26 Balance it Out

Another week went by. Grond stayed true to his word, and my food got better. Not only was there meat, there were vegetables as well as the porridge. Moreover, Nick's food supply allowed my body to recover quite a bit. One night he visited me, and announced that my training would start. Before we did, he quizzed me from the Encyclopaedia Herbis once again. The questions were harder that time, and I only managed to answer two out of five he asked.

"The more you read it, the more you'll memorize. This will come with time. Anyway, tonight, we will focus on a certain exercise. This will help you towards improving your Art of Stealth", Nick said. "Art of Stealth? I thought you'd teach me the hidden weapons first", "There's no need right now. Your aim isn't bad, since you practiced yourself. On the other hand, you have no experience in the Art of Stealth. Hence we will begin from that", he explained.

"Now, a question first. How would you hide yourself against an enemy?", he asked. I gave it some thoughts, then said, "Wouldn't that depend on the location? In the forest, I'd probably hide on top of a tree, or behind the bushes". "What if your enemy had constant view of you?", Nick added a condition.

"Well, if my enemy could see me all the time, how could I hide. He'd see my actions, therefore hiding would be pointless", I replied. "Not necessarily. You see, in the Art of Stealth shadows are your friend. With enough proficiency, you can escape an enemy that sees you. There's many factors, sure, but my intention was to check what your answer would be", he explained, then demonstrated what he meant.

Nick disappeared from my eyes. I couldn't see him, or even tell whether he was still inside the house. "That's why shadows are your friend", his voice came from the corner of my house. "How did you do it?", I asked excited. "This isn't anything great. I'm not that proficient in the Art of Stealth either. Though my knowledge should be enough to get you started", he replied while showing himself once again.

A question popped to my mind, "Say, what if it's broad daylight? There's no shadows, let's say you are on the plains. How would you hide yourself then?". Nick smiled, "Then you are screwed. Well, at least with my level of skills. I'm not sure of this, but those who mastered the art were apparently able to do such things. The records my master had mentioned something called, 'Avoid the light'. Before you ask, no, my master didn't perfect that art either. I mentioned this to you already, arts shouldn't be taught, they should be discovered".

"As far as I'm aware, each mastery is different. The reason is simple, a master was always an individual. Since there are all sorts of people in the world, their masteries are different too. That's the same with all arts. Hence, even you might be able to become a master one day. All you'll learn from me are basic concepts", he added.

Nick then walked to the middle of the room, and placed some wooden poles of various height around. "You will practice with this", he said as he finished setting up the poles. "Wait... How? No, where did you get these from?", I asked completely lost. "... Right, I forgot where you came from. How about this? I'll tell you, once you master this exercise", Nick replied. "Okay, what am I supposed to do then?", "That's simple, walk on top of these. None of the poles can fall, and of course you can't fall either", he explained.

I looked at him for a second, "Nah, you're pulling my leg. So what's the real practice?". Nick wasn't joking though. He jumped onto one of the poles, and without a struggle, he moved from one to another. The poles didn't even move during his demonstration. "Simple, right?", he said as if taunting me. I wasn't convinced and walked to one of the poles, '... They're not stuck to the floor with anything'.

"Now that you know it's possible, practice. The more you practice, the more you learn", Nick said. The shortest pole was about half a metre tall. Though the tallest was as tall as me. In other words, this wasn't simply skipping from one to another, but it required me to jump up and down onto them. There was nothing left for me to do, but try it out myself. I jumped onto the first pole, and almost immediately lost my balance.

Nick caught me before I fell, "Today, I'll be catching you as to make as little noise as possible. From tomorrow, we'll leave the house for a more quiet area". I nodded and tried a few more times. About half an hour later, I could sort of stay on the first pole, but moving onto the next one was something else entirely. "These poles aren't that big. There's enough space for my whole foot on the top, but that's about it... Maybe you have some sort of hints for me?", I asked. "Are you giving up that easily? You are supposed to figure this out yourself. If you can't, how can you move on and solve future issues?", Nick asked instead.

He had a point. I could only practice until perfection. Whether it'd take me a thousand tries or more, it would be something I accomplished by myself. We trained like this for another half an hour, where Nick told me to stop. "You got the general idea what you need to do next time. Tomorrow, I'll grab you and we'll go somewhere quiet", he said, hid the poles and left.

Though the exercise was really hard, Nick wouldn't ask me to practice that for the heck of it. I gave it some more thought before sleep, and came to one conclusion. That exercise required a perfect control of ones balance. That was the purpose of the exercise, to master my balance.