Heavenly Kingdom: The Kingdom among the clouds

Chapter 172: Misfortune

[Desert in the Outskirts of Tekoa Town]

Three days has passed since then, the whole group itself had finally arrived at the territory of Mayor Zoabi, asthey would soon reach Tekoa town after a few hours of travel. During this three eventful days, many things had happened such as Asmaveth starting to learn how to control his death mana under the guidance of Azrael, Ester slowly opening up to the Hero's party due to their kind treatment which reminded him of his own family, and the daily sparring training between Sato and Takahashi under the teachings of Zaheer who volunteered to teach them how to improve their skills.

With almost everyone has their own thing to spend the rest of the day, their bond with each other further strengthened, aside from the unchanging fact that Ester was still restrained by the holy Chains that Ban had casted on him.

There are many reasons why he is still restrained, one of the reasons is the fact that they still can't trust him despite forming a bond.

This time about a few hours away from Tekoa town, Takahashi once more asked Sato for a sparring challenge, which is then accepted by the latter under the pretext of improving one's combat skills. Of course in this sparringmatch between them Zaheer was automatically designated as its referee as he can give out pointers towards the both of them regarding their flows during combat.

This has become a daily routine, that the rest of the group had already regarded their sparring match as entertainment. Of course despite still being slight hostile to the group, Ester is somewhat captivated by the fight as he saw improvement from both Takahashi and Sato. Even though they started as if they were both newborn swordsman, the improvement they made daily was quite significant to the point they seemed like geniuses due to how fast they learn and apply the teachings into their combat. A once I'm a lifetime genius per se.

"Alright! Both of you guys know the rules right? You can't use powerful mana attacks, all you can use on this sparring match is your own swordmanship and the sword wave, the only skill that is allowed on this match... got it?"

"Sure so" answered by Sato

"I'm ready!" Said by Takahashi

With both of them responding to him, Zaheer then finally gave the go sign, as Takahashi made the first move and dashed towards Hero Sato.

Upon seeing Takahashi dashing towards him, he then entered his own defensive stance as he gripped his sword and swung it to meet the sword that Takahashi swung. On that first initial contact, a small shockwave shook the field as the sand picked up and was blown away.

But not long after Sato defended himself from the first attack, he then quickly maneuvered his sword to block the consecutive slashes that Takahashi has made using the reverse swing of his sword.

Not giving up at all, Takahashi swung his sword three consecutive times towards Sato, only to get all of them blocked from hitting its target. In that moment when Takahashi failed to land a single blow, Sato quickly felled him back with a small push, followed by a counter attack coming from from his swing.

Naturally Takahashi saw through this, as he quickly blocked the attack, only to get blown away from the force of Sato's swing. Being blown away and crashing unto the sand, Takahashi quickly made a flip, as he got to stay on his ground, followed by a sudden burst of speed as Takahashi planned to attack Sato.

When Sato saw the speed that Takahashi had did, he was quite surprised for a second as he didn't expect him to suddenly upped his speed when fighting him. In response to this, Hero Sato stayed collected as he charged up his sword with mana and made a swing towards Takahashi.

"Sword Wave"

Seeing that attack, Takahashi quickly maneuvered his own speed, as he easily dodged the sword wave coming his way, which kicks up the sand and causing almost zero visibility. Using the sand as a cover for his charge, Takahashi then successfully sneaked behind Sato as he charged up his sword and swung it towards Shun.