More Training

The focus point is the 'truth' of an illusion. If you found the focus point, you could break free from the grasp of the illusion and find the right path. Unless you were a master illusionist, a expert at building formations, or a mage, you wouldn't be able to protect the focus point without giving away its location.

'But why would a back door exist in an illusion?' some may ask. It's simple, it exists just in case you and your allies get caught up in the illusion.

Though, it is common practice in this world to move the location the focus point or outright rebuild the illusion from scratch once it was found unless it was a really strong illusion. Once a focus point was used or found, the illusion surrounding the focus point would weaken, making it easier to spot. Think of it like seeing a part of the wall with a different texture in a game, surely you are going to try and break it it, no?

'When they were exploring this place, they ended up trapped in this illusion. They did manage to escape it after finding the focus point, but only after half a hour-or-so,'

Tracing the wall with my hand as I was walking, I thought to myself.

'If memory serves me correctly, I need to lightly condense mana at my fingertips while tracing the right wall. This hallway isn't infinite, it's actually just loops around. I'll eventually snag the focus. This is supposed to be a simple illusion, to test one's senses.'

Just like that, after about ten-minutes of walking, I felt my hand tingle.

While coating my hand with mana, I felt that the flow wasn't as smooth as I was used to. I shook my head. I would have to worry about that feeling later. Turning my attention back to the wall, I pushed my mana-coated-hand against the spot where I felt my hand tingle.

My hand phased through the wall as if it wasn't there and I felt something round within it. I couldn't help but smile lightly.

'There you are.'

Clenching my hand around what I felt, I yanked it out of the wall.

*Crack!*

The space around me shattered, the sound akin to glass breaking, revealing… the same corridor.

Despite my surroundings appearing the same, I knew that I had broken out of the illusion.

'Now time to find Ali-!'

Something flew by at an extremely fast speed, to the point where my eyes could barely follow.

'What was that?'

Turning my head towards the direction I thought the thing went, I saw a small ball of light hovering in place not too far from me.

It just floated there, not doing anything else.

'Did Alistar send that thing to guide me?'

I wasn't overly cautious or concerned about the wisp being fatally dangerous. With Alistar now paying attention to me and actively controlling the dungeon, I was confident that he wouldn't let something life-threatening near me.

At least, I hope he didn't. I didn't include much about him in the story and so far, his training style had me… lets say not very exhilarated. Based on the training so far, I wouldn't be surprised if he actually did.

As I approached the wisp, it kept moving down the corridor and waited until I caught up before moving again.

After a few-minutes of walking and turning corners, the wisp led me to a double-steel door.

Finished with task of guiding me to the doors, the wisp faded away.

Mentally preparing myself, I entered the room.

'!'

Immediately after I entered the room though, my body jerked to the side, narrowly avoiding an arrow that was now stuck in the door.

[Oho? You got some nice reflexes.]

Sighing, I knew what had happened. I looked at the floating figure of Alistar that was nearby. Though how and where he shot the arrow from, I had an idea but didn't really know.

"Was that really necessary?"

[Now now, I did that in order to test your reflexes again. I saw a glimpse of what you could do when you were fighting the skeletons yesterday but I wanted to confirm some things. With what you have shown so far, you would've been able to dodge the arrow.]

'My reflexes? Now that I think about it, my senses seem to be, how do I put it… in sync now.'

Ever since I had woken up in Rick's body, I had always felt sluggish. After some time had passed, most of the sluggish feeling had gone but a tiny remnant of that feeling remained throughout my body. It was a strange and slightly uncomfortable feeling.

Not only that, up until now, the flow of my mana and my motor controls of my body didn't perfectly respond with how my mind wanted it to go. I could intuitively tell that the connection between my soul and body wasn't perfect before.

But now? It felt like I was born into this body from the very start.

I shook my head as I turned my attention towards Alistar.

"So what will I be doing now?"

Alistar tried to hide it, but I could tell he had a slight grin which had me suspicious of what he was planning.

[Before we go any further with Arts, you're going to work on the basics.]

I titled my head at his response.

"Are you talking about my stamina, strength, and so on?"

Alistar clapped in approval.

[That is correct, although no amount of basic physical training will make you an S-rank, the minor gains will eventually add up.]

I suddenly had an ominous feeling.

'I'm not going to like this…'

My expression must have given my thoughts away, as the grin Alistar was trying to hold finally broke free onto his face.

[That's right, time for some good ol' spartan-like training.]

[Now start running, or you'll feel even worse.]

*** (Note: I decided to change the POV shift to this now)

Back in the city, deep in an alleyway…

A small, shivering animal could barely be seen, hidden under a pile of trash and litter

'Big sis, I'm scared…'

…

[Author Note: Hi guys, thanks for reading this chapter! I'm really sorry for taking a few weeks to get this chapter out but some things happened in real life. You see, I had caught COVID a few days after posting the last chapter and though thankfully I didn't have the worst possible symptoms, I was still bedridden for a week. Not only that, I injured my hand while getting some food for myself and it hurt to type so I decided to take a break. I had a lot of time to think about the direction of the story was going to take.

Once I recovered, I went to redo a whole bunch of ideas of plot lines that I had in mind. I went back and forth a lot with different ideas, struggling to decide on the upcoming plot (next few chapters) because of how much time I had to think. Also, just letting you know, I'm probably going to be doing a slight time skip for Rick's upcoming physical training because I'm not familiar with/an expert on stuff like that. For things that seem impossible or unusual, mana is the answer.

Everything makes sense once mana is involved right?]