Sorcerer’s Handbook

Chapter 9

"Ha!"

With a shout, Ingritt raised her wooden sword high, stepped forward, and poured all her strength into the sword as she slashed down at the armor stand in front of her!

Crack!

With the sound of the armor stand shattering, Ingritt's wooden sword stopped at the edge of the ninth ring.

Ingritt pulled back her wooden sword and resumed a stance of vigilance, using the breathing techniques taught at school to expel a cloud of white mist, quickly recovering her energy.

'At this rate, I should be able to summon my first sword spirit this month,' Ingritt thought.

As a mage academy with hundreds of years of history, Swordflower College had various guiding techniques for training mages. Training props like these armor stands in front of Ingritt were specially made to teach novice swordsmen.

The armor stands looked like wooden posts on the outside, but had a hard core with ten rings marked on them. When a student could cut into the tenth ring of the core with one stroke of their sword, it meant their swordsmanship was good enough to summon their first magic spirit.

Generally speaking, swordsmen could summon three types of primary magic spirits - the 'Slash Sword', the 'Thrust Sword', and the 'Cut Sword'. Ingritt, who was training in slashing techniques, naturally wanted to summon a 'Slash Sword Spirit'.

Ingritt took a second or two to catch her breath. By now, the armor stand had recovered to its original state, as if Ingritt had never cut into it at all.

This was the power of Swordflower College's training grounds - no matter how badly damaged, all the training props would quickly recover. As long as you had the energy, you could keep attacking the stands. After all, it wasn't the stands that would eventually crawl out of the grounds on shaky legs.

Boom! Just as Ingritt was continuing her slashing training, she suddenly heard the doors of the training hall burst open. She couldn't help looking over, distracted. Although the hall echoed with the shouts and exertions of the trainees, this was normally a very orderly place, and it was rare for anyone to make a scene here.

Anyone who dared to cause trouble here would promptly have several dozen swordsmen trainees with pent-up fighting spirit looking to have an 'intimate chat' with them.

In the previous term, Ingritt had a few persistent suitors, but they never dared approach her in the training hall. After all, any behavior that disrupted training, Ingritt only needed to frown slightly for the hot-blooded trainees around her to immediately step in to uphold justice.

Hot blood, reticence, pugnacity, full of male hormones - these were the hallmarks of the training grounds.

There was a famous joke at Swordflower College: "Some guys come to train the sword at first to pursue girls, but later end up training just to compete with other guys in swordsmanship. Maybe it's not that love loses to power, but that compared to complicated love, simple power is easier to pursue?"

But tonight, complicated love had strode unbidden into the domain of power.

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A silky ponytail the luster of a ruby appeared in the doorway, skin so fair it dazzled, features so exquisite they seemed sculpted by an artist, a slender waist you could circle with one hand, long straight legs.

A rose that by all rights should have bloomed at a soirée had abruptly blossomed here amidst the forest of swords.

But what caught the trainees' attention most was what she held in her right hand - a wooden training sword.

"Sonya?"

As Ingritt watched Sonya cross half the hall and take up position at an unused armor stand, raising her wooden sword to begin training, her mind was full of questions.

Although she didn't harbor any ill will toward Sonya, in her understanding, Sonya was the kind of person who would never touch swordsmanship.

Unlike the elegant, floating female swordsmen portrayed in the "Fantasy Epics" and "Knight Dramas" screened on the Cineramas, real-life female swordsmen had to train their physiques to be even stronger than males in order to summon spirits, master spells, and acquire techniques.

Calloused hands from swinging swords were a given, and their arms, legs, even waists would become more muscular and developed from the training. Like those beautiful actress with their pretty little hands performing dazzling swordsmanship on the Cineramas, they simply did not exist in real life.

Even magic spirits would never acknowledge physically weak mages. Stories of magic spirits escaping when swordsmen grew old and feeble were ubiquitous in Ingritt's childhood.

Although some said female swordsmen possessed a 'powerful beauty', in Ingritt's observation, the number of male students pursuing watermages like Sonya and Iris far exceeded those pursuing female swordsmen.

She had to admit, delicate watermages like Sonya and Iris just looked better and more refined than masculine female swordsmen like herself.

But she wasn't dissatisfied with this. After all, while Ingritt trained, Sonya and the others would be putting on makeup and skincare. Everyone obtained what they pursued.

So Ingritt was very surprised now - if Sonya was just beginning swordsmanship training at this point, wouldn't she be abandoning all her previous efforts? Not only would it set back her progress in the watermage disciplines, it would also affect the looks she took such care to maintain.

However, when Ingritt noticed a handsome youth not far from Sonya, still in full training gear despite the heat, wiping away sweat, she immediately understood.

Felix Vlozrada, a first-year like them and genius swordsmanship trainee.

Without a doubt, Felix was trying to summon a stronger spirit than Ingritt's basic 'Slash Sword' - the Vlozrada family's secret spirit, the 'Vibration Sword'.

A mage's first spirit was of utmost importance, potentially deciding the path their training would take. Noble families who could, would find suitable cultivation methods to have their prodigies summon the strongest, most suitable first spirits.

Even country nobles like Ingritt's family had secret cultivation methods for summoning family spirits, just not suitable for her.

The 'Vibration Sword' was undoubtedly stronger than the 'Slash Sword', and Felix's cultivation undoubtedly surpassed Ingritt's - his swordsmanship and training intensity were far beyond their peers, earning him the reputation of #1 genius swordsman of their grade.

In the final swordsmanship competition last term, Ingritt had lost to Felix, but she accepted it sincerely. Her opponent was not only more talented, but worked harder than her too. Felix fully deserved the title of genius swordsman.

But even more than his talent with the sword, what set the girls gossiping was Felix's background.

Even though Ingritt was from the countryside, she knew the Vlozradas were top nobles on Twinstar, one of the Five Pillars of the Twinstar Assembly.

Duke Vlozrada, also known as the "Starforger Duke", controlled Twinstar's most advanced steel factories, with interests spanning civilian, military, and government sectors. He could be called the most influential person in the nation.

As the Duke's second son, Felix should have attended the Trinity College, so no one knew why he had come to Swordflower College instead. Many secretly guessed he was out of favor with the Duke.

But even as an out-of-favor son, Felix was still a scion of House Vlozrada, securely in the top echelons of society. Naturally there were many who wanted to use him as a ladder to climb the ranks.

And Felix's social skills were as outstanding as his swordsmanship - he seemed to have a different girl on his arm every week, changing partners faster than he changed clothes.

At his busiest, Ingritt had even seen five different girls coming to the training hall looking for him on five consecutive days. It made her half-admire, half-scorn his stamina - how did he find the energy for these trysts after such intense training? She could barely melt into her own bed afterwards.

With top skills, good looks, and many scandals, Felix was without doubt the center of attention in the training hall. If Sonya had any special motives, her only possible target was Felix.

But when they had been on good terms as dormmates, Iris, Adel, and Sonya had explicitly stated that they kept their distance from Felix.

After all, nobles like Felix inevitably ended up in political marriages arranged by their families. If they got their hopes up chasing him, they would just end up as insignificant members of the ex-girlfriends club.

Although Ingritt, more of a romantic, didn't like their blatant pragmatism, she agreed their assessment was right - none of Felix's girlfriends had lasted more than a week all year.

Wasn't Sonya here for Felix? But other than Felix, there was no one else here who could catch her eye...

Just as Ingritt was pondering this, Sonya had already begun training in earnest.

"Ha!" Matching her shouts to her breathing, Sonya slashed at the armor stand but failed to even cut into its surface.

Ingritt observed for a while and shook her head repeatedly: Sonya's main hand was unsteady, her off-hand weak, her footwork sloppy, and her body sluggish. None of her moves had any semblance of proper form.

She hadn't even changed into training clothes more suited for movement, still wearing her usual fine garments.

Even her shouts sounded coquettish rather than forceful.

Rather than training, it was more like she was here to attract attention.

Whatever her aim, it definitely wasn't training.

Ingritt ignored her and continued her own training. Swordsmanship emphasized the unity of mind, body and technique. Focus was paramount - every stroke had to be executed with total concentration, gauging how much strength to use, how much to keep in reserve, the rotation of shoulders, flicks of wrists, shifts of feet... Only when every detail was clear could a stroke be considered complete.

Slacking off was meaningless. A mage trainee's every effort was not for others, but for themselves.

Only when the trainee's skill could stir ripples in the astral plane, could they summon a spirit from nothingness, crossing over reality to obtain the pass to enter the astral domain and become a true Sorcerer.

At Ingritt's current level, she needed a short rest every three strokes, a longer rest to relax her muscles every thirty strokes, and nine hundred strokes in two hours constituted one complete training session that would tire her enough to fall asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow after her bath.

"Ha!"

"Ha!"

"Ha!"

A few minutes later, Ingritt could no longer restrain her anger and looked over at Sonya in dissatisfaction - in just those few minutes, she had heard Sonya make nearly dozens of strokes without any rest, basically fooling around.

It was natural for Ingritt to get angry, like if she was taking a difficult, serious exam and a frivolous student received the paper and started writing without even reading it, saying things like "This is so easy!" "Piece of cake!" "Can anyone really not do this?", the other students would definitely feel he was disrupting things.

What Sonya was doing now was equivalent to that disruption.

But just as Ingritt was about to go warn Sonya, she realized she might be mistaken - although Sonya's moves were still clumsy and amateurish, every action strictly adhered to the requirements of the Swordsmanship Manual, exerting all her strength in each stroke with sweat streaming down her forehead. She wasn't just messing around randomly.

Also, compared to a few minutes ago, Sonya's swordsmanship had improved noticeably. Her wooden sword could even cut slightly into the outer ring of the armor stand!

Although she was still lowering the quality of training in the entire hall, she seemed to have some foundation now - at least several months of practice!

"Did she practice swordsmanship before?" Ingritt wondered.

However, Ingritt still believed Sonya had not come to train - wasting stamina like this, Sonya would surely collapse from exhaustion in a few more minutes without achieving any training effect. It might have a fat-burning effect at most.

I see - she must be here for body sculpting! I've heard of that!

Ingritt suddenly felt she understood Sonya's aim, but also felt Sonya wouldn't last much longer.

Even Ingritt, who had trained for years, could only make 256 strokes at a time for 11 minutes.

For a swordsmanship novice like Sonya, it was already impressive to keep swinging without rest for minutes.

Just then, feeling a bit tired herself, Ingritt stopped to take a break and secretly counted Sonya's strokes, intending to go over and give her some pointers when her form started breaking down - although she didn't think Sonya would switch to the swordsmanship track, if she could raise Sonya's interest in swordsmanship even a little, that was still good.