NOVEL NEXT Chapter 10: stagnation
It's been a whole year since Hitogami discovered my identity...
I'm six years old now, and from that day on, I started training harder than I had ever done before.
Thanks to this my progress in the sword has skyrocketed, Samuel says I am very close to the advanced rank
Like magic, I've doubled my mana reserves so I can now throw twenty beginner-rank water balls or two intermediate-rank water cannons.
In addition, I am already intermediate in the four main branches of magic.
The branch that is costing me the most is healing magic, in which I am just a beginner but it is still a step forward.
Besides that...I learned something I never wanted to know...
Rudeus was not born in this timeline...so the world apart from me will follow its natural course...
But that wasn't good at all!! Without Rudeus, Orsted will never be able to defeat Hitogami!!
Speaking of Hitogami, thank goodness the guy didn't send an apostle to kill me or something like that...
With my current strength, it would only take one saint from the dojo and I wouldn't stand a chance...
It should be noted that I was paranoid at night for weeks after this, but apparently, that idiot will keep his word...
But if that were not enough, he knows that I know everything about him...he knows about Orsted, his curls, and his techniques...
I tried to ignore this for a long time but I just couldn't...
And to think that just by touching Nina's breasts the story would be so altered...what do I mean?...
Well, since that day Nina has been more affectionate with me.
We always walk from the dojo to our respective houses holding hands and when we say goodbye we always give each other a kiss on the cheek.
I also feel like his progress with the sword is stagnant and I feel guilty about that...
If I had been told that such an act of lust would harm me so much, I would never have done it in the first place...
...
A week ago was my sixth birthday, and my physical strength is increasing little by little as well as my skills in sword and magic.
I got out of bed, put on my workout clothes, and walked out to the backyard.
My father was there as always training and I joined him.
I started swinging my sword as usual.
Smooth and precise movements...if blisters appear it is because you are doing it wrong and you have to choose a correct posture...
"Gino, you're doing it wrong, again!" my father said when he noticed me unfocused.
"Yeah..."
It was summer in the Sacred Land of the Sword, and the midday sun warmed my head, causing sweat to come out of my small body.
It had been three years since I started my training, it had always been rigorous but it wasn't something I complained about very often.
Next to me was my father who had already finished his own training, he stood with his arms crossed and looked at me with a small smile.
For him, he was only supervising my training but I could see the look of pride on his face.
After watching adults train, practice, and duel during these six long, sleepy years, I have already given myself an idea of formal combat and what the correct and incorrect stances were.
And also there was the situation with Hitogami and Nina, I could ignore the Nina issue since a whole year has passed and nothing has happened... but the Hitogami issue is something I will never be sure about...
Even so, while swinging my sword I can easily ignore all that.
By doing something as fun, something as simple as swinging a sword, you can avoid any of those negative emotions that in a normal moment would threaten to overwhelm my thoughts.
I had the sword tightly gripped, my fingers clenched, my legs spread and resting on the ground, slightly unstable under the uneven weight of my young body, despite all these years my training all seemed sloppy, but I tried to adopt the best posture I could.
I struck again and again, and those wandering thoughts about Hitogami and Nina vanished as all my attention shifted to the small sword in my hand.
That simple repetition, holding it above my head, swinging it down, breathing deeply, constantly paying attention to my feet and hands, repeating every movement over and over...
I lost count of my hits almost immediately, the world around me unconsciously fading.
I entered a state in which I thought deeply about each movement and corrected all the mistakes I saw in each one.
If I could make a small change each time I swung and made it a little better...over time something good would form: I would reach a movement that I would be happy with.
Thinking about that one moment when I was able to let my thoughts and worries fade away to focus completely on the image in front of me...it didn't feel like a workout at all, it was more like a form of meditation for me...
I wouldn't know how to explain it but it was like that for me...simply a way to relax and rest the stress in my chest.
I continued like this, over and over again, while swinging my sword, that repetitive movement left me blank as I felt what was right and what was wrong in my body.
I lost track of the world around me, time passed at a pace impossible to know.
It was easy to do...almost too easy...at this point I felt out of energy...but I felt a strange sensation in my chest, arms, and legs.
The tiredness I felt before diminished almost completely, the swings of my sword became faster, I felt full of energy, my head that was spinning before was now back in the world, and my gaze was fixed on my sword.
"Alright, it's time to go," my father said, snapping me out of my self-induced trance.
"Yes..." I murmured as I wiped the sweat from my forehead.
...
After my daily training, Nina and I were in the center of the small outdoor training yard, right outside the dojo, it was late and well outside the normal training times of the day, around five in the afternoon, and no one more than us he was in that specific patio.
We were covered in dirt and bruises, holding the wooden swords with reluctance as we had trained for what must have been over an hour at that point.
However, the training was a little strange when it came to the passage of daylight.
For some reason, every time I trained with swords, hours would pass before I realized what was happening to me...I still felt I was getting used to the phenomenon.
When I mentioned it to my father he looked at me in total shock.
According to him, I am using my touki unconsciously, if I managed to control that feeling I would become an advanced swordsman... that feeling started six months ago but I still don't have the slightest idea how to control it.
It was frustrating, to say the least...
"What am I doing wrong?... I don't understand..." I mumbled while looking at the ground.
Nina crossed her arms and frowned as she looked at me.
Unlike me,Nina, she already had a slight control over her touki, it was not the best but it was already something for her age, according to Samuel, if she continued with her training she would be advanced at the age of ten.
"Listen, Gino! Just copy my movements exactly!" she said
I nodded and she held her sword in front of her, her sword raised almost directly above her head, before steadying her breathing and closing her eyes for a brief moment...
Then she started to move.
My future wife rose from the ground with a powerful step forward and cut the air horizontally, the wooden blade cut the air with almost perfect precision and speed, an intensity that broke my hair and made me open my eyes even when I was at a distance. Good distance.
She had performed the third basic step, if she applied more strength and speed she could create and execute a long sword of silence huh she would immediately become an advanced in the Sword God style.
My future wife had accomplished a feat that I still couldn't,
With a simple variation of that technique, she had already crossed the intermediate range barrier, which demonstrated her skill and technique superiority compared to me.
She still hadn't reached the level of skill needed to execute two separate cuts, and she wasn't fast or strong enough to break the sound barrier.
She stood up, straightened her spine, and relaxed her posture again, nodding to herself with a smile. I also nodded respectfully and she blushed slightly.
It wasn't an easy technique to use, and although I hadn't mastered it yet, it was very close.
"Okay Gino, if you weren't just looking at my ass you should be fine," she said.
I pursed my lips.
Without a doubt, I felt a kind of discomfort in my chest, after all, I always found it painful to execute an attack that I knew was too difficult for me, not because it hurt physically, but simply because it was clear that I had ruined the perfection. That other more skilled swordsmen could achieve.
It was silly to worry about this but he couldn't help it.
"Gino, you're thinking too much again!" she said with exasperation.
I shook my head and took a step forward.
"I know Nina but..."
"No ifs or buts! You have to feel it you know! Just feel the...sensation!, like that time you touched my breasts!" she said blushing.
What kind of...example?.. is that huh?...
Although his words were not clear, she said them with frustration, waving his arms frantically in the air to convey the emotion.
I smiled at him, appreciating the advice for what it was, even if it didn't exactly help.
"Thank you, Nina," I said with a smile and she blushed and looked away from mine.
I put myself in the same position that Nina had been in, I opened and closed my eyes after visualizing the movements with perfect clarity and I released the oppression I felt in my chest.
Pressing my front foot deeply into the ground, I jumped forward.
Swinging the sword downwards, I focused all my attention on remaining firm and calm in the face of the terrible pressure that would soon follow.
Of course it was not as planned and more...
I failed...
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Hello! Don't worry, let me cook!
*insert comment begging for power stones and positive comments!*