Chapter 25 - 25. Sparring

"You either raise 5 strength and you would gain 1 weight limit or 5 endurance and gain 0.5 weight limit. It seems useless for a necromancer to raise those stats but raising your endurance would also increase your stamina. And to utilize the shield you need a lot of stamina as you spend your stamina to block your enemy attack." Anna told James how to raise his weight limit

Anna is holding a thick red book in her hand and James is trying a couple of cool poses with his new shield. He said that it's the shield really fits his necromancer theme as it has a black color and shaped like a coffin.

30 minutes pass since the start of the class and Mr. Carlos raises from his chair and getting ready to teach the students some basic combat and weapon mastery. All Around, you can see a miss-match high school student holding all kind different weapon in their hands.

"Now that I see all of you already pick a weapon we can start the lesson."

After saying that Mr. Carlos separated the student into 3 main groups; melee, ranged, and magic classes. Each types has a different basic combat style so they need to teach them separately. Albert join the range group while Kana and James chose the mage group while James, Alice, and Anna join the mele group.

James contemplated for a while in which group to join. In the end, he chooses the range group as Anna offers to teach the group personally later. That way he can try both styles and pick which one suits him the most.

Mr. Carlos gives all the students a 10-minute lecture about the importance of teamwork and team composition.

After we're separated Mr. Carlos start instructing the melee group first as other instructor taking over other groups.

Mr. Carlos began teaching the melee group basic stance for each different weapon and how to use them efficiently. Mr. Carlos also teaches them how to properly dodge, block, parry, and counter-attack.

The range and mage group head to dummy to start their lesson. Other than basic that range group also learns how to dodge and basic movement patterns of shoot and run. Mage group mostly learn how to cast while moving or to dispell their spell midway to dodge a lethal attack. The instructor also helps the student to fix their stance and advise them to read extra titles in the library later.

Instructing a bunch of harmless teens to use weapons taking a lot of time and patient. Finally, after 2 hours, some student stands out compared to others. Archer starts hitting the dummy although they still miss 3 out of 5 shots; Some mage successfully cast a spell while they move around. 1 particular mage even hit the target casting while moving.

The last hours are free self-train time for the students and they can learn whatever they want and ask different instructors if they want to. Some students even suggest sparring with each other but Mr. Carlos stops them as it's really dangerous to let 2 beginners a sharp weapon to swing at each other.

He let the students spar with an instructor if they want to see their capability. Anna to do a 1 on 3 spars versus Alice James and BONE-VOYAGE team. Kana is left behind as she still can't cast any spell whatsoever and Albert due to his condition.

Mr. Carlos approved Anna's request as he knew her fighting capability and seeing there's no sharp weapon user in our group. Anna uses a training staff instead of her own spear that she owns in-game. James gives BONE-VOYAGE a big stick as you don't really need mastery to swing a stick.

Albert asks them to let him try to control Luna and make the spar 2 vs 3. James, Alice, and Anna moved to an open space to begun their sparring. James start by summoning BONE-VOYAGE and gave him a big stick as you don't need any particular skill or mastery to swing a stick. Being a kind older sister Anna gave him enough time to summon BONE-VOYAGE and only start the spar after they are ready.

Albert & Kana are not even a bit worried that they would hurt each other during the spar. Alice can only punch using bare hands or defend with her arm guards. James can only defend using his shield while Anna got to have enough experience if to do a 3 vs 1.

BONE-VOYAGE starts the spar by swinging his big stick toward Anna's side. Anna blocks the attack with his staff and shoves it make the skeleton stumble back 2 steps before he can regain his balance.

She swings his long staff left and right suppressing James while Alice would try to sneak around and launch a counter-attack when the opportunity arises. Alice can raise her battle experience and as James wants to learn how to cooperate with his skeleton to comfort his enemy later this training can be very useful for him.

Anna keeps hitting James's shield while pointing out some flaws. Granted there's not a lot as she is not an expert in shield either but it's still useful for James. Anna dodges most of Alice's sneaky attack and launch a counter back whenever she can towards her. She even predicts couple of Alice's sneak attack forcing her to defend herself before even she can attack.

Anna always stops her attack a couple of inches before it hit Alice unless she prepared to defend it with her arm guards. While James suffers a lot cause she didn't hold her punch against him.

On the sides, Albert tries to communicate with Luna so he can also participate in the sparring. He tries to set BONE-VOYAGE as his main target as he's afraid to target Alice or James in case anything went south.

They are learning fast and Alice learns to continuously move and not to linger around after she attacks giving Anna chance to attack her. She even learns how to hide behind James's shield protection which makes him suffer even more.