The Golden Lord has a perverted SSS-rank summoning system!-Chapter 54: Imperial fencing

Doran woke up to the crowing of roosters and the first rays of sunlight.

His blue eyes opened, focusing on the ceiling of the newly renovated barracks.

It was clean and untouched.

Ethan had given him his own house, so he didn’t have to stay there all the time, but he decided it would be better to sleep in the barracks.

Before leaving for Home, Ethan had left him a true arsenal.

Something that Doran, with no knowledge of his lord’s summoning system, could only wonder where it had come from.

A few suits of armor, dozens of swords, and just over five bows. Some items were of low quality, others of such high quality that Doran quickly traded his own sword for one of them.

With such valuable items in the barracks’ armory, he decided it was best to sleep there alongside at least two other guards, taking turns on watch.

That was his master’s property, and Doran would die before allowing any bandit to lay a hand on it.

With a sigh of comfort, he rose from the bed and picked up a small metal flask from the nightstand.

He took a single sip, clearing his throat with the strong, bitter alcohol.

It wasn’t the pleasant, sweet wine Ethan had brought them the night before. It was just ordinary beer, brewed by the citizens of Goldenveil themselves, some of which was stored in the guard barracks.

Putting the bottle back in its place, Doran started the day by washing his face and polishing his sword.

When he was done, he went to the guard captain’s office and reviewed the few documents there.

Nothing very useful or important. Just a few inventory and withdrawal reports, written by the previous captain, Alaric.

After growing tired of that, he left the office and went to the training ground in the barracks’ courtyard, where the twenty guards under his command were already gathered, beginning their training.

"Captain!" One of them approached with curiosity.

He was the youngest there, barely eighteen years old.

"Are you going to watch our training?"

His name was Luk, with black hair and dark eyes.

"It is the lord’s wish," Doran declared, pulling from his robes an item he had received from Ethan the night before.

The Burning Blood Body Enhancement Skill.

He had been instructed to guard that book with his very life and, also, to learn and teach the skill to all the guards.

Obviously, the few hours he’d had to read it weren’t enough to master the skill. He’d need at least a few weeks.

Doran considered reading the book aloud to the entire squad, since he was the only one there who could read, hoping perhaps to find someone who understood something he hadn’t yet grasped.

But after thinking it over for a moment, he dismissed the idea, tucking the book back into his robes.

"Grab your swords and form up. I want to assess each of your forms," Doran declared, deciding to start with the basics and see what he could improve in those guards.

Before being summoned to serve Ethan, in his lifetime, he had been a respected martial arts instructor, knowing better than most the art that, in his day, was called "imperial fencing."

The fencing of a fallen empire lost in time, created by the hands of an emperor of the past.

Normally, teaching that to an outsider would be punishable by death.

But Doran didn’t think much of that as he organized his thoughts and decided how to begin the guards’ training.

After all, everyone who might judge him for what he was doing there had been dead for at least a few thousand years.

As the guards took their formation in front of him, swords in hand, Doran watched them.

Each had a different background and had learned to wield a weapon in a unique way.

Doran would break all that.

For powerful experts, those above the third or fourth stage, developing their own technique that best utilized their superhuman abilities was natural.

But for rank-and-file soldiers?

The best approach was a standardized combat technique that was versatile, simple, and efficient within a closed formation, where a single breach in the line could mean the defeat or victory of an entire army.

That was Imperial fencing, with twelve forms in total.

Doran had memorized all twelve, though he mastered only four, which was the limit of his talent.

Fortunately, those four were essentially the core of what was needed for a functional army.

The first and second forms were the basic frameworks for large-scale battles, focused on line defense and maintaining position.

The third form was geared toward charges, with the goal of breaking the enemy line. The fourth was for individual duels and for regaining formation in case of a breach.

As for the forms above the fourth, even Doran himself had difficulty understanding them, having merely memorized them as he learned them.

"Hm..." He walked alongside the soldiers, studying each one’s posture.

"None of you have the potential to become a true master," he declared coldly, tapping his sheathed sword against the back of one of the guards.

Walking to the front of the formation, he drew his weapon and held it in front of his body at a forty-degree angle.

Imperial fencing was best suited for sword-and-shield combat in its first four forms, but it could also be easily adapted for a sword alone, since Goldenveil suffered from a severe shortage of shields.

"When fighting together against an enemy equal or superior in numbers, your cohesion as a force is just as important as individual combat ability. The fall of one man cannot bring down the entire line. It is necessary to..."

For the rest of the morning, Doran continued to teach the young guards everything he had learned in his lifetime as a sergeant in a powerful army of the past.

From the fundamentals of military combat to the earliest and most basic forms of imperial fencing.

It wasn’t much, but it was a start. The first step toward engraving into the flesh and souls of those men the warriors they were meant to become in the future.