After waking up and gathering the few things I was going to need—which was mainly a change of clothes for after training, since yesterday the ones I was wearing were almost ruined—I headed to the training grounds a little early.
When I arrived, Hakurou was already there, just like the day before.
“Good morning, master,” I greeted him.
“Good morning, sir.
Are you ready for today’s training?” he asked me respectfully.
“Of course.
Today I’ll keep practicing the same thing as yesterday, right?” I asked after answering his question.
“That’s right.
Come, let me see how you execute the vertical strikes,” he told me as he handed me the same katana I used yesterday.
Not wanting to give the impression that I wasn’t taking it seriously, I took a deep breath and concentrated as hard as I could for the ten minutes I spent swinging the katana without stopping.
“Enough, you may stop,” my master ordered me.
“So, how was it?”
“You still have much room for improvement, but you have undoubtedly made progress since yesterday.
Today, we will review the correct way to execute vertical strikes again and begin practicing horizontal ones,” the old swordsman informed me.
“As you wish, master,” I confirmed.
After that, I spent from what I guessed was 8:30 a.m.
until 2:00 p.m.
repeating the movements over and over.
Just like yesterday, “Speculator” would analyze all of my movements and Hakurou’s.
While eating some meat that, if I wasn’t mistaken, came from an animal called a Cattledeer, I reflected on my training today.
For some reason, horizontal strikes were significantly harder for me than vertical ones.
I guess it’s because this bodybuilder ape physique isn’t very well suited for that kind of movement, I thought with a sigh.
I couldn’t help but add internally: I’m looking forward to evolving as soon as possible.
I hope to at least regain as many human features as possible.
Having rested for about an hour, I returned to the training grounds and prepared to start my daily magic practice.
Let me see what the Extra Skill “Molecular Manipulation” allows me to do, I thought.
The first thing I did was create some ice spears in front of me.
I instantly noticed that the speed at which I could make them appear had increased.
Next, I moved the spears away from myself to test how far I could maintain control over them.
After these and other similar tests with more elements, I arrived at a rather pleasant conclusion.
It seems that “Molecular Manipulation” allows me to form elements faster, more precisely, and control them over greater distances, alongside a slightly reduced magicule cost. Find the original chapter at g.com.
As “Great Sage” once explained to Rimuru, this skill also allows control over the trajectories of molecules in the air to manipulate and utilize various elements through managing ambient magicules, as well as generating heat from the resulting friction.
Overall, a very useful skill.
Since practically all of my offensive power consists of elemental magic and manipulation, this is a great gain.
Setting elements aside—since yesterday I decided today would be the day—I began thinking about what movement technique I wanted and could learn.
Without having to overthink it, I concluded that something simple and short-range would be the best for now.
Something like “Instant Movement,” which is a type of aura-based art, would suffice.
But how to learn it?
Well, as it happens, this type of movement technique or skill is very common across various works and different type of media.
There’s Shunpo, Sonido, and Hirenkyaku from Bleach, Flash from League of Legends, Soru from One Piece, and many others.
Even if the methods to use them differ, the concept remains the same.
With so many reference sources, using “Speculator’s” capabilities would be much easier, and I could learn the technique far faster.
It could even help me assimilate “Instant Movement” and “Battlewill” later on, using my own skill as a reference.
Out of personal preference, I think I’ll try to combine Shunpo, Hirenkyaku, and Sonido.
It might sound a bit ambitious, but if I actually manage to pull it off, I’m sure the result will be an incredible technique.
As far as I know, Shunpo isn’t teleportation or magic; it’s high physical speed boosted by that world’s native energy.
The user concentrates internal spiritual energy into the soles of their feet and, upon taking a step, releases it all at once against the surface they’re touching, propelling them forward like a rocket.
The efficiency of a Shunpo is measured strictly by the number of steps required to cover a distance.
Being a technique that depends on muscle strength and agility, it fatigues the body.
Even if here we dont have Bleach energy system, I should be able to replicate the effect with magicules.
As for Sonido, it works by “sliding” the body through space.
The user utilizes their spiritual pressure to force surrounding particles out of the way, completely eliminating air resistance and friction.
Its biggest tactical advantage is that the moment the user moves, their energy signature completely disappears from the radar, making it impossible to predict where they are moving through energy tracking.
The sound itself is a physical side effect that occurs because the technique violently distorts and compresses sound waves and the surrounding space at the point of origin.
This one is indeed a bit more troublesome to learn, but thanks to the small distortion around me that I cause with my Unique Skill “Anomaly,” I should be able to manage it.
Finally, Hirenkyaku.
To use this technique, the user doesn’t use their own energy, but rather absorbs energy from their surroundings.
You gather ambient particles under your feet to create a highly condensed platform or flow.
Instead of taking explosive steps, the user “surfs” or glides over this flow. Find the original chapter at g.com.
The biggest advantage of this technique is that by using surrounding energy instead of one’s own, it is the most efficient and least physically exhausting movement method.
Furthermore, it allows them to hover in the air naturally and effortlessly.
The plan to properly combine all three would be as follows: First, I would use the initial explosive step of Shunpo while the spatial distortion of Sonido is active, and after that initial burst, I would glide on the platform-like structure created by Hirenkyaku.
That way, I should be able to get the best of all three versions.
With all this information in mind, none of them seem beyond my learning capabilities, but Sonido and Hirenkyaku are clearly more complicated, so I’ll start with Shunpo.
Although, knowing how to use mana rotation, the part about absorbing ambient energy for Hirenkyaku is mostly already taken care of.
The first thing I did was check how hard it was for me to concentrate magicules into the soles of my feet.
Since it was something I had never done before, I had no clue, so the first few hours were a complete disaster.
In the end, I spent the rest of the training session improving the speed and precision with which I concentrated my magicules in that area.
With everything mapped out, tomorrow I’ll get straight to work on my Shunpo.
I hope I can learn it before Gabiru arrives.
With a daily training routine where I pushed myself constantly from sunrise to sunset, five more days flew by in an instant, making it a total of seven days since I started training with Hakurou.
Even over these five days, my sword training was mostly repeating movements and working on body posture.
I must say I was quite happy with the results.
In my master’s words, my strikes and posture were already fairly solid; all that was left was to start incorporating proper technique into actual combat.
As for Shunpo, I think I can say I’ve learned it in a way.
After setting my magic training completely aside to focus entirely on it, I was finally able to achieve something acceptable.
The first and second days were completely dedicated to learning how to effectively concentrate magicules into the soles of my feet.
On the third day, I worked on the physical mechanics of how the technique should be executed, letting my body get used to it.
On the fourth day, I finally started working on the technique itself, combining magicule concentration with physical movement.
I wasn’t even “releasing” the magicules against the ground to propel myself yet—I was just gathering them in my soles; even so, performing both actions simultaneously and coordinating them proved very difficult, and I didn’t manage to do it reasonably well until that night.
Finally, on the fifth and last day, I started with a small release of magicules from the soles of my feet.
The result was a sort of straight-line speed boost of about fifty percent, but not a true Shunpo.
My biggest issue was that I couldn’t execute all the steps properly at the exact right moment, which made the technique’s performance rather poor.
With my current level of control, using it in combat is out of the question for now; nothing good would come from that.
Let’s rest for today and wait for Gabiru and his men to finally arrive tomorrow.
The battle with the orcs might be a good opportunity to analyze a few things that could prove useful.
You might think that detailed explanations of the techniques aren’t really necessary, but I wanted to include them to clarify the learning process the MC will undergo.