Chapter 9 (1/2)

Translator: Atlas StudiosEditor: Atlas Studios

“Hyah!”

With a loud yell, Ingrit raised her wooden sword high and took a step forward. She poured all his strength into the sword and slashed at the armored dummy in front of her!

Crack!

With the sound of the armored dummy cracking, the wooden sword stopped at the edge of the ninth ring.

Ingrit retracted her wooden sword and resumed her vigilance. Following the breathing technique taught by the school, she exhaled a white mist and quickly recovered her energy.

“At this rate, I should be able to summon the Sword Slash Spell Spirit within this month,” Ingrit thought.

As a sorcerer university that had been passed down for hundreds of years, Sword Flower University had already developed all sorts of guiding techniques for the training of sorcerers. The armored training dummy in front of Ingrit was a tool specially used to train swordplay apprentices at entry level.

The outer appearance of the armored dummy was a wooden stake, and the core was marked with ten-ring symbol. The material was extremely hard. If an apprentice could cut through the tenth ring of the core with a single strike, it meant that his swordplay had advanced enough to summon his first sword spell spirit.

Generally speaking, a swordmaster could summon three types of one-winged spell spirits. They were “Sword Slash”, “Sword Thrust”, and “Sword Slice” respectively. Ingrit, who was training in sword slashes, naturally wanted to summon the “Sword Slash” spell spirit.

Ingrit took a second or two to regulate her breathing. At this time, the armored dummy had already recovered to its original state, as if Ingrit had not broken it at all.

This was the strength of the training ground of Sword Flower University—no matter how serious the damage was, all the armored dummies in the training ground would quickly recover. As long as you still had the energy, the armored dummy would be at your mercy. After all, it wasn’t the armored dummy that would crawl out of the training ground on wobbly legs in the end.

Boom!

As Ingrit continued her sword slash training, she suddenly heard the door of the training ground being blasted open. She could not help but look over. Although the apprentices in the training ground were shouting and sweating profusely, this was actually a very orderly place. Very few people dared to make a scene here.

If anyone dared to cause trouble here, there would be dozens of swordplay apprentices who were tired of suppressing their Sword Aura and eager to engage in an “intimate physical exchange” with you.

Last semester, Ingrit had a few pursuers, but none of them dared to talk to Ingrit on the training ground. After all, if Ingrit so much as frowned a little at such disruptions to training, the hot-blooded apprentices nearby would immediately jump out to uphold justice.

Hot-blooded, reserved, aggressive and full of male hormones. These were the labels of the training ground.

There was a famous joke in Sword Flower University: “Some guys practice swordplay in the beginning to pursue girls, but later on, they practice swordplay in order to compete with other guys. Maybe it’s not that love lost to strength, but rather, compared to the complication of love, the simplicity of strength makes it easier to pursue?”

But tonight, complicated love took the initiative to step into the territory of strength.

A strand of hair that emitted a ruby luster appeared at the entrance. Her skin was so fair that it was dazzling, and her facial features were so exquisite that she looked like an artist who had meticulously polished them. She had a slim waist and long legs.

A rose that should have appeared at a banquet abruptly bloomed in a training ground full of swords.

But what caught the attention of the swordplay apprentices the most was the training wooden sword in her right hand.

“Sonia?”

When Ingrit saw Sonia cross half of the training ground and find an unoccupied armored dummy to start training with a wooden sword, she was full of confusion.

Although she did not have any ill feelings toward Sonia, from what she knew, Sonia was the kind of person who would never touch swordplay.

Unlike the elegant and graceful female swordmasters in “fantasy epics” and “knight dramas” on holograms, in reality, female swordmasters had to train their physical fitness to levels even surpassing that of males to summon spell spirits and master spells.

It needed no mentioning that their hands would be full of callouses from wielding the sword. Arm, leg, and even waist muscles would become even more robust and developed due to training. Displaying gorgeous swordplay using beautiful little hands that lacked any muscles, as those actresses did on the hologram, was absolutely impossible in reality.

Even the sword spell spirits would never approve of a physically weak swordmaster. Since she was young, Ingrit had heard only too much news of spell spirits escaping on of their own accord when their swordmaster became old and weak.

Although there were also people who said that female swordmasters had a “beauty of strength”, according to Ingrit’s own observations, there were far more men who pursued female water sorcerers than those who pursued female swordmasters.

Moreover, she herself admitted that the dainty-looking water sorcerers like Sonia and Louis were more attractive and refined than herself, a swordsman who was like a rugged man.

She wasn’t unhappy about that. After all, while she was training, Sonia and the others were doing makeup and skincare. Everyone got what they wanted.

That was why Ingrit was so surprised. After all, if Sonia were to only train her swordplay now, wouldn’t it be a waste of all her previous efforts? Not only would it delay the progress of her studies in the School of Water Sorcery, it would also affect the appearance that she had always been carefully preserving.

But when Ingrit noticed a handsome young man not far from Sonia, who was wiping his sweat and still wearing a full set of training clothes despite the hot weather, it dawned on her.

Felix Vosloda was a first-year student in the same batch as them. He was a genius apprentice in the School of Swordmastery.

Although Felix was still training hard to summon the first nascent spell spirit like Ingrit, he was different from Ingrit who was only trying to summon the most basic sword spirit. What Felix wanted to summon was the spell spirit passed down by his family in secret, the “Wave Sword”.

The nascent spell spirit of every sorcerer was of utmost importance, and it would even decide the future development direction of the sorcerer. Therefore, families with conditions would try their best to find suitable cultivation methods for genius clansmen to summon the most powerful and most suitable nascent spell spirit.

Even though Ingrit came from a small noble family in the countryside, her family also passed down a secret method of cultivating her spell spirit. It was just not suitable for Ingrit.

The “Wave Sword” was undoubtedly stronger than the “Sword Slash”, and the intensity of Felix’s training was undoubtedly superior to that of Ingrit. The reason why Felix was praised as a first-year swordplay genius was because his swordplay techniques and training intensity far exceeded his peers.

Last semester, Ingrit lost to Felix in an end-of-semester combat session in the School of Swordmastery, but she accepted her defeat fully. After all, not only was he more talented than her, he was also more hardworking than her. He deserved to be called a swordplay genius.

However, compared to his swordplay skills, what the girls were more interested in talking about was Felix’s other side.