"Come on, kid, show some spirit!" Gryffindor shouted as he slashed his sword at unimaginable speeds.
Auden tried his best to move out of the way but still got a small nick on his arm from a slash.
It had only been a few days since the start of his vacation, and an entirely different form of timetable had begun for him.
"You already have a good grasp of magical theory that even surpasses many adults in the current world. All that is required right now is for you to increase your battle skills to match or even surpass the current era of wizards.
Though they are nothing compared to the wizards of our era, you are still not strong enough to have the capacity to walk freely without being afraid of being attacked.
So, for this vacation, more focus will be given to your battle skills rather than your theoretical ones," Rowena said, having already made plans for Auden for the entirety of his vacation.
"I know your Charms teacher is planning something similar next year because of the severe lack of teaching materials. But still, it's better that you don't waste your time for now," Rowena said as a spiritual wand manifested in her ghostly hand.
The first day was hell.
Auden was unable to even muster the power to cast a single spell because of the continuous barrage of spells shot at him by Rowena.
Rowena wanted to imprint the idea that he would not get a chance in a real battle to muster up power to cast a spell.
For a wizard to cast a spell, they follow a two-step process. First, they muster up the energy they are going to put into the spell, or rather the intensity they want the spell to have. Second, they cast the spell, which converts the magical energy into the required spell power and shoots it out of the wand.
Almost the entire wizarding world follows these two steps. But expert wizards have reached a level where the execution of the two steps takes less than a second.
However, Rowena wanted to eliminate the concept of these two steps completely for Auden, her disciple. These steps never existed in ancient times, when milliseconds were more than enough to cast multiple different spells in battle. She wanted his spells to turn into a sort of continuous flow, where spells are cast continuously without time being taken to muster energy. For that to happen, Auden had to constantly circulate magical energy through his body without harming himself.
It took a total of three days for Auden to finally cast a single spell in one step.
Looking back, Auden had no idea how he had survived the last three days. To make sure that Auden learned the one-step spell-casting process, Rowena was extremely strict in her training during those days.
She made sure that Auden was under constant stress from attacks for three days, during which he only got a total of six hours of rest, including the time he had to consume food.
After he successfully managed to cast the spell, he fainted and woke up the next day, where he was trained again so that he could imprint that feeling onto himself. But this time, Salazar also took charge of the training, as he felt it was better for Auden to adapt to different patterns of attack rather than just one.
Seeing his improvement, Gryffindor decided it was time for Auden to start another form of training: swordsmanship.
According to him, learning swordsmanship would improve many aspects at the same time—physical stamina, reflexes, and reduction of energy waste.
The way Gryffindor attacked Auden was special. Auden was supposed to dodge the attacks thrown by Gryffindor while holding a heavy sword. But Gryffindor was tricky in the way he slashed at Auden. Auden had to use the least amount of movement to dodge the sword strikes.
If he moved less than required, he would get slashed by Gryffindor's strike. If he moved more than necessary, he wouldn't be able to dodge the next strike.
This was an extreme form of training meant to push the battle senses of a human being to their absolute limit.
Gryffindor was not human; he was a spirit. He did not have muscles or any other human organs that get tired after swinging a sword for a few minutes. But Auden was just a teenager with a slightly stronger body. He was exhausted within a few minutes the first time and fell to the ground with multiple bleeding wounds all over his body.
After healing his wounds and drinking a few stamina potions, he stood up and underwent the training once more.
"Aren't we pushing him too much? He's still a kid, isn't he?" Helga asked from a distance as she watched him get cut again and again.
"He's supposed to play around and have fun, not try his best to learn a fighting skill that normally takes decades to master."
"What can we do, Helga? We thought the same as well, but within a few months of being born, the child managed to develop an innate sense of right and wrong and was also smart enough to sense the rapid changes in the world," Salazar began. "Instead of enjoying the blessings he was born with, he decided to play a part in the world to reduce and prevent a war that would have happened in a few decades. But for him to have the capability to do that, he needs to become stronger, smarter, and more powerful than everyone else in the world. And for that, sacrifices have to be made."
"But it's still too much for a child," Helga commented as she saw Auden receive another large slash.
"Don't forget the most important thing, my friend," Rowena pointed out. "The child himself has not asked us to make it easy for him even once. Even while bleeding, even while being exhausted enough to faint, he has not asked us to make it easy for him even once."
Helga looked at Auden falling to the ground once again. But in the next moment, he picked himself up and continued to dodge the strikes thrown by Gryffindor's spirit without any break at all. Seeing the determination in the boy's eyes to grow strong, Helga realized that she had to change her mentality.
"I will go make some more potions for his wounds," she muttered as she went back to the garden to gather more ingredients.
A/N – Hope you like it.