That is called a "Perfect Block", all the damage being dealt will turn into sparks, if you attack afterwards, you deal more damage and some knockback, which is called a "Counter-Attack".
You can block attacks from metal weapons at the second level, the third level allows blocking from blades of all sorts, the final level allows you to block all elemental melee strikes.
Your OC wishes to be trained on blocking attacks from Melee strikes and learn about counter-attacks. So they head to a training area to learn about them.