Thanks to my daily training, autumn quickly passed. As the snow slowly covered the village and forest around, my training only got more intense. Although my dexterity improved a lot, fighting against five puppets wasn't easy. Nick controlled them so well, that even if four of them were hit by a dagger, the fifth one would get me.
On a more positive note, my ability to make medicine or poison improved a lot. We mostly trained either that, or the hidden weapons, which made me neglect the Art of Stealth a bit. Though as Nick put it, "The Art of Stealth is important, it will take you a long time in order to combine all the aspects. Hence we focus on other areas, not to waste time".
Once the winter arrived, we stopped the medicine or poison making. Instead, Nick would teach me a lot about the human body. He made sure I could locate all the pressure points, and really drilled that idea into me. He even told me that such techniques could be used during battles, but it wouldn't be easy. Nick himself didn't use pressure points during battles. As he explained, they were great for sneak attacks, or for health aspects, as combat wasn't a priority for Nick.
"I rarely fought people, hence my Art of Hidden Weapons is so basic. Don't make the same mistake though. My close, and mid range combat wasn't great against strong or stronger opponents. The injury that made me burn my energy just to get out alive, is a proof of that. If my skills were better, who knows, we probably wouldn't even meet", he explained.
The question on my mind remained, something obvious, but something I've never asked Nick. "Why are you here? As in this village?", "There are two reasons. One is the injury, I can't really show myself in cities and whatnot, since that would only kill me. The second reason is my master. Rand is an offspring to one of the disciples, a close disciple to my master. Because of the injury, as well as my fascination with my own Art of Medicine, my master sent me here, to look out for his favourite disciple's son. Of course the disciple died a long time ago, when Rand was a teenager, and my master's last wish was for me to keep an eye on him", he narrated.
"That doesn't mean I'll help him get stronger, or teach him anything", he added. "Your master must've died a long time ago though. Can't you just move on somewhere else? Why are you keeping an eye on him still?", I questioned. "Why? Because it was a promise to my master. I owed that old fart a lot, and he knew I wouldn't break that promise. Besides, life in this village isn't bad. I assumed the role of a doctor, since it would be boring for me to do nothing all day. Moreover, there's loads of herbs growing around each year. The people don't bother me, except when they actually need medical attention. After effectively crippling myself in the past, I focused solely on my Art of Medicine since then", he explained.
One question remained in my mind, "That would mean, I can't take Rand out, if you are still around". "Perhaps, but there's no much time left for me. Once you bury me, who's going to stop you? You can let your anger loose, do whatever you desired... Okay, that's enough chit-chat", he replied before moving the puppets towards me.
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With each passing day, Nick tried to explain things in more details, and even show me how to do things better. Of course that was unlike him, and made me wonder how much time he had left. I didn't ask the question, it was pointless. Instead, my focus and hard work were much more important.
We worked on my skills through the winter, and towards the end, I could tell Nick didn't have much time left. He'd cough up blood sometimes, but insisted on training with me. Nick's sacrifice didn't go to waste. The puppets couldn't touch me anymore, while all my daggers were on target. I learned how to distance myself, as well as how and when to advance.
I learned how to use blind spots, and distraction methods in order to throw my daggers unnoticed. My clothes were modified as well. They could hold multiple daggers, allowing me to retrieve one in almost all situations and positions. Nick seemed pleased with my progress, and even gave me a small praise for the improvements.
When the spring arrived, and the snow melted, Nick had something to say. "My time is almost up. At best, I'll be able to teach you for another half a year, maybe a bit less. During this time, you will practice with the puppets. You will learn how to move the strings, and control the puppets. We will start with one puppets, and both hands. Steadily, you will move on to one puppet with one hand, two puppets with both hands, and so on. To help you in the later stages of that training, there's an exercise you will do".
The exercise sounded simple. Draw a shape with one hand, and at the same time, draw another shape with the other hand. This was anything but simple. With proper motivation and practice, it wouldn't be difficult, the problem was change of shapes every half a minute or so. My mind and hands couldn't adjust to a new shape, and only one would remain drawing the shape, while the other hand simply became motionless.
The exercise was useful for a very good reason though. When controlling more than one puppet, my ability to split my focus was crucial. Nick was able to control five puppets with certain degree of 'liveness' to them. Of course the less he controlled the better the results. He told me that two puppets weren't a problem. He could control them akin to two different people making their moves.
With three and four puppets, it became more difficult, albeit Nick could make them cooperate. With five puppets, the degree of the difficulty increased a lot. He was limited to patterns and less individual behaviour, but more of a group work. Nonetheless, it was difficult for me to hit them throughout the winter. Sometimes numbers played a large part in combat, as Nick once said.
Either way, my practice with a single puppet began. Bad was perhaps too kind of a word to use, when it came to my skills at controlling the puppet. Even after Nick's explanation, my hands simply couldn't move that way, or rather my head couldn't keep up with the movements. "You can practice that alone, here at your house or wherever in the future. I just want to make sure you can control at least two puppets before passing. Once you can achieve that, you should be on the right track to learn further by yourself", Nick said.
"We don't need to see each other everyday, and the night outings tire me out. You can always visit me during afternoon, to ask for advice. The less of my energy is spent, the longer I'll teach you, right? Oh, and one more thing. Once you manage to control one puppet, I'll tell you something. You'll be really interested, since it has something to do with energy", he added.
I wasn't sure what exactly he wanted to tell me, but that one sentence made me really motivated. 'How hard can it be? I've seen Nick do it thousands of times. I can't struggle too much with one puppet', I figured before returning to my practice.