Walking towards the backyard, Lorien made his way to the Tree of Dreams

Standing under it he took a deep breath as he unsheathed his sword revealing the golden blade hidden inside the exquisite black-colored scabbard

Both the Scabbard and the Sword had mysterious and stunning patterns engraved on them giving them a mystic and noble look

Looking at his Sword only now did Lorien remember that since the day he made it, he never 'fed' it any Dream Energy, which caused its power to stay stagnant without any improvement

'Sigh...I totally forgot about it, I'll start giving it a portion starting tomorrow...'

After deciding on this he didnt linger any longer on the subject and immediately began testing his gains

Lorien suddenly slashed forward, his power going from 0 to a 100 in an instant

But just as this slash was about to fall Lorien's body miraculously stopped mid-way, going from 100 to 0

This was just a simple test for his power control to see how far he could take it

Following that he started 'combating' the Air in front of him, it was as if there was an invisible opponent in front of him

He kept switching from aggressive to passive, from defense to attack

This lasted for 5 minutes before he stopped, but it seems that he wasnt happy with the test he had just done as a big frown could be seen clearly on his face

To be more precise he's unhappy because he wasnt able to fully test his gains using this method

Previously testing them like this was enough, but some of the abilities he got needs to be tested in a battle to see their full extent

It's just that he doesn't have any opponent that can allow him to fight without any reserves

'What should I do...'

After thinking about it for a while Lorien suddenly recalled his training session with Tanjiro which caused him to get some new ideas

'Could I....'

So, without further ado, he immediately started testing it

[Dream]: Dream World

As soon as it was used Lorien disappeared from reality, and appeared in a Dream World he had just constructed

Following that, with a thought, another silhouette appeared in front of him

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This Silhouette looked just like him, it was a complete copy of him, from the outer look that is

Looking at the figure in front of him, Lorien felt a bit weird, it was the first time he had ever felt weird looking at 'himself'

But he quickly put those feelings behind him and focused his attention on the issue at hand

Now inside this dream two 'Lorien' could be seen standing face to face, the only difference between them is that one of them looked emotionless with his cold eyes lacking 'spirit'

The reason he made this 'Npc' copy is to fight it, as it has the exact same abilities as Lorien himself be it In terms of swordsmanship, martial arts, or physical strength...

Except of course for the ability to manipulate dreams and reality

So it's the optimal sparring partner for him to improve his battle experience as he can't use his physical strength and higher-level skills to overwhelm the opponent as he usually does

Lorien actually thought about making other 'people' to fight them, such as for example Scathach who would be a great sparring partner and teacher

But he quickly gave up as even if he was able to copy their outer look, the 'NPC' he makes won't possess any of the skills their true body has

That is unless Lorien spends a lot of energy deducing their skills and then giving them to the 'NPC'

But doing so is a complete waste of energy, and because of this he finally settled on just making a copy of himself

And with that, he didn't waste any more time as he unsheathed his sword and launched toward the copy slashing down at an incredible speed

But this attack was easily blocked by the copy who quickly parried it to the side and then counter-attacked

*Swish*

*Clash*

*Clash*

The two figures clashed at great speeds both showing incredible swordsmanship, the battle seemed quite balanced with no one getting the edge over the other side

But after exchanging a couple more blows the happy look on Lorien's face started receding as it got replaced by a frown

'The copy isn't as good as I expected it to be... it has no battle experience and it just applies the techniques mechanically, it feels like I am fighting a computer-controlled bot'

Finding this out, Lorien jumped back, stopping the battle, he then dissolved the 'Npc' that was in front of him

Following that, he started pondering, trying to find a solution to this problem

It took him a couple more minutes to come up with a new idea

So he materialized the 'NPC' again, but this time he didnt allow it to control itself as it would just act like a computer bot again

This time he wants to let his own ability control the NPC so that every time they clashed Lorien's power would deduce the best possible ways to fight back

Lorien could control how 'perfect' this counterattack would be by deciding how much energy he spends

The more energy he consumes the more 'experienced' his 'opponent' becomes

By spending a very small amount of energy the opponent's response may correspond to that of someone who has a month-long battle experience

And if for example, he spends all of his energy his opponent may have the battle experience of someone who fought on the battlefield for thousands of years

Of course, all of this is currently just guesswork and is yet to be tested

So with that, Lorien then spent a 'medium' amount of energy which should make the 'Npc' in front of him fight like someone who's been in battle constantly for decades

Lorien was really curious as he wanted to see the difference between him and someone who has a lot of battle experience

Especially that they are equal in all other aspects which will make the importance of this aspect clearer

So without wasting any more time Lorien attacked first trying to gain an advantage

But just as Lorien's sword arrived something unexpected happened

*Claaanggg*

The 'NPC' raised his sword at the last moment accurately blocking this attack

Moreover, it redirected all the force from the attack into the ground completely nullifying it, which caused Lorien to feel like he had just hit a pillow

Sensing this Lorien instantly knew that his idea worked, but even then he didn't immediately stop the battle as he still wanted to so if he could beat it

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