Chương 22: Time and Growth

After the land beast attack and its aftermath were dealt with, the village began to rebuild. Destroyed houses were reconstructed, injured people were taken care of, and those who had died were given a death ceremony. This ceremony consisted of the islanders tying strings of pearl, flowers, and other objects around the wrists of those who had fallen, before the flying boats carried them out to sea and placed them into the waves, returning them to the Ocean Mother. Slowly, life returned to normalcy in the village.

The injured hunters and villagers recovered. The children completed their adulthood ceremonies before taking on their first apprenticeships, or beginning their lives as adults of the village. During that time, the three of us focused on making runes as quickly as we could. The sudden attack of the land beast, as well as the deaths of the children and adults who were caught in its path, was a grim reminder to the three of us that this world wasn't safe either.

If we wanted to survive, we needed to be prepared for any problems that sprang up. We still spent time talking about our old worlds and deepening our friendship, but there was a tension in the air that hadn't existed before. The three of us were driven to improve in a way we hadn't been when we thought we were safe. Apart from just increasing our rune count, about a month after the village finished its reconstruction, I decided it was time that I learned how to fight properly.

Whenever we returned to the Market, we would be knee-deep in skeletons trying to kill us, and I still vividly remembered the robed skeleton that had blown my arm off with magic. I might not be able to fight against magic yet, but I could certainly learn how to wield a few weapons before we returned. Our bodies were mature enough to at least start learning the basics now, and I didn't want to waste any more time.

Since we could die anytime in this world, we could also return to the Market at any time, and I wanted to be as prepared as possible. After some thinking, I asked Sallia to teach me what she remembered about swordsmanship. After all, she was the only one of the three of us who had ever been formally trained in wielding weapons, and in the Market she had shown herself to quick on her feet and at least competent in wielding swords. The moment I asked, her eyes lit up.

I finally realized another reason Sallia was so frustrated in this life. Given how much she struggled with things that Felix and I found easy, such as focusing for long periods of time, as well as the fact that she had Grade 3 absorption essence, and the fact that she was forced to sponge off of my resources early on, she probably felt useless. I didn't think this was something that could be solved with just a conversation or a speech, so I made a mental note to find reasons to ask her for help more often.

Once she could see Felix and I benefitting from her being here, her self esteem might improve. Her training as a noblewoman had given her the ability to mask her emotions and navigate social situations, but the unique stress of becoming a child again and learning how to function again in a completely different environment had started to crack her noble mask. I wanted her to be more confident about herself and her own self worth instead of just asking her for help more often, but that would take time to build up.

My question about swordsmanship led to our first three person training session. Once Felix learned of my request, he also eagerly jumped in. The next day, we found a few smaller fish bones that were about the right length and weight for training swords.

"So, the first thing to keep in mind is that there are many different kinds of blade one can wield," said Sallia.

"I personally chose three bones that are similar to a one-handed sword, because those are the swords I've used most often. A one handed sword or spear paired with a shield is what most soldiers carry into battle, because it gives you an easy way to respond to most physical attacks. The way you fight will change drastically based on what kind of sword you have available, and whether you're holding a shield or not. But I'm going to teach you one-handed swordsmanship first, because that's what I'm good at."

"If shields are the most common thing to have with a one handed sword, are we learning to fight with or without them?" I asked.

"I can't figure out how to get good practice shields here," said Sallia.

"So for now, we'll train without them. I'll try to find a shield knockoff in the future so that you can practice with shields as well - perhaps I can find something made of wood or bone? Something I'll deal with on my end later," Sallia said.

"Don't worry about it. When we return to the Market we might not be able to find shields anyway. When we fought the skeletons, we didn't find any shields, and we're probably going to be improvising how we fight on the fly whenever we return because we couldn't equip the skeleton's weapons to our item slots, so we won't have them when we return. Having some idea how to fight and how to improvise is what matters the most right now," said Felix, giving Sallia a reassuring smile.

Sallia brightened up again at his words. She cleared her throat, before she picked up her bone again.

"The first thing you need to do is learn to walk and stand properly," said Sallia.

"Movement starts from your feet and legs, and if your movements are messed up there, you're going to have a very hard time exerting force with your sword. Start by placing one of your feet ahead of the other, and tilt your body just a little bit. Like this…" Sallia said, stepping towards me and grabbing my shoulders before carefully readjusting my position.

One of my shoulders was now very lightly angled towards Sallia, and the other was tilted away from her, giving Sallia a more narrow target if she wanted to attack me. It also kept my shoulders loose, allowing me to move my shoulders, arms, and sword around relatively easily if I needed to.

"Then, after that, for basic techniques you want to hold your sword in one of three positions. First, it can be pointing towards your enemy, in which case you're looking to stab them," said Sallia, adjusting my hand and elbow to its proper position, before she moved over to Felix and began adjusting his posture to match mine.

"This is the proper position to make a thrust from. It's not terribly defensive, but it can be the most effective way to get a decent level of accuracy with a sword thrust. You'll want to catch opponents in less well defended parts of their body if they're wearing armor, which usually means the neck and the joints. A smith needs to make those parts with more flexibility, or the wearer won't be able to move, but that also makes those parts easier to cut or stab through.

Stabbing those spots will be hard for you, but it's the easiest way to punch through armor against an undefended foe," said Sallia.

"This is the basic posture you want to make thrusts from. Try it - thrust the fish bone as if it were a sword." We both did so, and I found the movement surprisingly natural and easy to use.

"Not bad. Now, for now I'll introduce the two guarding positions. The first one is the high guard, and to use it, you should start by positioning your sword a bit above your head. This is mostly used to hack downwards with the sword, although it can also be used to parry if need be, although it's a bit awkward. Finally, you should learn the low guard, which is very similar to the high guard, but instead of holding the sword above your head, you want to keep the blade near your waist.

This is the main defensive position I've learned, and you'll want to use it to parry blades, as well as make lower slashing attacks. These three positions are the fundamental basics of what I've learned, and while managing them and swapping between them will feel unnatural at first, as you get more used to it you'll start to find it easier and easier to use these techniques, not only on the practice field, but in a real fight.

Now that I've demonstrated what they look like, I want you to try moving to a high guard and giving me a downward hack…" Sallia continued teaching us how to hold our swords and how to stand and move for most of the afternoon. We spent most of the day drilling stances and basic postures repeatedly, although Sallia occasionally made us practice actually hacking or thrusting our blades from certain positions, as well as defending ourselves with occasional parries when she tried to attack us.

She would announce that she would attack us in advance, giving us forewarning, but as the training session wore on she started to give us less and less notification before making us defend ourselves. Most of the time was spent on learning postures, footwork, and how to move our bodies around, but by the end of the session I could already feel that I was a bit more comfortable with maneuvering a sword around.

When I had grabbed a blade in the Market, the object had felt completely foreign to me, and I had been totally unable to figure out how to use it. While Sallia's current training was focused on one-handed swordsmanship, the ways I was learning to move my muscles and body were things I would be able to take with me to the Market. And if we actually found a few one-handed swords, I was sure I would be able to trade some blows with it as long as I practiced enough.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. It was a long and grueling training session, but at the end of it, Sallia looked both tired and more positive than she had looked in years. And I also felt satisfied with what I had learned over the day. Felix laid on the ground, panting with exhaustion, but he also held a certain level of assurance when he moved that he hadn't had before. It was our first of many training sessions over the months. * Time passed.

After about two months of training, Sallia got a rather interesting notification that she shared with us, although it took Felix and I another five or six months to get a notification of our own. Skill: Gain [Basic] Mastery of a one-handed swordsmanship technique.

Achievement +25 You have gained [Basic] Grade Mastery of a combat-related Skill for the first time Achievement +200 Since you have trained a swordsmanship technique to [Basic] Grade for the first time, upon your death you will have the option to purchase [Basic One-handed Swordsmanship] as an ability, for the cost of 250 Achievement. This Ability has the following effects: Keywords: N/A (This Ability does not have any keywords).

Anytime you train with one-handed Swords, your body will adjust itself and adapt itself to your previous knowledge of swordsmanship much more quickly and effectively. When reaching [Basic] Mastery of any one-handed Swordsmanship technique for the first time in each body, your body's Physical Attributes will permanently increase by 5. (Note - these stats are attached to your BODY. Not your soul. They will thus be lost whenever you die or swap bodies.) Glut Penalty: 2 Note: This Ability can also be purchased in the Market from an Ability Cube as well, as it is an Ability with no keywords. However, it will be more expensive than purchasing it after earning it yourself during a Reincarnation. You will need to purchase any Abilities you wish to keep within three days of returning to the Market. Please keep this in mind when considering purchases, and plan your purchases in advance.

The three of us found the notification quite interesting, since it was the first time we had found a way to purchase an Ability. The only Abilities we had seen so far were the two that started out on our Status Screens, one of which was the taxes ability that deleted itself on the spot, and the other of which let us control what gender we reincarnated as. However, after fiddling with the popup, all of us concluded that we couldn't interact with the ability until after our deaths.

This dampened our enthusiasm about our new discovery for now, but it still made us wonder what other Abilities we might come across during our time in this world. It also raised a few more questions about what glut penalty actually was. I had seen the term a few times while in the Market, but this was the first time any of us had a hint about what actually increased the Glut Penalty stat.

For now, I decided to assume glut penalty was some sort of extra cost tacked on to most abilities, although none of us would know whether my assumption was correct until we returned to the Market. During the time we trained our swordsmanship, we also created more runes. Felix worked his way up to forming his third rune, consistently staying ahead of Sallia and I due to his higher Absorption Essence. Sallia and I lagged one rune behind him, but we both managed to form our second runes, at least.

Power: Form a second rune. Achievement +200 Just like the first rune, the second rune also tacked another 20 onto all of my physical Stats. At this point, as a child who was almost six, I could probably wrestle a normal teenager pretty easily. If I burned mana to temporarily increase my physical abilities, I might even be able to match a grown man. The fact that my body hadn't fully matured yet, and that I would be stronger once I was grown up, made the entire situation feel ridiculous to me.

What would my body be like once I was fully grown up and had 3 or more runes? I knew that past the third physical rune, my body wouldn't get stronger anymore, and I would start to get special abilities instead. However, just my physical abilities alone were starting to feel well above what a normal human could achieve. With 3 runes, an adult body, and mana to burn, I would probably be able to pass off my physical body as a kind of superpower.

I doubted it would be enough to rip apart steel with my bare hands or match any feats of that kind, but I would be far enough beyond even professional athletes that I would be in a supernatural realm of my own. Of course, as we formed more runes, I was also increasingly aware of the 'maintenance cost' of each rune.

Even with only two runes, the amount of absorption essence I had to help me form a third rune in the future was noticeably lower, and more and more of the absorption essence in my body was reserved for just keeping my runes stable. I was sure how many runes I would be able to make before I couldn't make any more, but I was absolutely sure that I would run into a wall sooner or later. Sallia's situation was much worse, since she was only at Grade 3 Absorption Essence.

Since there was no way to increase the amount of absorption essence in our bodies, Sallia's maintenance costs were already eating up a huge chunk of the mana reserves in her body, even with only two of them formed. She was sure she would be able to form a third rune, but it was questionable whether she would even be able to form a fourth rune and get a special ability. Luckily, it seemed that Sallia was slowly learning to handle setbacks.

One of the things that helped her was probably the increase in her Willpower, honed from watching the storms over the year of training swordsmanship. Sallia's Willpower increased to 79, during the storm season that year, and although it seemed reluctant to gain one last point and raise Sallia's Willpower a grade, she seemed optimistic about finally having fewer concentration issues within another year. I felt that this was more than just her being happy about her stats improving, though.

Sallia had now spent five years in this world, not as a noblewoman yearning to be a knight and avoid bad marriages, but as a regular girl who struggled with everyday things. After falling from her position of power and command, Sallia had lost some confidence. However, due to our swordsmanship lessons and Felix and my attention to her mental health, she was growing as a result of her experiences here. While she wasn't quite emotionally secure, she was much closer than before.

Her growing confidence in herself, despite the setbacks she had encountered early on in this world, was gratifying for me to see as the months passed. Felix and I also gradually improved our Willpower by watching the storms that year, boosting Felix's Willpower to 119 while mine grew to 133. It wasn't much growth on my end, but I was just happy to improve. Finally, the storm season for that year ended. It was time for our second renewal festival, when Felix and I would turn six years old.

We were officially recognized as having taken our first step to adulthood by the village, and the chief congratulated us along with the other eleven kids who were turning six this year, before giving us a rehash of last year's speech. I didn't pay very much attention to it, because I was buzzing with anticipation as I focused on something much more important to me. It was finally time for us to hunt our first great fish.