A faint moonlight had seeped into the courtyard as the day neared its end. Two figures, one a faintly transparent and featureless hologram while the other a scary looking, fair skinned girl with her silver hair held in a thick braid that went past her shoulders.

Both were locked in a tense battle where each strike led into a dodge close enough to feel the heat off each other's skin… if the hologram- no, wisp could even feel.

Alfred, at this point, had felt he was at the end of the first level. Each one of his movements held no mistakes. He felt as if he knew exactly what the wisp would do just from a glance of his foot placement. He now felt confident to end it.

He shot forward with a low stance and snaked his body around the blows sent to him by the retreating wisp. Every shot that it was forced to block gave Alfred the confidence to continue.

Each strike got closer to setting up a combo. Such an achievement would show that he not only mastered the first level, but was ready to move on to the second.

Then, it happened.

'Chance!'

Alfred was able to slip his fist through the wisp's guard and struck it on its nose, sending its head back. He took a half step forward and landed a quick jab on its chin. The intricacies of the program made it react similarly to a human, and it was stunned for a second. Alfred took this opportunity to continue.

Now, the wisps entire abdomen was open, presenting what would be its liver to Alfred on a silver platter. He swung a hard left hook into it, making the wisp lean forward unwillingly and drop its guard. He then sent the final blow.

A thick "Bmmf" happened as the wisp's temple was smashed by Alfred's fist. The exercise was finished, and promptly deactivated itself.

The last fight was another long one, taking close to 40 minutes to finish. The majority of it was a fast trading of rapid hits meant to open up a chance just like the one Alfred just had. In exhaustion, Alfred plopped down next to the grimoire and ended the second exercise as well, which was keeping track of his completion rate.

'100%,' Alfred read. 'Finally.'

He nodded in satisfaction, and increased the level to two. He didn't start any exercises just yet, as he had to notify his master of the accomplishment.

Cysandoth was sitting cross-legged under the tree with his eyes closed. Alfred couldn't tell whether or not he was refining, but he guessed it had something to do with äura.

"... ahem~" Alfred cleared his throat to announce his presence. "Master. I have reached 100% completion rate, and will now be moving on to level 2."

Cysandoth opened his eyes and stood up. He stretched his legs briefly before walking over. "Good job, Öthe," he said as he patted Alfred's head. Alfred's reaction showed how uncomfortable he was with it, so Cysandoth stopped.

"You've completed your refinement, I assume?" he asked.

"Yes sir!"

"Good," he said while walking over to the grimoire to pick it up. "Spend the next two hours memorizing everything about the Isolation footwork, including the visual demonstrations."

"W-wait."

As requested, Cysandoth waited.

"...there were visual demonstrations?" Alfred asked incredulously.

"Yes, I just wanted to see how well you did without them."

Alfred stared blankly at his master's face. 'Devoid of shame…' he noticed.

"*Sigh~*... He'll be the end of me…" Alfred mumbled.

While pretending to not hear Alfred's last remark, Cysandoth pointed to the top left of the page where there was a small circle. He placed his finger on it and sent some äura through, and a small screen with a rewind, pause/play, and skip forward button alongside a level-selector appeared.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

He quickly explained the use of the buttons, but Alfred had already figured out their meaning. He was originally born in the 21st century after all.

"Don't ignore the notes on the page, either. Past masters have written down tips and tricks to help with understanding how to achieve mastery, among other things."

Alfred nodded silently and made sure to read all of the notes first. With the effects of the HSM branding, he had almost developed an eidetic memory, so this process was quick.

Through the notes, he actually realized a couple of things that he wished he had known before starting, but that was in the past, and now he gained a much deeper understanding of the reasoning behind the movements.

The isolation footwork's main goal is to make the user's movements feel, as the name suggests, "isolated" from reality. This, when mastered, would make the user's movements unpredictable to anyone not proficient in the art. Coincidentally, this works perfectly with the structure of the Junanbi discipline. With only two practitioners alive at any one time, and the fact that it was invented early on in the disciplines life by the original Master of it, nobody apart from Alfred's master or the wisps will be able to reliably predict his movements unless they could read his mind.

Near the end of the notes, a small side-note was written. It read: 'The Isolation footwork continues on page 317 as a 3rd Division art.'

Alfred flipped to that page and read a bit. It seemed that this lesson was meant to teach the disciple how to personally adapt different martial arts to fit the movements of the Isolation footwork. A small note at the top read: 'Do not attempt the teachings in this page before you fully master the fifth level, little one ;)'

Alfred let out an extremely faint chuckle and shook his head at how predictable his actions really were before going back to the first page where the original part of the Isolation footwork was located to start watching the demonstrations. The first video was, unsurprisingly, based on level 1. Still, Alfred was able to study how the movements looked from an outside perspective without having to deal with any pressure.

'This is taking too long. By the end of the fifth video, I won't have enough time to start any other memorization… and eventually, this whole book must be memorized fully by me!'

Alfred took a second before realizing the obvious answer. 'Just fast forward and slow it down with HSM. I don't deserve to be a 21st century child.'

He was just over halfway done with the first video when he started this. The fast forward was quick enough for him to have to go to the middle of level 1 HSM to keep up. He could now hold even the maximum of level 1 up for at least 30 minutes straight without feeling the effects, so the duration wasn't a problem.

The reason the videos were so long (without fast-forwarding , each was a little over one and a half hours long) was because they went over many different situations that one could find themselves in, and how the footwork would react to it. He saw the wisp, which was acting it out in a 3d space, get hit by swords, shields, maces, fists, legs, humans, and even animals, all controlled by other wisps. He also saw it jumping off trees, climbing up trees, doing kip-ups, tic-taking off walls, and many other moves.

With the fast forward, though, it ended up taking only seven more seconds to finish off the video.

'Hah! Now that's what I'm talking about! I might be able to memorize the 4th Division techniques kept here within a month!'

Alfred noticed that, at least for the start of the 4th Division and 3rd Division sections, the Isolation technique was there. Checking just one page behind the 3rd Division Isolation footwork he saw a blank one. He flipped through the pages haphazardly and determined that there were ~316 4th Division techniques, each to a page. If each had, say 4 levels, and each one's video was 1.5 hours long, it would only take him about 8 hours of total studying to finish using the skip+HSM method.

Still, doing so wasn't even close to at the top of his priority list, as memorizing how things look and their general directions is not even close to fully mastering them. He'd need years to practice each and every one of them, and he couldn't do that when there were another 1200 or so pages left.

His personal deadline of a is conservative considering he probably would have to skip days to refine or practice instead of memorizing.

Alfred had already almost wasted an hour on the first video before he started his fast-forwarding method, and he already wanted to bang his head against the wall for the wasted time. 'I could have memorized… 40! It's only an estimation, but even twenty would be great! Let alone 40…'

Still, Alfred would perceive almost 80 days of time during his time memorizing. If he did that all at once while forcing himself not only to memorize permanently, but to comprehend the meaning behind notes and suggestions alongside the use cases for the moves themselves would be too much information for him to handle currently. He can take in much more than that, as long as he doesn't focus on it. Part of the teachings in Roma's memories were focused on how to avoid frying your brain. Without them, if someone was able to activate HSM at anything above level 1, they would at least pass out. At higher levels, they could even go into a vegitative state.

Memorizing so much at once would go against said teachings Roma -and by extension Alfred- got.

Alfred didn't remain on his calculations and wishful thinking for more than a second in real-time. Getting back to watching more of the videos, he saw a gradual expansion of the technique's complexity, speed, and… "weirding" effect. This weirding effect was prominent on the fifth level in particular. Alfred felt like the wisp looked more like a bug than a human. Its directions could change on a dime and if at any moment he paused the video, he felt that it could go any direction no matter the position of its body parts and no matter what situation it was in.

It still wasn't too fast for him to see, even without an actual slowdown from HSM. 'Is master's almost void movements an extension of this? Or maybe, he combined a technique using the 3rd Division's teachings.'

Alfred didn't speculate long, since he believed that all the answers to these questions would come in due time.

He moved on to memorizing more 4th Division techniques. There were a plethora of different foundational techniques. There was a sword stance that made Alfred feel as if the sword that was being held flowed like water to wherever the wielder needed it to be, or a grappling stance that made the wisp feel like a bear, or a boxing form that, when the wisp threw a punch, it seemed to come out inexplicably faster than when he would throw the same one.

Some seemed to have similar but worse, or in some cases better effects than others. He took a mental note of all the ones he would try to bring up to his master when he was deciding what Alfred would learn. 'He knows more than me about this stuff, but I need to learn why so I can eventually make my own decisions.'

Alfred was not stupid, and even though it was pessimistic, he was planning for the day that he dies. Consequently, he would use everyone and everything to his advantage to eventually either stop the reincarnation cycle, or to become immortal… somehow.