Liens appeared in the white space.
Having died many times, he had grown accustomed to it, and he quickly recovered from the sensation of being beheaded by a single sword.
Although he didn't make it to the end, he could generally guess what the final outcome of the last instance was.
They were all killed by the Trainer, one sword each.
"Could the Trainer be someone who has mastered Extraordinary power?"
Liens thought this; both in terms of strength and speed, the Trainer far surpassed them, ordinary people, and he could barely withstand a single sword from the Trainer.
Since mages exist in this world, then perhaps physical professions like knights and warriors also exist.
Warrior, Mage, and Cleric are very traditional professions in RPG games.
So, could the Trainer be an Extraordinary One of a warrior profession?
Moreover, the defenses of this Training Camp were too strong, with high walls, magic barriers, and so on.
Was such strong protection really necessary just to guard against some Slaves escaping?
Is it possible that these defenses were not prepared for them, the Slaves, but rather to resist dangers from outside?
Since this Training Camp was built outside the city, it was highly likely to encounter attacks from "demonic beasts."
So all these things were for defending against "demonic beasts"?
Liens thought of a few more things, but whether these conjectures were correct or not, even if they were all true, they were of no use to him at the moment.
He wasn't going to try the previous instance again; it wasn't very meaningful and consumed too much time.
Continuing to practice sword fighting with the guards was more in line with his current plan for getting stronger.
He had already defeated the first guard with a wooden sword.
The more times he fought the same person, the easier it became to defeat them.
A single deathmatch lasted at most a few minutes, and a night's time was enough for Liens to engage in many rounds of combat.
Without the guard making any progress, Liens defeated him through some memorization of his patterns.
Although he didn't want to rely on memorization, sometimes it was unavoidable.
When he already knew when to attack and which position was best to strike, he couldn't deliberately choose not to do it, could he?
Now he had begun to engage in death matches with other guards, sometimes even fighting multiple opponents and enduring their encirclement.
But as long as Liens didn't go too far, that is, didn't kill the guards during the sparring, the Trainer wouldn't intervene.
It seemed the Trainer regarded him as a rare sparring partner for those guards, and perhaps the guards shared this thought.
"Heh heh."
Thinking of this, Liens felt a bit displeased.
Others could kill him, but he couldn't retaliate in kind; this feeling was very uncomfortable.
However, thanks to this training method, he felt his swordsmanship improved rapidly.
Because a wooden sword couldn't clash head-on with an iron sword, his sword techniques began to lean towards a style of "precise striking, one-hit finish."
Dodging and waiting for the opportune moment, finding weaknesses, and ensuring every sword strike hits... this was the direction Liens was currently taking.
Upon entering the instance, Liens skillfully attacked a guard who was supervising nearby, provoking him to retaliate.
This guard was not the first one Liens attacked, but a different one.
Sometimes, Liens couldn't just pick and choose which guard to practice sword fighting with.
Each day, not only would the Trainers change, but the supervising guards would also shift.
If a guard hadn't supervised Liens's duel in the sword training on the previous day,
then it would be very troublesome for Liens to try and find him to practice sword fighting in an instance on a subsequent day.
Moving around haphazardly during sword training would be deemed by the Trainer as having thoughts of passive training, leading to beatings in minor cases and death in severe cases.
Liens dodged the guard's whipping lash and continued to attack the guard with his wooden sword.
Having fought this guard a few times, Liens knew his temper was considered "good"; he wouldn't easily draw his sword and kill a Trainer.
When faced with a Trainer's offense, he would usually use his whip to punish the offender.
However, Liens didn't need his "good temper"; what he needed was a deathmatch between swords.
In terms of strength, this guard was also relatively strong among the guards he had encountered; he hadn't yet "conquered" him.
As Liens continued his offense, the guard's temper flared, and he drew his longsword, slashing at Liens.
At this point, the battle Liens wanted had arrived.
Liens dodged the incoming longsword, tensed his arm muscles, and thrust his sword at the guard with a speed faster than before.
Just now, Liens had deliberately slowed down his attacks; otherwise, he could have knocked down the guard while he was still holding the whip.
As mentioned earlier, his swordsmanship had improved rapidly; he was no longer weak now.
In the previous gate instance, Liens was even able to precisely kill the guard at the gate with a single sword.
Although it was done with the assistance of others, being able to precisely kill someone with one sword strike in itself was very impressive.
The battle between Liens and the guard quickly ended, with Liens's death as the conclusion.
Once the guard became serious, his attacks were swift and fierce, his longsword swung impenetrably, and his defense was also very strong; Liens couldn't find many weaknesses.
Finally, his condition deteriorated due to accumulated injuries, leading to a sword piercing his heart.
...
In the afternoon, in the square, sword training.
This was the tenth sword training session, also the tenth day of sword training.
The content of the training hadn't changed; it was still person-to-person sparring, but the number of people swinging swords in the square had significantly decreased.
A reduction of over thirty people at once brought the nearly one hundred Trainers down to perhaps less than sixty.
Suddenly, the entire square seemed much emptier.
Thinking about what had happened in these ten days, Liens couldn't help but sigh with emotion.
This world changed too quickly.
Friends he knew went from acquaintance to estrangement, from leaving last words to facing death, all within just ten days.
Ten days ago, he was also here, at this time, starting to practice sword fighting.
During this period, his swordsmanship went from unfamiliar to proficient, from striving for strength to becoming immersed in it, from killing to dying again and again.
Liens truly felt he had experienced a lot, but only ten days had passed.
Liens cast his gaze towards the Trainer; that guy was an obstacle that he, and even all the Trainers, couldn't overcome.
If the high walls of the Training Camp were compared to a cage, then the Trainer was the chain locking the cage.
They had not escaped their status as Slaves; they had merely moved to a different location, continuing to be confined.
After being disciplined (trained), they would become the enforcers needed by the Glenbagen Family, continuing to fight for their "masters."
When would true freedom finally arrive?
"What are you thinking about, Liens? You're so engrossed."
A voice interrupted Liens's contemplation; the owner of this voice was Liens's roommate—Ben.
"Speaking of which, this is our first time sparring. After a few days, we're finally meeting; it really is quite a coincidence, isn't it?"
Seeing Liens come back to his senses, Ben continued to speak.
Hearing this, Liens chuckled and said jokingly, "Maybe we're too fated, so destiny doesn't want to ruin our relationship."
"Haha, that's true," Ben replied with a laugh.
"I thought you'd be the type that's hard to talk to, but I didn't expect you to be quite interesting," Liens said to Ben.
The reason Liens had this thought was because Ben had the face of a bully, and combined with his physique, it was really hard for people to approach him.
"Alright, the duel time is about to start. Don't chat anymore."
Just as Ben was about to respond to Liens, a guard nearby interrupted him and forbade them from talking to each other.
Upon hearing this, Liens and Ben immediately fell silent.
As the guard signaled for the duel to begin, Liens and Ben started to grapple.