After Avan had returned the tray and cutlery to Beth the barmaid, he now stood in a long stone corridor in front of an iron door decorated with runes, which as usual hummed and shimmered slightly blue and reddish with magic.

Although he knew, according to the instructions and directions of various people, that behind it must be the training ground, he heard no sound and not a single noise penetrated through the door.

With an inward shrug of his shoulders, he opened the iron door at the handle and was surprised at first, since he had thought the door was much heavier. The second surprise came immediately afterwards, when he heard the sound of metal on metal and various other fighting and training noises as soon as the door was opened even a crack.

He saw before him, almost exactly as it had been described to him, the training backyard of the guild. In the center was a twenty-by-twenty meter sand-lined fighting area, and to the left, a good ten targets at varying distances for the ranged fighters. The weapons and armor racks were located on the right side in front of a ten meter high stone wall, which was covered with ivy and other flowering plants in the upper area.

Next to the entrance, through which he had just stepped, wooden benches with narrow rows of tables were attached to the left and right of the house's facade, to provide an opportunity for possible spectators to sit. To the left, he found some of the guildmates training here, cheering for their team members and jokingly booing some of them. With a glance and a turn of his head to the right, however, he found more familiar faces, which were all already watching him and some also smiled and winked.

The guild master together with Yue, who seemed to feel comfortable with the grandfatherly figure, together with slightly familiar faces of the participating fighters from the marketplace during the monster attack of the previous day.

"Oh hell..." Avan muttered at the gathering of spectators. He must have gained a considerable amount of notoriety in Cyntha.

With a wave of his right hand and a shake of his head in the direction of the people, which earned him a friendly grin from Yue, he made his way over to the already waiting Eve, who seemed to be engrossed in some warm-up exercises.

The exercises reminded him of a mixture of military order and martial arts, as she so stiffly but fluidly changed from one posture to the next, while sweat was already dripping from her forehead. She had just assumed a posture in which she positioned both legs bent right and left on the floor and resembled a sumo wrestler a bit when she opened her eyes and caught sight of him.

"Ahh, the long sleeper has finally arrived too it seems!" She exclaimed teasingly, spinning around to step to a small wooden stool diagonally behind her, where a few wooden training weapons and a towel lay. With a quick movement, she grabbed the small white towel and wiped her face.

Satisfied, she threw it back on the wooden table and grabbed a large wooden sword. With a quick twist of her wrist, she twirled it briefly on its axis and nodded in satisfaction.

"Do you need a minute to warm up?" She asked him in a serious tone as Eve turned back to him, holding the practice sword loosely in her right hand.

He merely nodded at her and stretched with the typical upper body exercises to the right and left, bending forward once and touching his toes playfully lightly on the first attempt. Satisfied and also surprised at how loose his muscles felt without having been warmed up, he looked up again and looked at Eve. "I need five minutes, if that's okay with you? After all, you're already warmed up too, even if neither of us could spend the time in a real fight." He asked her and concluded his statement with a short laugh.

"Sure, go ahead. I'll go check out the bets that were placed on our practice fight." She explained to him and laughed out loud when she saw his shocked expression. "What did you think? That the whole pack is just sitting there watching? They want to have a laugh too, Avan! Hahaha!" She laughed even louder and strolled past him towards the guild master and the adventurers.

Avan cursed softly to himself and tried to calm down a bit. I HATE being the center of attention and in the spotlight! Damn it... He cursed inwardly while he first tried unsuccessfully to block out the glances and other people from his thoughts.

Only after a few calming long breaths did he manage to find his usual and practiced inner peace and block out everything.

With this calmness, he went over and started the warm-up exercises, which his martial arts teacher had taught him and which should be performed before every combat exercise.

Unlike beginners, who wanted to get the forms over with as quickly and loosely as possible, one had to be careful to keep every muscle and body part permanently tense in order to achieve the greatest possible effect. The tense muscles in his body made even the simplest exercises challenging after a while.

What Avan liked most about his last martial arts class was the fact that it was not a traditional wing tsun class. Mr. Yan had also practiced mixed martial arts in his youth and had incorporated his experiences into the wing tsun training.

So when Avan stood there and went through his exercises with a clenched fist to an open palm and various foot shapes, the spectators understandably looked at him a bit confused when the first ones noticed his warm-up exercises.

He, however, noticed nothing of it and changed, for the very first time, the exercises that had accompanied him for months, into something new. Avan incorporated the fighting stances of the healer order of Akkalon, which he had learned in the dungeon, into his wing tsun exercises. The result was a flowing dance performance that he would have been somewhat ashamed of, had it not been for his blanking out of his surroundings.

His forms and gestures flowed seamlessly into each other, as if this had always been what he had trained and practiced all his life.

His feet moved almost silently across the sandy floor, gliding from posture to posture as he flowed from clenched fist to open palm from exercise to exercise, stepping, stomping, flowing and gliding in a circle.

As if martial arts had the origin here in this world, and on Earth was only distorted...

He thought to himself as he became aware of how natural and normal the movements felt.

After an indeterminate amount of time, he finally came out of his trance and became aware of his surroundings anew. The smell of sweat, dry sand, the wooden training weapons, the oils and leather armor, and the whispers and whispers coming from the benches.

Slightly shocked and blushing, he turned abruptly and found himself in front of an even larger audience than before, with at least fifty people of different races. The people had a spellbound look in their eyes and many seemed to come out of a kind of trance only now, as if he had been the flute player and the hypnotizing snake in one, which had put the people under its spell.

Little by little, as more and more emerged back into the here and now, some clapped and then a few more. What was a little restrained at the beginning, quickly became a respectful applause, which was usually given to a breathtaking show at the end. But without the euphoria, but only with a lot of respect, as befitting a fighter.

With a nervous scratching of the back of his head, Avan then recognized a grinning Eve at the edge of his field of vision, coming toward him.

"Respect. Now that's what I call a presentation." She congratulated him verbally. "Even if it was much more than a simple warm-up exercise. Are we ready then?" She grinned mischievously at him. "People shouldn't have bet on me for nothing!" She suddenly told him in a played serious tone, only to laugh out loud again.

"Do you need a weapon, or do you fight unarmed?" She asked him, as Eve swung her large wooden sword around and brought it down with a dull thud on the ground beside her.

"Weaponless. We can go at it for all I care." He replied, also serious, trying to ignore what had just happened. "And please, if possible, explain to me what I'm doing wrong. I want to learn to fight better. Especially towards other human races." He asked her with a pleading look, already inwardly prepared to be made a mockery of. But Avan didn't care, as long as he could leave here with a learning experience at the end of the day.

She nodded at him, now really serious, and positioned her greatsword at her right side and twisted her left wrist slightly in front of her belly to let her open palm point forward, as if she was about to ward off a fist strike. Which was probably true, considering his own fighting style.

Avan himself also got into position and slid into one of Akkalon's fighting stances, with a slight modification and mixture of his newly learned exercises. I wonder if this is the best idea. Let's see... When should it be better to try something new than in a practice fight...?

With this train of thought, he positioned his left leg forward and his right leg, with a bent foot, right behind him, while he tensed his muscles and pulled his only slightly closed fists toward his body. His left and loose fist hovered over his left knee, while his right fist was clenched and tense, waiting to lash forward like a whip after a block or other maneuver.

Both looked into each other's eyes, and without the need for a referee or any other start signal, both shot forward and toward each other.