Akihira's Training
Ichitsu looks up to the sky.
"Once we meet again, I will be stronger than you.....Akihira" Ichitsu thinks.
Meanwhile, Akihira was randomly wandering on an island Ishihaya left him on.
"Man, what the hell even is this place?! That ishihaya just left me here while I was Injured." Akihira says in annoyance.
Akihira then thinks back.
Ishihaya takes Akihira to an island with a large volcano at the center, when they arrive akihira get's off the boat while holding his backpack's straps with both his hands and starts to look around then looks back at Ishihaya.
"So where are we and what are we doing here exactly?" Akihira asks.
"This is Kemono Island and you'll see why we're here." Ishihaya says.
Akihira drops his head down in disappointment.
"What's with all this suspense all the time?" Akihira asks.
Ishihaya ignores Akihira's question and starts walking inside the island.
"Follow me." Ishihaya says as he walks away.
"Ignores me again." Akihira says.
Ishihaya and Akihira walk deep into the Island, after walking for a while, Ishihaya suddenly stops walking and Akihira bumps into Ishihaya.
"Don't suddenly stop like that, give me a indication or something!" Akihira says in annoyance.
Ishihaya then turns around towards Akihira.
"Alright, this should be far enough." Ishihaya says.
"Far enough? Far enough for what?" Akihira asks.
"You'll see, in exactly 5 seconds." Ishihaya says.
"Wha-"
Akihira stands there in confusion as Ishihaya kept counting down.
"5"
As Ishihaya says that, the ground shook.
"4"
"Why is the ground shaking?" Akihira thinks.
"3"
As Ishihaya was counting down, the tremors grew more violent albeit very little.
"2"
Akihira then realizes
"Wait, are there tremors...CAUSED BY FOOTSTEPS?!"
"1"
As Ishihaya says that, a salamander and two other colossals the size of the Iron Oxbeast came out from the trees.
"WHAT IN THE WORLD?!" Akihira panically says.
"This is going to be the start of your training." Ishihaya says calmly.
"WHAT?!" Akihira asks still panicked.
"As you may have guessed, there are more colossals like these three all around the island. In fact this island is basically inhabited by them, your goal is to beat 4 of these colossals, that will be your training." Ishihaya explains.
"SO YOU EXPECT ME TO BEAT THESE THINGS? WITH WHAT?!" Akihira asks.
"Use your magic. You already have an insane amount of physical strength and stamina, that's already one big advantage you have against Ichitsu. He's still gotta build up his strength and stamina some more." Ishihaya further explains.
"But I barely know how to control my magic." Akihira says.
"That's why I'll start by teaching you one of the most basic moves of any magic, an element barrier. That way can at least shield yourself from any attacks." Ishihaya says.
"All you have to do is focus your magic powers into a shape." Ishihaya says.
"But how do I know the shape?" Akihira asks.
"All you have to do is focus, if you focus hard enough, the shape will reveal itself to you." Ishihaya answers.
"Is that all?" Akihira asks.
"Yea thats all yo-
Ishihaya was cut-off by a loud roar. Both Akihira and Ichitsu turn around and look behind to see the salamander suddenly fly off straight upwards leaving a strong gush of wind, Akihira then puts his arms in front of his face to stop the wind from blowing on his face and he looks up to see the salmander flying around above. The salamander roars again and the other two colossals walk away in seperate directions, then the salamander flies towards the peak of kemono mountain.
"You should probably save that one for last and go for the other ones first." Ishihaya says.
"Why? What do you mean?" Akihira asks.
"Didn't I tell you before that you must defeat atleast 4 colossals? That one that just flew away is called a "salamander" seems to one of the strongest if not the strongest creature on this island." Ishihaya says.
"But how do you know that?" Akihira asks.
"I can sense It's incredible power, It's higher than most around here and also If you'd paid attention you'd notice the other two colossals walked away just as the salamander roared twice, probably out of fear If I had to guess." Ishihaya explains.
"Alright, but I didn't even practice the barrier move thingy yet." Akihira says.
"You seriously gonna practice it?" Ishihaya asks.
"Yeah, well I didn't even get to think about it for even a damn minute." Akihira says.
"Well, you know what they say. Action speaks better than words so better use it during fighting, now let's go." Ishihaya says.
Ishihaya then walks with Akihira to find a colossal and after a while, they find one of them out of pure luck.
"Hey akihira! Found one here, looks like it's covered in some sort of rock." Ishihaya says.
"Finally! After all this walking I can finally fight." Akihira says.
"You betcha." Ishihaya says as he jumped on one of the nearby trees.
"Wait, why'd you jump up there?" Akihira confusingly asks.
"Well, It is YOUR fight so I see no reason to stay in your way." Ishihaya says.
"Suit yourself then, I can kick this beast's ass all on my own and you'll regret missing out. It didn't look that tough when it walked away." Akihira says as he slams his right fist into his left palm.
Akihira then charges towards the colossal with just a punch using no magic power. He punches the colossal but it has no effect. The colossal then knocks Akihira back into a tree, Akihira shakes his head as he gets up.
"Ow my head, that was close." Akihira says.
"Stay on your guard, don't let up for a second. Colossals are stronger than they look and remember, you're training doesn't end until you beat the salamander who's on a whole other level than these guys.
The colossal then stomps it's foot on the ground which causes spikes to erupt from the ground and head towards akihira at high speeds, he manages to dodge the attack by strafing to his right and looks behind him and get's a little terrified by the scene as he turns pale for a second.
"What the hell?! Just from that one attack."
He looks back and sees the attack completely destroyed the forest behind him, hundreds of trees competely flattened by that one attack from the colossal.
"It was the first time Akihira had felt fear and the thought of fleeing was being tossed around his mind like it was the only thing he knew how to do."
But as he steps back a bit, he remembers why he was working this hard and how he got this far, he thinks about his rival Ichitsu, the sacrifice Kushi made and the desperate cry for help from sugita.
Akihira then closes his eyes and turns around, opens his eyes as strings of fire starts surrounding his body and he starts to charge towards the stone colossal.
"Running away? Falling back? After all this time I have the opportunity finally become stronger, fleeing and feeling fear isn't an option anymore. I will become stronger and defeat the demong king, I can't be afraid of an opponent ever again. I have to overcome through all these feelings. Akihira says.
The stone colossal then roars and gather's power with a brown aura surrounding it and shoots a brown colored beam of energy out of it's mouth. The strings of fire surrounding Akihira, gather infront of him and start to combine and construct a barrier similar to how a cloth is sewn with a thread and needle. Ishihaya was amazed by the barrier, He froze at the spot.
Then the energy beam collide's with the barrier and the heat from the collsion and akihira's fire makes a dense area of hot air that suddenly explodes, the bright light blinded the beast for a few seconds and suddenly akihira is in the air with his right fist covered in a red hot flame and using his left hand as a sort of mini-container so his attack didn't get weaker.
"I WILL NOT BE DEFEATED HERE! I'M GOING TO BEAT THE DEMON KING AND HELP PEOPLE AS LONG AS I LIVE!" Akihira screams.
The light from the explosion had faded and the beast notices akihira and quickly reinforces the layer of stone that was on it's body. Ishihaya notices this and calls out to Akihira.
"Stop! You're attack won't be enough to break it's defenses now! IT'S TOO STRONG!" Ishihaya warns akihira.
"WE'LL JUST SEE ABOUT THAT!" Akihira says.
Just as he says those words, the red fire on akihira's hand turned into a white hot flame.
"PHOTON..." Akihira says.
"Incredible, he added more elemental energy into his fist and compressed into a very dense level. This attack is gonna be earth shattering." Ishihaya thinks to himself.
"FIST!!!" Akihira says.
Akihira flips foward and strikes the stone colossal right at it's forehead causing a massive white light to be shot out of akihira's fist and behind him.
"HAAA!!!!" Akihira screams.
Just as akihira's attack was about to run out of power, the defenses of the stone colossal were cracked and a caused a massive explosion to occur which engulfed Akihira and the colossal.
Ishihaya could hear the beast roaring loudly and the blinding light made Ishihaya cover his eyes. After the light faded, ishihaya runs down and when the smoke clears he sees akihira standing victorious.
"Looks like the Colossal collapsed, it has critical burns all across it's entire body." Ishihaya thinks.
He then notices severe bleeding from akihira's right arm, as he goes towards him. Akihira collapes down on his knees and hits the ground unconscious.
After many hours, Akihira suddenly wakes up.
"Oh damn, It's night already...Did I pass out? I remember I made a dense fire fist or something..."
Akihira then remembers.
"Wait, Ishihaya what happened to the colossal?! Did I beat it?" Akihira asks.
"You successfully made a barrier and made a new move of your own and won, amazing job akihira." Ishihaya says.
Akihira smiles in happiness and jumps with his left hand in the air as celebration.
"BUT." Ishihaya's tone turned serious.
"you used too much of your power and nearly destroyed your own arm, that move was careless. You should've stopped when I told you too." Ishihaya says.
"I'm sorry, Just in that moment all I could think about was winning. Like I was blinded by something, I don't know if that makes sense." Akihira says.
Ishihaya sighs and puts his hand on akihira's head.
"Listen Akihira, always remember that winning is not all that matters. If you endager the lives of people or even worse sacrifice others to win a battle then, you might as well just die on the spot. There is no pride in such a victory, you won't recieve any acceptance from anyone. If there's one thing I've learned as a knight of this kingdom and a traveler of the world, it would be this." Ishihaya says and after he smiles at Akihira.
Those words made Akihira realize to never blindly pursue victory and he learned to realize the consequences of such a thing.
"Well, now that's out of the way. Get some rest for a few days until your arm heals. I'll be heading out now, to train Ichitsu. I'll leave a light clone behind, now go and really unleash out your potential by bringing down the salamander." Ishihaya says.
Akihira then trains to control his magic as his arm heals overtime, after 2 months of training with the clone of Ishihaya the real one comes back, just as Akihira was going to mount kanemo. Akihira eventually scales the mountain and beats the salamander.
With just 4 months left for the fateful battle against the demon king, both Akihira and Ichitsu train as hard as they possibly could.
END OF CHAPTER 9