The rise of the pervert primordial - Chapter 752 - 752: The third day of the development trial (part 5)

Before even starting with the explanation regarding how to use a shield, Aster wanted to know how will those cute girls would imagine the situation could turn if there was an extra element, in this case a shield.

“I can’t tell how the fight would have evolved if sister Agnes had a shield, but if it’s the last exchange only, then I think she could have won, after the sweep from the spear, she could have used the opening and with the extra reach of the shield, the face of the enemy would have been destroyed…”, mumbled a girl from the Red Sword faction.

That was quite the fierce scenario, as one would expect from a disciple of the Red Sword.

“Blinding the enemy to then aim for a proper finishing attack, so, basically using your “last resort” as a feint in order to turn the tables on the enemy, not bad”, said Aster with a voice approval.

The face is a really sensitive area, and if wounded it will bleed a lot, normally cultivators don’t need to rely that much in their eyes, even if they close them, they have spirit sense so besides some exceptions, whose eyes are special, like Aster or the receptionist girl Angela, their “sight” is better with spirit sense than with their own eyes.

So, by wounding the face, the bleeding and the pain will make let alone an amateur, but even average experienced fighters, to panic and commit mistakes, so a small chance for a comeback could become a really high possibility of winning a battle in which one was losing before, that being said, after praising that girl’s answer, it was Aster’s job to also point out the obvious.

“However, remember that the enemy was holding a spear, so when instinctively retreating after being blinded, there would come erratic thrusts from the enemy’s spear and given the previous suffered wounds, this scenario would usually lead to a tragic victory with the enemy dying while you suffer grave injuries with a relatively not so low chance of survival”, he said, which of course made that girl lower her gaze, at least until Aster added.

“Don’t misunderstand, others would call that a win given the circumstances, in fact even a seasoned commander leading an army would gladly accept this result, but you girls aren’t soldiers and I’m not a commander, all of you are my cute juniors and my priority is not winning, but to bring every single one of you back to the sect, safe and sound, anything else comes after that”.

Aster wasn’t trying to sound cool or anything, it was easy for those fierce girls from the battle peak to accept the idea of winning even if they have to pay a price, it’s normal, they might be a bit innocent in other aspects, but they are full combat oriented cultivators.

And here he is, teaching them how to fight, so he also took the responsibility to keep them aligned with the reality of the situation, they are basically mortals right now, a wound that is nothing for a cultivator can lead to death for a mortal, sure they still have access to things like elixirs, which indeed surpass what mortals would have, but it’s important to engrave it into their minds and hearts, that suffering wounds here is way more dangerous.

“Mm~”, happy but seriously listening to Aster’s words, those girls all nodded in unison, and this gave way to the second scenario imagined by one of the disciples, this time surprisingly one from the White Sword.

“Taking the priorities senior brother mentioned into account, to prevent the situation from escalating to that point, if sister Agnes had a shield, then when the “enemy” tried to step onto her spear, she could have charged with the shield, that would force the enemy to be tackled or to let go of his weapon”, in this imaginary exercise, only Agnes had a shield, so that was indeed a decent answer.

“Disarming the enemy at the start of the fight is a good idea, however in the particular case you mentioned, while there was no chance to take an attack from the spear of the enemy, given the position, if the enemy let go of the spear, he could take your shield away from you, so you’ll have your spear but he would have your shield”, said Aster to which that girl nodded as she mumbled in response.

“Mm, and senior brother has told us that if we have to choose between the weapon and the shield, we… should always choose the shield”.

“Correct, it’s not a bad outcome since it redefines the fight from the start and I’m indeed guiding you to act carefully, but timing is important too, a well thought move executed at a bad time, can be even more dangerous than a reckless one”.

Still, Aster expected this proposition to come from someone of the White Sword faction, because the girls that rightfully joined all share one thing in common, their personalities align with the word “neutral”, similar to Lieze who represents them.

So, they’ll naturally would try to solve the problem at its root, in a different way than their opposite, in other words the girls from the Black Sword, who would aim for the same, but in a sharper way, like killing the enemy fast with little to no wasted moves, an ideal perfectly represented by Nerissa as well by the way.

“How about changing the aim during that same exchange, ignore the spear, step forward with the shield blocking the side in case the spear is raised towards us, to then stab the enemy’s leading leg, or even easier, the foot, then we let him retreat to prevent desperate retaliation”, said a girl from the Black Sword.

“Keeping the guard up, sacrificing a possible large opening for a small but meaningful attack to land, the enemy doesn’t lose his weapon, nor you follow up, however the reduced mobility and disrupted balance, lowers the difficulty of the fight, it’s still a bit lacking but this scenario would be acceptable”, he said, which of course made the girls from the white and red sword factions pout to their insides.

Of course, they knew Aster was always fair with his evaluations, but those cute girls couldn’t help but think that he was playing favorites, since the one that got the green light was from the Black Sword faction, like him.

“Ahem, that’s enough to assess your progress for now”, said Aster to then focus back on explaining about the shield.

“I already explained the details of a proper stance to prevent being bushed back by the enemy easily, so we’ll skip that, I’ll instead teach you the basic way to hold and position the shield to wield it easily”.

“First, bend your arm so that your elbow sticks out sidewards, the distance from the shield and your body should be kept to around fifteen to twenty centimeters, don’t hold it too high because if it moves backwards due to impact, it could hit your face, not to mention that it would block your field of sight”, said Aster as he showed the position to the girls of the sect.

“Now, the two aspects I’ll explain are defense and control which can also be called passive and active shield wielding, we’ll start with defense since that’s the easiest and most basic aspect of a shield as one would expect, even so there are important things to take into account”.

“Regardless of how strong you might be, avoid blocking heavy attacks with the center of the shield, because if you do that you will be absorbing the full force of the attack, instead you should aim to use the border of the shield to make the attacks slide away after their impulse had been diminished”.

“This “angling” not only does reduce the blunt that your arm will take, but in this way you can also disrupt the rhythm of the enemy, because they will have to position themselves to charge again, instead of just having to retrieve their weapon”.

“Besides the correct way to block an attack, another thing you have to always keep in mind is to not flap your shield around, keep it on guard and only move it enough to block the enemy’s attack”.

“That’s basically all when it comes to defending, it’s quite simple the shield was created for that after all, as long as your reaction time is not horrible and you are not easily tricked by the opponent’s feints, then the previous should be enough for the passive aspect”, said Aster to then add.

“Control is a much more advanced subject, I’ll teach you about it and you’ll learn how to use it, but the condition is that you will only use it if it’s necessary, otherwise, you’ll stick to passive defense as to not take unnecessary risks”.

The vast majority of the girls, already realized that just by intercepting the enemy’s attack the way Aster told them to, they could create an opening for an attack, so if they focused in mastering that, they’ll be good to go, of course that didn’t mean they didn’t want to see and learn about the advanced subject of control.

“Like its name suggests, active shield wielding requires you to take the initiative with the shield, instead of waiting for the attack to reach you, you’ll reach out to the attack”.

“Once the enemy’s weapon has made contact with your shield you’ll push either back if you used the center of the shield, or to the side if you used the border and here is the important part, you have to be quick to follow up with an attack within the window of time in which the enemy is thrown out of balance”.

“In other words, you’ll have to attack and defend simultaneously, which is why this technique should be left to the end, instead of that I suggest you to try to disarm the enemy by bashing the shield against the arm with which he is holding his weapon when he is retrieving it after a simply parry”, concluded Aster.

That was the explanation he gave them, as one could see he limited it even more than when he explained about the spear, because he didn’t want them to switch to try and go too dep into learning about the shield.

There were zero maneuver type shield users among the present disciples, though there were a few defense type girls who indeed used a shield as their weapon, he was going to show them a few tricks during the incoming spar though and Agnes knew it and was excited about it as well.

“So, do I grab a spear or a shield?”, asked the sportsy sun diamond princess, there was no point in the two of them using shields for the spar, from her point of view.

“That’s a good question, to be honest I highly doubt the enemy will waste iron in reinforcing their shields so that they can withstand a prolonged shield vs shield clash, they’ll barely would have enough for their weapons if they have any, so in nine out of ten times we’ll be seeing pure wood shields stuck together with glue, maybe leather and improvised nails at most”, said Aster.

In other words, the enemy won’t try to use their shields to fight, their durability will be low so they will be exclusively used to defend, still a nice show for those curious girls was not a bad idea.

“Let’s do it like this, we’ll divide the spar in two parts, one with a spear and one with a shield, it will be a one point only type of spar and the spear goes first”, said Aster as he applied the red colored powder to the center and borders of the training shield, as well as to… his hands, shoulders, feet and knees.

‘I wasn’t going to feign ignorance if a hit landed, even if there was no visible mark left and he knows it, so then why…’, Agnes who was a bit confused about Aster’s actions for a second, suddenly came to a realization when she saw the slight smirk that appeared at the corner of his mouth and was reminded of that dot which he purposedly painted on the tip of her nose, he wanted to tease her.

“Humph”, softly snorting, but with an almost unnoticeable smile on her pretty face as she accepted the challenge, Agnes grabbed the training spear and adopted a solid stance, despite she being the one supposed to attack, the reason is simple, if Aster got a hold of her, that was a point and the combat will end, that’s why he applied the power to his hands in general and not only to his knuckles.

‘He is going to get me no matter what, so I might as well make him show me some good examples of active shield wielding to use them myself’, concluded the sportsy sun diamond princess as she charged forward.

“Clack!”, the tip of Agnes’s spear was stopped by Aster using the center of the training shield, but before he could push her weapon aside, she slashed it downwards, towards Aster’s feet, effectively making him step back in order to avoid it.

“Woah, sister Agnes is getting better with the spear”, mumbled a girl from the Black Sword, a spear user to be more accurate, not everyone was a swordsman despite the name of the faction, they are from the battle peak after all, the factions contained the word “sword” to honor the one sole ancestor who has never show up in public before, whom the other two active ones had mentioned uses a sword, but that’s beside the point.

The important part here, is that Agnes was indeed using the spear at a higher level than during the previous spar and with just a few minutes of difference in between, she just forced Aster to interrupt his move by targeting his feet after her stab “failed”, or more accurately after it had fulfilled its purpose of making Aster block with his shield.

“Using the initial explanation I give, to your advantage, good, the enemy won’t care about “Fairness” and you should expect them to resort to anything in order to achieve their goal, be it winning or surviving”, said Aster, this was him praising the sportsy sun diamond princess, she used his action pattern against him.

Happy with her evaluation, Agnes changed her strategy, instead of charging from the front, she started making turns around Aster, which made the observers once again murmur among themselves.

“Right, senior brother didn’t tell us how to use the shield against an enemy that moves around like that, the stance we learned focused in protecting the area in front of us?”, asked a girl from the Red Sword, only for one from the Yellow Anvil to answer her.

“Among the objects we’ll be working on, there is an instruction to make a lot of small steel plaques with the leftover steel from the weapons, I’m pretty sure our backs will be well guarded”.

“That’s a surprise for later, but of course I won’t send my cute juniors in “rags” to the battlefield, also this tactic is risky because a mortal can’t simply ignore the weight of its equipment like a cultivator does thanks to formations, so moving around this way will tire out the vast majority of enemies you’ll be facing”.

“But in the rare case you get to meet someone like that…”, said Aster as he took his belt off and passed it around the handle of the shield, to then secure the belt around his right shoulder and left side, so that the shield was now protecting his back.

Of course, it wasn’t perfectly fixed in place, but Aster simply wanted to demonstrate that they could make such tactic useless, with something really simple, which will be taken into account in the design of the shield and the gear each and every girl will have on them.

“This way, you can still make use of the shield and have both of your hands free for combat, of course this is more of a resting stance than a practical one, but it will do the trick when necessary”, he concluded.

Speaking of which, Agnes could be counted among the very few “enemies” that would be able to move around even with full gear on, without tiring herself out enough to interfere with the battle, but she recognized that with the shield on his back, trying to ambush him would be harder than just charging from the front, so she stopped circling around him.

Still, it’s not like it was for naught, she showed those girls another possible scenario, and now after tightening the grip on the staff of her lance, Agnes started thrusting at different parts of Aster’s body, of course Aster retrieved his shield and blocked the attacks.

But there was a difference, this time he started advancing while blocking, effectively disrupting Agnes’s rhythm.

“Clack!”, when Agnes tried to chain a slash after thrusting, Aster angled the shield upwards, so that the spear couldn’t move as intended, and this was a moment of extreme “danger” for Agnes since she had already made her move, so changing in the middle to retrieve her weapon was both her only choice and a flaw since an opening was bound to appear this way.

And as expected, the sportsy sun diamond princess slightly clicked her tongue to her insides, as she retrieved her spear and saw Aster using that window of opportunity to bash his shield in her direction.

“Clack!”, surprisingly, Agnes managed to use the shaft of the spear to redirect the border of the shield to the side, lessening the impact, but in the process, she got a clear red “handprint” appear on her left side.

“Hey, that went through the shirt”, complained the sun diamond princess as she slightly rose the side of her white loose shirt to reveal that even if more vaguely in shape, a mark with the form of Aster’s palm had appeared on her bare skin.

“Ahem, it was safer than risking my balance by using my legs to take advantage of the opening”, limited to say Aster.

It’s not like he specifically wanted to place his hand on Agnes’s side, but he noticed that she was aiming for the moment he tried to kick her to score a point, in a sense she guided him to use his hand instead, whether it was on purpose or not remained a mystery though.

After getting an “explanation” from Aster, the sportsy sun diamond princess happily threw the spear away and casually grabbed the shield to then position herself, that alone was enough for a couple of girls among the public to think in unison.

‘She did it on purpose!’, and they were right, but Valentina was more amused than surprised by the situation instead.

‘Even those innocent girls somewhat think that this was “bold”, but that younger sister of mine doesn’t realize it, I can’t help but feel happy for her, I don’t know how that guy did it, but she now has something else that eases her as much as the sword and physical training does… well, maybe because he combines the three aspects quite good’, thought the Purple Lightning princess.

“Clack!”, at the spar area, Aster and Agnes clashed their shields head on, with one hand and two legs free to complement each other, both tried to open a way to get ahold of the other, or to land a strike on an important part.

The exchange with shields actually lasted more than with the spear, Agnes integrated the usage of the shield quite nicely into the fighting style she was using, which was of course not the same as her usual.

Aster is a swordsman so he could tell, that she was using something that she had probably only learned in theory, but that worked better for combat at mortal level than the techniques in her peak Immortal grade cultivation manual.

“Thud!”, the spar ended with Agnes kicking Aster’s side, only for her leg to be stopped by Aster’s shin before she could properly land her attack, while he of course smacked her shield to the side.

The result was that the sportsy sun diamond princess lost her balance for a second, but before she could even start to fall, a firm but gentle hand held her by her wrist, preventing her from falling.

On the other hand, as soon as a smile was about to form on her face, Agnes also saw Aster finger approach her forehead and with a soft poke, she had a red paint mark appearing on it.