“NOOO! Alice hate water!”
Alice attempts to escape my grasp but fails to do so. I had found that if I physically held Alice, she couldn’t teleport away…or was unwilling to do so. Washing her hair, I thought about what had happened earlier today. After hearing the story from Xia and Aubrey, I had initially been shocked, but became happy that Alice was safe.
Giving up struggling, Alice turned and tried to look at me with a sad face. Used to this from when she had been in her monster form, I ignored it and kept washing her hair and wings. Once I finished and we got out of the lake, I quickly dressed the both of us and sat down. Alice quickly jumps into my lap and leans back, humming happily again.
For now, I decided to have Alice here with me, while Xia and Aubrey went to research if there had been any other evolved monsters like Alice. After checking her Status and Stats, I knew something strange had happened.
Her Status showed her Race as a Raven of Erebus. She required a staggering amount of experience to level up. In total, she required two million experience to level. Yet she had not gained any from killing the three adventurers. Aubrey believed that perhaps Alice required lifeforce to gain experience, though from her downing half a bag of monster cores she’d yet to receive any experience.
Lightly hugging Alice, she snuggled in closer and looked up at me. “Mummy, Alice wants training too!” Smiling at her words, she’d been watching me for the last day as I did the various exercises around the place.
As I’m about to respond, I heard a voice behind us. “I believe I can help with that.” Tilting my head back, I saw Tael walking towards us with a light smile on his face. “I have an old friend who specialises in Dark Magic. He’s also very versed in teaching evolved monsters and children.”
Looking at Alice, she seemed excited about it. “How much would it be to have him train Alice?”
“Hm, if you use that golden ticket of yours, he’ll do it. We don’t need it, we don’t select our students based on what they can pay us, we already have everything we want.” Looking at Alice, I see her looking at me, smiling.
“Do you want to learn more Dark magic?” Nodding, Alice hugs me as I smile. I felt excitement from the link between us, which had become strong. It became confusing to tell our emotions apart.
“Now, Alisha, I want to know how you’re going with the courses?” Telling him I had only fallen from the trees twice, made two laps in the river and was close to the top of the cliff, he nodded.
“Good. I believe by tomorrow you’ll have finished everything. I will be training you once you’ve finished. Our main goal will be to slowly remove your reflex on using your old style, though we will look at keeping some aspects of it, as they will work well with Flowing River.”
Bidding us farewell, he walks away as I get up to once again run the exercises asked of me while Alice watches.
***
Panting, I lifted my hand and grabbed the edge of the top of the cliff. Slowly making my way up, I climbed to the top completely. Rolling onto my back, I breathed out as I stood. I had made it to the top, and the view from here was breathtaking. I had successfully swung through the trees for seven hours without dropping or slowing down, only staying on a branch for two to three seconds. I had completed three laps of the river without falling in once, and now I had climbed to the top of the cliff.
Looking down at my hands, I knew what this training had done for me. Previously I hadn’t been controlling my body correctly, when I fought I had used about the same amount of strength, and because of my Stats, Race and Class I had been stronger than what I had fought. There had been times where I used more strength and because of that I had overcome enemies, but I hadn’t been controlling that strength correctly.
“Beautiful view, isn’t it?” Hearing Tael behind me, I simply nodded as I took the view in.
“We’ll begin our training here. You’ll no longer need those gloves. Put these bracelets on your wrists and ankles.” Passing the gloves to Tael, he passed me four chain-like bracelets. The System showed no information for them but I could see a faint green glow to them.
Putting them as instructed, I felt my body weight increase by about three times. Lifting my arm, I looked towards Tael as he explained. “You’ll be wearing these to limit your Agility and Strength for the duration of your training, in addition to restricting your magic. The next few days we will be working on resetting your reflexes, you’ll receive a different type of punishment the moment you try and use Dancing Fox Wind Style.
“They will also keep constantly adjusting, so your body will always feel three times as heavy. Now, we’ll begin. Start off by fighting like normal, don’t try and rid yourself of how you normally would fight.”
Nodding, I breathed out and took my stance. The moment I did, I felt the muscles in my arms and legs get shocked, but it was different from the shocks I’d received from the white gloves. It was deep, affecting every muscle. Grimacing, we started sparring as I worked with Tael to stop using Dancing Fox Wind Style on reflex.
***
Throwing a fist out, Tael easily deflects it as he throws out his own. Sidestepping it, I throw a leg at his midsection as he grabs it and lightly throws me. Twisting my body midair, I land on my feet and duck, avoiding his kick. Springing up while turning, I throw a punch upwards as he dodges easily before stepping back, looking satisfied.
“Good. It’s been nine hours since you were last shocked. We’ll stop here and begin teaching you the basics to Flowing River, starting at footwork. You’ll still be shocked if you attempt to relax any part of your body like you were using your previous style, so keep that in mind.”
Breathing out while rolling my shoulders, I thought over the last three days. I’d slowly but surely had stopped using Dancing Wind Fox Style, not due to the constant shocks but because I started being able to control my body much more easily due to the training I had before.
“As you may have heard, the fundamentals to Flowing River is our ability to foresee attacks coming by watching our opponent and how they move. The same is true to other martial arts, they too will see how you attack by watching your movements. Flowing River minimises the amount of movement we do. Over the next few days we’ll practise your footwork, then following that we’ll work on your state of mind during combat.”
As he showed me the footwork, I noticed it was rather simple yet difficult to do. There was very little movement to it, the main points being on where to step to help absorb or dodge attacks. There was also knowing when it was best to move to attack as well. After two days, Tael stopped and smiled with satisfaction.
“You learn quickly, Alisha. Very good, very good. Now, about your state of mind, Halone has said you have good focus and control over your emotions, even after being attacked in surprise. You are very promising in this regard, however as we mentioned before you do in fact have a lot of negative emotions like anger and vengeance in your eyes.
“After we looked into your past, I can see why. Being chased by a Church, ambushed by them at multiple points of time and seemingly only being hunted because you’re part monster and part human must make one feel angry.”
Blinking a bit in surprise, I didn’t know they had known I wasn’t an evolved human. I had at some point given up telling people I was a Hybrid, since most kept assuming I was just an evolved human.
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“To help you achieve controlling these negative emotions a lot easier, we’ll be using a certain type of meditation, where you’ll be able to face those emotions and control them.” Pulling out a candle that is blue in colour with golden patterns on it, he sat it down and gestured for me to sit in front of it. “The moment I light this, close your eyes and clear your mind. You’ll soon find yourself facing your emotions.”
Nodding, I close my eyes as he lights the candle and clears my mind. As it clears of any thought, I find myself in a white void, facing another me. Looking at this other me, I found it to have a hateful look, anger on its face, but it was smiling.
Smiling back at it, I had already accepted this side of me, the so-called monster side to myself.
Knowing I had no need to ‘fight’ this other me, and the other me knowing it did not need to fight me, we just stood there smiling at each other before it started speaking.
“You’re needing me less and less.”
“Mm, you are me and I am you. I’ll always need you.”
Stepping forward, I raise a hand to her. Taking it, she gave me a deep look before grinning.
Slowly, I felt myself merge with this other me. I knew deep down that rather than fighting for control over these emotions, we simply accepted each other. I may have relied less on these emotions, but they were very much still me.
Opening my eyes, I breathed out as I looked at Tael. He was wide eyed, looking at me while shaking his head.
“For you to so easily accept your anger and hatred, you must’ve lived a brutal life. Even then, that is far too quick, most fail at this point because they fight against themselves.” Looking at me in disbelief once again, he snuffed out the candle.
“I apologise for lying to you. Calmness is not the sole purpose of this style, nor is it suppressing your emotions. We tell our potential students this to test them for this stage. While being calm during a fight is important, you need focus, complete and utter focus. You can not be distracted or lose yourself in bloodlust. You need to be able to keep your focus at all times, like when Halone surprise attacked you the other night.
“This is why it’s important to control your emotions, so your anger doesn’t distract you. You need to be focused under any circumstances, never giving way to surprises, killing intent or anything that makes you lose that focus, even for a moment.”
Understanding what he meant, there had certainly been times where I had lost my focus before of situations he mentioned. Surprised at how something unexpected occurred, anger at my opponents and the killing intent Halone put me under the other day.
Standing, he frowned before laughing. “Halone was meant to start your training in a few days, as we thought it would take that long for you to realise what we had intended. She is currently bringing that friend of ours here to help train Alice.”
Smiling, I glanced behind me to see Alice. She’d been watching us training, seemingly happy. She’d even tried to practise footwork with us, earning a chuckle from Tael, who seemed more than happy to let her do so. We found very quickly that Alice was not good on her talons and gave up rather quickly, opting to watch while eating monster cores like they were snacks.
I had talked to Tael throughout the last few days and he revealed what type of Dark magic his friend specialised in. Dark magic could corrupt people, inflicting ailments on others, like Blindness that she’d known since she hatched. In fact, Tael had mentioned a branch of Dark magic could influence one's emotions, meaning they were the worst opponents for the Flowing River martial art.
“Well, since Halone will be back in a few days, I’ll teach you. This was meant to be a skill you’d learn from me after Halone taught you, but you don’t need that training to learn what I’m about to show you.”
Pulling out four slips of paper, I saw that they were in the shape of a person. Flicking his wrist, he throws the paper to the side as they suddenly explode in size, turning into white, featureless figures.
“Now, the skill I will be teaching you today is called Flowing Strikes. Before we begin, Alisha, what do you know about skills?”
Thinking about it, I only knew they used energy rather than magic, and telling Tael that he smiles. “That’s a basic understanding, but not incorrect. Yes, skills use energy. Do you know how to use your energy to use skills?” Telling him about Lashing Fire Kick, he nods and says “Good, how well can you control it?”
“I don’t really control it, sometimes I just think of it being stronger and it will be.” After thinking for a while, I told him how I’ve used it in the past.
“Alright, in that case we’ll first learn how to control the energy within your body. It won’t take long, similar to magic, energy revolves around our body and is much easier to control.”
After a few hours, I had a good grasp on how to control energy. It was rather simple, as Tael had told me. We couldn’t exert energy outside of our bodies, like we could we magic, and the more energy was used the more tired we became, which is what I expected. After some practice, I managed to use Lashing Fire Kick and control the energy that went into it very well.
“Good, you learn quickly. Now, Flowing Strikes is a basic staple of Flowing River. It’s one of the few attacking skills we learn, and it gets stronger the longer you use it. It involves controlling your strength, energy and flow. You strike fast, and the more your attacks land, the harder they hit. Now, strike these dummies, use as little strength and energy and slowly raise them. We’ll continue this over and over, ensuring you reset yourself at my command.”
Third Person PoV
A sun hangs above an empty desert, the temperature high enough to leave one sweating. Here, a lone man walks through the desert, seemingly unaffected by the temperature. A bored expression could be seen underneath the boar mask that he wore. One step at a time, he continues his walk, unaffected by the sand.
A smile started creeping up his mouth as his thoughts went back to the one he had fought some time ago. The Blood God had demanded, or to The Blade, requested to eliminate one that He had a grudge with. The Blade did not know why the Blood God had wanted her to die, and out of boredom he had created an avatar to send to the Tomb of Lilith.
He hadn’t expected to meet someone that gave him that sense of excitement. Like him, she enjoyed the thrill of fighting, she had no fear in her eyes nor did she fight to just survive. As his smile grew, he looked in a certain direction.
“Too slow, she’ll grow too slowly…Vale, hm?” As thoughts came to mind on how to accelerate her growth, the sky inverted. From a hot, sunny day, it suddenly became a night sky, the moon hanging brightly in the sky. With his smile widening, he turns to face the person who had appeared in front of him.
“Selenia. What does the Angel of the Moon Goddess wish of me? Surely you wouldn’t appear to simply kill me.”
He knew if they were to fight, he would not live. He wasn’t afraid though. He just found it boring that if he was to die here, he wouldn’t be able to enjoy the fight.
Selenia smiles. “If I wished to take your life, my appearance wouldn’t be necessary. I’ve come to request your aide in a manner that benefits both of us.”
Blinking for a moment, The Blade starts laughing. At first a chuckle, then out loud. Looking at Selenia, his grin returned. “Me, aid one of Celestia’s Angels?! To think yo-”
Interrupting him, Selenia simply smiled. “I think you’d rather enjoy this request. After all, you get to aid in her growth.”
As she finished speaking, The Blade's smile disappeared. Looking at Selenia with a serious expression, his thoughts ran wild for a moment. “Why?”
“She is training to get stronger, however her growth is slow. She needs a threat, a reminder of this world. That in a night all that she cares for can be taken away. She is slowly forgetting this, and as she grows stronger she will forget. She must never forget, and there is only one place this lesson can be engraved into her. A place you and her have been before, at the same time.”
“Zalus.” Without waiting for her to tell him, The Blade said it first and smiled deeply. “You want my help to lead an army to Zalus?”
“It’s good you catch on quickly. Yes, I have already set a plan in motion to have her and those she cares about go to the ruins of Zalus. In half a year she will be there, and in that time I wish for her to remember. Do not hold back, but do keep in mind she won’t be as strong as you may think.”
“I will only do this under one condition.”
“You wish to fight her, without interruption, once she is strong enough?”
Grinning, The Blade laughs once again. “It’s good you catch on quickly. Do we have a deal?”
As Selenia starts fading, she gives him a deep look. “Yes. I will set the stage when the time comes. Ensure you or your army do not kill her or any of those close to her, otherwise the deal is off.”
As The Blade stood there, his smile deepened. “Well, training her during this shouldn’t be a problem.” Facing a certain direction, The Blade starts walking, excitement in his step, as he crafted a plan of his own, to accelerate her growth while she was in Vale.