The training ended. Jason had been the obvious victor topic the others with forty seven gremlin kills. Alsvid was second, he was already doing well for himself and the explosion he caused pushed his kill count to thirty. Yoruichi was las coming in at twenty three kills and being eliminated from the challenge.
"You all did well, you have all improved different aspects of your skill. You should train yourself more. Nightsky, you have the same level of stamina and control but you have improved your movements to better use energy so you don't get exhausted. Sienna, the fact that you can change the behavior of all ten of your blobs at once is great job keep it up. Monarch, your new trick is great and good job on mastering three orbs at once but you can do better. That's all, you guys return to training." Kage said.
They returned back to their training and Kage soon realized why their training had drastically slowed down. They couldn't learn anything from each other anymore.
"Ok guys. I have a new training method for you." Kage grabbed their attention.
His shadow spread across the floor and connected with theirs. His then retracted as the three's shadow rose and took shape. They turned into shadow humanoids with very striking resemblance to their owners, the only difference was that they were made of shadow and had no decernable features.
"What I have created are shadow clones of each of you that can do exactly everything I have seen you do. Your new training method is to defeat this perfect clone of yours using only your projectile skills. They will also only use projectile skills and they have the same command which is to beat you anyway possible with only that skill. I noticed you were all having trouble learning from each other so how about you just learn from yourself." Kage said.
The three nodded to Kage and moved a distance away from each other to train with their shadows. The training started out simple. The shadows were the one on the offensive while the humans tested a few things with the shadows. Then slowly, things started getting heated.
Jason started having a very amazing time with his shadow. He was pulling out every move he had with his disks and the shadow was just countering with its own shadow disks. At first they just stood still clashing disks. Then he started walking towards his shadow slowly while having a huge smile on his face. When he got close enough he jumped back to his starting location and started running around the shadow while striking with his disks as the shadow started struggling a little to keep up, then it adapted and started countering the disks. Jason then ran in a straight line at the shadow and threw a punch which the shadow dodged but then he heard Kage's voice.
"You are to battle the shadow with only your projectile skills. Of course if you want I could make the shadow start learning from your movements so that it can feel like a real fight with yourself, I can see Nightsky would like that so you can have a taste." Kage said.
The shadow flipped over and threw a kick at Jason's head. He quickly ducked and jumped back as the shadow ran at him doing the exact thing he just did from the charge up to the punch which he dodged.
"Thank you Kage." Jason said with the biggest smile on his face.
Alsvid was having a hard time with his shadow. He felt as if the shadow was purposely mocking him as it was destroying all his orbs before he could start any tactics. Instead of it feeling like he was battling himself it felt like he was battling Jason. He tried a few more times and gave up preferring to just strike the shadow with raw orb power instead of working any techniques despite him only having two. He started sending over multiple orbs at random intervals. It wasn't in the hundreds. He would just send one and make a prediction follow-up where he thought the shadow would move to only for the shadow not to move at all and then he would bring the orb back around while sending two towards the shadow only for it to dodge all three of them.
Yoruichi was having it the most. It truly felt like her Shadow was mocking her. The shadow was mimicking everything she did as a counter to everything she did. Since most of what she leant required a bit of range this made it impossible to do anything with her blobs other than just keep trying and hope it works out sooner or later. She was getting angrier and angrier as she faught the shadow and eventually she got fed up and attacked with a smoke fist which neither Kage nor the shadow had seen before. The shadow was hit and it started adapting.
"It seems all of you chose option two." Kage said. He said this because Alsvid had gotten fed up with his shadow and had fired a discreet essence burst at it but Kage had picked up on it and his shadow started adapting.
"From this moment forward your shadows will learn from everything you do and will use those same tricks in different ways you don't know in an attempt to beat you. You will only pass this phase when you beat your shadow. Am also going to lessen the affects of the shadow field so you can all feel pain from your own skills. This should teach you pain tolerance and teach you how to evade. Good luck." Kage said.
As soon as Kage said the last two words which were good luck, chaos ensued. It was like a shadow flipped in the shadows as they went berserk and started attacking restlessly. They didn't give any breathing time and this even affected Jason. The shadows were now on hardcore.