Training combat ability (3)

"I see.", he said, while nodding his head.

"It isn't always easy to see weak spots, in fact, it is often extremely hard since every living being, tries to hide their weak spots. But with experience it will be easier to see them and make use of them.", she lectured him.

"Besides that, there are also other methods, that can help such as your spiritual sense. By using it you can get a better feeling of how a foe is structured. Here it is important to remember that your spiritual sense won't penetrate through the exterior if your sense isn't much stronger."

"So it is practically just like having another way of inspecting my enemy?", he asked.

"More or less. The stronger your spiritual sense, the more details you can see. In that, it is vastly superior to your eyes since it isn't blocked by something in its way."

Ivan nodded in understanding. He had used his spiritual sense before while fighting and exploring. But the way he had used it was exactly the opposite. He had spread his sense out to catch any enemy coming into its range.

Now Celine had proposed to him to use it in a focused form to scan his enemy for weaknesses. He could clearly understand the benefits that would bring but he wasn't sure that he wanted to give up the warning system for it.

So did he have to try to combine the two of them?

As if reading his mind, Celine continued, "It seems that you already used your spiritual sense, right?"

"Yes. I use it to keep an eye on my surroundings."

"Great. Then you should already have an understanding of how to use it.", she nodded in satisfaction.

Ivan took that opportunity to ask his question, "Then if I focus on the one enemy, wouldn't I lose my ability to have my surroundings in my view?"

"I don't propose for you to completely focus on the enemy. You are correct in that the tradeoff wouldn't be worth it. But nobody said that it is impossible to do both things at the same time.

Think of it as using a certain amount of your spiritual sense to detailed observe your enemy, while using the rest to sweep your surroundings."

Her solution was something he had thought about it as well but there was something about it, which he was skeptical of.

"But wouldn't that reduce the efficiency of both parts? I won't get as well of a look on the enemy and my awareness of my surrounding would decay as well."

"Sure, but it should be worth it. You don't need to have that large of an area covered by your spiritual sense. Some who have a weaker spiritual sense even focus it into a thin beam and use that to regularly sweep their surroundings, instead of keeping a focus on it at all times."

She continued to describe other ways of using the spiritual sense to, in the end, archive the same goal. Her descriptions allowed him to get a much better understanding of how to utilize his spiritual sense. It seemed that it was much more flexible than he had thought.

She also mentioned that it would later in his journey of cultivation, take a much more important role than its current one.

"For now, just focus your sense on your foe. I will take care that no other enemy appears, so you don't have to worry about that for now. Later you can then train your usage of spiritual sense.", Celine finally finished the impromptu lesson.

"How much mana do you have left?"

"It should be enough for two more blades.", he answered her question. It might be more but two was the most conservative number he could give. He didn't want to say three and then have to realize that it wasn't enough after all. He still wasn't all that good in evaluating how much mana he had left and how fast it regenerated.

"Ok, then let's continue on."

Ivan had to fight two more mushrooms. This time he carefully observed them before attacking and then tried to focus on the weak points he could find. Celine praised him for doing so but also stated that he still had a long way to go.

Ivan now didn't have enough mana for another flame blade. Unsurprisingly he hadn't managed to reduce the mana cost of the blade. Attacking weak spots didn't help in that regard either, since he was unable to adjust the flame blade accordingly.

"Ok, I'm done. I don't have any mana left.", he announced.

"Then let's go to the next step. Now fight with only your sword.", Celine ordered him.

This didn't come as a surprise to him. Since he had planned to train his combat ability it was clear that he had to train using his main weapon.

Only using his sword meant that he had to completely change his fighting style. After all, a sword had a much shorter range, than the flame blades, which he could just throw out. Against the immobile plants, he had to attack, he had been able to ignore their attacks since they couldn't reach them and he could just kill them from a distance. Now with his shorter-range, he would have to enter their attack range.

"Remember that the goal isn't to practice your dodging and movements.", Celine reminded him, "So try to kill the enemy as fast as possible, with the least amount of moves you can manage."

She was right. In the end, the goal of combat was to defeat the enemy as fast as possible. Everything else wasn't worth to be called combat. Maybe it could be called training, but more often than not it was just incompetence. And not the good one, where someone was trying but the one where one didn't even try to do better.

But don't think that recklessness was the way to go. While killing the enemy fast, was the goal, it was also important to stay as safe as possible. This made calculated risks the core principle of every combat strategy.

Together with the ability to see weaknesses and make use of them, it made up the core of combat ability. See weaknesses, find a way to exploit them, and finally judge the risk and make the decision. This row of actions would be performed constantly during combat.

The steps could become instinctive with enough training, thus shortening the time needed to go through them.

And Ivan was currently only at the beginning stages. It was hard for him to see weaknesses and even harder to exploit them in the best way. Not to mention correctly judging the risks. That was a skill, that could never be mastered perfectly, or it wouldn't be called taking a risk. There were always instances where one's understanding wasn't perfect or one had overlooked something of importance.

But for now, Ivan's mission was simple. Use his sword to slay his enemies as fast as possible without getting taken out.

Soon he found the next plant monster to slay. It was once again a flower, which looked just like the ones before.

This time he didn't stand outside its range but instead moved towards it. He didn't dash straight at it, because he was aware of its ability to shoot out acid. He really didn't want to be hit by that. From his former experiences, he knew that getting killed by acid hurt. The feeling of the flesh melting wasn't fun.

He hurriedly redirected his thoughts, fully putting his focus onto the plant. He didn't want to miss the moment it decided to spat out the acid. Speedily making his way towards the flower he soon saw the characteristical movements of the flowers' stem and flower.

He hurriedly dodged sideways, evading the bubble of acid, shooting out of the flower.

He then used all his speed to rush towards the flower and swung his sword towards the weak part of the stem.

Since the flower was one of the weakest plant monsters in existence, the sword cleanly went through the stem, with Ivan barely feeling any resistance.

The flower head separated from the stem and liquids splashed into the air. On his sword, there was some liquid as well. It was the acid, the flower had prepared for its next attack. Unlike with the flame blade which closed the liquid ducts with its heat, the sword left them open.

But what was truly a problem was that his sword was a cheap iron sword. He couldn't afford anything better back when he bought it and he hadn't needed to buy a better one. Now the acid started to destroy the surface of the sword.

"Damn.", he cursed when he saw that happening.

Besides him Celine laughed happily, "Hahaha. Your really using such a sword? Why haven't you bought a better one? It's not as if you are lacking money right?"