Kian Goldmaul POV

  A few weeks have passed since the forest clearing mission.

  My experiments with The Fool’s Line haven’t stopped, but unlike before, it isn’t just me and my father as Thaddeus has joined us.

  Unlike my father, Thaddeus knows more about sword magic, but even with that, nothing changed.

  During some experiments, they even tried to use combined magic, but still nothing happened

  After that, we just decided to stop indefinitely until I learn other magic myself or after I get the secondary core—the Horns.

  I am currently not in my parents’ backyard.

  I am training on the military training ground like usual. Martial arts. Hitting the punching bag repeatedly with both my legs and arms, and I switch and swap my position and legs with every ten hits.

  It is quite boring doing this repeatedly without anything new. But it does help me get used to hitting heavy objects and with fighting reflexes.

  I am training with Nicolas, and he is doing the same as me.

  As we are training, Helmut stops us after returning from his other tasks.

  “It is starting to get boring from the repetitive hitting routine, isn’t it? We will be changing things from now on. You two’s technique is good enough that you no longer need to train them all day long.” Helmut says.

  “Stay here for a second and catch your breaths. I’ll go bring something.”

  After saying that, he left us alone resting.

  After two minutes, he returned with a doll, but this doll has a different color than the ones we were used to.

  “As you can see, this doll is different. From now on, you two will be fighting this one instead of the previous one in both martial arts and swordsmanship. You both will start together, as you both have the same years of martial arts and swordsmanship experience, even though Nicolas is older.”

  After saying that, he throws the doll at the sparring ground before making distance.

  “Kian, you will start first.”

  He says as he adjusts the doll size to my height.

  I walk inside the area, looking at the doll in front of me.

  Pretty sure it is not just the color that is different. What could the other differences be?

  As I think to myself, the doll stands up, and I immediately figure it out.

  It has a structure inside, unlike the previous doll. I say as I see it legs bending realistically instead of doll-like movements.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  It is going to hurt.

  So that is what he meant by routine change… I think to myself.

  I should focus more now instead of taking it casually like the previous spars.

  As I think to myself, I take on a martial arts stance, looking at the doll carefully.

  The doll does the same, and Helmut begins the spar.

  I try to keep distance between us—this is unlike the usual where I just rush in immediately, as I am not yet sure of what the doll is capable of.

  But its attacks should be more predictable now, shouldn’t they? After all, the structure inside seems to be following the same spots as the bones in the human body.

  After a few seconds of standstill and seeing how Helmut is not actually planning on attacking first, I get closer. After reaching attack distance, I throw a punch toward its head, as it blocks with its forearm.

  This feels more like a human than a doll now. I can feel the ‘bones’ inside.

  After thinking of that, I step back as the doll throws a punch back at me with its other hand. I bend my back slightly, dodging the punch.

  Yeah, just as I thought—now the doll is moving realistically.

  Immediately after the dodge, it throws a whip kick toward my thighs, hitting me.

  Hngh. It hurts, but not as much as a normal kick would. It is more like getting hit with a shin pad, but slightly more painful.

  I ignore the pain and throw a front kick with my right leg at it, as it dodges by side-stepping toward my left while stepping back.

  Before I can bring my leg back down, it steps up toward me and attacks my still-standing leg, aiming toward my shin to cause me to fall.

  Luckily, I was still faster, as I was able to bring my leg back before the kick reached me, giving me enough time to step back the targeted leg, dodging it.

  Predicting that, the doll throws a punch toward me, connecting with my head, causing my head to fling a little before I force it back straight, staring at the doll for any combo.

  I take multiple steps back away from it to break free from the rhythm, or I would fall into a deeper disadvantage.

  Afterward, I continued fighting the controlled doll for over a minute until I was exhausted and breathing heavily.

  “Alright, this is enough,” Helmut says as he stops controlling the doll, making it drop down. “I will not heal you, so you can get used to the pain. I will be doing this in every future spar. But I will still heal you when your going to fight again.”

  “Speaking of pain, from now on, pain training will be included in the daily routine. And just as I said before, repetitive technique training will be reduced and swapped with sparring and physical training.”

  We nod. “Why can’t I hit the doll? My techniques are almost perfect,” I ask Helmut.

  “It is not about your technique but more about me. My reflexes are higher than yours, and coupled with that, your movements in my eyes are extremely slow, making it easy to dodge and counterattack faster,” Helmut explains. “You will become like this too in the academy, although not at my level—at least not just from the academy training.”

  “Alright, go rest. Nicolas, go inside. You are next.”

  Afterward, the same thing that happened to me happens to Nicolas. The only differences are he reacted to pain more than I did, and he got hit more, as his technique is slightly inferior to mine.

  They sparred for three minutes—one minute more than me—because of Nicolas’s stamina.

  After finishing, Helmut started to point out Nicolas’s mistakes and how to fix them so he doesn’t repeat them next time.

  Helmut came to me and healed me, and got me back to sparring with the dolls.

  Afterward, a cycle started, with us swapping every time we got tired and then healed before sparring. We stopped only after we started getting some phantom pain and ache.

  We are now too exhausted to speak, as Helmut didn’t heal us in the last sparring.

  “The training will soon be including other techniques like wrestling and groundwork. Normally, I wouldn’t teach this to kids your age, but you already have a solid foundation for fighting,” Helmut said.

  “Well then, that’s it for today. Go home and make sure your parents don’t heal you two for at least an hour, although they should know to not do that, as they went through this like you two kids.”

  We went back home, and ten minutes later, went to eat lunch, both of us still tired.

  Thaddeus looks at us, laughing.

  “You finally started that training. I started this around the same age as Nico,” he says, smiling teasingly. “You should get used to this quickly as it will only get more painful.”

  Chapter End