Ascension of the elder

Chapter 19: Training montage begins

"Uhh you do know I'm too young to drink?"

Randall realising his mistake rubbed the back of his neck whilst looking sheepish.

"Oh right well you can have fruit juice but you still need to join us for dinner to celebrate."

Understanding his intentions Kyle wasn't against this but had to clarify a few things.

"No problem, as long as I get permission from my parents I'll join you then. Miranda can you quickly ask my parents if I can miss dinner with them tonight and instead eat with the craftsmen."

Miranda upon receiving her instructions nodded and quickly ran off with the intention of meeting up with Kyle at the training grounds. Kyle turned his attention to the surrounding crowd.

"I'm afraid we can't celebrate, at least not yet. With this new alloy we can strengthen the family but if it gets out the other families or the imperial governor may interfere so I need you all to swear to keep this a secret for now."

Upon hearing this, the surrounding people thought about his words and realised the truth and immediately swore that they wouldn't divulge this information even to other members of the family without permission from Randall, Kyle or Landon. Randall was able to think further than the others and was thinking of the process to create the new alloy. Kyle could see Randall thinking about the situation.

"Don't worry about the creation method as the arrays and means of production are only known by me, so no one else will be able to recreate this method in the short term."

Upon realising this Randall had one less worry and decided to institute around the clock security on this improved furnace. They wouldn't alter any of the others for the moment, as he wanted to report to Landon about the situation as this could change many things and these decisions were above his pay grade. Randall may be a fool but he wasn't an idiot so he decided to leave worrying about all this to the management and just focus on what he knew.

"Oh by the way I haven't introduced myself yet I'm Randall chief blacksmith of the Powell family."

Holding out his hand towards Kyle, Randall looked expectantly at Kyle who could feel his eye twitching as after everything that had happened he now chose to introduce himself. The surrounding gallery let out a quiet groan seeing their leader acting this way but didn't interfere as they respected both of these people equally now.

"I'm Kyle, sorry but I'm really behind schedule now so I've got to get a move on."

Finally shaking Randall's hand, Kyle excused himself and started running towards his training ground. In order to reach his private grounds he needed to pass through the general training grounds were guards and the younger outer members of the family would train.

Slowing down slightly Kyle was curious to see the training methods the people were using as the previous Kyle never trained in these general grounds but instead in his private grounds so he wasn't embarrassed by younger people surpassing him.

He could see a lot of people lifting weights of different settings but they were all over 80kgs with most being in the 120kg range. There were also people training with their swords, these were predominantly large claymores and they were swinging these striking solid targets of wood or stone. They were training in this way to strengthen their arms and hands to better resist the impacts. The last group were people wrestling in a ring of about 30m diameter. There were no real martial arts used in any of these training schemes as the basis for martial power in this world was if you can hit harder you can win.

Once Kyle had looked at this training he sped up once again to meet up with Bruno. A few of the people in the training ground saw Kyle and were thinking of screwing with him as they knew he was stuck at level 0 but on seeing him run towards his training ground they gave up as they wouldn't be able to catch up with him because he was very quickly getting out of sight.

Disregarding him they returned to their training. Looking at the people who were training it had to be noted that the vast majority were men and less than 5% were women. It's not that women can't be cultivators but there was a stigma with women being muscular so they mostly trained in mana rather than physically training.

Kyle ran for another couple of minutes until he reached his training compound, this private area had all the equipment that the previous area had and was about 500m by 500m with stone walls blocking the outside. There was a few weapon racks to the side loaded with big swords of different weights and for the first time Kyle saw a couple of other weapons mixed in this included a couple of war hammers and some double headed axes, there was also a steel shaft halberd at 3m long.

As always this world favoured heavy weapons. In the centre of the training complex there was another ring but this one was different than the one in the general area as it was a formation that his mother had laid out. It was a protection array so if Kyle was sparring he and his opponent wouldn't be injured beyond a certain point. This was the most advanced formation Kyle had seen to date and he could see it was made up of over a dozen separate arrays all aligned and cast in adamantine to prevent them breaking during a training session.

Bruno had already arrived and was practising his sword swings in the ring. Kyle took this time to inspect his movements and martial skills. It has to be said Bruno had trained a lot and his form was text book perfect however this was only in relation to the books that already exist. Kyle could see many flaws in his movements due to how he was trained and this was from an amateurs eye, if it was a true master Kyle had no doubt Bruno would be dead without even understanding how.

Miranda arrived at this point being a little pink in the face and out of breath from running to do her duties.

"Master your parents said that was fine and you should enjoy yourself tonight."

Maria and Landon didn't realise it was Randall who had invited Kyle to the craftsmen's hall for diner, but thought it was probably the apprentices who were only a little older than him. With this line of thought they believed it was good Kyle had made some new friends.

Hearing Miranda, Bruno stopped his practice and turned to greet the pair of new arrivals.

"You're late!"

"Yeah sorry we had some errands to run which took a bit longer than expected."

"Okay no problem, so how do you want to start?"

Thinking about when he used to go to train he decided a warm up was the first port of call. Turning to Miranda who was still dressed in her maid attire Kyle pointed to a cubicle.

"Miranda you'll be joining us for training. If you go in the changing room over there you'll be able to find a training suit and then we can start warming up."

Miranda began to head towards the changing room while thinking 'I hope I don't get all butch.' Bruno then asked Kyle.

"So what are we going to do for a warm up? I've already done some sword practice."

"We're going to start by doing some running. I need to get an idea for everyone's stamina levels."

Bruno looked at Kyle with a confused expression for a minute before shrugging. Running isn't considered an exercise here due to it lacking direct improvement in the persons physical strength, but Kyle is aware of the improvements it can provide people if they do it regularly.

Miranda arrived after training into her training gear and Kyle told her they'll start with running. He would set the pace and they just have to keep to the same pace as him. All three then set off and started a jog around the compound. The first 3km was fine with Kyle setting the pace at a steady jog. Miranda and Bruno had started to sweat but it wasn't too bad, but when Kyle passed the 3km mark he started to raise the speed until he was flat out.

Bruno and Miranda tried their best to keep up. Bruno was the first to tap out after another 1200m followed by Miranda at 1500m. Kyle carried on for another 500m after Miranda before admitting defeat.

Coming over to Bruno and Miranda Kyle instructed them to begin cultivating. Miranda already having Kyle's new technique started straight away. Kyle approached Bruno and instructed him in the altered technique at level 2. Bruno was a meat head but he appeared to be gifted when it came to cultivation and picked it up quickly and started his cultivation followed by Kyle.

"And now here comes the training montage." Kyle thought with a grin which if the other 2 saw would really make them worried.