The First Night Out [Training][Closed]

The night was beginning to come in, the first twinkling glances of the night sky coming in through the cloud layer and reminding the people underneath the sky's embrace that, though they were in a different land to the one they had been in when they started this journey, they were still only a small way from their home, relative to the entire universe, 

The caravan had had to stop for a little while; they had been riding for untold hours and during that time, they had worn their horses to their limit. Although they were well bred, well trained and well looked after, they had been riding for the last eight hours straight, so its not exactly hard to believe that they would need to eat by now. Alek also needed to eat, but first he was on guard duty since he was the more active of the two commanding officers. It occurred to him that he could have just ordered one of his men to do it, but since he had always believed in leading by example, he had to take the first shift watching over the camp. 

Plus, since he was more used to being in hostile territory whilst trying to remain undetected than anyone else in the platoon, he had the most situational knowledge. If anyone else in this group found themselves behind what was potentially enemy lines, they would have gone on a killing streak rather than keeping their heads down and getting around the country like a shadow on the wall during the late hours of evening. 

So, standing at the edge of camp, he rested against the horse that he had been riding on for the last few hours. He had christened him "Susan", because sometimes gender roles didn't need to dictate names. Besides, why would the horse care? He doubted very much that it would care if he called it "Slartibartfast", considering the fact that it didn't speak English. Giving it an affectionate pat on the head, 'Susan' gave him the horse equivalent of evil, although he had no idea why. Maybe he could speak English a little bit more than he had thought.

362/500 Cherry Blossom Impact
000/500 Fanalis Jump

The night continued on with few issues as he decided to get into a little bit of training. he still had around two hours of his shift left, and he had to do something to keep him from going completely and utterly insane with boredom, so he focused on increasing his skills. 

Plus, if he was going to ford this dungeon thing, he was going to need to be at the top of his game and he didn't get to the top of his game without hours and hours of hard work and effort. 

With that in mind, he moved ever so slightly away from the camp (close enough that he could still watch over it just in case any shit went down, but far enough away that he would be able to make sure that nobody else was at risk of getting caught in his techniques), and began to practice some of his stronger arts.

The most obvious one was his ground obliteration fighting style. If he could punch the ground and destroy it, then he could stop people getting too near him and without people getting too near him without his consent, he would only have to focus about dodging things. 

This was a series of events that seemed like they were specifically designed to help increase his chances of survival, so he worked for the first half an hour on doing that. the area that he had chosen for this specific bit of training was a small, plain, rather disinteresting patch of grassland. There were no trees to get in the way, no-one around that he might end up getting injured through accidental carelessness, and nobody that would interfere. 

By the end of an hour, the place looked like the reverse of a bowling green. Giant craters littered the area, with only small islands in between the spots that stood up like monoliths. He wasn't exactly doing good for the local environment. However, by the time an hour passed, his skill at the art had improved so much... that there was now a hole around him larger than he could actually jump. Well... fuck. 

500/500 Cherry Blossom Impact
219/500 Fanalis Jump

Whilst it wasn't short enough to jump normally, Zander had a secret weapon... or, well, not very secret, actually. Hell, it was pretty much common knowledge. He was a Fanalis, and the Fanalis people had physical abilities far beyond what a normal human could do. It was with that that he concentrated his strength into his legs, crouching slightly, his legs digging into the ground as he prepared to jump the distance. Finally, with a silent prayer to whatever god looked over the Fanalis, he released the built in tension, bursting up like a spring, catching an amazing amount of air off the ground as he sailed like a majestic bird. 

The issue with the distance that he had jumped was that, now that he had caught so much air, he was going to have to come back down. It was the way that gravity worked, and considering that little fact, he was having to arrange himself so that he didn't shatter his legs on the moment of impact. Throwing himself forwards in the air ever so slightly so that he would roll at the moment of impact, a lot of the weight was distributed across his body and he avoided any major damage. He was dirty, banged up, bruised, but he wasn't actually injured, and that was important. 

Moving his way back to the camp, brushing himself down, he smiled at the first of the men that greeted him as he re-entered the camp, knowing that people were looking at him bizarrely. Half an hour ago he had been clean, pristine and shiny, and now he was covered in dust and dirt. That was a really quick change, and all he could do was smile. How could he explain something like that?

500/500 Fanalis Jump