I woke up after hitting the wooden floor hard from being pulled out of bed. I looked up to see the man from yesterday grinning.

“Rise and shine! Let’s get going. We’ll eat first and then get to work, so come downstairs.”

He left without another word, and I groaned rubbing my head.

I stood and met him downstairs, where the amount of food had doubled from yesterday. Did the house know I had eaten his portion?

He was already eating, so I sat across from him and started too.

“What should I call you?”

“Since I’ll be teaching you lets go with Master.”

“Really?”

It felt weird to call him that even in my own head. He laughed a bit too loudly for the morning making me grimace. There wasn’t any sunlight coming in through the windows. It must have been quite early.

“I’m just messin’ with you, I’m not a fan of formalities like that. Just call me Cyrus.”

“Alright then.”

Since he didn’t ask for my name, I didn’t see a point to give him mine.

“Good, so eat up and let’s get out and get started.”

I nodded and continued my way through my breakfast. By the time I was done and we were heading outside, the sun had just started to come out. He led me over to the sparing area and picked up one of the wooden swords.

“This method will hurt a bit. But why don’t you sit down and take this blindfold.”

He held out a black cloth.

This wasn’t going to be as convenient as it first seemed.

I took it covered my eyes and sat down.

“So, the goal of this first exercise if for you to be able to tell the difference between when I used my aura to hit you and when I didn’t. Aside from the fact that aura was used, the force you will feel and the pain from the hit will all be the same. I’ll hit you three times and I want you to tell me how many times I hit you with aura.”

“Seriously?”

“Well, you could always go back to your imaging practice and take a year before you can even have a solid image in your head.”

I sighed and did my best to get into a comfortable seating position.

“Alright then.”

It didn’t take long for him to start. It honestly didn’t hurt all that much, but I really couldn’t feel a difference between any of the hits.

“If you don’t know just shake your head when I’m done with the hits. Otherwise, once the final hit is made say the number you think.”

I shook my head and he started again almost instantly.

I wasn’t really sure what I was supposed to be feeling for. The weight and placement of the hits seemed consistent but after another three I still shook my head.

Well, if it was this easy, aura would be an easy thing for people to learn. We only took a break for lunch, but I was quite sore. The skin that had broken though healed quickly thanks to my own blessing, but since the floor was also supposed to heal people, it wouldn’t stick out so much.

It was going to take a while, wasn’t it?

Lunch was a nice break, but we got right back at it afterward. I would probably have to do my daily quest after dinner.

About halfway through our training in the afternoon, a banner appeared. I heard the ding, so I took my blindfold off to see it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The next group stage has started, would you like to join?

Yes or Yes

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Hey, I thought you said I’d get a choice?”

“Do you not?”

“No, it just says, yes or yes with little button looking things.”

He took a second to respond.

“Well… it’s been a while since I’ve had someone here so maybe it changed. The other issue is that they could be short people and so you have to participate no matter what. Well, we’ll continue when you get back.

“Don’t lose too quickly this time, take the chance to learn to fight a bit better. But don’t make it out of the group stages. The main tournament runs a bit faster, so you’ll be interrupted more during training.”

I sighed and pressed yes and was instantly teleported to that same waiting room as new people entered through the doorway. There were already people in the room with me as well, but I hadn’t paid any attention to the people I was with last time, so they didn’t seem at all familiar.

I looked around the room and saw a board with names written on it. I went to find my group and seat. I was sadly in group three and placed in the fourth spot. Which meant there was more time before I could lose and head back to continue training.

Might as well make use of the dummies.

I watched the first few fights of my group and got a little concerned. The fights were embarrassingly bad. Neither the first nor second seat person was good at hand-to-hand combat. And when it came to the third seat, which was a mage, they were too slow to use their spell and lost rather quickly.

Luckily though, one of the added participants was last, so either way I should be able to lose quickly. It was a bit weird that there was only one added member this time. If they were so desperate for people that they didn’t give me a choice to not participate, what happened to their added people?

My fight against the current first place was over quite easily. They didn’t have the stamina to fight three times in a row, nor the skill to last longer than a minute with me (not that I’m a good fighter).

Having fights where the skill difference between who I lost to and who I beat was so great, wasn’t much help with learning where my own skill level was at.

And then the added participant wasn’t as hard to fight against than I was expecting, but he wasn’t weak either. It wasn’t too hard to get myself knocked out of the ring and lose.

This time when I returned to the training hall, I was awake and appeared right outside the building.

“Well, that took a while, we only have an hour before dinner. Let’s just start again in the morning.”

Cyrus stood up from his chair and stretched.

“Yeah, well being in the third group and the fourth person and having to fake lose so I didn’t win the group stage was time consuming.”

“Fair enough, have a good dinner.”

Cyrus left again and I watched him walk out of the gate and teleport somewhere.

I guess that made more sense than just him walking to wherever he was trying to get to.

The next morning, I was woken up the same way. Breakfast was the same and we started training again. It was only halfway through our afternoon training session that I thought I had felt something.

I had gotten used to his pacing and had taken my shirt off so that it wouldn’t get ruined since at this point it was my only one. Without the shirt, I somehow got to the point of being able to feel the air move toward me right before the impact.

The image that Mypheryn was trying to get into my head, was that aura surrounded whatever you had put it on like my sheath. So I should feel it just briefly before I felt the rest of the object. After feeling the air, on a few occasions, I felt something just barely something else after I noticed the air.

I wasn’t too sure about that feeling until much later in the afternoon session and after the three hit I didn’t shake my head right away.

“Twice?”

“Is that a question or answer?”

I thought about it a bit more but was pretty sure I had only felt it twice.

“Twice.”

“Good.”

He didn’t say whether or not I was right, but he just started up again. By the time we had gotten to dinner, I had answered almost every other time instead of shaking my head. I guess that was progress.

I was more confident in my answers this time. Even if Cyrus didn’t say any sort of confirmation, just being somewhat confident in a number, counted as improvement for me.

I was surprised that I wasn’t called to the arena for the group stages yet again the next day. But I wasn’t going to complain. The whole day I had only one or two times where I wasn’t sure about what I had felt.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

It was late and he hadn’t started up again after giving my answer, so I took off my blindfold.

“You haven’t said anything, but have I been right?”

“Do you think it matters whether or not you’re right?”

I tilted my head, didn’t it matter? I mean wasn’t the whole point to be able to tell what I was feeling?

“What were you feeling?”

“Well, after I felt the air move towards me if it was a time you used aura then there would be something else, I’d feel before you hit me.”

“Are you sure there was something else?”

“I mean yeah, otherwise I wouldn’t have answered.”

“Is it a possibility you just think you feel something because you’re picturing what aura could be in your head?”

I scrunched my face a little annoyed.

“Even if I have an image of it in my head, what does that change as long as I can tell what I’m feeling?”

“It needs to come instinctively not from the thought process.”

“Then how do I do that?”

“That’ll be tomorrows lesson then. Alright, dinner time.”

No straight answers then.

I sat at the table alone, eating, trying to think about what he possibly meant. I mean I know that Mypheryn had mentioned that the image needed to be so solid that eventually, it would come as a muscle reflex. But if I was already thinking about it in those terms then how would I get past that and start to think about it as a reflex?

Well, I’m not great at thinking, might as well wait until tomorrow.

Before we could even start his explanation, I was sent back to the arena. Luckily, I was in group one and seat two and the people weren’t horrible. Overall, it was much easier for me to lose and get sent back quickly.

“Well let’s get started. As I said we’ll be starting a new style of training. I will hit at an interval of only a few seconds. Raise your right hand if you think aura and raise your left if you think no aura. If you don’t raise your hand before I hit you again, then that counts as a wrong answer, and you need to evaluate the next hit.”

I put the blindfold on and was not looking forward to this.

Even though we didn’t go for very long. I had only raised my hands in time a couple times before we broke for lunch.

“So, are you starting to see anything?”

“I’m not sure.”

“That’s okay, its faster than the method you were doing previously, it usually still takes a while. Thinking too much interferes with the training so do your best not to do that.”

If Alcoroth was here, he’d probably say that wouldn’t be a problem, that not much goes on in my head anyway.

It had been about a week since I’d last seen him, and while the break was nice, I did miss them slightly. Mostly I missed Mezu, but this would be rather boring for him to watch, and I don’t think I’d be able to entertain him while I was training. It was probably best he wasn’t here.

For this training, it took me three days, where I was interrupted each day with the group stage before something clicked.

I didn’t know what it was, but I suddenly was aware. With my blindfold on, I just knew.

I knew where he was, aware of when he put aura into the sword and when he didn’t. I wasn’t too sure of what I was aware of or if it was even something you could call seeing, but I decided to take a chance.

Before he even swung his sword, I sensed that he had used his aura and lifted my right hand. He still hit me with it. And it wasn’t until I had done that for ten consecutive hits did he stop and start laughing.

“I know I said it doesn’t take a couple days but you’re amazing. I can’t believe that you managed to get it that quickly.”

“How long does it usually take?” I asked while taking off my blindfold.

“Well, we usually train kids when they’re young and it takes a month or so, even for the fastest kids. Even though I don’t really have experience teaching older kids. I don’t have much to compare it to, the pace we’re going at feels considerably fast. Alright, let’s get lunch and talk a bit.”

We sat at one of the tables and I ate quickly, surprisingly starving.

“So can you explain to me from your perspective what just happened?”

“Well, I’m not too sure.”

My mouth was full as I spoke, but since he hadn’t said anything, I guess it wasn’t an issue.

“It was kind of just all of a sudden, I could see it, you know. Like you in front of me, and then the sword when you’d use aura. So, I just rose my hand before you hit me.”

I swallowed, and his face quickly changed from one that I think was shocked, to a more neutral one. I’m only mostly sure that it was shock, since it seemed similar to a face I’d seen on Lukon before. He used to tell me what his expressions were if he could tell I was confused.

…

I don’t really know why he did that.

“Can you see it now?”

I shook my head as if that’d help and did my best to concentrate. I looked at him, and couldn’t see anything, so I closed my eyes and tried thinking about it again. Slowly after becoming aware, like I was before, I began to see a faded green glow appear in front of me in the shape of Cyrus.

I opened my eyes.

“Yeah, but it’s a little weaker than before.”

A wide grin formed on his face.

“Aura is strongly linked to your battle instincts. You’re more likely to notice it when fighting or training than when you’re just sitting and eating your food. Now the next step is a bit harder, and it takes different times for everyone. You got to this point pretty fast, so it hopefully won’t take you that long, but you’re almost there.

“We’ll stick with the training we just did for a couple of hours before we try the next step. Just need to reinforce that feeling for you. I’ll be speeding up this time, so we’ll be aiming for you to answer before I hit you instead of after I hit you.”

After those couple hours, I was excited to move onto the next thing, but we got interrupted again.

I don’t think I’ve gotten a summon that late in the day before, but I guess we wouldn’t be moving on until tomorrow.

After breakfast, we stood in the sparring arena.

“Alright, now is the harder part of awakening. Since you can see my aura in me and when I use it, the next step is to turn yours on. There are a few schools of thought for this. There is an advanced one form of the imaging method or the advanced form of what we were doing. We can also mix the two. I don’t think using any imaging would work in your favor, it’s not useful for idiots.”

That was more direct than he had been before, but I couldn’t exactly disagree with him.

“So, we’ll do the advanced painful complete instincts version.”

Yay, how exciting.

“Alright, take a wooden sword and put your blindfold on. We’ll start with some simple sparring and go from there. We just need to wake up your sight so that I can show you the movement of it.”

We got a good sweat going, and various bruises were in the process of healing before my sight fully woke up.

“Alright, give me your sword.”

I held out my sword. He took it from me, walked away to a distance that I could no longer see his aura, then he came back and put only a hilt of something in my hand. The weight was weird and when I swung it around, I felt nothing.

“Alright, now this is the painful part. We’ll be starting to spar again but this time you won’t be able to defend yourself unless you can turn on your aura in the form of a sword. Can you see my aura right now?”

I nodded.

“Alright, it’s a do it until it works method, so it will click at some point just like your sight. Let’s get started.”

By the time we got to lunch, I was in the process of healing a multitude of cuts, gashes, scrapes, and bruises from his aura.

“Well, I wasn’t expecting you to get it that quickly, so let’s eat.”

We weren’t interrupted the rest of the day, but I had gotten nowhere on defending myself. The only progress was that my sight had gotten clearer and clearer. As we went, the glow solidified and was more distinct.

At breakfast the next morning, without commenting I tried to turn my sight on while my eyes were open. I noticed that yesterday, once we stopped and I took my blindfold off, I could still see that feint greenish glow in him. It went away quickly but it was definitely there.

I concentrated on it, and it flickered a bit at first, but now I could see that green glow. With it, I felt something in me that was a bit disturbing. I couldn’t quite place what it was, but I could feel something stagnant within me putting pressure on various points.

I stretched my neck a bit hoping it would go away but it didn’t. I looked at Cyrus and that green glow began to solidify into lines that looked like pathways on a map going through his body.

“Nicely done.”

“What?”

With my concentration lost, my sight was gone but I could still ever so slightly feel that same pressure in my body.

“You’ve figured something out, haven’t you? You just made your ‘I’m really uncomfortable face.’”

“What?”

“Whenever we eat something that you have some issue with, you get this look of extreme discomfort on your face. And you just had that even though you haven’t taken a bite in a bit.”

Fuck, what kind of face do I make?

“Can you describe it to me?”

I took a bite and tried to think about the feeling. Other than describing it as a sort of pressure, I wasn’t really sure what to say about it. It didn’t feel like the pathways I saw in him, I just felt very condensed points of pressure in my body.

“Don’t take all day, I told you thinking isn’t going to help you get through this.”

“It’s just really uncomfortable pressure points.”

“Good, you should be able to block my attack by the end of the day.”

He was only partially right; it only took me an hour more of practice.

He burst into laughter after I finally defended myself.

“They always said the stupidest of the bunch and the smartest of the bunch would figure it out the quickest.”

It was clear which side of things I was on, and I really wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or an insult.

“I’m not in the mood to teach circulation theory so let’s just spar for the rest of the day.”

I wasn’t consistent at first, since I had only defended myself once, but he started to go harder with me than he had been.

By the end of the day my wounds didn’t multiply, they only got worse since I kept reopening them before either my body could heal them, or the floor’s mechanics could. It was a weird really feeling, not painful just weird and it was really distracting at first. They’d flex and open up a bit and I’d feel the air on my skin when I normally wouldn’t.

The next day after warming up with some sparring, he sat me down in the dining hall and rolled over a chalkboard. He scratched the back of his head staring at it for a bit before drawing a very crude image of a person. And within it, he marked certain points.

Those points were recognizable even with how badly it was drawn. It was all the points that I felt the pressure. Well, at first it was only some of them but then the more I thought about each of the different points I realized I felt that same pressure there too.

He then connected the various points with lines that seemed to be like what I now saw as Cyrus’s aura.

“Alright, so I don’t have a lot of experience teaching the theory of aura circulation, but I’ll do my best to explain the basics. Even without instruction, with enough brute force and practice you should be able to clear most of them. But instruction makes the process quicker and less painful.

“When you first awaken your aura, it's concentrated along the lines between these points but only between the points. So, the pressure you feel is the aura against the points and not the other way around. The goal of circulation is to break through the barriers of these points and connect all the pathways. Through the brute force method, the points in your hands usually open first.

“Without instruction most can open the pathways in the arms and legs without any issue. It just takes forever and, in some cases, can be quite painful. Taking the time every day to practice the flow of your aura within the pathways will gradually train yourself to then open up more and more of them.”

I heard all of the words he was saying and individually knew what he was saying, but I really didn’t get what he was trying to get at. And I don’t think it helped that he kept scratching his head throughout, which I only saw Lukon do when he was trying to explain something to me using only words that he knew I understood.

“What I’m trying to say is that you need to build up even more pressure on one side of the point to break through it. And practicing the feeling of it every day should eventually teach it to become more of a reflex. The first break in a point will be small, but as you move it through the wider the hole gets eventually making it fully open.”

I squinted, still confused, and tilted my head, trying to understand what he meant.

He groaned.

“I really shouldn’t be trying to teach you this, it’s so hard to explain a feeling to someone. We’re just trying to get you to move your aura around and learn that feeling.”

I picked up the fork and covered it with aura like I had done when I made the sword. I felt the pressure in my hand weaken. And then told him what I felt.

“Okay, let’s try it that way. Two idiots can figure it out, I’m sure.”

We went back outside, and he handed me the sword hilt.

“Alright do the same thing.”

I did and yet again I felt the pressure decrease at that one point in my wrist.

“Do it again and again till you think you can feel it move and not just the pressure.”

The more I moved my aura, the more I could feel what I think he was aiming for. If the point was something I needed to break through, the solution would be to throw as much of my aura at it till it broke, right?

Even though this was taking a while, I wasn’t expecting it to be this fun. Even with all the injuries I got…. Well I mean they honestly didn’t really hurt, it was just an unusual and distracting feeling.

I shivered… that really was an unpleasant feeling.

But aside from that, this was fun. And even though I was being called an idiot Cyrus called himself one too, so it didn’t make me feel the same way that Alcoroth calling me an idiot made me feel.

Now that I learned aura, I should be able to make it pretty far in the tournament. I wonder how long it would take me to make it all the way through though.