The Villain's Sword Is Sharp

Isaac went straight from Sanna's house to the training ground. It was mostly empty due to the heavy snow, but that didn't bother Isaac – he loved the cold weather.

As the snow painted his coat white, he walked past the wooden dummies that disciples could practice with. He made his way to the corner of the training field and stood where the 2 wooden fences met. Then, he sent some Qi to his Snowshoe Anima and activated it.

He felt the snow below him suddenly shift. It crept over his feet and up his legs, covering his boots and ankles. To an onlooker, it might seem like he was wearing a pair of high-top boots made from snow.

Isaac remained still for a few seconds just to make sure the Anima was fully activated and nothing else would happen. Then he tried using it to move. However, working out how to use the Anima took a few attempts: first Isaac walked around, hoping the Anima would automatically activate when he moved. However, nothing happened. Next, he tried standing in one spot and just leaning in different directions, hoping the Anima would carry him in that direction. For the first handful of tries, nothing happened. But then, on one of his leans, he juddered forwards.

Isaac quickly straightened his body and he stopped moving. Then he wondered why he didn't move the first few times but had moved just then. He experimented a bit more and soon discovered the reason. If he leant with just his upper body, nothing would happen. When he had leant such that his heels had come off of the ground, then he would move forwards.

After some more trial and error, Isaac realised he didn't have to lean at all – the only thing which mattered was how he moved his feet. If he stood on the balls of his feet and raised his heels off the floor, he'd move forwards. If he stood on the backs of his feet and raised his toes off the floor, he'd move backwards. If he stood on the right sides of his feet and raised the left side off the floor, he'd go right. You get the picture.

While he was testing all of this, Isaac tried to stand on his tip-toes. He immediately went careering into the wooden fence in front of him.

It seemed that the extent to which you lifted a part of your foot decided how fast you would move. Just raising his heels slightly would cause him to move forward at walking speed, whilst lifting his heels as high as possible had propelled him into the fence at an undesirable velocity.

Isaac moved to a more open area of the training field and continued to practice. He worked on going forwards, backwards and sideways at moderate speeds. The Anima could be used to go in any direction, not just these 4, but Isaac wanted to get the basics down before he attempted anything else.

Unfortunately, he didn't have time to finish training the basic motions. It was nearly 2 pm and Isaac still hadn't eaten lunch yet. He also needed to read Sanna's written report and pick some people for her group to investigate further. Therefore, he left the training grounds and headed home.

Back at his house, he picked up some of the logs which were littered around his house and started a fire. While the fire grew, he used some of the food that was left over from seclusion and prepared a meal. When the fire was fully ablaze, he popped the food on a tray positioned above it and left it to cook.

While it was cooking, Isaac fished Sanna's notebook out of his inside coat pocket. He sat down near the fire and opened the book. The first page had a list of names and numbers in very neat handwriting. The name was obviously a person who they'd investigated and the number was the page number that person was on. Isaac quickly identified the names which had more than 1 page of information on them and flicked through the pocketbook to find them.

The first one was Nikolas Aalto, a man who supposedly defeated 20 thieves who were trying to steal his hunting loot. Unfortunately, he used a ranged attacking Anima. Isaac already had Johan providing ranged support and having 2 ranged attackers on a team of 4 wouldn't work. Isaac briefly considered trying to recruit this guy and create a team without Johan, but he believed he could still reap some benefits from knowing someone in the Friberg family. And it wasn't like Johan himself was useless –no, he was also a man of many talents. Even if Nikolas was better in combat, he wasn't outstanding enough for Isaac to kick Johan out of the team.

In fact, Isaac didn't think there were any newcomers wielding ranged Anima who were good enough for him to give up on the benefits that having Johan provided. Even if such a skilled ranged support did exist, they would probably create their own team instead of joining Isaac's.

After thinking this, Isaac skipped past anyone who used a ranged Anima. He read about a few more candidates, then he went to get his fully-cooked lunch and continued reading while he ate.

In the end, he settled on 12 people who could potentially join his team. A couple of them had relatively complete information, but most only had vague rumours written about them in the notebook. Isaac couldn't choose a long-term teammate based on one or two rumours, so he decided to have Sanna's group investigate these people.

He'd also promised to consult Johan about potential team members, but Isaac decided to conveniently forget about that promise. It would be much better if he chose the team on his own. Therefore, he circled the 12 names in the notebook and put it in his pocket. Then he hopped out of his window, strolled down the street right past Johan's house, and headed towards Sanna's place.

Nobody was there when he arrived. They were evidently out on the streets, spreading the rumour he'd asked them to. However, Isaac couldn't wait here all day and he also didn't want to waste time by coming back later. Since there was nobody here to welcome him, he decided to let himself in.

He walked around to the side of the house where there was a row of 3 windows. The windows all had shutters with locks, but Isaac had a sword with a very sharp edge. In a contest between the 2, there was only one winner.

Isaac's spirit sword slashed through the wooden shutter before him. Surprisingly, the shutter didn't fall apart immediately; it still sat proudly in the window frame even with a long cut down the middle. However, now it was more of a decoration than a method to prevent thieves entering. Isaac aimed a couple of kicks at the shutters and the wood buckled and broke.

He climbed through the broken shutter and entered Sanna's house. The first thing he did was leave the notebook on Sanna's table. Then he found a piece of paper and wrote a note to go with it,

'There are 12 names circled in the notebook. Do more in-depth investigations into all of them, but prioritise Noah Jensen, Eva Damsgaard, Abbie Ibsen and Hayden Stromberg. Hans will continue to watch your progress, so do not put a foot wrong.'

Other than Hans, who was the imaginary person the group thought was watching them, the other 4 names were Isaac's top candidates to join his team. Isaac needed somebody to defend the team and another close-range fighter to join him, so he'd picked a 1st and 2nd choice for each position. Other than those 4 people, there were the other 8 people who Isaac either didn't have enough information on or didn't think were quite good enough to be in his top 2. He would only fall back on those guys if both his choices for that position rejected him or couldn't be found.

After writing the note and placing it next to the notebook, Isaac decided it wouldn't hurt to have a look around. He did a brief top-to-bottom search of Sanna's house, but he could only find 3 iron pieces. He obviously pocketed them, then he hopped out of the window and tried to put the broken shutters back in a somewhat convincing position. He didn't want somebody else to come along, see the open window and decide to rob the house, since they'd probably move his note and the notebook.

After putting the broken shutters back in place, Isaac left. He went back to the training ground so he could practice with his Snowshoe Anima. The Qi he used up during his earlier practice was mostly recovered, so he could work on his forwards, backwards, and lateral movement for a long while.

Isaac didn't want to completely exhaust his Qi since he would need to defend himself if he was ambushed. When he finally got down to about 7% Qi, he decided to stop practicing and go home. He thought about the need to quicken his growth speed on the way back.

Taking missions was the quickest and most reliable way to earn resources, but Isaac had always been restricted by his solitary nature. He couldn't find a group of people with similar capabilities to him, so he had been confined to taking easier missions, or missions for only 1 or 2 people which typically had lower rewards. Most of the difficult missions were suited for 4 or more people, and these were the missions that Isaac wanted to take but couldn't. However, soon he would lead a team and he would be able to take these missions. Perhaps that would grant him another spike in his growth speed...