《The Apex》Chapter 4: Training
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A/n: Here you guys go for your daily dose of chapter. Though, it's a bit on the shorter side of my chapters. Oh well. Hope you guys enjoy. As always, leave comments when you can. Also there may or may not be another chapter today, depends on if I will have time. Without further ado.
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“Hahaha! I will never get tired of this no matter what! To think I missed out on this my whole life!” A certain girl shouted out as she accelerated through the air at breakneck speeds. Her long golden blonde hair trailed behind her as she spiraled through the air doing somersault after somersault.
“Your wings will get a cramp if you do that too often. Ever felt the pain of impact from falling out of the sky? Let me tell you, you don’t want to know. Now get down here before I personally make you.” A loud, magically enhanced voice shouted from a large cave entrance.
The girl soon landed a bit of distance away from the cave and walked up to the entrance before stopping.
“Aw, come on. I wasn’t done yet! I’m not even tired.” She whined.
“Oh, you damn well better not be tired. You’re going to need all that energy today. We start our training right now and by the end of it, I guarantee you’ll be begging me for mercy.” A man replied amusingly as he stepped out of the cave.
What appeared from the cave was an extremely gorgeous looking young man who looked to be around twenty years old. This man was currently wearing an elegant black and gold robe with a decorated wing emblem at the center. He was neither too tall nor short and walked with a gentle elegance to him. As he approached the girl, his long whitish-silver hair that was tied in a ponytail at the base gently floated behind him. With an amused smirk on his face that accentuated his well-chiseled features, he looked at the girl through shining golden eyes.
His most distinctive feature, however, was on his back. Four large pairs of jet black wings fluttered gracefully behind him as each and every feather on them rustled gently against each other.
“Ah! That’s right. It’s already been two weeks hasn’t it? I see you are fully recovered now.” The girl grinned back.
“Indeed I am, though admittedly being a skeleton wasn’t all that bad. Alright, enough playing around let’s get started.” Cyrus said as he clapped his hands together.
Seffy nodded to this, her eyes getting sharp and serious in the process. She tensed her muscles a bit as she got ready for whatever Cyrus has to throw at her.
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“Let’s see, how about we start off with a diagnostic test to see what you are capable of right now.” Cyrus said as he waved a hand in front of him.
After doing so, black shadows slowly emerged from the shade of the trees all around them, much like large monsters rising out of a pool of water. Soon, those shadows took on a humanoid shape with glowing golden eyes opening once they were finished. There were three of these figures in all as they came and stood between Cyrus and Seffy.
“Alright, let’s see what you can do. Don’t worry these guys are pretty weak and will disperse upon too much physical impact.” Cyrus told her as he waved his hands once more to which the shadows immediately rushed at her.
As one tried to grab her, she barely dodged it before throwing a punch at it. Grazing the shadow a bit, she jumped back before the other two could converge on her.
Seffy hasn’t just been slacking off for these two weeks. In fact, she took it upon herself to try and hunt her own food. At first, she failed miserably as even the weakest of magical beasts, such as the horned rabbit, escaped her grasp. Over time however, she honed her reaction time to match up to the power her body naturally had. Though she still hasn’t had any fights until now, her enhanced senses more than make up for her lack of experience.
Cyrus, watching her first movements, just gave an approving nod. He knew that to quickly improve, a person had to go above and beyond just the instructions they were given. The fact that Seffy tried to get stronger even before he started training her greatly impressed him as not many would take that initiative.
Seffy tried her best as she dodged, evaded, and countered the shadows. She lasted for a pretty long time as well, but ultimately the shadows overwhelmed her as her combat skills were still in the infantile stage. As the shadows let her go, Cyrus walked up to her with a grin.
“Alright, I think this is just about right. Until nightfall, which is the time limit, you will continue to fight these shadows of mine until you win. Why nightfall you ask? Well, it’s simply because my shadows are greatly empowered during nighttime so do your best to beat them until then. I’ll be watching to the side so just holler if you need me.”
Nodding in understanding, she rose up, patted off her fur outfit, and then got ready to fight again. The fights then continued on for quite a while with her losing every time. However, the more she fought the shadows, the more she realized one thing. The shadows were far weaker in direct sunlight. She hadn’t noticed before because they fought in the thick canopy of the forests where shade was in abundance, but even the forest can’t completely block out all of the sunlight. She seemed to have noticed that as a shadow passed by a beam of sunlight before it flickered and got a bit slower.
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Grinning a bit as she thought up a plan, she continued to fight the shadows. With each and every fight, the place of the battle continuously shifted towards a clearing in the distance, albeit subtly so that the shadows wouldn’t notice. After countless hours, the place they now fought at was directly in the center of the clearing.
Once again the shadows lunged at her, only this time she was able to completely evade them without being touched at all. This fight, unlike all the others before, Seffy held the advantage as the shadows desperately tried to subdue her only to have her shift out of the way. Now that she knew she was fast enough to dodge all of their strikes, she moved onto the offensive. As one shadow tried to grab her from behind, she carefully sidestepped to the right before driving her fist into the shadow through the center of its chest. Surprisingly, unlike the other times, the first easily went through the shadow before it fell backwards and dispersed into darkness.
The other two shadows seemed to have become rabid as they saw this and attacked her with even more ferocity, though they were still slower than her. Seffy danced around the clearing like a butterfly, while evading and returning the attacks, slowly whittling the other two shadows down before they also fell and dispersed.
With a large grin on her face, she walked back Cyrus who had a wide smirk plastered on him as he came out from behind a tree to the side.
“Good job. You finished this much faster than I expected you to. Now tell me, what did you learn from this?” Cyrus asked, still smiling.
Seffy thought a bit before answering, “These fights taught me how to better deal with situations when there is more than one enemy you have to watch out for. Along with that, it also tells me that when fighting, it is often more efficient to look for and exploit your enemy’s weaknesses instead of attacking them head on.”
At this, Cyrus’s smile became even wider. “Correct! This lesson was not to test your endurance even though that’s a basic requirement for it. You have already taken it upon yourself to increase your endurance even before today. For that, I am impressed and thus decided a test for that wasn’t needed for now. Those battles you just fought were not simply to test your fighting capacity, that can be improved later, but they were meant to challenge something even more fundamental than that. That thing I am talking about is battle sense. After all, fighting a battle isn’t simply about a show of brute strength as one person tries to mindlessly hurt the other, no. A person has to use their brain in battle. To deduce the opponents moves and efficiently capitalize on that. To be able to detect all the subtleties of the battlefield and use that to your advantage. In the end, battles are fought and won by using both brain and brawn in conjunction. Between battles of equally skilled individuals, the one who has keener awareness and insight of their surroundings will always be the winner.” Cyrus concluded.
Nodding her head a few times at each point Cyrus put out, Seffy carefully absorbed all that Cyrus was telling her.
“In any case, you did well today, come on let’s go back and get something to eat. You must be tired as well from all that. After all you were at it for ten hours straight.” Cyrus told her.
Now that Seffy finally had the chance to relax, she noticed just how fatigued she actually was and immediately collapsed on her knees as her arms trembled. The adrenaline of the fight completely left her and she found herself unable to move.
“Umm, I can’t seem to move anymore, can I get a lift?” Seffy asked.
Cyrus put a finger to his chin as he looked up in contemplation, though it’s obviously faked.
“Hmmm, I don’t know, there’s a certain word people use when asking for things. Maybe that'll change my mind. I wonder what it is? Maybe… maybe… no no. It’s at the tip of my tongue, but I can’t seem to find it.” Cyrus spoke in a roundabout way as he turned back and forth.
At this, Seffy just gave a small, irritated scowl and said, “Please…”
“Aha! Thanks for reminding me. Now then, let’s head back princess.” Cyrus said as he went over to Seffy and lifted her up in a princess carry before heading back to the cave.
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