Triiffic-Soul: Can I Be In Control?-Chapter 83 – Apprenticeship
Chapter 83 – Apprenticeship
“You can do it, Ethan.”
“Yes Sir!”
“Woof!”
“I believe you can do it as well, Cobalt.”
“Woo Roo!”
[They are doing well.] (Eva)
[They are doing okay.] (Syrus)
Less than a week had passed since Syrus had ordered her sword, so it still hadn’t been crafted yet. Syrus didn’t mind waiting as long as she knew the results were to come.
For today, it was another training session with Ethan and a tagalong Cobalt.
They had made substantial progress in their training, well mostly Ethan as he was the one aiming to become stronger. Cobalt made some improvements as well, for one, Cobalt was bigger! Not much bigger; he still fit in Anlesa and Ethan’s lap, but the small animal had grown a couple of centimetres.
With those centimetres, it did gain quite a bit of strength, Syrus chalked it up to it being a mythic creature. This made Eva curious about why, but there was no way to learn further about that. Even Luna only had minimal knowledge of blessed creatures.
Training Ethan on the outskirts of the town wasn’t the only plan they had for the day. It was only the first step, though, the second step also involved him.
The training at the moment was simply an evaluation of his progress. Syrus didn’t want to push him to his limits at the moment; she just wanted to see how good his form and execution were.
While Syrus was watching Ethan, she also had her mind split on another task, crafting her sheath. Syrus first carved a simple sword of wood to act as the base, so she could sew the leather to the correct size. She got her cutting knife and began to cut the leather into shapes and multiple pieces that she was going to glue together later. Syrus asked Eva to create glue later using Barbook weed/Northroot grass, she thought Eva might be able to make it stronger with her skills in mixing.
[You’re quite good at this.] (Luna)
[Not really, just picked up the skills over time.] (Syrus)
[Did you craft with leather a lot?] (Eva)
[Hmm, no, but I enjoyed making and modifying my sheaths in my spare time.] Syrus had a small internal chuckle. [Though in most combat situations I didn’t bring any of my full cover sheaths, they were mostly for travel and in-city use.]
“Hah, hah.” Ethan puffed, as he got a little tired. It was early in the morning, so he got tired faster. Apparently, he had stayed up a little late the night before.
“Good, now step back,” Syrus ordered, and Ethan jumped back and sat down to rest. Cobalt rushed over to him and started licking his face.
Syrus quickly drew three lines in the ground and examined the wooden target she made for Ethan to shoot at. The three lines were spaced out, each slightly further than the other moving away from the target. They weren’t perfectly aligned either, the first was aligned with the target, the second was a few paces to the left, while the third and last one was off to the right of the target.
[Everything is ready.] Syrus turned around and said, “Now I want you to run from the first line to the second, once you reach the second, I want you to fire an arrow, then move to the third to fire another arrow; finally, I want you to switch to your axe and run towards the target. During this whole process, I don’t want you to stop using your attribute. I’m not asking you to be perfectly efficient with it; I just want to see that you are able to maintain it for the whole process. Besides that one rule, you can do whatever you want.”
“Understood!” Ethan jumped up and ran into position and stood at the first line. Cobalt followed him, its little paws bounced across the ground.
Ethan now paused at the line, waiting for Syrus to give a signal. “Don’t worry, this isn’t timed, go whenever you feel like.”
“Right!”
“Woof!”
A breeze began to build up around Ethan as he started to focus. Wind was famous for its movement enhancement abilities. It did have combat options, nearly everything did, but Wind’s movement functions overshadowed its other features.
Unlike Light, where years of research built a very strong healing magic around it. Wind by itself was suited for supporting the movement of oneself or projectiles to the point where multiple people have thought up and learned the skill without proper training. It was still a skill that a Wind user had to learn and not something given by nature by just having the attribute, but the barrier for entry was low.
Was it as good as an attribute like [Acceleration] when it came to movement speed? No, but that was okay. Technically, Wind didn’t have any movement-enhancing properties, it was simply the easiest to use to create an external effect to enhance movement.
When someone used their magic, there wasn’t a pushback on the body. A strain? Sometimes, it depended on what the individual was doing with their mana. Certain complicated spells were known to harm the body if used incorrectly, but simply using an elemental attribute spell didn’t move the user back or anything.
Syrus wasn’t pushed back when she fired a beam of fire from her hand, but if she made it explode in front of her, then that would push her back. This was kind of the logic when it came to using Wind to enhance movement. The user would use their Wind to push their body forward in the direction they wanted to go.
Theoretically, it was possible to do this with attributes other than Wind, but most had their major problems with this approach. Most couldn’t apply enough consistent force while doing it, another chunk of attributes it was simply too mana taxing to even try the concept, others the process was too difficult, and another major issue was that it could actually hurt you–trying to push yourself with an explosion of fire was understandably not a great idea.
“Let’s go!” Ethan yelled as he jumped off the line.
“Woo Woof!” Cobalt dashed after him.
Wind was constantly being summoned and pushed against his body. He had trained enough to not stumble with the extra force being applied to him.
[Wow, he is doing a good job.] (Eva)
He sprinted from the first line and moments before he touched the second line he grabbed the bow off his back, and lodged an arrow.
[He is doing an okay job.] (Syrus)
He tapped the second line and launched the arrow at the target. He tried to apply Wind to the arrow to help adjust its flight. That was successful, but from the beginning, his shot was off and he missed the target.
Visibly frustrated, he didn't stop moving.
The skill expression in this technique was quite large. On the base level, the user would summon some wind to push them. After that, there were a lot of ways to develop it. Using Wind to only push certain parts of the body, whether that be certain points on the back or with the motion of the legs; or recycling wind by allowing it to flow off the body and back around, saving mana.
At the third line, he paused and fired the arrow from a standing position. The storm of wind was still being created behind him and he started to sweat from the mana usage. He wasn’t still for long as he fired the arrow and managed to hit the target.
He fumbled the bow back onto his back and, just before reaching the target, managed to pull the axe off the latch on his side and hack it into the target.
“Huff, huff.” He stopped by the target, using it as support.
Syrus walked up to the boy. “Good job.”
“Thank you!” He nodded. “What could I have done better?”
“I’ll let you rest on it for a moment; most things don’t have one solution, but we will talk about it later.”
“Okay…” Ethan turned around, “Anything else to do next?”
“There will be something, I figure for the actual training today I will take you on a quest with me.”
“Really?” His eyes sparkled.
“Yes, unless you are too tired, of course.”
Ethan violently shook his head and spat on the ground. “Of course not!” Cobalt barked in agreement, “I’ll be ready in a moment.” He stood up straight, ready to move.
Syrus raised her hand and flicked him on the head. “We will leave in two hours. Rest is important, so make sure you get it.”
“Understood…” Ethan fell back to the ground as Cobalt jumped to lick his face.
