“Thousand Arms Style,” Alnea said to himself, looking at the scroll, and its contents in awe. “It sounds so domineering, more like a Casting, or a Summoning type of Martial Style, rather than an Auxiliary type.”
“Do you think that the Auxiliary type of Martial Style are not strong?” his master said, looking at him with an amused smile, causing his blood to rush to his face once again, dyeing it red just as soon as it had returned to normal.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Alnea said, fixing his eyes on the scroll, trying his best to ignore his embarrassment, hoping that it would go away on its own. “It is just that Thousands Arms Styles sounds as if it could conjure thousands of arms. Like a Summoning or Casting type of Martial Style.”
“Names are not everything, Alnea,” his master said. “Just because it is named as Thousand Arms Style does not mean that it can conjure a thousand arms. People can name their Martial Styles or Arcanas however they like, and it would not change anything. Just take my ‘Dimensional Pocket’ as an example. Does that name sound domineering? Or would names like ‘Small World’, ‘World in a Palm’, ‘Storage World’, and other similarly tacky names sound more domineering?
“And yet, I can say with confidence that most of the Arcanas with such tacky names would never be able to compare with my ‘Dimensional Pocket’. Because the people who name their Arcanas as such think more about appearances rather than the Arcanas themselves. They dream of what their Arcanas would be like once they stand at the top of the world. And in their daydreaming, they forget that it is not how or what they name their Arcanas that matters, but the Arcanas itself, and its effects that does.
“And that holds true for Martial Styles as well, which is what happened to this Martial Style. Thousand Arms Martial Styles, according to its creator’s vision, would have allowed him to wield the strength of a thousand arms with each of his arms. And by that, he did not mean thousand times the strength of normal people, but thousand times the strength of his own arms.
“Unfortunately, the talent of the creator of the Martial Style limited his achievements, and he never made it past the Three Arms level. In addition, because of his overly ambitious vision, he forgot to take other things into account, like enhancing the strength of the body itself. Even if the Martial Style had reached completion of its vision, and would have allowed its creator to wield thousand times his base strength, if his base strength itself was low, what good would multiplying his base strength be?
“Furthermore, the most glaring flaw of the Martial Style was that all its effects were focussed on the arms of the Warrior. No matter how strong his arms became, what could the Warrior do if the other parts of the Warrior’s body could not keep up with his arms? Thus, because of all these considerations, despite having such a ‘domineering’ name, the Martial Style remains as a Lowest Grade Martial Style.”
“Does not enhance the strength of the body… then does that mean that this is not a Strength specialisation type of Martial Style?”
“...You may have a slight misunderstanding about what specialisation of Martial Styles mean,” his master said, smiling at his confused face. “What did you say were the factors that the Grades of the Martial Styles are based upon?”
“Control, enhancement, and efficiency.”
“And why did I say that the Thousand Arms Style was Graded as a Lowest Ranked Martial Styles?”
“...Because it does not focus on enhancement, and has extremely low efficiency. Even in the matter of control, instead of the Thousand Arms that the creator envisioned, he could only go up to the Three Arms level.”
“See, you got your answer all by yourself,” his master said. “The Thousand Arms Style is still a Strength type specialisation Martial Style, it is just that it focuses on the route of extreme control, sacrificing both the efficiency of the Martial Style, and its enhancement effects. In more specific terms, it tries to realise the potential of arms to the extreme, increasing the amount of strength your arms can release.
“Of course, the Martial Styles fails in that regard as well, and that is why it is just a Lowest Ranked Martial Style. Like I had said earlier, the creator of the Martial Style managed to hone it only up to the Three Arms Style. Which means, if completely mastered, and used with the Aspects, this Martial Style would allow you to use three times the strength of your arms. But there would be a slight problem in that. What do you think the problem would be, Alnea?”
“Only its creator would be able to reach the highest limit of the Style,” Alnea said after some thought, quickly going through his mind about the limitations of Martial Styles. “For others, two to two and half times would be the limit. And that too, only if they are compatible with the Style, and are using it with their Aspects. Without the Aspects, being able to use the complete strength in their arms would be the limit.”
“Good,” his Master said. “Then I guess there would be no problem for you to be able to at least make the full use of your arm’s strength. Once you do that, we will move on to the next Martial Style.”
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
“...Wouldn’t that be the limit of what is possible without the use of Aspects?”
“So? Would there be any problem?”
“...No.”
Just on a theoretical basis, the Thousand Arms Style should allow him to make full use of his arm’s potential, and strength. Any issue of compatibility between him, and the Martial Style would come into play only when the Aspects were involved. So, his master had not made any unreasonable demands of him. And even if there had been any unreasonable demand, he would still do it, because he knew his master would never ask him to do anything impossible. Especially since he had already taken his Oath.
Aware of the dangers involved, his master would never deliberately push him towards his death. At most, she would just make him suffer a little. She still cared for him though, so she would never let anything happen to him. Besides, it was not as if he was completely helpless against his master’s demands. In the end, what Martial Styles focussed on were the Aspects of the Origin Sea, and the user’s bodies. And what he had to do was to reach perfection in the use of bodies that the Thousand Arms Styles detailed.
The more perfect his control over his body would be, the better his grasp of the Thousand Arms Style would be. And though he did not have any experience in fine tuning the control of his body, over the past few months, Alnea had never stopped building the foundations of his body. Going on runs, exercising his body, and practising the moves of the Oathkeeper Arts that he could remember, these were all part of his daily routine. A part of his preparation for his future as a Wanderer, as Warrior.
And though he may not have succeeded much in regard to his practise of the Oathkeeper Arts, some the results from his training were already showing. Greater stamina, greater strength, and even greater flexibility, he had made improvements in all the areas of his body. He may still not be as strong as the Seeds of the other Orthodoxies, but he was catching up.
Still, mastering the Martial Style to the level of making the complete use of his arm’s strength would not be an easy task. Alnea did not know how much time he would take to reach that level. And there were still seven more Martial Styles, all of which he would have to master to a similar level in just two weeks because of his Oath. Thinking of the way his master had looked at him, and warned him when he had taken his Oath, Alnea could not help wondering if she had deliberately raised the bar of what he was supposed to achieve with the Martial Style just to teach him a lesson.
“What are you spacing out for?” his master said, breaking Alnea out from his thoughts, and bringing his attention to herself. “Do you think you have too much time? Should I teach you some other things too then?”
“I will get right to it, master,” Alnea hurriedly said, stopping his master from making things even more difficult for him, before focusing on the scroll in front of him. The scroll was filled with diagrams of a person making all sorts of different postures with their arms, with the explanations and reasoning behind those postures given beside those diagrams.
According to the descriptions, holding on to a posture, and practising it, would stimulate only a certain part of his arms, or in some cases, just a few muscles of that part of his arms. And each of the postures dealt with different parts, or muscles of his arms. And if he practised holding on to these postures, and positions, with his arms, then gradually, through repeated practice, he would be able to get all of them under his control.
The more he read, the more eager Alnea got to begin practising the different positions and movements mentioned in the Martial Style. As only if he could completely master this martial Style would he be able to move on with the next. But he did not let his eagerness cloud his judgement, or patience, and focussed a little more on the scroll, reading it in even more detail.
In the scroll, it was written that all the muscles of a person’s arms could be divided into seven different parts. The scroll then further went on describing how to gain full control over his arms, beginning with these seven parts, by practising all kinds of postures, and stimulating those muscles. And at the end, the scroll explained that the proficiency of the Martial Style was divided into different levels, describing each of those levels as well.
The first level started with the seven main parts of the arms, as described by the scroll, asking the Warriors to get a feel of their muscles in those seven parts of their arms. This level was an introductory level, and was mainly to familiarise the Warriors with the different muscles in their arms, preparing them for further training. Of course, there was also a small requirement for Warriors to have been deemed as having mastered the first level, which was to be able to feel the muscles in only one of the seven parts of their arms at a time.
Once that was done, the Warriors would then have to start practising the second level of the Martial Style, in which the Warriors had to differentiate between the different clusters of the strands of muscles in those parts of their arms. Up till this point, things were still relatively easier for the Warriors to master. But once they had done that, they had to move on to the third level, where the true difficulty of the Martial Style started.
At the third level, not only did Warriors have to single out each muscle strand in the cluster of the muscle strands, but they also had to gain full control of those said muscle strands. There was nothing at a level even lower than single muscle strands, or at least not that the creator of the Thousand Arms Style knew of, so the fourth level came back to the cluster of muscle strands, but this time, instead of just getting familiar with them, the requirement of mastering the fourth level of the Martial Styles was to gain individual control of each cluster of muscle strands, paving the way for the fifth level, which required Warriors to gain individual control of all of the seven different parts of their arms to gain mastery.
Once that was done, the basic part of the Martial Style would be almost finished, and at the sixth level, which also happened to be the last level that the Warriors could practise without involving Oren, or Aspects, all the Warriors had to do was compile everything they had learned, and gain full control of their arms. And that was what his master required of him, completing the sixth level of the Thousand Arms Style, before she would allow him to move on to the next Martial Style.