The Fruits of Training

I was working as a guard, as well as training under knight Joan and Rodrigo. I was learning the basics of Mana. The training was like the typical spiritual training like shown in any movie or a show. To control and increase the amount of mana. Joan made me meditate while her instructions were, "Focus on each and every part of your body, feel the mana in it." And with these instructions, she made me meditate for 2 hours under the waterfall, and 2 hours under early morning sunrise. And for the physical training, Rodrigo made me focus the mana on my arms and legs to increase the damage of all my attacks. He thought me how to envelope the mana around my body to increase my defense too. I trained vigorously for half an year, ten hours a day! The ten hours which I spent training were supposed to be my 'Sleeping Hours'. And while I was too busy with the training and my duty as a guard, I never realized it until one of my fellow guard asked me how can I stay energetic after all this work. I didn't gave him the answer but it was my determination, determination to save my friend. The other day while I was still confused about myself being not sleepy, Joan, who was waiting for me to train with her as my trainer, said, "We reincarnates don't need sleep or food to survive. We are already dead" I was shocked as this came out of the blue. As I was about to ask her where it from, she interrupted me and said, "I can read your mind. It is one of my gloom-mana ability. And you realize that now?" "Do not call me creepy!" she added after reading my mind again.

And for the results of the training, I learned how to manifest mana, Bend it, model it, and control it according to me. All I needed to do was imagine a dark cloud and move and shape it as I will while manifesting mana. I also learned various tactical moves, which were to dark-mana abilities, like 'Intimidate' which allows me to create or generate fear or threat of me in my opponents mind. Like a prey scared of the predator. And the other one was, 'Memory Play' which allows me to change, erase or add anything to the opponent's memory. It can be used to control their mind, hypnotize them or re-model and ruin their strategies. But, unlike Joan, I cannot read their minds. All I can do is change them, not know or understand them.

And due to the incompetency of guards, the post of a Black Knight, which was held by the current king, was still vacant. The rookie guards had no appreciable records and neither did the veterans. After 8 months of imbalance of knights, king was troubled. And finally can up with the decision of promoting someone to the Knight position. But there wasn't anyone fit enough to take the position. So, to find the jewel among rocks, king came up with the idea of having a tournament of power. In which the winner gets promoted to 'Knight'. The participation of this tournament was open to all citizens, and was compulsory to all the solders and guards. The contest was scheduled a week later at noon. As the news spread across the Borderland, many skilled, powerful and talented people started to train for the tournament. I too, started training more vigorously, while skipping the guard duty for the whole week. I learned the TWO KNIFE STYLE in past six months. In which two knifes were used in combat especially in close combat. This style consisted of three modes, Attack, Defense and Sure Kill Modes. It sounded childish, but was actually quite effective. All trick was in the style of holding the knife. Attack Mode was holding both the knifes pointing in front, in other words like we do normally away from wrist. Defense Mode was holding both the knife exactly opposite as the Attack Mode, near the wrist. And finally the Sure Kill Mode! It was a little difficult to learn as it was done by holding a knife to attack and other to defend. And for my physical abilities that I enhanced during to six months, while I was fast enough to hit every drop of rain water around me with the knife, like an umbrella, I was strong enough to break a 1-foot thick steel gate of any average castle with a punch of bare fists. My mana was strong too and I even lasted against Rodrigo for an hour in the combat training!, with both of us exhausted. Especially I was more torn out by the combat training, as I did that at the end of the day, after all the training and meditation stuff.

So, basically I was trained enough to participate and stand out in the Contest of Power. All that was left, was the time of the Contest to start.