Preparation (3)

“So, what are we going to be doing for weapon training?” I asked.

“Before I can train you I have to know exactly what you’re capable of,” Lizz said. “Ssso to do that, I’m going to create a faux opponent for you.

“To teach this boy to fight, I summon Magic Knight!”

As soon as Lizz finished saying that a light purple ball of light flew out of his wand. Around the ball, glowing armor materialized until it formed a full knight suit, complete with a sword and shield.

The knight then turned its empty helmet towards me.

“So, how do you cast spells like that?” I asked. “And more importantly could I learn to cast spells.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to get very far as a mage,” he said.

“All you gotta do is rhyme and point a stick, right?”

“Yes, that’ss all I have to do, but for a colorlessss like yoursself, it would be much harder.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Let me explain three thingsss to you:” Lizz said. “First: Ssaying a rhyme doesn’t let you do magic. The only reasson it works like that for me is becaussse of my flair, Magic Rhyme. I’m able to use any ssspell regardless of elemental restrictionsss-sso long as I can work itss name into a rhyme.

“Second: Even with that you need an ample amount control over the amount of mana you possessss if you wissh to do a spell without hurting yoursself.

“And Third: As a colorless, you cannot create elemental energy easily. It’d take at least monthss of work before you were able to even begin doing bassic elemental ssspellss.”

I’m a colorless? What does that mean?

“What do you mean by colorless?” I asked.

Lizz sighed annoyedly before saying, “I mean that you are not bound to any color or element, rendering you incapable of ssubconssscioussly creating the types of energy needed to do any spellss. And even if you learned how to create thosse energiess you’d never be able to do a sspell above intermediate level without having a flair that lets you, which you don’t.”

“What do you mean? Are there different levels of spells?”

“I don’t have time to explain the nuances of sspells to sssomeone who won’t be ussing them.”

Now that I think about it, I don’t have time to waste learning about spells if I can’t use them anyway. Why did I even ask?

“Now, attack the armor,” Lizz said.

“How should I do that?”

“How about you jusst try not to get hit,” he said in an annoyed tone before pointing a finger at me.

Suddenly the armor ran towards me, holding the blade up as it prepared to strike.

Is he gonna try and kill me too? What is up with these people?

I put my hand on the hilt and fixed my stature. The moment the armor came into my range I sprang forward, ripping the sword out of its sheath.

I spun around and landed facing the suit of armor from behind, sheathing my blade once more so that I could be ready to strike again in a moment’s notice, although this proved to be unnecessary precaution.

The suit of armor split in two along a line that cut diagonally across from its neck to its torso.

“…”

The heck?

I’m not even sure how I just did that. It was like a familiar feeling was guiding me along the way. This had to be what Canvas meant.

So, that means the weapon I used on earth was a katana, or more accurately, a shisu blade. But that wasn’t a thing last I checked. Then again, I wasn’t really into swords all that much so I’m not exactly an expert voice on the matter of sword types.

But that was cool!

“Ssso you’ve already mastered the Art of the Unsseen Ssslash,” Lizz said, although he seemed more annoyed than he did surprised. “You wanna tell me what you already know or do you jusst wanna wasste more time?”

“Actually, I’m not really sure what I know,” I said. “It’s just like a feeling that guided my body, I don’t really know how I did that…”

“What in Thloria are you talking about?”

“It’s hard to explain,” I said. “The best I can make of it is that at one point I did know how to use the shisu blade, but something happened and my memories got erased.

“That’s why I know how to use it without really knowing how to use it,” I said, before adding. “And that’s also why I’m always asking so many questions…”

So what I worded it to make him think that I lost all my memories? I’m just trying to explain why I don’t know anything about this world without saying I’m from a different one. Although, his annoyance seemed to only grow after I said that.

I get it. I really do. It’s no walk in the park for me either, having my memories erased and not being able to get them back until some pompous bitch lets me. It’s both annoying and a waste of time.

Did I just see a bar of soap out of the corner of my eye? I better just be imagining things…

“Alright… Seeing as I have officially given up and I’m not allowed to just get rid of you, how do you suppose we go about this ‘training’?” Lizz said, annoyance dripping from every word that came out of his mouth.

He’s not even doing that dumb thing with his S’s anymore… I feel kinda sad he has to deal with this honestly.

“I think the most time efficient way would be for you to give a quick explanation of each of the different shisu blade arts and test to see if I’m able to do them as we go along,” I said.

“Fine, we’ll do it that way,” Lizz agreed. “First we’ll go through the normal arts, and then we’ll see if you’ve learned how to do any of the elemental styles. If you know any, we’ll work on that, but if not we’ll teach you the fire style-”

“So you know how to do the fire style then?”

“Not perssonally,” Lizz said. I guess he’s less annoyed now. “But we can easily get a fire sshisu blade here in the castle, while the other elements would be a little harder to acquire.”

“So you need elemental blades to do a specific elemental art with a shisu blade?” I asked.

“More sspecifically, you need a sssteeltanium blade and a ssheath imbued with an elemental core to be able to constantly use a certain elemental sstyle. The difference in the sstyles iss just positioning and extra movement to besst utilize the element while channeling it in a way that wouldn’t bring any unnecessssary damage to yoursself.

“But I’ll have more time to explain that once we get to that point,” he said. “Sssince you already know the Unsseen Slassh, let’s sstart with the Sswift Counter.”

“Okay, I’m ready when you are.”

…

We spent quite a bit of time going over all the shisu blade arts, well not all of them, but still a lot.

First, we went over the normal ones. It turns out I only knew the first ten arts, the oldest arts possible. Not only that, but I couldn’t do a single elemental style, so like Lizz said, he taught me some of the fire style, although I was far from mastering it.

The arts I could do where as follows:

Shisu Art 1: Unseen Slash:
The simplest art to understand. It’s a slash so fast that your opponent can’t see it. It’s said that by the time you master it, you won’t be able to see the sword yourself anymore, you’ll just be able to tell where it is.

Shisu Art 2: Swift Counter:
Similar to Unseen Slash, but this one is for defense. It really is just the same thing, but you aim to counter what your opponent has attacked you with.

Shisu Art 3: Flying Razor:
For this one you need to already have some speed built up. After that, you take a spinning leap into the air, becoming like a sort of battle top while you do. The hardest part about this one is landing afterwards.

Shisu Art 4: Flurry Cutter:
This one is just an unrelenting assault. It’s a series of slashes made while rushing towards an opponent. Whatever you’re slashing along the way doesn’t matter, but you need to have an end goal in sight while doing this, or it won’t work.

Shisu Art 5: Skyward Strike:
You make a slash upwards while jumping, after the slash you’re usually left in the air still, which makes this art perfect for transitioning into the sixth art.

Shisu Art 6: Piercing Descent:
For this one, you need to meet two conditions. One, you must have your sword drawn, and Two, you must be falling. You point your sword downwards and put the weight of your body into the motion, making you rapidly increase speed. It’s said that by doing this, you can somehow negate all impact from a fall? That doesn’t really make sense to me, but if you do it from too high up there’s a chance that your sword will break from the impact.

Shisu Art 7: Fakeout Swing:
This one is kind of complicated and requires the most speed of all the art forms. First, you have to rush your opponent, but not at full speed. Then, you pull your blade as though you were going to attack with one of the other arts, but at the last second quickly change your footing and at full speed dash to the other side of your opponent and strike. This one is all about deception, and works best against opponents who aren’t fast and don’t use swords. This art is best used sparingly.

Shisu Art 8: Stabbing Rush:
Like Flurry Cutter, this is an unrelenting assault, but this one can only be used against a single opponent. It’s a series of stabs, which makes it the slowest of all the arts. You should never use this one against an opponent that’s around your speed or one that uses a shisu balde as it’s easily countered by the second art.

Shisu Art 9: Skewering Hold:
For this one, you draw out your blade and banette charge towards your opponent, pinning them to a surface. It only works if you pull it out suddenly while you’re near your opponent, or as an intimidation tactic against an opponent that is slower than yourself.

Shisu Art 10: Dance of Death:
The easiest art to learn and the most dangerous, but it’s a double edged sword. It’s really just combining the other nine arts into one continuous “dance”, but doing so leaves a massive toll on your body. As long as you know two or three of the other arts, you’ll be able to use this one.

Apparently, those were just the fundamentals and all the other arts and styles build off of them. So having those mastered would make it easier for me to learn additional arts and elemental styles.

While teaching me the fire style, Lizz conjured up a ring of fire. The reason he did this was because as long as there was enough of an element in your immediate environment, you’d be able to use elemental arts of that element.

The fire style arts I could manage where:

Fire Style Art 1: Hidden Flame:
The same as Unseen Slash, but with a fiery aspect. If you do it right, then the flames take effect after you strike your opponent, not during the initial slash.

Fire Style Art 4: Fiery Assault:
It’s like Flurry Cutter, but your blade is on fire the entire time, and gets hotter the longer you go on. It releases all the heat in the final slash.

Fire Style Art 5: Rising Sun:
It’s the same as Skyward Strike, but at the top of the swing you complete the vertical circle slash, connecting the fire to itself and causing it to burst outwards.

Fire Style Art 6: Falling Fire:
It’s the same as Piercing Decent, but it explodes into a fiery inferno around you upon landing. The size of the inferno depends on how much speed you had while falling.

Fire Style Art 9: Burning Skewer:
It’s the same as Skewering Hold, but the blade is burning hot and looks like it just came out of a blacksmith’s furnace. There’s no visible flame on this one, just heat.

Fire Style Art 10: Dance of Flames:
The same as the Dance of Death, but with fire style arts. Along with the usual toll it leaves on your body, if you do this for too long you risk getting burnt.

Also, while doing the tenth art, if you use arts from different styles then it just counts as the Dance of Death.

Anyway, this training took about the rest of the day to get that far. Me and Marion would be heading out tomorrow.

I was shown to a room, given a meal, and told to get some rest.

I debated sneaking around the castle at night to try and find out what was going on, but I didn’t have the energy after all that training so I decided against it. I ended up going to the library and looking for the book I was reading last time when Canvas interrupted me, but it wasn’t there.

I did notice that Marion didn’t put it back, but where’d she take it, and why even do something like that in the first place? What’s going on? This couldn’t possibly be because of Canvas, could it?