the hit, the force of her wooden greatsword hurling into Arleigh’s midriff knocked her over. Neia quickly recovered and placed her sword on Arleigh’s shoulder. On her knees and winded, Arleigh immediately yielded.

They’d been practicing for the past two hours. Their clothes were soaked in sweat. Neia even had a few blood stains.

Neia dropped her sword and sat down, “You leave yourself open everytime you go for the neck.”

Arleigh, still recovering, sighed dramatically. “Most people wouldn’t just take a hit to their neck.” Taking a few more breaths she got up and continued, “Plus, if we were using sahir you wouldn’t have that arm. You would have never been able to hit me."

Neia chuckled lightly, “Relying on sahir again. That's why you keep losing to Nyle, even when he’s barehanded.”

Arleigh pouted, “It’s not like you can beat him.”

Neia struggled to her feet, “I’m no prodigy.”

Neia started walking towards camp. She wasn’t heavily injured, but a quick check with their healer would do no harm. In the meantime, Arleigh found some shade by a tree and laid in it. She stared up at the swaying leaves, replaying the fight hundreds of times in her head. Going through each dodge, each thrust, each swing. There were faults here and there, but overall it was a great performance. Her eagerness to convert her dominance into victory made her a bit more aggressive than necessary, but she should have been able to win all the same.

“A fight is both won and lost in but a moment. Knowing how to manipulate that moment to your favor is the difference between a good fighter and a great one.”

Arleigh sighed, “You can say that because you have power.”

“You must move past your misguided belief that your lack of strength makes you weak.”

Struggling to control her desire to scoff at those words she sat up, “That still makes no sense.”

“Shall I show you again?”

Arleigh closed her eyes and rested her head on the tree trunk, “Give me a minute.”

—————

Seems like Jon is skipping again.

Kain had just taken his seat at the back of class. There were quite a few minutes before class started, but as apprentices they were expected to be at their desks early. Most of Kain’s classmates had already been at their desks when he arrived, crude pencils and notebooks out. He, on the other hand, came with no such items. The only thing in his satchel was a coat.

Schools in most of Lysken separated their students into 6 levels; anobem, nohel, apprentice, fensir, edreven, and mesheer. Excluding apprentice, they roughly translated to beginner, novice, professional, expert, and master. The top schools in the Alden Empire expanded that system to 9 levels, adding apprentice+, fensir+, and fensir silver.

The school Kain attended, being located in a relatively small town, only taught through to the 4th level. When they moved him he went from being an anobem to being an apprentice. The teachers hoped that the fact the members of his new class were older would mean they would be less likely to bully him. They were completely wrong.

Kain was only eleven at the time, incredibly young for an apprentice. The other students in the class were not too happy at the sight of a child reaching a level they took many years to reach. Luckily for Kain, the more mature form of bullying was isolation. While the teachers worried about the new problem they caused themselves, Kain seemed perfectly content with his new circumstances. Over time, with Kain proving he belonged in the class, the forced isolation relented.

After a few minutes rolled by, his first professor for the day walked in. He did a quick headcount and began the first lecture of the day, math. Within but a few short words, Kain was out cold. When his professor noticed he briefly eyed his drooling face, traces of anger lingering. While sleeping during a professor's lecture was seen as a serious insult, Kain had somewhat of a relationship with the lecturer. A relationship that meant the sight of Kain’s face flat on his desk was ultimately ignored. Fortunately for Kain, he was more than just the math lecturer. He also taught science and economics. Unfortunately, he taught nothing else and the following professors would not react so kindly to anything less than full engagement. His reputation as a genius forced him to be much more involved than the rest of his classmates. In his earlier days, it was a dynamic that sparked much jealousy and tension amongst his class. Five years in, it was simply the status quo.

As the bell rang to signal the end of his school day, Kain’s thanked the gods above. Not wanting to waste a second longer than he had to, he quickly rushed out of class.

Apples or oranges?

Apples.

Apples it is.

The school’s grounds weren’t large enough for a cafeteria, those wishing to buy food had to go to the food stalls outside the campus. Kain used to see it as quite the inconvenience, but he was quite thankful for it these days.

“Good afternoon Mr. Flint, can I get three red apples?”

“Good afternoon.” He reached for the apples, “That’ll be 12 bits”

Kain handed him two dree and grabbed the apples.

“You don’t have two bits on you?” Mr. Flint asked.

Searching his coin pouch, “I don’t believe I do. Just give me two more apples.”

“Don’t worry about it kid.” Mr. Flint tossed him one of the dree coins.

Catching the coin, Kain bowed slightly, “Thank you very much Mr. Flint”

The rest of Kain’s day went as usual, he went to the central administrative building to work under his mentor. The office had an actual name, but Kain couldn’t be bothered to remember it.

One upside of being an apprentice was you started practical work. About one third of the regular school day was spent working under fensirs, learning their various crafts. Sometimes, as in Kain’s case, an apprentice could be hired by their mentor to work beyond the required few hours.

His job at the office was largely just keeping track of the flow of money and making sure everyone paid the appropriate amount of taxes. In other words, analyzing and sorting numbers. The job was tedious to no end, but it paid the best of any work he could get as an apprentice. Or rather, any work his mother would allow. His mentor worked him like a horse too. Realizing his brilliance fairly early on, he put far more work on him than any apprentice should have to do. Kain responded in kind by fudging the numbers at times to pocket a few more coin. His mentor used to check his work routinely, but for the past year he left Kain completely unchecked.

After work he headed to the library. Contrary to what most people thought, he didn’t exist on an island. He had friends, a female one even. She just happened to be seven years older than him. They met during his first year as an apprentice. Before Kain joined, she was the youngest member in the class. Having joined the class at 17, she was three years younger than everyone else at the time and felt isolated. As such, she could empathize with Kain. Sparking a conversation with him, she quickly learned that he was far more mature than most eleven-year-olds. Both being bookworms, their friendship grew and grew over time.

Eventually, someone spoke to her about the optics of a 19-year-old hanging out with an 12-year-old. Understanding the impression it could give, they kept their friendship far more discreet.

"Yes, with enough guns you can overpower a group of trained malsirs, but can that many guns be sustained? I'm not saying one off battles can't be won, I'm talking about the war."

"No, you're not listening. You can not win wars with small, specialized armies anymore. The strain of fighting for weeks on end would ruin the malsirs before anything else. With a large army of mostly equals that burden is shared."

"Simple counter, give each malsirs a squad of gunners. I'm not saying there isn't value in numbers, I'm saying there's no good reason you give up your metal rod to fight with a couple of wooden sticks."

"That sounds great, but it's never worked in practice. Just look at the Alden Empire and the Imuru Empire, which of the two remain?"

"That's not the same and you know it."