145 Trainin' sesh

After a relatively large meal of foraged vegetables, herbs, and stolen rations, the trio each left to sleep and prepare for the next day, where they'd again be training themselves to exhaustion. Ralf walks over and sits on a nearby log, taking the first watch as Michael and Tiffania enter the one they shared.

Only, Michael didn't fall asleep next to Tiffania as one might expect, instead, his extra training would begin. He flips open the now named Book of Heroes and pushes his mind into Rhasta's world/prison.

After his talk with Riki and his promotion in rank from Commoner to Hero, he'd found that time in the book wasn't just slowed down anyway. Indeed, when he pushed his soul into the Spirit's worlds, time stopped while he was inside.

This was a fantastic finding, and one Michael desperately needed to enhance his strength further. He couldn't avoid training in the real world as his body's muscles would atrophy and his muscle memory would slowly be lost. This is the main reason he hadn't been explicitly training with the Spirits in his book.

There was one negative to this however, he could only spend one hour in each Spirit's world. Meaning, between Rhasta, Slark, and Riki, he could only train for three hours before time resumes again... This time stop recharged after twenty-four hours though, so once a day before he slept, he'd been learning under his respective masters.

Of course, there was the problem of his mental exhaustion from a full day of almost constant training, so his first stop is usually Rhasta's world.

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*Thud*

Michael feet heavily hit the ground as he drops from a couple meters in the air, entering the Spirit's worlds was weird, and more often than not his entry would be at some random location... Sometimes he appears high in the sky, and once he even appeared with one of his legs buried up to his thigh... Still, he was slowly getting the hang of it

*Clack!*

"Ouch!" Michael yelps as he bends over and rubs the back of his head where he'd been hit by a rock Afterwards turning and sending a glare at Rhasta who had one hand extended in a throw all the while meditating atop a large boulder.

"You said you wanted to be trained young one! So stop slacking and begin!" he exclaims, the Serpent Wards around him flaring their hoods while baring their fangs at Michael as if to emphasize his point.

Michael lets out a sigh and nods, "Yes Master." he says, the difference of the words still sounding awkward to his ears and tongue despite how many times he'd said it. He walks over to a boulder sitting opposite Rhasta and stretches his back, limbs, and neck before sitting down in a meditative position, one that is almost identical to what Buddhists do in his old world.

This was the main reason Michael picked Rhasta's world first. The act of meditation wasn't physically stressful, and in fact helped alleviate the mental stress he'd built up through the day. Even if he eventually mastered Rhasta's teaching, he'd continue to meditate like this merely for the presence of mind and clarity it provided.

He wasn't just relaxing however, during this hour, once he was properly calm and relaxed, he'd spent all his time attempting to feel the spirits around him. Despite the weeks he'd already spent doing this however, he had yet to even sense the existence of a spirit, let alone 'feel' them. The only reason he hadn't given up and declared it a lost cause was because he could distinctly feel Rhasta's Serpent Wards.

This only worked because they were as physically manifested as a spirit could get. In Rhasta's words, where a regular spirit would be like the slight wind disturbed by the wings of a butterfly, his Serpent Wards were like a Lion's roar, loudly and proudly declaring its presence to the world.

He had little talent, he knew that. But even if this process took hundreds of years, Michael didn't think he'd find it to be annoying or a chore. With time stopped outside, he was fine meditating like this, and had no reason to even contemplate stopp-"Ouch!" he groans as another pebble strikes him between the brows.

"Less thinking, more feeling!" Rhasta loudly states, reminding why Michael had thought of stopping these lessons before... His master's propensity to be annoying and demanding despite his best efforts. Regardless, he understood why discipline was required, and continued to meditate until his next lesson.

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Michael appears inside the gold-filled room within Riki's world, instantly throwing himself to the side as a dagger flips through his previous position.

"Good reaction, thought you'd be dying for another two days until you learned your lesson." Riki chuckles as he slinks out of the darkness, looking as much like a demonic imp as possible without actually being one.

Michael just gives an exasperated frown in response as he rubs the side he'd landed on. "Do you have to do that? I've just been doing Rhasta's 'Peace and Tranquility' training for an hour, I need to warm up before we start knife fighting." he mutters his complaints, but is slightly annoyed to find Riki ignoring him and walking towards the window.

He turns and gives Michael a shit-eating grin, "Oh, are you done talking? I didn't hear a word, but I assume it was 'please continue teaching me Lord Master Riki of Shadows and Gold."

Michael palms his face as he gets up, shaking his head, "Yeah, whatever you say... Shall we start?" he asks, pulling the earlier thrown dagger out of the wall... Wait, it's made of wood? And it stuck into the stone wall anyway? The fuck?

Riki just laughs at his expression, "Let's see if you can keep up this time." he says as he throws down a Smoke Bomb and drops backwards out of the window, Michael only seeing his shadow do so as he tries to follow.

It was only then that Michael remembered that Riki's Smoke Bombs silenced anyone caught in them, preventing him from using Blink Strike or any other spell as he threw himself out of the window.

"Fuuuuuuck!" he shouts as he plummets, eventually falling out of the range of the Smoke Bomb just in time to see the cobbled street of White Spire rapidly approaching him, or was it the other way around?