It had been a little over a week now since Kyros had successfully learned the Fireball skill, however he hadn’t practised it yet at all due to how conspicuous it was. However, he had notable gains over the week, mainly his perseverance stat which was now at 11, it had slowed down as Kyros was getting used to the pain. He was also nearing his next mining level up, which would put him at intermediate level 10, only 1 level off the next rank. Due to diligent meditation he had also risen his wisdom stat to 31, which Kyros was pleased with its growth rate. Aside from these things Kyros’s week had gone by pretty quick, although he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t mentally fatigued. 

He would spend the first half of the day doing his slave duties, then he would sneak off and mine for a couple of hours to sort out his plan which was now only 3 weeks away. Finally, his day would end with a beating from James and a quick heal up from his master, which then he’d go home meditate for 2 hours and then sleep and repeat. It was a pretty tedious process really. However, the tedious program was starting to pay off.

----------------------------------------

Kyros was currently with James for his routine scheduled beating. However, this time was different, Kyros was able to stare James in the eyes without flinching while each strike had struck him. That’s not to say the pain wasn’t there, although it was noticeably a lot less since rising his perseverance stat, but it was that Kyros had finally learned to stop his natural instinct of closing his eyes. 

When James had seen this, his brows furrowed a bit and Kyros could’ve sworn the following strikes were harder than the rest. Once James noticed Kyros had continued to stare him in the eyes, he dropped his sheathe to the ground.

“Ah so you passed… Thought you may have taken longer…” James spoke glumly. 

“Shouldn’t you be happy that your student improved?” Kyros couldn’t believe how much James had looked forward to the beatings.

“You don’t understand… All that pain master had inflicted on me, and now I lost my only release…” 

“Seriously? It was painful, but it wasn’t that bad.” 

“Don’t get arrogant lad. This was an improvised style training, I didn’t have my proper tools. This was training, those tools will make it torture. There’s a difference lad, you hear me?” 

What did they do to this guy, he is seriously scarred from whatever it was.

“Yeah right… Well, we should move onto the next part of training don’t you think?” Kyros decided it was in his best interest to avoid all possible discussions of the torture training method.

“Hahahaha you’re quite right lad, well let’s get on with it.” James was back to his jovial self again.

How does he change so quickly…?

“Alright lad, this time we’re moving into some actual technique training. Before I start, you have to promise to never pass on the agility technique.” 

“Ah yeah I promise and all that, but James, are you sure you should be teaching me than?” Kyros was starting to like James, so he didn’t want James to get any sort trouble because of himself.

“Don’t worry about it. I still haven’t given up on trying to get you to come stay with my family hahaha” 

“Actually I thought about it James, and I think I might take you up on that. I actually have nowhere else to go…” It was the logical decision, after all.

“Hahahaha that’s the way! Our family is pretty big and it’s easy to get lost but you can stay with me and the missus. She cooks great food and I know the kids will love an extra person around the house.” James had a goofy smile on his face as he spoke about his wife and kids.

Just like that it seems my future has been planned… He’s a good guy, James, at first I was only going to use him but his been looking out for me this whole time. I have to train harder to make sure everything goes to plan!

“That sounds great James. We better start with the training though, we only have 3 weeks left. We can talk about this once we’ve escaped.” Kyros urged James.

“Oh you’re right. Sorry hahaha I just lose myself when I think of my love and how adorable my little guys are, they’re just…” 

“James!” Kyros interrupted when he saw that James was going off track again.

“Okay. Serious now. For real. So you promise not to leak the technique out?” James back-stepped and reaffirmed.

“Yes.” Kyros confirmed. 

“Alright, as I stated before, there are three types of techniques: offensive, defences and agility.” James reiterated what he said a few days earlier. “So I’m going to teach you an agility and defensive technique. That way, whatever happens you can escape and defend yourself.” James explained.

“Hmm… I kind of want to be able take some out and not just defend myself and run.” Kyros said grudgingly. 

“Stubborn bastard you are. Unfortunately for you, you don’t have a say in this. I’ll take care of anything unexpected, all you need to do is not die while I do so. We clear?” James eyed Kyros.

“Ah… Yes, we’re clear.” 

“Hahaha good. Alright the two techniques are called Windsense and Shadow Step. I’m sure you can figure out which is which.” 

“Okay, but is one defensive technique enough? it can only cover so much.” Kyros couldn’t understand how one technique could defend such a wide variety of attacks. On Earth you would need to train in multiple defensive techniques to be able to defend against different varieties of attacks.

“Well it wouldn’t be a good defensive technique if it only covered half, now would it?” James looked at Kyros as if he were stupid.

Wait, it was stupid to try and compare martial arts from this world to Earth. There are already so many things in this world which were unexplainable when compared to what was common on Earth, it’s only obvious martial arts would be different as well.

“Yeah, you’re right ahaha” Kyros just scratched the back of his head and laughed it off.

“You can be a pretty weird guy at times… anyway, getting back to it. The main point of Windsense is as the name implies, it’s about being able to sense the changes in the wind. They say that if you can master this technique, you’ll be able to sense someone attacking you from behind dozens of metres away from you. Think of the advantage of always knowing when someone is about to attack.” James explained to him.

“Wait, that’s just… unfair…” Kyros couldn’t wrap his head over something that crazy. 

“Well that’s only if you can master it, which I doubt hahaha. Remember the faster someone can strike, the harder it is for you to sense the changes it causes to the wind. I just want to get you to a level where you can sense the attacks of these guards. Although getting you to that level will be tough and is going to be intense…” 

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“Don’t worry I can take. But, you said not to leak the agility technique, however this defensive technique seems way to good to be leaked as well.” Kyros honestly didn’t know why James didn’t include this technique in the promise.

“Ah don’t worry about. Don’t get me wrong the technique is extremely good but is already rather widespread whereas the Shadow Step is unique to our family. Now for Shadow Step, it’s not as fancy as some of the other techniques out there but it is effective.” James said.

“Okay so I’m guessing it’s about being silent…” Kyros stated the obvious.

“Yep. It’s pretty awkward getting use to the different feet positions but it minimises noise and gives a pretty good boost your speed for close distances. Now let’s start with Shadow Step. Copy me.” James went on to demonstrate 16 different stances.

Kyros tried to copy along but failed miserably, the stances were using different legs muscles than his body was use to associating with that sort of movement. 

“Alright those are the stances, go home tonight and practise them. Try and get to a point where I can start to teach you, because what I just saw was atrocious hahaha.” James mocked Kyros.

“That’s really not that encouraging, you know.” Kyros had his normal look of indifference but he was fighting back the embarrassment that was threatening to show itself.

“Oh lighten up lad.” James gave Kyros a slap on the back. “Alright, the reason I want you to practise Shadow Step at home is because we’re going to have to get you to focus on Windsense.” 

“Wait, is Windsense hard to practise?” Kyros asked while being surprised the slaps from James no longer hurt.

Guess that perseverance stat is pretty useful.

“Hahaha you could say that…” James said ambiguously, while once again picking up his sheathe.

“Wait wait.. I thought you said we’re done with that part of training.” Kyros panicked. 

“Oh we had, this is different haha.” James had now pulled out some dirty looking cloth from his pocket. Who knew where it had been or what it was used for. “Alright, use this as a blind fold.” James ordered as he passed Kyros the blind fold.

“What’re you up to?” Kyros said warily.

“Christ sake lad, man up and do it so we can get to the fun part hahaha” James criticised. Kyros could only do as he was told, and blindfolded himself.

“Alright, what now James?” Kyros couldn’t see anything and had a real bad feeling in his gut.

“…”

“…”

“James…?”

-9hp

Argh! What the fuck? Is he seriously doing this?? No way…

Kyros had received a strike right in his gut which clued him onto what James was up to, so he started to listen to any clues that would warn him of an incoming strike.

-7hp

Fuck this shit!

“James, how the fuck am I supposed to dodge while I’m blind folded.” Kyros had cracked. He was use to James’s inhumane training methods but this just seemed ridiculous.

-3hp

This time the strike collected him on his left shin. A strike to the shin doesn’t cause much damage to Kyros but it hurt a shitload.

“Stop talking. Start listening. Listen to the wind, the way it bends to my sword. My current strike speed isn’t even half of what these guards are capable of.” James’s voice drifted into Kyros’s ears from what seemed to be behind him.

Fuck this… No I have to at least try.

Kyros steadied his breathing and he stood as still as he could. He focused on his hearing, any sounds that would alert him to an incoming strike. 

“…”

“…”

Wait, what’s that?

Kyros heard a twitch in the wind to his left. He focused on that sound. He heard another twitch and tried to jump backwards, however a sword collected him his left hip before he could even take a step.

-5hp

However,

 New Skill Acquired - Windsense

Skill Name:

Skill Rank:

Skill Level:

Skill Experience:

Windsense

Disciple

1

1%

The talent of hearing the abnormalities in the wind.

Kyros wouldn’t notice this until he took his blindfold of course. 

Halfway through the practise James had noticed something.

Did he just get faster at catching on? no way, that’s a bit too quick to catch on isn’t it? James thought to himself however he increased the speed of his swings anyway.

----------------------------------------

“Hahahah well that was fun, you can take the blindfold off now.” James laughed. Kyros took his blindfold off angrily, he felt as if he hadn’t achieved anything this session.

Skill Name:

Skill Rank:

Skill Level:

Skill Experience:

Windsense

Disciple

1

37.5%

The talent of hearing the abnormalities in the wind.

Wait, what? So this means I did actually learn the skill. However, what is with this rate of improvement… it’s so slow…

However what Kyros didn’t know was that although this skill was widespread not many would practise it due to the difficulty of improving the skill. However due to Kyros’s cheat like skill he had an advantage over others when it came to improving his skills.