Zach stood in a plain hall filled with trainees, just like him. Normally, the students just sparred with one another, but today was a special occasion.
It was public lecture day, a once-a-week class where an instructor lectured the students. In the kingdom, there were four ranks of Knights: Mortal Knights, Earth Knights, Sky Knights.
And the graduates moved up to the Star rank in secluded training. Above the Star Knight was the Heavenly Knight; these beings stood at the pinnacle of strength.
"Today, we'll be teaching you the value of combat." An instructor raised his finger.
"What do you think is the most important thing when fighting?" He directed his question at the crowd.
"A good weapon...?" a student said. "Good fighting skill?" Another chimed. The instructor shook his head.
"Not quite..." He pointed towards his eye. "It's perception."
"Perception...?" Zach muttered.
"That's right." He tapped his temple. "If you can't see an attack coming, you can't dodge it." "So focus on sharpening your perception, this is what differentiates the elites from regular soldiers."
"So how can we train our perception?" a female student asked.
"Easy," he stated. "You train your senses, balance movement, and reaction to sharpen your reflexes."
"If you dodge an attack without looking—that's your cue."
The class ended, and the instructor bid the cadets farewell.
Zach's objective was to save the kingdom from the Thyxars, but thinking about it... it seemed impossible. Zach remembered the difficulty of this trial said "hard."
He still remembered something from his world: the harder the trial was, the more powerful your skill card was. But Zach's skill was weak as hell; how did he get paired up with a nightmare-level trial and a garbage skill?
His luck couldn't have been any worse. Zach stood in the training grounds, reminiscing about past events.
First of all, what he knew was that he was transmigrated into the body of a platoon leader, a Mortal Knight. The knight must have died in that coffin, allowing Zach to take over his body.
He glanced at his palm. If Zach was going to do this, he couldn't do it alone.
"I need a team," a squad to be precise.
"Yo, Zach!" Zach heard a voice call out to him.
A blond-haired scholar walked up to him with a cocky smile.
"I heard your entire platoon died. Ha! Serves them right for following a bum like you." He laughed.
"Not funny..." Zach rolled his eyes. The blond-haired kid was Richard, the owner of this body's friend.
Thankfully, the owner of this body was also called Zach.
"How can you joke about such a matter? I almost died, you know?" Zach figured it was best not to act out of character.
"Ha! Don't get too worried, man. I would've saved your sorry ass." He grinned.
"If you weren't too busy running away first..." Zach interrupted.
"Ahh, chill man." Richard tapped his shoulder. The entire hall was filled with people sparring, stretching, and doing all sorts of pointless activities.
"Hey, where were you going?"
"To train," Zach replied.
"Train?... that's new. Did one of the Thyxars hit you in the head or something?" Richard smirked.
Tch... that's right. The true owner of this body never took the knight training seriously.
But Zach was going to change that.
The first step was to choose a proper weapon. Zach was a shape-shifter, so a versatile weapon would suffice. Zach grabbed a pair of wooden hook blades and walked into a circle, with a doll standing opposite him.
"Hey! Get away from that thing!" Richard yelled. The training dummies were avoided by all the trainees in the hall, and for a very good reason at that.
The wooden dummy stared at him with lifeless eyes, limp with a wooden sword in its hands. This was one of the best training equipment in the entire settlement—but it was also the most gruesome.
The training dummy was powered by an existence stone, crafted by a high-level mage. It was said to move like a Star Knight when at level 10.
Level one was just thrusting and slashing, but at higher levels, the dummy moved like a true Star Knight. Zach walked over to the training dummy.
But there was a problem: the training dummy deactivated when it landed a clear hit on its opponent, but that hit was undecided.
Some trainees got lucky; the hit with the wooden sword bruised their sides, but others... The wooden sword blinded a few cadets, broke arms, and crippled students.
Despite that, the academy refused to ban the equipment, probably because it cost so much to build, but all the students avoided it.
But Zach knew the fastest way to grow stronger was through danger.
"Are you crazy!" Richard gritted.
Zach tapped on a button by the dummy's neck, and the dummy's lifeless eyes flashed with life.
"What are you doing?!" Richard hissed.
"Training..." Zach shrugged.
"Like this?"
Everyone in the vast hall paused. The dummy stood straight with its sword in hand; Zach slashed at it, but the dummy dodged with a single gracefully moment.
If he could just hit the dummy once, he would pass the level. Zach swung the dual blades at the dummy, but the thing moved with precision.
Existence stone-powered tools are so scarily efficient.
Zach's swung sword with a his might bruising the dummy's wooden cheek, passing the first level.
Level one was about perception; the dummy observed, then acted accordingly, dodging Zach's attacks without flinching—but that was what Zach aimed for.
This time, the dummy not only dodged but blocked and parried Zach's attacks, shifting its stance accordingly. A weak stance crumbles under pressure and weight, while a strong stance proves impenetrable.
There were three types of stances: the attack stance, the defense stance, and the lounge stance. Three of them serve different purposes.
The attack stances have different forms, but they all serve a purpose: to maintain the center of gravity while moving with violent speeds. Knights use this in close battles, and talented knights can even ingrain it into movement techniques to become unstoppable on the battlefield.