Sachihiro

Training with Kazimoto is as you would imagine; hard, hard and hard. The forms were nothing but a pleasant memory we share around the fire reminiscing about our young naive days.

The man is a sadist of the highest order and if you hear Asriel tell it, there probably is a cult called Sadist somewhere on his Pangaia. We are at a camp doing nothing but continual training mixed in with students from other villages or schools, there are hundreds of us doing the bidding of this tyrant.

We carry wooden weighed practice swords at all times. You drop it you get beaten and run up a mountain slope. Usually I wouldn't mind running but there is a little thing called gravity magic that makes shit heavier than it should be. You wear that contraption like back pack and you run, the longer you take on the run the heavier it becomes.

There is no specific style taught as the now miserable Hiroshi has said. We just take a stance and imitate the same first strike over and over and over again. Until the sun comes down and the night becames deep, 50 straight hours. Fifty entire hours, and the next day we take a second stance and repeat, it's madness. Then the third stance on the third day. But fortunately or unfortunately we only learn the three combat beginning stances.

On the fourth day it turns out the stances were the easy part of the training. What we've been doing first three days was rest compared to everything else we face.

Both hands on sword, sword help above head with blade facing upwards. Lead with sword.

Then there is; lead with body. Sword held back, shoulder leaning forward. Dominant leg forwards. Front foot on toes.

And lastly; lead with sword held straight. Blade facing downwards. Dominant foot back, wrist loose.

It's the aikido stances on another level, an extreme level.

I had bumped into Mira once and all she gave me was a miserable smile as we passed by each other like zombies. We never saw each other again during that training camp.

The first two months no one quite. We are all the elite of our villages and grateful for the opportunity to train with the drunk enigma of a sadist. Soldiering on determined to be number one at the end of the program, that's what Kazimoto calls it. The program.

The one time someone complained the drunkard beat him bloody with a practice sword. Even the other sensei's kept their distance from that. The Beautiful Madmen they called him and even during his drunken trashing of someone, you could see the genius in his motions if you have the eye to catch such things.

Iaido is also torture, the art of drawing the sword. A subject I had thought I thoroughly enjoyed until this sadist took even that pleasure from me.

I still remember the first lecture he gave as we got here.

"I need you to trust me for this to work. I know it doesn't come naturally for some of you to trust, but I promise you I have the best of intentions. And I promise you none of you will die from negligence if you train under me.

"The training will be gruelling and sometimes you will think you can't continue. But I know all your limits and if I say you have 10 more in you, you probably have 11 more in you.

"The training is designed to break your limits. I will set seemingly impossible goals for you to accomplish, and in three months when you've accomplished them," he said.

"I will help you break them as we set new goals from then onwards"

Complete and utter wolf shit now that I'm deep in it. Utterly in-comprehensible. And yet, somehow, he is always right there when someone is about to quit. Somehow he knows how to push us just to the tip of giving up completely without actually giving up.

The man is a genius of torture, he must be. To be able to wring every ounce of effort out of me that's possible for me to give, to each their own limits. At some point our training stopped being uniform for all of us. We are getting almost completely individual attention from the Madman and his trainers.

How they are able to do this for us and still manage to not reduce the scheduled training times I don't know. Either there is a hell of a lot more trainers than I noticed or they are supernatural beings.

The Madman is ever present. The trainer's always there when he points yelling abuse that both encourages and frustrates me. The Madman's little backhanded advice turning into crucial points in improving my skill, the man must be a genuis.

"Most people don't realise how long a sword is which is how a lot of death matches can be finished before they start, just by the simple draw of your swords. I've killed many a man by drawing my sword through him.

"That is why when it comes to the draw each of you will be as fast as the vampires with your chosen bladed weapons or you will be practicing drawing 6 hours a day everyday for the next three years. Begin!"

And like that our iaido classes continue. Drawing the blade from different stances and cutting angles. Going as far as moving on to the next two moves after drawing in painstaking detail. Learning sequence after sequence of opening moves repeatedly until we do everything flawlessly.

Learning sequences and choreographed moves seemed stupid to me at first. Battle is an unpredictable chaotic thing that doesn't follow a direct script. I know this from experience. But I shut my mouth and learnt, just like Asriel thought me.

Sleep and meditation are a rare and welcomed peace. Sometimes going days without sleep of any kind. The Madman had us dig holes up to our shins one time and step into them before pouring a concrete in. Once it hardened, with a pair facing each other with a wooden sword we were bidden to spar.

It was a gruesome 12 hours that day and everyone was bloody by the end of it. Some with broken bones had to be escorted to the nearest village for healing.

By the end of the third month I thoroughly missed Saya but the program was thankfully slowing down as we get word that the first few soul weapons are done with no casualties as of yet.

I think it's time I negotiated my people new allies, myself and my friends some new swords, and get myself home.