A punch flies at my head, the full weight of the 10 year old body behind it. The knuckles are tight, not the knuckle in a clenched fist but the first ones outward on your fingers heading for my chest. I lightly sway to the side and a sweep of the leg in reply as I trap the outthrust arm in my armpit. The other arm goes into a palm to block the retaliatory fist heading for my chest but I get thrown overhead myself as the trapped arm levers me into the air. I go flying up but put my hand out to the ground to reduce the fall and roll, the other falls flat on their back dust lightly floating in the air as I also make my own dust explosion 2m away. Both of us scramble to get back onto our feet breathing heavily but fists at the ready and feet planted firmly, we have been at this for several rounds already without stop.

“Your punches are too easily seen, strike with conviction and speed. Simply hitting with only your body force makes it too easy to be trapped.”“Young master you have good tactics and prediction but you don’t follow through with enough force. Simply trapping the enemy does not mean they are no threat, but looks like you are building up your battle instinct well so far”

This is the head maid Tatiana yelling at me and the new valet Bradburn who has been assigned to serve me but right now we are stuck in obligatory self defense training(boot camp). He is a blonde haired and green eyed human who was the same same age as me.

“Alright that's enough for today, take a break. Cade bring them the pitchers and towels”.

“Yes ma'am”

That was the apprentice maid Cade, she was a black/blue haired and amber eyed aelurus(cat girl, yes catgirl, in this case Maine-Coonesqe)

After we finished getting rid of most of the sweat and chugging down water we walked off to the lawn of the manor closest to the village. The exact same lawn I remember the head maid putting me on while still a toddler. Cade grabbed a sheet of cloth over and we all layed down on it. We were like that for about an hour just cloud watching, while me and ‘Bran’ were tired from training Cade said that she had apparently just gone through about 3 hours of maid etiquette lessons before having to come get some stuff for us so she was not in the best of shape either. Eventually after sharing stories about each others day we started to eat some lunch a maid from the manor brought out. Nothing fancy for a impromptu picnic, bread, apples, dried meat and water. Cade was being rather cute and nibbling on a piece of jerky with both hands while Bran was eating an apple.

“Marc can you read that book to us again” Cade said after having eaten most of her jerky while Bran nodded in agreement.

“Alright did you bring it with you”

“Yeah”

This was a story book the two had taken a liking to about adventurers going off to fight a troll. There were parts about the use of magic and ki so this is why they would be interested but from what I have read the actual use of these abilities are much different. Still this is a fairy tale so no need to spoil the fun. The language took me awhile to learn being pretty complex and pictograph based. Think chinese, japanese, korean, etc. While some characters are based on real life images others are not. This is not as simple as english with a small core alphabet so mostly only nobility learn it. Even then literacy is sketchy due to the massive amount of characters and most nobles get a dedicated scholar to write longer texts. Thankfully a historical document this picture book was not so after reading this to them several times we got dragged in by the head maid to wash up and go to bed. While we were finishing up I asked the two what they wanted to be in the future?

“I want to be like maam and be strong and graceful”

“I want to be like sir and be able to always be the best!!”

“Thats good...grow up strong, I will be there to help” ‘Yeah, sigh’