Dominik stood at the center of a sparring field while having a small youth in his twenties with a sword in front of him. This caught the attention of some soldiers doing their training, it was a rare occurrence that the Head Instructor would personally teach someone on technique, his fame was even higher than most Divel’s high officers. Dominik was once a famous adventurer, now retired, who choose to settle on the borders of South Kingdom.

It was hard to know why he did so, wild speculations made it that this was a way to keep the adventuring feeling alive by training young and promising soldiers who will later begin their own story in the wilderness.

Maybe they were right, or maybe Dominik was just a retired man with too much free time on his hands that liked to constantly better himself and keep on shape; what is certain is its strength and stubbornness regarding training.

This was the man standing in front of Noah, a mountain of muscles that was awe inspiring and intimidating, his dignity undiscussed. Noah could only marvel at these feelings he was experiencing inside a game; it was amazing, he never felt like this in Heart, not even when he once was faced by an automatic guard-bot that came to arrest some armed thieves on a district near his home.

While marveling once again at Vesper, Dominik spoke: >.

Quest Speak with head instructor completed.

Bonus: hidden achievement completed, rewarding compensation.

► Hidden chain quest obtained ◄

For being the first player to enlist in this city army, Head Instructor Dominik took you as an experimental subject. He was once a famous adventurer of this Kingdom, you can gain a lot from his teachings but that is up to you.

Now Noah was shocked, he could extract a load of information by this popup: Dominik was bigger than what he looked and this game was trickier than it seemed, biggest news is the appearance of freedom again; this hidden quest was more than welcomed but the way he got it was in a simple word: Luck. It was up to him to make something out of it as the mission panel stated.

Now that he got a wind of hidden quests determined by individual NPCs and the grade of freedom in completing them, he decided to try and deepen his relationships with both Dominik and Markus. But right now wasn’t the time for planning and thinking, he got to carefully look at Dominik’s sword movements and try to follow them.

It was incredible that such a big character could move a sword so swiftly, gentle like spring breeze and delicately in the way you would caress a newborn. Noah got mesmerized by it, he got totally immersed in admiration of this harmonious show. It was impossible for him to have an analytical eye right now, his concentration wasn’t here and like this he got through all the sword forms, enjoying them.

After Dominik finished demonstrating, Noah came back to his senses and couldn’t figure why he got showed a sword dance even though he was a tamer, so he voiced his doubts to the instructor.

After giving a strange look to pestilence, as if he asked the strangest thing in the world, Dominik said: >

Noah couldn’t close his mouth after this reply, he felt so stupid. Almost as if he asked the most obvious thing on the world; Dominik couldn’t know that what he so casually revealed made Noah dumbfounded, it was a new concept and it brought up the freedom aspect of the game.

Seeing his student so ignorant, Dominik decided to reveal some other basic information: >.

Dominik started again his dance with Noah concentrating as much as he could on it.

It looked like a gentle, innocent dance but this time Noah could see a dragon might behind some transitions; concentrating on it instead of just admiring allowed him to grasp new aspects of this sword dance, while it was impossible to learn its movements right away, he could at least understand the intent behind those movements. Like this an hour passed in which Dominik alternated between demonstrations and explanations of individual passages.

It was now Noah turn to stand up in the training circle and he was nervous, never in his life he did martial arts or more than a simple workout, society now enjoyed sports but as a show and not really to practice, even his basic work out was imposed by a governmental's law 3 hours a week.

It was time to start and focus on the movements he saw until now, he remembered the gentle and flowing sensation he got from this style but he also kept on mind that it could become outright fierce and overpowering.

Feeling the pressure of Dominik gaze and also the quest statement that the rewards depended on him, Noah opened his legs by a meter and slightly bent his knees.