39-Sects of battling mountain farmers?

7/2/5/4353 M.A.C - Niwut- Mid-Morning

"Dodge!"

Doro put his left foot back and shifted his body into a side stance, letting the padded projectile skim off his chest.

"You were a blink too slow on that one. If it had been a bladed weapon, it might have made enough contact to draw blood. Again!"

Doro was growing sweaty as the training proceeded. He was somewhat accustomed to physical exercise by now, having started his stamina training over a decan earlier, but the pacing of the effort being dictated by another party was a new experience to him.

Damn, every time I try to move away to catch my breath, she somehow stays the exact same distance from me.

When the relatively young scout had first shown her face that morning, Doro had greatly underestimated her. Upon seeing her lithe frame, the thin leather protections she wore as armor, and her apparent lack of weaponry, Doro had assumed that she couldn't be more than the freshest of recruits, still saving up for decent equipment. He'd been quite a ways off the mark.

"Ouwww! Ahhhh...fff...ahh...ff...ahh..."

Doro had attempted to duck to dodge a projectile that he'd anticipated would be aimed at his head, but he had been a bit too early. To his instructor, and all of her actual battle experience, the target that Doro offered, by bending his knees and spreading them apart to crouch, was too tempting an option to let go. As she finished the flick of the wrist that sent the projectile flying forward, she let her fingertips trail and catch its tail end, drastically changing the angle with which it ended up leaving her hand. Doro remained squatting, breathing heavily, a look on his face that betrayed that he was currently oblivious to anything else than the throbbing pain below his bladder.

If they've already descended, that might have sent them back into hiding for a few years.

"...And that's what happens when you dodge too early. Dodging is the simplest of the three defenses, if you get the timing right, and your body can follow. You don't need as much physical strength as for blocking or parrying, and you can do it without an armor or a weapon. Do it too early though, and your opponent will change their attack. Too late, and, well, you get skewered."

Doro had tried to change his instructor's lesson plan at first, thinking that he would probably end up wearing metal armor in the future, making dodging the least practical skill of the three, at least in his mind. He'd also believed that dodging was simple and that he already had a grasp on it, thinking it was as simple as just moving out of the way of an attack. He now knew better.

"The trick is identifying the moment at which your opponent can no longer significantly alter his attack, and then employing any movement you are capable of to get your body out of its path. When you get better, you can start doing more acrobatic movements, and try to use your dodge to either put more distance between you and your opponent, or to close in for a counter. For now though, just focus on trying to stop my attacks from touching you, without your movements leaving you off balance and making you an easy target for the next one."

The instructor's words sparked a wicked idea in Doro's head, but Ben's maturity did not put up enough of a fight against Doro's childlike mischievousness to ensure that it remained there. Doro Picked up one of the small sand pouches, that he had been on the receiving end of, and slipped a larger pebble into it.

"To help me pick up on the timing, mind letting me have a go so I can see when you start moving?"

The instructor looked pleased by Doro's initiative as she smiled at him, probably eager to show off her skills.

"Go for it. Let's make it interesting. I'll give you ten throws, and I will tie both my ankles together to limit my range of movement. If you manage to hit me once, you can have the dessert from the lunch your parents are paying me with. If you fail, I get yours. Deal?"

Guess it is my turn to teach her a thing or two. Payback time!

"What if I manage to hit you more than once?"

"Let's not get cheeky, Pipsqueak. Hit me once first and then we'll see."

Doro brought his right hand, with which he was holding the pouch, behind his right ear as he faced the left side of his body in the direction of his target. He lifted his left knee as he pulled his weight backward, and brought his left arm back to meet his right.

"Planning on using your left hand to hide your right for a couple extra moments of surprise? Not a bad plan, but not gonna be enough to bridge the gap bud."

Guess I must look like I'm trying to pull some fancy trick, Baseball is most probably not a thing here, so this style of windup must not be common.

Doro shifted his weight forward, stepping hard with his left leg, his left arm making an arc ahead of him as his semi-extended right arm pivoted from behind him. Doro's hand-eye coordination was a lot better than when he had been Ben, but his lack of interest in sports had made his form all manners of wrong. For one, his throwing arm was too straight, making his pitch more of a cricket balling form, and for two, his wrist remained stiff for the entirety of the movement.

Doro was not trying to throw particularly hard, or at least not as hard as he could, and so was able to keep the throw somewhat on target, not that it mattered in the first place. The pouch flew true, but as Doro looked at his target, he realized she was not there anymore.

in the split second between the pouch leaving Doro's fingertips and the time it had made it a foot away from him, she'd already gotten herself 3 feet to the left, in the middle of a side roll. She got back on her feet just as the pouch flew through where she had been moments prior, a smirk on her face.

Doro made a fist and slammed it into his other hand, as if to make a show of how annoyed he was by his failure.

"Damnit, I was nowhere near!"

As Doro put on his act, his hand motion caused the pebble inside the pouch to make it do a U-turn further down the backstreet, sending it back on its way toward him. His instructor took a couple hops forward and put a hand up as if to pat him on the head, in what Doro supposed was an attempt to cheer him up.

Heh, don't bother!....Two....One...

The corners of Doro's lips started to raise as his guided missile was but inches from his target's back, but then the world spun. In fact, the world did not actually spin, but the instructor's hand had grabbed onto Doro's collar, and she had nearly instantly swapped their position in an expertly performed maneuver, making Doro feel as if the world had just spun about him.

*Thwap*

"Ouch!"

Doro got hit in the back of the head by the pouch, but its relatively low speed should have normally made it less painful than the other times he had gotten hit. It was not. By using the large pebble to drive the sand pouch, it had wormed its way to the surface as it pulled the bag behind it by pushing on the leather from the inside. That meant that upon impact, Doro first felt a sharp hit from the pebble, then had it driven hard into the back of his head by the compacted sand that was following closely behind, the pouch stopping the sand from exploding outward and dissipating its energy.

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"Hahahaha...aw man, I got you good. You are not the first one to try something like this. This tip, if any, is the one that will be most likely to keep you alive. The moment you think you have it all in the bag is the moment you are most at risk. In the real world, there isn't an attacker and a defender, but two people fighting. We are practicing dodging, the moment you saw me close the distance between us and bring my arm forward, you should have dodged, or attempted to maintain your distance."

"Shhhhhh......my head still hurts, maybe wait a few seconds before lecturing me? Also, you said I could try to throw it at you, you never said I should still be practicing how to dodge!"

The instructor pointed her nose up, as if her superior height was not already enought to look down at him, and then gave him a three-stage villain laugh.

"Ha..HahaHA....HAHAHAHAHA, the way to the perfect dodge is built upon millions of tiny dodges. I have set you on the path, but don't simply walk it, "dodge" the distance with every step! If you can only dodge when you know you are warned, ahead of the attack, you'll die at the first sneak attack that comes your way. Now that I have started teaching you how to dodge, the lesson only ends with your death. Until then, consider yourself to have a passing mark. I did say I would give you ten tries though, want to take them or are you ready to surrender your dessert in defeat? Guess I'll aknowledge you though, the name is Karo."

***

Yup, I'm an idiot. My plan might have worked against a guard, or some other kind of warrior, but for a clumsy sneak attack, a scout's senses are by far my worst match. Shit, just the fact that she could see the energy strands linking me and pebble while I was controlling it was enough to foil my plan entirely.

"If I had known that you could see it, I would have tried things differently Miss Karo. What level are you even?"

After failing on all nine subsequent attempts, Doro brought his instructor inside their home for lunch, and the two told Suyum and Khetep about their morning's worth of effort over some well-deserved food.

"Isn't someone nosy? Why? Are you interested in me and trying to find out our age gap maybe?"

Suyum laughed at their guest's joke as Khetep gave his son a supportive look.

"Even though I don't plan on sticking around in the mortal realms forever, I am still only level 19. I have been putting off passing my threshold while I train in body tempering and vitality manipulation."

Khetep and Suyum nodded with a look of understanding on their faces, but Doro was confused.

"What are body tempering and vitality manipulation? And why would you need to push back passing your threshold?"

Karo seemed perplexed by Doro's confusion until she clapped her hands together as if to punctuate her sudden realization.

"Oh right, food is super expensive here, so it is not weird that an average kid hasn't heard of it even at your age. Basically, all living things produce vitality, and by learning how to manipulate that vitality while doing various different kind of exercises called body tempering, one can grow a lot tougher, stronger, faster, or limber. The issue is practitioners tend to need more food than the average person, and that the further you go down that path, the worse it gets. Also, unlike with Choices, the network isn't there to hold your hand, so you can do yourself some serious harm if you mess up."

"Alright, that is mostly new info to me so thanks, but you haven't explained why you are postponing going through your threshold."

Suyum interjected and answered her son's question, letting Karo continue eating uninterrupted.

"If someone is practicing vitality, and purposefully preventin' themselves from passin' their threshold, it is safe to assume that they are preparin' to climb a mountain."

Khetep eyed his wife dubiously and picked up the explanation.

"By climbing a mountain, your mother means one of the thousand peaks of Baisheng. It is code for joining a sect and becoming a cultivator. The sects will accept promising prospects that are low enough level and train them in secret vitality techniques, provide them with body tempering supplies, and even teach them the basics of alchemy and brahmic spell-work to unlock specific rare Choices, if they pass the entrance tests or get a referral."

"Why would you need to be that powerful to farm on a mountain? Is it some really fertile land that has a lot of monsters?"

The three adults laughed in unison at Doro's misunderstanding. Khetep was about to interject but his wife composed herself first.

"Well, the land up there is so prized that cultivators will fight one another to claim better-positioned plots of land on the mountains."

Khetep looked at their guest expectantly, making her pause between two mouthfuls.

"Meh, that is kind of right. Good enough to get the basic idea, but yeah, we cultivate ourselves, not the land. The higher you rise in a sect's ranks, the closer your residence will be to the peak. The goal is to try to achieve the greatest level of power possible, and to live out all one thousand years of our allotted time before attempting ascension."

"Thanks for the explanation, my mom can be pretty difficult when she wants to be."

"I stopped listenin' after 'pretty'."

"See?"

Karo laughed at the comic duo and a bit of food flew out of her mouth and onto Doro's face, who complained indignantly.

"What are you complaining about? I should be sending you to run laps for failing to dodge that, but since I'm already stealing your dessert, I'll let it go this once."

Friggin dodge freak! I have to admit she is a pretty good teacher though. I'd expected a much greener recruit.

Doro fished around his pocket for the token the receptionist had given him, and made to hand it to Karo, but she shook her head as she refused it.

"You are a nice kid, and if I was sticking around I wouldn't mind making this a decanly thing, but I'm leaving the city this decan. I'm heading to the Ashram of Diligence, to work on body tempering and to learn the basics of Brahmic spellwork in preparation for the sect entrance exams. Since the caravan I am joining leaves in two days, I only had the time to pick up a small job."

"No worries, I get it. Not much career advancement opportunity in sticking around to teach me. Tell you what, since I'm not having dessert, I have a couple extra minutes of free time on my hands."

***

Karo's throwing knife reflected the sunlight as she sent it spinning up in the air again, an evil grin on her face. She had not been able to stop herself from playing with her new toy as she accompanied her charge to his lessons.

Man, peculiar kid. Might become something in the future, no idea what though. Might be worth keeping in contact.

As Karo had been enjoying her double ration of desserts, the peculiar boy had gotten to work. He'd asked for her camping knife, and she'd assumed he would just oil it up and polish it for her, but what happened next was a lot more interesting. First, the boy retrieved an ingot of steel and a small rectangle of some strange golden material she had never seen before. Then, he swiped the blade onto the ingot, once on each side, and declared the blade repaired. Upon inspecting the blade, it turned out he had not been lying. The tiny chips in the edge, as well as the many little scratches that had accumulated on the sides of the blades from wear and tear, were nowhere to be seen. The edge was as sharp as before, sharper without the imperfections, and the knife looked as good, if not better, than the day she had bought it. What came next was what really piqued her interest though.

The young boy had taken the knife back a second time and started applying the thinnest of layers of his strange material all around the blade. The golden glint was attractive, but Karo was afraid it might have made the blade worse. Upon hearing his explanation of her knife's new properties though, Karo had begged him to also do the same to one of her two throwing knives.

"Damn, Kid! You do some good work. The balance hasn't shifted at all. If I throw this flashy knife with my right hand, no one is going to notice this one coming from the left!"

Karo stowed her golden throwing knife and retrieved a tarnished-black one, aside from its razor-thin silver edges. For this one, the boy had done something with an acid in his father's workshop, to darken the steel, after protecting the edge with some of his mother's clay.

"Happy you are happy. Don't worry, this was pretty quick and cost me barely any energy or materials, consider it a good luck gift. Be careful with the golden one though, with repeated impacts the coating might flake off or crack, won't make it worse than it originally was without it, but a blacksmith won't be able to fix it and might need to do a bit of extra work to remove it if you need them to do some work on the knife."

"Meh, these were decent knives, but nothing special until you got your hands on them anyway. Well, I think that's you. What time do you need me to come pick you up?"

"Honestly? Today might be weird. My dad and I might have sent him into a drunken stupor last week. Not sure what to expect."

The kid seems trustworthy, I'll just lend him one of my sympathy stones. Worst case, I know where he lives, and the other stone could lead me back to it anyway.

Karo removed a necklace, that had been tucked inside the brown camisole she wore beneath her leather protections, and took one of two circular stones stones dangling from it. She handed the stone to Doro and went on to explain its use.

"The two stones are connected, if you input a bit of energy in one, both will start glowing for a little bit."

She then took a few steps away and had Doro repeat the process.

"See. Now that I am further away from you, only roughly half of the stone is glowing. The further apart the stones, the narrower a section will light up. If you move it around, you will notice the glowing side will keep pointing in my direction. When you are ready for me to come fetch you, come back here and activate the stone every few minutes until I show up. S'that fine?"

"Sure, that's a convenient little thing."

"Don't have any ideas, eh. If you try keeping it, I'll know where to find you. They work both ways. Also, these are fairly cheap ones, and only work within about 10 miles of each other, so you won't make a crazy amount by selling them either. Still, be careful with it. This one used to belong to my father so it is precious to me."

The young boy straightened his posture and gave Karo a no-nonsense look she hadn't expected to come from someone so young.

"Don't worry, I can tell it's important to you, I'll be careful with it. I'll see ya later, gotta go face a possibly grumpy, possibly hungover, old scholar."

The young boy retrieved a simple linen handkerchief and wrapped the stone in it before storing it safely in the inner breast pocket of his silken tunic. Karo kept an eye on the boy until the door of the scholars' entrance closed behind him.

Yup, definitely keeping an eye on this one. I have a feeling that he might grow into a tasty meal if I give him some years to finish cooking. Not like I have the time to look around for romance until I get myself into one of the sects anyway, but by then he might already be an adult. Well, it's not like I'm that hard up on that front anyway, but maybe I can plant a couple of seeds and see if something grows in time.