NOVEL WEB Chapter 5 – The warmup
It was the break of dawn. The chirping of birds filled the air and streams of sunlight cut through the canopy of leaves. The night felt short, as usual, but the laziness and exhaustion that bore itself into my bones in the other world seemed to have vanished.
Urvi and I jumped down from our nest and onto the ground, whose grass still carried the fresh morning dew. The air was filled with the scent of spring.
“I don’t think I have ever got up this early in the morning,” I commented as I began to do some basic stretches.
“Yes, of course. Clearly, you were a pampered baby,” Urvi replied as she walked over to me carrying a weapon in each of her hands. The weight of both weapons was not a joke. The claymore weighed almost five kilos while the axe was almost seven. Yet, she carried them around like it was nobody’s business.
“You know that is not true,” I said. I wore a faint frown as I took the claymore from her.
“I am sorry,” she said. She knew well how bad my life had been with my family. Ever since my mother died, no one ever stood by my side. Not even my own father. She walked back a few feet and said, “How about we get started then?”
She held onto her axe with both her arms and extended it forward. She spread her legs getting into a base stance. I quietly watched her as she swung the axe in a semi-circle with a loud grunt. As she twisted around, she tried to stop the swing but was carried forward by the momentum of the axe, causing her to lose her footing. “Fuck,” she cursed under her breath.
She got back into her previous stance and tried again. This time she fared a little better. The force of the swings rattled her. She let go of the axe and rolled her arms, clearly the swing took a toll on her shoulders.
She picked the axe back up and returned to the stance once again. This time, she lifted the axe into the air and brought it down onto the ground with all her might, pretending to strike an invisible object in front of her. This seemed to work, somewhat, but even she knew there was something wrong.
I, however, understood what she was doing wrong. “Two things,” I began. “First of all, it is an axe. You are treating it as a sword. Secondly, that is a one-handed axe, you need to use only one of your hands to handle it.”
She looked back at the axe in amazement. She realized how short the handle was, with the massive head taking up most of the space. She dropped her left hand and tried to steady her right-hand grip on the axe. I could tell from the way she was holding it, that this felt a lot better.
“Don’t use your wrist. Rely more on your arm and biceps to put the power into your swing,” I added.
“Okay...” she tried again. She went back to her previous stance, however, with a one-handed weapon, she felt uncomfortable with how she stood. Her mind instinctually adjusted her stance to better fit the new weapon. The space between her legs was reduced and her torso was now less twisted. She put her right leg forward and swung the axe up with less power but more control. She followed up the upward swing by turning around, letting the axe guide her. She then proceeded to swing it above her, before bringing it down onto the ground with a generous amount of power.
By the time she was done, she had a big smile on her face. “Did you see that!” she asked as she stood up. “That felt amazing!”
I nodded my head in approval. “You work great with an axe.”
She looked at the axe and said, “This feels good!”
She got back into practicing the axe, trying to get used to it as much as possible before we ventured out into the forest. I, myself, decided to do the same. I had my right hand on the handle, trying to get a feel for it. Even though I had never used one, I expected to get accustomed to it. But for some reason, I didn’t find the same connection Urvi found with her axe and this made me a little nervous.
I started with some basic swings and slashes. They looked to be on point and should get the job done, but something felt off.
***
Urvi dropped the axe, panting with a big smile on her face. Sweat poured down every inch of her skin, soaking her bare minimum clothes. She turned to see me still swinging the sword like an amateur.
“What’s wrong?” She asked.
I put the claymore down, resting on my leg. “I don’t know. Something doesn’t feel right,” I said.
Urvi looked confused. “What do you mean?”
“I am just not finding the connection with the sword.”
“Maybe the sword isn’t for you,” she said.
“That can’t be. I love the sword. I always did.”
Urvi fell quiet.
I sighed dully before dropping the claymore to the ground.
“Say. Didn’t you say something about class being about our fight style?” Urvi said.
“Oh yeah. But the class was undetermined.”
“Maybe we need to pick one.”
I had read about it in the guide. “We can’t pick right now. We need to wait till we reach level 10.”
“Hmm…” Urvi rubbed her chin and replied, “and the fairy said we level up to 10 before leaving.”
She did. “I guess we choose our class after fighting and figuring out what works for us, huh?” I said.
“Sounds reasonable to me.”
“In that case, how about we finally go out and venture into the forest?”
“Oh, most delightfully!” She replied with a nasty smile. She turned around and grabbed onto her axe, swinging it around just one more time. “Let’s fucking go!”
“But where exactly do we go?” She asked.
“Faeren said the training ground was ten kilometers from this point. I guess we are free to go in any direction we want.”
“Okay... Then which direction do we start?”
“Hmm...” I looked around us and all directions looked the same. The map was not helpful either. Any place we hadn’t explored didn’t appear on it. I am guessing we have to find pieces of it scattered all around us. “Since the exit to this place is up north, how about we head in the opposite direction? Down south.”
“Sounds good to me. But which way is south?”
“Oh yeah...” I pulled out the journal that was tucked in on the side, hoping that the guide had an answer to this simple question. After flipping through a bunch of pages and navigating through paragraphs of texts, I reached the line that read - “find north on the back of the book.” Is that it? I flipped the book around to see a pretty design etched into the leather. But I didn’t understand how it was going to help me. That was until I began moving the book and I realized the design was an artistic representation of a starry sky. One symbol in the design is particularly interesting. It moved very differently than the other artwork. It was the North Star!
I stretched my arm out and moved the journal in that direction until the symbol reached the top of the book. That was north.
“That’s fucking cool!” Urvi said peeping over my shoulder.
“This way is north. So, we go in the opposite direction,” I replied.
“Lead the way, master!” She said, still grinning. She swung the axe over her shoulder while I held onto the claymore uneasily.
The two of us proceeded to walk into what I could only describe as a thick dense forest.
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