Chapter 35: Chapter 35

“【23, 56】, 【99, 1】, 【15, 78】…”

Ron rapidly called out coordinate after coordinate. These numbers were all randomly generated in his mind; even he didn’t know what connection they had, let alone predict where the next coordinate would be based on the previous one.

Facing such rapidly shifting attack targets, Instructor Morris didn’t panic in the slightest. The way he thrust his sword with composure seemed slow, but was in truth incredibly swift.

At this point, Ron couldn’t spare the focus to verify whether Morris had hit each mark, but judging solely by the direction Morris’s sword tip thrust out, he could completely confirm that the man wasn’t just swinging blindly.

After five straight minutes passed, Ron had already begun to go numb. He couldn’t even concentrate enough to determine the coordinates of the next attack point, so he had to stop.

At this moment, Morris looked thoroughly relaxed. Seeing that Ron was no longer calling out coordinates, he sheathed his sword and turned around, first asking Justin and the others:

“Did I miss any targets?”

“None! Not a single one!”

Even though his own father was a Formal Knight, Justin still reacted with profound exaggeration. Not only did he completely affirm Morris’s accuracy, but he also provided some extra details:

“Instructor, you even accounted for the fluttering state of the cloth when it was struck. There wasn’t the slightest mistake at all. It’s simply unbelievable!”

Ron had only watched the general direction of Morris’s sword thrusts and hadn’t looked closely at the hit rate. Although he had guessed before the performance that the result would be astonishing, he never imagined that Morris wouldn’t make even a single error.

Five consecutive minutes of random, rapid straight thrusts with a one hundred percent hit rate; ignoring the weight of the weapon, even professional athletes from his homeland would likely find it hard to achieve, right?

In any case, Ron had never heard of any athlete in a sport requiring accuracy possessing a flawless, one hundred percent hit rate record.

Yet Morris had achieved speed, randomness, and precision. These seemingly contradictory attributes had genuinely materialized right before his eyes.

If even this didn’t count as transcendence, what would?

Not to mention, Morris was wielding a longsword weighing two to three *jin*. To ensure training effectiveness, the training swords used by the apprentices and actual combat swords differed only in whether they were sharpened, with no noticeable difference in weight.

With the speed and precision Morris had just displayed, he was practically a human-shaped CIWS. Ron figured that if one wanted to deal with a Knight, bows and arrows probably wouldn’t be very effective.

Of course, looking at it from another angle, an archer who could still thrive in a world filled with transcendent Knights would probably be incredibly terrifying as well.

They might just be a humanoid supersonic artillery shell launcher!

“Instructor, do you think we’ll be able to do what you just did after three months?” Ron couldn’t help but ask.

He desperately hoped to hear an affirmative answer from Morris, but based on his current estimation of his own rate of progress, the result likely wouldn’t satisfy him.

To this question, Morris didn’t answer directly, but phrased it differently: “The most outstanding person among this year’s batch of apprentices might be able to reach this level.”

The implication couldn’t be more obvious.

Ron knew his own situation. Even though he already had a clue on how to become a Formal Knight, precisely because he understood the difficulty involved, he didn’t dare claim that he could definitely succeed within three months.

As for Justin and the others, they were mostly just watching the spectacle of Morris’s demonstration, not necessarily knowing what conditions were required to reach such a level.

Because of this, they were actually more confident than Ron. Incited by Morris’s words, they were all just short of swearing an oath to achieve the goal within three months.

“Instructor, we can do it!”

“Don’t talk about the future just yet. Finish today’s training first!”

With that, Morris set the training sword in his hand aside and randomly pointed at Ron again. “You go first. The rest of you, hold your swords and stand still.”

“Yes, Instructor” *5

Because of his talent, Ron received a little bit of special treatment from Morris, but Ron didn’t feel proud or annoyed by this special treatment. Instead, he treated it with an ordinary mindset.

The training now was just like Morris’s demonstration earlier, except this time it was Morris’s turn to call out coordinates, and he only called out one at a time:

“【19, 28】.”

Hearing this coordinate, Ron’s first instinct was to locate the corresponding grid on the gray cloth, and only then did he thrust the longsword in his hand forward. Unfortunately, he missed again this time, off by a straight-line distance of at least six or seven grids.

And this was just attacking a stationary target, without factoring in the interference caused by continuous thrusts making the gray cloth flutter.

“Stop!”

Just as Ron was about to withdraw his sword, Morris suddenly called for a halt. “Maintain your current posture. Don’t move.”

Following that, he pointed out the numerous mistakes Ron had made with that single thrust:

“First is visual observation. You didn’t pinpoint the spatial position in the first instant. If you weren’t facing a training target cloth right now, but a real enemy, they could completely dodge your vital strike before you even launched your attack.

“Second, your thrusting motion is far too stiff. You need to understand that while you may seem to be holding a sword, you must treat it as an extension of your limbs, not an external object. Remember this feeling of limb extension; it is extremely important!

“Third, your body’s coordination was half a beat slow when you struck. The goal of Sword-Holding training is indeed to prepare you for actual combat, but it’s also to help you truly master the Sword Stance. Therefore, you must treat every single practice swing as completing a Sword Stance!

“Fourth…”

Morris proceeded to list seven or eight corrective suggestions, making cold sweat break out on Ron’s back. He could now lie in bed and maintain the Sword Stance state with his body’s internal combined force, but when it came to forming that combined force while his physical body was in motion, he simply couldn’t pull it off.

Ultimately, his level of control over his own body was simply too low right now!

And the solution to this problem was actually quite simple, just one word: Train!

Train like your life depended on it, and as long as you don’t die, keep training!

The Old Oil Peddler could pour oil straight through the square hole of a copper coin into a gourd; did he possess some special athletic talent? Perhaps he did, but what played the decisive role was the proficiency he had trained through years and months of performing related work!

…

After Ron came Justin, Karel, and the others. Morris pointed out the mistakes in their sword thrusts one by one, followed by endless repetitive training and pointers.

During this time, snowflakes began to drift down from the sky. This was the first time Ron had seen it snow during the day since his transmigration. This training continued until the sky grew dark and the lines and numbers on the gray cloth became completely indistinguishable.

“That’s all for today. Go to the eastern grounds, eat your fill, and then head back. Reflect more when you get back. Sword Stance training, Sword-Holding training, and even future Knight promotions cannot be passed smoothly with just brute strength. You need to use your brains!”

“Yes, Instructor. Take care, Instructor.”

…

[1]: “CIWS” stands for Close-In Weapon System, a naval shipboard point-defense weapon. Ron uses this modern military metaphor to describe Morris’s terrifying speed and precision.