chapter 9

Three months and one week had passed since I had unleashed my first flying sword slash. Remembering that moment still brings a smile to my face, even to this day.

And even though it was pretty exhilarating, I decided not to do it again, unless necessary, of course, as it had left me unconscious for what had to be at least three days judging by the state of the rotten fruits that I hand found in my backpack.

I had woken up with a killer headache and a feeling of weakness all over my body. Not long after that, my field of view was covered with Wilson's large face, and he was looking at me with a strange mixture of reproach for not being careful and stupidly endangering my life, respect for achieving the feat of cutting everything near that ancient tree, and wonder at my stupidity for sleeping in the middle of the forest.

After asking him what had happened and why I was waking up in his place instead of near the ancient tree where I stupidly knocked myself out, I had spent several minutes trying to decode his grunts and weird hand gestures.

The gist of the story is that he had felt something when I had unleashed my mantra-powered flying sword slash. So he came to investigate only to end up fighting several predators who were trying to devour my unconscious body and then flee while carrying me back to his place.

Listening to him and realizing how close I came to death, I felt no small amount of cold sweat rolling down both of my foreheads and back as I continuously ate the fruits that Wilson had generously offered me without stopping.

It took an entire stack of fruits, almost as tall as myself, for me to finally be able to move and think properly. And so, feeling somewhat full and with some energy to spare, I went back to my camp, but not without thanking Wilson and bidding him farewell first.

It took me three full days of both food and rest with only a minimum amount of training to finally feel like I was in top shape again. And once that happened, I started my brutal daily training sessions once again while focusing on trying to learn rankyaku since I, fortunately, didn't forget the feeling of the flying sword slash that I had used on the ancient tree.

I started by wriggling the muscles on my ankle and trying to make them take the shape of a blade, which again proved easier said and done as I had only controlled them by hardening and relaxing them so far doing nothing complicated like trying to make them take a particular shape or keep them in said shape.

However, my persistence and stubbornness once again came through as I could finally make the muscles on my ankle take the shape of a rough and dull blade of a sword, with no natural sharpness to them after two weeks and a day of training. That, however, was more than enough for me, as I didn't even think it was possible to make muscles truly sharp by shaping them like a blade.

I spent another six days trying to replicate the feeling of the flying slash through my ankle. Finally, I had some success by being able to unleash a crescent-shaped, white-coloured flying slash that was only a meter long and only travelled a maximum distance of a meter and a half before dissipating, which was the limit for me now, as I had to have stronger leg muscles to perform better and stronger rankyaku flying slashes.

I then spent the next month working on just that and nothing else. I first started, doing squats, lunges..., etc. while carrying all manner of large rocks on my back until I could make the flying slash travel a maximum distance of two meters, anything more than that would require to perform a named attack which would deplete much more energy than its worth.

And then again spent another week of fighting to gain experience with the technique and truly make it my own.

Of course, the next step for me was, to try and learn the shave(soru) technique.

Which seemed quite simple to train. But very difficult to master. As it and moonwalk(geppo) were the only two of the marine's six powers that had been clearly explained in the anime series.

For a person to perform a soru dash, they would need to kick the ground a total number of 10 times, and they have to do that in the same it takes an average person to blink his eyes, which is quite simple in theory but very hard to apply in real life.

Even though I could theoretically do it, thanks to all the leg training and exercises that I had been doing in the past month, it was challenging for me to perform, primarily because of the time frame that the soru dash had to be performed within.

It's not like I could not kick the ground ten times during the time it would take someone to blink his eyes. HOWEVER, what I failed to do was figure out the time frame that I had to perform such a feat in. I mean, how the fuck am I supposed to know the exact time it would take someone to blink their eyes.

I had first tried to kick the ground as fast as I can only for me to crash face-first into a tree and break my friggen nose. I then tried to slow down the speed of my kicks, only move at a slightly faster rate than I usually do with the added disadvantage of not being able to decide the distance I'll move and not being able to change directions, and that's when to my utter disappointment I discovered that to perform a proper soru dash I had to kick the ground precisely ten times in an exact and unknown frame of time without even a fraction of a second of delay or haste.

And so I spent the following weeks experimenting and perfecting the timing all while tripping and crashing into all kinds of objects, rocks, trees, bushes, and shrubbery, you name it, I crashed into it, not to mention tripping and crashing into the ground face first and stuffing my mouth with an ungodly amount of sand and dirt until I could finally master the timing and by god, it was worth it as I can't even describe the rush and exhilaration of speeding through the forest and jumping from tree to tree while moving at such a high speed.

Once I had my fun, I, of course, once again took a week of fighting and terrorizing the poor inhabitants of this deserted island to absorb the soru technique into my fighting style.