4 Training
Claire wakes up with a clear mind and a flood of energy filling her body, something that only seems amplified once she gets out of bed. She does some stretches and puts on her clothes, this time with obviously more ease on the bra part than yesterday. She then goes for a short and uneventful breakfast, before returning back to her room to continue her cultivation.
Claire appears inside of her sub-space and prepares to start cultivating, but a thought pops up in her head, 'Maybe I should read up on a few of the books, preferably ones that have something to do with fighting, as I know next to nothing about actually fighting.'. With that thought in mind, she goes over to the stack of books and pulls out one named "Beginner's guide to swordsmanship that fits the sword I gave you – Some god".
With the book now in hand, let the reading commence. Claire's reading of the books is very quick, with few comments in the process, once she reaches a tenth of the way in, the book's information reduces in usefulness, as she has already started thinking up ways to use her sword. That doesn't mean that she doesn't finish the book, she does finish it just in case something useful would be remaining in the last 90% of it, which proves useless just like she had expected.
"Alright, now that I have some theoretical knowledge of what's going on, I should have an easier time learning the physical aspect of fighting, but that will have to wait, it's now time to test what I can do with the shapeshifting." After having said that, Claire tries to change her shape by manipulating her size, something that leads to no avail after a few minutes. So, she starts experimenting with a lot of different ways and processes to change, of which none work, at least until she has spent some ten minutes and ends up at her hair.
When her intent reaches her hair, it quickly shortens and turns blonde, something she's only able to notice due to the weight difference with shorter hair, and the hair to the sides of her vision changing color. "Oh, it seems that I've found something I can change, I might be able to change more, so let the experimentation continue." With the intention of not allowing something useful to bypass her, she spends the next half an hour experimenting, just to find nothing more that she can change.
"Now that that's over, time to return to my original intention, cultivation." With those words said, she takes a seat on the ground and crosses both her legs, then the cultivation can begin.
Spirit energy starts to slowly seep in through her skin, the energy then starts moving towards the bones of her body, even going further than the bones and all the way to the marrow. Unlike when she first started cultivating, there's no feeling of growing stronger while the marrow is refined. There's also the joy of feeling more energy enter her body than before, but it still feels like a slow flow.
After spending nearly half a day cultivating, Claire finally opens her eyes as the spirit energy gives off the feeling of "locking" in place, bringing a surge of energy with it, luckily without a truckload of pain this time around. She springs up from her lotus position and notices a lack of sweat like last time around. "Huh, seems that cultivation no longer produces an increased amount of sweat, or at least this stage didn't do it, I need more information to make a conclusion, but it'd be nice if it has stopped."
She does a few stretches and exits the sub-space and heads to the pub for some dinner.
The two next days are spent in the same way, with Claire even managing to break through into Body Refining stage 3 in this short span of time. She also spent the breakfast and dinner times to gather a little more information, with one of the most important ones being, that the Blue Flame Sect is located half a day away from the city, and that's for a first stage body refiner.
Another important information that she gathered; the names of the days are different. There're still seven days on a week, but they have other names, from what she knew as Monday to Sunday:
Ignis Dan, the day of fire
Terra Dan, the day of Earth
Aqua Dan, the day of water
Silva Dan, the day of wood
Metallum Dan, the day of metal
Aevum Dan, the day of time
Locus Dan, the day of space
(A/N: I want to change things up a bit, as this is a fantasy world, so it'd make sense for the days of the week to be inspired by something of this world, this will also make the world more unique and more alive.)
She also found out that the Blue Flame Sect's entrance exam is placed on Ignis Dan, which is fitting for a fire sect, that makes today Metallum Dan.
Claire wakes up on the morning of Metallum Dan and does some stretches. "With the currently most important information now gathered, it's time to train sword moves and completely defy what the optimal movements are, I'll just have to trust the book that this is the foundation for sword techniques later on, but if I see improvements, then I'll take the liberty of improving it." With her mind made up, she prepares to leave, gets some breakfast, and leaves the inn to go look for a few things on a street market, before she can start training with her sword.
Once out on the street, it doesn't take long for Claire to find some stalls selling utility items, but sadly not the item she's looking for, said item being a thick rope preferably of a good few meters in length. After spending around half an hour of looking for the rope, she's finally able to find one that's a good three meters.
The shopkeeper standing behind the stall is a young woman with bright blue eyes, neck-length brown hair, about 163 cm tall, with a below-knee skirt and t-shirt. The woman looks at Claire with a smile who's looking at her wares. "Can I do something for you, miss?" "Ah, yes, I have something that I'd like to buy." Claire says in response while pointing towards the rope. "That rope there, what's its price?" "Oh, that took a while to make, so, it'll be 5 big copper for it." "Alright, here you go." Claire hands over the coins and gets the rope in return. "Thank you for your purchase, have a good day." "You too." She walks away from the shop to look for the remaining items on her list.
As she walks away from the shop, Claire swings the rope over a shoulder as a temporary measure for storage, then the lookout for a smithy can start, so she walks around to find a store area of town, instead of the stall here at marketplace. It doesn't take her long to find a smithy. Once she walks inside, she sees a few people walk around in the store, and a young man stand behind the desk.
"Excuse me, do you have maintenance gear for swords?" She asks the young man, who smiles back along with his response. "Yep, let me go get some," The man walks to a room behind the desk and returns after a few minutes, bringing with him a pouch. "Here you go miss, this should last a few months if you do it well, it'll be 3 big copper." She smiles as she hands over the coins. "Here you go, 3 big copper." The man quickly checks the money and hands over the gear. "Good doing business with you, do you know how to use the maintenance gear, or would you like a demonstration? It'll only cost you 10 copper."
"I think I'll decline the offer, I've taken care of metal before, but thanks for the suggestion, have a good day." Claire turns to walk out of the store as the man calls out. "You too, have a good day as well."
"Alright, now I can finally get on with the training, that certainly took some time." She goes to look for a forested area where she can be alone to train.
With the sun now hanging high in the sky, Claire finally manages to find forest area to train in, she made sure to talk with people around about soul beasts and getting the good news of there being very few, and those being of the lowest rank. She's quickly able to find a place with no one else. She takes the rope and binds it around a tree that has a diameter of around 20 cm, allowing her to wrap the rope around it 4 times, leaving a little rope to bind everything together. With her makeshift dummy done, the training can now commence
Her blade appears in her hands as she takes a stance from the manual, she takes a deep breath before trying to diagonal downwards cuts on the dummy, switching the sides every 1-3 hits in a random order, so as to not ingrain a bad habit of a predictable pattern of attack. The first tens of strikes can't really be said to be precise in any real way, but after a hundred of so strikes, they are finally getting more precise, enough for her to hit within 2 cm of her aim. The increased strength of her body helps quite a bit with controlling the sword, but it also works against controlling the force of the impact, as she isn't used to striking with a weak force.
After another fifty odd slashes, she starts to incorporate a little movement of her body as well, as that will make the strikes more powerful and actually useable in a fight, as you won't just be standing fully still when fighting. This causes her strikes to be more unprecise for the next while, but that rectifies itself over the next few dozen strikes.
As the sun hangs on the edge of the horizon, Claire finally stops for the day, with her having swung well over a thousand times, and her even adding in upwards diagonal slashes to the mix. She takes down the rope, which now has multiple cuts on it, and heads home with soar arms, even a stage 3 Body Refiner will get tired from swinging a sword over a thousand times each day.
As she enters her sub-space after having some dinner at the pub, she starts cultivating while thinking about what she gained from her training today, finding it to be satisfying for a day's work. After a few hours has gone by, she exits the sub-space and heads to bed early.
