Chapter 29: The search (1)

****Steve P.O.V.

The next few days we only trained basics while the professor guided us. Slowly, everyone realized that he would not give brownie points to those that could perform advanced techniques. In fact, he avoided them instead so they stopped the display of their capabilities.

He looked pleased when a few students finally stopped blindly performing kata as they were detailed in books.

Sabrina of my class was the first to understand what she needed to do to earn the good graces of the professor.

After 3 days of the constant and monotonous act of performing similar stances, she suddenly stopped in the middle of class.

She attracted a lot of eyeballs when relaxed her stance and took some deep breaths while closing her eyes. I was one of those observers.

I almost believed that she had finally lost it and was about to protest to the professor about this repetitive practice. After all, since she came from a very influential family, they likely already trained her to excellence in basics at least.

But to all of our surprise, after a few moments, she opened her eyes calmly and once again took her stance.

The difference was that this time the stance was not perfect like before or was it perfect for the first time?

I was confused about why she was making an imperfect stance now when during all the training sessions till now, she had a perfect stance.

I turned to observe the professor's reaction and he didn't seem angry or disappointed, instead, he looked approvingly at her for the first time as she started to perform her kata once again but this time there were some obvious differences between her form and what she displayed earlier.

It was indeed imperfect if we compare it with what was in books but at the same time, it was perfect on its own.

He didn't comment on it that day and let us think about it ourselves. The next day, there were others like Sabrina that stopped blindly following instructions from the books and started to make minor changes.

This time professor nodded before addressing us all," What is the difference between a student and a good student?"

" Everyone knows that books are sources of knowledge then why do you think we appoint teachers to teach? Why can't students read and learn from the books directly, after all, all that the teacher is doing is explaining the book to the student?"

"You need a history teacher because books tend to show the perspective of the writer which might have skipped other perspectives."

"You need a science teacher because science is a growing field and keeps updating itself while the books are time constant and can't follow the current trend which is why you need a teacher to help you get updated knowledge."

"During early 20th century in a post-apocalyptic world, people thought that infinities are equal which caused it to be mentioned in that period's mathematical books and later learned that few infinities are bigger than others which makes the older books wrong."

"Books are sources of knowledge and let them be just that. Blindly following them is not good. In martial arts, You are your own teacher. Learn the art, technique, or kata from a book but remember to have critical thinking capabilities."

"The books are not wrong but they are generalized so that most people with qualifications can learn the writer's arts or techniques. You need to understand the technique and adjust it to yourself."

"Do not kick completely if you have a larger leg, use it instead to attack in short burst kicks instead which will make your guard stronger and make you less prone to fall by circumstances."

After that, he didn't say much instead of giving some advice here and there.

***

Meanwhile, other classes kept going on too.

We would have to attend 75 mins practice class with professor dumbbell first thing in the morning and after that, we get a 30-minute break in which we were free to bathe once again.

The next 3 classes were an hour-long with 5 minutes interval between them, those were science, maths, and history on Monday to Wednesday while on Thursday to Saturday we had to take politics, advanced mechanics and alchemy.

We get a 45-minute lunch break after these four classes before we were expected to report for our last class of the day which was an optional subject.

Students were divided according to their talents and were taught by specialized teachers that were masters in their arts.

Since my main talent right now was either monster training or sword mastery, I was expected to attend one of these classes but since my tamed beast couldn't do anything except laze around, I didn't have an option except sword mastery class.

This was more of an exclusive subject than an optional one. The exclusive class was not divided into sections, all sword wielder freshmen had to attend together.

We were taught many things in class. Contrary to my expectations, we didn't start learning how to wield a weapon from the get-go.

We were taught about how weight and length could affect a blade to be utilized in different ways. The difference between a long sword and a katana or any other kind of sword.

No sword is better than the other kind. They were just made to wield differently.

A katana was specialized to slash while a longsword was built to thrust as well so its hilt was heavier in comparison.

All of this was new knowledge for me since I could be considered the least educated among the students in terms of any type of cold weapon.

Even a magic-user likely knew more than me.

I was trying to bridge the gap between us by constantly researching about the subjects during my free time. I never imagined that I would be one day studying like my life depended on it. I was never the one to study at home since I never needed to do that.

I would get above average grades just by being attentive in class so I never tried to get out of my way to study at home too but now the same person was trying to get as much knowledge as possible in his head.

***

One of my side missions was to find the protagonist of the game. Since I already confirmed that im inside a game that my friend was fond of, the next course of action was to somehow learn more about the plotline.

Knowledge is power and future knowledge is even more so. Living under the dark when I knew that there would likely be big events happening in the future was not good.

It was likely that I had already affected future events just by existing. It could like to severe consequences too.

Many possibilities could be transpired in this world. Since this world was a game or based on a game, there was likely a playable main character. I already knew that it could be a male character since my friend only plays as a male character but since the game was so popular, there could likely be an option to play as a female too.

The possibility that I dread the most was, there is no main character in this world because of my presence and it means that I have to face all the problems that he/she would have encountered.

The second possibility was a bit better, the main character is still present in this world. It could be male or female.

If it's the second possibility then I have to quickly identify the main character and somehow stop myself from influencing them negatively in their growth as my fate is dependent on their success.

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Sorry about the late chapter, I was busy with my exams and couldn't think of a plotline with all the tension of exams. Sadly, I write just before uploading so I didn't have any advanced chapters to keep the update going on during exams.

Don't worry, I am not dropping this book anytime soon without informing you all.

To be honest, I expected you all to remove the book from your libraries but you didn't to my utter surprise to which im very much grateful. 🙏🙏😄😄