Stamina

As Mitsuna slept, the dojo of the sword saint was in chaos.

The person in question was staying in their room, not answering to any knock on their door.

They were training, swinging their sword and trying to grow as fast as possible.

The workers and regulars at the dojo were confused since they didn't know what had happened to make the sword saint so reclusive suddenly.

Although she did say she does not take disciples nor apprentices, she does still help out the regulars and point out their mistakes.

But suddenly after a quick spar with a little girl, she shut herself in her room and practised and trained her sword style and Techniques with no rest after the girl had left.

...

It was now nighttime. Mitsuna woke up and exited the town.

'Guess I'll train a bit since I have a spar scheduled for tomorrow.'

Mitsuna walked to the plains and took her sword.

Using her Eclipsed Sakura Techniques one after the other, she poured her everything into her attacks to test the limit of her Stamina.

After 20 minutes of continuous Techniques, Mitsuna fell to the ground while panting.

'They really do take a lot out of you. No wonder that teacher made us train our stamina before teaching us Techniques.'

After a minute of rest, she felt she could go again.

So that is what she did.

Although her stats do increase her stamina, it seemed that Techniques don't take a predetermined amount of it but a percentage of her maximum stamina.

That is the conclusion she came to after falling to the ground covered in sweat for the third time in a row.

'I think I've made a bit of progress. Maybe a minute longer than last time?'

After some time, she sat up.

'I think this is inefficient.'

Walking into the forest, Mitsuna came across a few boulders that had wild animals resting around them.

Walking to one, she laid down next to it, punched her hand through it and held it above her.

Even though it seemed like a regular bolder she could brake without a sweat, Mitsuna knew that it was actually filled with heavy metal.

'This is where I found all that black platinum for that one request.'

As minutes passed, Mitsuna was pushed to the brink as after every second the bolder seemed to get heavier.

Till now she has refused to use any stamina type skills since counting on them wouldn't be of much help if she wanted to grow.

Even most of her passive skills were turned off.

After a few more minutes, Mitsuna could not endure it anymore and placed the bolder down next to her.

To make it clear, the bolder was about the size of her room at the inn.

'God. This is some shounen type training.'

Breathing in deeply, Mitsuna thought for a moment.

'What if... I breathe injunction to using my Techniques?'

Staying on that thought, Mitsuna waited until she regained her stamina.

After a while, she stood up, took her blade and started using Techniques regularly to see if her stamina had increased.

She didn't keep track but she felt like she held that bolder for nearly half an hour. She stopped holding it because she could feel her bones starting to ache.

After the bolder exercise, she could use Techniques at full scale for about 32 minutes straight.

"Alright."

Mitsuna said in between pants as she felt like her stamina had topped off again.

Going with the idea she came up with, she breathed the same way she did when she had discovered her breathing skill but this time she breathed in tandem with using her Techniques instead of just breathing like normal.

With this strategy, she could keep going for about 50 minutes.

Falling to the ground, she could feel her lungs burning.

'That's... Weird.'

She thought in between breaths.

'I guess... not breathing when... I'm not attacking... is a pretty good... strategy?'

After a while, her stamina was full again.

Yawning deeply, she thought.

'I don't really know much about human... I mean 'my' biology. I don't really understand what breathing and training does to my body. I doubt there's a book named 'Physiology of Mitsuna' out there either.'

Stopping her stamina training, for now, Mitsuna thought of other ways to improve.

'I do only use one Style of Techniques when I can use at most 6 or so. If I remember correctly, they were Eclipse, Lunar, Solar, Twilight, Dawn and Hydro.'

Thinking about how she found out about her Techniques, Mitsuna remembered the light shock of colours when she had removed her hand from the crystal.

Thinking back on it, the colours were vivid in her mind.

'I guess that is how most people know what techniques they can use? Just remembering the colours or something and going from there.'

Not knowing how to start gaining Techniques, Mitsuna just put it off for now and walked back to her inn. She slept until noon.