Two Futures Bound

Chapter 10

Arthur:

After Caera and I returned from getting our swords, we went up to our rooms to get changed as we have about a month till we become adventurers. I want to help Caera work on her swordsmanship.

We met back outside twenty minutes later with us just wearing more comfortable clothes to train in.

"So Arthur, what is it that you want to teach me?" Caera asked me, taking her sword from her ring and resting on it.

"Well I want to improve your swordsmanship and tell you something," I said, while removing the black shortsword from my extra dimension ring and swinging it a couple of times. "So here In Dicathen we use mana differently, while you guys have emblems and Regalia's we can use the mana around us. Since you can't do that you can't really use any mana spells in the beast glades as you're a striker meaning you've only gotten techniques to augment your sword with soulfire correct?" I asked, while Caera nodded her head in agreement.

"With that you can only internally augment your body and use the mana from your core on your sword and nothing else, at least till I find a way for you to use our way of mana here In Dicathen," I said.

" How will you do that? I don't think that's even possible. Sure there may be a chance we could learn to use mana like you do here in Dicathen, but the experiments from the Vritra removed that ability from us," She questioned, not really understanding what I'll do and to be honest, I don't even know what I'll do either.

"I don't have an idea yet, but maybe it'll come in the future, just not now," I smiled while getting into my battle stance, with Caera getting into hers. "Do you know how to dull your sword with mana?" I asked not wanting to get cut by her in this spar.

"Yes, Scythe Seris taught it to me when I was young," Caera said in a sad tone.

"It's alright, you'll see her again, I promise you that," I said while dulling my sword with mana.

She took the first move, slashing her sword to my right. I parried it with my sword and went to counter, but she had stepped back, preventing my sword from reaching her.

I took a short step forward, closing the distance enough for me to get a proper strike. I swung my sword at her left arm, but she ducked under my attack and went for an upward swing at my neck. The blade grazed my neck with me only avoiding it by a hair.

Using the handle of my sword I bumped her forehead pushing her back. She swung her sword in a flurry of attacks. With my fast footwork and quick reaction time I was able to parry her attacks away from me.

She ducked down low again trying the same tactic as before, I swung my leg to sweep her legs, causing her to jump back before she could attack. I was upon her before she could get her balance back, swinging at none vital points, but still putting pressure on her.

She started to keep a bigger distance from me, only stepping into my range to make quick swings at me. Because of this I started to put more pressure on her, driving her to the end of the stone padeo that we were fighting on.

Once she noticed what I was doing she started to enhance her body with mana and jumped over me. In the air she took a swing at my neck that I parried. When she landed on the ground she started to put as much pressure on me as she could trying to knock me off the padeo as I tried on her.

'Was this her plan all this damn time?' I thought, gritting my teeth.

As I started to get close to the edge I started to wrap my head around what I could do. I started to put more force into my sword, putting more of my weight into my strikes, causing her to lose concentration on where she was placing her feet.