Strategy Follows

[Verity Lohlepher]

Verity hung just outside the guild, making sure she was out of the way of everyone else. It wasn't a good idea to train inside of the hall and thus, she was in the training area (duh). There wasn't anybody else around and so she guessed she could do whatever she wanted without the fear that she would whack someone else in the face. For starters, while she didn't absolutely suck at fighting, there were tons of people out there who were much better than her. She didn't like that. It was certainly a part of life; at least one person was going to be stronger than her in one way or another, but it didn't mean she wasn't allowed to reduce the number of people better at fighting than her.

The only real fight she had participated in that was significantly hard for her was with Tatsuma. Not that it was really like a fight. It was more like a trade blows thing than leave. Not her best moment ever but still worth remembering. She had to learn from her mistakes and that was a major mistake on her behalf.

The young mage summoned her broomstick and dagger. First of all, she needed to work on her abilities with her weapons. So far she had only ever bothered with knowing how to use them to the bare basics. She wasn't bad at using them or anything but she wasn't particularly good. The main point of requip magic was to have a variety. That came with the added bonus of being able to have a variety of weapons along with magic. She figured to use her magic to it's max potential, she was going to need to know how to use the weapon very well.

She decided to start with Fiera Ignis. It was a staff basically and she already had previous skill with a staff. All she needed to do was brush up on it and add Fiera's touch to it. She placed Hauskor on the ground a safe distance away and held the staff in front of her. She experimentally whacked with it a few times before deciding she had gotten the feel of it and put it more heart to her blows. There were several dummies situated around and so she decided to pretend she was attacking them.

125/150 MP

391/1000 words - Ribbon Shock
0/1000 words - Flame Arena

[Verity Lohlepher]

The first thing she decided to do with her staff was grip it with two hands. Next, she decided to work on her offense. To do that, she was going to have to tap into that memory of hers and figure out what she had been taught about staffs. She recalled being taught a figure 8 motion and so she did that with her wrist. Slowly at first, the staff inched towards what she called an attack. Soon though, it sped up and she figured she could use the spinning motion of her staff to attack people sufficiently well. She decided to test this theory and moved towards the dummies, stepping in the direction she wanted and moving quickly. A few minutes later, she stopped, not yet panting. That would be good enough. To her relief, she found most of her knowledge of the staff was returning to her. The bristles of the broom would be quite handy in the fact that while her opponent wouldn't get knocked aside, they would get caught in the bristles which she could then use flaming end to catch them in a direct hit.

A thought then occurred to her. Fiera Ignis hated it when she used flaming end with her hands directly in the middle of the staff which was what she was currently doing. Or wait. It was only when her hands were near the bristles. Never mind then. She wondered what would happen if one of her later spells would hate it if her hands were in the middle of her broomstick. Okay, she needed another set way to attack.

And so the girl went for a while whacking dummies left right and centre. It was evident as she continued attacking, the more she got used to the movements. The more she got used to the movements, the more she was able to hit her targets flawlessly. Very soon, she was more than competent at using her broomstick, her former training with the staff making it's reappearance. So now that Vera felt that she had gotten whacking people covered, she decided to work on her evasiveness. After evasiveness, she would try defence and then finally thinking up other ways to use the stick. Now there was a plan.

768/1000 words - Ribbon Shock
0/1000 words - Flame Arena

[Verity Lohlepher]

There were numerous ways one could use a staff for defence and getting away. First of all she assumed if she was fighting a mage and they blasted her with magic, it wouldn't be wise to counter it by whacking at the air and hoping for it to disperse the attack. That was what pros did and she definitely wasn't a pro...yet. She would be, one day. Verity shook her head to resume thinking of ideas. If a blast of magic was coming at her, she would probably have to dodge it. She could use Fiera as leverage to gain momentum. That sounded like it could work. She decided to try it.

She stuck her staff in the ground beside her. How hard could it be? It turns out very hard. She tried using it as a catapult but instead of achieving the feat gracefully...she ended up tripping and falling over. She groaned on the ground. Okay. So the movies in which people managed to do things skilfully were all wrong. What she needed to do was find a way that suited her. She pushed herself up and gave it another shot. That time failed again. She cursed in frustration. She wouldn't give up. The blonde tried again and again and again. To her, there seemed to be little progress. However, in actual fact she was getting better. She stopped and decided to think for a second. So she couldn't hurdle over broomsticks quite yet. A wave of frustration rose but she urged it down. Hurdling was out. She rattled her brain and smiled when she got an idea. She could give spinning a shot. It would make a pretty handy attack too.

And so she tried that. She placed her staff some distance away and used it as a catapult like she practiced. However, instead of jumping over it, she tried letting her momentum swing her around the pole. This ended with her smacking her face against the stick but nonetheless, triumph filled her. Yes! She didn't land spreadeagled on the ground! All she needed to do was practice her spinning trick and all would be great. A wide smile spread across her face as she prepared to do so again.

1000/1000 words - Ribbon Shock
140/1000 words - Flame Arena

[Verity Lohlepher]

After about 30 minutes, she managed to complete the art of using a broomstick as leverage to dodge. Success! 30 minutes later, she was struggling with defense. Here's the thing. When practicing one's defense, one generally had to be attacked by someone to know how to defend. It was one thing to swipe invisible enemies. It was was another thing to stop non-existent attacks (yay!). So Verity was at a lost. She didn't particularly want to attack herself since a) she didn't know how b) that wouldn't actually help her defend and c) she'd just injure herself pointlessly and she wasn't one for inflicting pointless pain. And so, Verity came to the hard decision of postponing her defence training for another day and started on support strategy.

Ways she could use a broomstick in other ways instead of direct offense or defense. She could use it for cleaning floors. She contemplated for a minute. Fair enough. Except there was one problem. She didn't intend on becoming a maid funnily enough. She sighed. There must be some practical way she could use a broomstick in a real life despite the aforementioned sweeping. She decided to brainstorm.

She could use it as a slide. She could use it as a prop. She could use as a walking stick! She could use it to catapult herself if she ever decided to partake in free running. She could jump up and down on the spot. Wait that was getting off topic. She shook her head and continued thinking. She could use it to climb walls. She could use it to break a fall. She could...probably do a lot of things with it once she got creative but it wouldn't do to come up with ways on the spot. If there was one thing she knew about herself it was that she couldn't think quickly. She was very slow minded if she had no clue about what she was trying to do. Basically she became a headless chicken running around. A very pretty headless chicken but a headless chicken nonetheless. She hated that but it wasn't like she could bang her head on the ground hoping that some sense would come into it.

Vera sighed. She'd come up with some later. She hated strategy with a passion and coming up with ideas seemed like strategy. Plain old boring strategy. Boohoo. But strategy was something that could help her and she had been pseudo coming up with strategies to win before hand. It was all to do with what she thought. She shook her head. It wasn't worth discussing to herself how much she hated strategy. Less thought, more action. That's what she thought.

1000/1000 words - Ribbon Shock
588/1000 words - Flame Arena

[Verity Lohlepher]

By the time Verity had finished whining in her head about how much she hated complex strategy, she figured that finding out how to use a broom wasn't strategy and more or less just a tutorial in how to use a broom. As such, she decided to practice doing whatever she could with the broom. That meant, she wasn't restricted to the training ground anymore. She could go into the guild if she wanted to.

So first up she decided to practice her sweeping skills. Never know when that was going to come in handy. And so she swept the grounds of whatever she could find. A bit of plastic, a Styrofoam cup, dirt, leaves, anything really. She brushed them all up into one giant neat pile and did away with them by scooping it up into the air and whacking it with her broom to send it back to wherever it came from. Not handy cleaning but still fun. Once she finished doing her area, she went to the inside of the guild. Thankfully there weren't that many people around to laugh at her cleaning. She did that over there to and as a joke, she decided to make a college of random things to commemorate nonsense. Once she was done, she stood back to admire her handy art with the broom. Simply magnifique. The guild master wouldn't care (but really, she didn't think he would).

Next, she decided to climb with the broom and using for a seesaw. There were different levels in the guild and so instead of using stairs like a normal person, she experimented with her broomstick. She wedged it in between gaps, stepped on it, catapulted over it, broke the ground with it. All of what she did didn't particularly help in climbing but it was part of her training and one of the more fun parts. After a while she did manage to find a way to get to the second floor without using stairs and felt reasonably pleased with herself. It consisted of near breaking her broom but was worth it.

After she did that, she next best thing was using it to get down from places. That was slightly easier. The girl simply went outside again and went onto the nearest elevated platform and jumped off. From then on, it was just a matter of finding out what she needed to do to break her fall or make it easier to get back up again. Even if she found a way to swing down like a pro that would have done.

By the time she was finished with that, she found she was reasonably skilled with a broomstick. Sure, she didn't work on her dagger and she was sore all over but it was worth it. She knew she hadn't actually done anything productive in the last hour or so but she didn't care. She thought it helped in one way or another. And so the girl returned back to her house without much thought of the possibly broken furniture lying inside the guild from the last segment of her 'training' session.

1000/1000 words - Ribbon Shock
1109/1000 words - Flame Arena

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