Author's Reincarnation in a Fantasy Setting

Chapter 218 A Tale Of A Thousand Years Ago [15]

I woke up the next day, today was when my training would start. I went to the pond and washed my face and hands. The weakness in my body had mostly gone away, and I was feeling a lot better.

When I came back Reshi was there with a bowl of stew in his hands, he passed it over to me and I ate it quietly. After I was done, he got up and led me to the klauth room where the skeleton was kept.

As we took steps forward, the nervousness inside me grew. This was the first time I was going to do this type of training, of course, I would be a little on the edge. We entered the klauth room and stood at a distance from the skeleton.

"From today onward, this would be the place where you will train," he said, referring to the surrounding area.

After that began my lesson. He started off by telling me what swordsmanship is, and how it works. That was the first time I heard the word 'sword arts'. He showed me all the different stances and the situation where I would use them. He showed me all the various ways in which I could attack an enemy or defend against their attack.

He began with the basics and then slowly dived into the complexity of things. For an hour or two, I did nothing but listen to him. I listened with all the concentration I had and let not a single piece of information slip away.

Then it seemed like the verbal parts were done, and I guess verbal lessons were probably meant to first give me insights and introduce me to what I was going to learn.

He told me to stand up and then led me to a corner of the room where a lot of uneven rocks were scattered. Finally, he stood before a big rocky boulder that was dirty gray and looked rigid.

There was a sword leaning against the boulder, a pure white sword. Taking the sword in his hands, he stood in front of me.

"What is this made of?" I asked, confused at the bright white color of the sword.

"Bones," he said. "I'd craved it out of the bones of the klauth. You can't handle the Requiem sword right now, but you need a sword to continue with your training, that's why I made this," he tossed it in my direction and I hurriedly held it with both my hands.

It was not a perfect sword, and it was clearly visible that it had been carved out of something else, as the edges and slides were rough and uneven. Still, it was better than anything I could make, and I didn't doubt its sharpness.

"In order for us to get down to your real training," he mentioned. "You will first have to cut this boulder. Do that, and we will move to the next step. But let me say this, you won't learn anything else until you cut this boulder."

The wildness of his statement left me speechless for a while. I gathered my composure and cleared my mind.

"I don't think that is possible," I said.

His brows furrowed, and a line formed on his face. "I wouldn't be telling you to do this if it had been impossible. I am telling you to do it because it can be done. Do you understand?"

There was no other option, the tone of his voice that sounded like a command made me do nothing but nod in agreement.

"Take a swing," he said. He came behind me and assisted me in adjusting the sword at an actual angle and not just swinging it randomly. I was not facing the boulder, go I guessed this was meant to be a practice swing.

Thus, I held the sword with both my hands, lifted it up, and then brought it down in a straight line. I glanced at him from the corner of my eye.

"Good. This is how you will do it," he commented, and then took the sword from my hands and walked to my front. "Repeat the swing until you can no longer stand, repeat it until you pass out, and if you pass out, repeat it again after waking up. That is how you will be able to cut the rock."

Again, I was left speechless. He told me to swing, but now there was no sword in my hands.

"Without a sword?" I asked to confirm if I'd heard him wrong.

"Without a sword," he repeated.

I would have protested, but by now I knew that arguing was never an option. So I did as he said. With nothing but thin air in my hands, I made the gesture as if I was holding a sword and repeated the swing I'd done before. Reshi watched me for a while and then left. But I didn't flinch.

I swung and swung and swung until my hands began to hurt, but I still swung. I swung until I was out of breath and heavily gasping for air, I still swung, I swung it till I was drenched in sweat, but I swung anyway. I swung until I passed out from exhaustion, but I woke up and swung again. I would wake up feeling as if I didn't have limbs, but I swung and moved my hands anyway.

This continued for three months, and during those days I would do nothing but swing my hands holding thin air. All this time, Reshi didn't teach me anything else, not even a single lesson.

I would wake up, eat the stew he made, and start swinging until I would find myself waking up the next morning again.

Finally, after three months of nonstop training that pushed me to the limits of madness, one-day Reshi came to me with the bone sword in my hands.

"Give it a try now," he said, and handed me the sword.

I took it from him. It felt weird holding an actual sword after such a long time, all these days I have been holding nothing but air. I gripped my fingers on its hilt and then stood to face the boulder.

I took a good look at it, at the angle from which I would attack, the line of the path the sword would follow, everything. Then I closed my eyes as I took a deep breath, exhaling, and I opened my eyes again.

Clenching the hilt of the sword, I stepped forward, kicked the ground, and launched myself in the air. I raised the sword high as I was pulled down toward the earth again, then when the boulder was within range, I swung again.

Just like I had been doing for the past three months, I swung the sword down hard. It felt no different, not like I was hitting a solid rock, but like I was swinging my hands in free air.

Then I landed on the ground, and when I lifted my head to see the result, I can't say I wasn't surprised. That big boulder was split apart into two parts, and the cut in the middle was clean and straight.

I looked at Reshi with utter surprise in my eyes, and he passed me a smile that said, 'told you it's possible.'

My lessons continued after that, and they became harder and harder. He would teach me different stances, and ways to block an attack or counter it. He would teach me verbal lessons and give me a better understanding of sword art. After a while, I was beginning to create a sword art that suited my style.

It was after two continuous years of training that he started to teach me about magic and how to manipulate my mana. Up until now, he had not once taught me about magic, so I naturally didn't know how to use my mana. Everything I was doing until now was a result of my physical strength alone.

When I learned to control my mana, the destructiveness of attacks skyrocketed. My sword art was also on an entirely new level now that I had mana backing it up.

However, in all the time I spent training with Reshi he had not once told me how to do magic. Yes, he taught me how magic works, how magic circles are created, how to read and write the runes, how to make spells of your own, and how to shorten the length of incantations without compromising on the power.

He taught me everything related to magic, but not magic itself. It was like learning the recipe of a dish, but not how to make the actual dish. At that time I didn't know the reason, but now I guess it was because he wanted to learn it by himself, and he also knew about how my mana was different from the rest.

My memories of that time were fuzzy, since I passed out so many times that I lost count of it. And I'm sure you wouldn't be interested in listening to how I trained, so I won't bore you with that.

So let me spare you the details of the five years I spent training under Reshi, and skip to the day when it was finally the time for me to receive the Requiem sword.