5 Acquiring Arts

I awoke before the first traces of light began to brighten the horizon and slipped out of bed. My feet sank into soft moss carpets as I swung my legs off the bed and stood. As I slid on a loose robe woven from soft white fabric, I grabbed my wooden sword on the blade just below the hilt and set off toward the throne room. Along the way, I passed guards in the major hallways of the palace. Every single one straightened noticeably as I gave them nods when passing. 

The first rays of sunlight peeked over the horizon and began to illuminate the palace as I stepped through into the large throne room. Despite the low light levels, the carved ivory floors and pillars glowed brightly, casting plenty of light on the throne specifically. I couldn't help but admire the throne, which was carved in the likeness of the spirit tree from a solid pillar of wood running from floor to ceiling.

In a large alcove carved into the center of the tree, my father sat. His blade was held sheathed in one hand, resting against the ground. Even in this casual position, he seemed to exude grace and power. Undoubtedly, the pose had been carefully cultivated over hundreds of years to strike the right ratio of emotions in any who gazed upon it. I approached until a quiver of the hand acknowledged my presence, and I stopped, executing a low bow, and waited for my father to speak.

He rose for the chair and stalked closer until he was right before me, drawing his brilliant blade as he did so, "The first thing to understand is the right mentality to wield a blade." he began.

"I do not share the beliefs that a blade is one with the wielder or it has its own intent that must be understood. A blade is not a partner or mysterious thing. It is simply a tool and should be treated with respect, but do not fixate on it. However, when picking up any weapon, you must be prepared to kill," He said, pacing around me, gesturing for me to pull out my sword as he went on.

"A blade is simply used to pierce and cut. There is nothing overly complex about the weapon, and therewithin lies its beauty. While some forms of swordplay rely on intricate movements and flashy attacks, mine does not. To perfect the blade is to perfect those two simple actions, cutting and piercing in the most direct way possible."

 As he spoke, Celebron demonstrated by executing a thrust that seemed superhuman in its strength and speed. I was barely even able to register the movement, as there was no windup or delay. Then, he executed a few slashes in a similar manner. It was clear that his style relied on very few tricks or gimmicks. He preferred pure mastery of the blade and aggressive movements. There was some defense, but most of the stances he demonstrated were for repositioning to attack more efficiently. 

"To give your enemy time to think in battle is to let them come up with a plan to counter and kill you," he said, turning to me and beginning to guide me more directly. He went slowly so that I could easily mirror his movements.

I smiled at this simplistic style because it would be easier to copy quickly with my skill, Prodigy. 

. . .

As the weeks ticked by, my prediction turned out to be correct, and I improved rapidly in swordplay, astounding my father, "Son, you have achieved what took me decades in mere weeks."

My seemingly boundless talent encouraged my father to start pushing me more and more, which was fine with me. With Prodigy, I was able to adapt and quickly overcome any challenges he threw my way. In fact, he allowed me to abuse the Exponential Growth sub-skill to the absolute maximum. My increasing sword skills gave me the foundation to start pursuing arts such as Battlewill, which in and of itself was a foundation for a family of even more arts. 

Battlewill is all about harnessing the innate aura present within all living beings. By harnessing this energy, one can perform feats such as body and weapon strengthening, presence concealment, creating aura constructs, and flight. This was exactly what I planned to do, deciding to focus on presence concealment and strengthening myself and my weapons first. My first priority was enhancing my already fast-progressing swordsmanship. Then, I would focus on other arts, magic, and finally, skills since they would take the longest.

After understanding my body's aura flow and generation, my first step was to learn to manipulate it, which turned out to be much easier than it had been with mana. The aura generated by my body almost seemed to be begging to be used by me, making the development of the arts easier than I initially anticipated. With the method down, I started by sitting at night with my sword on my lap, trying to extend my aura to cover the sword to enhance its power and durability. Eventually, little by little, my aura eventually stretched out to envelop the blade.

This was a major step toward another fundamental technique under the Battlewill family, Modelwill. This technique allows the user to create constructs out of their aura. They can also create bubbles that can encase objects, magic, or the effects of skills within. So, it was a nice thing to have for my development in general, but for now, I used it to cover my sword and enhance it. With Modelwill, it only took me a few days to gain the art Aura Sword.

Then, it only took a while longer to gain the defensive Modelwill art Aura Sheild, which constructs a barrier in front of the user to defend from all kinds of physical and magical attacks. With a better grasp of aura and arts, I pictured my aura forming a wall around me in the form of a half sphere in front of me. This only took me about a week from beginning to end, but with these two basic arts learned, I had simple but reliable arts to lean on already. However, there were two more pressing arts I wanted to learn before moving on to magic.

Those were Formhide and Aura Slash. While technically listed as a Mystic-Art, which results from combining magic and aura to create something better, I didn't have that expertise yet. Hence, the Aura Slash I developed was just a basic Battlewill art. I used my Aura Sword as a base and filled it with more aura, then projected a crescent blade of power with every swing, consuming a small amount of aura from the total that was covering my blade. It wasn't too difficult to learn, but still took me a few days. 

. . .

All of my progress thus far had been fairly staggering, leading me to get a bit cocky when approaching Formhide, expecting it to take only a few days. However, here I sat multiple months later, only having just scratched the surface of erasing my presence and form from sight. I could only sigh at the amount of time it had taken me to progress this far. Still, with Formhide under my belt, I finally turned my sights on magic, which I expected to take around a year or two to acquire everything I wanted.

Yet, I began to wonder if I should abandon some of the magic I had been considering in favor of giving myself more time to develop skills later. I eventually decided to pursue some quality-of-life magic and one or two elemental magics to try and turn into Extra Skills, which would allow me to manipulate those elements with much more ease than when they are pure magic since Skills, no matter the rank, are able to be used inherently by the user. 

Since I had cut a bit of what I wanted to explore with magic, I started by pursuing the spell that I wanted the most, that being the Spatial Magic, Spatial Storge, which essentially works like an inventory that I can use whenever I want. Plus, it even had the potential to be turned into an extra skill the the future, though I was sure it would take a lot of effort to do so. For now, I just planned to have it as a spell. 

I figured that this plan was risky since it would undoubtedly take me a long time to master even the most basic spell of Spatial Magic, which turned out to be correct. I toiled away at the spell for the better part of a year. While working on my sword training during the day, I worked on Sptial Storage at night. Every night, I would conjure the progressively more complete magic circle above my hand by gathering the magical energy in my body, yet the spell circle would shatter, and I would fail. Until Finally I made the final leap in gaining the spell.

Even with Prodigy, it seemed that mastering spells from particularly tricky elements still took me quite a bit of time. However, that meant when I moved on to Life Magic for the most basic quality-of-life spell, Clean Wash, which completely cleans my body, clothes, and equipment, it only took me about half a day's work. Fire magic was similarly easy to attain, and I got the most basic spell, Fire, which conjures a simple flame, on the first try. Moving on to the more advanced fire magics didn't prove to be much of a challenge either. 

But after two years of work and training, I decided it was time to start working on skills for the last three years.

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MC's Tensura Arts and Skills below (It may look like a lot right off the bat, but this is mostly set up and pretty basic abilities)

. . . . .

~ Arts:

- Battlewill: Aura Slash, Formhide, Modelwill

+ Modelwill: Aura Sword, Aura Shield

- Magic: Space, Life, Fire

+ Spatial Magic: Spatial Storage

+ Life Magic: Clean Wash

+ Fire Magic: Flame, Torch, Fireball, Fire Lance, Fire Wall

~ Common Skills:

~ Extra Skills:

~ Unique Skills:

* Prodigy 

- Exponential Growth

- Enhanced Acquisition

- Skill Tree

- Chant Annulment

~ Ultimate Skills:

. . . . .