Our swords clashed against each other neither able to get through the others defence. My opponent suddenly switched from aggressive attacks to fast precision attacks launched at me from a variety of different directions and angles, however each of them sailed past me as I ducked, swerved and jumped out of the way of the blade.
I then went on the attack and with two powerful hits to the top of my opponents blade I disarmed my enemy. Her rapier fell to the grassy floor leaving her weaponless and therefore defeated. I sheathed my sword and waited for Aurora to pick up her sword before I commented on the training fight.
"You have a good speed with your attacks and you can throw a pretty hard hit as well, but your attacks are pretty predictable and your reaction time when getting attacked is a bit slow. However you are actually better than I had expected and you seem to be learning a lot from Andrew's speed training" I tell Aurora her performance during the fight. She had come and asked me for some training sessions so that she could learn techniques and skills from another front liner to make her ready to go it alone in the front dungeon like I regularly do.
"So I need to become more unpredictable and faster at reacting." She says taking on my given advice quickly and understanding why I had said it.
"Yer basically that's all I can see that could bring you down up on the front. Your attacks can be predicted somewhat easily and so monsters will be able to block or plain out counter your attacks and if you have a split second to block or move from an attack you need to have a good reaction speed to do so. But in player versus player situations I would say to run as a human is much smarter than most of the monsters up there." I add to my initial comments to explain them in more detail.
"And why do you think I'm not up for PvP? I may have, well, flaws in my technique but I can still hold my own against some one." She asks me, her pride now slightly hurt.
"I'll put it this way, I was going easy on you just then and within 2 seconds of me wanting it to end I disarmed you. Up against more serious players you will get destroyed and if it's a player killer they will show you no mercy and will have back up waiting somewhere to finish you off if needed." I reply patiently. "If you want me to demonstrate a serious fighter just say."
"Go on then." She says confidently. I sigh, already knowing who would win this fight. I draw my trusted black katana and hold it's tip level with the tip of Aurora's white rapier and waited for her to make the first move.
She opens up the fight by charging down at me with her sword drawn back in the same way I've seen Andrew do many a time. I angle my blade preparing to block the attack when I see her jump past me, spin her blade around in her hand and strike me in the back. This hit knocks me back a bit and forces me to reassess my opponents true ability.
I turn and charge down at her with two hands on my sword's grip to deliver a more powerful blow. I swing my sword downwards upon her, she easily dodges this attack but doesn't realise that mid swing I had changed the trajectory of my sword and the blade crashes into her side light metal armor and knocking her to the ground.
She quickly scrambles to her feet as I move towards her with my sword raised for the finishing attack. However my powerful strike smashes into her weak last second block and her sword flies from her hand and down into the grass once more. I move my sword tip to her neck signaling what I thought to be the end of the duel.
However she grabbed the blade with the palms of her hands and kicked out at my hand with stupendous speed and power. This completely takes me off guard and I drop my sword to the ground due to the sharp pain that had spiked into my relaxing hand.
We were now both un-armed, Aurora took my momentary shock to her advantage and barreled into me and committed to a powerful shoulder attack which connected with my chest plate and knocked me to the ground. A split second after I had hit the ground she went and picked up my sword with the intention of using it against me.
Seeing this I got back up and waited for the next move, knowing that I couldn't attack with out getting impaled or cut by my own sword. Aurora then went back on the offensive against me. She raised my sword high above her head and brought it down upon me.
I raised my crossed arms in a defensive way in front of my face, this saved me the fight. My arm bracers took the whole impact and blocked the blade from hitting my body or head. I quickly followed up by twisting my arms and therefore twisting the blade out of her hands and back onto the ground. I then drew a large curved dagger from a scabbard on the back of my belt, I charged Aurora down and onto the ground where I placed the sharp dagger on her neck.
"I win." I say fiercely before getting back to my feet, putting away my emergency dagger and went to retrieve my sword. I turned back to see Aurora already on her feet and sheathing her rapier. "Now where the hell did you learn to do that." I ask still shocked at the disarming technique she had used against me.
"Well I didn't really learn it anywhere it just came to me and it seems to have worked pretty well. So now Woods did you expect that at all?" She replies smugly knowing that she had completely surprised me and had made less predictable attacks as I had advised her to do earlier.
"No, I didn't expect that to happen at all, well done and don't call me Woods I do have an actual name. Steven." I say with irritation at the use of my IGN and still annoyed for nearly loosing the fight. "So what does Terra actually teach you and how does he do it?" I ask curious of my friends teaching techniques.
"A lot of running while dodging things and hitting fast moving targets. Gets a bit tiring and tedious after a while but it does help my accuracy and speed." She replies as she sits down on the dry grassy ground and taking out some food and drink from her inventory.
"Ok, how about after we eat, I have a shield and you need to get past it to hit me or break the shield within lets say... 10 hits. That should help with more powerful and unpredictable hits." I say after sitting down opposite her and thinking over what training methods I could use. "We can get onto reaction times sometime later."
"So how did you meet Terra in the real world then." Aurora asks curiously as we ate our lunch. I look up from my food at her confused at her question but I decide to answer it truthfully.
"We go to the same secondary school and we are in the same form and most of the same classes so we used to see a lot of each other around school and I guess being part of the outcasts we became friends." I reply honestly with a pang of nostalgia when thinking of the old times at school, this had all stopped now that we were trapped in Aincrad.
"So you know him pretty well then." She comments slowly most likely thinking how she came into this game without anyone whom she knew from the real world.
"Yer, I probably know him better than anyone in Aincrad. Why do you want to know though?" I ask still curious of the notion of these questions about Andrew.
"Well I just saw how well you two knew each other and just wondered." She says quickly and not making eye contact.
"And why do you still use his IGN, I mean come on you live in the same house. I would have thought by now you could trust each other enough for that." I comment thinking that from the two weeks of them being in the same house they would know each other's names.
"Well, I guess its just easy to use IGNs and we've never really talked about things like that often." She replies calmly before getting to her feet and saying loudly. "Okay, enough talking now. Lets get back to training."
"Bit eager aren't you." I say quietly before taking one last swig from my water bottle and getting to my feet and equipping one of my low level shields for the training. I raise my red painted iron shield defensively and the training session begins.
By the end of the training we were both exhausted my shield had nearly been destroyed and Aurora's Rapier felt like a lump of raw metal in her hand. However exhausted we were though the training had gone extremely well and Aurora was now getting much better at hitting past defences and her sword skills had increased in power by a great deal.
"Well that was a pretty good first session and you're getting a lot better." I say with pride in my student and my training methods.
"That and I was able to jab you to death." She commented with a grin thinking of the amount of times she had got past my shield and hit me. "But seriously thank you, it's helped a lot and is more enjoyable than most of Terra's methods." She continued sincerely.
"No problem and whenever you want some more help just ask and I'll help." I say happy that my method of training had gone down well with Aurora. "Well I guess we better get back home before it gets dark." I continue while looking into the sky to see that the sun was beginning to fall in the sky. So we began to walk back to the floor portal from the plains training ground.
"So... Does Terra have any one special to him in the real world?" Aurora asks me tentatively. I stop walking raise my eyebrows and turn to look at her. I tried to look into her eyes but she was blatantly trying to avoid eye contact by looking into the clear sky.
"As far as I know, no he doesn't." I say slowly and I begin to walk again to try and avoid any more awkward questions. I look back briefly to see a slight expression of relief cross her face. She continues to walk beside me with a grin but this time without talking, obviously lost in her thoughts. For the rest of the walk I try to figure out all of the possible motives for the question she asked and her reaction to it, but ending up with only one possibility. "Oh god no." I think with a roll of my eyes.