After a long spar, Walker showed Teret what he meant the hours prior. Jumping high, he pivoted around and redirected his position with a fantastic display of inhuman acrobatics.
"It should be possible for you, too. I think you can do it if you think of yourself as a qi-string."
Walker snapped in realization as his eyes lightened up with excitement. Instructing Teret by explaining what he referred to as "Advanced Energy Physics" by giving a lecture with his blackboard and chalk...the skeleton sort of understood what he was asking.
In his mind, he pictured the Core of his Qi-Archive, manifesting the image of it from whatever pseudo-immaterial realm it dwelled in. Strings vividly flowed out of the mutated tiger's eye gemstone, a soft aurora composed of white, millimeter-long lines all around it.
Next, he psychically manifested his own body within his mind. Every single fault in the texture of his bones appeared picture-perfect and lifelike, as if he had just formed a perfect doppelganger.
His bones became slightly transparent as Teret roamed the confines of his structure. He could see the colorless mist that was the Mortisim vented effortlessly as the energy clung to the sides. A long string that bobbed and shifted in cycles without end traced a path, forming a repeating circuit.
Teret felt like he could redirect and shape that energy, the same as when he withdrew it. Coiling the string in his feet, he laid most of it out flat and tugged upwards with the remaining length.
Outside of his concentrated introspection, Walker watched him slightly levitate. His eyes were overcast and murky as he shook his head.
"That's not what I mean. Flying like that is useless for us assassins. I'm not teaching you how to be a magician, so save that for when someone does! Think, apprentice. Why only the feet? My movements were ones brought about by a complex series of rhythms...ebbs and flows."
Teret nodded, distributing the string all around his body. Of course, he had to thin out the energy considerably...but he soon saw a way for him to do it!
Drawing insight from the restless flow of the mortisim in his bones, he created a sort of "flooring" that supported the mist. The union of the two techniques seemed to withdraw something entirely as a subtle glow of a fuscia pink outlined his body.
"Hey, Mara. You're mad at me, right? Name this technique for your kid."
Walker commented as he pulled up the system dialogue panel that his own system urgently showed him whenever it faced the relentless badgering of an incensed mother. Then, before Mara could ignore him, he jabbed at the clattering teeth of the skeleton as he waved with overjoyed movements, rotating and pivoting his body in midair for a few seconds before he fell.
--...
[Please note: the active martial skill Djinn Float LV 01 has been created.]
Week 3.
A dagger flew at a tree. An etched-in archery indicator with a bullseye at the center was upon its bark.
The nicked blade missed the mark so hard that it bounced off of the miasmic wall Walker kept operating at all times.
"Haaa...kid, that's not how you do it."
Teret sheepishly leaned over and tilted his head in curiosity. Walker, having broken his meditative posture over the constant sounds of the blade glancing off the surprisingly hard haze...he took an active role in his teaching once again.
"Here, I'll show you."
The haze coiled around the dagger and shot it at a tree directly behind Walker with supersonic speed. The blade's tip landed precisely at the spot where he was pointing.
Then he retrieved the dagger from the crooked wooden makeshift sheath and took a lackadaisical stance. In the moment it took an ordinary person to blink his demeanor shifted, becoming refined and honed.
Breathing in, exhaling. A complex rhythm synthesized with the blood coursing along his veins and the system of ligaments, bones, and joints in his dominant hand. Everything was synchronized; his movements were flawless.
His arm bent along with his wrist as he sent the dagger flying, and the tip of the blade found itself within the center of the center, squarely in the nexus of the bullseye's radius.
He repeated this several times without dropping a sweat, even performing variations and carefully deconstructing his actions step by step. He even had time to talk, his breathing not oscillating whatsoever.
"Every movement you make relies on rhythm. It can be tempo. It can be momentum...but you don't have any. It's natural, I think. You don't have any muscles, so much so that weight training and drilling concepts into you with pure body memory alone....is useless. But that mind of yours is pretty astute. So I'll try to explain this with words while you process what I'm doing."
Throw, retrieve. Whistles broke the ambiance as the dagger was hurled, tossed, and shot. No matter how hard or how soft Walker threw it, the result was the same.
"When moving...in this case, throwing...you control the trajectory with 'flow.' This is an important thing that you lack since you don't have lungs. Even the natural rhythm of breathing is inaccessible to you...so we have to build this 'flow' from scratch."
"I will display my pathways to you. Pay attention, simulate that feeling mentally, and replicate it through your entire body. All things have an ebb and flow. The speed of this flow is tempo. The smoothness of this flow is momentum. This is the basis of all things, a fundamental root. Without this, you'll live your entire life as prey...so I will say it once again. Pay attention."
Instead of breathing oxygen, Walker cut off the ventilation of his respiratory system. Yes, he was entirely without breath, taking care to display his energies as they shone through his physical body.
Fine lines rotated and streamed along constructed pathways that represented the various rhythms that coordinated together. His gaze neither wavered nor fluctuated, and every single corner of his body was like its own planet system.
Each rotation overlapped and orbited around each other. It was like watching the atmosphere expand, the sky widening and expanding over each and every atom.
This was complete synchronization, his bones, veins, blood, and even organs moving as one.
Throw. Retrieve. Bullseye.
Week 4.
"That's right. Wrap the string around the handle, compress it in a spring, and then shoot it. Bang! Like a bullet."
Walker pantomimed a gun with his fingers, his index squeezing on the trigger as he even went the extra way to replicate the effect of recoil. His hair tossed and turned as it floated with the breeze, even his bangs blowing upwards and away from his face.
Teret did as he was told, of course. He eagerly slaked his growing thirst for knowledge over the soon to be 2 months, learning to take notes from anyone and anything!
Shuaaa...
The white string-qi looped around the handle in a firm grasp. The dagger that was almost too small to be recognized as such was akin to an arrow the way Teret tossed it around, controlling the string like an extension of his body!
"That's nice, huh? A perfect throw and retrieve...and that's pretty close to the bullseye, too? You must've finally created a few rhythms! This calls for a celebration..."
The handle of his weapon, the 'Sheathed Effigy,' was withdrawn from the long flat-ended hilt in one slick draw.
The slit that was the space for the blade spewed heaps of malevolent black and even blacker violet colors...until! A neon blade composed entirely of qi, aura, and even the legendary sword intent stretched out into a rectangular blade with an even end.
This happened at the crux of his draw, and by the time the blade guard was level to his waist, the neon purple blade caressed the forest floor. A striking indent was drawn without any difficulty at all.
As if he was cutting through butter.
"My apprentice. I've let you wail on me without much fanfare. Now, it's the master's turn to educate you..."
Walker's attention was to continuously push Teret to the edge, forcing the skeleton to combine the skills he learned separately. Then, with luck, he'd become able to blend them together and engrave their meanings in his very soul...
The blade took on three different shapes as the leaves on the ground began to subtly float in the air. His deadly killing intent was partially unleashed, and his fighting spirit loudly roared as the phantasms of demons emerged and cried to the tune of his sword.
Teret stepped back, his own spirit subdued at first. But, as his routine had engraved in his bones...he still lifted the blade that re-entered his bony hands.
Step.
That one step was enough to blow away the trees and stretch their roots. But even if you may not think it, this was Walker at his most charitable.
If we used levels to gauge his power, Walker was currently at LV -9000.
This was the power of The Stained Ginnead's progenitor, the man who was most definitely on the top 10 list of Strangers back in Blue Pangea. Even if he only had a portion of his Particularity due to the Trait he acquired from the Redemption Point Service, this was enough to keep the deathdeities in their heavenly forms and away from mortal vessels...so long as Walker had the inclination to go on a hunt!
"Apprentice. This teacher of yours will attack you from up close, far away, or between those two states. Learn from this, and watch my movements. Oh, and I advise that you don't use that tiger thing unless you absolutely have to. Revealing all of your abilities to your opponent will simply get you killed..."
And with that, Teret could no longer sense Walker's presence. But, even though he was standing still, the skeleton could see his teacher with his own eyes...
The lengthy attack came from nowhere.
Teret felt a flash of intuition as he felt death linger on his shoulders, causing him to duck to the ground so low that his chin dug into the dirt. From there, he rolled and bounded, bouncing off his spine as he lithely took the position of a crouch.
"...Good senses. Should I go easier?"
Particles and sparks danced and gleamed beneath the red veil above the two. With every strike, Teret felt his bones crack and fracture!
The string-qi that flowed about in two medium-sized strands shot upwards...and hardened! Walker was surprised as they formed a texture that Teret could step on, dodging a blow that his teacher only left a couple openings for him to escape through.
The dagger slid and danced as if it was a living person, guided by the energy-composed string. Shooting through the breeze, a sharp whistle punctured above the whispering of the nestled-together leaves.
A heel dug into the bark, leading to Teret bounding further. The fighting spirit the two emitted clashed together, the skeleton a mere spark facing a hellish inferno.
Mortisim billowed out of his bones in a misty vapor, his hands taut and cutting with the added force of sharpness from every single digit he had.
Yet Walker wasn't pushed back at all. Instead, he was the victor of every exchange of blows.
When Teret launched a salvo of jabs akin to blades slashing wildly, Walter rolled his blade in his hands and then shot his wrist with a snap! If he wasn't an assassin, the mere noises his body would emit would hammer in the ears, smashing their canals with the same force of a rocket launcher!
The neon blade composed of energy and flowing petals of The Stained Ginnead extended, contracted, and slashed. The glinting light was a red luster that cleanly cleaved with overflowing conciseness.
His every move was thought out as if he was playing a game of chess. While he seemed to be relaxed, his every muscle expanded and contracted with millisecond timed precision.
Whereas Teret was an eager grasshopper, hopping up with sickening hewing slashes performed by the string-controlled dagger.
Walker drew out more and more of Teret's potential as he subtly increased the difficulty. This was the pressure that would start pressing that planet of carbon into diamond...!
Clang, clang, clang.
Digging his feet into the ground and spinning his wrist, a ray of thin mist shot out from Teret's empty socket. His moves and aura were becoming refined from the mental pressure Walker adjusted to his current state.
It wasn't long before the area around them became leveled, the trees bending over to create a gated arena.