“Listen carefully.” Elder Nishikawa laid out many herbs on a table for Yuki and Nana to see. “Each of these herbs has many different properties. If mixed in the wrong way, they can even be poisonous. Each one has a counterpart that may look similar but is not. Take these two leaves of spiritual orinnie. Although they look similar, they are not. The leaf shape and the color are the same, but if you look closely, one has jagged edges while the other has smooth edges. Can either of you spot the other difference?”
Nana and Yuki both raised their hands at the same time. Elder Nishikawa smiled as she pointed to Nana. “Nana, you answer.”
“The one on the right seems to have a silver sheen to it,” Nana answered.
“Correct. The one on the right does have a silver sheen to it, and that is due to the tiny hairs that grow off its surface. This is how you tell that you have picked the wrong leaf. As for the others….” Elder Nishikawa went over each herb in great detail while Yuki and Nana sucked up all this information as these would be the herbs they would need to search for.
“Alright, that is it for today. Both of you should finish up your training and head back to your immortal caves tonight. You can come here during the day, I want you both to get to the beginner stage in both of the techniques you got. Then I will allow you to start taking on missions to search for the herbs you need.” Elder Nishikawa wanted them to at least have a better means of fighting before letting them go out. She knew she was being overprotective, but right now, they seemed to have picked up an enemy or two already.
Yuki and Nana split up and went to their respective training grounds. Yuki stood in the middle of her training ground and quickly jumped into the air and stood there, getting used to the feeling of creating footholds. Only after she was used to it again did she start her training once more.
Hours passed, and Yuki was now able to flip through the air easily and stand upside down. She had finally gotten used to extreme movements so that she would move and turn mid air while attacking with ease. While Yuki was unsure this was how this sky rank technique was supposed to be used, she had found it to be very useful in her current state. She could move ten times faster than normal and in any direction she wanted.
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Landing on the ground, Yuki took a deep breath as she wiped her sweat. “This is much more amazing than I thought.” Yuki smiled as she took a small break.
She took out her sword technique and pressed it against her head, reading the information on it before slowly closing her eyes and digesting it. Only when she opened her eyes again did she furrow her brow. “While it is called a technique and the way it is done is okay, the fact that the technique is just drawing the sword really shouldn’t be called something like swift slash. I was expecting some kind of cool technique, but it’s nothing but drawing the sword. Then again, this is only a mortal rank technique but still….”
Yuki did not even start practicing it as she normally would. She just began taking bits of pieces of the technique and began integrating it into her own fighting style. She had practiced for almost an hour when she suddenly stopped mid air when she noticed the whole training ground had become foggy. “This is…. Right, Master said that there was an illusion array here….”
Not even a few seconds later, a huge rank two armored rhino appeared from the dense fog. The entire area around the training grounds was no longer visible, but the training grounds itself was still fog free. Yuki licked her lips as she shot forward using her new movement technique and held the grip of her sword. She then quickly drew her sword and slashed out at the same time according to the swift slash techniques instructions mixed with her own flare. The armored rhino let out a pained roar before turning into a fog and floating into the sky.
Two seconds later, two more ranked two armored rhinos appeared, which were quickly dispatched. Yuki retreated into the air before sheathing her sword and flipping her hand. A long katana appeared within it. She quickly undid her other sword and put it away before tying her katana to her side. She quickly did a few draws with the sword and felt they were much cleaner than with her other sword. “This sword feels so perfect in my hands.”
Yuki couldn’t help but smile as she held the hilt of her katana. She really did feel the sword was almost perfect for her. While still a tad too long, she could still easily wield it with no problem. And if she tilted it just right, it would not drag on the ground either.
More armored rhinos kept appearing, and with Yuki’s new longer sword, her reach was much greater than before, meaning she would have a chance to react to any attacks from the demonic beasts. With her already amazing reaction speed, this was another plus for her ability to fight both offensively and defensively.
Yuki’s lips were curled up into a big smile as she bounced around through the air killing demonic beast after demonic beast in as little as one to two strokes of her sword. Elder Nishikawa watched on with a stunned expression. She knew Yuki was a talent above all talents, but this was just….