Limits

After the dinner we traveled further north. I chose this direction on purpose. That was because north had the least human settlements and I promised Nick to avoid them. I needed peace and quiet to develop my skills but I also needed different encounters and experiences.

We traveled during the day and slept during the night. While traveling, I would practise my arts and while resting at the shelter, I would try to modify the diagrams from the manual I obtained from Rand.

3 Days passed like this and I was finally able to figure out the most suitable diagram for myself. It wasn't only improved but also much more refined and difficult. This one diagram that was the first in the book, would bring double the result compared to the old one. If trained to perfection.

The pose that the human being was depicting in my diagram was different of course. It now depicted a human with both hands touching the back of his neck while being crouched in a specific position. The position of the crouch was such that one leg would stay on the ground and the other would be lifted up in front of the human figure. This pose had also one very crucial detail and that was, the back needed to be straight and the whole body had to lean back a bit.

It was much more difficult because maintaining that position was magnitude harder than the original diagram depicted. I would only be able to train this for about 10 minutes and I would be completely tired. If I wanted to perfect this diagram, I would have to be able to last in this position at 30 minutes. If someone could last longer then that, I didn't know what would happen. From my knowledge, I could only predict this diagram to 30 minutes, which would make the hidden muscles in the trained areas as hard as stones. It could be possible that longer intervals would damage the body or it could develop even stronger muscles.

I could only last 10 minutes and the time it would take me to reach the 30 minutes mark was not short, therefore I didn't worry about that for now. I started to practise the pose from the diagram immediately and tried to get used to it. At first, I lost my balance loads of times but soon I got the hang of it and could stay in that pose for couple of minutes.

Although my limit was 10 minutes, it was a new type of exercise that I never attempted. Just because I would be able to last 10 minutes, it didn't automatically mean I was able to stay in that pose for that long. After couple of tries and couple of minutes of staying in the pose, I was dead tired.

I didn't want to try and modify the 2nd diagram because I was just a beginner when it comes to the 1st diagram. Meanwhile I thought of an idea and started to teach some skills to Shelly. Because Shelly's style of fighting was crude and relied on speed and its weight, meaning the faster it was and the heavier it was, the more force would be exerted on the target. That was why the bear flew into the air when Shelly rammed into it.

I didn't want to change how Shelly fought. Instead, I wanted for it to develop senses and be more aware of the surroundings. The idea I came up with was to place the mask limiting the vision on Shelly's head and make it practise its other senses, like hearing or smell.

Shelly was not very keen on the idea, its vision would be taken away again but because I insisted, Shelly finally nodded its head in understanding. I trained the arts as well as my body's muscles while Shelly trained its senses.

Days went by like this and a week passed. On our way, we encountered wolves, bears and sometimes big insects such as huge wasps that were at least the size of a human palm. When I first saw those wasps, I was dumbstruck. Usually wasps were tiny but these were about 20 times bigger and much more ferocious. Those wasps lived in huge hives that covered whole trees. Even if a tree was 20 metres tall or taller the nest would still extend from the top to almost the bottom of the tree.

The nest must've contained thousand if not thousands of wasps of such size. When we encountered the nest for the first time, we immediately took a detour. Although I could kill dozen or so wasps, if there were hundreds or a thousand, even Nick's skills would be helpless against that kind of swarm.

Every day was new experience for us. Sometimes we were chased by wasps, sometimes we killed wolves and once we even encountered a huge group of bears that contained at least 300 of them. I also learned something about tracks and habitats of the animals in the forest. Because we encountered large groups more often while we traveled towards the north, I had more opportunities to learn about their nature and their way of life.

If there were traces of larger groups of animals, we would immediately take a detour and avoid meeting that group. I could take care of couple of bears at once while Shelly could take a few as well. But a group of 40 and more was deadly to us. I learned in those couple of days that I was a bit too overconfident due to my skills. I thought of them as just animals but there were pack leaders and sometimes even other variants that seemed to be even higher in social status of the group.

After I practiced the new pose from the 1st diagram I modified, I was able to last 10 minutes. After 10 minutes I would be left breathless while taking huge mouthfuls of air. Although it seemed simple, it was very stressful exercise and therefore, I limited myself to only do it once a day and never more. I didn't want to disable myself, even though I had some medicine on me. I still preferred to be safe than sorry.

Shelly also had some improvements, although it couldn't run with the mask on, it didn't stumble anymore while walking and occasionally walked into things but it was learning. I could see that Shelly was determined to learn as well. We traveled like this, where days were filled with training, hunting, avoiding packs of animals as well as resting and contemplating.