Into The Shadow II [Solo/Training]

The swordsman hummed softly while crafting something that look like a target board, he always liked to do such kind of thing. Several piles were already behind him and when he thought it was enough for his own training, he stopped and stood up while bringing all the target board and tying it on the trees. It looked pretty well and he totally could use it to train his throwing movement, besides, it was just the beginning of his training. He planned to use the target board for several first day of his training, keep sticking to the basic. He was the man who would always stick to the basic no matter what, as he believed that it could improve someone a lot more. ‘The rest is always to improvise…’

He began to throw his knives, watching as each of his knives hit the target board perfectly in the middle. But he was not contempt, it was not a moving target after all and he still needed to stick with it for several days to go. It was boring, he felt that, but it was not his feeling or thoughts that mattered for him. It was his determination to be stronger, to be able to endure such boring routine and to be able to keep himself to be patient. After all, if he was patient enough, something good might come…maybe…

That belief seemed to give a false hope for him as he kept being patient but that one that he wanted the most never come to him. But what else that he could do, it was beyond his own strength. He understood that he couldn’t change his fate, so accepting it and worked hard to walking through his fate path were the only think that he should do at the moment. Fate wouldn’t be that cruel to whim to just giving him something false to believe… right?

Crack The swordsman snapped from his deep thoughts only to see his knife embedded deep into the tree. It was his own fault to swaying his focus to have that kind of thoughts and his failure was resulted by that wrong chosen move. Sigh escaped his lips as he decided to just repeat from the beginning, he didn’t like it at all and knew he should be harsh to himself by giving himself a punishment so he repeated it ten times. Looked like the harsh training from the desert really did increasing his stamina as he had been throwing his knives over and over again but he didn’t feel tired at all, that was a nice start. After two days had passed, the one eyed man began to look for moving object, such as watching how the leaves fell from the tree and then attempted to pierce the moving leaf by using his throwing knife. It was an interesting method as it required him to increase his sight power and observe his target as he prefer to throw from around 3 meters away from his object. The distance between his object increased every time he felt it was necessary to get a little far, and the furthest he had was around 10 meters. But it was not the end of his effort, he felt that he need to train those too, so the black haired man lifted the target board again and threw his knife from afar on the next day. His record was 20 meters away from the target board and he knew that he could increase it again but maybe not now.

WC: 591/1000

After he played with moving objects for around three days by using his throwing knife, then it was time to try hunting something alive and could move. He would start to look for a snake as soon as he arrived at the desert, the moment he found it, he would throw his knife after aiming for its head. When he missed and the snake quickly slithering away, Tenma would frown and look for another snake to perform his training. It was harsh to train in the desert because of the scorching heat and the danger that resided within, but it was an environment that could improve himself, so he just need to adapt with it. He spent all the time he had to be able to aim for the snake’s head and without him noticing, it was already midnight and he could feel the temperature decreased. Lucky for him, he already managed to master it by seeing at several snake corpses lying near to him and it seemed he wouldn’t need to look for dinner anymore as he could just eat the snake.

On the next day, the one eyed man planned to look for something harder to aim, something small and could move swiftly. Probably he could just look at the nearby forest and when he saw moving object that had a small size, he could try to aim his knife at them. He would make an exception for several small animals that he wouldn’t aim, it would increase his skill and also helping him to distinguish between friend or foe easily just in case the time for him to do it would ever come. After making the mental note of what he could aim or not, he proceeded to train. It was hard at first because some of the small animals were too fast and some had similar shape, but so far he even though he threw his knife towards the small animals that he shouldn’t aim for, he missed it. It was not a good achievement, he knew it but at least he didn’t kill it. Perfection was what he aimed at the moment, so he kept doing his training until he was able to distinguish between what he should or should not aim in a short time. It took around a month for him to master it and he was able to do every training without flaw. Thus, considering that he managed to improve himself once more, he thought it would be good to give reward for himself; so he went into nearby tavern only to enjoy his favorite booze.


Total WC : 1025

Early in the morning, the swordsman stared at the weapon that he possessed at the moment. He lined up his weapons on his bed, looking at each one of it thoroughly. Currently, he had Katana, something that he could use perfectly since it was his first weapon of choice and he always loved Katana. Then he stared at the next weapon, it was a medium sized Katana-like weapon which was called as Wakizashi. Katana and Wakizashi usually were being put into a set of weapon where the wielder can choose to use it depends on the place and situation. So far, the set was perfect for him. But then he moved his focus to the throwing knives that he used recently, it was very helpful if he needed to attack from afar even though having a set of bow would help more if he wanted to aim from much further distance. Yet, so far he was contempt having the throwing knives as it gave him the access to attack from medium range that would open the chance for him to deliver another attack in a close range. At the moment, having a bow so he could gain access to be able to attack from far range was tempting, but he knew it was not needed this time. He wondered what else that he could add to his collection of weapon that he could bring to the battlefield.

There were several options that the man gave a thought, but he was still not sure on which one to choose at. One of his choices was a shield, obviously it would be used to block enemy’s attack and he needed it. But then he could get something else that could give him access to several poisonous weapons that would help him to attack without having to worry about defends. However, he realized that he would need something that could give him access to be able to attack several people in the same time. He had not known the way to do it so maybe he could just save it, at least until he could get an access to do it. Perhaps he should learn magic like what his father did, combining his swordsmanship with deadly magic. He sighed; he had interest towards magic but not in the stage where he felt like he wanted to learn it. He guessed he should just stick with some weapon for now and planned for what he needed to learn later.

Perhaps he should look at the market to see if he could find any weapon that could gain his interest, so he headed out towards the market and straight to the weapon seller area. Unfortunately, after looking around the weaponry, he couldn’t find anything that could gain his interest. But then he saw a merchant that was selling antiques, he spotted a shield that was possibly made from onyx. He noticed the red color on the outer side of the shield and thought that it resembled a fire, he couldn’t help but to approach the stall and stare at the shield only to learn the details of its appearance. “I see you are interested with this shield? You have a very nice eye, young man!” The merchant laughed happily and grabbed the shield, showing it to the one eyed man. “This shield has a magic inside, it will give you the ability to cast magic from this shield. I don’t dare to try it in the public because I don’t know how strong the magic embedded in this beautiful art, but I think it is worth to buy because it was a strong shield.”

The thoughts about having a shield that could make him able to use magic as well was tempting for him, he needed such kind of thing. But he was not sure if the shield really contain magic or not; however like the merchant said, he could just use the shield normally if turns out there was no magic inside it. But to prove the durability of the shield, Tenma asked for permission to test it but the old man looked very confident. It was true though as after the one eyed man threw his knife on the shield, the Onyx shield blocked it successfully. Luckily he got a nice price from the merchant so he paid the cash and went back home so he could test it, he didn’t even wait to see other things and focused all of his attention for the shield. It was a pretty big shield with its 1 meter height and when Tenma examined it, he could find strange circle near the handle. It looked like a magic circle but he didn’t know much about it.

From what the merchant mentioned, this shield might bore something like Lava magic. He never heard of it before so it could be an item from this place called dungeon that people talked about lately, from what he knew there was several dungeon being raised and the latest one was in Balbadd if he was not mistaken. Perhaps he could enter one of it sometime only to satisfy his curiosity of the place which they said was full of wonders and also dangers, but he needed to wait until the right time to enter that place called dungeon.

The one eyed man tried to think of what kind of magic that this shield might have and he imagined if it really had Lava magic contained inside, maybe it would be like a lava wave that could deal some scorching damage to everyone it touched. He raised his eyebrow, wondering about how to activate the magic inside it. He hold the handle and touched the magic symbol while imagining about the Lava wave, right at that moment, he could feel something hot right in front of the shield and when he saw, something that looked like a lava was produced. He saw the shield in disbelief but since it was a magic tool, something like that would obviously happen. It would be a good time to train himself with this shield, so he concentrate once more and tried to imagine the lava wave with more details. He wanted it to have 15 meters height and also it should probably discharged in a 15 meters area, so he focused on it and he could feel something absorbing his energy a little bit. It was not a successful try, but Tenma was not going to stop until he managed to create what he pictured. The swordsman then tried again until he could control the lava to be discharged at his 4th try, he was still not content with the result since he wanted it to be discharged to a certain area. So he tried again, pouring his concentration, this time he gazed forward as if commanding the shield to discharge the lava into the place that he wanted it to be discharged. The black haired man smiled when he managed to do it successfully as the lava wave had 15 meters height and it discharged into 15 meters area within 30 meters of himself at 20m/s. He could totally use the ability for the fight…


WC: 1202/1000

Ability Trained: