14 - First Day, Asauchi
First of all, the wording sounded like this was her chance to make a choice that would significantly affect her future path and strength.
The choices looked simple as they were all enhancing her talent in one area each, but the challenging part was where she would want to be most talented in.
She didn't understand much about the four choices since she had no actual knowledge about soul reapers, so she appreciated the short explanation.
According to the explanation, she was to choose one among swordsmanship, fast movement, hand-to-hand combat and some sort of spells to be good at.
'Where do I want to be most talented in?' Rumi found herself asking.
In her opinion, fast movement and kido spells sounded interesting. But, she could probably make up for fast movement with her elemental reiatsu in the future as her reiatsu was a wind
elemental one. Of course, having better talent in fast movement could complement her reiatsu better as well but Rumi didn't think she needed to enhance her talent in that. As long as she didn't have poor talent in fast movement, she could probably make use of Sloth's efficiency to improve it to a satisfactory level.
On the other hand, there wasn't much explanation on what kind of spells Kido have in category. But, it was exactly because of that, Rumi thought it could be a wide range of spells with different functions. And the guess made her quite excited to have her talent enhanced on that area.
As for hand-to-hand combat, Rumi wasn't much of a fan when it comes to brawls and close combats, especially with bare hands like a savage so she didn't want to focus much on that.
But, as far as Rumi had noticed, every Soul reaper seemed to have a sword of their own and it seemed to be a big part of being a soul reaper. So, having talent in swordsmanship would inevitably be necessary.
'So far, I have Sloth's efficiency and Mind's Momentum, which should help me in combat situations. Maybe hand-to-hand combat and swordsmanship could be made up by them. So, I'm left with two other choices, fast movement and kido. Again, I have wind elemental reiryoku so I should somehow be able to use it to enhance my speed. By that logic, the one I might need help is in kido. It sounds like it is a lot more versatile too.' Rumi thought as versatility was what she needed right now.
Because she had yet to enter the academy, she didn't have enough information about the four options. And although having to choose with the limited information she had wasn't ideal, she had no choice in this case.
'I'll choose Option 1, kido talent.' Rumi made a choice.
[Understood. Your talent in Kidō has been enhanced. Your potential in Kidō has been upgraded from Kidō expert to Kidō Master.]
'So, it did really help..' Rumi thought. But, it seemed that her natural talent in Kido wasn't too bad in the first place, seeing how she naturally had potential to become an expert in it.
That also made her a bit curious on how her other talents would be, but System didn't answer any of her questions regarding her talents in other three categories.
It was a shame, really.
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After the exam was over, Rumi found that there were only a handful of students in Class One. Renji also got into Class One so she would be in the same class with him. Meanwhile, Rukia looked pretty upset that she was separated to Class Two alone. Rumi could imagine the disappointment she felt but there was nothing she could do so she tried to not dwell on it too much.
Since all the students who passed were given one more day to pack up and say goodbye to the families before they moved into the dormitories, Rumi decided to go a little sightseeing and taking another long nap to store some extra reiryoku. It was still a long way until 10,000 but still it was progress.
When the next day came, Rumi woke up from her 12 hour sleep and as she got up from bed, she realized that she was so terribly late and she wouldn't have enough time to find where Rukia or Renji was.
After running for a few minutes, she arrived at the entrance ceremony more than a few minutes late but fortunately, no one really paid attention to her sneaking in. And soon, the entrance ceremony and a long speech was over much to Rumi's relief.
Then, it was time for another speech at their own classes and once again, Rumi and Renji sat in Class One with a bored face as their instructor proudly explained how they were supposed to be geniuses of this academy.
"I'm your instructor, Ounabara Gengoro." The instructor introduced himself, "This freshman Class One took the top scores in the entrance exam. In other words, you are the elite class. Rather than merely serve your future squads, train hard to excel in your various pursuits!"
Rumi glanced around the classroom to check her new classmates out and saw a girl with pig tails. She had black hair and brown eyes and a rather small figure. She looked oddly determined so Rumi instantly noticed her.
Then, there was also another guy with emo style blonde hair and depressed eyes . Again, he looked like he was full of dreams so Rumi noticed him.
After the speech was over, they had a few theoretical classes and Rumi learned that there were four basic fighting techniques for Soul Reapers called Zankensoki. Zan referred to Zanjutsu, swordsmanship, Ken referred to hand-to-hand combat techniques, So referred to moving techniques and lastly, Ki referred to Kido. It was basically the four options she had to choose yesterday, Rumi realized.
So, she paid a bit more attention to the official explanation and also found out that in order to graduate from the academy, one only needed to reach practioner rank in all four techniques.
After the theories and more formalities, it was finally time to receive their Asauchi, which was a nameless Zanpakuto given to Soul Reapers in training upon entering the academy.
"Next."
Rumi stepped forward as her turn quickly came and accepted a Japanese style katana that looked exactly the same as the other Asauchis except hers had a light blue hilt.
As she received the Asauchi into her hands, Rumi felt that something shook inside her, it was a subtle feeling but she felt that something changed. It was as if a piece of her, or something inside her had physically went into the sword. She couldn't prove it except for that faint feeling but her hands tightened around the Asauchi hilt.
Rumi tried to pay attention to the instructions on how to slowly imprint their essence into their Asauchi and slowly mold it into their own Zanpakuto, and learning the name of the Zanpakuto processes. But, the keyword here was "tried", and that meant Rumi only heard what she thought was interesting. She even fell asleep for the rest of the class when she had enough of listening to boring stuff.
Fortunately, getting an Asauchi and a lecture on Asauchi was the last task of the day, so Rumi went back to her dormitories quickly. Apparently, she was supposed to share a room with the motivated girl with brown pig tails hair.
"Hi, I'm Hinamori Momo. I think I have seen you in clase one." She introduced herself.
Rumi nodded with a smile, "Fujiwara Rumi. I saw you in class too."
"That's amazing. I mean it's really nice to share a room with a classmate." Momo said.
"Right," Rumi hummed.
Momo smiled, "Is it true that you're also from Rukongai? I've heard a lot of students saying there was a girl from Rukongai with amazing reiatsu and I think you kinda fit the criteria.."
"Oh, people're talking about me?" Rumi made a surprised face, "I'm a bit surprised but yeah, I'm from 78th district."
"No way," Momo was actually taken aback to hear where exactly Rumi was from. "That's like really far away, right?"
"Definitely." Rumi nodded in reply, "Took me and my friends a little over a month just to get here."
"Your friends ?"
"Yeah, I think you've met one of my friends, he's in the same class with us. The one with red spiky hair and a dumb face." Rumi said.
"I think..I have the image?" Momo replied, a bit uncertain.
"Good, the other one's a girl in class two. Kinda a shorty." Rumi said with a laugh, "I'll introduce you two later!"
"Thanks," Momo said.
"No problem." Rumi said before plopping down onto her bed. As her Asauchi was still attached to her wrist, Rumi winced at the discomfort.
"Forgot about this Asauchi here." She said with a scartch on her head. "Are we really supposed to carry it at all times?"
"Well, the instructions said we have to spend a lot of time with our Asauchis to get to know them." Momo said.
"I kinda get it. But still..." Rumi rubbed her Asauchi, and tapped it with her fingers multiple times, playing with it.
"Are you playing with your Asauchi?" Momo asked.
"Yeah, just felt like this little guy would like it." Rumi shrugged.
"But, Asauchis don't have souls yet. Only after being imbued with your soul essence for a long time, it will start to grow into a Zanpakuto with spirit." Momo said.
Rumi shrugged, "If they don't have spirits yet, they can't get mad then. Either way, I'm having fun."
Momo didn't exactly know how to refute on that.