As I was walking down the path I looked around and tried to find the area I hid the bag the day before.After recognizing it I quickly walked up to the tree and examined the place where I had left the bag.
It was still there and after I looked into it I saw that everything was still there. With that I had basically completed everything in connection to the village and I doubted a lot of danger to result from the death of Hiroki, after all nobody should suspect me and even if they do they had no sufficient evidence and I acted like I was just a nice boy, who had to experience something dramatic.
"Nice, seems like everything worked out so far."
I grabbed the sword, an almost 1 meter long katana which wasn't really able to be considered a well made sword, but still something far better than I would've imagined to get so shortly after coming to this world.
The bow was a normal wooden bow and there were 15 arrows left in the quiver. I put the bow around my back and put the sword into the sheath, equipping it at my waist, ready to draw it quickly.
It will probably take a while, but after a certain amount of time it should be natural for me to draw my sword in the face of danger in just a few moments of time. Well that should at least be one of the rather long time goals considering my swordsmanship I wanted to develop.
I was still a little too small to be able to fully use the sword and my skills were also by far not good enough so for training I would use a wooden branch as a practice weapon, at the best it would be a bit lighter, but still have the same thickness with a small decrease in length.
"Well this could still serve as a good weapon to scare off opponents, if I would be to really encounter someone who wants to kill me, when I am still not ready to fight against them myself."
Well now I felt prepared and started to follow the path in the exact opposite direction I walked in the first time.
Of course I wanted to go to the next city to get information, but I shouldn't be too fast and try to train myself a bit more along the way, you never know, maybe even just a day more could get me to a skill level, which would allow me to win in a life-death situation I would normally lose.
So with these thoughts in mind I proceeded to make my way along the path while also looking out for beasts inside the forest and also search a suitable branch, which I could use as a practice weapon.
I managed to find one rather quickly after walking for a bit more than 5 minutes.
"Well I have so much time left today I guess I should try to get decently far today."
I was looking out for a certain place. The place, which I fought the man named, who I now knew the name of, 'Hiroki'. I had previously quickly wanted to move on and didn't know how far I was away from the next place to stay, so I only moved his corpse a bit more than a dozen meters into the forest.
It was a bit too risky for me, so I wanted to just be safe and move the corpse a bit further into the forest.
The problem was that I couldn't really find the place we fought at, I couldn't see any traces of the gate, nor of our fight, so after noticing that I must have already walked too far I just gave up and hoped that it wouldn't be found by coincidence.
I was probably too cautious anyway, so I just concentrated on others things.
-evening-
"Phew."
"I guess even just walking normally is tiring if you do it the whole day long."
I sat down at a random place in the forest where I was covered by a few trees around me and also wasn't able to be seen from the path, but still was close enough to not be considered in the territory of the beasts.
Fortunately it was quite warm, probably summer in this world or maybe late spring. Well I guess I don't even know if this world has seasons, but I guess I should just accept it and be happy that I don't have to additionally fight with snow and cold.
If I needed to make a fire to get warm I could easily be detected by beasts or other people in this forest, at this point I was sure I wouldn't be able to fight off most of the things in the forest, nobody in the village even knew of most of the things, so I shouldn't rely on the fact that I hadn't already been attacked.
"Let's get up, I have to use my time efficiently."
I knew I couldn't sleep yet, but it was only getting darker and darker, so I didn't want to proceed at that time if it wasn't necessary.
In the spare time I was going to train skills with the sword and bow.
First I picked up the bow, because I knew that you should shoot, while being calm and having a normal breathing, it would be harder after doing quick movements with the sword for multiple minutes.
I knew only a few things about archery from my previous world, I hadn't really been interested in archery previously, but knowing even just a thing or two more could've really helped me in that situation.
Basically the only thing I heard was that you had to shoot after concentrating and shooting the arrow at the moment you breathed out.
So I grabbed the bow with my left hand and picked an arrow from the quiver from my back and tried to make myself comfortable with the weight of the bow. It wasn't that hard, but neither was it too easy.
If I got a bit stronger and more comfortable with it I would surely automatically get better, so I tried to calm myself down and concentrated on breathing in and out slowly and calmly.
After slowly breathing in and out for a few times I would shoot the arrow at the tree a bit more than a meter away from me.
It actually did hit the tree, but the strength was horrible and I knew that I wouldn't be able to hit a target further than a few meters away.
After shooting for a few more minutes I began to get more comfortable with the bow and began ot move back further and further step by step and although a few arrows didn't hit I still felt like I was making huge improvements.
But I felt my arms getting heavier and heavier the longer I stood there, so I went to get the last arrow back and sat down to eat and drink a bit, it wouldn't really help me that much if I tried to improve while feeling pain in my arms.
The food I got from Daisuke was mostly bread and other things you wouldn't need to warm up before eating them.
"Hmm, that was a nice meal."
It felt good to eat all alone in a quiet place and although I couldn't really relax I was still very happy to actually feel like I was adventuring all alone in a fantasy world it all still felt sort of surreal, but I could already feel myself getting more and more used to it and although I have a lot to think about while walking along the path, I used that time to think about all the different kinds of things you could do in a typical fantasy story and got absorbed by these thoughts.
Well after all that was actually exactly what I was doing, living in a 'fantasy' world, but instead of only a fantasy it was real life, it was a pleasant and reassuring thought.
After eating up I was beginning to feel a bit tired, but I wanted to still train with the sword before going to sleep, so I stood up again and was already getting ready to begin the training.
I unsheathed my sword and weighted it first in both hands and then only in one hand, the weight was actually lighter than I would've thought although It did already feel like it was pretty light, when I was only walking around with it.
Well I swung it around and tried to think of opponents in my head and how I would fight against them. I also tried to not just improve my slashes and techniques I could use for defending or attacking, but also tried to improve my footwork.
Jumping back, swiftly evading or just blocking an attack and following up with a killing strike. I didn't try anything too fast or too difficult, because I knew that if I hurt myself accidentally that could be really bad in the current situation and could cause me to lose a lot of time again.
I didn't want my potential stupidity to ruin my time, which actually felt like I couldn't get enough of now that I was in this new world.
Well that day I practiced a few more minutes until I finally went to sleep. Looking down upon the katana with my dark brown eyes I felt like I was finally able to feel something, which actually brought me joy and the feeling of improving myself.
It was fun, something which would take me my whole lifetime to really master, but also something that would save my life multiple times in the future.