Chapter 108: 106 – Training Grounds

Every conceivable sort of target or dummy, multiple smaller buildings near the main one’s entryway up against the walls, even… Hold on, were those fountains on the walls of the main edifice that fed into aqueducts that themselves ran into irrigation tanks right next to those structures? In fact, the sheer scale of this place just hadn’t dawned on her until now, as if the barrier made it seem significantly less magnitudinous than it truly was.

Not even including the doubtlessly vast scale of the main building, the courtyard had to be several hundred meters long and about a third as wide. 

Zel just sort-of let herself break into a full-tilt sprint around the pavilion as she took in its full scale. Until now, she hadn’t really had the opportunity to run like this - the roads were either gravelly and carved by wheels, or paved with runestones meant for long-term travel and durability. This, this was meant for running. She eventually set her sights on one of the metal blocks, building up Fulgur in her Essentia Crucible as she ran towards it. Lungful after lungful, the coalesced mass of elemental lightning grew more and more tangible, until by the point when she dug her heels in to slow down right as she reached one of the blackstone slabs, it was an actual struggle to hold it down. 

Without the slightest attempt to focus the deluge, she willed it to pour out of her mouth. It was much like before - a massive, continuous burp - and this time the blinding-white obscured part of her vision. She hadn’t counted how many lungfuls full of Fulgur it was, but she wagered that the fact it took a solid couple seconds to expunge made the strain orders of magnitude lesser than it would’ve been had she used it to fuel a casting of Thundercannon.

It was a sustained, directed arc with the tip of her tongue as the sole breakout point, so wild and violent it resembled an actual flame as it whipped and scored gashes into the metal, sending molten droplets flying.

Only when it ended and she was left here gasping for breath, the last arcs jumping between her teeth, did Zelsys realize that it wasn’t a block of iron, or steel, or any other mundane metal. It was solid cold-iron, seconds after her onslaught already free of what charge she had imparted and pulling itself back together, pieces of it that had been blown off slowly crawling across the ground, while others disintegrated into dust and blew away in the wind while similarly-sized chunks grew back on the original mass.

“Yeah, those training blocks are great,” remarked Makhus from right next to her, himself breathing heavy plumes of Fog and the wooden pillar before him bearing several deep cuts, which were also already growing shut. He sheathed his war-knife and continued, “They take what energy you give them and use it to regenerate what damage you inflicted, making up the spare by suckin’ it up from the environment. Just… If you ever learn a technique that lets you speak with spirits, don’t talk to them. The ones that happen to develop a spirit tend to be disgusting masochists.”

“Is that so? How’d you know?” laughed Zel. 

The swordsman let out a sigh and explained with a wry smile, “Don’t recall if I’ve told you, but I tried joining the Black Horse Family when I was younger. Ended up getting rejected and joining their rivals in the Sanger Family instead, but uh… Sorta got kicked out of there, too, admittedly by my own fault.”

“I suppose you’ll get a second chance at learning Black Horse techniques, then… Hopefully.”

“Hopefully.”

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The four of them spent a while just exploring the pavilion. Sig readily took to the more humanoid of target dummies, rousing himself into the Victory Demon state and performing a variety of exorbitantly flashy moves, among which a jumping headscissor took center stage. He moved in a way that implied a restrained intent to pull the target to the ground, stopped by the simple fact that even the wooden dummies were strongly anchored.

Zef was happy to plink away at the archery range in the pavilion’s north-western corner, and Zel was more than happy with the view as she rested between bursts of pounding solid cold-iron with her bare hands. It was certainly far less painful than she’d expected, though she didn’t know whether it was because of the metal’s supposed energy absorbent properties or her own Hardness attribute, or perhaps both. Punching solid metal still sent shocks of pain through her left arm, but the right was left no worse for wear besides sore knuckles.

The third time ‘round - some half an hour after they’d arrived to the property - Makhus finally noticed what she was doing, having busied himself with some of the mechanized dummies up until this point. 

“Normally I’d recommend against poundin’ away like that…” he tilted his head at her after she’d left just-visible pits in the metal with the sheer force of her blows, or at least the right-handed ones. “Eh, you’ve got bonemeld in your system, you’ll be fine. Just make sure to set the bone if you break something.”

So it went, for some time. The excursion had been meant to just case the building, to get a look inside, but the sprawling options provided by the outdoor training pavilion alone derailed the four of them into using it for what was in effect relaxation. However, the sun soon hung high in the sky, and Sigmund was first to notice, perhaps because of his bald, now sweat-slicked head. 

It was him who pointed out the likely time of day and, with exaggerated reluctance, came up behind Makhus, waiting for the swordsman to finish a series of slashes. He was practicing against a violently-spinning log dummy with a shield on one arm, a club on the other, and two more offset sticks lower down to simulate other attacks. On the third slash, the dummy reversed its spin and smacked Makhus on the arm, on a spot that was already visibly bruising no less, eliciting a growl of pain and frustration from the swordsman.

Sig proceeded to grab his attention with a simple statement: “Sun’s getting high. We need to get back now or we’ll miss the rush.”

And so, with a sigh and a short goodbye, the Historian and the Swordsman-Alchemist departed.

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