Shichiro was simply passed out at his desk again after waking up and moving to his temporary quarters, but this time it wasn't because he was up all night studying, but rather that after a few weeks of training and expanding on the lessons that he learned from the old man out in the wilderness, he was simply dead tired and relaxing, sleeping off the exhaustion. It was very strange, but he found that most times, sitting on the chair and sleeping on his desk was far more comfortable than actually sleeping in his bed, but that was mostly because he almost lived his whole life at his desk after he separated from the bandits that ”took him in”, as a figure of speech. He enjoyed sitting at his desk in the deep hours, reading a good book, as if the book was good, he could see the imagery painted within with vivid mental images within his mind. It was actually a fun experience for him reading books, not that a lot of other people understood the points he tried to bring up, and this was mostly because the people who he associated with were inexperienced mages and children like himself back from that camp, so they didn't really much care for reading, unless it was related to topics that they were interested in, and those usually weren't works of fiction. Plus, He liked the heavier stuff, such as a story that involved a woman who had given birth, and the daughter turned out to be an insane serial killer, and the struggles the mother faced. She couldn't outright bring herself to turn her daughter into the authorities, as she would surely be executed, but she wasn't able to save her daughter throughout the book, and eventually had to kill her daughter with her own hands when the daughter attempted to kill her mother. It was a sad and heavy story, but had a lot of values and conflict that one could contemplate about and work out in their own lives.

Shichiro wondered what he would do if someone extremely close to him was a serial killer or something of that nature. He didn't think he could turn them in even if he knew information about them, but he also couldn't stop the elder council from simply picking his brain using their interrogation techniques either, so it was a very strange thought for him. He wasn't going to oppose the authority of the city that he currently resided in and drag himself into that person’s mess thinking he was an accomplice, but he also couldn't sell out someone that he thought as friend or rival. He was dreaming about his time in the wilderness, which was only about a week ago, and suddenly awoke to a thought. He was almost done learning the basics of everything he wanted to learn, and he needed to continue, even if it put him in the hospital for exhaustion. He wanted to better himself and become well rounded, and he wasn't going to stop until he had done so. The only specialty that he was hesitant to learn was projectile based techniques, mostly because everything else he was greatly interested in used his hands, and he thought that he couldn't really dedicate his hands to learning forms and incantations, plus he had almost no money, so getting the money to study or learn other people’s techniques wasn't quite on the table, since he needed supplies and the money to buy items and weapons, purchase training books, etc. He decided to go to the local target range to see if he could practice his long ranged based techniques. He wanted to be good with his precision so that he wasn't useless at long range, and then he also wanted to learn how to use a sword better, or maybe even train with claws would be pretty fun. The next thing he needed to learn about was debuffs, or the act of casting detrimental abilities. Debuffing seemed like it was going to be a lot easier for him than projectile based techniques, just because he didn't have much practice with precision, and was a series of formulas, math, and equations that one would have to calculate to form a technique and aim properly.

That was easy for him, simply to memorize certain concepts, but the physical acts of throwing a projectile needed to be engraved into his body through muscle memory, but it was still going to be more difficult. He showed up to the range, and they had a bunch of chipped and cracked throwing weapons like javelins, shuriken, etc that were donated so that the lower level mage could use them and practice their throwing on dummies and targets. He picked a small lane, and grabbed some of the shuriken laying nearby, and then held one in his right hand. He wondered what the best way to hold and throw it was, and so he grabbed it in between his thumb and forefinger, so that he would throw it like one would throw a Frisbee, and hopefully it would be accurate enough to where he could figure it out. So, he brought his right hand over to the left side of the body, and then threw the shuriken with a backwards arc, and tried to release it, but released it fairly late, and completely missed the closest target, and then sighed. There was a mage that snickered at him, and then proceeded to hit the target dummy in the head with all five of his five shuriken. This was like the young man was taunting Shichiro, and he simply furrowed his brow at the mage, as he was already an accomplished mage that made it into an organization and didn't need to deal with someone like that although it crossed his mind to use him as a punching bag for his fists. Chances are, he wouldn’t survive the barrage of punches Shichiro would have laid on him since he sized him up to be around the rank of C class so instead, he kept practicing and kept throwing the shuriken until he had no more, and went and picked them up. He wondered how he could become better, as he only hit two of the five attempts at throwing the shuriken, and none of them were close to kill shots like C-ranked mages had.

Shichiro was about to throw again, when an A-ranked mage came into the range, and was simply watching the lower ranked mage. They all seemed to be doing well, and even better when the B-class mages showed up, and Shichiro began to recognize him as one of the other teachers in the city who was mostly projectile focused. It seemed that a few of these C-ranked mage were students of his, and eventually the B-ranks took pity on him and showed him the proper way to hold and throw the shuriken. Now with Shichiro flustered, he quickly thanked the man, and was getting the hang of throwing the shuriken how the B-ranked mage taught him. He secretly smiled when the A-ranked mage started chewing out his students because there was someone struggling and they just looked on instead of simply showing him proper technique. Shichiro said it was no problem anyways, and then complimented him and the students on their abilities as a sign of goodwill though he didn’t mean it. He kept practicing, and he was learning extremely quickly, like he usually did. The muscle memory was being ingrained into his system, and eventually he was hitting the target everywhere he wanted to hit it almost perfectly. He decided to try different ranges, and eventually the shuriken itself was conquered, and put into his memory banks. He repeated the steps with javelins which of course had their own forms of holding and throwing, and eventually, he got the hang of tossing it. These javelins were going to be his preferred method of fighting, as they could find joints and nerve clusters and shut down opponents without killing them or causing too much damage to the body. They weren’t going to be normal javelins though. He would make them from his mana and eventually be formidable with it. A rogue projectile could cut an artery or major veins and lead to serious problems, and Shichiro didn't want to accidentally kill anyone.

The javelin was a different story from the shuriken and had a completely different way to throw them and hold them, and a completely different trajectory, so it was very difficult to get used to them. He had to stop for the day and go back the next day, and eventually after the entire day at the range, he was fairly good at throwing javelin. The other thing he wanted to learn was how to wield a sword or other bladed weapon efficiently, and that was a simple thing of going and talking to someone in the city that had a sword strapped to their belt, and asking them if they could show him a few moves. Learning weapons was fairly fun, but definitely not easy for everybody. Shichiro felt he could learn them easier than most people though. Wielding a sword felt very natural for him, as the training swords that were given to him were heavier than normal swords, so that they could train his body to swing a sword easily. Well, he had already trained greatly in weaponry before with the bandits, so wielding the training sword wasn't really that difficult weight wise, but he wasn't a natural in sword fighting like he was in hand-to-hand combat. He got beaten and bruised a lot, not only by his instructor at the camps, but by other people who were practicing with their swords and offered to spar with him as a child. Shichiro was small and scrawny at the time, so people thought it was because he couldn't swing the sword around properly because he was so small, but it wasn't really that, he was simply bad at coordinating his body with what his mind wanted him to do. He kept practicing until he could barely stand, and then stumbled and limped home with a big grin on his face. One couldn't expect to proceed without a bit of suffering, and this was his creed or code he lived by. One must go through and overcome suffering to have a pure heart. Life itself was suffering, but through the suffering of life, there are moments where you are proud that you got through the suffering stronger than before.

Shichiro was happy to think about that as he was sprawled out over his bed and instantly fell asleep. The next day, he grabbed some breakfast, said hello to his allies, and then told them that he was going to train again that day, to which they seemed a little concerned about him, because the bruises on his body had become purple, although they weren't swelling or anything. They were most likely going to swell that day since he was determined to continue his harsh training with a sword. It was fun, and eventually he was able to throw around the metal easier, and was better about defending himself in that way against the other sword users. He was happy with his progress, although it was slow compared to the rest of the people practicing, but that was to be expected from someone who had never actually been formally trained with a sword before and mostly read books. The training overall was good, and he was satisfied with his performance, but the people there were adept, and he learned all that he could from them, and decided to move onto his next goal, which was to control his mana efficiently. This one, he actually didn't need anyone to teach him specifically, because everything he wanted to learn was available at the library, and that was exactly where he went that day. He offered some of the members to come with him to the library, but they did that once, and noticed that he had over sixty percent of the fitness books at the table with himself, and they said that he trained too much. Well, some of them said that anyway. It was getting nearing to his next arena natch so he had to wrap this training session up soon, if he could help it.

Shichiro continued to read and read and read, the basics of mana control started to open up within his mind, and he started to learn about it. It was strange, and was almost like the old tales of alchemy, using arrays to channel energy and change the properties of matter, and he wondered if anyone had ever tried to complete the same thing using the principles of mana and spells. Mana essentially acted as a catalyst, a symbol that would hold the energy and tell it what to do was directed at a person, place or thing when aiming and when the user wished to activate it, mana was fed to it, and because the action was already pre-recorded, it would simply activate, no incantations required. This was only using mana to cast techniques through body movement, however, as he continued reading, he learned that one could channel their mana through weapons and other things, and apply it directly through contact using their hands, feet and body. It was a very interesting specialty, and right up Shichiro's alley. The generic catalyst was the product of techniques, and it seemed like it was definitely needed if he was going to be a hand-to-hand practitioner.

Having a bunch of supplies in a scroll instead of a bag seemed to be far more efficient of a way to carry around things, the scroll could also most likely be used to contain some of the weapons or medicinal supplies that he would carry along with him, so this was invaluable to learn. As he combed through the scrolls and books about mana and how to properly control it, it was getting late, and he had forgotten to eat, so he simply checked out some of the books as he usually did, said goodbye to the library attendant that knew him by first name now, and then went home to prepare for his fight. Making it back to the room he was renting out in the inn, Shichiro had gathered his equipment, putting them on and heading out towards the arena hosting his match. Arriving there, he was in his best condition seeing as he'd gotten a light workout as a warmup up to his fight. Entering an arena, it was against a battle-hardened solider of a woman. She looks pretty strong so Shichiro had to stay on guard. The gong had rung which signaled them to start battling. With both participants running directly each, it was only a matter of seconds before they started clashing with each other. After the exchange of blows, Shichiro found himself on top and was declared the victor. With that, he collected his prize money and left the area.

[Exit.]

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