Testing,...

"If you have a question, ask."

Reed let out a sigh and looked at Lyn, who had her thoughts written on her face.

They were standing in a clearing three kilometers away from the city, a clearing that Reed had made for himself, and Lyn had been all but declaring to him that she had something on her mind the entire journey.

"Do the rules apply to you too?" She asked, making eye contact with him.

"Or are they just for me?" 

Reed hummed.

"The rules are temporary for now. I don't know enough about you to trust you to not do something that may affect me."

"I know myself, and I know what I can handle, but we have just met, so I do not have a complete understanding of you. Once I do, I will make some changes to the rules to better serve my purposes."

"And no, the rules do not apply to me, because I can trust myself to not make big mistakes, and even if I cause a setback, I can get over it."

"But I will still keep your secrets, don't worry about that."

Reed laid out his meaning clearly, and waited for her response.

"I see..." She appeared to be deep in thought as she looked at a leaf on the ground.

Reed let her think for a moment before stopping her train of thought.

"All right, let's get started."

He gestured for her to move forward.

"Do you see those targets?" He asked.

"I do." 

Wooden circles scattered in the trees, some of them small, some large.

"How many are there?"

Lyn took 4 seconds to give her answer.

"Twelve."

"Wrong, there's fourteen, find them."

'Fourteen?' Lyn activated her eye trait to locate them, but failed to do so.

"I can't see them." She admitted.

"Higher."

"Higher?" Lyn looked higher, and spotted them, hiding between branches and partially obscured by leaves.

"Found them."

"Catch." Reed threw a small item at her.

"Whoa!" She stumbled backwards as she hurriedly brought up her hands to avoid getting hit in the face.

"Why the face?" She questioned as she stooped to pick it up.

"You're going to be getting hit in the face plenty of times, you need to increase your reaction speed." Reed had a stern face when he said this.

"But don't worry, I can heal you! So prepare to bleed!."

For some reason, Reed had a wide smile on his face while he spoke about making Lyn bleed, which did make her worry about her immediate future.

"Now, shoot the targets. I want to see how accurate you are."

Lyn stared at his face which seemed to change emotions a bit too quickly., then looked at the gun that Reed had given her.

It was smaller than she expected, but the barrel was quite thick in comparison to its body.

"Is that a good idea? The road is not that far, what if someone hears the shots?"

The road was only a hundred-and-something meters away, and Lyn was quite certain that gunshots could be heard from that distance.

"Don't worry, just shoot." Reed assured her.

She shrugged and took aim.

She aimed for the biggest target and fired.

The loud bang did not sound, in its place, a soft 'th' sound occurred as the pellet found its mark, but just bounced off the wood.

"Ho?" Lyn exclaimed as she looked at Reed, silently asking a question.

"It's not a real gun, and it doesn't fire real bullets, even if a person was hit by it, all it would do would leave a small bruise."

That response satisfied Lyn's curiosity. She turned and started to fire upon the other targets as Reed watched her performance and wrote something in his book.

When all targets were hit, she turned to Reed.

"Not bad, now use this."

Reed took back the gun and brought out a bow and a quiver of arrows.

Lyn's performance with the bow was horrible, and both of them knew about it, so Reed did not say anything and simply handed her the next items, throwables.

Those went better than the bow, as she managed to hit all but the smallest targets.

"Do you need to rest? Or shall we continue?" 

Reed asked Lyn who rubbed her right bicep.

"Let's continue." She said, determined to get through the test.

Reed gave her a sword.

"Attack me." He said as she examined the weapon.

Surprisingly, she didn't question him, just nodded and took a stance. Reed gained a bit of insight into her character with this action, and raised his blade as well.

"Hmm." He hummed softly as he waited for her to attack, noticing that she knew at least the basics of sword combat.

She charged him head-on, trying to push his blade away and damage him, only to fail immediately as he retreated, pushing her blade downwards before stepping on it and stopping her advance by bringing his blade to her neck.

"Don't run at an experienced opponent without a plan."

He pulled his blade back and released her sword.

"I did have a plan, it was to overwhelm you with my momentum."

Reed thought about it.

"Not a bad plan, but that isn't how swords work."

"These..."

He brought his blade up and swung it down.

"Are force multipliers, not power weapons like hammers. You don't need to put high amounts of power behind your attacks to deal damage with blades, they focus your power to deal damage, so even half your full strength may deal great damage."

"But you need to do things right, if you don't have proper structure and edge alignment, you are going to suffer a lot, because you can't just swing them randomly and hope that they work. Do that, and I can guarantee that your attacks will fail miserably."

"Proper posture is required for almost every movement with a sword if you want to be able to use it proficiently."

"What you just did, had none of it. I guess that you saw a tutorial of some kind a long time ago, that's where your starting stance came from, correct?"

"Right, I saw it... like 6 years ago?"

Lyn listened carefully to what he said, which pleased Reed quite a bit.

"I will teach you what to do, but for now..."

Reed raised his sword.

"Defend yourself."