Training

“What do you think we should do?” - Alva asked me

“I think knowing how his ability works now, I should be fine taking him on, I’d prefer if I had some extra time to really hone my ability to utilize his weakness the most.”

“All right then, I’ll trust you this time, I’ll practice the basics over again, if anything happens in the mine, call my name and I’ll try to come as fast as possible.”

Both of us knew what we had to do. Alva left the room and, I assume, went to train somewhere else. I was still sitting at the table, just staring onto a candle that was on it. But before long the door opened, and Sasagi walked through it:

“You still thinking about how to fight Xinx?” - She asked with some concern

“A bit yeah” - I really didn’t know how to respond, I was not even sure what I was thinking myself

“You shouldn’t worry about it for now, there really isn’t much counterplay to his abilities, only being stronger can help. I can guess My brother and Alva are going to cook up some training routine for themselves, so what do you say we do one for ourselves too?”

“You know what, I think that might be for the best” - As I said it I stood up and got my things ready, if I could manage to hone the weapons I create, Xinx’s Crystal Armour shouldn’t be a problem

And so our training began

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I left Saya with all her thoughts alone, and I really felt bad about it, but If I don’t grow stronger, In the fight against Xinx I’ll be useless, and I can't let that happen again. When Saya was asleep I talked to Yami about sparring with me. I bet on the fact that we’re going to help them. I met up with Yami in a cave that was attached to the house we were currently in.

“ Yo Alva you kept me waiting”

“Haha yeah my bad, now let’s get to some real stuff” - Yami said as he started spinning his sword around - “ You know the basics of Flow, right?”

“Yeah, honestly proud of how well I can perform some of them”

“I see I see, well then, I don’t think you have experience of fighting someone with abilities right?” - As soon as Yami said that, his sword extended by maybe 2 or 3 times its original length, it was also incredibly red. “ Here I go”

He used an overhead swing, which I dodged to the right, though I wasn’t expecting how fast he’d recover from the attack, and before I knew it the red blade was moving in my direction. I was able to pull out my sword, or dagger as called by many people, and blocked the attack, after which he retracted the blade

“ “Moltred Blade, allows me to coat any bladed weapon I have with a scorching hot texture that can extend quite easily”

“Isn’t that pretty similar to Saya’s?”

“In theory yes, but when you put into practice, which do you think will be more effective, making something from scratch or just reinforcing something that already exists?”

What he said made sense, it seemed like you needed to use much more Flow to create something from scratch

“ All right, let’s get back to it” - the sword became bright red again and soon after it travelled towards me again

I wasn’t sure what to focus on during the training,my parries and doges were honestly not that bad, I think just general fighting experience is what I needed, so I just decided to let the fight go normally. After getting used to the swings from the sword, closing the distance was rather easy, when I approached Yami, contrary to what I was expecting he came closer and our blades clashed.

“Forgot to mention it, but the shorter Moltred is, the more effective it is”

As soon as he said that I noticed the difference in power. it was almost like someone else was pushing the blade with him, the heat was also too uncomfortable as I was starting to sweat massively. I wasn’t expecting that much extra from Yami, so he knocked me over., after which he lent me his hand to grab onto, which I took.

“Come on, we only have like a day left, better make use of it”

“Obviously, next time I’ll be the one extending my hand”

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I walked with Sasagi to some sort of abandoned warehouse, which is where we were supposed to train in. The room was slightly lit up, though it was visible enough to be able to see everything comfortably. She told me to wait, while she walked to the other end of the room:

“All right, I think this should do the job”

When she said it I noticed what she was planning on doing, thick metal slabs, and as she slaps them she says enthusiastically - “I think these should do the trick”

I sighed but I understood the point of it, honing my weapons was the best way to beat Xinx.

With a silent call, the glaive appeared in my hand, the answer to my question was still not there, I also summoned my gun though I wasn’t sure about using it. I approached the giant plates, and stood in front of them. I took a deep breath, and took a swing at the plates but was met with a lackluster response of my blade bouncing back.

“I’ll leave the basics up to you, let me know once you get the idea of what could work, i’ll help you fighting wise then”

“Thanks” - I was grateful, although people might think her not doing anything after saying she’ll help me is a rather bad thing, but her just providing the materials and sparring with me later would be enough.

I thought of what I could do, going all over the basic techniques of flow and then it dawned on me, the most simple way. enhancing your body with Ishiki, which reinforces the body by making it more durable and strong. All I have to do is to somehow manage to make the blades sharper, more durable. It was simpler than it seemed, having control over your own body is fine, but thinking of something not even real as a part of you is definitely more complicated. I don’t think I was even able to muster any Flow into the weapon. What else was there to change? I could maybe try focusing more on summoning a better weapon, with more Ishiki poured into it, the quality should increase right? But it wasn’t that much different, or at least I wasn’t able to perform such a skill.

Couple of hours have passed, and while my blade was finally able to scratch the metal, it wasn’t nearly good enough to be useful. Same with my gun technique, the bullets penetrated the metal deeper and deeper, but not satisfactory enough. Soon enough Sasagi came back into the room and asked me how I was doing:

“Doing good?”

“Haha, I think you can tell” - you could see my posture wasn’t exactly the happiest one, I was a little bit slouched over.

“How about we train for now normally, maybe that will help you”

There really wasn’t much progress in my training, and I was bummed out by it, so I just agreed to it. Sasagi grabbed a sword from one of the piles of metal in the corners of the room and we decided to just go for it.

Her movements were quick, but honestly I think i was the better fighter, i didn’t have much problem matching her speed and power, though she only used the basics techniques of Flow without any special abilities, which was quite interesting to me:

“You haven't developed an ability yet?” - I asked with genuine curiosity

“Keeping it a secret for now! Also I think it’s better for practice since Xinx won’t be pulling off what I’m doing”

“I guess you are right”

Our little chit chat was accompanied by our blades clashing, the silent, barely lit room made it seem like it was some sort of destined fight between rivals, but it was just a friendly spar. As the time went on, I found out that I wasn’t as tired as I expected to be. I think the previous practice with improving the quality of my blades actually improved my stamina instead.

Soon after, my breathing got calmer and calmer, and before I even noticed it felt like air was flowing through me effortlessly, which was surprising to me, but not as surprising as my blade slashing through Sasagi’s Sword like through butter. Both of us looked at each other in pure shock and then hugged each other intensely.

“Did you see that?” - I screamed enthusiastically

“I told you!”

This little spar was the last of my training that I was able to do before the raid on Xinx. I spent the rest of the night trying to recreate that feeling, and the day after that I tried applying it to my gun technique too. I didn’t try to overstrain myself, so I left the training room earlier in order to be in full power against Xinx.

It was finally the day

Then, the day finally came

“All right, are you ready?” - Yami said to us

“Haven’t been this ready in my life” - Alva responded joyfully, it seemed like he made a lot of progress too

I just smirked in order to confirm my readiness, and so the “Mine Takeover” plan was put in action.