[h3][center][url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpimiNvcRC4][b][i]We're Only Human[/i][/b][/url][/center][/h3]

"Not good enough, do it again." Repetition until it became muscle memory and you could perform the moves in your sleep. It was a mundane and painstaking process but no less would do for prospective hunters. Though many of the worst beasts had been slain by his hand Edmund was not content to rest, and perhaps it was a sort of paranoia he'd grown over his years. Beasts rose and fell like a tainted tide and no matter how many were killed more returned, who was to say the larger, more lethal creatures wouldn't return too? Hunters had to be prepared for any enemy and to do that meant training until your limbs were heavy as led and your lungs ached. His students would hate him today but they would thank him tomorrow when their training saved their lives. Or they might hate him still, Edmund hardly cared. His job was not to befriend everyone who came into his Workshop but to train Hunters to protect and drive back the beasts. So long as that happened he hardly cared about anything else. 

[i]Not good enough. Not good enough. Not. Good. Enough.[/i] Praise was not something Kael sought normally but it wouldn't kill their master to at least acknowledge their efforts. They had clearly improved since they had passed through those gates and yet Master Edmund treated them like fledgling hunters. And in many ways he supposed they were, there was no escaping that. Glaring up at their mentor he grit his teeth and struggled to lift his Bowblade once more, raising his weapon and notching another arrow in the string. The amount of muscles that were required to simply fire a single shot was surprisingly high and repeated firing certainly took its toll. And no matter how many bullseyes Kael managed, and there were a great many, Edmund demanded more. Fine, he would do as they had done so many times before and go to the brink of exhaustion, and only then would their master allow them to rest.

Inhaling deeply through his mouth Kael held his breath for but a moment and steadied his aim. The arrow head aimed right at the target and he slowly exhaled, pulling the string back taut before letting his fingers unfurl and the arrow fly. A whine serenaded his ears as his shot sped to its mark and hit true, the arrowhead easily piercing the dummy and embedding itself deep within its chest. A kill shot on most beasts, straight to the heart.

"I don't get why you won't let us train outside... The beasts nearby are pathetic." It was a familiar argument between student and master, the former of which who thought they were more than prepared. Exhaling as he let his shoulders drop he sat on the grass, hands splayed out behind him as he stared at the target. "Shooting this isn't going to improve my skills any, its a waste of time. If you want us to be Hunters then let us be Hunters, stop treating us like children."

Edmund silently stared at the target for a moment before a soft sigh passed through his lips. "I will stop treating you like a child when you cease acting like one," the Hunter replied curtly, his green pupils swiveling to the corners of his eyes, giving Kael a disapproving glance. "Impatience will get you killed, and that's still a problem you have. I'm not going to let some of my best students out just because you want to fight. Fighting is about knowing your enemy's movements and countering them before they can even act, not just attacking bli-"

"Yeah, you've said so a hundred times. 'Know your enemy and their movements, understand what they'll do better than they themselves do.' We get it old man, but that doesn't change that this training is a waste of our time. Shooting at still targets, striking targets with a sword," Kael added with a gesture towards his peer, Josephine, "We need to fight real beasts. Otherwise none of this matters. Do you really think we'll ever be ready unless you let us fight them?"

"So you think you're ready then? To be a true Hunter?" Edmund asked, folding his arms as he turned and addressed Kael. Of course he would say yes, the boy had been saying he was ready on nigh a year now and would not take no for an answer. There was more to hunting beasts than simply knowing how to fight, you had to resist the blood yourself, lest you become one of them. You had to learn how to save people, the biggest priority of a Hunter, and you had to accept the fact that you may very well die doing so. Neither of his students were at that stage yet, though if Kael was so adamant... "Josephine, do you feel prepared to fight?" Edmund pressed, addressing the young girl with an arched brow, "I'll accompany you two, but you'll work together to kill a beast. If you two can prove you're ready then there's no need for these drills anymore."