Chapter 16 – Mysterious Instructor

After homeroom those who had passed their exam headed to the training groups where we would head off to train with our respective instructors. My friends and I went with the old knight.  From yesterday who we still didn’t know the name of.

While his name was still a mystery to us, we soon found out that his skills were no mystery. No matter which weapon he took up, he was as equally proficient in each of them. Different from a jack of all trades master of none, he was more of an omnipotent weapons master. Many of the flaws that were in our forms and habits were weeded out in a short morning’s time.

My friends and I had a noticeable difference in our ability levels. While we had improved greatly under general Harlow’s training, he was in the end a general, in other words, he was an officer before he was a warrior.

Our mysterious instructor on the other hand, could easily be identified as a warrior through his callused and steady hand from years of training and being on the frontlines. I was guessing that he must have been from the order of the silver wolf, because they were the ones that usually went to the front lines to fight while royal knights tended to stay near the capital and were only deployed when the situation was direr.

Even when the royal knights are deployed, they usually serve as officers and rarely do they directly boost the ranks of our country’s forces. It was commonly known that royal knights were your choice in finding a commanding officer, and wolf knights were the way to go when you need to fight alongside someone in the front lines.

Time went by, as we went to knight training in the morning and attended electives in the afternoon. Even though I wasn’t actively participating in club activities after classes I found that my time was being used up by various activities.

Whether it was studying monster biology under Professor Ian or studying battle tactics under Sir Lawson, all of them gave so much homework we had to do. Even when we had a week to do them, I felt like I had gone back to my university days where I was free one moment and swamped the next with all my assignments due at the same time. The plus side was that because I only had these two electives for the first trimester and only had the one club to go to, I was still fine. I was busy for sure but not stressed in a bad way. Unlike some of the other students that I had gotten to know.

Some of those students even stopped going to their club activities completely or dropped out of electives to find time to complete their allocated tasks. I help those that I could, by summarising notes and explaining parts that they couldn’t understand, but usually they were just so swamped and didn’t even have time to go through those notes.

I guess this is why so many students stay back after their time at the academy is supposed to be over, because they still had things that they want to learn, but because it would cause them additional stress, they opted to defer those electives.

As my friends and I were a few years younger, than the other students and couldn’t become a knight or an adventure before we turned sixteen under normal circumstances. We were working under a lower load as we were only taking a few electives at a time.

Having just finished knight training with the mysterious instructor, my friends were getting ready to go to their clubs but because I didn’t have a club to go to, I opted to stay and train with the mysterious instructor until lunchtime.

At first, because I didn’t know his name, I found it hard to call out to him and ask for advice but now it didn’t bother me anymore. I would just call him Sir instructor like all the other students, in my group. During these two months, he had been instructing us, he had identified that I was by far more agile and flexible than the others. He believed that I would benefit from unarmed weapon training, as I was able to enter through tight spaces easily, making me suitable for breach and clear operations where I couldn’t bring a weapon.

I found the situation unlikely because of the spear and shield I received from Claude and Ingrid. However, he still believed that I shouldn’t blindly trust artifacts and magic accessories, as they could break at any time. 

If he keeps such a philosophy, would this be the reason why he's capable of picking up any weapon and using it to such a proficient degree because he doesn’t trust his weapon. He has trained himself so that he can just pick up some random weapon on the battlefield and use it.

When I ask him if this was the case he denied it, saying it wasn’t the case. Explaining that while he trusted his weapon, at times, particularly during a war it could become damaged and fall into disrepair. The reason why he was so good at picking up weapons was just that the situation had forced him to become good or die. In war, time waits for no one. It's either you take up a weapon and survive or die trying, literally.

It makes sense that during a protracted war, supplies and resources often run low and over-attachment to an unreliable weapon could cost you your life. Survival of the fittest doesn’t just mean those that are the physically strongest, but those that adapt and survive. This could come in any shape or form, but in his own words, knowledge and experience is what kept him alive.

Now, he was imparting some of the things that helped him onto us, in the form of knight training. If his experience tells him that learning more unarmed combat skills, will keep me alive, why would I doubt someone with vastly more experience than me.

Due to physical body limitations, I was not going to be as physically strong as a male that had received similar training. Even though I was a goddess I wasn’t a goddess related to combat so unless I was in my goddess form, I was just a normal human. While my mother was the goddess of war, what I inherited from her was not physical strength but mental strength. Over the weeks she had told me that my excellent strategic mind was what had inherited from her. So, all I could do was find ways that I could outmatch them. The first was way was to use my lighter and more flexible body, the second was to use more kicks when the other was using punches and third if one hit doesn’t two will, if two hits don’t work three will and so forth.

Using such a philosophy, I started to form a combat style that I realised I had already started to use, even before I came to the academy.

 Remembering my match with Anna the last time we had trained under general Harlow. Anna could be considered someone physically stronger than me, in a front on sword duel I was not her match. I couldn’t beat her in strength, so I had thought of other ways to beat her. That time I had used both my higher flexibility and agility to out maneuverer her and guide her where I wanted before using consecutive kicks which could generate more power than my punches while also giving more reach.

Like using the training weapons, what I need now was not some training dummy that couldn’t retaliate, but a good opponent. One that was both challenging enough, so that I could improve while, also not too challenging that it felt like some unsurpassable wall.

Sadly, all those that fit in that category were busy at the moment, so I was limited to the highly skilled mysterious instructor. While he promised not to move from his position and would only pivot and move with his left leg only and not move his right at all it still felt like I was outmatched.

As he stood before me completely relaxed, I felt more stressed as I had no idea even how to begin fighting against him. Under his urging, I finally launched a series of reverse roundhouse kicks that drew crescent arcs reminding me of the moon. As soon as that thought appeared like a persistent puppy it constantly followed me in my mind gaining more and more attention to itself as I performed more kicks.

Before long I had completely gone into a trance, while I was completely aware of what I was doing I wasn’t really in control. It was like my body had a mind of its own. I performed kick after kick as they continued to rain down on my mysterious instructor. I don’t know when it started but my divinity started to appear in each of my kicks. Slowly, I was not limiting my attacks to pure kicks and physical strength. Each of my attacks was fuelled by my divinity and empowered by the hidden but ever-present moon. 

Until finally, I unleashed my full force as a goddess and sent the mysterious instructor flying into the air before crashing back down on the ground unconscious. 

This was when I finally broke out of the trance fully aware of what I had done. I rushed to the instructor and check if he was ok. I found that while his armour had become completely shattered, miraculously he was fine. 

His armour had taken most of the blow and had dispersed most of the energy when it shattered. While he would be sore for a few weeks from the looks of the bruise that had already started to form.

The other good thing was that he had regained his consciousness before long. Assuring her that he was fine but would probably be out of action for the next few days. However, even then he asked her to explain what had happened.

I didn’t hide anything as he has experienced everything firsthand and seen her transformation into a goddess and received the full force of one too. There was no use hiding it from him now.

As if reciprocating the gesture for telling my deepest secret the mysterious instructor also told her of his name and history.

He was born to two slaves and had the name of Frederick in a distant country where slavery was legal and in turn also became a slave, but different from his parents he had grown up to have a large build and strong body. Noticing that it was a waste to just leave him as a laborer, he was sold to a local noble and worked as a guard for a few years. But the noble he worked under was cruel and had fun making his life miserable.

Until one day, on his twentieth birthday, he ran away, but not before slaying the noble that had caused him to become so miserable. Having not run very far, he was easily caught by the authorities that came to hunt him down. He was spared from being executed but was sentenced to a hundred lashings and subsequently sold once again as a slave. From there he was sold time and time again either as a meat shield in the worst of times or as a soldier during the best of times. Eventually, he was brought by a retired soldier that he had once saved, this soldier wanting to thank him and released him immediately.

Now a free man, he decided to travel far away from his birth country that allowed for the cruel treatment of slaves. Working as an adventure, he moved from one country to the next. When he finally turned thirty, he thought it was finally time to settle down in the very country he was in. Which happened to be the kingdom of Kar.

With no skills other than his fighting skills, he decided to join the army and eventually married the daughter of his senior officer, who thought highly of his skills. With the support of his father-in-law, he was knighted and transferred to the order of the silver wolf.

Now that he was old, he had retired from active duty but still wanted to serve this country that actively fought against slavery. It was Sir Lawson that recommended he worked as an instructor at the academy teaching the next generation of knights.

I didn’t know when I started to cry but I had tears and mucous running down my face. While Frederick thought that his early life was exhausting and cruel, he felt that because of it he could meet his current wife and while he and his wife couldn’t have any children, he thought of every student he taught as his children and grandchildren.

As he wiped away my tears he asks if I the goddess of the merciful moon and patron goddess of children would prevent such things from happening to another person I naturally agreed.