The reincarnated Demon (Male Mendoris Reader x Mushoku Tensei)

Chapter 6: Training and Birthday (Rewritten)

You woke up again. It was once again later than usual, so you figured that Ghislaine was send off for another round of errands by Philip. The rest of yesterday wasn't really that interesting, as it was just magic class with Frieren, which was some theory and then practice in the courtyard. She also explained that the saint rank spells had a large area of effect and thus should be practiced outside of the city. Now that you thought about it: you've never actually left the castle, since the beast woman carried you here. There was already a lot to experience here in the castle alone, but after a couple of months things began to get a bit dull. Especially since you knew the whole place by heart by now.

You sat up in your bed and threw the covers off of you, immediately shivering a bit as the comfortable warmth was gone in an instant, evaporated like ice being thrown into a campfire. You quickly walked to your closet and pulled out a pair of pants, a shirt and some underpants. You changed into your clothes and tied the laces of your boots. As you entered the dining room everyone waited till you were seated and than began eating and talking as usual. Have they forgotten my birthday? you thought. But there seemed to be more food on the table than usual. Now that I think about it, I only told Ghislaine and Eris and no one else. It's not that weird they would forget, I mostly didn't remember the birthdays of my friends in my old life either. However, as you glaced at the redhead next to you it looked like she wanted to say something, but she didn't open her mouth, so you initiated the conversation instead.

'Have you slept well?' you asked her.

'Yeah, what about you?' she responded.

'I'm well rested,' you said and then decided to change the subject. 'Is it just me or is there more breakfast than usual?'

'So what?! That just means there's more to eat,' she shrugged in such a way that let through that she definitely knew more about it, which raised your suspicion.

Nevertheless, you still just ate your breakfast, while having some small talk with the other people at the table, but no one let any hint through that they knew about your birthday.

Despite it being your birthday, and no one noticing it so far, you still had sword training by Ghislaine. Currently, you were busy with your warm up exercises. You held your wooden sword with both hands slightly above your head and swung it down, then raised the blade and did it again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. Then you brought it to your right side and slashed horizontally to the left and did that ten times too. Then you did the opposite and slashed horizontally to the right. Then diagonally from your right shoulder to bottom left, then the other way around. All of the exercises ten times. After that you repeated the entire sequence, but this time with only one hand. Your arms and torso were warmed up, but you still ran a couple of laps around the courtyard to warm up your legs. Once your warming up was done, the actual lesson started.

'Left! Right! Left! Top! Flat left! Right! Parry!' Ghislaine instructed you loudly and you followed her directions with the corresponding sword strikes on the wooden pole that acted as a dummy.

With each and every strike, your wooden practice sword became more and more battered, especially since you were already using it for a bit less than a year now. There were quite noticeable chunks out of the wooden edge, but nothing so far that could lead to critical failure. 'Right! Backhand! Pommel! Head! Head!'

You positioned your sword at your right shoulder and diagonally cut down, then brought it back with the false edge up, over your shoulder then smashed the pommel against the pole, followed up with two consecutive zwerchhau strikes. 'That's enough for now! You've done well, take a break,' the muscular beast woman said, so you put your wooden practice sword in its sheath again. 'After that we'll have a sparring match to close off our training for today.' You gave a nod in understanding and slowly walked around the yard to not let your muscles get cold.