“Like I’ve said before, It’s pointless having you start with the basics. From the way you move, I can see that you’ve learnt and understood them well enough to execute them properly with enough practice. Repetitive stuff like katas you can do in your own time.”

Kira nodded. This much was obvious but having it said out loud and knowing that Tetsuya noticed it was somewhat of a relief.

“Instead, what we’re going to do first is sort out your progression plan, what your cultivation focus is going to be. From there we can decide on what types of training to have you do. So kiddo, have you put any thought into it yet?”

“If I understand correctly what cultivation focus is, I believe that a balanced approach is best.”

What Tetsuya mentioned was, of course, whether to focus on Life Energy- or Soul Energy cultivation or a mixture of both. Each path came with its own benefits and downsides. By focusing on either of the Twin Energies, you could meet requirements for higher-ranked Skills that focused on a higher ratio of a certain Energy much sooner, allowing you to take a significant power advantage against balanced approach cultivators of the same level and rank.

Not only this but, by focusing on one of the Twin Energies, you also get earlier access to the Energy’s unique techniques, such as Life Energy’s Accel Heal and Soul Energy’s Projection.

The main problem with this approach was that, as you reached the higher ranks, to reach further required more time and effort than to work on cultivating the other Energy. At the same time, having the other Energy at such a low rank would leave you vulnerable from an Energy-stamina standpoint as the higher-ranked Skills have higher energy consumption. Even though they won’t require much of the secondary Energy, they still need to use some of it to form the Quintessence.

On the other hand, with the balanced approach, by splitting your time, your overall Twin Energy power would rise at a slower, but more steady level. Alongside having equal access to all Skills at each cultivation rank once you reached it, your Energy-stamina wouldn’t be lacking in any particular area, being able to use many Skills in a single fight as opposed to very few, yet very potent, Skills.

Many people chose to focus on a single Energy as the allure of “fast power” was attractive to youth who don’t know any better. Then, later in life, they end up playing catch-up when they realise that they need to cultivate their secondary Energy.

Kira, however, wasn’t a careless youth and, even though she desperately wanted to increase her strength, she knew from long ago that she had to do it steadily and correctly. After all, she believed that her sword techniques would be enough to compensate for her lack of Twin Energy control.

“I suppose that fits in with your cautious style. Just don’t forget what I said. You need to loosen up a bit and let your body take over a bit more.”

“Yes…Uncle.”

This was a point that Kira still felt conflicted about. According to her Uncle, to surpass her mother, she needed to stop over-analysing situations and trust her gut instinct. While it was true that her mother, as a Burning Soul Inheritor, was able to live this long and manage to settle into a quiet life and raise a family, which was testament to something, Kira wasn’t sure that that so-called “absolute confidence” was the reason. Regardless, she understood the importance of being able to make snap-decisions as not everything would be within her control in a fight.

The other main reason Kira chose to go with a balanced approach was, of course, Burning Soul itself. From her brief mental perusal of the Flame Blossom Trail she realised that there was so much more depth to Burning Soul that she had yet to discover. Apart from the strange progression of Soul Energy mentioned in the cultivation route itself, she realised that she needed a strong body to withstand the toll that Burning Soul would take on her in the future. Even now, overuse of it would leave her incapacitated for far too long.

Tetsuya gazed at her intently for a while before speaking.

“You said that you’re still at Skin Tempering stage in Life Energy and at Core rank in Soul Energy. If you’re gonna go all-out balanced, then we need to push you through to Muscle Tempering before we work on your Soul Energy any further. Hmm, I might have an idea.”

Clicking his fingers, a pale shadow shimmered around Tetsuya’s right hand. On his middle finger Kira noticed a ring set with a dark gemstone, possibly obsidian. Then it appeared.

In Tetsuya’s hand was a sheathed katana. Its most striking feature was that it was completely black, from the metal fitting on the end of the handle, to the wrapping, to the scabbard itself. Embossed on the scabbard were strange designs that Kira couldn’t make out. Overall, the sword had a menacing air to it that was difficult to ignore.

“Here, catch.”

Kira looked at the weapon as she caught it with both hands, expecting it to have a strange weight or some other oddity but was surprised when there was none. She looked up at Tetsuya questioningly.

“Go ahead, draw it.”

Kira nodded before properly tying the sword to her haramaki, alongside her dragon-motif sword. Gripping the handle and scabbard tightly, she began to draw the sword. As the first few centimetres of the blade were exposed, Kira could see that the metal itself was also pitch-black. However, that wasn’t what caused her to stumble backwards.

The further Kira drew that black blade, the more she felt her Soul Energy slowing down in its circulation, despite having a Heavenly-ranked cultivation route, the Flame Blossom Trail. Not just that, but the blade’s weight became progressively heavier. Forcing herself to fully unsheathe the sword, her Soul Energy had by now come to a complete standstill as she struggled to hold the sword upright with both hands.

With her Soul Energy locked down, Kira realised that she had never felt so vulnerable in her life as when she was holding that fully-exposed blade. Without realising it, she had come to rely on the Soul Energy, that didn’t exist in her previous life, to some extent, especially now that she knew that her sword techniques alone were insufficient.

“Uncle, what…is this sword?”

“Something I came across in the northern part of the Moonsilver Empire. Poor guy couldn’t sell it as a collector’s piece so he hid it amongst the trash blades, hoping someone wouldn’t look too closely when they bought it. I thought it was cool so I got it for basically nothing. He seemed to be glad to be rid of it to be honest. This might help your Life Energy training.”

As Kira stared at the blade and tried to ignore that weak feeling the sword was having on her, she noticed that the blade itself had some sort of malicious aura. Looking closer and extending her Soul Sense, Kira realised that the black metal was, in fact, greedily absorbing all the natural energy from around it! However, the blade itself didn’t seem to store the energy. Instead, it just kept on pulling it in like an endless void.

‘This weapon is actually extremely dangerous. I don’t know what kind of strange metal this blade is made from and which smith was brave enough to forge it but, if it were to cut someone…’

Kira shivered. She would have to be extremely careful when training with it as it didn’t seem to discriminate its user from everything else. Strangely enough, her Life Energy was completely unaffected. Carefully resheathing the sword, Kira tilted her head at her uncle.

“Oh yeah, forgot. Training. Eh, do whatever you want with the sword for now. I’ll come up with something. If you can use that sword like you normally do by the time I come up with something, that will be perfect.”

Tetsuya leaned against a tree with his arms crossed behind his head and closed his eyes as Kira glared at him. He’d had all this time while she was recovering to prepare lessons but didn’t.

‘He was probably off drinking most of the time. If I ever acknowledge him as my Master, it will be a miracle.’

Kira thought as she remembered her old Masters, the Elders of the Takanashi Clan. They were calm, wise and always knew what to say to struggling students, encouraging them as they gently adjusted their students’ postures and blade angles when they practiced cutting drills. This lazy, alcohol-loving, uncle of hers may be strong but he’s a horrible teacher. Kira sighed to herself. She shouldn’t let herself have expectations of him and continue with her methods of self-teaching that she had been using before.

‘He’ll make a decent bodyguard to compensate for my lack of reading material at least.’

Kira thought with a little bitterness. While she had read through most of the Weapon Skill scrolls in the Training Hall, there were still some she hadn’t had time to learn, and those were just the scrolls she knew about. Hopefully, she would find some powerful Skills on this journey as the odds of her uncle keeping any didn’t seem very high. He seemed more like the kind of person who would learn a Skill then leave the scroll where he found it. As a wanderer he wouldn’t have space for unnecessary baggage.

Kira found a quiet spot in the forest near their camp but away from her uncle’s line of sight before steeling herself to draw the sword once more and starting with basic drills.

‘Seven…’

Kira counted as she disembowelled yet another imaginary enemy with that black blade. It had been a few days since she had received the sword and she was slowly adjusting to its strange mass and draining effect. Her uncle hadn’t come up with anything more specific than to just practice with the sword so that is what she did.

In her free time, she experimented with the sword and found that, as her Soul Energy was basically inaccessible, her ability to use Weapons Skills was likewise restricted. The feeling brought her back to her time in her Takanashi Clan where body strength and technique were the most important. Not for the first time in the recent days, she pondered over how she could bring more of the techniques she had been taught into her new style of swordplay. She had ideas, but they were just that, ideas. There was no way to put them into practice and have them be relevant if she didn’t find a way to create her own Weapon Skills…

“Boo!”

While she was deep in thought, she didn’t notice Tetsuya approaching. She started before turning and frowning at him.

“Hey, no need to look at me like that. I’ve finally got an idea for you.”

Swallowing her protests and scepticism that were on the tip of her tongue, Kira followed him deeper into the forest. As they passed between the trunks, she noticed that some of them were marked with white ‘X’s. Curious, she asked Tetsuya about them.

“You’ll see.”

Eventually, they stopped and Tetsuya turned around. Kira followed and was surprised at what she saw. From that particular spot that they stood, each and every one of the marked trees were visible, without blocking each other, despite being different distances away from them.

“Cool, huh? Now, what I want you to do is use that black sword and treat each of those trees as an approaching enemy and take each of them down as you move ahead.”

Kira’s first impression was that this was intended to be a test of stamina. What she didn’t expect was this almost-funny amount of effort into making a boring exercise seem interesting. Shrugging her shoulders, Kira began.

While drawing the sword wasn’t the same struggle it used to be, she still wasn’t comfortable with the feeling of weakness it brought about by the stagnation of her Soul Energy. Moving forward, Kira cut at the first few trees with little difficulty but, as she continued, just reaching each of the following trees took almost as much effort as all the previous ones combined.

At first, she wasn’t sure of the reason but, doing her best to ignore the feeling of restriction on her Energy, she realised what the problem was.

Her legs.

There was a burning in her legs that was masked by the numbing feeling of having her energy sealed away. She understood then that, while performing katas, she remained mostly in the same place. In this way, her arms strengthened but her legs weren’t pushed that hard. Tetsuya must have realised this and devised this simple yet effective exercise to strengthen them while not completely ignoring her cutting technique.

Before Kira had even reached halfway through the trees, she was already gasping for breath. A tap on her shoulder startled her into alertness.

“Dead. That guy got you.”

Tetsuya was standing behind her. Behind him was the next tree which she couldn’t reach, let alone attack.

“Not bad for your first try. You did better than I expected, kiddo.”

Kira didn’t have the breath to reply and hurriedly resheathed the black blade, revelling in the refreshing feeling of her Soul Energy circulating again. At the same time, she could feel her Life Energy pulsating rapidly from the exertion, a clear sign that the cultivation was progressing along.

After letting her body return to its resting state, Kira sat down, legs crossed, and began to work on her Soul Energy cultivation. Seeing as her body was still tired, it made sense to her to focus on her Soul Energy in the meantime. After all, it was part of her usual schedule back at the Suzuki Clan.

“What are you doing?”

Kira frowned. Seeing as Tetsuya was on the Soul Projector rank it should be beyond obvious that she was cultivating.

“Uncle, my body is tired and cultivating Soul Energy is restful. Surely there’s nothing wrong with this.”

“Jeez, how do I put this. To you it seems efficient but you’re actually hindering yourself. For focused cultivation, as in focusing on a single Twin Energy, to work, your body needs to only have that to worry about. What you’re doing now is giving it mixed messages. You need to make it clear what you want it to improve on.”

Kira could see some wisdom in his words but, at the same time, there were more things that seemed to be opinions given as truths. She wasn’t sure if these stemmed from certain superstitions he held or from his experience gained while travelling, which made sorting out what she could actually learn from him very hard because he seemed to truly believe everything that he was saying.

‘No, that isn’t what’s actually bothering me.’

Sifting through her initial thoughts, Kira found the root of her irked state. Since she had been a teenager in her previous life, after learning most of which the Elders of the Takanashi Clan had to teach her, up until recently, she had always had a degree of autonomy in how she lived her life. She hadn’t been contradicted nor had she been forced into anything that wasn’t of her own volition. She had lived a life of complete freedom.

That wasn’t to say that she wasn’t open to having her faults corrected. The opposite was actually true. She’d always been someone who'd strived for perfection, especially in her martial- and sword arts. However, those who corrected her before clearly knew much more that she did and she could trust their counsel not to be influenced by personal opinions and was backed by generations of research and experience.

Right now, forced into taking the option which had the highest chances for her survival by leaving home, Kira was stuck with a source of knowledge that couldn’t be trusted completely while not having access to any other resources to help her save for this single person whose personality was lazy despite him being significantly strong. Now, she was having her methods questioned without sufficient proof to back up the new methods. It was trying her patience to say the least.

“Understood, I will do as you say…”

‘For now.’

“…but Uncle, isn’t there something new you can teach me? In particular, there was a topic I couldn’t find scrolls on in the clan. I would like to know more about Weapon Skills and how they are crea-”

Kira paused as she noticed a spark in Tetsuya’s eyes, a manic light that seemed to completely engulf his pupils. Kira watched as he began to pace up and down, mumbling to himself.

“Should I, shouldn’t I…she’s not even that strong in cultivation yet so she won’t be able to do much but I could still teach her the basics…”

Kira, listening intently, heard everything and was somewhat relieved.

‘From the tone of his voice, this must be a topic which deeply interests him so what he says might actually be more reliable. I don’t know anything about creating Skills so anything I learn could be interesting at the very least.’

“Alright, I’ll teach you what I know, kiddo, but on one condition. First you need to break through to the Muscle Tempering rank in your Life Energy before I teach you what I know. For now, though, I can give you a crash course.”

Kira nodded in acknowledgement. From her previous fiasco at spontaneously trying to create a Skill, she had at least come away knowing that it required a high cultivation level to even Activate a created Skill, especially if you didn’t know what rank it would be.

“First off, basic stuff. Skills draw their power from Quintessence. Quintessence is given its purpose by being Activated and the ratio of Twin Energies used affects the degree of range your Skill will have. The Activated Quintessence then needs to be Released in a certain way to execute properly.”

“Range?”

“The distance away from your body that the Skill has influence.

Right, so, Skills with high Life Energy ratios are usually close-ranged and tied towards actual physical techniques. This makes them more potent within their range but also usually have stricter Release requirements. The opposite is true for Soul Energy.

What makes developing a Skill difficult isn’t figuring out the right ratios or Release method, it’s properly defining the purpose of the Skill by drawing it through the Activation paths that make the most sense for what you’re trying to do. If your Activation doesn’t synchronise well with your intent, all you’ll end up with is a lot of wasted energy. At least, in your case, you can use the excess energy to practice using your Burning Soul. Any questions?”

“Just one. May I return to training now?”

She couldn’t help it. Even though what Tetsuya had mentioned was concise and blunt, the passion in his voice betrayed how excited he was to be able to share this knowledge with someone. That passion was contagious and had spread to Kira without her realising it when she'd remembered his condition.

‘One week. Within one week I’ll reach Muscle Tempering and you’ll have to teach me everything you know!’