My New Life in TBATE

Potential

The sounds of swords clashing could be heard in the small opening of the forest, it was me and Arthur sparring for what seemed like the thousandth time these past couple months. This clearing was one Jasmine showed us after our dive into that dreaded spider dungeon, my body shivers slightly and I can see Arthur's eye twitch. Oops he thinks I'm not taking him seriously, which I guess I'm not too much.

He picks up his pace and begins making too many mistakes as his body is still not in tune with his past life's swordplay. He feints right before quickly spinning on the ball of his foot to come at me with a slash, but I just elbow his sword arm at his elbow. Sweep his legs with my feet that he tries in vain to dodge and then using the flats of my 2 Kukris i slam them on his back. Foot on his sword hand so he knows to stop, I hear him groan slightly.

"You're lucky Jasmine will still be gone a couple days. Her punishments are a lot worse than mine." I said while looking down at Arthur, finally removing my foot. He growls slightly, but grabs his sword and sits in a meditative position and I follow suit.

"Grr. What do you expect when you're not taking this seriously." He spats out while trying to calm his breathing, I just smile and chuckle at him.

"If me shivering from a terrifying memory is enough to completely throw you off then why are we even out here training?" He grumbles again in response and I bite back another laugh, no need to upset the former king too much. He begins purifying his core, while going over the battle in his head, and I can only smile every time he winces at his mistakes.

However there is something I've noticed, but I haven't thought of a way to bring it up. I can only assume it's because of his past life and how they cultivated Ki, but he only draws and purifies the mana inside his body and not the mana outside as well. Besides the mana that comes in through mana rotation, but that's what made me realize it and I can't believe he hasn't yet.

His core progresses much faster when he brings in new mana through rotation.

"Arthur." I call out to him.

"Hmm?" Still focusing on meditating this is all I get.

"Why do you not bring in ambient mana when you meditate, it's almost like you don't do it on purpose?" He opens his eyes in surprise before quickly closing them and I can see him focus on bringing in more mana than mana rotation normally would idly. Stale mana that hadn't been purifying as fast as the new mana was taken out and fresh mana brought in. His eyes widened and jaw dropped.

"I just passed into orange stage... I was already close, but I still had another month or 2 before I expected to breakthrough." I smile brightly at him and stand back up.

"That's great! Now lets get the spar started again so you can get used to your new core." He quickly jumps up which makes me laugh internally because it feels like he really is only 9 years old the way he hates meditating. Though I guess when you do something your whole life and then have to do it again in a new life you start to dread it.

Flourishing my Kukris as I hold them out in preparation, Arthur unsheathes Dawns Ballad and takes his stance. Mana fuels into our bodies and our spar begins again. He does a quick slash at my stomach, but I step back, though he takes another steps forward to stay in my guard. He still hasn't learned that the Kukris are also a deception.

They look vicious and dangerous, so opponents will try to prevent you from using easy slashes or stabs, but their true strength lies in, like daggers, they are easy to use hand to hand combat skills with. Now inside my guard Arthur brings his sword to his chest for a stab, but I just punch out at his head with my fist. He tries to continue his stab while leaning out of the way of my fist, but misses my other arm coming up to deflect his sword away from me.