Having remained in thought for a few hours, Gareth had time to recover consciousness.  

Gareth: so, how did it end? 

As I had suspected, he had passed out before the conclusion. 

Solomon: your last attack forced me to transform into my wolf form. Even then, I was forced to use a load of my energy to stop it injuring me. 

Hearing this, a broad smile appeared on his face. Slightly sour, I made sure he didn't grow too confident. 

Solomon: it's not like it was anywhere close to me, don't get too cocky. 

Picking up on my bitterness, Gareth kept up his shit eating grin. 

Gareth: I won't. So how long was I passed out? 

Solomon: it's been three and a half hours. 

I imagined most of the others would awake soon. 

Gareth: well, we've only got a few days left before the mission. Hopefully, I can get those recruits up to scratch.  

Still, with a grin on his face, he appeared confident in his methods. I would imagine his training would be hell for these unranked recruits. 

Solomon: haha, I'm sure you can. Don't go too hard on them though. I'd rather that they aren't dead on their feet when we start the next mission. 

Gareth: it'll be fine. 

Seeing the attitude of Gareth, I had no worries about his methods. He was more than proficient enough to train others. 

Solomon: well, I'm going to go do some training. If you need me, I will be in the garden. 

Having thought extensively about my fighting style, there were several improvements I wanted to make. However, I couldn't make those changes in the time before the next mission. So I affirmed myself to improve my strength as fast as possible. 

The best method for this was to learn skills. So I planned to wholeheartedly devote myself to training them. 

Gareth: all right, I'll let everyone know when they're up. 

Leaving Gareth in the living room, walked out into the garden. Looking over at the sparring area from before I marvelled at it. The damage from before was almost completely gone. You would hardly believe it if you didn't see it yourself. 

Solomon: damn, that's convenient.  

If we had caused that destruction elsewhere, the time and cost to repair it would have been a hundred fold. Knowing what Gareth and I were like, we would easily get our monies worth out of these repairing magic arrays. 

Walking to the far end of the spacious garden, I left the rest of the room for everyone else. Though I wasn't sure how pluvia trained, the training of Gareth and the unranked would most likely be done here. 

Solomon: so, what should I start with.  

Looking at the four different books, I wasn't sure which to practise first. Since reaching inspiration, I felt like I had hit a roadblock in all of them. Though I was still improving at an insane rate, It felt painfully slow. Then again, compared to a person with average talent, I was really asking for too much. 

Solomon: let's go with this. 

Picking up the verdant mountain gale, I decided to practise it first. Out of all of the things I had gained from learning these skills so far, this was the most useful. It had allowed me to understand the way to control qi outside of my body. Such a valuable ability was worth a huge amount to me. 

Though I didn't know why I had the feeling that projecting qi outside my body was not something usually done at my level. Compared to that the others skills of which I had only used the inspirations of one of them in combat. It wasn't that they were bad skills. The problem was that they were not suitable for my energy. As different energies have different properties, the skills can sometimes be limited by the users type of energy. 

For example, the afterimage technique is based on the chi in the dragon ball universe. That chi was very similar to my own qi, though not exactly the same. this meant the usual application of the skill is made when using it. However, if I had a vastly different type of energy, like spiritual; energy, it would not be anywhere near as easy. 

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This was why I was struggling with the raging sword and buff techniques. Though they were not unusable with my energy, I would only be able to use the skill when I had practised enough. they were not similar enough in original energies to be adapted into new applications of my qi. If I had known this before, I would have chosen different skills. However, It was too late to complain now.  

Solomon: alright, let's give this a go. 

Having reached a decent understanding in verdant mountain gale, it said something very peculiar. "you have learnt all you need to use this skill. Now you must put the pieces together yourself." 

It was a very cryptic message. And worse than that, it gave me nothing to go off of. Not really knowing what to do, I spilt the work into pieces. The first part was to understand what all of the different things I had learnt in the skill were, then I had to find out how they fit each other.  

Solomon: hmmmm 

After thinking for a while, I struggled to come up with all the things I had learnt. Because it was laid out in so many steps, it was hard to tell where on part ended and another began. Trying to decipher this, I settled onto a bench up against the gardens outer walls. As I went over every step in my head, I began to understand how several of the steps would create a piece of the skill. 

After this 20 minute or so delve into my mind, I had categorised the skill into 7 parts. Movement, control, fluidity, resistance, retention, divergence and independence. 

I had learnt them in that order. Movement referred to how I pushed my qi out of my meridians. I had to be careful not to exceed the output, damaging them. Then control was forming the qi outside of my body into a controlled shape. At first, it was only an inch long, worm-like tentacle. Then I learnt fluidity. When controlling the qi, you had to let the movement flow. If you were too robotic with the movement, both the cost and effectiveness were drastically reduced.  

Then there was resistance. At first, you would try to stop the loss of qi over time. However, this was impossible. Once you accepted that and stopped resisting, the power overall was improved. Fifthly was retention. Having accepted that qi would flow out, you figured out the best way to slow down this process. 

Second to last you would learn about divergence. Now having the best tentacle that you could, you would push the limits of what you could do with it. In this case, you would split it into several components. Several tentacles would be made to appear from the original. This was an extremely difficult part, as it required the user to split their attention between multiple different objects. If you lost focus on one then all of them would brake apart. 

Lastly, you would master independence. This was summoning a tentacle with an explicit purpose. If you did this then the cost would be hugely reduced. However, the limits would mean that the tentacle could only perform the job it was created for. It was an exchange of versatility for energy cost.  

These were all of the pieces that made up the verdant mountain gale skill.  

Solomon: oh, so that's how it is. 

After a few moment, I had realised the answer was right before my eyes. The way they went together was already done. In essence, the skill was already created. There was one thing missing. 

Solomon: so it's the hand seals. 

Being a skill from the Naruto universe, it naturally came with accompanying hand seals. As I had been engrossed in the mechanics of the skill, I had yet to practise them. 

Turning back to the pages in the book, I clumsily followed the seals. After 15 seconds, I had formed the five seals. 

Solomon: wind release: verdant mountain gale. 

With a whirl, one twentieth of my qi moved down my hands. Then the qi burst forth from my palms meridians. Condensing in front of me, the qi made a tentacle with a human shaped hand on the end. 

With a thought, the hand drew my sword and held it out before me. Reaching out as far as it could, the tentacle stretched 15 meters away from me. It was a vastly further distance than I thought it would.  

Getting over, my amazement, I decided to assess the skill properly. The first thing I noticed was the energy consumption. after being created, the usual steady tide of disappearing qi was gone. In its place was a small dripping. The consumption between the skill and the inspiration were like heaven and earth.  

At the current rate, it would take an hour for the qi to lose half of its amount. As long as it was not reduced by other energy attacks, I could use this skill to massacre endless amounts of people without energy. 

Solomon: so this is the trade-off, huh. 

separating my hands, I released the final hand seal. when I did, the skill disappeared, along with the qi used in it. 

It seems that the limits were as grand as the strengths. Assessing it overall, It would be a great crowd control skill. But I would not use it in one on one fights. But then again, I had yet to perfect the skill. Though I could use it, I had only reached the lower limit. I was still unable to bring out anything near its full strength. When I could, maybe the hand seal limit would be removed. But, until then it would be a crowd control skill.  

Continuing like this, I moved onto the other skills. Like I suspected, I could also use the weakest versions of them. For the raging sword skill, I could project out a wave of anger fuelled qi. The result was a 4-meter wide slash that projected out for tenish meters. Surprisingly, the cost was amazingly low. Using an equivalent amount of qi with the flame serpent art, the damage would only be half as much. It seemed that the addition of rage had improved the energies quality. Unfortunately, it lacked the destructive power and range of the flame serpent art. 

The basic strengthening skill allowed me to improve my strength stat by ten percent, as well as other by five percent. The cost for either was a 40th of my qi and it lasted for 3 hours. Overall, it would probably prove to be the most useful of my current skills. Especially when I made it to higher ranks. Until we got a specialist in buffs, this skill would be very useful. 

The final afterimage technique was just what it said on the tin. I could now leave an afterimage in my place, appearing behind a designated target. Interestingly that target did not have to be human, and the range was quite far. So if I wanted to quickly move between places, or hide, I could just teleport up to a nearby rooftop. As the afterimage only lasts, 2 seconds, I would not have to worry about that. Unfortunately, this application would be lost when the time it remained increased. 

Having gone through all of my newly acquired skills, I felt a sense of empowerment. Walking over to the back door of the mansion, I had a spring in my step. 

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