Knight training

Not long after Sir Rudolph began the training session, dozens of soldiers swarmed in the training hall.

Although Sir Rudolph was a knight instructor, his words were the crystalisations of battle understanding attained by an official knight who had ignited his life force and attained a realm of strength that they dreamed. His words were more genuine, more valuable than coins. 

"As you swing your sword, you should always commit as much as you need to. Wide swings bring forth great strength, but they also expose you to some extent due to the inertia of the movement. Quick thrusts are precise and accurate, but unless you hit a vital or an armour joint, it is unlikely to deal any damage. Putting forth too much strength in a blow will make you exhausted, and putting too little strength will fail to achieve anything in the first place", Sir Rudolph said as he displayed the Steelguard Military Swordsmanship.

All noble houses taught a different swordsmanship to its soldiers. Some knight households had grown very famous due to their legacy, like the Ironguard Family, which was known for its rigorous and unbreakable defence.

The steelguard military swordsmanship was different. It was very balanced, very homogenous. It had been created by a Grand Knight nearly 600 years ago, and each generation of steelguard knights had learned and refined it. 

It had been more than a century since a Grand Knight had been created, but it did not mean that the legacy was lost, far from it. Although contracted knights like Sir Rudolph could only access the foundations of such swordsmanship, it was already much stronger, much more refined than most noble houses swordsmanship.

This was the power of accumulation.

The Steelguard Household was not a knight household in its essence. Yet, over a thousand years of existence, it had accumulated so much ressources and gave birth so many geniuses that its knight legacy was actually exceeding pretty much every single knight household in the empire. The same could be said for the other two major noble households.

*SWOOSH*

[You have learned the Steelguard Military Swordsmanship (Basic) skill]

A few hours later, a notification reached his ears, giving him the wonderful news of skill acquisition.

He was a bit taken aback, as it came much faster than he expected it to take.

However, the faces of the soldiers, Sir Rudolph and Albert were very much different.

At first, they were disappointed, as Greem had been training in the swordsmanship for years now. The fact that he could not even display the first movements of the swordsmanship and needed Rudolph to do it for him did not make any sense, and further disappointed the hearts of the soldiers who had sworn to serve him.

However, as minutes passed, Greem began to replicated Sir Rudolph's movements at lightning pace. He only needed a couple of minutes to grasp the essence of the sword art form. The training process was very unconventional too.

Greem would display several variations of the form, and ask which one was closest to the textbook form, which Sir Rudolph would comment on. Some of these variations could be seen in the soldiers' swordsmanship, but these variations had come at the price of years of intense training, including some real combat experience.

Some of these variations had only been recorded and discarded in archives, which only Sir Rudolph, known as the knight intructor and knight librarian, had heard of.

But...the crazy part was that some of these variations had never been heard of, at least not from the archives of Marsaskala Lion Manor. 

This could only mean one thing : Greem had created them himself.

As he completed his third hour of training, the soldiers' impressions of Greem completely shifted, his reputation renewed. It was a new beginning for the [Heir of Marsaskala].