~ Chapter 18: First steps in training ~

Three weeks have passed since aunty Eliza came to our house.

Strong, determined, beautiful from certain isolated points of view, a proud warrior, and a bit of a mage, she was the human(?) woman who took up the role of both a devoted tutor and a bodyguard until we were to reach the blessed age of ten years old, when we would be sent off to different schools.

As for how she came to obtain this role, it was simple. When father saw the three Blessings of my sister, he immediately sought someone loyal and strong to fill those two roles. Our blood-related aunt was the perfect one for this job. Above all, she was an Emperor Rank Adventurer, although, at that time, I had no idea what this meant. She did sound and looked strong.

Hiring and convincing her to stay with us for seven years would have been difficult with other individuals, but in her case, it was surprisingly easy. On top of being family, she was always in some sort of debt or trouble due to gambling away her hard-earned money while adventuring. The only reason she was never sold off as a slave by now was because she always managed to somehow make her payments on time.

All of this was discovered by me by accident when I was passing by father's office and overheard them talking about it. Mother loved her little sister and wouldn't hesitate to help her get out of any predicament, but one thing was paying up a debt and another was to fix the woman's broken noggin'. That part was impossible even for her. Besides, at best, she wanted to avoid knowing she became a slave when she still had the power to do something about it.

After I heard this and remembered aunty Eliza's words during her introduction, I understood why she approved of the way I saw slaves. Out of all of us, she was the only one who kept standing on the edge between living as a free woman or in chains as a slave.

Despite me seeing her as nothing but a giant brutish woman, there were many perverts out there who would think of her as an irresistible beauty.

Even after her job as a teacher would be over, there was still a good chance that she would end up in a slave collar. Mother only wanted to avoid such a tragic outcome for her little sister for as long as she could. Hiring her was one of such ways.

That being said, I could only see this aunt of ours as someone in a rather unfortunate situation. Even so, her ability to train us in magic and sword fighting was excellent. Not to mention the fact that it was appropriate for our current ages.

Usually, the protagonists in situations similar to mine would end up with some sort of spartan regime meant to turn them into monsters before reaching puberty. Something like that would only damage our fragile bodies, which have barely started to grow. So far, we had only been doing basic strength and stamina exercises, but not to the point where we would collapse of exhaustion. In terms of fighting, we barely learned how to properly hold the sword in our hands.

There were many combat styles our aunty could teach us, but for now she refused to do so. The reason behind her reasoning was simple: we were too young and inexperienced to have a preference for a certain weapon. The majority of self-proclaimed warriors used the short sword and shield and deemed them too be the best, but those were only the 'soldier's tools'. In the case of a true warrior or adventurer, their weapons could vary in both shape and size. Thus, finding out the weapon our bodies felt more comfortable with using could spare us a lot of time and effort. It could also end up being more fun to practice.

Naturally, we had no idea how to distinguish between them, so aunty Eliza helped us with her experience and well-trained eyes.

As it turned out, both me and my sister had a preference for an European-style blade. To be more specific: the Scottish claymore, but as one would expect, they had a different name than the one I was familiar with. It was called the Paraskin Blade.

Compared to the long swords with a broad fuller aunty was using, this one was a bit different. It was longer and had a thinner fuller, making it more of a precise strike sword than a power slash one. Although, the Paraskin Blade was my own personal preference, I knew that instead of a two-handed weapon a short sword would be of better use in close combat, especially in a location like a dungeon with narrow corridors where moving space was limited.

When we first started to train, we didn't use real weapons. Aunty Eliza made wood replicas for both of us, and we started from the typical scimitars, then we tried a katana, a scythe, straight daggers, curved daggers, clubs, hammers, and a lot more others. The claymores were the very last ones we tried, and I personally felt it suited me perfectly, although it would take me a while to call them Paraskin Blades.

The fact that our aunt could carve practice weapons so well took us completely by surprise, and sister immediately went full-on collector mode.

Who would have thought that an ogre woman like her had a precise hand at wood carving?

Speaking of which, after aunty handed us the wooden scimitars, we immediately started to practice. The first swing went well, so did the second and third, but at the fourth swing, the sword slipped out of my grasp and flew through the air, straight through the window of my father's study room. Luthecia panicked when she found our old man unconscious on the desk a moment later. He had a big bump on his head. While I was worried that I might have accidentally caused some serious damage, aunty Eliza gave me a thumbs up and told me I had a good aim.

Despite that being a totally bizarre accident even from my point of view, Cassandra ended up pouting for the rest of the day because I impressed the muscle woman.

When it came to magic lessons, our main task for now was to learn how to properly feel the Magic Energy around us and inside of us. Aunty Eliza would usually cast a spell that made a floating orb of light to act as a clear source of magic. After about two weeks had passed, we were tasked to practice molding that specific energy into invisible balls.

For this part, my sister was doing exceptionally well, while I accidentally shot myself off the floor with Wind Magic. This happened when I unintentionally changed the element of one of those invisible balls to 'air'. Aunty made a superhuman jump in order to catch me before I broke my neck in the fall.

Turns out, I had no idea how exactly I did that, and any attempt to recreate the event ended up in complete failure.

Because of this incident, we started practicing magic outside. During rainy days, when the water element was at its strongest, we moved inside and practiced only Magic Energy perception.

I also stopped calling aunty Eliza an ogre woman in my mind. It was my thanks for saving me back then.